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It's a really good controller hub device, it doesn't solve the outrageous cost of large clickable buttons or mouth-sticks, but it's definitely well thought out with more expansion than you'll probably need.
See:
In the lab with Xbox's new Adaptive Controller, and
Xbox Adaptive Controller is now out -- and we go hand, foot, fingers, and elbows-on

3. Musk doesn’t get a flying fuck about climate change. If he did, he wouldn’t be making frivolous 20 mile flights in his private jet.

Or maybe he has a sense of proportion and understands that his private jet is a drop in the bucket compared to the fact that he's been a huge factor in changing the automotive world for the better.

Individual actions are nice and all, but they are dwarfed by changes to standards and to industry practices.

So, as individuals, we are all ok to keep driving gas guzzlers?

3. Musk doesn’t get a flying fuck about climate change. If he did, he wouldn’t be making frivolous 20 mile flights in his private jet.

Or maybe he has a sense of proportion and understands that his private jet is a drop in the bucket compared to the fact that he's been a huge factor in changing the automotive world for the better.

Individual actions are nice and all, but they are dwarfed by changes to standards and to industry practices.

Elon Musk have been extremely clear, from the very beginning, that Tesla was a private bet almost sure to fail, but still worthwhile in order to speed up the transition away from ICE cars.

1. Musk didn’t start Tesla faggot.
2. Musk is only in it for the money.
3. Musk doesn’t get a flying fuck about climate change. If he did, he wouldn’t be making frivolous 20 mile flights in his private jet.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

Yep, that seems to be Indian strategy. They want to ban not just foreign companies, but automation too (see https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...).

I did answer your questions. If your command of english is so weak as to not being able to understand that I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, then I can't help you. Maybe enrol into some english classes. I'm not being critical of you if english isn't your native language.

They don't; you're delusional. Let's see what T-Mobile says about their phones.

...

That's a difference barely worth mentioning. Apple and Microsoft come with plenty of bloat, and no, you can't remove it.

I think it's you who is deluded, have a look at those lists and you can clearly see most of the apps are from the manufactuer/OS and core functions of the phone. Just t-mobile apps, android has 5, WP has 1 and iOS has 0. Also regarding that list, I'm not familiar with iOS, but certainly on WP, many of those apps can be uninstalled (I think at least 24 of them) and you do get some space back. A reinstall on WP requires apps to be downloaded from the store, they're not included in the recovery partition, only the core OS apps which are not uninstallable, such as phone, messaging, web browser, etc... Regarding OnePlus, well that's a massive feature of theirs in being lightweight. It's why they sell so many phones.

Lastly, AOSP =/= Android. Here's an excellent article from Ars Technica explaining the situation.

You're whining about android devices as if they were all the same. How about you exercise that brain of yours and buy one which is loaded with less crap than an iPhone or a Windows Phone, rather than more?

And we've gone full circle here. Like I said in my first post (if you could comprehend it), I had this problem with my first android phone, not afterwards. When you get about the worst experience the platform has to offer, you do learn a lot about the do's and don'ts. But please note what I said;

Problem is, the community just says it's my fault because I got a carrier branded phone, because android/google is beyond criticism and can't possibly be flawed at all.

But, just how it is mostly the case, the community (this time that includes you!) just says that I'm doing it wrong, so again, it's not a flaw, it's a feature. If you want to reinstall the OS and do all that stuff, more power to you, I just want a device that works, for me, out of the box. There are some of those around, even android devices, but it really narrows down to only a couple of manufacturers, and no OnePlus is not one of them, due to undocumented spyware 'features'.

I do recall that the NSA was intercepting Cisco hardware to install backdoors on those systems. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... Obama was all about change so that is maybe why he didn't make a big deal out of those NSA changes.

Doesn't matter about what was "better". what matters is what impacted the world more. Apple products were always 2nd or 3rd place options, and always way behind the leaders. The Commodore 64 dominated until the rise of the IBM PC and the clones. That is what changed the world - a standard, open hardware and OS platform for anyone to work with. Domination in the market as a standard platform enabled an explosion of software. Without the IBM PC and Windows, the entire 1990s Internet/computer revolution would have never happened.

And without the Apple 1, we'd still be toggling-in Bootloaders on our Altair and IMSAI PDP-8 Clones.

And without the wheel, we'd still all be walking.

How far back do you want to go, fucktard?

