It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.
The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.
The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries, should scare the shit out of people.
Sometimes bypassing those checks and balances, isn't a good thing.
The company has said little publicly about verification, which it suspended in 2017 following backlash over its verification of a white supremacist.
As a non-Twitter user, can someone explain to me the purpose of the blue check? I had assumed it was to verify a persons identity. Now it seems to be weaponized and abused to filter out people based on their ideology.
Here's what Twitter says:
"The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic."
Authentically what? Liberal? Politically Correct? I'm not sure what's worse, the bias or the bullshit.
Twitter is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture.
Yes, it really is. Don't give me that freedom/privacy/have-to-fight-tyranny bullshit. Wars were never won with Tweets, and the last humans attempting to convey meaningful messages in 140 characters or less were cavemen smearing pictures on rock walls. The early days of Twitter were essentially learning just how often humans was bored enough on a toilet to tell other humans about it, and assume they gave a shit.
And no, you're not going to convince greedy shareholders demanding infinite growth these days that less eyeballs and less time in front of your ad-driven revenue model is somehow a good thing. You would need to fix the greed problem first.
Why are most people on the internet so fucking dumb now? Nobody has enough knowledge on literally any subject to make an intelligent post. It's all pseudoscience and conspiracy tards everywhere there's a public interface.
Nobody ever got rich telling people how stupid they are.
Yeah, wrong. Obviously you've never heard of Howard Stern. He is quite literally a Professional Asshole, and makes an obscene amount of money in that profession.
This might not go over as well as they think. People are kind of tired of corporations thinking they own everything. I can imagine children interested in science finding it offensive rather that cool.
When was the last time you offended a child?
Actual children don't get offended. That only happens when they grow up and act like bigger children in their pursuit of being perpetually offended in the name of social justice, or some nonsensical shit.
Pepsi has a lot of different products that could be boycotted. I run a planetarium, and I can imagine the shows I could do on light pollution, having a great big orbting billboard to point to as an example of BAD. Right now, everybody has too many bright lights. Nobody's head stands head and shoulders above the rest as offensive. But when Pepsi puts their name on a billboard, I have a bad guy to memorialize forever. It'd be terrible, but it'd be great for Pepsi to bring a whole world of opinion down upon their head as enemies of the night sky.
Less than 5% of Pepsi customers will even expend the effort to do the research to find all of the products they own in order to enact a boycott. And less than a single percent of them will actually get off their lazy ass and do it. End result? Zero impact.
You grossly overestimate the give-a-shit factor on this by an order of magnitude or seven. It's hard trying to reach people when they have a 15-second attention span. "Outrage" will be forgotten about before the evening news.
Care to inform me what medication would help with Asperger's?
There are no FDA-approved ones, but that certainly doesn't stop doctors from prescribing meds (SSRIs), particularly for related symptoms such as depression or anxiety.
Wouldn't it be more profitable for pharma corporations if doctors came to other conclusions?
And take a risk that their $1000/pill brand name drug might be eclipsed by a $5 generic solution?
There's a reason drug pimps are highly paid to push specific solutions to those writing prescriptions.
The bigger problem is management. Fake reviews makes Amazon money, because a bunch of people will be fooled into buying things they think will be great. Who's going to staff a project that, in the short term, harms the bottom line?
How far should corporate support of blatant consumer deception be allowed to go? I don't even know why anyone mandates ethics training in business anymore when we blatantly turn a blind eye to the most immoral and unethical shit, all in the name of profits.
Amazon, either give a shit about rating integrity, or don't. Just stop fucking pretending you do.
"Amazon is a $900B company with thousands of brilliant engineers. I majored in construction management. It seems like they should be able to figure this one out."
You know what happens when brilliant engineers get together and work hard to make something so great it's idiot-proof?
Society simply responds by building a better idiot.
The problem is never that easy when you're up against that shit all day, every day.
... this looks like standard anti-fraud measures that banks and retail have been doing for years and years and years. It's not creating a profile of YOU, its creating a profile of YOUR CARD so it can detect if it's been compromised.
