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I just posted the following to all of the comment sections of each of the creators I was supporting. Maybe I'll be back but I want to send Patreon.com a strong message by cancelling everything.

I just got a note from Patreon.com about the new fee changes. I'm so sorry that you are going to get hurt by this. I have sent a note to Patreon.com that I won't be able to justify paying so much for all of my large number of $1 pledges, where they will tack on a 37.9% charge for each pledge, so I'm going to cancel all of my pledges right after posting this note. I'll be back if they move the $0.35 fee to be per-credit-card-charge, but per-pledge is just a money-grab.

Maybe in the future I will pick one creator at random to give them all of my money rather than spread it around in small amounts like I currently do, but if I don't cancel things, Patreon won't see that I am seriously pissed. I'll keep "following" your patreon page.

Here is some coverage of the announcement - https://www.engadget.com/2017/... and https://techcrunch.com/2017/12... and https://www.pretty-terrible.co...

I will use the following line as my reason for cancelling my pledge:

The changed fee structure makes many small donations too expensive, so I am cancelling everything. Patreon.com's greed and/or stupidity has pissed me off.

They have. Facebook too.

Those games have a hell of a lot more complexity too, so it's no wonder it's a hard problem to solve. Resource management, army counter/order management, base creation, etc...

the tax in question is being paid to Ireland, not the EU. The reason they EU is getting involved is the EU has rules to avoid countries engaging in a race to the bottom to attract major corporations. Ireland violated those rules.

What's to prevent Ireland from "hiring" Google to perform some token service for them and then handing all of the tax money back?

Two things, first, the company in this story was Apple.

Second is the same set of underlying rules, according to this:

The commission says that lower tax bills create illegal "state aid", giving firms advantages over rivals.

So if the violation isn't taxes in specific, but rather the practice of giving big companies sweetheart deals, then handing the money back to Google would be an even more obvious violation.

Some companies are making a bold claims with new battery tech/charging
https://electrek.co/2017/11/14...
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

CGP Grey did a good video on why social media is bad. Basically in a world where clicks and comments and shares is the metric, people create content which makes people angry

This Video Will Make You Angry

Or as Andrew Klavan put it 'outrage is the Devil's cocaine'

See also

I can tolerate anything except the outgroup

Add in the fact that most social media platforms have a very strong bias because they are full of young, college educated people and that people who try to derail the continuous Three Minute Hate against the outgroup(them) get banned for 'hate speech' and you can see why it is cancer.

And the final insult is that the people who run these companies want regulation of the ISPs, aka Net Neutrality to stop them doing things like zero rating and then claiming it's about free speech. Even though the FCC didn't actually ban zero rating when T Mobile did it

https://www.engadget.com/2015/...

So a US ISP can do exactly what Portugal's MEO did even if Net Neutrality stays in place

http://www.telecomsense.com/20...

And of course Google and Facebook launched a non Net Neutral service with zero rating in India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I.e. they're lobbying for it because they think it will stop zero rating, which would might force them to pay ISPs to be zero rated, and it won't. We know that because even when it was in place the FCC had no problem with T Mobile's Binge On. They don't actually have a principled objection to zero rating, because they did it themselves.

Only half truth. it is "based on" windows 10 enterprise but apparent they STILL had to change it. That indicates there is probably other stuff you can't turn off no matter what you pay them. China banned Windows 8 (because they knew what people here should have known and kept it out of their networks in North America and round the world) so Microsoft realized then China was dead serious. See this article. https://www.engadget.com/2017/... Debate is fine, as long as it is supported with complete facts.

Imagine...phones with better quality release cycles, at least from reports I'm reading on the iPhone X release.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/new...
http://www.techradar.com/news/...
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

Ahuxley- I do remember those days! Also, how about the DOS and PC Compatibility cards?

Robots have been taking over ever since the industrial revolution began.

Initially, it was mechanical robots in the form of factory machines, which allowed one person to do the work that used to require dozens or hundreds. The Gutenberg moveable type press allowed a single worker to replace dozens of printing plate carvers, for example.

Each generation of new robots has gotten more and more sophisticated. Farm equipment like combines each replaced many workers. Factories themselves became automated.

