Slashdot Mirror

https://www.theverge.com/2015/... https://techcrunch.com/2016/02... https://www.dailydot.com/layer...

I'm surprised no one else mentioned this, but from Edward Snowden's revelations, the docs highlighted the NSA has "major problems" getting into zoho, specifically their encrypted email service.

But I think zoho might be an Indian company (surprisingly); while the post mentions a "US Internet Company".

Snowdon's revelation also revealed that NSA didn't have much difficulty in monitoring hundreds of thousands of VPN's as well as having the ability to decrypt and intercept https comms [source].

Well he's certainly feeding the alt-right garden with horse manure. Sean Hannity made a complete ass of himself trying to spin a Seth Rich conspiracy story partly because of Kim claimed to have a "bombshell".

Legit sites with rich youtube content make revenue.

I guess you haven't heard about the advertiser boycott that had reduced YouTube ad revenues significantly. Content creators who don't have multiple revenue streams — merchandise, sponsorship and public speaking — are hurting badly.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-advertising-boycott-hate-speech

You, must make pennies.

Ad revenues from Slashdot traffic alone pays for my monthly subscription to The Wall Street Journal.

Everyone uses adblock [...]

Uh, no.

[...] no one has heard of you, your absurd "personal brand", your Geocities-level website, or your shitty 1000-word ebooks.

Let me check my bank account... ROFL.

Microsoft gives OEMs free, as in beer, or low-cost 32-bit Windows OS licenses for equipment that falls within certain hardware limits (screen size, RAM,etc.), that is why you can find $89 Win10 Tablets, for example.

Valley Values triggered and out comes the ban hammer...

Whereas conservative values concerning things like the sanctity of one's personal property and the benefits of strong copyright seemingly evaporate the moment that someone appropriates Pepe for conservative lulz.

Did Matt Furie author the app, or license it to the app? I doubt it, because Pepe is dead.

I'm surprised to see over 100 comments, and not yet find a single Blood Boy comment.

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?

The development of the "Surface Phone" was announced in 2012. Where have you been?

Detachable tablets such as Microsoft's Surface line and Apple's iPad Pro will lead the growth as consumers have turned away from laptops in favor of these more versatile computing devices.

Surface Pro perhaps. But I don't see how an iPad Pro, constrained by the App Store Review Guidelines, is "more versatile" than a PC that can run anything. In particular, the ban on time-limited free trials has hindered ports of applications from macOS to iOS. And even if you stick to free applications, it'll cost you $499 extra if you want to be able to compile them from source because loading applications onto an iPad Pro requires a Mac, which starts at $499.

Why? That wasn't news, we already heard about it under Bush.

You're like the parent who confronts his kid's drug use, and then they say they learned it from you.

Who never had to teach grandpa to spy on Americans, let alone suck eggs.

Look, you want to convince me you give a rat's ass about privacy, and aren't just grinding a partisan axe? Show some concern beyond the previous administration, the one that's out of office. Take a gander overseas, or in the boardrooms. Then maybe I'll think it is something other than an irate pretense that you'll drop as soon as somebody else is in office.

Google Apps are being discontinued except for Chrome OS.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

Not only that, they're slated for second-half of 2017... so like in a couple of months. Goodbye Netflix app. I hope they've resolved the "no 1080p/4K in Chrome except in the app" issue.

I'm more interested in work being done to bring back flavor in tomatoes, which for some time now have been selected for looks rather than taste.

if I have to disclose my social media accounts and phone or social media login details, I will spare you from the several thousand bucks

Trump had, literally, nothing to do with it. Here is a June 28th 2016 article about the searches, but our racist media gave Obama a pass until Trump got elected. And then, before the President-elect even entered office, there was an avalanche of articles about the "new" procedures — not directly blaming him, but planting the negative thoughts in the gullible heads (like yours and those of your adoring moderators here today). Only some of the reports mentioned the truth:

searches increased fivefold in the final fiscal year of the Obama presidency

So, no, it had nothing to do with Trump. More likely, the reason is the growth of dollar since last December — vacationing in the US simply became more expensive for foreigners, while going abroad became cheaper for Americans.

Radical islam will load it full of anfo with a remote camera and detonator and use it as a guided missile to wage jihad. Ford will be sued and the cars will be outlawed.

Except they'll both chase you and backtrack where you came from, how many terrorists successfully escape even if they don't do it as a suicide mission? They mostly end up in some kind of shootout/hostage situation shortly after, like the Boston marathon bombers, San Bernardino, the Christmas market attack in Berlin etc. so I figure for the most part jihadists will simply drive themselves. Failing that you can much easier make an "RC car" with a dummy, dash cam and a bit of hydraulics to push the pedals. Didn't someone essentially make that for $1000?

Or who knows maybe the security cameras of the store can detect even that and send the police.

