You seem to subscribe to the misguided notion that this is a new or concerning development. It's not. The fact that Apple uses other cloud vendors as commodity services on which they build their own has been well documented for years and is even explicitly stated on a number of Apple's user-facing pages. For instance, Apple's Approach to Privacy page mentions in the section on iCloud:
If we use third-party vendors to store your information, we encrypt it and never give them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in our own data centers, so you can back up, sync, and share your iCloud data.
Apple hasn't exactly been shy about mentioning (in lectures, white papers, and other communications) that parts of iCloud have been built on top of S3 and Azure for the last several years. The only thing that changed recently is that they swapped Azure out for Google Cloud in some of their documentation, suggesting that Google likely outbid Microsoft the last time the contract came up for renewal. Given that Apple's cloud contracts are reported to be worth billions of dollars apiece, it's not exactly surprising that competition would be rather fierce and that Google would have been gunning for it.
As for your concerns over what the providers might do with Apple's data, as noted above, Apple is already encrypting the data at rest on those servers, but as a Slashdot reader you may want to dig your teeth into some more details. For people who are technically-minded, such as yourself, Apple has helpfully published an iOS Security Guide that does a decent job of explaining what all goes into their devices' security, including iCloud services that are used on their devices. It should be a relatively easy read for you, given that they've done a good job of taking deeply technical details and making them accessible in intermediate-level language. You'll quickly find that besides encrypting the data when it's at rest on third-party servers, they're also employing other techniques for securing their users' data, such as using end-to-end communication (with keys that they have no access to because they're always kept on-device) for a number of their services.
Aside from the technological means they've employed to secure their users' data that resides on others' servers, there's almost certainly also legal means that they're employing. With these contracts being worth as much as they are, Apple isn't simply clicking an "I Agree" button for a take-it-or-leave it Terms of Service that the rest of us have to agree to when we sign up with these providers. Rather, they're using teams of lawyers to negotiate one-off contracts with their cloud service providers...contracts which will no doubt make the lives of those providers hell should they ever try to misuse Apple's data. After all, that's how contracts between competitors tend to work.
All of which is to say, while I don't have any expectation that anyone here will rise above the standard of petty tribalism and glib comments, this site is at its best when it manages to do so. There are plenty of valid complaints to make against Apple, but flippant aspersions based on a lack of understanding about widely employed business practices that have been in use by them for years without issue is not the way to do it.
There is some of that, sure, but they actually have a point hidden in the doublespeak.
For instance, in the case of the touch sensors used by iPhones, they’re uniquely paired with the rest of the hardware via cryptographic keys, ensuring that if a bad actor ever tried to replace the sensor with one that would grant them unfettered access the rest of the iPhone would refuse to play along.
The problem, however, is that this trade organization is trying to suggest it’s an either-or problem when it isn’t.
If a user wants to replace their touch sensor without going through Apple, they should be able to do so! The cryptographic keys shouldn’t prevent them from doing so, and Apple, thankfully, has backed off on their previous stance that caused that iPhones using third-party sensors to cease working. That said, if a user chooses to do so outside of Apple and enters their password to confirm that they accept the use of an untrusted part, they also accept the responsibility for vetting that part themselves, which few of them are likely to ever do. As such, they are indeed opening themselves up to a variety of potential security vulnerabilities.
All of which is to say, if a user is buying from a particular manufacturer, they clearly trust that manufacturer, and I’m fine with a manufacturer taking steps to ensure that trust is well-placed, but if a user wants to take that responsibility on themselves, let ‘em. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
The author was speaking specifically of software patents. Shark Tank entrepreneurs rarely if ever have those. The patents you usually see on Shark Tank are utility patents on a physical invention of some sort.
I think you’re misremembering a bit. Apple had only two product lines in 2005: Mac and iPod, and they were just as tight-lipped with details back then. Analysts would beg for Mac numbers to be broken out in more detail, and the only reason they eventually gave up on those requests was because the Mac stopped mattering as much to Apple’s bottom line.
The reddit post on which I presume you’re basing your claims about response and distortion has been thoroughly debunked. You don’t need to be spending that much per speaker. Not even close.
I too prefer dumb speakers, but for different reasons than you: 1) For the sound quality, they're almost assuredly cheaper. 2) In the tech industry's timescale, they essentially never become obsolete.
Most of the smart speakers either sound like crap or else sound far worse than comparably priced dumb speakers. Even if you buy into the HomePod hype, unless you're hopelessly technologically illiterate or you have no way to fit a stereo set in your home, why pay $350 for a device that simulates stereo when you can have actual stereo from better speakers for the same price? Toss in a wireless receiver with a wired output and you'll have better wireless compatibility than what the HomePod has, without any of the lock-in to AirPlay or Apple's ecosystem.