The only difference now is that these "robots" are smarter and can do things like take inventory at Walmart stores--a job that humans really don't do all that well, as evidenced by constant issues with empty shelves and racks.

Somehow, through the centuries, as robots took over more and more of our jobs, we managed to find new jobs to keep us busy. I'm pretty sure we will continue to adapt and find new jobs to do.

I'm not sure what you are calling a lookup table. Having an AI algorithm try things and remember what worked and what did not work does not sound like any kind of input table. The algorithm learns how to play by trying things out. I don't consider it intelligent, so I would suggest you stop confusing things by talking about unrelated things, this conversation is about learning, not about intelligence.

I remember one of the mario playing bots figured out some sort of cheat jump that it did not watch anyone play, because it was not fed any games that were played for it to learn. It found that if the turtle landed on marios head as he was falling in a jump (just after the peak of the jump) it would count as bouncing off of the turtle and kill it while bouncing mario up higher. It also learned to play several other games. This seems a direct opposite of what you said, "can only mimic any move it has previously seen". Or differs from your other statement, "completely incapable of playing any other game".

Unlike other AI programs, MarI/O wasn't taught anything before jumping into the game.

They did give the AI a fitness rating that increased the further to the right that Mario moved. So the rest of the game had to be learned. You would not even have to teach the AI about the buttons for jumping as it can figure that out by trial and error also. If you consider that a self-created database of actions that work to be a lookup table that was created by the programmers, then you have serious problems with your understanding of technical ideas.

you are joking... aren't you? i hope...

https://www.engadget.com/2012/...

this reality is closer than you think.

I think they whole reason FBI is whining is for political purposes. They want the laws to allow them to search more with fewer impediments. Thus they don't ask Apple for help since that removes the ability to whine about it.

That said, why the 48 hour time? Does that mean living people must use the fingerprint sensor every 2 days or they're locked out?

Oh, it's political all right. Apple offered the FBI help to unlock the phone. In fact, Apple reached out to the FBI for this - presuming the killer used Touch ID, it would be easy to unlock the phone! (Remember, there are a few ways to bypass a fingerprint sensor using fake fingerprints).

But the FBI stalled and stalled until the window closed. You can bet it's on purpose - Apple was offering, pre-emptively, to help them (probably conjuring up a fake finger to fool the sensor). Hell, I'm sure the FBI has access to PLENTY of labs that can do this, too!

So no, the FBI has INTENTIONALLY refused Apple's help. Why? Because the phone is not important at all. The FBI couldn't care less about the phone's contents. The political fight to remove encryption is the real target

The phone's data is unimportant. There is no evidence on the phone the FBI wants, guaranteed. Because if there was, why else would they refuse Apple's help? This is an emotional plea to get the public saying the evil phone companies are keeping them from doing their jobs.

Apple offered to help. The FBI deliberately ignored them. The FBI is who should account for the loss of evidence - they are the ones who deliberately destroyed it.

This seems a bit...dramatic...in its description. Yes, as of comparatively recently you can now get satellite launch services that are substantially private sector (both in who you buy them from and in the launch vehicle not being some defense contractor's ICBM work warmed over a bit); but to the degree that the private sector has found things worth doing in space(mostly communications satellites, some sensor ones) that predates the new launch options by a fair bit; and none of the asteroid mining/private colonies/etc. stuff seems to have changed much, particularly as of 2009.
 

The legal framework for regulating asteroid mining has to come first. That now exists for firms in the US, as of Nov 2015 (SPACE Act of 2015) and Luxembourg, as of Aug 2017 (Luxembourg's asteroid mining law takes effect August 1st).

It's still early days.

I came here looking to find people mocking Microsoft for pre-announcing the same thing twice... and was disappointed.

How could all of you forget the much hyped Courier?? It was really pushed at the time, then bam - no production.

Maybe it will really "surface" this time - but at this point you have to take the idea with a grain of salt at least.

The fundamental question I think it is, do people really want devices that fold. Even though I think it is very cool as a way to get a larger screen area and I'm a fan of the basic idea, I'm not sure the answer is yes.