IE - you definitely want this.
Nothing to see here.
Is the browser different from what you typically use?
Is the device different from what you typically use?
Is the cadence of the way you typed out your password typical for you? (tracked by some advanced systems)
Tell me something Ignorant One, does that shit sound like it has anything to do with that piece of plastic in your wallet?
I'm sorry, but you cannot accurately measure this problem with mere fatalities.
Seat belts. Air bags. 5-star safety ratings on smaller cars because of doors being more metal than glass. We've come a long way with car safety, which is exactly why fatalities should not be the lone metric to determine if we've managed to get better with our overall safety.
The "paper map" problem was restricted to the fraction of people on the road who were using one. Most drivers knew where they were going most of the time. Today we use mapping software and GPS just to show us traffic, so even those who know where they're going are using smartphones behind the wheel. As a result, we will ultimately kill more people trying to open and program navigation apps than paper maps ever did. Did we have some magazine readers behind the wheel before? Sure. Do we now have the majority of drivers distracted with some form of social media or streaming entertainment behind the wheel? Yes, we do. This isn't just about numbers. It's about public acceptance of dangerous behavior, as in the old "everyone is doing it" bullshit excuse.
And we're sitting here talking about how distracted driving is eclipsing drunk driving. I'd hold off on those "way more dangerous" comments regarding the past. We may not be as deadly on the roads today, but that is not because the idiot behind the wheel is acting any safer. Look at the other traffic metrics to see how bad we really are now.
Sorry, but improved detection isn't just an excuse. It's the reason. I'm reasonably old and remember my childhood, and back then I went to school with quite a few kids that would be diagnosed with certain mental conditions today, from ADHD to autism. Not the case back then. ADHD was "cured" by smacking the kids 'til they would sit still and autism was just shyness and being weird.
Maybe you're not old enough to actually know that yes, these kids existed back then, too. The difference is just that nobody gave a fuck.
The only thing higher detection did was maximize revenue streams. The only "cure" capitalism will ever legalize is perpetual prescriptions for however long your body can endure them.
That is what I mean by detection not helping matters. It's not reducing the rate of autism or even remotely attempting to find a cure. Who gives a shit if we can eventually detect autism at birth? Detection is only half of the problem here, and it might in fact be making things worse by becoming a more efficient money maker. Oh, did I say 1 in 50? Yeah, it's now 1 in 10. Line up for your lifetime supply of pills, kids. Let's cheer on another round of bonuses for Big Pharma execs!
With shareholders demanding infinite growth these days no matter how nonsensical that is, why would you ever assume that revenue stream wouldn't be abused? It can, and it will.
Well they NEED to genetically engineer a working class that can survive a 996 workweek.
Uh, no. We need to genetically engineer out the immoral and unethical mentality that believes that shit is viable or sustainable for any human.
Logic dictates that as the population grows, so will the demand for people to work. You can only have so much demand before you're going to be forced to share that 996 with three other people.
There is no general fertility problem with human beings at this time.
You're right, but unless you want to deal with a planet full of autistic humans in 20 years, we better start doing what we can to improve the next generation instead of breaking it.
In less than 15 years, we've gone from 1 in 150 to 1 in 50 with regards to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). And sadly, the rate of kids being medicated (to include the infamous ADD/ADHD) is likely much higher simply due to greed, which also damages our kids (read your warning labels).
And yeah, I know we've gotten better at detecting autism. And cancer, Alzheimers, and a host of other diseases crippling our citizens . The bullshit "detection" excuse isn't helping, and it's certainly not an excuse to dismiss the rate at which these conditions are consuming our population.
And if you're still in disbelief as to how bad it's gotten, go ask 10 parents with children. See how many have kids that have been diagnosed with ASD or are being medicated for ADD/ADHD.
Ah, yes. No wonder my confidence level is still a bit low regarding intergalactic travel.
Gee, how about if we figure out interstellar travel first, and then work on intergalactic?/me thinks there's plenty of places to go in this galaxy first.