Doesn't matter about what was "better". what matters is what impacted the world more. Apple products were always 2nd or 3rd place options, and always way behind the leaders. The Commodore 64 dominated until the rise of the IBM PC and the clones. That is what changed the world - a standard, open hardware and OS platform for anyone to work with. Domination in the market as a standard platform enabled an explosion of software. Without the IBM PC and Windows, the entire 1990s Internet/computer revolution would have never happened.

I mean, there are still upgrades that Verizon needs for Fios. I love my gigabit fios service and that it's uncapped. But they definitely have peering issues and saturated interconnects at their internet exchanges. This is now the bottleneck for me almost 90% of the time. Verizon is notorious for avoid upgrading their exchanges https://arstechnica.com/inform.... Cogent is still congested, along with Hurricane Electric. Comcast sucks, but at least their peering is solid.

That's the main difference, but their are many others.

The US Govt can't shut up the press or their people. Freedoms guaranteed in the USA.
In China, the press is owned by the govt and "causing trouble" is illegal. Thugs (aka police) come to your home, beat you up, threaten you and your family, and prevent you from travel.

And China puts people in "education camps" over their religion. Over 1M last estimate.

Smartphones in China must have govt tracking app installed. Police randomly verify this.

Tienanmen Square; they admit to killing over 1,022 civilians. Other estimates are over 10,000 deaths.

Their elections are fixed - only approved party members can be on the ballot.

Don't forget what China is and how they behave.

Stealing https://www.wsj.com/articles/S...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1...
China hacked over 125 orgs.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
The Chinese govt commonly lies. This happened while The US/China economic espionage pact was in-force beginning in 2016.

Yeah, China is nothing like the USA.

On a related note, the russians are pressuring their NASA also. Time to put up or shutup and let some other folks have a shot perhaps: https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

And Sean Gallagher was right in the middle of that era, so he can't even play the clueless Millennial card....

That's nothing compared to that $10,000 ethernet cable that Denon was trying to push.

Here is some info to back some of this up:

https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

A quote:

Iliyan Malchev: With Treble, the operating system has separated to the adaptation layers that tailor down to the hardware. And that's still the case, but the devil is in the details. There's a ton of nuance that we still need to get right, and this is what we've focused on with this [Android P] release. What is the case today—and I think that gets overlooked by a lot of the press on Treble—is that any device that is preloaded with Google's apps, any device that launches with Oreo or subsequent releases, must work smoothly with a binary image of Android that we built for certification purposes.

This image isn't a product. The intent is not to launch this, but the idea is, by requiring that this "golden image" run on everything out there, we create a centripetal force that pushes our partners ever so gently toward not changing Android in ways that aren't really meaningful to their bottom lines. We finished that technical work with Android P this year, and we started working with silicon manufacturers.

Hopefully this will help reduce the re-done overhead across the phone manufacturers, hopefully reducing updates down the road. By 50%? I hope.

You're right, it's an obscure phrase that people only used briefly on obscure websites years ago.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/...
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07...
https://mashable.com/article/f...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/sc...
https://gizmodo.com/dark-patte...
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-...
https://www.extremetech.com/in...
https://venturebeat.com/2018/0...
https://sdtimes.com/addiction/...
https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/15...

Or you could, you know... use terminology in the standard way it has come to be used throughout the industry.

And at the same time,verizon is charging Remind fees to combat text message spam. Though they may be reversing course?

That's a bit tricky when the ISP quotes you six figures to upgrade from dial-up to broadband (source 1; source 2; source 3).

That's a bit tricky when the ISP quotes you six figures to upgrade from dial-up to broadband (source 1; source 2; source 3).

but you know what, only about 10% of Call of Duty players finish story mode. I couldn't find BF stats but I'm guessing it's the same (they're in the same genre and are basically the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter of the military shooter world, discuss among yourselves which is MK and which is SF).

The sales suck because:

1. It went up against Rockstar's Red Dead. Everybody was gonna take a bath this year no matter what. It's like when a new Elder Scrolls comes out, there's only so many hours in the day and everybody is busy playing that.
2. The game's unfinished (it's missing half it's modes) so folks are playing BF1, which was $5 bucks on Origin recently. I'm guessing the last minute push to put Ray Tracing in is to blame.

There's no such thing as bad publicity. Far Cry 5 had similar controversy and managed to be the best selling Far Cry in history. Gamers will put their dislikes and politics aside if you bring a good game. But if you bring a mediocre one while they're 50 hours into a 200 Red Dead play through expect to get hosed.

