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The Tech Industry Is Getting Ridiculous
An anonymous reader writes "Columnist Jon Evans points out that the tech industry has been slowly getting stranger over the past several years. When you look at the headlines individually, they all seem to make sense, but putting them together and trying to imagine them popping up a decade ago really illustrates how odd it has become. Quoting: 'In Japan, some half-billion dollars' worth of cryptocurrency vanished from a site founded to trade Magic: The Gathering cards. In New Zealand, the world's greatest Call of Duty player has launched a political party to revenge himself on those who had him arrested and seized his sports cars. In Britain, the secret service is busy collecting and watching homegrown porn. Here in Silicon Valley, mighty Apple just revealed that a flagrant, basic programming error gutted the security of all its devices for years. Google, "more wood behind fewer arrows" Google, now has its own navy, to go with its air force and robot army.'"
It has been ridiculous for a long time. It is just now that more people are noticing that it is getting embarrassing... :)
generalization based upon outliers
Places that handle large amounts of money get taken by thieves and embezzlers, people of all stripes go into politics because they're vengeful, overgrown security services monitor lots of petty and unimportant things, minor errors get overlooked for years on end, and massively wealthy people maintain semi-militarized forces.
Congratulations, you've just described literally any point of time in human history.
Google, now has its own navy, to go with its air force and robot army.'"
How else do you expect them to defend themselves from Oracle?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
TFA's premise is off...the whole 20th Century was a giant clusterfuck of human rights & technology.
"getting" ridiculous...that notion itself is ridiculous
Here's what I find really ridiculous...this happened in 1968 & basically all computing now is just an upscale version of that tech...faster, more colors, bigger...
The only difference is that so many people have been screwed over by so many different expressions of our modern greed that **they can't hide anymore**
Thank you Dave Raggett
Over the last 10 years, the NSA has declared war on privacy while having secret courts and our president got the nobel peace prize for something he didn't end up doing.
Egypt has gone through 2 governments, and there have been uprisings in many other places, including now Ukraine.
I could legally marry another man while smoking pot, but telling people in Russia being gay isn't evil is now a crime.
All these would seem pretty crazy 10 years ago. Its not just Tech, its simply time: Things happen, and stuff changes. Heck, the CoD players's political stuff isn't even tech news, thats political and could have happened at any point.
Boy, when you remove context from misleading headline excerpts, things sure do get wacky!
You know those jokes that sometimes aren't funny from old movies, that your relatives laugh real hard about? A large number of those came from the same logic - taking a topical story, removing the context, and applying hyperbole to the idea. They know the idea is misleading, and are 'in' on a joke that they just can't explain to you and still be funny.
Just bundling some of those together with a 'technology' theme isn't making a point - its bungling a joke. Not as bad as that whole 'beta' attempt, but still, a bad attempt at a joke.
Ryan Fenton
That's how you know you're getting old. Stand aside, grandpa, we have a future to build!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Any significant industry is going to be ridiculous if you first cherry-pick your examples, selecting for lunacy/idiocy, and then state them in the most exaggerated, sensationalist way you can think of.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I wanted to live in the future, the future I read about, the future I saw on tv, in movies. Now that that future is here, I find myself increasingly wanting to go back to a past that's no longer there, scheduling 'no internet' days and turning off my cell phone so that I can go back to a more peaceful time, a more thoughtful time, a time with more focus, if only for a few hours.
"mighty Apple just revealed that a flagrant, basic programming error gutted the security of all its devices for years"
I believe this is actually "for months", as that specific bug [the gotofail bug] only applies to Mavericks [10.9.x], which was released in October 2013, and iOS shares this code with MacOSX, so it wouldn't have had the bug for much longer [likely introduced with iOS 6.1.5/Nov 2013 and some version of iOS 7 [Sept 2013].
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
A former cowboy became President of the United States. Oh, that was in 1901. And the U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala to help out a fruit company. Oh, that was in 1954.
You can make anything sound crazy if you just say it in a silly enough way and leave out most of the important details. Heck, conservatives are fond of pointing out that Obama is a "former community organizer." Also a former senator, but who cares about that?
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Techies have always been strange - for example, consider the average /. reader. Or Richard Stallman.
Another great example of an outlier is the so-called "Spam King", Dale Begg-Smith, who, when not making millions off spam and malware, won two Olympic medals and three World Cup championships in mogul skiing, starting in 2006. If that isn't a bizarre combination of pursuits, I don't know what is.
Have you read my blog lately?
While that's a nice ideal, you are speaking of a group of people who lose their minds over trivial shit like what brand of phone someone bought. Or that someone else may find a tablet useful/desirable. These are not people with the slightest bit of social grace.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Even worse is the assertion by the click bait summary that it "gutted Apple's security for years" when it only affected Mavericks and iOS versions 6 and 7.
Mavericks was released as a GM in September 2013, iOS 7 around the same time. iOS 6 was released in September 2013, which is hardly "years" ago - it is 16 months ago. "Over a year" might be a more accurate, if less click bait worthy, phrase to use there.
It was a programming error, though, through a simple lack of QA on the code. If you;re trying to claim it was deliberate then I have a tinfoil hat to sell you. I'll throw in the bridge for free.
Seriously, I'm not sure it gets any weirder than that.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"