On the other side, my parents have had the same speakers since before I was born (34 years ago). The speakers still work just fine. The dumb speakers I have today will—barring an accident—still be working just fine when the kid I have on the way is as old as I am today. Even if the world were to switch entirely to wireless or those wireless protocols were to change, I could simply swap out the aforementioned wireless receiver with a different one. Meanwhile, if I had bought into the HomePod or Alexa or whatever, I'd have to scrap the entire speaker to get on the new protocol.
No thanks.
If nothing else, the ones that are staking their name on sound quality at least need to give me a line in jack. Until then, so far as I'm concerned, they're smart accessories, not smart speakers.
According to earlier reports, they can’t patch it. The problem is in the SoC itself, meaning they’d need to a new hardware revision in order to issue a “patch”. Any existing Switches are, and will forever be, exploitable by this tactic.
Just for a sec, you’ve no doubt heard “Bros” having a conversation where every benign statement is turned into a sexual innuendo. I’ve stumbled into those conversations at various points in my life and have quickly discovered just how easily my words can be twisted to have meanings that are completely contrary to what I intended. It’s a frustrating, demeaning experience. We rightly condemn that sort of immature, offensive culture.
Well, this is the exact same problem, but on the other end of the spectrum.
Instead of twisting everything into a sexual innuendo, this “hair trigger” culture twists every benign statement into an offense. They deny through their actions that the listener shares a responsibility to not seek out offense. They reject having the patience and tolerance necessary to push past what was said so that they can understand what was intended to be said, ensuring that communication WILL break down. They exclude people dissimilar to themselves, ensuring they will never understand those others. They insist on legislating speech so that anyone who wants to communicate with them must do so on their terms, which they then use as an excuse to blame everyone else for the misunderstandings that inevitably occur. They’re like children who invented their own language and then insist that you speak to them in it.
Having conversations with these people is just as frustrating and just as demeaning as having a conversation with the Bros, and while their motivations may be less degrading, their twisting of words is just as worthy of condemnation.
Even when you have two “good” people talking, there are numerous opportunities for each to be offended. Whether they will or won’t be isn’t something you can legislate; it’s just part of being an adult. Moreover, any attempt to legislate acceptable speech will inevitably fail because the target is constantly moving. That’s why sane policies are based on principles, not rules.
I neither attacked a person nor an idea. I was merely observing that his ability to post as an AC is only possible thanks to the very thing he is attacking. If you viewed those idle observations as an attack, that might suggest something about your own biases.
But if an attack is what you're looking for, I'm happy to oblige.
1) The AC incorrectly believes that the Constitution "guarantees" our rights. It doesn't. Nor does it grant us our rights. Rather, it provides a non-exhaustive enumeration of rights that we already have. As such, if an additional right is necessary to exercise the ones that are enumerated, then that additional right must necessarily be one that we already have as well.
2) The AC is correct in suggesting that the Constitution and its amendments do not explicitly enumerate a right to privacy, but they nonetheless make it clear that we have one anyway because without one it is impossible to exercise rights that are explicitly enumerated.
3) Specifically, the Supreme Court has routinely disagreed with the AC's interpretation of the Constitution and has made it clear that the right to privacy can be found in multiple places in the Constitution, including the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Ninth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, or some combination thereof.
4) Furthermore, the AC is attempting to argue what ought to be—a topic of morality—by bringing up Constitutionality—a topic of legality. That's like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Our laws exist to serve us, not the other way around, so inasmuch as they come up short of what they ought to be, they should be amended. If we value the ability to post anonymously and believe that it is something we ought to have, not just on Slashdot, but in wider social circles as we engage in discourse that may be unpopular, that would suggest that we should have the right to privacy, regardless of its current Constitutionality.
5) The very act of posting as AC to voice an unpopular opinion is an argument in support of the moral necessity for the right to privacy.
I can't say with certainty. I know it's possible to update via USB under normal circumstances, and I know it's possible to use DFU mode when you're stuck in a reboot loop, but DFU mode will leave you with a wiped phone, so far as I know. It might be possible to clear the notification in some other way, but I admit I don't know how that'd be done.
That said, for any normal users encountering this issue, they're likely to be fine. The default behavior once an iPhone user sets up an iCloud account is to enable iCloud Backups for their iPhone. In the few times I've used iCloud backups (e.g. switching my wife to a newer iPhone), it's had the phone back up and running in a matter of minutes. Most people seem to have it enabled, with geeks who prefer using encrypted iTunes backups being the only big exception I've seen.
