Slashdot Mirror

First, thank you for a rational reply, and not just snark.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

I would think that with ownership so concentrated -- 1,000 accounts hold 40% of all value -- with another 30-50% estimated to be lost and out of circulation, I question a psychological model based off of so few possible sample sets. That's just crazy.

Musk intends to place the car in orbit about Mars.

You were saying...?

(BTW, I am not especially a fan of Musk, Tesla, or his flaming desire to grow a REALLY BEEG space peen by creating a monument to himself, but let's base our criticisms on *facts*, if you don't mind.)

"Much of this techlash is misguided."

Lets list some top shelf, recent bad things happening at the big tech giants:
- Google is suppressing relevant links in your search results that don't agree with their world view and/or whatever country you are searching from. If a conservative organization that controlled 90% of all search was doing this, it would be wall to wall media coverage, but the truth is Google is warping reality, rather than using straight relevancy to your search terms, now they are also deciding what is relevant.

Google must be regulated as a common carrier to protect the free exchange of ideas (a ubiquitous search engine is the very definition of a common carrier), and only a very narrow list should be censorable, and that list must be defined by the government with federal oversight and transparency and accountability to the people, not some unaccountable corporation. For example, sites inciting actual unjustified violence (in their content, not in some random user generated comment), sites promoting violent jihad, sites promoting harming children, etc.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articl...
https://www.usnews.com/opinion...
https://www.reddit.com/r/googl...

- Google and Facebook combined control 60% of all advertising revenue on the web, and routinely block content from receiving revenue if they don't agree with it (conservative video blogs on Youtube for example.) No other entity has more than 5% market share of online advertising. http://fortune.com/2017/07/28/...
- Google recently fired an employee who was asked for input on their internal hiring policies. When he highlighted a number of reasonable, demonstrable facts that contradict Google's diversity initiatives, one of his upper level managers leaked his memo to the press and he was subsequently fired (they are now facing a massive class action lawsuit, and more and more stories of the fascist intolerant alt left behavior at Google are coming out.) (no citation needed, well documented on slashdot.)
- Facebook first facilitated Russian (and likely Chinese and others) meddling by allowing false advertising stories to run during the election, then they tried to implement news censors, the vast majority of which were targeted against conservative sites, to the point that there was massive backlash and they got hauled in front of congress to explain WTF they were doing. They utilized blatantly biased censors as well as sites like politifact (which has very little facts beyond the actual name, and is a demonstrated shill for the alt left and not some non-partisan group) and the ADL (also an alt left hit squad group with zero credibility to anyone who has been paying attention).
https://gizmodo.com/former-fac...
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
Some concrete examples of conservative banning: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/20...

- Twitter has been caught red handed gleefully describing how they shadow ban people for expressing political views with which they disagree, rather than advocating anything objectively wrong. The political bans have been 90% right leaning people. Those on the left who have been banned have been advocating actual violence, and often associated with the terrorist group Antifa.

> You though inkjet cartridges were as expensive as if they were filled with unicorn blood ? Just wait to see the price the pharma companies are going to charge you for their "Drug-o-tron 3000" cartridge replacements.

Impression Products v. Lexmark http://fortune.com/2017/05/30/...

Also, your link implies that the cameras use local storage

Not for very long. As soon as a smart criminal or two take the recorder along with the driver's money at the end of a ride, the next generation of such cameras will be hailing "instant uploading of videos to the cloud". And the cabbies will upgrade. They are upgrading already — credit card acceptance by taxis is rising. Though cash still remains an option, that too may be on its way out.

BTW, cities like New York have required data-collection from taxis for years — and now require the same from Uber/Lyft as well. Scandals like this will, no doubt, happen again.

At any rate, I can accept the opposition based on privacy — even if I still think, you are naive, if you think, paying cash in a taxi is substantially beneficial to your privacy. But anything based on the supposed "illegality" of Uber/Lyft is just nonsense.

And taxi companies are taxi companies -- they're not into selling your data to marketeering filth

Unless you turn off and disable your smart phone, when you enter a cab, tracking you personally is already easy — and will become more so, when the new generation of taxi equipment is adopted. To Uber, Lyft, or traditional taxis (as well as to any retailer, policeman, or passer-by) the WiFi and Bluetooth radios in your phone already uniquely identify you... Crap, it is already happening.

May as well ride Lyft and save money...

One advantage they have though is better liquidity than other collectibles.