On the plus side no Rockstar games in 2019 (I'm not a fan of Red Dead & GTA) so there's a ton of great games coming out. The rest of the game industry noticed a new Rockstar game and planned their releases accordingly, but that doesn't work for annual & bi-annual franchises. You can't risk your player base getting out of the habit of buying this years release. Hell, if the community should be mad it's about that crap.

As the original article duly explains, the laser light at the wavelength of 1550 nm used by this lidar scanner does NOT reach the retina of the eye. At this wavelength, it is fully absorbed in outer parts of the eye (cornea, lens, etc.) before it could get focused into a tight spot on the retina. This makes this wavelength (relatively) eye-safe, comparing to visible and some other wavelength ranges. There is no such protection for the camera however, whose glass optics happily focuses 1550 nm into a small spot... so the sensor damage may happen.

Laser safety regulations are primarily concerned with (a) no damage to humans, especially their eyes, and (b) laser beams not setting things on fire. Neither of this has happened in this incident. So we are good.

If you are interested in technical details of laser safety, read ANSI Z136.1 standard. Warning: it requires technical expertise.

Too bad your comment wasn't posted on the internet so you could provide a link to said response.

I too am lazy and would have preferred to have just clicked a link rather than do my own original search. Therefore I have sacrificed my own free time by finding a link (and actually reading it) wherein the link that you requested can be found...

ArsTechnica article with more information and LINKS to the original infringement claim letter as well as the EFF's (great) response can be found here https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/eff-flips-bird-the-bird-says-boing-boing-post-doesnt-violate-copyright-law/.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

It's $280 for the screen on that $1000 phone :-/

My phone cost $280.

https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

I don't call it a back stab, more of a 'tit-for-tat' situation. Can you back your claims up with cites?

Paul didn't surprise anyone when he informed Stardock he was going to be releasing a sequel. That was an open discussion ALL along. The only area of possible debate there is the timing... that Paul may have timed his announcement to leverage the existing publicity of Origins being near launch, and that was a bit of a dick move, that both sides could have handled more graciously.

And remember, Paul didn't sell Stardock anything for $400k; so its not like they reneged on anything. They bought whatever they bought from Atari's bankruptcy management in a bankruptcy auction.

Meanwhile, yes Stardock was trying to play nicer originally, and yes they made an offer to Paul and Fred; that they ulimately rejected for reasons unknown. (Which as the owners of the IP is their right) and then Stardock started selling SC1 and SC2 on steam...

"And then thereâ(TM)s GOG, which actually was selling Star Control and Star Control II back in 2011. GOG claimed it was selling the titles under an existing agreement with Atari, but Ford and Reiche notified GOG that Atari didnâ(TM)t have the power to make such an agreement because Reiche owned the gamesâ(TM) copyrights. According to the counterclaim, GOG questioned Atari on this point, and Atariâ"after consulting its attorneysâ"agreed that Ford and Reiche were correct. The parties then renegotiated a distribution agreement that cut Ford and Reiche into the royalties, and GOG resumed selling the titles."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

So even Atari agreed in 2011 that it didn't own SC 1 and SC 2 anymore, so how could Stardock have bought rights to them from Atari exactly?

So at this point Stardock wasn't playing nice anymore, and Paul and Fred issued DMCA takedowns, then Startdock sued them, then they countersued stardock... and so on, until here we are.

You can argue rightfully that both sides made mistakes, and played rough. I won't dispute that. You can raise the argument that Stardock paid ~400k for _something_ and if that something is actually nothing, then you can rightfully call them legitimate victims here... victims of their own failure to do diligence, victims of their own lawyers, victims of Atari's bankrupty proceedings... but not victims of Paul and Fred.

Paul and Fred shouldn't have to make any compromises, on the rights to a thing they clearly own, just because Stardock went and got itself royally ripped off by a now bankrupt 3rd party. Could Paul and Fred have been more lenient with Stardock... sure, but they don't have any obligation there at all. On the other hand, Stardock hasn't got a leg to stand on... they were in no position to play hardball except perhaps as a moderately succesfull corporation they may have had more money than Paul and Fred to throw around to try and win that way. But morally? They aren't on the high ground here at all. Although my sympathy genuinely does go to startdock for the $400k they spent on what was minimal at best... and may be even less than that.

The vote was 52-47 in the senate.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

Granted it would be easier in the house and harder in the senate next time around.

"When it comes to terrorism, backpacks are a far bigger risk than dornes"

Absolutely true. In fact, pressure cookers are a far bigger risk than recreational drone flying (3 dead, hundreds injured by pressure-cooker bombs in the Boston Marathon attack) -- so why is it that in most countries, people owning drones weighing more than 250g have to be registered yet people owning pressure cookers don't?