The local mall has a security bot that can report disturbances.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12170640/mall-security-robot-k5-knocks-down-toddler

Those damned toddlers: They're why we can't have nice things.

Or who knows maybe the security cameras of the store can detect even that and send the police.

The local mall has a security bot that can report disturbances.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12170640/mall-security-robot-k5-knocks-down-toddler

Or has the tone switched, because Musk is a Trump-administration supporter (sort of) — and there is a well-organized smear and boycott campaign against him as a result?

Anyone who thinks the tone switched only recently hasn't been paying attention. People started grousing about Musk long before "The Donald" became a serious presidential contender.

For a few years I was annoyed about the uniform adoration Mr. Musk was getting on Slashdot and in other circles. Then hit-pieces like this one started appearing...

Would the insufferable conditions described in TFA have been described at all — or described using the same terms — if he were still the Progressives' darling for championing "green" causes?

Or has the tone switched, because Musk is a Trump-administration supporter (sort of) — and there is a well-organized smear and boycott campaign against him as a result?

There is a lively discussion on whether or not Musk is a "Trump enabler" — but people, who've already concluded, that he is, will stop at, literally, nothing. Even poisoning the "haters" is becoming a thing — online smears are child's play...

As you may know, net neutrality is a set of rules which say Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon, cannot block, throttle or prioritize certain content on the Internet. Knowing this, do you support or oppose net neutrality?

• Strongly support: 24%
• Somewhat support: 37%
• Somewhat oppose: 13%
• Strongly oppose: 5%
• Don't Know / No Opinion: 21%

So that's 61% in favour of net neutrality rather than the abstract jargon-laden questions of 88% of people disagreeing with "the government should have the ability to set the specific prices, terms and conditions for Internet access," the 43% people who believe the internet would "get worse" if "government were to regulate Internet access as a utility" (ignoring the fact that it arguably already does, and things clearly are not getting progressively worse already), and the 51% who said "Internet access should not be considered a public utility regulated by the federal government" when it was compared to everything but telecommunications.

Two points arise from this: the 5% of people who 'strongly oppose' net neutrality may very well believe they're supporting censorship of terrorist propaganda, and if there is a major overlap between the population segment that wants an open internet and the one that wants minimal government interference in ISPs, they're probably free-market idealists who want the ISPs to have the good taste to maintain net neutrality without government oversight, much like the software industry created the ESRB to avoid government regulation of video game ratings.

It is, I think, absurd to conclude that any majority of the population is in favour of Comcast absorbing a bunch of media companies and manipulating rules so it can steal Netflix's income with XFINITY TV—no matter how many layers of bullshit they bury it under.

They don't mind telecom companies screwing customers

Your outrage is misplaced and uninformed. Sprint has spoken out in favor of Network Neutrality, and said NN benefits both customers and smaller ISPs. The bigger carriers like AT&T and Verizon are opposed, but they are opposed to these price caps as well. There is no hypocrisy here.

"Podesta is an idiot."

The truth is a little more subtle. Podesta asked his his aids about the phishing email, who told him that it was legit.

I don't believe the claim from the "tech advisor" that in his reply, "illegitimate" was the intended wording, because of the use of "a" instead of "an" and the other text in the reply.

You: "I think Microsoft is just chickening out here."

Microsoft: "Industry standardized interfaces are too confusing for people, they should use our proprietary, device specific one."

I don't think that counts as "chickening out," it's Apple-like courage.

Wrong.

Apple took the High Road when it comes to USB-C/TB3. They have more I/O bandwidth than any other laptop on the planet.

And yes, it did take Courage to release a Laptop with all USB-C/TB3 connectors.

Just like it took Courage to release the original iMac with only USB-A Connectors, when the rest of the world still wanted you to figure out whether it was pin 2 or pin 3, and pins 4 and 5, or 6, 8 and 20. Or use a printer with a 3 inch long, 34-pin "Centronics" connector, to carry an 8 bit wide data-path.

Two years later, you'd be hard-pressed to find a printer with anything BUT a USB connector.

Now it's USB-C's turn. Just like with the internet, Microsoft is dead-wrong on this one.

You: "I think Microsoft is just chickening out here."

Microsoft: "Industry standardized interfaces are too confusing for people, they should use our proprietary, device specific one."

I don't think that counts as "chickening out," it's Apple-like courage.

Also, I wonder if the names Fuchsia & Magenta are references to the ill-fated Pink OS that started life as a ground-up Mac OS rewrite at Apple

Mac homage or not, T-Mobile has sued Aio Wireless and Engadget over the use of magenta.

How quick people are to forget and forgive these days... remember this?
https://news.vice.com/article/...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/...
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...

Yeah. Not a single review or article about this new Blackberry phone ever mentioned the case. This is why we privacy keeps eroding and why security practices went down the gutter. Stop promoting the company.