Apple has now confirmed that the fixes they have in the public betas will be rolled out as minor releases for the current versions of iOS and macOS, rather than being kept for the next big release of each.
As for Mashable's reporting? Still lousy. They finally updated their article with the information it was missing at the time it was originally published, but then they went and added that "the fix will slowly roll out to older software", suggesting that the current versions won't get the fix until after the betas are released, even though the iMore article they linked as a source for that info says nothing of the sort. Quite the contrary, iMore's editor-in-chief is saying Apple will roll the fixes out before the betas are released.
Why is Slashdot using Mashable as a source when pretty much anyone else has more timely and accurate reporting, regardless of topic?
They didn't kill multiplayer. They killed sales of the game. Big difference. Multiplayer still works just fine and the game works exactly as it did when it was sold to the purchaser. Buyers still have exactly what they purchased.
The AC way back up in this thread was trying to suggest that because sales will drop off the multiplayer experience won't become what people had hoped, and he was using that to suggest that Valve owes people refunds, which is bunk.
Ehh, the issue was fixed in the public betas before Mashable had even published their story about it.
For a better writeup, check out MacRumors' reporting on it (which was published prior to Mashable's). They mention that the bug was reported to Apple on Monday and was fixed at some point between then and now, so Apple has had a pretty quick turnaround on this one. Even so, it remains to be seen whether these fixes will be published in a minor update prior to their next intended release, or whether we'll have to wait for iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 before we get the fixes, which would likely be next month.
Meanwhile, Mashable's reporting is lagging. While they've found the time to update their article to indicate they finally managed to reproduce the issue, they apparently haven't had the time to update it with the fact that the bug was fixed before they ever wrote a word about it.
Just cause the game "works" doesn't mean it's providing the experience they were sold.
Actually, it does. You keep suggesting that these customers were sold a multiplayer experience. They weren't. They were sold a game, and that's exactly what Valve gave them. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, they were promised a multiplayer experience, but that promise didn't come from Valve.
Whether the game lives up to its promise of delivering a particular multiplayer experience is the responsibility of the publisher. Moreover, if your ability to deliver on your promises depends on maintaining a relationship with a third-party, maybe you shouldn't go breaking the contractual terms under which that relationship operates, lest you fail to be able to deliver on your promises?
As for updates, what's stopping them from updating it? I've updated plenty of games I bought on Steam with third-party patches and mods. Is there some sort of magic preventing first-parties from updating their own games? I doubt it. All they've done is cut off their ability to easily update those copies, but they've hardly cut off the ability altogether. Besides which, even if they had cut it off, it's not difficult to verify whether someone has purchased a copy of your game, at which point you can simply give them a free copy of the game off of Steam, one which you have the ability to update.
Valve may choose to give these customers a refund, but they are under no obligation to do so (excepting those who qualify under their normal terms for a refund, of course). But if Insel made promises it can't keep? It may be on the hook for those refunds, and it'd need to figure out some way to honor them without Valve.
Let me push the reset button and see if I can get us back on the same page, since it's apparent that we're arguing orthogonal issues (and I think we may both be right).
The GP disagreed with this statement of mine:
[the redditor has] provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price
That's a statement of fact. Either the redditor did what I said or he didn't. There isn't a qualitative claim that the speaker sounds "better". There isn't a subjective claim that the speaker even sounds "good". There is only a factual assertion: it reproduces sound more accurately than another speaker. Making that distinction was a large part of my first post, in fact.
The GP (and you) have raised the very valid—but separate—point that the redditor's review is lacking because it's missing important details and measurements that are necessary to make a good assessment of whether the HomePod is a "decent audiophile product". I don't disagree with that, but that's unrelated to whether the redditor provided the evidence I claimed he did. The fact that he didn't provide evidence Y has no impact on the fact that he did provide evidence X.
Did the redditor provide evidence that the HomePod is a decent audiophile product? I agree with you in thinking that he didn't. Did he, however, provide the evidence I claimed he provided? I think that, yes, he very clearly did. As such, while the GP may have intended that last line as a continuation of his earlier points (i.e. what you just suggested), what he actually said was something quite different. As I said, it was a non sequitur to a completely different topic that he hadn't addressed in the least in his preceding comments.
Anyway, if he really intended it as you suggest, then I have no issue with it, nor with your agreement with him.
Huh. If only I had already said exactly that in my post. Oh, wait, I did!
Furthermore, little speakers cannot reproduce low frequencies at acceptable levels.
Agreed. I wasn’t addressing that point, nor was I attempting to suggest the speaker is defensible on every point.
Look, just because I think people are giving the device short shrift doesn’t mean I think it’s a perfect device or better than the devices it’s designed to emulate.
