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GP was pointing out a general error with humans. I think everyone on slashdot who isn't a alt-right troll would admit that NYT is real news while fox is not, sure. But convincing ourselves that we're immune because our media is better than that would be the worst thing to do.

For instance, there are plenty of slashdotters who don't believe wiki citations when wiki disagrees with them. It's not perfect, sure, but neither is anything else.

A good number of Trump supporters I know personally don't question the unethical things Trump or the right wing does because they've firmly established in their minds that the right wing is the correct wing and Trump is a good guy. They are willing to ignore when Trump says wildly innacurate stuff because they've convinced themselves he's the honest one. If we convince ourselves that because our media is at the moment more accurate, we're always right, we're liable to do things that might damage the country like the right wing is now.

say what you want about Windows but I can grab a windows laptop and inside of 10 minutes be booting into anything from BSD to Zorin OS, just try that on a Chromebook

Challenge accepted. Done.

Also: Fuck You, it took me 5 seconds to Google that.

Really? There have been instances of almost intact mammoths being found in receding glaciers, how bad does DNA get degraded from freezing? Heck, in this find blood was actually flowing out of the carcass as it thawed. If we can sequence the neanderthal genome using much older samples I don't see a reason we couldn't sequence the much more recent mammoth genome.

"If you cant sort out a buffer overflow then dont call yourself a programmer"
Several decades of severe network exploits show that a huge amount of software, commercial, free, open source, obscure, commonplace, whatever was written by people who can't call themselves programmers and used by those who don't have the 1st clue how to use it securely.

When I first got serious about computing, 2 decades gone, the common wisdom was that we had not choice but to keep on using the old (mostly very insecure) software because so much depended on it, it would be too costly to rewrite in more secure languages and in time it would all get fixed by better programming practices.
We are also only 2 weeks away from the 15th anniversary of Bill Gates' "Security is Job 1" e-mail
https://www.cnet.com/news/gate...

If we knew then what we knew now, how much damage would be caused by exploits, what it would cost to fix, remediate, the secrets exposed, the privacy intrusions, would that advice still hold or would we have been better off to say damn the torpedoes and rewrite all of it?

Is that because they admit they're unreliable or because that would be circular and inherently flawed?

Also, I think people, especially people who I imagine populate wiki these days, forget that relative accuracy is important. There are zero information sources of any decent length which can be said to be absolutely true. Wiki was shown at one point to be as accurate as the alternative. It's all good to be skeptical of wiki, but let's not pretend God Himself edits Britannica print version.

"Talk to your landlord" you say? The law is being enforced primarily against landlords who keep their apartments off the rental market so that they can collect hotel-like rents instead of apartment rents. These are AirBnBers who have 5 or more properties on AirBnB at the same time, all the time. They are operating illegal hotels, plain and simple.

https://www.cnet.com/news/airbnb-nyc-law-hosts-fined-for-illegal-home-rentals

You are right that we have a long history of people crying wolf. As part of a course on the policy and ethical implications of AI, I am teaching the history of Luddite reactions from the printing press to the more recent robotic "revolution". Even recently with ATMs, there was a prediction of fewer branches and tellers which did not happen. So we're good right? Well...

Unfortunately, there is one thing that should stand out as being potentially different this time -- in previous instances of the Chicken Little scenarios, it was those who were worried about being displaced that were sounding the alarm, not those creating the technology. This time, it's the other way around. The vast majority of AI researchers, particularly in the private sector, are bullish on the elimination of most blue-collar and service jobs (even management and hedge fund investors are not safe) in the not too distant future. And if you have doubts, we have ample room to believe that the changes are not 50 years away:

• Manufacturing jobs are finally returning to North America...for robots
• Chinese factory replaces 90% of human workers with robots. Production rises by 250%, defects drop by 80%
• BBC News: Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'
• Attention all humans of Shanghai! Robo chefs will now whip you up a bowl of ramen in 90 seconds flat
• Japanese white-collar workers are already being replaced by artificial intelligence
• Mining 24 Hours a Day with Robots
• China Has Launched the Robocops You Have Been Waiting For
• Robots are already replacing fast-food workers Trump’s pick for labor chief, the CEO of Hardee's and Carl’s Jr., likes the idea.
• Inside Silicon Valley’s Robot Pizzeria
• Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour
• Fast-food CEO says he's investing in machines because the government is making it difficult to afford employees

And other things to think about....

