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If privacy all at once was gone and for everyone, then it would change us as a society probably for the better. The reality is privacy is only going to be left for the elite which will continue the blackmail and comprised world we live in today. Think about the toe tapping senator or the cheating politicians that have been busted in years past. Did they start the behavior after being elected or were they always like that and someone else helped them get to power with the exchange of secrecy for influence? |
The funny thing is, the headline is not exaggerating much at all. I understand your dislike of sensationalist titles and I respect and share that dislike. Your skepticism is entirely founded, especially if you are not familiar with these ongoing issues. But in this case, this event is significant enough that it is most likely as bad as I said it was. Here are the facts:
services are openly operated that claim to retreive full identity info of any arbitrary American. I know these services work. They have operated successfully for months or possibly over a year, with much positive feedback from customers. If you have bitcoins, you can verify that these work too(but don't tell anyone, that would be illegal).
exposed[dot]su has been doxing celebrities and government officials for a while now. They are all essentially ssndob reports. You don't get(for example) Mitt Romney's credit history without some info that only Mitt Romney should have. If the data was stolen due to an attack against Mitt Romney, we would be seeing more than just his credit report. We don't. That's because the credit reporting agencies are the target.
That very small botnet was seen in extremely close association with the ssndob service. When badguys lurk on a network for many months, they don't just sit there and do nothing. Anyone that claims they do is simply blind to what they actually do. And that box doesn't sit in a very special hand picked botnet if it isn't producing anything.
Those compromised machines were running an unknown binary executable, and regularly phoning home to a domain name with 0 reputation associated with it. MANY enterprise level security monitoring tools would have flagged any aspect of this situation, even though Virustotal flagged nothing.
Later on in the article, LexisNexis admitted to finding an account that was being used to generate reports for SSNDOB. They only mentioned one account. That doesn't mean that was the only account the bad guys had.
Krebs has sponsors but he does not actually sell those products. Within the infosec community his blog is known for being one of the few sources of real investigative reporting in information security, and has a history of shining light into some very dark recesses of the Internet crime world, and there are people behind bars because of his work.
Typos happen. But if you knew the reputation of the site this wouldn't be an issue. A lot of the sources of information that Krebs uses are underground forums and would require a significant amount of work to replicate. But you can, if you study fraud and are a security researcher. I have independently checked his conclusions on occasion, just to see if they were right, so have others. It may be hard to blindly trust people on the Internet but that blog does receive a fair amount of peer review from some of the best people in the industry.
So here are my conclusions:
These companies have been hacked by SSNDOB, and don't want to be held accountable. And without Krebs rubbing the facts in their faces, they would never want to look. These companies are not acting responsibly and are not interested in doing so, because it would hurt their business. It's better to sweep it all under the rug.
"We... have found no evidence that customer or consumer data were reached or retrieved." - What a misleading usage of language. If you know about how data exfiltration works, the hard part about it is that the criminals clean up after themselves. Often the data is offloaded in encrypted rar files. You'll never have that evidence, even in environments with good monitoring. But making that claim misleads people into thinking that there is no theft, rather than the fact that evidence of theft is often impossible to find.
The public evidence of this compromise indicate that these companies do not check no-reputation domains their servers connect to, and they do not inspect new executables, and they do not check for unauthorized large numbers of reports being run on their service. This is extremely bad! It indicates to me that this is an organization whos management does not care about security and does not think that leaking huge amounts of data is a threat to their business. This indicates to me that these bad guys have had free, undetected, reign on these networks.
These companies are the largest data brokers in the US, and are responsible for authentication, background checks, and credit checks for all Americans that participate in our financial system at all. Ever get a job? HireRight was probably used, even if you don't know they were. Ever do anything where your identity has to be verified? You probably dealt with LexisNexis, even if you don't know you did.
The best part about this? SSNDOB was also hacked and their databases have been stolen by unknown persons. The cat is out of the bag.
In conclusion, I do believe that "all Americans" have been hacked. If you want to be pedantic, you can say "all Americans except ones that only live in the woods" have been hacked. If you are still skeptical, I can try to explain how things work in information security, but this story is legit. |
For those that don't remember, Lavabit was Edward Snowden's email provider, and they shut down their business rather than cooperating with a court order they claimed "would make them complicit in crimes against the American people." They were bound by a gag order and threatened with jail if they violated it.
Today they won a victory in court and were able to get the secret court order unsealed, and holy shit is it a doozy: the ACLU's Chris Soghoian (@csoghoian) called it "the nuclear option." The court order revealed the US government demanded Lavabit turn over their root SSL certificate, something that allows them to monitor the traffic of every user of the service . Security researchers have argued for years over whether the government would be so heavy-handed as to try this, but there has never been any proof that they actually do, as no one has ever challenged such an order in court.
If a government can force a company to turn over the SSL keys, it breaks the trust model for the entire internet. Everything from google to facebook to skype to your bank is only encrypted by SSL keys, and if the FBI can force Lavabit to hand over their SSL key, they can bet your ass they did the same thing to Google. This story changes everything. |
There's a channel here that plays reruns of SG:1 and SG:Atlantis for as long as I can remember, and I still watch every episode I can even if it's for the umpteenth time, SG:1 is obviously not the same without O'neil in it's last seasons, and they seem to run out of ideas, but the team chemistry is still there with several funny and absurd moments. SG:Atlantis is also pretty good, the team also works very well together, the show did end weird though..
If anything, there's really no other sci-fi shows out there that are worth it, I loved Fringe but that's over now as well, so the Stargate shows are definitely worth it.
Also, SG:Universe, while very different from the other 2 shows, is also very worthy, the first season was kinda weird, guess everyone back then was trying to emulate Battlestar Galactica with the human dramas and the black and white choices, but the second season picked up very well and it promised to be one heck of a show, too bad they're all over at this time. |
Actually 8 cubes, not hundreds. And self-assembling just means they stick together, not that they replicate. |
Yeah....about that. I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one.
It's [not the first time]( people have lost money from [bogus projects](
People seem to get the impression that Kickstarter/Indiegogo verify the project and check everything, and if they don't get their item then they get a refund. The truth is, these "brokerage firms" perform a minimal amount of due diligence to cover their asses, and then let the project start to earn money. If the project itself fails to perform, they're not liable for anything, and the most they do is send an email to the project and ask them to refund the donations. It's also not in their best interest to go suing all the project developers that don't follow through with their promise either. Best you can hope for is winning a foreign country class action lawsuit, or filing a chargeback of course...
I find it funny they didn't show a working product in the video - you don't see too many of those ones around. Oh wait, that's right - because Kickstarter doesn't even allow projects without a working prototype. IndieGoGo is much less restrictive because when they entered the market (after Kickstarter of course), they had to find some way of taking away market-share away from Kickstarter. IndieGogo's "Aha!" moment was when they decided to be much less restrictive on the requirements to post a project with them. Essentially, allowing all those previously unfundable "experimental" projects. |
pushed Britney Spears to go nuts for the camera to increase sales.
Actually, she legit suffers from mental illness. That's also why she is under a guardianship/trusteeship (ie: her parents need to make legal, financial, and even personal decisions for her since she was/is incapable of doing so). She was also out of the picture for a while, and her "come back" kind of flopped, she just kinda kept at it and eventually people forgot about the hair shaving thing, edit to add: and even how she was forced in to the hospital in the first place [(snapping after losing custody of her kids, holding her kids hostage, being rolled out of her home strapped to a gurney, etc)](
AFAIK, she still does suffer from mental issues but what they are exactly has never been disclosed. The most ever discussed in court files were something to the effect of her having a severe mental illness which people think might be postpartum psychosis and/or bipolar disorder. It might also gain the weight gain which is common with bipolar medication, and requires extensive effort to counter -- even with exercise. |
I'll try to keep this brief (and will probably fail).
First, I tried to open the T-Mobile account/shift the AT&T account online. Kind of an involved process (since credit check is involved), took 20 minutes... got to final confirmation page and got an error saying I needed to go in store. Grumble grumble, whatever.
So I go to store the next day during rush hour (I'm currently in Los Angeles so that's no small thing) and repeat the account setup/transfer process with a rep. We get to the final step again when the rep informs me that the system won't let it go through since I already have an account (via my SSN) in process in the system (from the previous day's failed online order. That "in-process" account can't be canceled at the moment because it's 7PM west coast time and the T-Mobile support people who could cancel the first online account/order are gone for the day, as of 8pm EST. He says "come back tomorrow." Again, this is dealing with LA rush hour and, in terms of keeping score, I've already failed online and now in store.
So I come back the next day again after work. The T-Mobile support people are able to cancel the first online order, so we're about to get everything setup when he asks me for the trade-in AT&T phone (which is needed as part of the promotion to switch from AT&T and T-Mobile pays the breakup fees). I didn't bring it since the online setup said I could just mail it in with a T-Mobie provided postage box. He says he can't open the new account without the old phone's IMEI.
At this point, I'm pretty darn frustrated that this is the third problem in three days and I'm really just trying to give T-Mobile my money here... and yet I've spent a grand total of an hour sitting in traffic (over two days) and another 40 minutes in-store trying to get this setup. So I communicate this. To which he responds "well, you should really go through with this signup because each time we've done this process, it's opened up new credit inquiries and unless you sign up, these multiple inquiries are going to hurt your credit score."
This, needless to say, realllllly makes my blood boil because 1) it's a threat (signup or else your credit is affected), and 2) it's partially untrue. Yes, multiple credit inquiries in a short period of time hurt your credit. That said, T-Mobile is able to clarify to Experian/Equifax/Transunion that these multiple inquiries are all part of ONE T-Mobile inquiry as part of ONE T-Mobile sign-up.