Yes, he has, and your assertion to the contrary is nothing more than denialism.
You either didn't read the GP's post, or you didn't read the Redditor's review. The review covers nothing of what was covered in the above post.
That’s the point. His false assertion is a non sequitur from everything that preceded it. His entire post is about whether the HomePod can achieve a decent stereo effect, which is a wholly unrelated topic from whether or not the redditor was correct, given that the redditor didn’t test stereo imaging in the first place. Nothing he said in any way contradicts or refutes a claim made by the redditor, so his claim that the redditor provided no evidence at all is, as I said, a complete non sequitur from everything else he said, and not backed up by any evidence.
Neither platform uses DLLs because they call their dynamically linked libraries something else. For instance, just as you’ll see.app instead of.exe on macOS, you’ll see.dylib instead of.dll. Same basic notion, different extension, same design that leaves it open to attack.
So, No, he has NOT 'provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.'.
Yes, he has, and your assertion to the contrary is nothing more than denialism. While you’re quite correct in arguing that having a flat response curve is not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to speakers, that doesn’t change what he provided evidence of. You can disagree with his methodology or you can disagree with the conclusions people are drawing from his evidence (and by all means feel free to do so, since I’ll be right there with you in agreement that many of them are way off-base), but I don’t see how you can suggest that he didn’t even provide the evidence at all.
It is trivial to get flat response - and few look for that as the only requirement, because it comes at the cost of other bad problems.
Getting a truly flat response is hardly the trivial task you make it out to be, but I do agree that it’s generally not desirable. Flat responses are great for people mastering tracks or doing mixing (which is where I was first exposed to them), but the general population is usually better served with the warmed up sound that’s more popular in audiophile circles. Accurate sound can be fatiguing to listen to for prolonged periods and sounds unpleasantly harsh to most people’s ears.
As for your claim that beam forming isn’t possible, why do you say that? It seems perfectly plausible to me. You’d simply rely on reflection instead of spatial separation to achieve distance.
Will the results be as good? By no means! I agree with you on that. Direct line sound with proper spatial separation is going to be far superior, but using reflections and then calculating the correct delays to account for those reflections (for their seven tweeters, incidentally, not six as you incorrectly stated) is still beam forming. Again, I already said, “I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup”, so I agree with your assertion that it will likely be a mess compared to real stereo. Even so, I stand by my remark that, “it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker”, which is a large chunk of the population.
I linked the Lightning one because it was the first link in the search results, but they make a standard 3.5mm jack version for the same price as well.
The rest of what you said is apparently in response to something else someone said? I was just pointing out a misunderstanding about product names. I wasn’t trying to make any sort of larger point.
Completely agree. That said, I think there's still room in a product space for a single speaker that tries to do it all. After all, not everyone has the space or inclination for a proper stereo setup. And you nailed the crux of the issue related to the "sweet spot" problem (which also holds true in a stereo setup, to be clear), but one advantage the HomePod has in that regard is that it may be possible to move the "sweet spot" without moving the speaker.
The HomePod uses an accelerometer to recognize when it's been moved so that it can recalculate its room correction, which it then does using whatever music happens to be playing, rather than needing to rely on control sounds. Put differently, the HomePod is capable of adjusting its room correction on the fly in response to changes in its environment.
The HomePod also has a circular array of six microphones and is already doing beamforming to pick up voices that are talking to it (i.e. similar to how passive sonar operates, it's delaying audio signals for mics closer to the voice's origin before combining those signals with ones further from the point of origin so as to produce an amplified vocal signal), which by all accounts works far better than any of the competing speakers in this space (e.g. one review mentioned that the reviewer spoke in a normal voice while grabbing something from the fridge in a different room while loud music was playing, and the HomePod understood them just fine).
But with that same microphone array and the ability to time things that accurately, the device should be capable of inferring a voice's location within a room. Direction and distance can be determined based on the order in which the voice arrived at each mic and the differences in timing of those arrivals. And if they had that, they could theoretically tailor the speaker's beamforming to aim the "sweet spot" at that particular location.
Mind you, this is all theory so far as I know, since they haven't confirmed any of it, and to make it work well it'd need some way to track you as you moved around, which they haven't suggested it can do. Even so, the concept of a speaker that is capable of ensuring that wherever you are is the best seat in the room is a neat one, and it may be something that a device like this could actually achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to subscribe to the misguided notion that this is a new or concerning development. It's not. The fact that Apple uses other cloud vendors as commodity services on which they build their own has been well documented for years and is even explicitly stated on a number of Apple's user-facing pages. For instance, Apple's Approach to Privacy page mentions in the section on iCloud:
If we use third-party vendors to store your information, we encrypt it and never give them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in our own data centers, so you can back up, sync, and share your iCloud data.