An awful time meeting demand when talking about single-digit millions of devices when real manufacturers are involved usually either means you made something too complex to actually manufacture (yield issues), supply chain constraints, or availability is being artificially kept low (they don't want to manufacture more than they are).

Also, since when is just over 1 million phones reason to celebrate? HTC is getting death knell articles written about them with 14 million phones shipped in 2016.

A million phones isn't nothing - it's exactly a million more than I've shipped. But let's not act like they are burning up the market here. The iPhone X isn't even available yet, and they still have a 6+ week backlog of orders even with it's ridiculous price meant to limit demand.

In fact if you look at Samsung's digital picture frame from 2006, it's pretty clear their Galaxy Tab simply re-used that face design, rather than copying the iPad.

Bullshit. The iPad design patent was made public a year before that frame came out. And we even talked about it on Slashdot. So how can Apple have stolen the iPad design from it? Damn Samsung fanbois have no brain.

We got a Kinect so that our kids could move around a bit without having to exit the home in the dark winter evenings. Other than the bundled "Kinect Sports Rivals" and "Dance Central Spotlight", we also found Kung-Fu for Kinect and Fru enjoyable. In particular, Fru is a rather cool game where your body silhouette becomes part of the gamescape and you have to manipulate it to ascend levels.

It's worth noting that Samsung won the same case regarding tablets - they convinced the jury that the elements in the Apple design patent for the iPad already existed in other products and popular culture (2001, Star Trek, etc) long before the iPad. In fact if you look at Samsung's digital picture frame from 2006, it's pretty clear their Galaxy Tab simply re-used that face design, rather than copying the iPad. And if anything, it was Apple who copied Samsung. (Except of course Samsung never got a design patent on a black rectangle with rounded corners - because that'd be silly and the USPTO would never grant it, right?)

The only reason Samsung lost to the design patent on phones was because they missed a filing deadline. They'd put together a document showing pre-production models and design concepts of Samsung phones prior to the iPhone's release. Demonstrating that their phone designs already incorporated all the elements in Apple's design patent before the patent was granted. Unfortunately, Judge Koh prohibited Samsung from showing that evidence to the jury because they missed the filing deadline.

BTW, a lot of other Apple patents should never have been granted. Here's pinch-to-zoom in 1988. And the "bounce" animation is just the transient response of an underdamped second order system that every freshman engineering student learns.

We have had client-side certificates forever. They make HTTPS more secure, they make us safer, they solve most of our password problems. Why aren't we using them?

Also the frequently changed complex password requirements make passwords less safe, not more.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

Here's hoping.

This bill wouldn't have had any effect at all on the ads in question.

This bill is a straightforward extension of the existing Federal Election Campaign Act so it also covers internet advertising. That's fine and is good. It says that any "qualified political advertisement" must be disclosed. A qualified political advertisement is defined as one which (1) refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office, (2) is targeted to the relevant electorate.

The ads in question? They weren't qualified political advertisements. They weren't geared towards any one political candidate. They were general sowing of division and antipathy between groups. "Some of the ads supported Black Lives Matter and other groups bringing attention to the tense relationship between law enforcement and people of color. Yet other ads painted these activist organizations as a rising political threat." (article1). "Some championed activist groups like Black Lives Matter, while others portrayed them as existential threats. Others aimed to split opinions through hot-button issues like Islam, LGBT rights, gun rights and immigration." -- (article2).

So this bill is fine and good and just makes sense. But if there were indeed Russian ads as described in the past electoral cycle, then their propaganda is years ahead of our own legislators.

PS. Here's the full text of the proposed "Honest Ads Act": https://coffman.house.gov/uplo...

And here's the relevant federal law which it amends: https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

According to the alternate mode specification the 3 modes for USB-C include USB, DP, and power delivery; there is no HDMI support in the USB-C spec.

Look again at the PDF you linked to, HDMI is listed on the second page, left hand column, first paragraph.

since the HDMI mode is part of the TB3 spec

HDMI is not part of the Thunderbolt spec. I found this presentation on the HDMI alternate mode for USB-C and there is no mention of Thunderbolt that I could see.
http://www.usb.org/developers/...