So, at that point I left the store (without switching over!) and angrily tweeted my frustration at T-Mobile and CEO John. Thank goodness he responded because just recounting this story is making my blood boil all over again. I'm pretty sure nothing short of his intervention would've made me go back a third time for a fourth attempt at switching but I've been pretty happy since. |
Its only limited because the big two want it to be limited. [Look up the 700Mhz A Block spectrum.]( Verizon purchased their 700Mhz Lower A Block spectrum in 2008. Yes, thats 6 years ago. To date, they have not deployed a single network on that spectrum, and recently sold of a couple billion of it to T-Mobile, for a profit of about 22% I think it was.
This is just one example of many. They began rolling their LTE network out on AWS spectrum in late 2013... they bought that in 2006. T-Mobile rolled that spectrum out nationwide in 2008, but Verizon chose to sit on it and bitch that they didn't have enough spectrum. |
The thing about Verizon that pisses me off the most is that, after 20 GB, the rate for any more data increases per GB,and you are forced to purchase 10 GB increments.
So it's $10/2GB ($5/GB) from 2-20GB, but it becomes $75 to go from 20GB to 30GB ($7.5/GB).
That is a 50% data rate increase that you get penalized with for spending lots of money on data every month.
This is an issue for me because our Verizon 4G LTE is our home internet (terrible, right?). Our house is just out of range for any broadband or DSL, so it's 4G LTE or dial-up. Now, believe it or not, I am kind of okay with paying, this month for example, $140 for 18GB (of which I pay like $60-70), since I can actually have high-speed internet. I was in touch with a representative who was trying to set up a custom pay plan so that I wouldn't have to fear that if I went to 20.000001 GB, that I wouldn't be forced to take on huge surcharges. Unfortunately, he never called me back after getting off the phone one day.
So, I call back about a week later to bring the issue up again (as our monthly data was at 16 GB not even 2 weeks into our cycle--OUCH--get off YouTube, Dad!!!). The representative told me that the system isn't "coded" to allow for any plans between 20 and 30GB. I was told I had 2 options:
1.) Just incur overages up until 25GB
2.) Pay for 30GB once you hit 25GB
So basically, Verizon said screw me. I'm expected to incur $15/GB overages until I hit $75 in overages (5GB), then I'm supposed to just "upgrade" to 30GB FOR NO EXTRA COST!
So, needless to say, for the rest of the month, I personally stayed away from the Verizon MiFi and just stuck to using my T-Mobile 5GB plan (not bad for $30/month).
I know that my family is the exception to the rule for 4G LTE data usage, but it should be illegal to do what Verizon does to customers that probably spend more than most other families do on a monthly basis.
All I would ask for is that the data rate isn't increased as I pay for more data . The thing is, that nice representative that I was working with initially told me that a possible restructuring of the Share Everything plans has been brought up during monthly meetings, but Verizon doesn't see the need for the change since it apparently doesn't affect anyone... |
I was talking about my original comment in this thread, you jumped in halfway and started raging about one particular situation which was really just irrelevant to the topic at hand. |
innocent civilians
This phrase is so weird to me, but I hear it all the time.
Why do people insist on constantly pairing the two words together as if they are necessarily overlapping? It bothers me for two reasons, the first is that is forces the assumption that all civilians are necessarily "innocent" and free from any crime or offense relative to the conflict being discussed. In reality, the civilians could be anyone, and we do not really know how innocent they are, so why would we necessarily apply the word innocent? A civilian could be Mother Theresa, it could be Casey Anthony, it could be the Pope, or it could be a farmer who was hired by Al Qaeda to plant roadside bombs. The group "civilians" includes most members of Al Qaeda, drug cartels, human traffickers, etc. What I'm saying here is that the two words don't necessarily go together like "school teacher" or "puppy dog". Innocent is an adjective that can be used to describe some, but not all, civilians. Let's start being careful to make the distinction of using it when it's appropriate and not associating the two such that we start to think that they always go together.
My second issue with the way the words are constantly associated is the implication that anyone who is not a civilian is then necessarily not innocent, or "guilty". Yes, by joining a nation's military, a person assumes risk in defending his or her country. But that doesn't mean we should condemn them as OK to kill without reason because they aren't " innocent civilians". If Obama ordered a drone to smoke the guards at Buckingham Palace without any provocation, would you insist that they were not innocent (guilty) and therefore deserving of that fate? I'd say that those guards are much more innocent than an unarmed courier for al Qaeda.
Basically, the word innocent frequently applies to civilians, but people need to be careful to not equate the two words. Not all civilians are innocent, and being a civilian isn't a prerequisite for innocence. |
It's true. But the problem with the Streisand Effect on a law like this is the fact that the sheer volume of deletion requests will make it hard for more stories like this to gain attention. Imagine if this trend continues, up to the point where every disgraced CEO, CFO, or high level banker forces Google to start scrubbing old new stories about them? One worst case scenario would be that the 2008 financial crash would be forever enshrined in history; and all the major players that led to it are anonymous, their actions consistently unprosecuted and now, unverifiable.
Remember when the CEO of Nestle said that [water isn't a basic human right and should be privatized?]( In a few years, that kind of bad publicity could be wiped from search results, even while Nestle works behind the scenes to accomplish that kind of goal.
Take it a step further; the news broke this week how [Comcast execs enjoy a cozy relationship with DOJ antitrust officials]( imagine if this law gets applied the moment this kind of news breaks? The links will get spread on news aggregators like Reddit, but in a matter of weeks or months, Google searches start coming up empty, the articles removed due to the use of names of the people involved. It's said that the internet has a short memory; this kind of law can end up making it even shorter, with mass dissemination of information harder to accomplish through mainstream mediums.
And for every major deletion that gets attention, how many more will slip through the cracks while everyone is distracted? |
The law doesn't require Google to take down everything just because some guy asks them too.
On the other hand, Google are probably being very loose in their interpretation of the law, because it's in their interests to stir up indignation (they want to get it repealed).
What's happening is: bad person asks Google to be forgotten. Google just does it, without challenging it, and sends email to journalist to tell them what's happened. Cue lots of lovely anti "Right to be forgotten" headlines and an internet storm. |
Yes, should have made a clearer distinction.
There's information in the public domain - stuff that happens in public in real life, stuff you intentionally publish to the World ... and then there's information that is supposed to be private or anonymous - communications between individuals (email, IM, txt, phone), pseudonym-ed posts, surfing habits.
It's typically the same sort of people who can't see the inherent harm that intrusion on personal privacy does that don't bother to understand how laws like that under discussion here actually only really help those with the resources to control public information about them and don't further the cause of real privacy. |
Except it's not the ISP's that route the traffic from Netflix to you.
Completely and utterly wrong. Nobody even remotely competent with networking would make such a ridiculous statement.
>It's Netflix that decides which CDN's to route that traffic from Netflix to your ISP's network
The problem is not on Netflix's side. The problem is that the ISPs static route all netflix traffic over the same route and create congestion on purpose.
> Netflix is really the only service that's really having problems delivering it's content. Facebook, Reddit, et. al. are doing just fine
Reddit and Facebook don't deliver a tiny fraction of the traffic that Netflix does. |
Weird. If you guys remember the Time Warner outage a few months ago I commented, jokingly, that I downloaded 16 gb of porn (which I actually did) and it must have shut it down. Now, whats fucking weird is I recently switched to Comcast and downloaded a bunch more porn last night. I'm sorry |
The funny thing is that I have a below average sex drive and often go for days without masturbating. I just really get off on digital hoarding in general because I started off downloading warez in the 56k days. I still remember watching porn pictures fully load line by line or spending half a day to grab a single Neo-Geo rom. Then there was that time I spent literally two weeks downloading a 700 meg rip of Scary Movie. I was poor but dedicated.
I've got maybe 300 gigs of porn tops, but more than 10 terabytes of movies, games and TV shows. I'll read about some cult classic movie or TV show that sounds fantastic and before downloading it I'll run a HDD search and find out that I downloaded the damned thing five years ago when I first heard about it and never bothered to watch it. |
I disagree; I think the internet is strangling religion for profit not religion as an idea; the amount of people that are reading older religious texts has skyrocketed as a percentage of society and so has the number of people willing to interprett this on their own becaus translation resources are abundant today.
We are coming into an age of reformation different religions but I think Christianity is up to bat first; the Catholics and protestants are interpreting the Word in new ways and this is thanks to the discourse and resources provided by the internet, this is also increasing the amount of actual intelectuals intrigued by the offereings of religion, organized or not, as a means for pro social stanrds and a historical record on ethics that we may be able to understand better the reasons for seemingly obtuse punishments of past civilizations.
The internet is pulling the weeds in the ideological garden freeing the true nature of these religions to be represented against an accurate backdrop of facts, history and developing social theories.
I think we will see and expansion of reasonable religion within this and the next generation and my proof is that even hard lined secular websites have a Christianity or religion board, FFS 8chan's/christian/ is the 60th board on a website with 10,000 boards and that's it's lowest ranking since it was made, and it's only so low because it's used more as a resource board by other boards that constantly have pro religion threads running. |
Sorry about misunderstanding the printing press part, although I disagree that newspapers allow discourse. The Editors aren't going to print things they don't like unless there's profit involved.
I don't think you're wrong about humans seeking leaders and conformity, but I think that's at least partly because they don't know any better. The internet allows those who want a little more individuality to actually have it. Of course it also allows those who want conformity to have it just as easily, but before now there wasn't an option between those two choices.