• Dallas Police Used Robot With Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect
• Microsoft Foresees AR Tracking Your Keys, Milk, Entire Life
• White House: US Needs a Stronger Social Safety Net To Help Workers Displaced by Robots
• McKinsey's 2016 Analy

Panasonic 'smart-tv' displaying an advertising banner when you change the volume wasn't enough?
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/tu...

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-...

Trump and his wonderful deregulations just announced today that Cable providers don't need to do this. I have to wonder if Comcast was aware of this before their announcement?

"Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who had been appointed by Barack Obama, criticized the move, calling it a victory for "Cablewood over consumers." He also took a jab at Trump on Twitter. "$200 million Pai Tax on helpless cable subs. Trump helping little guy??"

Ugh, bad tags. That link should be: LG GWB-H20L blu-ray writer

• Occasionally logs you out. This was happening every 30-60 minutes when I first started the service, but it's only happened once in the last few days so they seem to be getting it under control.
• Yes they have ABC, NBC, and Fox (CBS wants you to pay for their channel to get OTA shows). But only in certain metro areas. And if you move outside of that metro area, the channels stop working. The Android app needs location permission or it refuses to run. I haven't yet traveled to another supported metro area, so dunno if this is just checks for supported locations, or if it's tied to your home address metro area.
• Limited to 2 streams. Not an issue for me, but this will be a deal-breaker for some.
• Most streaming channels don't list DirecTV Now as a service. So even though I can watch the Discovery Channel with DirecTV Now, I can't watch their Roku channel since there's no way for me to activate it. Hopefully this is just due to the services being slow to add DirecTV Now as an enabling subscription service. It does work for HBO, and someone else has said it works for ESPN.
• Swiping up/down on the guide often advances the show listings forward an hour.
• The favorites selection is right next to the channel names. It's easy to accidentally favorite/unfavorite a channel while scrolling through the list, or when selecting a channel to watch.
• Favorites list is slow to sync between devices.
• Only has a single favorites list. I was expecting multiple favorites like with their satellite tuners.
• Guide defaults to all channels every time you open it.
• Starts muted when you first start the Android app. This threw me off for a bit as I tried to troubleshoot it. IMHO it should remember the audio state the last time the app was run. (Just checked and looks like the update they released today adds an option to let you set it to on/off on launch.)
• Easy to change from partial screen (with a list of recent channels you've watched underneath) to full screen. But impossible to switch from full screen to partial screen.
• No configuration options for closed captioning. Text is probably the right size for a phone, but too small for my tablet (2560x1600 screen).
• After living with the Roku for a year, it's really horrifying how much of the show times are taken up by commercials.

I'm gonna keep it for now. HBO alone is normally $15/mo, so it's like I'm getting the other 100+ channels for $25/mo. (The 100 channel promo ended Jan 10. It's now priced at $65/mo. $35/mo now gets you just 60 channels.) Yeah they're having a lot of problems, but it seems to me to be teething problems. And my cable company's basic TV plan was nearly double the price for far fewer channels. Here are comparison of DirecTV vs Sling vs Vue channel lineups and features

I read the wikipedia page too, but the prosecution's side ignores the technical reason why they didn't necessarily delete the files. I read an example of the file deletion thing, it was on these lines:
1. user1 makes a copy of the file for personal use (legal);
2. user2 makes a copy for sharing in his blog (illegal according to American laws)
3. user3, the rights holder, makes another copy of the file, for private use (legal).

If they deleted the file because of a notice on user2's link, the other users that had legitimate access to the file would have their legal property destroyed.