This incident, plus the Gatwick one shows that the hysteria over "dangerous drones" has reached unacceptable and ridiculous proportions.

How many young children have died from suffocation as a result of plastic bags? (answer: a lot more than one).

How many people have been killed by manned aircraft crashing into populated areas? (answer, a double-digit number every year).

How many people have died as a result of domesticated dog attacks? (answer, far more than you might realise)

And here's the really important question:

How many people have died as a result of recreational multirotor drone use? Answer: A BIG FAT ZERO!

That's right, despite all the claims that these things are dangerous, that these things will bring down airliners, that these things will result in needless deaths... NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON has been killed as a result of recreational multirotor drone operation ANYWHERE in the world, EVER.

Firstly they said that if a drone collides with a plane, people will die. Then, after several documented instances of collisions between drones and planes -- without even an injury to show for it, they said "Ah, but if a drone collides with a HELICOPTER, *then* people will undoubtedly die.

After the collision with a military helicopter over NY harbour where nobody was injured and the helicopter landed safely they said "Ah, but if a drone strikes a helicopter's tail rotor -- *then* people will die".

After a drone struck an MD500 helicopter's tail-rotor at the Baha races and the craft landed safely without injuries they said "Ah, but if a drone strikes an airliner, *then* people will die".

Do you see the way this is playing out?

But let's look at the science instead of the hysteria (not that the media nor the regulators seem interested in doing so).

As reported by ArsTechnica, one university crunched the numbers some time ago and came to the conclusion that drones are a lot safer than we're being led to believe.

Who are you going to believe -- academics who've done the science or a bunch of hysterical know-nothings in the media who simply want to sell papers or accumulate clicks on web-pages?

I love how this scientific paper has been completely ignored -- in favour of predictions by parties (such as unions of commercial pilots, who stand to lose their jobs if/when drones take over).

But not all pilots believe that drones are the devil's spawn. Check out what Captain Chris Mano, a veteran 737 pilot for a major US carrier has to say in his blog about the issue of drone risk to airliners.

I'm sorry but I get really peeved when I see the mainstream media blowing the true risks (as proven by the passage of time and in complete contradiction to the predictions of death and disaster by the ignorant or those parties with their own agendas) right out of proportion.

I trust that those who use Slashdot will appreciate the reality of the situation and not be suckered into believing that recreational drone use is a major threat to public safety -- as the media would have us believe.

It is coming back again. Look at Microsoft who we LOVE to bash. Office 2016 reintroduced a radical concept of colors. Office 2019 has 2007 style icons again here

Cool! Good to see that the flat ugly tile is going to the hell it deserves. Those new icons are completely acceptable.

It is coming back again. Look at Microsoft who we LOVE to bash. Office 2016 reintroduced a radical concept of colors. Office 2019 has 2007 style icons again here.

I just re-imaged my PC this weekend and went into Chrome to set the old UI back. I am pretty pissed and now I know why I can't find the settings

https://www.theguardian.com/me... higher-proportion-of-men-than-women-report-online-abuse-in-survey

This isn't terribly surprising. And it will be quite difficult to turn the online experience into one that caters to the most sensitive. In general, men just let it go, yet apparently it damages women terribly.

I don't buy Georgie Harman's ideat that it damages men as well, but that men don't seek treatment. Sorry, other than a direct threat of violence, the insults and abuse are just background noise.

What is more, the attempts on some sites to reign this "bad behavior" in are inconsistent, leading to draconian suppression in some cases, but not others. I haven't seen enough to figure a trend yet. I do know some posts I've commented on have been deleted after a male disagreed with a female. You start out trying to avoid abuse, and you end up squelching civil discourse.

And then there is tumblr. This one is pretty funny, as Tumblr's "porn detection algorithms" flag some pretty innocuous things as pornography https://arstechnica.com/gaming...

Some of the more amusing things that Tumblr is protecting the sensitive from are some cute little candles a woman knitted. Some dinosaur drawings, two fully clothed males with their arms around each other. Spiderman's head, Alex Ovechkin taking a nap with the Stanley cup, a dog sitting in a shopping cart. Not in the article, but another case was a guy who collected gemstones and posted beautiful pictures online. Yup - Tumblr reported it as porn. The unfortunate irony is that Tumblr was a source of imagery for the LGBT community as well as women, who might feel a little awkward going to places like Pornhub or porn.com. They re pissing off the more sensitive among us.