Even those seeking conformity will find what they want in more niche groups that suit their wants now. Even that is more individualistic than "One nation under [one] god". |
You're limited by thinking Abrahamic religions are the only religions.
Buddhism, for instance, has no gods. The man who laid the tenets of the belief system was subsequently revered to the point that Buddhists feel the words of the Buddha are as important as Christians feel the words of Christ are.
Over time, charismatic leaders of movements become deified. It's usually after they die, because once someone only survives in memory it's easier to claim what they would do if they were still alive. These statements are unprovable, pure conjecture, and counterfactual, but cannot be easily argued against, for the same reason it's impossible to prove a negative.
The only difference between Kim Kardashian and Jesus Christ is 2,000 years. If Jesus Christ was still alive and ending up in photoshoots every few days, he would not be as easily revered, because humans are imperfect and make mistakes. But when they live on only in stories, they become characters, the represent things, and they are easily deified. |
The fact that people are deconverting because if the Internet does not in anyway disprove what the above user said.
This does not rule out reasons beyond misinformation for staying with your religion.
I'm talking about a rather small population now, but in my former modern orthodox Jewish community, the number of people who strongly believe in God is very small. The number of people who believe every word in the Bible is zero. My own parents, who have begun practicing more, and going to prayer more, do not argue against evolution, or the big bang theory. There is a very strong community based around this synagogue though. When there's a death in a family, the whole congregation volunteers and cooks every meal for them for a week. The same happens for families with a newborn.
You and I can laugh at them for sticking to their religion, but I can guarantee you won't ever find the benefits of community like that, outside religion. It's sad, because I don't want to be a part of it, and I'm not, but having grown up with that community, I do miss the support aspect. |
I'm talking about the future. Reddit seems to be of the opinion that Netflix and others like it are going to replace the TV studios, which is a possibility. However, I get a little tired of the circlejerk about how awesome Netflix is because I don't think people realize that they only exist because the studios make the shows in the first place. There's a reason Netflix doesn't get a show right away.
I don't care about how much it costs to get a show from a studio. I'm talking about a scenario where they don't exist anymore to make those shows for Netflix.
I think it's pretty easy to use common sense regarding the fact that the cable companies charge that much for their service and get advertising revenue, and they're still hurting, to say that it's going to cost Netflix subscribers more than $8.99 to replace what the studios are doing.
I do think you're right that there are operating costs that the studios have that Netflix doesn't have. The studios also have the competition that also forces them to promote their shows. What's going to happen when Netflix is the last thing standing? They won't be, of course, there will be competition, and then Netflix is going to have to advertise... and it's pretty clear that advertising on your own network is not sufficient (do you see ads for studio shows only on their channel? No.).
The "sub-sub-subcontracting you talk about is often the cost of doing business. You act as if Netflix, when it takes over production of all these shows - and there are going to be a lot of shows, never mind movies - isn't going to have any of these costs.
At the end, you note that Netflix is not going to replace cable, it's going to replace the business model. What's the difference there, exactly? I'm not being snarky, I just don't really understand what you're saying. If the studios' business model is gone, they're gone... unless they do exactly what Netflix does.
The key question here, to me, is how much this new business model is going to cost. Reddit is circlejerking daily about how shitty the studios are without really taking into account what the replacement is going to cost them. What happens when Netflix inevitably has to raise prices? Do we pay them, or do what we did when we thought cable was too expensive, and just torrent them? |
I'm talking about the future. Reddit seems to be of the opinion that Netflix and others like it are going to replace the TV studios, which is a possibility. However, I get a little tired of the circlejerk about how awesome Netflix is because I don't think people realize that they only exist because the studios make the shows in the first place. There's a reason Netflix doesn't get a show right away.
Netflix won't replace TV studios. Nobody ever said that.
> I don't care about how much it costs to get a show from a studio. I'm talking about a scenario where they don't exist anymore to make those shows for Netflix.
That isn't going to happen. As long as there is money to be made producing TV shows, there will be TV studios.
> I think it's pretty easy to use common sense regarding the fact that the cable companies charge that much for their service and get advertising revenue, and they're still hurting, to say that it's going to cost Netflix subscribers more than $8.99 to replace what the studios are doing.
You keep using that term "common sense".
I assure you, there is no such thing.
Cable providers aren't hurting. Their internet businesses are doing great, in spite of their best efforts to destroy themselves. TV subscription rates are falling, but that is only one part of their business model.
> I do think you're right that there are operating costs that the studios have that Netflix doesn't have. The studios also have the competition that also forces them to promote their shows. What's going to happen when Netflix is the last thing standing? They won't be, of course, there will be competition, and then Netflix is going to have to advertise... and it's pretty clear that advertising on your own network is not sufficient (do you see ads for studio shows only on their channel? No.).
Netflix won't be the "last one standing"
When Comcast posts net losses quarter over quarter for a couple years, then we can worry about this.
> The "sub-sub-subcontracting you talk about is often the cost of doing business. You act as if Netflix, when it takes over production of all these shows - and there are going to be a lot of shows, never mind movies - isn't going to have any of these costs.
I'm not talking about contracting costs in production. I'm talking about costs in everything else that they do. Pole service. Tech support (or lack thereof...). Network maintenance. These services are almost always contracted out through a few layers. Netflix doesn't do these things.
> At the end, you note that Netflix is not going to replace cable, it's going to replace the business model. What's the difference there, exactly? I'm not being snarky, I just don't really understand what you're saying. If the studios' business model is gone, they're gone... unless they do exactly what Netflix does.
The difference is that time warner can start a streaming service. So can Comcast. They can compete with Netflix in the new business model. They won't die, but the business model will.
> The key question here, to me, is how much this new business model is going to cost. Reddit is circlejerking daily about how shitty the studios are without really taking into account what the replacement is going to cost them. What happens when Netflix inevitably has to raise prices? Do we pay them, or do what we did when we thought cable was too expensive, and just torrent them?
Nobody ever said anything about studios. We're talking about networks. Studios can slide into the new business model without batting an eye.
Netflix could raise their prices. They have in the past. If any of the major networks wakes up and actually tries to compete with them, they may have to. I doubt it will ever approach the cost of a cable subscription, though. |
The article here: from the OP doesn't list a name.
You randomly come in and name "Elliot Rodger" which any rational person, with having ANY OTHER CONTEXT would assume you are talking about the person in the OP who just plead guilty to swatting.
Then, you further orphan your pronoun by saying justice was done and that it just took time to catch up to her. Again, because you hijacked / derailed the post without any context, any rational individual would think that you meant
a. Elliot Rodger was the individual who plead guilty
b. He went off the rails because some girl rejected him
c. This girl was served Justice with the swatting initiated by the boy
So yes. I thought you were a fucked up sadist asshole who (probably got picked on as a kid), and thought it was OK that some poor girl got swatted because she rejected (possibly bullied) a boy years ago. |
I got swatted FUCKING TWICE because of these shits! I want some fucking compensation for getting woken up to gunpoint twice. At least let me beat them until they can't see. |
These people also fail to realize is:
Google is a technology company. They are big and bloated and in their position it makes a lot of sense to invest a lot in creating technologies to help position themselves for their business models.
The core Google business model is advertising. Anything else they do is not a for-profit practice.
Building an OS is like buying equipment at a manufacturing plant.
Google phone is like how the utility company builds and maintains utility poles. (They probably take a loss)
They are not creating/selling phones (htc made their phone). They are not creating /selling operating systems (Android is essentially a repackaging of a linux distribution with a custom jvm). They are not creating/selling a web browser (Chromium is an open source project, Chrome is a branch of that). And of course, they do not sell any of their online services: maps, email, search, etc.
So what does Google do? They invest in technology- they hire people to create technology so they can brand all of these things "Google". They build infrastructure and services so that you work with and use Google all day, all for free. That way their name is a trusted name associated with 'Quality', 'Trust' and 'Fair'. As long as they are perceived as benevolent, we will use their products- and their services. All of this, funnels us into consuming google advertising- which is where they make tens of billions in ad revenue per year .
This is so alien to most people because usually a company will try to turn a profit on everything it does. Look at Microsoft which does most of these same things. They tried to charge for hotmail. Their operating system they intentionally lock out vendors from being compatible or having technology previews so that they can have a first run at innovation (its good to have a monopoly). They license win mobile for HTC devices, most likely to make profit- not to have people use win mobile. And we all know about internet explorer: the web browser that we can't escape using at least once (to download its replacement). |
I work with many types of companies that are starting up as my day-to-day job. A lot of my time is spent doing risk and growth assessments on new startup companies. I agree with 37 Signals completely.
A lot of reddit buys into them because of the following:
reddit /r/technology is full of people who have never shipped code . People here vastly underrate how much time, testing, support, testing, marketing, testing and retesting goes into shipped products.
reddit believes the Big Idea is the hard part, when it is actually the easiest part.
Diaspora is 4 guys who have a Big Idea and, according to them, a little bit of code. You could probably spit out a window on any major college campus and hit someone with an equally good Big Idea -- ideas are a dime a dozen, people that can ship good, well researched products take the marketshare. We have just given six figures to someone who I can confidently say has no idea what to do with the money .
Hopefully they get lucky and have some business and accounting chops to not go poor, have the marketing/research chops to figure out what people actually want that facebook doesn't have , and have the programming chops to make it all a reality. |
Even Apple won't stoop that low.