But about them not "playing nice", that's arguable, and my point is that according to the "rights holders", youtube is both a violator AND isn't playing nice, see 1, 2 and RIAA Says YouTube is Running a DMCA Protection Racket. They are all about how youtube and google are pirate heavens and are not helping enough in the good fight. In TFA they are talking about well-known loopholes (claiming/implying youtube should be doing something about it).

Megaupload was taking down the links for infringing content, that means that the alleged pirate lost access to the file, but without destroying the data of those users that were never accused of infringing anything. This is what caused controversy, the prosecutor thinks they should have deleted people's files.

The fact that they were complying with the DMCA notices the way google and everybody else does should be enough. People shouldn't have to do more than what the law says, they should to as little as possible. Specially if going through extra lengths would hurt legitimate users. Being prosecuted or not shouldn't be about playing nice with the powerful or about being one of them.
While megaupload is being prosecuted, and torrent sites are constantly being persecuted, Google is the big pirate. The best way to find a torrent is still googling FILENAME .torrent and to find a song is still youtube. They are not prosecuted because it is google.

4K video is hardly the future, its right up there with 3D TV, Curved Screens, Smart TV.

Its a check box for sales people to convince the uninformed they must spend more money on something they will not actually benefit from

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-...

ALL consumers would benefit with better quality programming , but the race to the bottom is on. Advertising revenue is down, costs are up, so quality is sacrificed to fit into that budget. We get re-runs, "re-boots", reality TV and other complete dross. I am now back to reading books in preference to the crap the call TV.

Microsoft has just patented an Apple Patent!

Note the sharp corners!

I do knot know what GP believes or knows, but one would have to be have been living under a rock for the past one and a half years not to know that the use of defeat devices is very widespread in the industry. Some reports and articles easily found with your favourite search engine:

The emissions test defeat device problem in Europe is not about VW
Dieselgate At GM? Defeat Devices Claimed To Be Found In Opel Cars
Test of Fiat diesel model shows irregular emissions: Bild am Sonntag
Report on France’s Renault emissions probe omitted crucial details
French government ordered to hand over full details of Renault emissions study
PSA Group Raided by French Fraud Office in Emissions Probe
Nissan faces suit over alleged emission fraud
#Dieselgate continues: new cheating techniques
RDW emission test programme - Results of indicative tests for the presence of an unauthorised defeat device
VW, Daimler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, GM: Can We Finally Agree That Dieselgate Is An Industry Problem?
Revealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, report finds

Defeat devices are hardly a recent phenomenon:
How Common Are EPA “Defeat Devices” In The Auto Industry?
Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Almost as Old as Pollution Tests

There are different ways to cheat, too:
`Shameful' Mitsubishi Fraud Risks Pushing Carmaker to Brink
This is the world now: Suzuki also admits to cheating on fuel-economy tests

It's not hard to find more. Pretty much every manufacturer cheats or has cheated in one way or another.

With less than a month of sales data it's hard to say how many of those will regret their impulse purchase.

Apples offering isn't exactly getting 5-star reviews.

https://www.cnet.com/products/...

Who killed antiphorm, and why can't I seem to post a /. comment referring to it? https://www.cnet.com/news/rand...

Here: https://www.cnet.com/au/produc... I didn't even bother searching - that was the first Google review I looked at. That system had a 160GB hard drive with a minor upgrade to 250GB. I've been getting 128GB SSD drives in laptops for the past few years, but they almost never work any more in any of my clients businesses. The biggest thing driving it is Dropbox, Google Drive and box.com usage. So many companies (or departments) are ditching fileservers and moving to those systems and they think that the storage just magically lives elsewhere. Instead, you end up with 30GB of cloud storage saved locally on every device.

I never understood their decisions...why disable the phone when you can redesign the battery to not blow up and just swap batteries? I mean the battery is a removable part.

Apparently the battery is too big physically for the space allotted for it. Batteries expand when heated/charged. A teardown revealed this https://www.cnet.com/news/gala... (beware, the assholes have an autoplaying video.

This is all redolent of the marketing issues I've often spoke about with phones. "Users need longer battery life! Users need thinner phones! Users need wireless charging!"