Fair point, but either distance is irrelevant and will be for a very long time.
We're damn good at talking about how "places" are "only" light years away. We're nowhere near solving the travel problem. We can't even travel the distance of a single light minute efficiently.
"We are exploring rolling a truck out that would enable someone to see a hologram of me that is three-dimensional give my stump speech,"
Yeah, or you could just make a YouTube video like normal people do for your "stump speech" instead of pissing money away on pseudo-hologram bullshit. Way to demonstrate fiscal responsibility. I'm sure everyone will benefit with you leading the UBI efforts.
Yang also told the paper that he plans to use hologram technology to remind voters that "it is 2019, and soon it will be 2020, and things are changing."
Just because it's almost 2020 doesn't mean getting out there and greeting people in person is an outdated concept, but hey don't let me stop you from digging your own grave. At least you'll be livestreaming your own demise. That should be somewhat entertaining.
The hologram's debut came on TMZ Live, which showed a video of Yang's hologram performing a duet alongside a hologram of his "hero," Tupac.
His "hero", is Tupac? Yeah, I'm fucking done here. Hope 300 million citizens are too.
Thanks for this worthless factoid being pointlessly tacked onto the headline, my computer just slapped me with a lawsuit. She kept rambling on about toxic work environment, being fat-shamed (I mean, she does have 240TB), and that the last thing we need right now is to be chastised for a large Data Mass Index (DMI).
Man, I remember the days when that data was in a tight 4TB RAID-1 stripe. It eventually spread out far and wide across a RAID-10 array over the years. Careful of the data creep kids. At the rate we're clickbaiting titles these days, your medical insurance is gonna go up if you're carrying around more than 200TB, especially in a small form factor.
I wouldn't call it their 'best thing going', it's been massively bloated for quite some time now. You shouldn't need a quad-core 3GHz processor just to look at a fucking map.
You shouldn't need a computer at all to look at a fucking map. Ironically, that doesn't compute for anyone under the age of 30.
God help the technoaddicts if GPS goes down. The wanderlost masses will look worse than a zombie horde playing Pokemon Go.
So, I'll ask again, what is considered a "PC" these days?
A general computing device that you or your organization's sysadmin have full administrative access to the underlying operating system and firmware and that is capable integrating with a third-party hardware and peripheral devices via standard physical interfaces.
Standard physical interfaces? So I'm assuming Gartner and IDC aren't counting any modern Apple laptops then.
And when my desktop and smartphone are both prompting me to install "apps" these days (setup.exe is soooo 1990s), the line becomes even more blurred, and admin rights become even more irrelevant. Tablets and Netbooks are capable of "integrating with a third-party hardware and peripheral devices via standard physical interfaces."
PC is also often referred to as a single-user computer, which also defines just about every modern computing device.
No, I'm not trying to be ignorant in my question. It's rather valid when you consider TFA has pictures of a tablet, a more traditional laptop, and then what appears to be a Surface with a detachable keyboard.
So, I'll ask again, what is considered a "PC" these days? Tablets? Phablets? Touch-screen enabled laptops? Detachable vs. attached keyboards?
And since we now do all the same shit on smarthphones that we do on other computing devices, are smartphones considered Personal Computers? If not, why? (You really can't get any more personal than the computer you carry in your pocket all day)
A shift in form factors is what we're really talking about here, so let's cut through the usual hype/bullshit reporting and understand definitions before labeling it a "decline" in sales.
Slashdot Mirror
It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.
The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.
The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries, should scare the shit out of people.
Sometimes bypassing those checks and balances, isn't a good thing.
The company has said little publicly about verification, which it suspended in 2017 following backlash over its verification of a white supremacist.
As a non-Twitter user, can someone explain to me the purpose of the blue check? I had assumed it was to verify a persons identity. Now it seems to be weaponized and abused to filter out people based on their ideology.
Here's what Twitter says:
"The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic."
Authentically what? Liberal? Politically Correct? I'm not sure what's worse, the bias or the bullshit.