They try though. I recently deleted the mac partition on my macbook (to try to get it to dual boot windows and linux), it wouldn't boot even from cd, so just for fun I took it to the apple store to see if they could get it to boot from cd. They tried to tell me I had messed up the firmware, EFI, and the cd drive, and would need to pay hundreds of dollars for a hardware fix. Two days later, my computer was back to how I wanted it, without replacing any hardware. |
This whole thing is making me frustrated about reddit's fact checking. Neither this post nor the OP linked to the source, P3Droid at MyDroidWorld, the guy responsible for many of the Droid ROMs and basebands and roots.
Here's the deal: P3 made it pretty clear in his post and that it's being used in a new way, making bricking a possibility based on first-look conjecture. Does the eFuse provide the capability to do this? Yes, it does. Is it enabled? We're not sure yet. What we do know is the bootloader IS encrypted and the device is using the same system as the as-yet-uncracked Milestone. Whether or not it bricks your phone, you won't be flashing a new ROM anytime soon.
The fact that the internet is blowing up over this is absolutely asinine, and the fact that we're already settled into two "BRICKS IT" and "DOESN'T BRICK IT" camps is frankly appalling. Read the source for yourself. It couldn't be more waffle-y in the intro (disappointingly so, in my opinion; I think this post was a half-baked idea from P3, who's usually cleaner about his information). |
I'm fucking going to scratch my eyes out if I see the abbreviation |
They are afraid of this myth:
Nobody wants an ultra-competitive environment. That's why people invest so much in "brands" and "intangibles" - otherwise the low margins reduce the ecosystem, then they depend on a single vendor who can in theory force competition back to them. |
Apple is the closed system trying F me and you up the A. Google is trying to take some of the power from the hardware makers by giving them a free/open software solution that can compete with Closed System Apple.
If you consider some decision by Apple equivalent to crapware (as I often do), then why choose to have less choice? |
Sorry for the delay.
I work with a lot of this particular model. You do have a x16 PCIe expansion slot available luckily.
You will need a new PSU. That bundle has one! Good brand too. This card will also last you to your next computer... which will probably need to be sooner rather than later. DC 1.87 isn't much right now, neither is 2GB of RAM.
With the 5770 your bottleneck will transition from your GPU to your CPU/memory. You can get more memory (keep in mind you will need to upgrade your OS from x86 to x64 if you go to 4GB). |
I can. Anecdotal strictly.
I put in a fake e-mail address and name combined with an unused PO box (hasn't received mail in 8+ years). I started receiving junk e-mail on the new e-mail address and started receiving chase and capital one card offers for the fake name at the unused PO box. I'm guessing phone numbers are the same deal.
Don't know if it's common practice, but Facebook is the reason. |
No, facebook is giving API access to it, to those apps you APPROVE and grant ACCESS to your phone number. Incorrect submission title. Learn to ensure what you say in the title is correct. |
Anyone STUPID enough to put said information on the internet, more specifically FACEBOOK, deserve what they get.
There is no expectation of privacy when those 1's and 0's leave your computer (although there should be). |
To offer joint services. We may provide services jointly with other companies, such as the classifieds service in the Facebook Marketplace. If you use these services, we may share your information to facilitate that service. However, we will identify the partner and present the joint service provider’s privacy policy to you before you use that service."
Well there is one. Intentionally vague enough to cover what happened. And then there is this beauty:
"Changes. We may change this Privacy Policy pursuant to the procedures outlined in the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here and on the Facebook Site Governance Page. If the changes are material, we will provide you additional, prominent notice as appropriate under the circumstances. You can make sure that you receive notice directly by liking the Facebook Site Governance Page." |
Scumbag ISPs run the bus company:
you buy a bus pass
they still expect you pay every time you ride the bus
IMO the bus system makes the best analogy to simplify the issue. To make a very simple analogy, the ISPs:
sell 1000 bus passes
assume only 25% of bus pass holders will ride at once
buy 5 buses that hold 50 people each (max capacity of 250)
The problem ISPs are facing is the equivalent of having 500 people that want to ride the bus to and from work every day. To meet the demand they need to buy 5 more buses. Here's where the 'bandwidth hogs' lie comes into play.
Why does the ISP have to buy more buses? Is it because of Joe Workaday that rides the bus for 1 hour per day to get to / from work or is it because of Joe Bytehog that rides the bus from 12:00 AM - 6:00 AM every night (when no one else is on the bus)?
The fair way to pay for more buses is to add a surcharge for anyone that rides the bus to and from work, aka during the times when there is peak demand .
How do you tell Joe Workaday, who's already getting price gouged out the whazoo, that he needs to pay a surcharge if he wants to ride the bus to / from work? This is the same as someone who watches a Netflix movie after supper every evening. As far as they're concerned, they barely use the internet (2 hours per day), so why should they pay more? You can't tell them they need to pay more because they're already getting ripped off.
Instead, you demonize the ' bandwidth hogs ' and, because the average person is technologically retarded, you convice Joe Workaday that his 8:00 AM bus is overcrowded and running late because Joe Bytehog rode it for 6 hours last night.
The problem is that no matter what gets charged for total consumption, aka the number of hours you ride the bus, it's not going to solve the problems inherent to peak consumption, aka not having enough buses to get everyone to / from work.
Right now, ISPs are in profit heaven. A lot of people pay for internet access and use only a tiny fraction of what they're paying for. Their bus riding doppelganger is Joe Lightrider and buys a bus pass so he can ride the bus once a month to get to a concert or a hockey game. It would be far more cost effective for Joe Lightrider to pay a small fare every time he rides the bus, but, in ISP land, there are no pay per use buses; you must buy a bus pass.
In the 'bandwidth hog' argument the ISPs are basically saying, "Joe Lightrider only rides the bus once a month, why should he be subsidizing Joe Bytehog?" The reality is that neither or them are responsible for the to / from work congestion that forces the ISP bus company to buy more buses.
The real problem in North America is that our ISP bus companies:
estimated usage assuming everyone is like Joe Lightrider
sold all of us bus passes
took hand-outs from the government to buy buses
bought a bunch of used vans instead of buses
raked in record profits for a decade
bought new tires for the vans and called it infrastructure investment |
Surprised no one has mentioned this (that i saw): Google for articles yourself, but the basic scenario is this: Updates to a phone's OS are handled by the hardware manufacturer and come in two flavors: Urgent/security/bugfix, and "feature" updates. The former are usually free/cheap to the cell provider, the latter more expensive since they're "optional"
Unlike most other cell phone makers, Samsung is considering updating to 2.2+ a "feature" update despite the fact that they didn't have to do much development on it (just test it on the devices) and wants an asston of money from the providers, who don't want to pay for it. Negotiation has been slow, and end users are caught in the middle. |
It's just ignorant to rant about something like the point release for the software that powers your phone.
Does it not work? Does it not do everything that it was advertised to do when you bought the phone?
If someone is THAT concerned about the firmware on their smartphone, maybe they should have investigated which phones are easier to keep up to date before making the purchase. There are also plenty of methods to root and update most Android based phones, so you can run whatever version of the firmware you want. |
What? Absolutely not, OSX is a fantastic platform and if anything, I've found the users to be slightly more capable than the baseline PC user.
And THAT has not come through in your posts. In your posts that I've read you've come off as the opposite.
>That doesn't change the fact that Android support for Mac is laughable and the majority of phone-related tasks on a Mac are through homebrew and unsupported and unsanctioned measures.
Wasn't arguing that at all.
>If you think for one second that the average Mac user is going to search forums and blogs for how to perform UNIX-based maintenance on their phone OS, you're actually being really unrealisitic.
Never said they could.
>t's fine if you disagree with me, but to make an accusation like that is rather intellectually dishonest. I'm providing points here, I'm explaining. You're not, you're dismissing my ideas without a reason why.
I'm not dismissing any of your ideas. When did I do that? Instead I simply pointed out that you're sounding very anti-mac.
>I'm not anti-Mac, I just understand the technical proficiency of the average user. Maybe you don't -- maybe you're blissfully divorced from understanding how much the average American understands about their computer.
Oh I sure do, worked IT for many years supporting Windows and OS X. I understand how stupid people can be, some of them don't even try. |
I am not a fan of /b/'s style or tactics.
I love the anonymity and freedom of expression. And the LOL...cats
This is legit, thanks glinsvad. |
A resounding, uninformed, uneducated, misplaced replaced and in-place NO from me. |
There is nothing wrong with the concepts of patents IMHO, although I know it's not a popular thing to say on Reddit. Before the patent system existed companies kept inventions to themselves and some got lost when the companies ceased to exist (or the inventor died). The patent system was created to give inventors/companies an incentive to share their idea with all of humanity, by granting them a temporary monopoly on the idea (max. 20 years, at least in most European countries). (The extremely long duration of copyright IS a problem however.) A patent can't be used to block inventions being available on the market and patent owners can be forced to sell licenses (at least in European countries).
What is a problem however is the excessive amount of licensing fees that are being asked. If the functionality described in the patent is only 0.01% (= example) of the combined functionality of the infringing product 2.25% royalties is ridiculous. The judge should not ban a product, but decide an appropriate fee that fits with the impact the invention has on the product (in this example 0.01%).
Another issue these days is the lack of common sense... I'm not sure about this case, but the 'swipe to unlock' stuff is strange in my eyes. If a certain product is made out of metal, it's not a patentable invention if you start making it out of plastics. Why on earth is it suddenly patentable if you make it digital? Locks (bolts?) that are operated with a 'swipe' movement have existed for centuries. Furthermore it is too obvious to be an invention, any experienced cellphone user (and even the noobs) can come up with the idea that if you can unlock the phone by pressing a button on a touchscreen they could replace it with a 'button' operated by a swipe movement.