Disagree. I never had to pay a 30-60 $ transaction fee to get or dump a Beanie Baby.

Liquidity is more about a robust buying and selling environment than the transaction cost which eats into the profits

Here's an interesting article on the Beanie Baby bust
http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/...

bugger, forgot link to Apple story about firing their diversity chief: http://fortune.com/2017/11/16/... P.S. seriously, no line breaks and i can't edit comments either ??

No, it's not tricky to pull off.

If it wasn't tricky to pull off then it would have already been done on a wide scale. I'm not saying it's impossible but it is going to be a much tougher nut to crack than open software. Mostly for economic reasons rather than technical ones.

- Research and make use of expired patents extensively, file new ones defensively.

Who is going to do this? Who has the funding and more importantly the incentive to do this? IBM received 8000 patents in 2016 and numerous other tech companies received thousands more each. Exactly how do you plan to match that sort of pace? How do you plan to produce anything really useful without infringing on a pile of those patents? Not to mention fending off the flesh eating lawyers that give those patents teeth...

It's more capital intensive than software, but it's also not that expensive either.

I'm a certified accountant and an industrial engineer. I do cost accounting for a living. It is a LOT more expensive than software no matter how clever you are. There is a reason gross margins in manufacturing hardware are far thinner than in software. You don't escape these costs by just doing design either. Someone eventually has to make the product and that will require substantial capital. Then you have the cost of distributing the product. Unlike software which can be sent across the net for nearly free, hardware has to be shipped, stored and turned into products, all of which cost non trivial amounts of cash. If you think it isn't substantially more expensive than making and distributing software you haven't done the math.

Don't destroy ISIS

Obama did that, with his strategy of working with local forces. Trump just got to put his name at the bottom.

Don't give middle class workers a tax cut

That tax cut turns into a pumpkin in two years and will cost them more than they're saving.

Don't increase GDP over 3%, higher than Obama did any time over 8 years

Get back to us in another three years, let alone eight.

Don't prosecute illegals that kill Americans

Illegals do a minuscule percentage of the killing of Americans. Most of the ones with a really good body count come from Saudi Arabia, which Trump didn't put on his Muslim Ban List.

Don't protect VA whistle-blowers that are trying to help veterans

Don't worry, Trump wouldn't do that.

Don't bring back Americans jailed overseas, such as shoplifting basketball players

That's literally part of the president's job. Also, have you seen any of the evidence against those basketball players?

I don't think your advice is very good.

Who are you?

From the story

The cost of electricity in Germany has decreased so dramatically in the past few days that major consumers have actually been paid to use power from the grid.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

Also if you are going to point out electricity is taxed you need to point out renewables are heavily subsidized

http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/...

There is a difference between fake news and incomplete news.

Ill go with

Half the truth is often a great lie

–Benjamin Franklin

Well if it's on hotair.com, you can take it to the bank!

Ughh.

The "subsidy" is system-wide...it means that everyone who ships with USPS is paying less than the market rate should be. However, since the rate, set by law, hasn't kept up with reality, everyone gets a little bit of a free ride. Amazon isn't stupid, nor is it getting a special deal. It simply is taking advantage of a market inefficiency.

http://fortune.com/2017/07/16/amazon-postal-service-subsidy/

These articles are probably what it's like to attend a KKK meeting if the KKK hated Russians.

Except the KKK loves the Russians. It's the Jews, blacks and Catholics the KKK hates.

But other than that, and the fact that it's completely wrong, it's a very good comparison.

And we know something the KKK loves:

http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/...

Pebble had to lay off 20% of its' staff in March src.

Unfortunately, they continued their downward slide, financially. The Pebble 2 was a hail Mary that didn't succeed.

You can trade BTC In China? That isn't what Beijing says... Unless, of course, you want to go spend some time in a small cell with that other fellow who ran a VPN service in China.

http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/...

In 2016 40,000 people were killed in automobile accidents (nationwide. I can't get reliable numbers for California due to ambulance chaser web sites clogging search results). 4.6 million people seriously injured. These are real, recordable factual numbers, not some foggy "might possibly be but can't really see anything conclusive" epidemiological study.

But when a solution is offered, AKA self-driving vehicles, the outcry from the nut jobs is that there's no way they'll ever trust those darn confusers to shuttle them around. Even when you point out that aircraft with advanced autopilots are one of the primary reasons for their excellent safety record. Even when you point out that human error is the primary reasons for vehicle accidents. Even when they don't remember the last time they had to reboot their phone.