Apple hasn't exactly been shy about mentioning (in lectures, white papers, and other communications) that parts of iCloud have been built on top of S3 and Azure for the last several years. The only thing that changed recently is that they swapped Azure out for Google Cloud in some of their documentation, suggesting that Google likely outbid Microsoft the last time the contract came up for renewal. Given that Apple's cloud contracts are reported to be worth billions of dollars apiece, it's not exactly surprising that competition would be rather fierce and that Google would have been gunning for it.
As for your concerns over what the providers might do with Apple's data, as noted above, Apple is already encrypting the data at rest on those servers, but as a Slashdot reader you may want to dig your teeth into some more details. For people who are technically-minded, such as yourself, Apple has helpfully published an iOS Security Guide that does a decent job of explaining what all goes into their devices' security, including iCloud services that are used on their devices. It should be a relatively easy read for you, given that they've done a good job of taking deeply technical details and making them accessible in intermediate-level language. You'll quickly find that besides encrypting the data when it's at rest on third-party servers, they're also employing other techniques for securing their users' data, such as using end-to-end communication (with keys that they have no access to because they're always kept on-device) for a number of their services.
Aside from the technological means they've employed to secure their users' data that resides on others' servers, there's almost certainly also legal means that they're employing. With these contracts being worth as much as they are, Apple isn't simply clicking an "I Agree" button for a take-it-or-leave it Terms of Service that the rest of us have to agree to when we sign up with these providers. Rather, they're using teams of lawyers to negotiate one-off contracts with their cloud service providers...contracts which will no doubt make the lives of those providers hell should they ever try to misuse Apple's data. After all, that's how contracts between competitors tend to work.
All of which is to say, while I don't have any expectation that anyone here will rise above the standard of petty tribalism and glib comments, this site is at its best when it manages to do so. There are plenty of valid complaints to make against Apple, but flippant aspersions based on a lack of understanding about widely employed business practices that have been in use by them for years without issue is not the way to do it.
Nonsense! It gives us an opportunity to shake our fists while saying, “Damn you, climate change! What won’t you destroy?”
That’s time well spent, right there.
There is some of that, sure, but they actually have a point hidden in the doublespeak.
For instance, in the case of the touch sensors used by iPhones, they’re uniquely paired with the rest of the hardware via cryptographic keys, ensuring that if a bad actor ever tried to replace the sensor with one that would grant them unfettered access the rest of the iPhone would refuse to play along.
The problem, however, is that this trade organization is trying to suggest it’s an either-or problem when it isn’t.
If a user wants to replace their touch sensor without going through Apple, they should be able to do so! The cryptographic keys shouldn’t prevent them from doing so, and Apple, thankfully, has backed off on their previous stance that caused that iPhones using third-party sensors to cease working. That said, if a user chooses to do so outside of Apple and enters their password to confirm that they accept the use of an untrusted part, they also accept the responsibility for vetting that part themselves, which few of them are likely to ever do. As such, they are indeed opening themselves up to a variety of potential security vulnerabilities.
All of which is to say, if a user is buying from a particular manufacturer, they clearly trust that manufacturer, and I’m fine with a manufacturer taking steps to ensure that trust is well-placed, but if a user wants to take that responsibility on themselves, let ‘em. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
The author was speaking specifically of software patents. Shark Tank entrepreneurs rarely if ever have those. The patents you usually see on Shark Tank are utility patents on a physical invention of some sort.
As I recall, Apple typically reports sell through, not shipments.
I think you’re misremembering a bit. Apple had only two product lines in 2005: Mac and iPod, and they were just as tight-lipped with details back then. Analysts would beg for Mac numbers to be broken out in more detail, and the only reason they eventually gave up on those requests was because the Mac stopped mattering as much to Apple’s bottom line.
The reddit post on which I presume you’re basing your claims about response and distortion has been thoroughly debunked. You don’t need to be spending that much per speaker. Not even close.
I too prefer dumb speakers, but for different reasons than you:
1) For the sound quality, they're almost assuredly cheaper.
2) In the tech industry's timescale, they essentially never become obsolete.
Most of the smart speakers either sound like crap or else sound far worse than comparably priced dumb speakers. Even if you buy into the HomePod hype, unless you're hopelessly technologically illiterate or you have no way to fit a stereo set in your home, why pay $350 for a device that simulates stereo when you can have actual stereo from better speakers for the same price? Toss in a wireless receiver with a wired output and you'll have better wireless compatibility than what the HomePod has, without any of the lock-in to AirPlay or Apple's ecosystem.