With the increasing speed of innovation and in this digital age the patent system needs an overhaul for sure, but abandoning the patent system as a whole is a bad idea. We need inventors and they should be allowed to make some money for the time, energy and investment they put into an invention... and to make a bit of profit on top. But yes, the current situation is stupid. |
Totally agree with all your points - I think there was a TED talk about the role of IP within the fashion industry (can't easily search atm, on my phone).
Essentially, there is no such thing as enforcement of IP within the fashion industry - many labels make a point of reworking clothing cuts that have gone before them.
The fashion industry is one of the few areas where there is still healthy degrees of innovation.
That's not to suggest that they don't face their own issues with knockoffs - anyone who's been to China (one of my favourite countries in the world) will attest to the knockoff market. The difference is that there is a prestige or 'face' value in owning the legitimate product, and in some cases having a huge knockoff market drives sales of the legitimate stuff up as well. |
This is a messy and complicated subject to think about. In an ideal world, there would be no need for patents, and R&D money would just grow on trees. Sadly, we do not live in said ideal world (mostly because people suck), so there has to exist some mechanism by which R&D funding can be secured reliably in order to propagate the cycle of innovation. Before I get into what I think of this whole mess, I would just like to say that we would probably all agree on the following things: innovation and research are good and desirable things, and that people who dedicate their lives to said deserve some measure of compensation. Alright? Good.
Patents are designed to protect innovation long enough for the creator (and/or financier depending on their arrangement) to profit from whatever it is they produced without fear of being undercut by a rival. This is not a bad system in theory, but it has gone terribly wrong. Problems arise when general concepts, mechanisms, or theoretical concepts, or even organisms can be patented. Take for example a laser. It is simple enough in theory, a population inversion is artificially created by thermal or electrical means, which upon relaxing creates a fairly uniform beam of light. Which part of this could be patented? The idea? The scientific research that led up to the development? The first working prototype? The combination of materials? The various applications for lasers? It's pretty obvious what sort of mess this creates almost from the get-go, and each one of them would be at least somewhat valid under the original premise - everybody involved deserves some compensation. The issue now is what is fair to all parties involved, and to others not directly involved. I come from the scientific side of this, and I'm pretty sure I speak for the vast majority of academics and researches when I say that knowledge must never be restricted in any way. Hopelessly idealistic, I know. So what about the prototype in our example? Sure. It's a working example, and while it may not be the most efficient one of its kind, it serves as the original. Whether it is the best one of its kind or not, it will serve as the model from which all subsequent models will be derived. Ergo it deserves some protection. Now about the combination of materials involved. This is a tough one. On the one hand, patenting something I could create in a lab is a ridiculous idea, on the other hand, novel materials serve many useful functions, and are oftentimes difficult to produce, ergo they require some sort of protection in order to secure funding. This is a completely grey area, and just about any argument here is valid. I would personally want to see patents being restricted to manufacturing techniques, but there are also problems with that. I don't have a solution. The last one is applications, to which I would emphatically say no. All this does is combine a new device with a proposed mechanism, eg using lasers to read a CD. There is nothing novel about it, and while I would concede the possibility of patenting CDs based on material composition/novel use, I cannot conceive of any argument that would apply to application without creating a whole clusterfuck of potential and more often than not hypothetical uses that benefit no one.
I know this is rambley, but I hope I made at least some sense.
How-to-fix |
This looks like a time of flight depth camera. They are much better for up close experiences like those displayed here. Microsoft owns the two pioneers of this technology, Canesta and 3DV, but does not use their technology in Kinect. They also own their patents. Have fun getting a licensing deal, Leap. (Look up Canesta on YouTube to see Microsoft's nearly identical technology.)
Kinect is a structured light depth camera from PrimeSense. It allows for the long range and wide angles Kinect needs to do full body tracking, which this technology simply isn't capable of yet. Kinect's would also be useless without Microsoft's crazy complicated human skeletal tracking software. |
A very simply way to think of e-ink is like an etch-a-sketch. It creates images by manipulating particles with electrical charges. Once an image is on the screen, the screen takes zero electricity. So a device like a kindle only uses power when you flip a page when you flip a page, once the page is refreshed, you could cut all the power and the image would stay on the screen. This is one huge advantage of e-ink and why it is good for things that don't require high frame rates. I only have to charge my kindle once a month and I read a couple books on it a week.
Also, as I am sure you know, e-ink screens are great in the sun. This is because they reflect light rather than emit light Like Acme said, this inhibits the image quality because cmyk E-ink has to use cmyk (or some other subtractive color model) because it does not emit light to create an image.
So, yes e-ink may eventually reach the point where it could refresh fast enough to play movies. However, at least in the near future this would defeat the purpose of e-ink. Eventually, we may get to the point where the electricity usage isn't an issue and perhaps we figure out a better way to reproduce colors. If that happens perhaps we could have animated newspapers. But until both of those things happen, e-ink won't be suited for high frame rates. |
i know its a Random Access Memory...
however there is more than one way of using ram
IE: loading a entire program or OS onto it and using it in a more of a traditional long term storage sense.
Or acting as a copy of a ROM to speed up processing of the data that is located on the rom if needed, I have seen this in a DVR but it is a uncommon sight.
More the the point if you are just referring to something that is random access memory then the bios cant be running off of ROM? in this case its more of a Non Versatile Ram as the bios normally uses that as its "working directory"
I didn't mean for everyone to get pissie about the details... but hey this is the internet lol (if this wasn't your intention sorry then.) |
Wrong. All of those 18921 people would need to somehow have seen (and remember perfectly) every copyrighted video in existence, as well as have heard every copyrighted song in existence. Furthermore, videos actually consist of frames - so they would have to have seen every copyrighted picture in existence as well. And check them in slow motion, frame by frame - so you need 25 times more of them. They would also have to be specialists in copyright law(mainly fair use), and lawyers get paid much more than a measly 40,000$ a year.
Oh, and they would have to have some way to instantly determine that the video in question is not uploaded by someone with permission from the copyright owner or the copyright owner himself, which is an equally impossible problem in and of itself. |
why all the QQ, why doesn't reddit get a team of people together to create an OS. Windows has been failing since anything after XP. and linux is the obvious choice from here on out but, alot of people are to lazy to do the little extra work that goes into running linux or getting used to rather. Why do we just create and form a Universal OS, cut the OS wars make it compatible with everything, make it the best that it can be and easy to use. I dont know why or do not know of such an OS, i cannot code worth jack, but i do understand the hard work of all that would equate to. We must create something that goes on par with the pace that the Internet moves, i feel like OS's like mac and windows are old and just trying to sell a brand, (tho XP was the best OS imo). / endhoperant |
Just to give another perspective...
I listed a property for rent on Craigslist, and then decided not to rent the property and deleted the ad. Unbeknownst to me, my ad had been scraped by padmapper.com and walkscore.com. Even though I didn't want to rent the property, I continued to get phone calls and drive-bys. It was annoying. Pictures of my house, my address and phone number continued to be displayed in searches long after I was done with the idea of renting.
To his credit the admin at padmapper responded to my email and eventually removed my listing from his site. The people at walkscore were impossible to communicate with, and I ended up having to use less than nice techniques to get their attention. Finally after about six weeks my private information was removed from both sites and Google's cache of both sites.
I think padmapper is a great site, and maybe next time, I'll list my ad there directly. Especially if I get some actual control over removing it. |
With complete control of all the crappiest memes we will rule the world! None shall be able to stop us, thouands will facepalm at our greatness. Millions will groan at the horror that is our memes that we will control forever. |
So, you make a cute website, and you post some content. Some asshole comes along, scrapes all of your content, systematically and repeatedly, puts ads all over it, and somehow ends up higher in search ranking than you do.
This kind of move by Google is an attempt to help those original content creators, and punish the scrapers - who are the scum of the Earth.
Think of the recent FunnyJunk debacle. When you search for Oatmeal comics - do you want to see FunnyJunk show up in your results? If you do, then you suck.
Also, for those of you concerned that your favorite sites, which receive a ton of infringement notices, might lose ranking? Do you know something that really helps sites keep their ranking? When users actually like them, and click on them in the top results.
Translation: this is a good thing, and y'all need to chill out and have some faith. Google has gotten this far, and I'm pretty happy with where it is. It's really easy to make people afraid of Google, because no one knows the algorithm for how search rank is really calculated. So then when we find out there's some new signal, it's easy to imagine the new signal will dominate all of the others, and completely change how Google Search looks. Seriously? You think Google is going to completely change how Google Search looks in a way that you dislike? If that happens, then yeah, move to DuckDuckGo (aka Bing). [Clearly Microsoft never makes major changes to how their products work, which almost all users universally hate.]( |
This won't hurt pirates, it'll hurt people who run websites with user-submitted content and who don't censor the fuck out of it before it's even posted.
i.e., Youtube would get NAILED under this if it wasn't run by Google. |
China won't care about copyright law till enough of the Chinese companies start seeing lost profits as a result of infringement on their original ideas. When that happens they will start to complain to the government and things will change.
You can even use the US as example of this course of action. During the colonial days one of the only forms of entertainment were literary works. And as such were a booming business to sell them. The only problem was that colonies didn't have that many well known or desirable writers at the time. But Britain on the other hand had many well known and much desired writers.
So when a new book would come in from over seas into the colonies, domestic businesses, having no law against it at the time, would immediately take that one book and produce massive "pirated" copies and selling them. Now this was all well and good for awhile because the people being "hurt" were not native. They were foreign, non-local people that the colonist really didn't care about.