Size and battery capacity are opposing traits. And while compressing a Li based battery of high energy density is never a good idea, they designed a phone that did just that. reducing the margin of error to no margin of error, and when you get a positive feedback loop like a battery expanding with nowhere to go, yet getting hotter and expanding more, you get the Galaxy Note 7 phone.

So if they did replace the battery with a new one of proper size, it would not have as much capacity, so marketing would be pissed.

But Google has admitted to reading users' emails for their own benefit! Who's to say they won't take your printed photos and sell them on stock photo sites?

Well, machines with containers for pre-loaded detergents/bleaches have been around for a while and a quick google shows the washer->dryer transfer has already been solved, so that just leaves: adding some bins for queueing separate loads; a way to dump clean dry clothes out somewhere; some more bins to receive the clean clothes; and some optical sensors to detect what color the next load is. Color sensors already exist, the I/O bins are easy, and the laundry dumping mechanism is doable if you don't mind Doc Brown-ing it a bit (I mean his other gadgets -- drawing 1.21GW for every laundry load would be too expensive even during the cheapest hours).

Probably the only reason no one's selling these already is because there aren't enough lazy people willing to spend the extra dosh to be marginally lazier than before, and the people who would want one haven't built one themselves because, again, they're lazy.

It is the same old crap, in one breath they talk about downloading a file, ohh ahh scary stuff and in the next they actually talk about reality, file sharing, nothing to do with downloading files and everything to do with uploading. I am not responsible for anything any media company does when distributing content, I watch and ad and watch content and thats it, what they do beyond that is their responsibility.

So not 'Downloading' but uploading and the ass hats are just trying to throw in scary language. A billion web sites containing trillions of bit of copyrighted information, every page and every image on that page and every paragraph of text on that page, all of it subject to copyright laws and what, they claim you the down load are meant to what, verify the legality of all of it, what a load. When they talk file sharing, they are talking about uploading but then again a product like this https://www.cnet.com/au/produc... would technically infringe copyright because it broadcast content upon request.

Not just RAM. Vista video requirements led to a generation of laptops with Intel GMA 900 video that were obsolete before leaving the factory. Instead of relegating such hardware to the recycle bin, it was marketed as "Vista Capable". https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-e-mails-reveal-intel-pressure-over-vista

Touch is a different class input, not the OS it is running on. Yes, there is Touch based ChromeOS systems out there. I am sure I can find a full size Android "desktop" out there that runs with a Mouse/Keyboard OR Touch just fine ,,, hey look ... https://www.cnet.com/how-to/ru...

The point being (which I am sure you're missing on purpose) is that "Windows" (or Mac) is not just the ONLY "desktop" out there.

What other OS would you recommend?

Apple users, beware: First live ransomware targeting Macs found 'in the wild'

At the New York Times that's no paywall, that's a trench latrine beyond lies a sewerage lake slowly but surely decomposing, better just to turn away, really why immerse yourself in that lake, join it's fake journalists neck deep in shite, only able to see the instruction of their corporate advertisers. Instead just wait for some one to put up an alternate link https://www.cnet.com/au/news/f.... New York Times, sad to say, is just yesterdays corporate propaganda channel and blatant corrupter of democracy. Better off having nothing what so ever to do with them, far better off.

Perhaps the New York Times can relocate to China and become the Bejing Times it is a market they are far more suited to (if not there perhaps the liars at the New York Times would be happier in Saudi Arabia) and Facebook, well, people have been warned for years to drop it and move on. It is just the way things work with social media channels, delusions of grandeur and power and the fuckers go nutz, censoring and propagandising and monetising their users and everyone moves on, it is just the way of things.

I'm genuinely disappointed.

I've seen numerous internet articles showing the wide array and quality of Samsung campuses in South Korea, and I've always told my friends and coworkers to buy Samsung, because you're buying Korean, and you're voting for a company with a good track record of clean production facilities and high wages for workers.

I guess Samsung is just as bad as Apple. Or Nike. Or that company that built the Burj Khalifa. I wonder who built it...

Wikipedia.org...Burj Khalifa...

Oh, wait...

Well, that just ruined my day.