Twitter is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture.
Yes, it really is. Don't give me that freedom/privacy/have-to-fight-tyranny bullshit. Wars were never won with Tweets, and the last humans attempting to convey meaningful messages in 140 characters or less were cavemen smearing pictures on rock walls. The early days of Twitter were essentially learning just how often humans was bored enough on a toilet to tell other humans about it, and assume they gave a shit.
And no, you're not going to convince greedy shareholders demanding infinite growth these days that less eyeballs and less time in front of your ad-driven revenue model is somehow a good thing. You would need to fix the greed problem first.
Fine, file individual suits in small claims court.
Find enough people who give a shit enough to expend that effort first.
Why are most people on the internet so fucking dumb now? Nobody has enough knowledge on literally any subject to make an intelligent post. It's all pseudoscience and conspiracy tards everywhere there's a public interface.
Nobody ever got rich telling people how stupid they are.
Yeah, wrong. Obviously you've never heard of Howard Stern. He is quite literally a Professional Asshole, and makes an obscene amount of money in that profession.
And sadly, the parent is 100% right.
This might not go over as well as they think. People are kind of tired of corporations thinking they own everything. I can imagine children interested in science finding it offensive rather that cool.
When was the last time you offended a child?
Actual children don't get offended. That only happens when they grow up and act like bigger children in their pursuit of being perpetually offended in the name of social justice, or some nonsensical shit.
Pepsi has a lot of different products that could be boycotted. I run a planetarium, and I can imagine the shows I could do on light pollution, having a great big orbting billboard to point to as an example of BAD. Right now, everybody has too many bright lights. Nobody's head stands head and shoulders above the rest as offensive. But when Pepsi puts their name on a billboard, I have a bad guy to memorialize forever. It'd be terrible, but it'd be great for Pepsi to bring a whole world of opinion down upon their head as enemies of the night sky.
Less than 5% of Pepsi customers will even expend the effort to do the research to find all of the products they own in order to enact a boycott. And less than a single percent of them will actually get off their lazy ass and do it. End result? Zero impact.
You grossly overestimate the give-a-shit factor on this by an order of magnitude or seven. It's hard trying to reach people when they have a 15-second attention span. "Outrage" will be forgotten about before the evening news.
...you go off and do one of the nerdiest things in human history?
Oh yeah. That'll keep Ogre at bay.
Care to inform me what medication would help with Asperger's?
There are no FDA-approved ones, but that certainly doesn't stop doctors from prescribing meds (SSRIs), particularly for related symptoms such as depression or anxiety.
Wouldn't it be more profitable for pharma corporations if doctors came to other conclusions?
And take a risk that their $1000/pill brand name drug might be eclipsed by a $5 generic solution?
There's a reason drug pimps are highly paid to push specific solutions to those writing prescriptions.
The bigger problem is management. Fake reviews makes Amazon money, because a bunch of people will be fooled into buying things they think will be great. Who's going to staff a project that, in the short term, harms the bottom line?
How far should corporate support of blatant consumer deception be allowed to go? I don't even know why anyone mandates ethics training in business anymore when we blatantly turn a blind eye to the most immoral and unethical shit, all in the name of profits.
Amazon, either give a shit about rating integrity, or don't. Just stop fucking pretending you do.
"Amazon is a $900B company with thousands of brilliant engineers. I majored in construction management. It seems like they should be able to figure this one out."
You know what happens when brilliant engineers get together and work hard to make something so great it's idiot-proof?
Society simply responds by building a better idiot.
The problem is never that easy when you're up against that shit all day, every day.
Beta testing 5G on that herd, in order to prepare it for another herd.
At least we've been upgraded from lemmings. Or at least on paper we have.
... this looks like standard anti-fraud measures that banks and retail have been doing for years and years and years. It's not creating a profile of YOU, its creating a profile of YOUR CARD so it can detect if it's been compromised.
IE - you definitely want this.
Nothing to see here.
Is the browser different from what you typically use?