You can change the default search engine in Chrome for Android (and iOS): e.g. https://www.technorms.com/4060...
You can install other browsers on Android and set them to be default to open URLs (actually, you're prompted for which browser to use the first time after installing another browser then open a URL).
You can turn off Google Location Services: e.g. https://support.google.com/nex...

Can't argue with the Skyhook thing though (e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2011/...)

Is it just me or does Windows 10 S sound like Windows Tennis? Listen to this MS guy talking about it here

The author wrongly assumed that Microsoft's phone business is the manufacture and selling of cell phones. Microsoft's phone business is in patents, and it brings in far more money from patents that it does phones.

Reports range from 2 to 6 billions dollars every year in profits just from Android.

https://www.howtogeek.com/1837...
https://fossbytes.com/microsof...

Samsung alone pays Microsoft 1 billion per year

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...

Making handsets is simply a convenient way to stay in the patent creation business.

Except that Apple sued Qualcomm over royalties first (21 Jan 2017 - http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20...) then Qualcomm counter-sued Apple over chip performance (Apr 11, 2017 - http://www.theverge.com/2017/4...)

Apple already withheld the $1billion dollars that Qualcomm allegedly owe them by not paying the royalties. Now we are learning that Apple has decided to keep withholding all royalties until the lawsuit is settled.

That's the first time I hear about that trust account. Citation?

To all Adidas wearers: May your shoes be eaten by wax worms, then you'll know what recycling really means.

I believe that in some of his stories, the lack of human contact went to extreme lengths. The wealthy and powerful outer systems had 20,000 robots per person. One story I recall had a woman, removing her gloves and, for the first time in her life, touching another human. I forgot how they managed to reproduce! However maybe they utilized technology for that (see below comment).

To echo a previous poster who says people are a pain, wasn't it Satre who said "Hell is other people"?

Although it seems obvious that there will be an evolutionary disadvantage to avoid socialization, it need not be that way if we can decouple reproduction from human contact completely. With IVF and soon artificial wombs, the government could harvest eggs and sperm (willingly?) to counter low birth rates.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/4...

Not that I'm promoting this, I like my partner very much thank you :)

Nah, just sell those glasses frames that confused facial recognition systems:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1...
*everyone* is the Queen of England.

Microsoft... bought a company... to program a ToDo list...

Microsoft spent upwards of 100 million dollars... to get a ToDo list app...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6...

Microsoft has this product called Outlook that, at one time, had a ToDo list built in...
Microsoft built Outlook to compete with Lotus Notes which had... a ToDo list built in...
Microsoft already HAS ToDo list functionality in their OneNote product - designed for the Windows 10 ecosystem and is already cloud based.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why MBAs SUCK! "I need a ToDo list app to fulfill market segment XJ27- go buy this popular one and integrate it with Windows 10", "But sir we have a ToDo list app built into our OneNote product"
"Don't be a fool - that's for taking notes, not a ToDo list app. Apps are appy apps."
"But you told us to get rid of the ToDo list in Outlook to cut costs on developers?!"
"Don't bother me with trivialities."

Loved the fist Matrix movie.

What do you mean, the "first" Matrix movie?

Haven't you heard? They are going to reboot it.

They violated the TOS of Wikipedia. Here: https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Already been done --

http://www.theverge.com/2017/1...

"One recent instance occurred in Dallas, Texas earlier this week, when a six-year-old asked her family’s new Amazon Echo “can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” The device readily complied, ordering a KidKraft Sparkle mansion dollhouse,"
...
"The story could have stopped there, had it not ended up on a local morning show on San Diego’s CW6 News. At the end of the story, Anchor Jim Patton remarked: “I love the little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse,’” According to CW6 News, Echo owners who were watching the broadcast found that the remark triggered orders on their own devices."

Tesla already does this. Ludicrous mode is a software enabled option (albeit only on certain models), and some battery packs are "crippled" unless you pay to unlock the better mode.

That's where the market is.

People were begging GM to keep their EV1s. The market that liked them really liked them. GM said "no" and crushed them.

They could have given the EVs to college campuses and thrown some "prize money" at improving them annually and been way ahead of Tesla by now. Look at what everyone got out of a mere $1M in DARPA prize money (that they didn't even give out the first year).

Caterpillar (sponsors of CMU's Red Team) has self driving dump trucks. Uber came in and poached all of CMU's autonomous grad students & teachers. Pittsburgh is the SV of autonomous vehicles.

GM could have given a budget rounding error to sponsor an EV prize in 1999 and been way ahead of the game by now.

Any whistleblower around to finally show us what M$ patents are ?