Except routers are the one thing between most Mac users at home and the Internet. Apple's routers filled a niche of 'working'. I've had far fewer problems diagnosing Apple router problems of family members than D-Link/Netgear/Etc.

While I have no problem setting up Ubiquity ERL and Access Points or DD-WRT/OpenWRT on a generic router there are people out there that do have a problem with it. They just want their devices to work together. The AirportExtreme got high marks https://www.cnet.com/products/... in reviews. It's easy and straight forward to setup.

Jobs understood this and it's why Airport existed in the first place. The first one had a 56k modem as well. It was a straight forward 'plug in, minimal config, use' device back in the early 2000s when most generic routers were a bit more difficult.

Looks at the iOS 10 supported device list... Nope, no iPhone 4S here! AC is, once again, a liar...

What made the iPod successful was how Jobs copied how the Creative Nomad worked.

FTFY. Source.

Errm, no. Apple violated their patent on "automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata." - but the UIs as implemented on top of that were actually quite different. Not the least because Creative used a much smaller screen and - instead of the iPods click-wheel with 5 buttons - 11 buttons, 3 of which were "soft buttons" that contextually change what they did (which took 1 line of the display away to show what they did).

BTW the fact that Apple lost that patent suit against Creative was the reason why Apple now patents every little shit. And Creative sued every Android phone maker for violating that very patent some months ago. So do go on cheering for Creative.

What made the iPod successful was how Jobs copied how the Creative Nomad worked.

FTFY. Source.

"The Macs will eventually ship with only 1 USB port, with Apple telling customers to just get adapters, etc. "

Hasn't this already happened?
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-...

For those with Androids, by default, WiFi access point known locations supersede GPS **Even when WiFi is turned off** (the asterisk-encapsulated part can be disabled, but it's pretty difficult, and it annoys you about it all the time when you do).

If the complaining taxi drivers are using auto manufacturer GPSes, then I guess that's not the problem. But if they are using Androids, it could be. And for Pokemon Go users, it certainly would be consistent.

I turn off this feature mostly because it's very annoying when I fly on an airline with WiFi (always). When I land, it shows me in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, or wherever the hub of the airline is, even though I'm somewhere else.

Google collects WiFi location data via crowdsourcing (see https://www.cnet.com/news/goog...)

This is a common problem when someone moves houses, or moves an access point from one place to another. It takes a long time for Google to update its database.

Inductive charging is horribly inefficient and it would be a huge pain to have to lug your six-foot-radius inductive charging transmitter around with you. So that's out.

Magsafe went away on the Macbook because the designers did a bunch of testing and realized that the USBC connector yanks out of the socket almost as easily, unless pulled at an angle, and in that case, the Macbook is light enough that it tends to pivot before it gains enough momentum to fall off a desk. That and, everything in the Macbook is solid-state. The risk of damage from tripping over a cord is less, while the risk of damage from dropping it at standing-height was never addressed by magsafe in the first place.

What remains to be seen is, will they refine the design of USB enough that the extra weight of a Pro machine doesn't interfere with cable detachment, and, will they be able to charge a Pro-level battery acceptably fast enough by the USB quick-charge standard. If one or both of those questions come out "no", then you'll be seeing a magsafe connector, or dongle, on your new Macbook Pro.

Your history lesson about Apple removing the floppy drive is just a little bit revisionist. All those devices you mention that eclipsed the 3.5-inch drive really only became usable once the USB standard got entrenched, and the iMac was one of the biggest reasons for that. Remember when ZipDrives needed a special driver, and ran off the parallel port? Or off the SCSI port? Same with SyQuest drives. They were SCSI- or IDE-only for a very long time. What was killing the floppy before the iMac was all those ZipDrives and SyQuests AND the rise of dirt-cheap home and small business LAN hardware, and the ever-cheapening cost of CDs and CDRs. Ubiquitous USB came later. Let's not put the historical cart before the horse ;)

But anyhoo... Thunderbolt. I'm glad you mentioned that. There's some good news on that front: https://www.cnet.com/news/thun...