The way HDMI works, using all four data lanes in the spec, makes me wonder if a USB-C port could support both Thnuderbolt and HDMI at the same time like Thunderbolt and DisplayPort can share data lines. I assume switching between HDMI and Thunderbolt on the same USB-C port is possible with the right cable for each, the right alternate mode being selected by the device or cable connected. It was my understanding that Apple supported HDMI on USB-C and the adapters they offer for HDMI are passive, but I may be mistaken. Apple does not go into such detail on their product descriptions and they bury the technical specifications well on their website.

As long as you choose Intel (as they won't license Thunderbolt to other x86 chipmakers), that is.

Intel does license Thunderbolt to others, AMD included. Why AMD does not take advantage of this is anyone's guess.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

But that's not a problem, according to you.

I'm not saying it's not a problem, only that it's not something I'm going to be terribly concerned about now that I know some more about the issues.

I agree that it sucks that there will be continued confusion on what any given USB-C port or cable is capable of doing for the user. That's been a problem with USB almost from the beginning with three different speeds and not every cable supporting them all. The USB group made it worse with the 15 different power levels, 5 different data rates (or is it 7?), and it's 4 (or 3 or 5) alternate modes. What they did do though is retire the mini and micro ports and leave us (effectively at least) with just 3, the micro ports might live on for a bit longer but few new products will have them. There's no more On-The-Go connectors and cables. What still remains is the silliness on figuring out what speed any given cable or device supports, which is not unique to USB either. The other problems are pretty minor considering that a "fully functional" USB-C cable would likely cost $100 but a "crippled" cable costs only $30. I'll put up with the minor inconvenience of having to sort through those cables since it means I can hook up three things at the same time for the price of one. This is from someone that bought one of those $30 cables to find out it didn't do what I wanted. I tossed it in a box, as I'm sure I'll need it later, and ordered a different $30 cable.

The lack of widely supported host-to-host connectivity still bothers me a bit. That seems like something that would be easy to do if only someone cared enough to implement it. I might play with the Linux USB slave device software I discovered to see if I can't make that work on one of my computers.

If someone gets bit by buying the wrong cable or device (like I did) then that's just someone not doing their homework. It sucks and I do think that Intel, Apple, and others, could fix a lot of this by being more open on what protocols their USB-C ports and cables support. Most devices that I've seen make it pretty clear on what protocols are supported, so no real complaints from me on that.

Maybe I'll change my mind on this again as I accumulate more USB-C stuff.

It's ironic to see this the day after the Infineon flaw was widely announced.

Its easy to understand the anger and frustration this causes, especially when something works for some time and then ceases to function; we suspect for commercial reasons. But it may not be (just?) for commercial reasons.

Apple tightly regulates the market around their widgets- that has been the case for a very long time. They really want you to only use their HW and SW with their products, and would claim that this leads to a consistent and improved experience. There are examples where we can see negative effects of allowing any and all accessories to be produced cheaply- here is a recent one.

It may not be so black and white.

Underwater volcanism is my first guess. There is probably a convective current starting from the heated area at sea floor beneath the hole. The heat source was probably always there, but now the temperature of sea water has risen enough that with additional heating it is enough to melt the ice.

Perhaps. I'm a firm believer in the laws of thermodynamics, but I certainly wouldn't declare this as related to AGW. This despite the denialists rushing to declare that people are saying it is, so they can have a strawman to beat up.

And yes folks, we are allowed to speculate. Scientists do this all the time in order to eliminate unlikely candidates for the phenomenon, like the open water being caused by the pancake syrup at iHop.

You are correct that volcanic activity is a good first guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Antarctica is a pretty busy place in that way. A group has claimed to have found 91 previously unknown volcanoes, https://www.engadget.com/2017/... but these have not been confirmed as of yet.

This one is active and confirmed https://www.livescience.com/41... .

Global warming? I seriously doubt it. A problem for humans? Not unless this is the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano. Interesting as all hell, and it surely wouldn't hurt to find out the cause.

Is a problem "solved" in your book when it is still ongoing? https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
Realistically the problem isn't that it would happen, but that our ISPs WANT it to happen, which means it is going to wind up mysteriously occurring. The will of the ISPs is the actual problem here, not the symptoms of throttling.