It still stuns me when people say stuff like this. But then I remember, maybe they weren't here, and didn't see what happened.

The net has always been neutral. From time to time an ISP would try to test the boundaries, and then we would stop them:

2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.

2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.

2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.

2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)

2011-2013, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace

2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (edit: they were fined $1.25million over this)

2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.

2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.

2015 was just the FCC formalizing what we've had since the internet was first invented. The Internet only exists because it was always neutral. This is about breaking the entire premise of the internet, after decades of it working properly.

You think you can have meaningful competition in "last mile" for internet, any more than you can have it for electricity? Hilarious. Someone's going to start up a new ISP, somehow get right of way to everyone's last mile? That's your competitive marketplace?

"Oh but the local governments." I can give you another list of all the cities and towns full of people who can't get decent service at all, from any ISP, and then when they try to build their own, the big ISPs sue and harass them to stop them from doing it...

We are so far away from the shoeshine boy stage that it isn't even funny. Also, bitcoin is an odd blend of tech-adoption, which follows an S-curve, and an investment, which does not. (Note that I don't consider bitcoin to be an investment and don't encourage it, I'm discussing a conceptual model used by "the masses" here.)

Usage of bitcoin for commerce is growing by leaps and bounds, still very early in the S-curve. In other words, more people are buying bitcoin to use as money than ever before. I don't know how to disentangle those purchases from the speculative purchases, and neither does anyone else.

For that reason, and a few others, bitcoin is unusually resistant to our ordinary methods of price discovery. My guess is that the price today (literally right now) is high compared to what it will be in a few weeks or months or whenever the short term trend reverses, but the price this year is still low compared to what it will be in a few years when the long term trends swamps the recent short term movements.

(Please don't mortgage your house or gamble with money you can't afford to lose with a smile.)

TSLA will go bankrupt without significant cash infusion. Sorry, you can't keep losing hundreds of millions of dollars a month and avoid bankruptcy WITHOUT trying to raise a lot more cash. And with TLSA now in junk-bond status, that means starting to sell a lot more stock, most likely diluting the value, and driving it into the ground.

Yeah, I'm so confident in Bitcoin. Anyone that plows money into this is an idiot and deserves to lose his money.

No, in the end it is the middle class they will come after. Always. Because that's where the money is.

Is that so?

http://fortune.com/2017/01/16/world-richest-men-income-equality/

So... is it time for the guillotines yet? When will the public turn on those who are betraying them? When will enough of them even realize they're being betrayed?

I saw an interesting article on this the other day, from a 1%er apologist's perspective, but he raised some interesting facts and perhaps unintentionally made a good argument for something adjacent to his point:

http://fortune.com/2015/03/02/...

The reason Americans don't revolt can be summed up with a reference to the old dirty joke about "the barrel." Because the USA's economic system gives most people a day outside "the barrel" at some point in their lives, Americans as a group are apparently willing to accept a system where most people spend most or all of their lives "in the barrel." It's pretty fucked up.

Sorry but Germany is now the greatest country in the world. The USA didn't even make the top three.

Germany beat out Canada and the United Kingdom to take the top spot in the inaugural âoeBest Countriesâ rankings.

dropping flash support

That's what everyone is doing, even Adobe themselves. Flash is dead. You are in the first stage of grief. Time to move on.

Are you stuck in 1999?

Today more than 90% of the Fortune 500 rely on Linux in some aspect

http://fortune.com/2013/05/06/...

Linux 79%, Windows 39%
http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...

Even Microsoft has given in, SQL Server can now run on Linux.

This is not the biggest percent drop ever. Here's a 30% drop I found quickly googling.. It wouldn't surprise me if it has many double-digit percent changes up and down. It's well known to be volatile. Call us when it's been bouncing around at last year's price for a while. Then you know it's in a real bear market.

Hardly

https://www.axios.com/republic...

What they're saying:

Vice President Mike Pence said, via his spokesperson, that Pence believes that if the allegations against Roy Moore are true, then "this would disqualify anyone from serving in office."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: "If these allegations are true, he must step aside."

Sen. John McCain: "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying. He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they are proud of."

Former Gov. of Massachusetts: "Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, "I'm horrified and if this is true he needs to step down immediately." She also said she has spoken to Luther Strange about becoming a write-in challenge, ultimately challenging Moore in the Dec. 12 election.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who endorsed Roy Moore: "These are serious and troubling allegations. If they are true, Judge Moore should immediately withdraw. However, we need to know the truth, and Judge Moore has the right to respond to these accusations."