And I don't have the hard data, but I suspect that the heavy hand of suppression is weighted toward keeping the men in line. Not certain about that, but a number of the things I've found suppressed were right after a male disagreed with a woman's post. None were abusive or profane, just simple disagreement.

So back to the abuse - how do we eliminate abuse when some people consider not agreeing with them as abuse? I've seen people do exactly that over the years. And the Jessica Price twitter assault on a guy who had a respectful criticism shows it continues.

The only way to avoid going down that perpetually offended rabbit hole is to ignore their demands.

There was even a memo about Uber's self driving cars hitting a lot of things before the killing.

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - tech magnate Marc Zuckerberg was found dead in his Manhattan home this morning.
There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon. .

While Verizon said its wireless home Internet service will have no data caps, Verizon's "unlimited" mobile services can be throttled during times of network congestion after customers use a certain amount each month. We asked Verizon if a similar limitation will be applied to 5G home Internet and will update this story if we a get a response. We also asked Verizon for the service's upload speeds and information about what equipment will be used in the home.

(UPDATE: A Verizon spokesperson told us the service won't have any throttling. Service at each home will rely on a router, and possibly an exterior antenna "depending on the customer's location," Verizon also told Ars.)

Here's my question: how much due diligence did they do, ensuring that they are not accidentally catching people selling legit international editions (published by someone properly licensed)? Those exist, and first-sale doctrine in those cases was upheld.

iirc, this is how it is done in Amsterdam.

A city-run organisation builds fibre from customer premises back to a PoP. Multiple ISPs pick up from the PoP and handle onward transit/service.

(Ars Technica story about it).

I don't know who those people are, nor do I care who they are or what their opinions are. IRC sucks and always has. An assertion of "inferior" always seems to be missing important parts of the assertion: to whom, for what purposes? Forums and mailing lists are objectively better than any chat application for situations where clearly thought out and sometimes very detailed responses that can be skimmed at the reader's leisure are desirable. I can subscribe to a mailing list or read a forum without a site-specific account; I can't do that with proprietary IRC on steroids clients like Slack and Discord. If I need to discuss in near real-time, chat makes a lot more sense and mailing lists and forums are unnecessarily slow and frustrating.

Microsoft centralized Skype for data siphoning and control; everything else is a side effect. Skype has also been absolute trash ever since they did so. P2P Skype worked just fine when both people were behind NATs; it's called UDP hole punching and it is quite effective for the type of NAT that is in widespread use in homes and small businesses. I'd hardly call Electron a native application; if anything, it's more of an elaborate emulator.

Solar roofs are looking better and better. All While blending into your neighborhood.

It doesn't take much research to find far better options to the bulky solar panel design.

The big problem that I have with EVs is that they're all new. In other words, they all have "navigation systems." In other words, they all spy on you.

Here's an EV that's just a car (well, a truck), without any fancy-schmancy nav or other tech. Look at the dashboard...

Yeah, for these two and other new technologies, companies were clearly overly optimistic. Launching a new technology always involves a lot of unknown unknowns and saying "5 years out" means you really don't have a concrete plan to get to market. See the fusion "always 30 years away" meme.

At least for self-driving cars, the estimates of how far in the future they are at least are going down. It hasn't made Slashdot yet, but when looking for Google's plans of when their next step with their self-driving cars is, I see they "launched" Waymo One today, which looks like it's a very incremental step of removing the NDA for their "early rider" program in Phoenix and a switch from calling it a beta to commercial service with a promise to allow more riders soon... but still with safety drivers. I think Waymo's current estimates for driverless cars being "ready" (probably meaning taxi service in all major US cities in all weather) is 2020 and Tesla is claiming 2019 but no one really believes them.

The California Highway Patrol on Friday pulled over a Tesla Model S that was traveling down the road—but whose driver appeared to be asleep at the wheel. The vehicle was traveling southbound on Highway 101 in Palo Alto.

Officers said that they were unable to get the man's attention.

"One of the officers basically ended up going in front of the vehicle and basically tried to slow it down," a California Highway Patrol spokesman told KCBS radio. The process took about seven minutes, and the car traveled for about seven miles before coming to a stop.

The driver was Alexander Samek, who serves on the Los Altos Planning Commission. He was arrested for driving under the influence.

So how was the vehicle able to travel for more than seven minutes with an apparently sleeping driver? The obvious theory is that the Model S had its Autopilot system turned on, but officials said on Friday that they hadn't confirmed that yet. It's quite possible that Autopilot saved Samek's life.