So yes, this does make the internet worse. "But that's just mobile traffic!" nope it aint:
https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Google can manipulate the balance of political speech in a whole variety of ways

1) They can demonetize content they dislike, which will lead to people producing less of it

2) They can delete the video, or the whole channel.

3) They can take it blacklist individual videos or whole channels to stop them trending.

4) They can can make it impossible to search for videos or channels, or to comment on them

https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

All of which enables them to promote memes that agree with their politics and hide ones that disagree with their politics.

Given that Google/FB etc employ mostly young people in blue states it's fair to assume that the politics their employees agree with will be heavily left of centre. And we know they fired James Damore for essentially criticizing Google's left wing echo chamber.

As someone here puts it

http://dailycaller.com/2017/08...

"By these standards, if YouTube existed previous to the Emancipation Act, they'd be censoring videos criticizing slave owners, since being anti-slavery wasn't popular ... at all," he added. "The popular opinion isn't always the right opinion."

Funnily enough the Democrats would have objected to people who were anti slavery then and are also the ones censoring political speech now via the likes of YouTube and FB where they are the majority of employees. In fact both slavery then and illegal immigration now are a way to get a load of cheap, biddable labour that isn't able to organize itself and demand better conditions.

A lot of the 'extremists' Youtube is trying to silence are simply people pointing stuff like that out. Meanwhile memes that Democrats approve of - Jimmy Kimmel crying and demanding more government intervention - nationalising health care or banning guns, 'Hands Up Don't Shoot', and the notion that anyone who opposes open borders migration is a bigot are promoted all over the media.

Guess you have not looked at tape lately. https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

What's the deal with Google and HTC? and From the Editor's Desk: HTC x Google These seem to be well thought out and in more depth than many. It sounds like Google and HTC complement one another pretty well in what it takes to succeed in the smartphone business, and it also sounds like Google is getting excellent manufacturing at a very good price. I wonder how long before they also have a product that competes well with MS Surface?

Yet can't even cut and paste.

Copy & paste has been in iOS since 3.0 which was back in 2009. But don't let reality ruin your out-of-date rant.

Lenovo will pay $3.5M. Source 1 Source 2

TL;DR There was no fine by the FTC, but they will pay a settlement on another lawsuit.

Both the title and summary here, as well as the TFA are misleading. Come on /. check your facts!

Such as faulty/counterfeit batteries used in Galaxy Note 4s during repair.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

There are no padded lampposts in London. Or trials. This is an urban myth that started when British directory enquiries service 118-118 ran an advertisting campaign in 2008.

How can people still be foolish enough to include this in news articles without checking the facts?

Which ISPs are wronging their customer? How are they doing it? I have yet to see any evidence of ISPs actually doing things like slowing connections and blocking sites, just a lot of talk about what they could do.

I would say you don't read the news or are lying about it.

Would you say Comcast suing Chattanooga to prevent it from offering fiber more than talk?
If we stick to just his alone, there are more examples

Remember when Microsoft held a "funeral" for the iPhone in 2010? Today the iPhone makes more money for Apple than all of MS.

Unless someone has silently edited either the Slashdot article or the Engaget article since you posted that, your statement is completely false. Nowhere on the version of the article that I read does it mention non-public data. At most, it talks about Louisiana refusing by saying they'll have to buy the publicly-available data.

But perhaps you've read the many other articles that did say that and you got confused, which is perfectly understandable. In that case, please try reading the actual letter instead of relying on lazy journalists who don't bother to cite their sources:

"I am requesting that you provide to the Comission the publicly available voter roll data" (emphasis added).

So no, neither the Slashdot summary nor the article linked here says that and it wouldn't be true even if they did say that. And any source saying that should give you a copy of the letter to verify it for yourself because if they do not, they are completely unreliable rumor mongers. If they bothered to cite reliable sources, they wouldn't have this sort of problem.

Desires of the public, maybe. Of course, those particular politicians may have been different than the ones in office when that particular law/directive was put in place.

These are fantasy numbers and a project this scale would have $10 trillion in hidden costs and risks.

The bar is set rather low, however. After the most tech-savvy President ever effed-up his own promise to revamp the government, if Trump achieves something — anything — he'll still have done better than the predecessor. Not that you'd know about any such success — unless you are paying really close attention — from the established reporters.