Sen. Jeff Flake: "If there is any shred of truth to the allegations against Roy Moore, he should step aside immediately."

Sen. John Cornyn, who endorsed Moore and is listed on his website, said: "Well I think the next steps are up to the governor and the people of Alabama. I find it deeply disturbing and troubling. If it is true, I don't think his candidacy is sustainable."

Sen. David Perdue called the allegations "devastating" and said Moore should withdraw if they're true.

Sen. Pat Toomey: "If there's a shred of truth to it, then he need to step aside."

Sen. Richard Shelby: "If that's true, then he wouldn't belong in the Senate."

Sen. Mike Lee: "If these allegations are true, Roy Moore needs to step down."

Sen. Tim Scott: "If they're accurate, he should step aside."

Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of national republican senatorial committee: "If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election."

Sen. Rob Portman: "It was very troubling ... if what we read is true and people are on the record so I assume it is..." Moore should step aside.

Sen. Susan Collins: "If there is any truth at all to these horrific allegations, Roy Moore should immediately step aside as a Senate candidate."

Sen. John Hoeven: "The allegations against Roy Moore are very serious and if true, he should step down as a candidate for the Senate."

Trump said he should stand aside if the allegations are true

http://fortune.com/2017/11/10/...

Sanders said that Trump âoebelieves we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case from many years ago, to destroy a person's life.

"However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside."

Apple's taxes explained for idiots IOW for you.

With coal plants being discontinued, I prefer solar and wind to charge electric cars without heavy rare earth batteries (not fully rare earth free but going the right direction): http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/...

there is a tremendous amount of real estate consumed by retail outlets

That's absolutely true. We force brick and mortar retailers to build more parking than the market thinks is necessary, and we mandate minimum setbacks, maximum floor area ratios, and height limits, and if stores don't meet these arbitrary requirements that drive up their building costs and property taxes, we don't let them build at all.

In the end, the only retailers who can afford to navigate these regulations are big-box chain stores who are able to woo local governments into giving them massive tax breaks. And then we wonder why cities have no money!

Online retailers can build in small towns where land is cheap and the people are just glad to have the jobs. Then we subsidize their shipping costs. So the decks are stacked against brick and mortar stores.

The death of retail isn't happening naturally. We are causing it ourselves. Once again regulations are killing commerce just as it did in Soviet Russia. We have met the anti-capitalists and it is us.

My understanding is that in their ruling, the Canadian Supreme Court basically pointed out that while it was possible that their decision would violate laws in other countries, nobody hadn't presented any arguments or evidence to that effect.

In other words, they specifically left it open as an "out" for Google: prove that the ruling violated US law and they'd be able to walk it back.

I had not seen that. The Fortune article that is linked through the last Slashdot discussion doesn't mention that in my reading. I would be interested in a reference if you have one.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/28/...

I did notice this, which doesn't seem too unreasonable:

“This is not an order to remove speech that, on its face, engages freedom of expression values, it is an order to de-index websites that are in violation of several court orders. We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods,” wrote Judge Rosalie Abella.

Does anyone know how Google's regional de-indexing work? If I use a computer located in Canada to search for "illegal" stuff that has been de-indexed in Canada on google.ca I presume I won't find it, but will I get the result when using google.com (due to Google knowing my geo-location and thus presenting me with particular results)? What about using a US based computer to search on google.ca?

You are trying to see areas in which I am wrong, instead of cooperating and trying to see how what I said could be correct.

Nothing I said was intended to be a complete analysis of Google management of the last few years. I agree that GMail is a wonderful contribution.

I'm studying how successful companies eventually fail. For me, it was painful to watch Hewlett-Packard destroy itself. One article: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way (May 8, 2012).

Another example: Tektronix was once a wonderful leader in electronic measuring devices. Now: Tektronix, five years after sale to Danaher, continues to shed jobs and struggle (Dec. 08, 2012).

Google allowed Android cell phone company customers to prevent installation of Android updates. That has been extraordinarily destructive. There are many complaints about Google selling services that allow it to track web site visitors. There are smaller failures that indicate there has been insufficient oversight by Google management.

The fact that Google has succeeded very nicely in some areas does not take away from a study of the scary self-defeat.

It seems to me that Google is becoming more and more abusive.