On the other side, my parents have had the same speakers since before I was born (34 years ago). The speakers still work just fine. The dumb speakers I have today will—barring an accident—still be working just fine when the kid I have on the way is as old as I am today. Even if the world were to switch entirely to wireless or those wireless protocols were to change, I could simply swap out the aforementioned wireless receiver with a different one. Meanwhile, if I had bought into the HomePod or Alexa or whatever, I'd have to scrap the entire speaker to get on the new protocol.
No thanks.
If nothing else, the ones that are staking their name on sound quality at least need to give me a line in jack. Until then, so far as I'm concerned, they're smart accessories, not smart speakers.
According to earlier reports, they can’t patch it. The problem is in the SoC itself, meaning they’d need to a new hardware revision in order to issue a “patch”. Any existing Switches are, and will forever be, exploitable by this tactic.
Just for a sec, you’ve no doubt heard “Bros” having a conversation where every benign statement is turned into a sexual innuendo. I’ve stumbled into those conversations at various points in my life and have quickly discovered just how easily my words can be twisted to have meanings that are completely contrary to what I intended. It’s a frustrating, demeaning experience. We rightly condemn that sort of immature, offensive culture.
Well, this is the exact same problem, but on the other end of the spectrum.
Instead of twisting everything into a sexual innuendo, this “hair trigger” culture twists every benign statement into an offense. They deny through their actions that the listener shares a responsibility to not seek out offense. They reject having the patience and tolerance necessary to push past what was said so that they can understand what was intended to be said, ensuring that communication WILL break down. They exclude people dissimilar to themselves, ensuring they will never understand those others. They insist on legislating speech so that anyone who wants to communicate with them must do so on their terms, which they then use as an excuse to blame everyone else for the misunderstandings that inevitably occur. They’re like children who invented their own language and then insist that you speak to them in it.
Having conversations with these people is just as frustrating and just as demeaning as having a conversation with the Bros, and while their motivations may be less degrading, their twisting of words is just as worthy of condemnation.
Even when you have two “good” people talking, there are numerous opportunities for each to be offended. Whether they will or won’t be isn’t something you can legislate; it’s just part of being an adult. Moreover, any attempt to legislate acceptable speech will inevitably fail because the target is constantly moving. That’s why sane policies are based on principles, not rules.
I neither attacked a person nor an idea. I was merely observing that his ability to post as an AC is only possible thanks to the very thing he is attacking. If you viewed those idle observations as an attack, that might suggest something about your own biases.
But if an attack is what you're looking for, I'm happy to oblige.
1) The AC incorrectly believes that the Constitution "guarantees" our rights. It doesn't. Nor does it grant us our rights. Rather, it provides a non-exhaustive enumeration of rights that we already have. As such, if an additional right is necessary to exercise the ones that are enumerated, then that additional right must necessarily be one that we already have as well.
2) The AC is correct in suggesting that the Constitution and its amendments do not explicitly enumerate a right to privacy, but they nonetheless make it clear that we have one anyway because without one it is impossible to exercise rights that are explicitly enumerated.
3) Specifically, the Supreme Court has routinely disagreed with the AC's interpretation of the Constitution and has made it clear that the right to privacy can be found in multiple places in the Constitution, including the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Ninth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, or some combination thereof.
4) Furthermore, the AC is attempting to argue what ought to be—a topic of morality—by bringing up Constitutionality—a topic of legality. That's like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Our laws exist to serve us, not the other way around, so inasmuch as they come up short of what they ought to be, they should be amended. If we value the ability to post anonymously and believe that it is something we ought to have, not just on Slashdot, but in wider social circles as we engage in discourse that may be unpopular, that would suggest that we should have the right to privacy, regardless of its current Constitutionality.
5) The very act of posting as AC to voice an unpopular opinion is an argument in support of the moral necessity for the right to privacy.
There’s some irony in an AC arguing that there’s no right to privacy.
I wonder, would you feel as comfortable stating your unpopular opinion if your account’s reputation was on the line?
Can you update via USB without wiping the phone?
I can't say with certainty. I know it's possible to update via USB under normal circumstances, and I know it's possible to use DFU mode when you're stuck in a reboot loop, but DFU mode will leave you with a wiped phone, so far as I know. It might be possible to clear the notification in some other way, but I admit I don't know how that'd be done.
That said, for any normal users encountering this issue, they're likely to be fine. The default behavior once an iPhone user sets up an iCloud account is to enable iCloud Backups for their iPhone. In the few times I've used iCloud backups (e.g. switching my wife to a newer iPhone), it's had the phone back up and running in a matter of minutes. Most people seem to have it enabled, with geeks who prefer using encrypted iTunes backups being the only big exception I've seen.