Is the device different from what you typically use?
Is the cadence of the way you typed out your password typical for you? (tracked by some advanced systems)
Tell me something Ignorant One, does that shit sound like it has anything to do with that piece of plastic in your wallet?
Wake up.
I'm sorry, but you cannot accurately measure this problem with mere fatalities.
Seat belts. Air bags. 5-star safety ratings on smaller cars because of doors being more metal than glass. We've come a long way with car safety, which is exactly why fatalities should not be the lone metric to determine if we've managed to get better with our overall safety.
The "paper map" problem was restricted to the fraction of people on the road who were using one. Most drivers knew where they were going most of the time. Today we use mapping software and GPS just to show us traffic, so even those who know where they're going are using smartphones behind the wheel. As a result, we will ultimately kill more people trying to open and program navigation apps than paper maps ever did. Did we have some magazine readers behind the wheel before? Sure. Do we now have the majority of drivers distracted with some form of social media or streaming entertainment behind the wheel? Yes, we do. This isn't just about numbers. It's about public acceptance of dangerous behavior, as in the old "everyone is doing it" bullshit excuse.
And we're sitting here talking about how distracted driving is eclipsing drunk driving. I'd hold off on those "way more dangerous" comments regarding the past. We may not be as deadly on the roads today, but that is not because the idiot behind the wheel is acting any safer. Look at the other traffic metrics to see how bad we really are now.
Those in the ISS have turned SMFH into an legitimate exercise because of this shit.
Flat Earthers; Making our astro/cosmonauts stronger every day.
Sorry, but improved detection isn't just an excuse. It's the reason. I'm reasonably old and remember my childhood, and back then I went to school with quite a few kids that would be diagnosed with certain mental conditions today, from ADHD to autism. Not the case back then. ADHD was "cured" by smacking the kids 'til they would sit still and autism was just shyness and being weird.
Maybe you're not old enough to actually know that yes, these kids existed back then, too. The difference is just that nobody gave a fuck.
The only thing higher detection did was maximize revenue streams. The only "cure" capitalism will ever legalize is perpetual prescriptions for however long your body can endure them.
That is what I mean by detection not helping matters. It's not reducing the rate of autism or even remotely attempting to find a cure. Who gives a shit if we can eventually detect autism at birth? Detection is only half of the problem here, and it might in fact be making things worse by becoming a more efficient money maker. Oh, did I say 1 in 50? Yeah, it's now 1 in 10. Line up for your lifetime supply of pills, kids. Let's cheer on another round of bonuses for Big Pharma execs!
With shareholders demanding infinite growth these days no matter how nonsensical that is, why would you ever assume that revenue stream wouldn't be abused? It can, and it will.
Well they NEED to genetically engineer a working class that can survive a 996 workweek.
Uh, no. We need to genetically engineer out the immoral and unethical mentality that believes that shit is viable or sustainable for any human.
Logic dictates that as the population grows, so will the demand for people to work. You can only have so much demand before you're going to be forced to share that 996 with three other people.
There is no general fertility problem with human beings at this time.
You're right, but unless you want to deal with a planet full of autistic humans in 20 years, we better start doing what we can to improve the next generation instead of breaking it.
In less than 15 years, we've gone from 1 in 150 to 1 in 50 with regards to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). And sadly, the rate of kids being medicated (to include the infamous ADD/ADHD) is likely much higher simply due to greed, which also damages our kids (read your warning labels).
And yeah, I know we've gotten better at detecting autism. And cancer, Alzheimers, and a host of other diseases crippling our citizens . The bullshit "detection" excuse isn't helping, and it's certainly not an excuse to dismiss the rate at which these conditions are consuming our population.
And if you're still in disbelief as to how bad it's gotten, go ask 10 parents with children. See how many have kids that have been diagnosed with ASD or are being medicated for ADD/ADHD.
Ah, yes. No wonder my confidence level is still a bit low regarding intergalactic travel.
Gee, how about if we figure out interstellar travel first, and then work on intergalactic? /me thinks there's plenty of places to go in this galaxy first.