When I go to web pages, often the NoScript and Ghostery add-ons list one or more Google processes. Google is following web site visitors everywhere.

Google allows cell phone providers to prevent updates to its Android operating system. That forces people who need security to buy new cell phones.

In general, it seems to me that hardware and software providers are becoming more and more authoritarian. They take advantage of the fact that most people don't know much about technology.

In my opinion, Microsoft's Windows 10 is NOT USABLE! How can you deliver a computer to a customer when you know what you are delivering is spyware? One article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote from that story: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." A previous comment about Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware.

Technology companies are not only abusive in their design of products, they are abusive in other ways, also:

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book.

Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us'

Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc.

Adobe Systems: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer -- Part 1 Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people don't know how to protect themselves from technology abuse.

Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental

It's almost as if Trump is incredibly corrupt and giving massive amounts of money to his friends and supporters for doing nothing.

Drain the swamp was not about getting rid of lobbyists and corrupt deals. It was always about getting rid of competent government employees. That's why just about everyone he's nominated for cabinet jobs are literally anti-qualified (FFS Rick Perry campaigned on eliminating the DoE and now he's the DoE secretary). Bannon fully admitted it too when he (illiterately) said the goal is the "deconstruction of the administrative state."

Germany pays subsidies for wind and solar only to export the electricity at low prices so it's not a complete loss. Not only low prices but negative, as in paying people to take it so the grid remains stable. They are bankrupting themselves.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/...
https://www.technologyreview.c...
http://euanmearns.com/getting-...
http://www.windpowermonthly.co...

Denmark imports electricity at 30 euro/MWh and exports at 20 euro/MWh. Germany does better with imports at 30 euro/MWh and exports at 27 euro/MWh. If Germany keeps shutting down reliable nuclear and replacing it with unreliable wind and solar the net export is likely to disappear, the price difference is most definitely going to spread, and this will cost Germany money. Perhaps Germany will remain a net exporter of electricity but they will have to pay their neighbors to take it.

These "environmentalists" like to talk about things being sustainable. This is not sustainable.

I'll bite Mr. AC, you and your short memory. Obama took over after a certain W spent a surplus away with tax cuts for the rich (that didn't improve the economy or create jobs) and a WAR that we're still fighting over WMD's that didn't exist and that they told us would pay for itself. Obama turned that around. Hell, he permitted the government to save the U.S. auto industry - remember GM about to go belly-up - when Mitt Romney said in his own words to let it go bankrupt. Everyone driving a sweet, new, spanky Camaro today should friendly thank you to Mr. Obama for preventing the Rominator from letting the "market" slice GM into whatever would have turned a fast buck. Funny thing, facts: they don't always agree with the prejudice you want to maintain.

Here's another one: GDP tends to go up under Democratic administrations, down in Republican ones. I suppose Trump is still enjoying the fruits of Obama's hard work, here in his first year. But as he keeps throwing monkey-wrenches at the health-care and insurance markets with his Tweets and executive orders, instead of just leaving it alone, health care and health insurance is only going to go up, up, up as insurance companies can't predict what to charge to cover their asses. Does that affect rich people? No, billionaires and Senators can pay cash to the best doctors and hospitals. But it affects YOU, hits YOUR paycheck or, if you don't get health from your boss, hits you with bankruptcy when that pain in your gut turns out to be cancer, when that traffic accident with that uninsured drunk in the pickup kills your kidneys and puts you on dialysis for the rest of your life, hits you as you get old and your knees start to give out. Trump will get his knees replaced, and tax-payers will pay for it. YOU will just live with it, buy a walker from Walgreen's and shuffle around between your bed and your TV couch. Dammit, what happened to the Fox News? Had to choose between the pain pills and the cable bill - guess which one's more addictive.

On the one hand, if these allegations are true, heads should damn roll.

On the other, Tesla is a great target for a he-said-he-said lawsuit. High profile, lots of cash, great timing right before the make-or-break moment where they have to make good on their affordable cars before GM and the other old guys power into the market.

Tesla's got to be a pressure-cooker company right now to get that production up. But if floor management is creating problems like this, there's a huge incentive to for senior management to give a beat-down to the floor managers. No workers, no Tesla 3's, no Tesla... and there goes Elon Musk puttering around dog-faced in a Bolt.