This is old news (I guess not to you) but you can get the list from here. Im not sure what you mean by "whistleblower", they are USPTO-issued patents and the list is made available to the licensees like Samsung. Sure they might not have been revealed to you but they certainly are to many Android device makers, many of which are very large corporations also with large patent holdings. The sorts of companies that would litigate rather than making multi-million dollar ongoing deals if they actually believed the patents to be invalid.

Hey, you know who's doing it today?

About half the current administration.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/1...

the deep red state of Utah, is showing how the free market is supposed to operate.

Government sucks everywhere — the less of it, the better. Free people ought to be able to sell stuff to each other at will. The list is long... Deep blue New Jersey, which first prohibited and then allowed sales of Tesla is not any better in this regard.

It is not a right, if you need a permission (license, permit, approval) to exercise it.

They just need one of these puppies and a faraday cage to put it in when it lands. No way for the drone to send back video or any information on the attacker and it can be transported to a radio secure location to open and disable it.

I envy Minnesota's senate. Thank you for doing the right thing. This whole law push through congress is just a pocket-lining exercise for a ton of Republicans who have skin-in-the-game to gain money off selling of personal data.

If the FCC cared, they'd have had this ironed out years ago. The 'Big 3' have been doing this for years (Facebook, Google, Apple) but it's a bit different when it's an ISP; that's probably the most intimate of an agreement you have to get on/in/use the internet of any kind. When that level of privacy is breached, what's left, really?

People are right, and I'm not new to say this: As much as I commended it, so what if a law is passed, in the end as an extreme end-user, I'm doomed by the ISP(s) I have access to pick a service from that don't intertwine the "we-dont-care-what-the-law-says-use-our-network-and-your-data-gets-sold" stranglehold. It's just disgusting anymore.

In an article posted by the Verge today, the members of Congress who voted to Shred the ISP Privacy Rules are listed, by name, along with information of how much they received in donations from the telecom industry and employees of those corporations.

Remember... Congress didn't need to do this. Newly-promoted FCC chairman Ajit Pai was going to gut the FCC rule behind Internet privacy all by himself. But with this move, the members of Congress named in this list took the extra step under the authority of the Congressional Review Act to expressly cause the privacy rules to "have no force or effect" and prohibit the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future .

They might say that this move was just a legal technicality... that the real power for privacy should properly rest with the FTC. Bullshit. The resolution they passed eliminates the FCC's privacy rules without any immediate action to return jurisdiction to the FTC, which is prohibited from regulating common carriers such as ISPs and phone companies.

All that's left to happen is for Trump to sign it, and then, that's that. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in AT&T v. FTC that the FTC has no authority over common carriers. This FCC rule that Republicans got rid of filled the gap from that court decision. After that court decision a bill was introduced to give the FTC that authority to reverse the court decision, but most Republicans voted against the bill and it failed.

So Republicans argument is:
FCC shouldn't regulate privacy because that is the FTC's job.
FTC shouldn't regulate common carriers because that is the FCC's job.

So who regulates common carrier's privacy? Now, it's no one.

In addition, congress only gave the FTC the authority to pass actual regulations if there "unfair or deceptive acts" and they can prove the regulation prevents harm. Some Republicans argue there is no harm from companies spying on you because you save money or get services for free. Some also argue that seeing ads tailored to you is in your benefit.

This bill wasn't about doing what was right though. It was all about money. ISPs and mobile providers stand to make a lot of money by invading our privacy. They had no problem paying off politicians to pass this bill:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3...

Are you referring to the same jokers who have AOL + Yahoo addresses? Because, c'mon now... The US congress has a GREAT track record of comprehension of the internet!

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9...
http://www.upworthy.com/the-go...
http://gizmodo.com/this-congre...
https://thinkprogress.org/new-...

... just a note that ad blocking and VPN need to be enabled in Settings first.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9...

Thanks again for the tip!

Yes, the iPhones in China which have been exploding in large numbers have not seen any ban, and almost no media coverage.

No, you still can't take a Note 7 on an airplane. Even if it does not contain a battery.

Hey, dumbass!

This is about the iPhone 6 (and 6s) battery PREMATURE SHUTDOWN problem.

1. A lot different that exploding.

2. Largely fixed with a Software Update.

There are a couple of reports of a small number of iPhones (eight was the number I saw) that supposedly "exploded". Apple claims these units suffered mechanical damage that caused the battery to short-circuit. Smashing or compressing a Li-On battery is actually one of the main causes of fire/explosion; so Apple's explanation rings true. If it were a design or manufacturing defect, you would expect to see it in a larger number of units, not just a small handful.

If this ban had been in place in place when a Samsung Note 7 caught fire in an airplane cabin the result would have been more serious. Instead of being quickly caught and dealt with as the phone battery overheated in his hand while still on ground, it is possible that it would have smoldered undetected in the middle of the cargo hold until turning into a serious conflagration in-flight. A ban like this will increase the risk of in-flight battery fires and make flying less safe.