But once the book companies started making profits from sales and the need for new literary works grew. People decided it might be profitable to write their own books. Thing was though since "pirating" was so rampant soon as they finished their work and published it, 20 companies would just start copying and selling it with out even asking for the rights. Soon the original publishing companies realized they were losing massive amounts of profits that should be theirs because other companies were taking and selling their original "property".
So the companies started lobbying the government to enact laws that would prohibit the copying and selling of works with out being given the legal right to do so. So the U.S. used and expanded upon the laws Britain had established in England and wrote their own "copyright" laws. |
The atmosphere is very thin at height, and air has a much lower thermal capacity per unit volume then water, even at sea level, and air is a much worse conductor of heat then water. Additionally, although the ambient temperature at that height is low, the temperature of the air near the skin of the craft will be (much) higher (depending on speed), due to air resistance.
A quick ballpark idea (Values taken from Wikipedia):
Air at sea level has a thermal capacity of ~1.00 J g^-1 K^-1. Water has a heat capacity of ~4.18 J cm^-3 K^-1 . This means that, all other things being equal, one would have to pump ~4.18 g of air through the heat exchanger for every 1 g of water to get the same amount of cooling. When one converts the units to litres, this works out to ~3,215 L of air per L of water. As deep underwater the pressure is higher, and the pressure of air is lower at higher temperatures, this difference would be even greater, by probably about another order of magnitude or so.
However, all other things are not indeed equal. First, air has a thermal conductivity of ~0.026 W m^-1 K^-1 at 1 atmosphere. Water has a thermal conductivity of ~0.596 W m^-1 K^-1 . This means that one needs many more fins, which adds weight and impedes flow, requiring yet more pumps on the inlet.
The only thing in air's favor is that you can heat the outlet air to a higher temperature differential then that of water. Water has a (fairly) hard limit - one cannot heat water to above 373K, or it boils, which causes steam pockets, which cause all sorts of interesting issues. However, even being optimistic, this only works out to < an order of magnitude in air's favor.
There's a reason why most cars (well, (almost?) all cars (servers (is this enough (nested) parentheses?), etc.) that want performance) are water-cooled. |
HTS is a place where people come and ask questions, and we rightfully answer them. The one thing you failed to do there is to tell people who asked those questions. It wasn't a moderator, or anyone with some experience at all, I can tell you that. If I remember correctly those were all asked by people completely new to the technology/hacking field entirely. And, if you post the answers (once again, by people with some knowledge) to all of those you'll see that each and everyone gets resolved.
I don't really see why you're bashing HTS when it's a place for others to learn, and try new things out. In fact, everything you said up there is the equivalent of going to a forum dedicated to teaching Spanish, taking all of the worst questions, and posting them here without context, in order to validate some random vendetta you seen to have. |
so at least I know for sure the money goes to road maintenance and isn't being funnelled through a backdoor into weapons research or something.
Only 60% of fuel taxes get actually spent on road related things^[1] (and that was in 2007, things are likely worse, now).
So tax income from gasoline is not used exclusively for roads already (but neither is it the sole kind of tax-money used for road maintenance). IMO taxing fuel is just a way for the government to get their hands on more cash-- fuel taxes effect much less public outcry, than, say, raising the income tax, and are harder to avoid.
There is no point in financing road-related costs from a specific tax anyway, because we all massively benefit from those investments:
A functional road network is much more valuable for a modern society than, say, healthcare; if we just stopped any kind of medicare and killed anyone outright who was unable to pay for treatment up front, then that would surely somewhat impact our society, but losing our road network would end society as we know it (and medicare devours more tax dollars than roads).
recycle_bin^[2] already pointed out that gasoline taxes are not "fair" anyway (trucks do all the damage but don't pay much more). |
Early this morning Apple issued an update to its XProtect malware-handling system in OS X that updates the Web plug-in blacklist to include a more recent version of Oracle's Java plug-in. The update now will prevent all versions of the Java Web plug-in before version 1.7.11.22 from running on the system (previously the limit was version 1.7.10.19). |
If you read carefully, you'll notice that not only does this HTML5 DRM scheme requires a CDM (content decryption module), but they provide no common API to make it. So instead of shitty silverlight you'll get a different much much shittier, buggier, and crashy silverlight clone installed for every different HTML5 DRM page you visit. |
you know how HTML5 doesnt require flash to play video? you just embed it in an html tag and the browser/os take care of rendering it. Well, that doesnt quite work for encrypted (i.e. DRM crippled) video, which requires flash and silverlight to un-DRM the content, report back to the DRM servers etc.
So, Hollywood wants HTML5 to contain tags/standards for enabling DRM crippled video streams to play, so that even after flash/silverlight are dead because of HTML5, the encrypted DRM-ed streams will work as-is in the future. |
A depression with upwards of 25% unemployment lasting for a decade is not better then 5 years of 7-9% unemployment (at least in my opinion). Reform is one thing (I'm all for it), but allowing banks to fail because you're angry would solve nothing and help no one. Such an action in 2008 would have caused tens of millions of Americans (as well as tens of millions of non-Americans) to lose their jobs and and be cast into poverty.
This does not mean every large company needs to be or should be bailed out (ideally we should bail out none). It just means that in some rare instances, a bailout is appropriate (its upsetting I know, but we live in an imperfect and complicated world).
Now, If you want things to change, I'm all for it. We should have acted then, but congress and the white house were too afraid it would worsen the situation (I think that was cowardly and foolish, leaders should not shrink away from difficult situations). |
I got me a nexus 7 because it's linux and I could hack (old-school definition, not cracking) stuff on it. I was so sure I'd have to root it. Turns out I can get busybox and do all my cool SSH stuff on it without even rooting the thing xD |
Time did a short interview with them]( but the |
Why should twitter reveal the names of these people, what's going to happen they release the names of these people. Then it's on-line for everyone to see and then everyone hunts these people down and beats the shit out of them.
Then the UEJF is forced to apologise because it was them that wanted the names of the people to be put on public display, and in the end people begin to hate them. |
Verizon's coverage has been good and I haven't had any problems with them, but...
Too expensive, my #1 compaint. My phone is $96/mo. Same with the girlfriends'. So we got a $200/mo bill. For two phones. And we don't use minutes often, so we don't need them. But they don't offer plans that are designed to fit our needs for the right price. Carriers like T-Mobile do, but I've heard the coverage is spotty sometimes.
I plan to go the Nexus 4 (or 5 by the time I upgrade) + T-Mobile route if the coverage is okay, because it'll halve my bill, but otherwise I'm kinda' stuck.
Edit: I just looked and the minimum minutes plan is 700/mo. It's $70/mo. I could drop it to 100 or 200 and not even use them all. That'd be, I'd guess, a $50-60 savings. That's what it'd take for Verizon to get me to not think about switching. Right now, T-Mobile's plans offer me a significant savings somewhere along this line. |
When unlimited data was an option the only data phones were blackberries and palms which sipped data, now phones can gulp data. Also, with early upgrades, NE2 credits and contract exceptions they were making exceptions to get you a phone for a reasonable price. 5 years ago phones coat $100-$300 full retail now they cost $700-$800. Its much harder to stay profitable when the phones are so expensive. |
Best IT fix at work I've had:
(I'm not the IT guy, I'm a student intern that could do most of their jobs with my eyes closed and no arms)
Dude says, "Hey you're young, I bet you can fix this!" He wants to get his music from his computer to his new phone. He got a brand new super nice Galaxy Note 2 with a 64 GB SD card. Triple the cost of my phone but he can't use it. I have never used the phone so I go to my trusty friend Google. "How to copy music to Galaxy Note 2" Click first link, you have to use special software to do it over some new fangled cloud service. After trying to figure out a round-a-bout solution, I told him I could just plug his SD card into my phone since my phone lets me treat the SD as a USB. He said that would be nice. I told him if he needed to do it often they sell SD->USB adapters and that would be just as easy. "O, they gave me one of those with the phone" ............ Yea... use that. And then drag your music to the Music folder. "O, wow! That's awesome I can't believe that worked" |
I got called to fix several machines in our Music department at the end of one day; they all had mysterious hard disk errors, bad sectors - you name it. (This had been going on and getting worse and worse for months and there was no real explanation...)
As luck would have it, with it being the end of the day, the Music teacher is just about to go so he says his farewells and then... (wait for it) he hits the big red emergency-kill-switch to shut down all the machines.
I think it was my rather loud intake of breath that made him think that maybe shutting down his machines in this manner was perhaps ill-advised. After some very sheepish apologies, the mystery hard drive problem didn't happen again (or, didn't get any worse at least until they were replace).
Needless to say, I forced site management to remove the offending big red cut-off switch the following holiday (why did they need it in Music!? Woodwork I can understand, but Music!?) |
Honestly, I'm not a fan of the various visa quota systems in general. They restrict people's access to good education, good jobs, and force intense competition among skilled foreign laborers. This often leads to their exploitation, since an intelligent employee willing to work for less is usually more valuable to a company than an intelligent employee who demands a good deal of money. It also leads to the exploitation of unskilled laborers, since most of them enter the country illegally and are effectively forced to accept poverty, danger, and/or abuse. It's that or be sent home, and at least here they have a chance of feeding their families.
Setting that aside, the US generally speaking has the greatest capacity to educate of any country in the world. It's mostly within the last few decades that the practicality of outsourcing has allowed the politics and politicians who manage the fiscal attitudes of the educational system to permit the cost of education to rise. That is, because more people are willing to compete for American excellence or even just American prestige, we charge more for it.