Who the fuck to believe. To my knowledge, these Tesla things are not sticking like the way they stuck on Uber. But who the fuck knows... news and lawsuits are full of bullshit these days, it's not easy to know truth from some Russian kid with a smartphone masquerading as a Texan. All that's reliably true is Tesla has money, and any cheap-suit lawyer would see an opportunity to make a quick settlement out of them, rather than risk more bad press and production delays as they try like mad to make their delivery date.

It seems to me that companies have discovered that most people don't have much knowledge of technology, and are easily manipulated. So now it seems to me that companies are competing to see who can be most abusive. A few of the many examples:

Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book.

Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us'

Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc.

Adobe Systemes: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer â" Part 1 Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people cannot protect themselves from technology abuse.

Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental

The increase of "baseline", ambient CO2 concentrations will push CO2 concentrations in enclosed spaces even higher. That either spells doom for productivity in office buildings or will significantly increase costs for improved ventilation of said buildings.

An Intel inside iPhone would be an interesting development.

Already happening. Fortune

Intel is working on much more than that and is trying hard to break into the phone market in a really big way, not just with atom based arch. Even though they have been out of the running for 16 years it seems this time they are coming back and are really looking for the brainz this time. Like I said either they are paying Qualcomm to not sue them or we might see a major tech merger. Say perhaps Qualcomm and Intel in a joint venture with a mind to squash Samsung once and for all?

Either way there are interesting times ahead in the cell chip sector and there will be blood on the floor with the introduction of the new high end Note by Samsung. The iPhone 8 has some serious competition this time around and I think Apple knows it. If the new 8 series from Samsung starts to take over a huge section of the market the way the original galaxy did you can bet the bullshit American protectionist law suits will fly again. Like the Boeing bombers now flying over Quebec Canada the tariff(s) on Samsung phones will be enormous.

Why would Zuckerberg ever want us to log out of Facebook to enter a 'virtual reality?'

So we can go on virtual tours of weather-torn 3rd world countries, in hopes that we'll be so grief-stricken, we'll send aid to help, using Facebook, of course.

Agreed. I'd love it if Facebook had open data APIs where you could get your own data and relationships on and off of it, but I don't want the government stepping in to force them to do it.

As for AIM, the latest news is that after 20 years, it's now shutting down completely. So how did that work out for them in the long run?

There was plenty of evidence, mostly in emails. It was enough for Intel to agree to a $1.25 billion settlement in 2009. In one of the emails, Otellini referred to then Dell CEO Kevin Rollins as "The best friend money can buy."

More info needed, especially when it is a CNN article.

http://fortune.com/2017/09/29/...

https://lawnewz.com/crazy/doj-...

Perhaps doing that will be harder once every browser adopts EME.

Every major browser adopted EME and DRM quite some time ago. See for example Netflix's HTML5 requirements. YouTube uses DRM for its "premium content", it's why they bought WideVine.

First of all, I'm not right wing. Second of all, let's use the internet then:

https://sunlightfoundation.com...

http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/...

https://politics.slashdot.org/...

So no, it's not a falsehood. An example of a falsehood would be if somebody said that you were any smarter than a tic-tac.

So pursuing the matter a bit farther led to this link, which finally helped me get a provisional answer to the first question.

http://fortune.com/2017/09/15/...

Turns out I was looking at it from the "wrong" perspective, but with the hints from the article, I was able to figure out that clicking on "Enroll" button at https://www.equifaxsecurity201... will partly answer my first question. It doesn't actually say whether or not they have a dossier on me, but it does say that they, the wise and inscrutable people owned by the soulless monster Equifax, currently believe my personal information was not included in the big data breach and theft that they know about.

Still don't trust Equifax enough to follow up on the rest of the scam, in spite of the recommendation from the Fortune link. First year's free, eh? How much trouble to make the bills go away next year?

Should I rehash my fundamental principles of personal information protection? On Slashdot?

It's about the available profit in the mobile market. And yes, you're both correct that it's not 95%, it's 93% in Feb 2015, 92% in July 2015, 91% in Feb 2016, 94% in Nov 2016.

I apologize for the rounding error.

I'd bet it's all about this: http://fortune.com/2017/09/06/...
Facebook caught cheating, says 'Let's divert the attention by blaming Russia' . It works. They also ate my homework.

It might be an old source, but Apple seem to still trounce Samsung on profit margins...

God knows how though, samsung's phones are expensive to buy and cheaply built compared to Apple's. Maybe labor costs are a factor...

http://archive.fortune.com/mag...

I was technical lead for the client-side of this.

Best moments: "the cone of silence" ritual, and being deposed by David Boies.