Don't think of the new MacBook Pro as having a bunch of small-size USB ports, think of it as having a bunch of Thunderbolt 3 ports. That's one port for supplying data in and out, at massive speeds, including multiple displays, and it's daisy-chainable, and it supplies power!! Of course Apple is all over this! What else would they be doing?

That said, if they eliminate the headphone jack, I'm going to have to drive down to Cupertino and slap some people around.

When you have a tablet, you can do things like punch in what defense the other team just used to provide statistical analysis of what the next best play is, or what kind of defense to run if your opponent is doing X often...

You could, but not in the NFL. These tablets are locked down to a single app provided by the NFL to show still photos of earlier plays in the game. The photos are sent to the tablets during the game, thus the need for connectivity.

The tablets, the app, the connectivity, and the photo feeds are all provided by the NFL. Probably hard to fault the tablet hardware itself for any complaints Belichick may have.

Don't take his word for it

http://gizmodo.com/an-iphone-i...
http://www.cultofmac.com/29186...
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/...
https://www.cnet.com/news/ipho...
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news...
https://9to5mac.com/2014/02/22...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/...
http://bgr.com/2016/10/03/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/09/29/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/09/30/ipho...
http://bgr.com/2016/10/03/ipho...

And those are just the first two pages of Google links. It's not just Apple - all phones do this. All phones with lithium batteries have a chance of entering thermal runaway. It's inherent in the materials. That said, the Note 7 was close to two orders of magnitude above what a consumer device really should be in terms of spontaneous combustion. Still low probability, but too high for the disruptive nature of and heat generating device on an operating aircraft.

Actually they are pretty much one now?

You have Windows 7?

You need Windows 8 or higher for full USB 3 speeds. Also a new Skylake will have full type C speed. Even at 480 MBS it is faster than the transfer rate of a an SD unless you have a specialty one made for cameras.

No need anymore still.

Yes its all been done for the "ads", forget PRISM :)
Facebook doesn't listen through your phone's mic -- except when it does (Jun 6, 2016)
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Is your smartphone listening to you? (2 March 2016)
http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
Google looks to patent tech that listens to calls to promote ads (23 March 2012)
https://www.cnet.com/au/news/g...
Is nothing off limits? Now Google plans to spy on background noise in your phone calls to bombard you with tailored adverts (23 March 2012)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
The jokes are a way to soften the creepy dystopian live mic feeling as the ads play back and the security services get their daily take?

Umm three pages of complaints. Not exactly a groudswell of anger.

Whatchoo wanna bet that I can find similar forums for iphones.

Except the ones for iPhones won't be threatening class-action suits based on fraudulent "Water-resistance" claims.

Oh, and that Forum was in ADDITION to several ARTICLES regarding "failed water-resistance" tests. Here's one, for example. And here's another. And here's Samsung's obsufcated response.

Want me to keep going (I can)?

The CVV code on the back of the card is actually different than the code on the magnetic stripe. Which is also different than the one in the chip. And I think the CVV in a chip does vary per transaction; if not that, there's something in there that prevents replay of data captured "on the wire" from an EMV transaction.

Passwords exist too. They're called PINs. American banks have mostly shied away from going the Chip and PIN route for credit cards like most other countries, but there are a few out there and PINs have been used with debit cards for a while.

As far as biometric credit cards, those exist too.

Sure. But they only have real power insofar as states agree to treat them as the ultimate authority. Which is very unlikely to be the case if they tried to implement such policies.

Imagine a scenario however where they reclaim an IP block from say Asia and then issue it to North America. Whatever ISP now has the IP block is probably going to change their BGP configuration to claim ownership. That will affect far more countries than just the one that now owns it, and I suspect that backbone providers not within the affected Asian country would go with whatever IANA says.

if UPU were to get too heavy-handed, the drawbacks would outweigh the benefits of a single standardized mail exchange system, and large players would simply withdraw.

It would be possible to withdraw from a mail system because ultimately it still remains possible to deliver letters with or without a central authority. However if you don't have a universal agreement on assigned names and numbers for the internet, the whole thing just doesn't work. For an example of what that would look like, look at what happened when Pakistan decided to blackhole youtube by poisoning the BGP route tables.

https://www.cnet.com/news/how-...