Exactly. I seem to recall quite a hype bubble about 3D printing. We were all going to drive 3D printed cars, printed right into the garage of our 3D printed houses.

Um, we have 3D printed cars and 3D printed houses. Considering 3D printing hype arguably started in earnest in 2014 we are a decade or two away from being able to tell if it was all just hype. The 3D printing industry is still growing today and showing no signs of stopping.

Then it was private space. We were going to colonize the Galaxy because "the species", and technology always gets better.

I have not heard anything about companies such as SpaceX or Virgin Galactic pulling back on their commercial space travel ambitions.

Overall you seem to be just complaining about new technologies and industries with nothing to back it up.

CenturyLink is notorious for burying startup ISPs that would compete with them in preliminary injunctions and then dragging the cases out in court until the startup goes bankrupt from lawyer fees. They're one of the major ISPs that shut down North Carolina municipal broadband. They have obtained an obscene government grant to expand rural broadband yet every rural area I go to has pretty much the same CenturyLink service as they did five years ago: you're lucky if you get one megabit. They got one five years ago too.

CenturyLink is about as evil of a corporation as you can get. They constantly cut off all attempts to bring better internet service to areas (even if they don't serve them yet!) while not improving their offerings significantly enough compared to the amount of cash they're raking in from customers and government grants.

Isn't it ironic that they're slated to get $3 BILLION in grants over the next six years, yet they claim municipal broadband funded by local-level tax dollars is "unfair competition?"

Posting anonymously only because CenturyLink could easily sue me otherwise.

You're seriously asking how internet-based hacking can happen in this day and age? You believe that all these hypothetical protections you've conjured up were actually put in place in the real world? Have you ever actually worked in the industry, at all?

In the real world, the voting systems in place were old, buggy and unpatched. Researchers had already shown with real proof of concept attacks that the attacks were possible before the election. Hell, the systems weren't even classed as critical infrastructure - there wasn't even a requirement in place for any kind of level of protection.

This kind of this wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
 

Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

At the time, I gather from another article, Sharp was hard-up for money. They've since been bought out...by Foxconn. Pot calling the kettle black, much?

Nothing new here, even with the iPhone 7, the variant with the Intel modem is slower. Heck, the iPhone 6S had two different CPU suppliers, and battery life differences cropped up over that. Oh yeah, and the original iPhone had some LCD screens with a negative black issue.

I'm sure the faithful will still line up to play the iPhone 8 lottery. Do you feel lucky?

... because they work against him.

Reporters (and critics) who have been blocked are using Trump's own tweet to petition for equal access.

Bloomberg reports that White House spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed in a press conference that Trump's tweets should be considered official statements.

I am personally not excited.

Me neither. The Stick is much more like your own personal pocket-carried PC, as at least it comes with an HDMI plug and a power supply. This thing doesn't appear to be able even to power up without help from a dock or some new wave of appliance, which appers to be what Intel's after.

Seems like insane overkill to slap in whole PC's just for kiosks, window signage, grocery-store displays, door-openers and soap-dispensers, but if Intel keeps making PC's smaller then I guess that's where we're headed. It's just sick to think this might mean a complete copy of copy of Windows 10 on damn near everything because... it can. Perhaps Red Hat can package and market a Linux for tiny business PC's, packaged with signage or kiosk application software, and break this potential Microsoft stranglehold, please?

If some one made a smart phone that could go several days without charging under realistic usage conditions I might drop $699 on it. Lame duck garbage like this? No thanks, I'd rather spend 3 or 4 hundred on something that does everything I want it to do just as well (and I find that expense insulting even given how old the tech is now that meets my needs)

Is a phone with a 10,000mAH (10 AH!) big enough? It's certainly not very expensive and it's about to be released. Granted, the specs aren't terrific, but middle of the road which should help keep battery life measured in days. And since you didn't need fast processor and other fancy stuff, it should suit your needs well.

It's also a brick, both size wise and likely weight

I'll just leave these here:

steamvr is coming to linux
known issues for steamvr on linux
this was also reported on /. a while back

Source? According to this article, the machine is still connected to the Google cloud.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/...