The situation is a bit of a puzzle because Autopilot is supposed to detect if a driver's hands are on the wheel and disengage if they're not. Tesla has steadily tightened up these rules, with recent revisions of the software warning drivers in as little as 30 seconds. So if the driver did fall asleep at the wheel the car should have started slowing down on its own within a few minutes.

In a similar case back in January, police encountered a man asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla car on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. When police woke him up, he insisted that everything was fine because his vehicle was "on autopilot." Unfortunately for him, there's no autopilot exception to drunk-driving laws.

Top comment: onkeljonas

"It's entirely plausible that he was asleep with his hands on the wheel."

that [Comcast internal servers] traffic doesn't cross the public internet,

But THAT's the trick. Think of your normal (techie) home. You've got servers and storage. You've got infrastructure: cabling, routers, WiFi hubs, and a link to "outside." You've got clients, wired and wireless. You might have peak BANDWIDTH problems which you ignore, or continual problems you fix fix by upgrading equipment: speed, wifi, storage.

But that's your HOME. It's a single one-charge per item with slight depreciation. (And power charges and lightning strikes.) This is also Comcast, with lots and LOTS of cabling. But they've got a network with clients, servers *1, and infrastructure and it's all paid for *2 and can charge you for access to all of it and profit. As. Long. As. You. Stay. Inside.

Once you hit that outward going edge router, two absolutely horrible things happen: you're using their bandwidth to access the internet at large and not paying them for it. *3 And, you're not looking at and subsidizing *their* servers.

So let's watch a movie. Comcast: Client hits home router, the city hub, a larger hub, is sent to a large city containing one of their replicated servers. Bandwidth usage occurs, and 11GB of data is sent across their wires to your home. TA-DAA! The End, roll credits.

Outside NetFlix/YouTube/PornHub: Same exact thing, but instead of a server, data hits their network edge and leaves their network going into the cloud. *4 It merges with all of the other raindrops, eventually ending up at your far-away remote site, where 11GB of data is sent from the internet thru their edge router and that 11GB is sent through their infrastructure to you. The ONLY DIFFERENCE is the relative destination: internal server vs edge router. Oh, and did I mention that their server is free while the edge has a continuing cost per bandwidth?

NOW let's bring in the bandwidth cap. What actually is it? It's just a cap of data on the edge router. If it actually affected their own system they wouldn't have excluded it from usage. So that cap is also a way to prompt you to look at their own "free data" services, or risk going over on NetFlix and paying +$10/each 50G or whatever the charge is. "See? NetFlix isn't as cheap as you THOUGHT it was! Buy us and always have a known fixed monthly charge." *5

Verizon is the same. Metered bandwidth, but OH! You can view our servers as much as you want. (They included ESPN on that.) So I did. I watched the entire SuperBowl game, previews, game, and afterwards on my phone. I'd go to bed, fire it up and mute it. I'd get up and go to the bathroom later and reset/restart it. During the day I'd fire it up as well. For a month. I *FORGET* my usage, it was well over my normal (old, actually unlimited) account usage. Cell tower wireless bandwidth usage isn't (normally) the limiting problem with them either, it's that nasty old "outside" internet.

*1 the licensed media on their servers might have a continuing monthly/annually cost
*2 It's paid for or they wouldn't have it. The LOAN they took out for it for capital expenditures, however, probably is not.
*3 You are paying for it, but not paying them for their servers. How dare you think you could look thru their atmosphere but then look at something ELSE besides their pretty, shiny servers?
*4 Netflix had a policy whereby they would provide and maintain free hardware for ISPs to lower the edge router bandwidth so that all of their usage would be "ISP local". Comcast didn't want it, I wonder why?
*5 I am altering the deal; pray i don't alter it any further. TV only

Interesting Old Links:
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but will Comcast send an tech to court that can say beyond a reasonable doubt that IP = that user?
and when crossed examined be able to explain why they can do that but can't get the cap meter right
If your system can show that IP = that user then why does also show that users to have used there internet on a day that they had no power and there modem was off?

You just have to point to cases in where the ISP systems where off to make the reasonable doubt part kill the case.
http://www.dslreports.com/show...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...

but will Comcast send an tech to court that can say beyond a reasonable doubt that IP = that user?
and when crossed examined be able to explain why they can do that but can't get the cap meter right
If your system can show that IP = that user then why does also show that users to have used there internet on a day that they had no power and there modem was off?

You just have to point to cases in where the ISP systems where off to make the reasonable doubt part kill the case.
http://www.dslreports.com/show...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...