Fair point, but either distance is irrelevant and will be for a very long time.
We're damn good at talking about how "places" are "only" light years away. We're nowhere near solving the travel problem. We can't even travel the distance of a single light minute efficiently.
"We are exploring rolling a truck out that would enable someone to see a hologram of me that is three-dimensional give my stump speech,"
Yeah, or you could just make a YouTube video like normal people do for your "stump speech" instead of pissing money away on pseudo-hologram bullshit. Way to demonstrate fiscal responsibility. I'm sure everyone will benefit with you leading the UBI efforts.
Yang also told the paper that he plans to use hologram technology to remind voters that "it is 2019, and soon it will be 2020, and things are changing."
Just because it's almost 2020 doesn't mean getting out there and greeting people in person is an outdated concept, but hey don't let me stop you from digging your own grave. At least you'll be livestreaming your own demise. That should be somewhat entertaining.
The hologram's debut came on TMZ Live, which showed a video of Yang's hologram performing a duet alongside a hologram of his "hero," Tupac.
His "hero", is Tupac? Yeah, I'm fucking done here. Hope 300 million citizens are too.
"... these data suggest that human health can be mostly sustained..."
That description sounds so familiar...
(Ford Prefect expands entry for Earth in the Guide)
Ah, yes. No wonder my confidence level is still a bit low regarding intergalactic travel.
of a C130 loaded with Flashdrives flying at 700 mph. The latency is a bitch though.
If a prop-driven C-130 is traveling at 700MPH, your latency problem will be expiring very soon.
Unfortunately, it will be replaced by a much larger data loss problem...
"Stored On About Half a Ton of Hard Drives"
Thanks for this worthless factoid being pointlessly tacked onto the headline, my computer just slapped me with a lawsuit. She kept rambling on about toxic work environment, being fat-shamed (I mean, she does have 240TB), and that the last thing we need right now is to be chastised for a large Data Mass Index (DMI).
Man, I remember the days when that data was in a tight 4TB RAID-1 stripe. It eventually spread out far and wide across a RAID-10 array over the years. Careful of the data creep kids. At the rate we're clickbaiting titles these days, your medical insurance is gonna go up if you're carrying around more than 200TB, especially in a small form factor.
I wouldn't call it their 'best thing going', it's been massively bloated for quite some time now. You shouldn't need a quad-core 3GHz processor just to look at a fucking map.
You shouldn't need a computer at all to look at a fucking map. Ironically, that doesn't compute for anyone under the age of 30.
God help the technoaddicts if GPS goes down. The wanderlost masses will look worse than a zombie horde playing Pokemon Go.
So, I'll ask again, what is considered a "PC" these days?
A general computing device that you or your organization's sysadmin have full administrative access to the underlying operating system and firmware and that is capable integrating with a third-party hardware and peripheral devices via standard physical interfaces.
Standard physical interfaces? So I'm assuming Gartner and IDC aren't counting any modern Apple laptops then.
And when my desktop and smartphone are both prompting me to install "apps" these days (setup.exe is soooo 1990s), the line becomes even more blurred, and admin rights become even more irrelevant. Tablets and Netbooks are capable of "integrating with a third-party hardware and peripheral devices via standard physical interfaces."
PC is also often referred to as a single-user computer, which also defines just about every modern computing device.
No, I'm not trying to be ignorant in my question. It's rather valid when you consider TFA has pictures of a tablet, a more traditional laptop, and then what appears to be a Surface with a detachable keyboard.
So, I'll ask again, what is considered a "PC" these days? Tablets? Phablets? Touch-screen enabled laptops? Detachable vs. attached keyboards?
And since we now do all the same shit on smarthphones that we do on other computing devices, are smartphones considered Personal Computers? If not, why? (You really can't get any more personal than the computer you carry in your pocket all day)
A shift in form factors is what we're really talking about here, so let's cut through the usual hype/bullshit reporting and understand definitions before labeling it a "decline" in sales.