Apple has now confirmed that the fixes they have in the public betas will be rolled out as minor releases for the current versions of iOS and macOS, rather than being kept for the next big release of each.
As for Mashable's reporting? Still lousy. They finally updated their article with the information it was missing at the time it was originally published, but then they went and added that "the fix will slowly roll out to older software", suggesting that the current versions won't get the fix until after the betas are released, even though the iMore article they linked as a source for that info says nothing of the sort. Quite the contrary, iMore's editor-in-chief is saying Apple will roll the fixes out before the betas are released.
Why is Slashdot using Mashable as a source when pretty much anyone else has more timely and accurate reporting, regardless of topic?
They didn't kill multiplayer. They killed sales of the game. Big difference. Multiplayer still works just fine and the game works exactly as it did when it was sold to the purchaser. Buyers still have exactly what they purchased.
The AC way back up in this thread was trying to suggest that because sales will drop off the multiplayer experience won't become what people had hoped, and he was using that to suggest that Valve owes people refunds, which is bunk.
Ehh, the issue was fixed in the public betas before Mashable had even published their story about it.
For a better writeup, check out MacRumors' reporting on it (which was published prior to Mashable's). They mention that the bug was reported to Apple on Monday and was fixed at some point between then and now, so Apple has had a pretty quick turnaround on this one. Even so, it remains to be seen whether these fixes will be published in a minor update prior to their next intended release, or whether we'll have to wait for iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 before we get the fixes, which would likely be next month.
Meanwhile, Mashable's reporting is lagging. While they've found the time to update their article to indicate they finally managed to reproduce the issue, they apparently haven't had the time to update it with the fact that the bug was fixed before they ever wrote a word about it.
Just cause the game "works" doesn't mean it's providing the experience they were sold.
Actually, it does. You keep suggesting that these customers were sold a multiplayer experience. They weren't. They were sold a game, and that's exactly what Valve gave them. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, they were promised a multiplayer experience, but that promise didn't come from Valve.
Whether the game lives up to its promise of delivering a particular multiplayer experience is the responsibility of the publisher. Moreover, if your ability to deliver on your promises depends on maintaining a relationship with a third-party, maybe you shouldn't go breaking the contractual terms under which that relationship operates, lest you fail to be able to deliver on your promises?
As for updates, what's stopping them from updating it? I've updated plenty of games I bought on Steam with third-party patches and mods. Is there some sort of magic preventing first-parties from updating their own games? I doubt it. All they've done is cut off their ability to easily update those copies, but they've hardly cut off the ability altogether. Besides which, even if they had cut it off, it's not difficult to verify whether someone has purchased a copy of your game, at which point you can simply give them a free copy of the game off of Steam, one which you have the ability to update.
Valve may choose to give these customers a refund, but they are under no obligation to do so (excepting those who qualify under their normal terms for a refund, of course). But if Insel made promises it can't keep? It may be on the hook for those refunds, and it'd need to figure out some way to honor them without Valve.
Let me push the reset button and see if I can get us back on the same page, since it's apparent that we're arguing orthogonal issues (and I think we may both be right).
The GP disagreed with this statement of mine:
[the redditor has] provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price
That's a statement of fact. Either the redditor did what I said or he didn't. There isn't a qualitative claim that the speaker sounds "better". There isn't a subjective claim that the speaker even sounds "good". There is only a factual assertion: it reproduces sound more accurately than another speaker. Making that distinction was a large part of my first post, in fact.
The GP (and you) have raised the very valid—but separate—point that the redditor's review is lacking because it's missing important details and measurements that are necessary to make a good assessment of whether the HomePod is a "decent audiophile product". I don't disagree with that, but that's unrelated to whether the redditor provided the evidence I claimed he did. The fact that he didn't provide evidence Y has no impact on the fact that he did provide evidence X.
Did the redditor provide evidence that the HomePod is a decent audiophile product? I agree with you in thinking that he didn't. Did he, however, provide the evidence I claimed he provided? I think that, yes, he very clearly did. As such, while the GP may have intended that last line as a continuation of his earlier points (i.e. what you just suggested), what he actually said was something quite different. As I said, it was a non sequitur to a completely different topic that he hadn't addressed in the least in his preceding comments.
Anyway, if he really intended it as you suggest, then I have no issue with it, nor with your agreement with him.
Apparently I did. I stand corrected. They're $159, not $179.
No single speaker system can compare with two
Huh. If only I had already said exactly that in my post. Oh, wait, I did!