The WiFi bands are unlicensed and users *must* accept interference from other users. The FCC already went through this with the Port Authority when they tried to ban their tenets from offering WiFi services.

http://www.govtech.com/policy-...
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-...

INCORRECT. They are not putting a restriction on the devices operation, they are forbidding you from using the device. A restriction would be sub-licensing and not allowed. Not allowing their use at all is actually fine.

Really?

http://www.govtech.com/policy-...
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-...

If this is actually implemented will be interesting to see how much they save in a few years-- especially as they will end up re-building the existing infrastructure.

The article didn't mentioned it but I'm also curious if they start using their own electric vehicles as well? (Similar to how Google has backup DC power to their servers.)

i.e.

Another illustration of Google's obsession with efficiency comes through power supply design. Power supplies convert conventional AC (alternating current--what you get from a wall socket) electricity into the DC (direct current--what you get from a battery) electricity, and typical power supplies provide computers with both 5-volt and 12-volt DC power. Google's designs supply only 12-volt power, with the necessary conversions taking place on the motherboard.

It will also be interesting to see how Fedex and UPS respond to this.

I wonder if Amazon will pass along any savings to customers?

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-...

And you make up 1% of people who listen to music.

To the other 99%, it doesn't really matter.

After a few concerts, it doesn't really matter for most folks any more.

People weren't willing to pay a penny to send e-mail: https://www.cnet.com/forums/di...

If you notice, one of the resolutions is a subset of the UHD 4k. The other one is only slightly sharper and it should be possible to downsample to UHD 4k with no loss of quality.

Not that most people would be able to tell the difference between a 1080p bluray and a 4k bluray...

Simply put it all depends on the viewer and the distance they like to view from as well as the screen size. The following information goes into much more detail and is well worth the read. As an example say you as the viewer have a preference for a 55" TV (I am not going to make a comparison just yet) and you prefer sitting at 2.4m (8ft) distance then providing you have reasonably good eyes you probably won' be able to tell the difference between a picture at 1080p on a HDTV to one at 2160p on a UHDTV (assuming identical quality). Obviously, as you sit closer the differences do become apparent.

Other factors also come into play as well. There is "High Dynamic Range" (HDR) that all newer UHDTV's support which does add to the crispness of the picture at the expense of latency (gamers take note), however you also have to consider there is a format war going on at the moment. Two HDR formats are on offer the first is HDR10 (open format, licence free) and Dolby Vision HDR (proprietary, requires licence fee) and if you are in the market for a UHDTV then you should be aware of this.

Currently 4K or UHDTV's (there are differences) appear to to be the next big thing in TV's, however there is also another display which will effectively sideline 4k to the equivalent of 720p compared to 1080p and that is 8K TV's which are only just now making an appearance and while they are very expensive they will rapidly come down in price (say 3 to 5 years). Of course, the distance to screen size calculation as per the URL is not going to change so to appreciate an 8K screen it would have to be bigger again and you would have to sit closer. Maybe a curved screen would help since you can sit closer but that may not be all that comfortable for some viewers.

5 Billion a year useful enough? That's just Amazon.

https://www.cnet.com/news/amaz...

Although I suspect that Samsung will argue that this just that Galaxy 7s will only burn 60% as hot as they would normally.

This is what is known as a Interim Containment Action (ICA). It's merely to prevent more fires before the phones are replaced. A recall has already ordered, and anyone that owns one of these phones can return them for a full refund.

Observation of daily activity is limited by security policies at every corporation, and media events spotlighting such larges companies are the primary insight into them available for the public. Try again.

And Women stole the show at Apple's developers keynote - the beef of the article is that Apple has the people responsible for a product on stage to introduce it. And Apple focused on 2 (hardware) products in the "September Event", and both are managed by men. While at WWDC the women responsible for the software running on those devices presented that.

Which according to the claims made elsewhere in this discussion obviously means Apple targets hardware at men and software at women.