This is directly related to the romanticization of achieving a college degree. As has been said fairly often, "you don't need a sales degree to work at Best Buy" - except now you do. The wide variety of colleges that rubberstamp degrees for both domestic and international consumption has managed to clutch onto the coattails of the success of the post-WWII era in America, and the corresponding rise of the American Dream in the world's gestalt has convinced millions that a degree and passion are all that's needed to become successful and brilliant.
That's patently not true, and the US has gotten much worse at nurturing the skilled and making use of the unskilled. I have no problem with colleges that teach purely for the purpose of education, but I wish that they didn't pretend that the exorbitant fees that they charge will lead to any meaningful advantage. A fool and his money are soon parted, and there's no fool like a smart fool.
That brings me back to the point that I was trying to make: the US is not only bad at creating jobs for the skilled, it's bad at defining what "skilled" is for young people. The worst thing is, a degree is not a self-imposed artificial requirement for American kids - it's a societally imposed artificial requirement. Your fast food franchise manager wants college grads. So does your publishing house, your shipping business, your avant-garde cafe. They want college grads... or they want foreigners. They're both desperate fools once they're out there, looking for work.
A thousand people are chasing the American dream with their families looking at them, hoping that they'll be able to provide for them, to make it big, to make them all proud and happy. After all, they've all sacrificed so much - these people have been away for so many years. They've tried so hard. They've devoted himself single-mindedly to making their situations better than they are. It took so much money, so much sacrifice to get them here.
Which one are they?
I can look down on the system, all high and mighty with my useful and marketable mechanical engineering degree. On the subject of this article, I can even say with pride that I've been able to develop a pretty satisfactory degree of technical literacy - and I disagree pretty heavily with the author's conclusions, but that's another story - but that doesn't change the fact that it's not my astonishing brilliance that's allowed me to see the light of revelation. The truth is, I lucked out with my passion. I heard all my life that I should indulge it, so I took apart my childhood toys, read some books on computers, and generally screwed around with enough technically complex stuff to start earning money for it. It's astonishing to me that (apparently) ["most kids in CS never programmed before getting to college"](
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting to learn something that you know know nothing about. All I'm saying is that it seems pretty stupid to me to spend exorbitant amounts of money to indulge the collective curiosity of American youth.
Conversely, we're not well off enough as a society that everyone can pursue their passion and make a living. I lucked out because my interests were fairly marketable. Someone who's deeply into art, sports, communication, performing, etc. is much less likely to make their passion marketable, because the market is much more competitive (though ironically, unflooded by foreigners).
I'm doubly lucky in that I got good enough at my passions to place me into a semi-elite class of workers. My qualifications generally exclude me as a target for outsourcing or heavy competition, so the work I get to do is interesting enough to make me do well at it. I'm not rich by any stretch, but I'm comfortable, secure, and generally enjoying myself.
I just feel bad for all the poor berks who aren't. It's hard to make your way pursuing an unfulfilling career that you shelled out several hundred thousand dollars for someone to tell you you're adequate at. Without doing so, you won't be able to make it very far - the collapse of domestic manufacturing and (again) the increased feasibility of outsourcing have made that kind of thing a joke. Even the market for highly skilled manual labor, like welding, has suffered significantly.
And to come full circle and (finally) make a point, it's all due at least in part to the difficulty associated with making it to America for a foreigner. We're rich enough that they're better off, but our visa system is exclusive enough that it keeps labor prices low and many pockets lined. That's not the whole problem, but it's half of it. The other half is the "school for 16 years, work for 50" system that the US has. Half of those fifty years are spent paying off the last four years of school, and the other half is scrabbling for money to live off of for 16 years after you stop working.
More has been written about the condition of American higher education than I can really say, but it really comes down to "high price, minimal real benefit, mandatory for most jobs." Likewise, more has been written about foreign labor markets than I can say, but that comes down to "people lowering their standards for the sake of the American dream, and still making more money than they could at home." |
As a high school computer whiz, as in I can use a computer ad per this article and I can program in 5 languages and fluent in web page design, this is so apparent in my school. I know more than my computer science teacher who has a masters in his field. Kids will sit there claiming their computers are broken yelling at the librarian and I will just walk over and hit the power button to turn it on. They act like I'm so smart but I had no idea how dumb people are. I can honestly say that I have met a high school student in a technology friendly school who did not know how to save a word document. Its either this or the kid who uses Google to "hack" things. By the way, using a proxy is not hacking and writing batch scripts is not hacking. anyway sorry for my rant |
very true. in fact many people here say that he is pretentious and it does seem this way but the point that he makes stands. sure he explains it like an ass but its true that most people don't understand what happens when their computer doesn't function, or what to do in those situations. This is the reason why we have IT people. Now, people don't have to go out and get compsci degrees just to use a computer, but at least understand the situation so that they can either try to fix it or get a professional to do so. I hate having to fix a computer and the person tells me I'm doing it wrong, despite all my experience. I also hate it when someone tries to fix something and it messes more things up leaving more to fix. I do agree that most teenagers are pretty dumb, and do classify computer experts as nerds with no life.
Bottom line, people should learn how to deal with a situation, and learn problem solving skills like they should have in grade school. It's true that if you are a computer user you should have some understanding of how things work and what the components do, and it deosn't have to be at the level of an expert but enough to solve basic issues. They should learn basic computer knowledge, what common error codes mean, and basic problem solving skills so they don't screw things up. With these tools at their disposal they can look at a situation and think "what is happening here? do i know what is causing this? can i solve this? should i ask for help?". These questions work in most situations, like cars. I don't know everything about how to fix a car and I certainly don't have the tools at my convenience, but I have a mechanic who knows whats up and is convenient.
Sorry if this wall of text got in the way, and I don't even know if I should have even replied here or not. I guess |
Well, the examples he cites are relatively common occurrences that I think they qualify as "use". However, the UI's on computers are generally so poorly designed that they don't make sense.
I have never spent any quality time with an iPhone or an iPad, but I have with Android and my shiny new Surface Pro. Android, compared to Windows, is far easier to use. Need wi-fi, you get an alert. Touch it and you can select a network. Touch that and you can enter whatever data is needed. Is it a guest network with a portal? In most cases, Android will figure that out and ask if you want to launch a browser. Say yes and you're in. It's pretty seamless.
In Windows 8, you first have to find the wireless icon and decipher it's meaning. Then open it and pick a network and do whatever config you need. Then you have to figure out if you need to access a portal or not (say you opened a network app, you son't get directed to a portal like you do with a browser). Then you have to open a browser, and log in. It's not nearly as straight forward or simple. Windows requires you to be familiar with setting up a WLAN versus it telling you what to do.
The Android designers, and I imagine iOS as well, have better UI/UX than Windows or OSX. |
One thing that irks me about this article is the deliberate disregard for the emergence of ease-of-use. The majority of the prose here gets into like.... how shitty everything is these days - and yet is "so easy".
I cite the the references to placement of switches, toggles, the existence of error messages, etc. - all of which do not equally receive his attention in terms of the practicality. That is, why not also address the convoluted nature of each?
Example: that one case where someone couldn't figure out their wifi switch was toggled OFF on the laptop itself. Why not question the existence of the switch? Why not question the decision process behind not making it painfully obvious to the end user that this is the case?
Instead of deeming iOS as a "lost cause unless you jailbreak" and panning Android as "much of the same" (what ever that means), consider emphasizing the importance of their mutual advancement in accessibility.
Technology is best when it gets out of your way, yet still enhances your day-to-day.
Instead of writing some bitchy article, invest your time in exposing people to TinkerLearn, CenterCode, edX, or better yet.. go build your fucking own. See how close to perfect you get it. |
Ok I have to give my two cents. This guy makes an excellent point that individuals of the future will be worse at using computers as they currently are. This argument could have been made in the seventies and eighties that people will no longer understand computing because they don't have to punch it into a card. His point is that people are getting farther removed from hardware. This is kind of okay though; the computing world is moving toward a more mobile and remote processing type of approach anyway. I feel that the same proportion of people will desire to pursue technical computing as they do today. The rest will use the popular technologies as they exist to carry our their non-IT or programming jobs. I get what he's saying but I disagree with his implications. |
You're on the right path! Youtube your problems and remember how to solve them. After a while you'll get an abstract understanding of how the computer "thinks" and predict ui options before you get to them.
It's pretty much how i got into computers when i was a kid... I got bored of waiting for parents to help. That and it was somewhere i could tinker around and play and test to see what happened when i fiddled around.
You really just have to play around with things you don't understand until you do understand... Like when i promised my dad i would put a favicon on his website even though i literally had 0 idea on how to do it. I ended up completely ruining the site for around 15 minutes while i shat myself and frantically moved web pages around with ftp. For anyone wondering, i did fix it pretty quickly. That day i learnt tons about html, css, ftp and meta data. All from just one screw up.
Look on the bright side, if you screw things over when you're trying to fix something you'll end up learning how to fix the added issues. Thus increasing your knowledge and understanding even further. |
I have to say, I hate articles like this. I would never condescend to someone because they don't know how to do genetic knock-ins, yet my experience of computer people has always been like that, they're absolutely contemptuous of the general population's lack of knowledge, and they let you know the entire time they're working with you. In my experience, it becomes the job of the one with the knowledge to disseminate that information in the most digestible form possible...not to lord your superiority over them, not to make them feel like an ass. Ultimately, a lot of the blame for people not understanding how to use computers comes from this widespread attitude problem in those with the knowledge. |
And how does he expect his kid to learn Python or bash without the internet in the first place?