Furthermore, little speakers cannot reproduce low frequencies at acceptable levels.
Agreed. I wasn’t addressing that point, nor was I attempting to suggest the speaker is defensible on every point.
Look, just because I think people are giving the device short shrift doesn’t mean I think it’s a perfect device or better than the devices it’s designed to emulate.
Yes, he has, and your assertion to the contrary is nothing more than denialism.
You either didn't read the GP's post, or you didn't read the Redditor's review. The review covers nothing of what was covered in the above post.
That’s the point. His false assertion is a non sequitur from everything that preceded it. His entire post is about whether the HomePod can achieve a decent stereo effect, which is a wholly unrelated topic from whether or not the redditor was correct, given that the redditor didn’t test stereo imaging in the first place. Nothing he said in any way contradicts or refutes a claim made by the redditor, so his claim that the redditor provided no evidence at all is, as I said, a complete non sequitur from everything else he said, and not backed up by any evidence.
Neither platform uses DLLs because they call their dynamically linked libraries something else. For instance, just as you’ll see .app instead of .exe on macOS, you’ll see .dylib instead of .dll. Same basic notion, different extension, same design that leaves it open to attack.
So, No, he has NOT 'provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.' .
Yes, he has, and your assertion to the contrary is nothing more than denialism. While you’re quite correct in arguing that having a flat response curve is not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to speakers, that doesn’t change what he provided evidence of. You can disagree with his methodology or you can disagree with the conclusions people are drawing from his evidence (and by all means feel free to do so, since I’ll be right there with you in agreement that many of them are way off-base), but I don’t see how you can suggest that he didn’t even provide the evidence at all.
It is trivial to get flat response - and few look for that as the only requirement, because it comes at the cost of other bad problems.
Getting a truly flat response is hardly the trivial task you make it out to be, but I do agree that it’s generally not desirable. Flat responses are great for people mastering tracks or doing mixing (which is where I was first exposed to them), but the general population is usually better served with the warmed up sound that’s more popular in audiophile circles. Accurate sound can be fatiguing to listen to for prolonged periods and sounds unpleasantly harsh to most people’s ears.
As for your claim that beam forming isn’t possible, why do you say that? It seems perfectly plausible to me. You’d simply rely on reflection instead of spatial separation to achieve distance.
Will the results be as good? By no means! I agree with you on that. Direct line sound with proper spatial separation is going to be far superior, but using reflections and then calculating the correct delays to account for those reflections (for their seven tweeters, incidentally, not six as you incorrectly stated) is still beam forming. Again, I already said, “I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup”, so I agree with your assertion that it will likely be a mess compared to real stereo. Even so, I stand by my remark that, “it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker”, which is a large chunk of the population.
I linked the Lightning one because it was the first link in the search results, but they make a standard 3.5mm jack version for the same price as well.
The rest of what you said is apparently in response to something else someone said? I was just pointing out a misunderstanding about product names. I wasn’t trying to make any sort of larger point.
Completely agree. That said, I think there's still room in a product space for a single speaker that tries to do it all. After all, not everyone has the space or inclination for a proper stereo setup. And you nailed the crux of the issue related to the "sweet spot" problem (which also holds true in a stereo setup, to be clear), but one advantage the HomePod has in that regard is that it may be possible to move the "sweet spot" without moving the speaker.
The HomePod uses an accelerometer to recognize when it's been moved so that it can recalculate its room correction, which it then does using whatever music happens to be playing, rather than needing to rely on control sounds. Put differently, the HomePod is capable of adjusting its room correction on the fly in response to changes in its environment.
The HomePod also has a circular array of six microphones and is already doing beamforming to pick up voices that are talking to it (i.e. similar to how passive sonar operates, it's delaying audio signals for mics closer to the voice's origin before combining those signals with ones further from the point of origin so as to produce an amplified vocal signal), which by all accounts works far better than any of the competing speakers in this space (e.g. one review mentioned that the reviewer spoke in a normal voice while grabbing something from the fridge in a different room while loud music was playing, and the HomePod understood them just fine).
But with that same microphone array and the ability to time things that accurately, the device should be capable of inferring a voice's location within a room. Direction and distance can be determined based on the order in which the voice arrived at each mic and the differences in timing of those arrivals. And if they had that, they could theoretically tailor the speaker's beamforming to aim the "sweet spot" at that particular location.
Mind you, this is all theory so far as I know, since they haven't confirmed any of it, and to make it work well it'd need some way to track you as you moved around, which they haven't suggested it can do. Even so, the concept of a speaker that is capable of ensuring that wherever you are is the best seat in the room is a neat one, and it may be something that a device like this could actually achieve.