"I want you to learn how to program. Here's a text file with 10,000 keys, only one of them correct. Here's the family desktop PC that you have monitored time on. It's hard-wired, but I installed a wireless card to try connecting to our WIFI AP. Here's your new Android tablet. It can't leave the house, but you can use it any time you want. You'll only be able to connect it to WIFI when you figure out the correct WPA2 key, and if you do, you can connect your tablet and do whatever freely whenever you want. The first hint I'll give you is that Python or bash may be useful. Feel free to search for your own solution to figure out the key, using these tools or any others you may find, during your allotted computer time. You may also ask me any question at all, but I may charge you in house chores for the answer. If it's a really good question, you might get the answer for free. These terms are negotiable. I want you to learn computers because it has enriched my life, but if you really don't want to, and want to take a different path altogether, make your case. We can bargain. In the meantime, while you don't have the key, if you want any apps on your tablet, I'll download them for you in exchange for doing chores or good deeds."
There's what I think is a good parenting scenario. I wouldn't really try to force programming on my child, but I may make some of the basics more mandatory. For example: "Viruses and malware are easy to avoid. I've used computers for N years without ever getting infected. Here's your Windows PC without antivirus. Use it and don't get infected. Please ask me any questions to help you keep it clean. If it gets infected, you must remove the malware yourself (you can use my computer to research a solution, but I must be there to monitor your usage). If you require my assistance removing the malware, I will do it for you, but you will pay with chores or lost computer time, or some other agreement that we make at the time of infection."
I wouldn't be as nerdy or technical when talking to my kid, but I tried to outline the basic gist of what I'd try to impart in as clear terms as possible. |
I know this is a 15 hour old post, and that I'm typing this on my phone at 4am but I agree with this man 100%. I am only 15 years old and by the time I was 6 I had already built a computer and installed Windows off a floppy drive, all off a box of old computer parts. Since then I have built 2 other computers, one I still use everyday. I have learned Linux and setup web servers in Linux and in Windows. I have learned the basics of HTML, PHP and bash, as I think people should be learning. Just because people sit on Facebook all day doesn't mean they can use a computer. If I told a average teenager that says they know how to use a computer to reconfigure a proxy server to blacklist a website and restart it, they would tell me speak english. People at my school were amazed I was able to edit any website by changing the HTML of it. Sorry for the rant and I could go on but my fingers hurt. |
It is cheaper for them to just have servers offsite and connect in.
Except it's not. Hosting 5 Exchange servers across our ~2000 user MPLS network for 5 years amortises to about £2.08/month/user all-in. If we run it for more than 5 years (Like Exch 2003), then that number falls even further. There is not a cloud provider that can do anything close to that. We get the benefits of being able to do what we like to the environment, not worry about data security, backups, quality of administrators and all the unknowns of managed services.
If you're going to go 'Cloud' properly you need resilient internet connections anyway, so all the cost savings of shoving it outside of your network perimeter evaporate. This might not be the case outside of the UK. |
I am giving the mans post a spin certainly, and it could have been better written. He does though address the fact that there is a significant gap between what people think the digital natives can do, and what they can do. |
this whole article comes off extremely sniddy. especially his |
I'll just throw this out there: the |
You can further buttress your argument with the example given of the car. You drive it everyday, and while you might not know how to rebuild your engine, you should absolutely know how to change a flat, fill various fluids, and other upkeep that requires a little knowledge of how a car works.
Apologies if this argument was made in the article, I admittedly skipped over it due to the patronizing |
I was thinking that the whole time. Right from the get-go, after his smart-ass introduction. Funny thing is, it was |
I went ahead and took the |
I read the |
I thought so to; I felt like he was trying to make a statement. If he mislikes |
Sorry, bounced off this article after reading that ridiculously pretentious |
Seriously? this guys a tool.
You are a professional, you have been trained.
I don't see plumbers bitching about how you don't know anything about plumbing.
Even the |
You are clearly speaking as someone outside of the industry. I am an independent filmmaker and producer who has just released a film via self-distribution.
In order to get on Netflix, you need an aggregator which basically represents you and your film. In order to get an aggregator to even talk to Netflix (and iTunes among others) you have to pay a great deal of money which often can be 10-15 percent of an indie film's budget.
On top of this, if your film gets on one of these platforms like Netflix, they tend to get a cut that averages 15-50 percent of the profits. This is in addition to the up-front fees from the platform to stay on them and most often a fixed fee per sale.
With all of that financial stuff taken care of, a filmmaker still needs to claw their way in terms of people seeing their film. Just because a film is on Netflix doesn't guarantee people will watch it. It's still a full time job of promoting the film.
This is where creative online marketing comes in handy. By releasing a few screener copies online, people get interested and interest begins to build.
In terms of indie filmmakers, you need to market yourself and not just your film. That long term investment in initially getting someone to check out your film is worth far more than an initial buy which may actually stand as a barrier for people with low disposable income.
I released my film for free for the first month and got over 5000 views. From that, a good amount converted into buying customers and i made around 30 percent of the budget back so far.
By utilizing a site like Gumroad, which takes a small fixed cut of the profit while remaining as transparent as possible, i was able to build my brand and convert viewers into an audience who will prove to be invaluable in my future film endeavors.
As for the job thing, Hollywood isn't creating jobs. In fact, most studios openly abuse internship access to get many free workers who will ultimately not be offered a full time job. Those who do get jobs tend to remain within the system, taking many of the jobs on various films. It is ultimately cheaper for a studio. On top of that, the studios will often ignore work laws and have crew work extremely long hours for lower pay. That is why unions exist, which are there to dissuade a studio from taking advantage of the workers.
Sorry for the wall of text, but it is important to have a perspective from someone in the industry on this topic.
Many in the industry (outside of the MPAA which only cares about profits) agree that piracy actually helps the film industry. The data also agrees. Don't let your opinions be built on propaganda released by a huge entity (MPAA) who ultimately is looking out for the studios' profits. I recommend checking out the documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated" which explores the MPAA in detail. It is currently streaming on Netflix. |
Beware of any article with "empower" in the title. It is likely to be long-winded, tangential and the content value will be inversely proportional to the number of words used. |
I don't think so. I know somebody who works in a big company in the research department and the orders from up above are pretty clear. They have to deliver a product that will make profits, not a product that will do good for the environment or for anybody else, but the company.
I once asked him why they don't do something 2 times better then their competition and he told me that every year, the product must be just slightly better then the competition's because otherwise, if you make something really innovative and 2x better than the competition's, the competition will replicate it and the following year, you'll have a very difficult task of creating something waaay better than you would if you just made a product slightly better. |
I bought my first laptop 5 years ago from BB- cost about $900 at the time, needless to say, it was a pretty big purchase for me. The wifi didn't work properly, so I took it back, and you know what happened?
The guy at the Geek Squad desk fiddled with it for a couple minutes, then called someone over to get me a new one. I was in and out in in five minutes. It was one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had.
They're far from perfect, and there's plenty of stuff I wouldn't buy from them, but as I said eslewhere on this thread, if you're a halfway informed shopper, they're no worse than a lot of businesses, including Amazon. |
Hi, I'm really late commenting in this thread but I just want to show you guys a possible way that you can use this incredible markup and [Best Buy Canada's lowest price guarantee]( to save some money.
Ok so the rules of Best Buy's Lowest Price Guarantee are as follows:
>Should you find a lower price in-store, in print or online from an authorized Canadian dealer we will beat it by 10% of the difference. Tell us which competitor is offering the lower price; we will verify the price and that the item is in stock and available for immediate sale and delivery.
So, if you go to Best Buy, ask them to price match [Google Play]( the price drops to Google's $349 price point. But we can still get it for cheaper then that. Best Buy states that they not only beat the competitor's price, but will beat it by 10% of the difference.
So, if we subtract Best Buy's $799 price, from Google's $349, we get $450. 10% of $450 is $45, we then subtract $45 from $349, for a final Nexus 5 price of $304 (plus tax). |
However, it's not the voice of reason. The only way the "invisible hand" of the market works is by communication (written/word of mouth/whatever). This post is a perfectly example of the market working as it should...and ultimately Best Buy will drop their price because of lack of consumer demand, driven by this sort of communication. |
If you want to see really creepy, on your Android phone go to your applications and uninstall updates to Google Play Services. Go to update it in the market and see all the new permissions it requires.
This has an innocent intent: keep all Google apps up to date, even system apps. That means pretty much all phones get mostly current android software. However , through this method one single application gets essentially complete access to your device. By being a Google service and not Android, it gets to be almost required on your phone but also completely closed source. There's no way to know what else it's doing.
I noticed most of this myself only because I noticed my GS4's battery was dropping much quicker than usual. I checked out my battery stats and noticed Google play services used up a huge chunk of my battery life, second only to screen on time.
And the increase isn't just because the system apps are now going through the play service. Without the update the "Android OS" and "System" categories combined still aren't even close. So whatever Play Services is doing now, its using a lot more juice than it took to do it before. Now that's creepy. |
If you want to see really creepy, on your Android phone go to your applications and uninstall updates to Google Play Services. Go to update it in the market and see all the new permissions it requires.
This has an innocent intent: keep all Google apps up to date, even system apps. That means pretty much all phones get mostly current android software. However , through this method one single application gets essentially complete access to your device. By being a Google service and not Android, it gets to be almost required on your phone but also completely closed source. There's no way to know what else it's doing.
I noticed most of this myself only because I noticed my GS4's battery was dropping much quicker than usual. I checked out my battery stats and noticed Google play services used up a huge chunk of my battery life, second only to screen on time.
And the increase isn't just because the system apps are now going through the play service. Without the update the "Android OS" and "System" categories combined still aren't even close. So whatever Play Services is doing now, its using a lot more juice than it took to do it before. Now that's creepy. |
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