A couple things to consider. Not that I'm trying to defend facebook, i'm not. But:
1) No one should ever think that their VPN can't see their traffic. They can. But they can prevent outside observers from seeing your traffic. I can use a VPN to prevent comcast from keeping logs on me, or when at the coffee shop on their crappy open wifi so that the rest of the patrons can't see what I'm doing.
2) Even though we're thinking that this app is only for those of us in the West, their VPN COULD (and, I repeat, could - not will) provide a way for people in more locked down countries to access the rest of the web. But that's only if Facebook actually keeps their VPN logs from the authorities.
Whether they would say "Hey, we're Facebook China, you can't demand that we provide logs from Onavo Protect, which is governed by the laws of California" - that's a different story.
But anyone in the Europe, their VPN is a downgrade. Anyone in the US, it's probably negligible. But people in more locked down countries could see benefit, but only if FB is offering it to provide them a benefit and not just try to vacuum up even more info.
But then you have to trust that the issuer of your virtual currency actually has the means to back it.
Rather than just trade tokens which are valued for being the tokens that they are, you're trading tokens which COULD be worth what they say they're worth, but they also could not be worth what they're said to be worth.
It's like depository reciepts from banks in the 1800's. You put gold in. You got a ticket. You can spend the ticket. But can you really turn in the ticket to get your gold back? A pegged currency is akin to that, I think.
The world has many currencies and things work fine. Software that functions with dollars works with euros. And you exchange when you go to a "zone" (country) that uses that currency. No reason a brand new currency needs to be pegged to an existing currency. The issue is that there will be a huge amount of value created seemingly out of thin air. How to account for it? By expending electricity? By sending dollars to a company who says they'll keep them safe for you? Unless it's the Federal Reserve or a suitably capitalized institution, tether being that credible of a custodian for too long. I could be wrong, though. I'vebeen wrong on lots of things before.
All I'm saying is that putting aside the libertarian thing is fine. But there's no reason a borderless currency should be pegged in value to any national currency. So if you accept that, then you need to accept that it'll take the "market" time to figure out how to value this new currency.
I fully agree that Bitcoin is not it, though. And its holders, I mean, HODLers accept that too, many refuse to actually spend it, use it as a currency, and just refer to it as digital gold, and are fine with a payment network with crushing fees. That's fine. They were first to market, but they'll lose the race probably. I think a new one (or maybe on the already existing ones) will arise that is built for transacting, and will attract people who want to transact rather than attempt to hoard or get rich quick. But alas, we're still in the wild west days, people staking claims all over in hope that they'll strike it rich. Soon, I hope people change their mindset and try to build a new economy or economic engine. But that'll take time.
The summary makes it sound like exchanges are holding Tethers as part of their reserves.
Why would they do so? What advantage is there to holding a cryptocurrency pegged at $1, to just holding dollars, especially since when your clients cash out, they are also asking for dollars?
Side note, it shouldn't be that difficult to get and audit done to make sure they have sufficient backing for the currency they issued. Just a quick print out of a bunch of bank statements, or perhaps brokerage statements showing T-Bill holdings is all it would take.
As someone who just quit smoking in favor of vaping, yes, nicotine isn't the only thing that keeps you smoking. I think its the combination of nicotine AND the activity itself. Because I've NEVER been able to quite using nicotine replacement (patches, gum, lozenges) or just trying to divert my attention to other things (fiddling with things, etc). But the combination of nicotine AND an activity has done it, and broken the smoking cycle for me.
Right now i'm at 12mg of nicotine juice. Some friends have said "you should start cutting back on that", but for now, I'm not going to mess with it. Maybe a year down the road, I'll try to lower the nicotine intake, but for now, i'm more than happy. Physically, it's better. I was stunned when i started smelling things that I had missed out on for years. Who ever would have thought you'd smell gasoline at gas stations? I was looking for a spill or leak, but then realized "oh, i can smell again!". And, being in a high tax state, rather than spending $80 a week on cigarettes, I'm getting by with $6-$8 worth of nicotine juice.
I hadn't been able to achieve this in any other way but through vaping.
As a long time smoker who switch to vaping, I think these are fantastic inventions from a harm reduction standpoint. As far as I've read, it's a far safer nicotine delivery system than inhaling burning plant products and by products, not to mention the hundreds of additives used for flavoring and to insure even burning, and I'm happy as a clam that I switched.
That said.
Who asked these scientists to study whether nicotine (a chemical we already know is addictive) is still addictive when inhaled as a vapor rather than in smoke? Of course it is.
Next issue is all these vape shops selling their wares to everyone in the world, including varieties with 0 nicotine. Sure, there might be a small market of smokers who have successfully weaned themselves down to 0mg of nicotine. But the far bigger market is likely kids who aren't nicotine dependent at all, and are just vaping because it's cool. Just like they used to start smoking. So, get them started on 0mg, and you've got customers. If they graduate to the nicotine versions, then you have even more lock-in.
In my mind, these should be considered medical devices and sold at pharmacies to people who are smokers, not to the millions of adolescents that are just attracted because of the cool clouds of smoke. But, of course, if these were only sold at pharmacies, we wouldn't have the wide variety of flavorings... Probably just a few knockoff tobacco flavors and a few knock off menthol flavors.
TLDR 1: Of course nicotine is addictive.
TLDR 2: Yes. We should have a discussion about responsible marketing of these devices. That'll never happen, though. Or it'll happen so hard and they'll clamp down so much that we'll all be pushed back into the waiting arms of the tobacco companies.
Amazon, Google, etc. They all launch a service, get people to use it, but not enough people, and then pull the plug.
I have Apple Cloud, whatever its called, for music storage, myself. And it's great, I can stream or pull down my music anywhere I go. But I still need to keep it on my computer (don't save any space), out of fear that they might pull the plug one day. Or just have a server crash.
These companies shouldn't just arbitrarily end services like these. If they have a lot of users, at least put the service up for bids from other developers or companies to take it over.
If we have someone if office that broke the law, we shouldn't leave them in out of fear that their successor's policies are worse. That makes it even more political. If they did something wrong, they did something wrong, that's it. Not "it's illegal, but we'll selectively not enforce the law because..."
IS it the "lefts" fault for forcing people out of jobs after they've been abusing the power bestowed on them? Or is it the fault of the people doing those actions?
Whatever happened to "personal responsibility", which used to be the mantra of the right? Oh, that's gone...
Lawsuits are the punishment to insure they're doing their jobs correctly.
There aren't any "successful treatment lawsuits", but there are "malpractice" lawsuits galore.
Here is the definition of Malpractice from Dictionary.com:
Law. failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, especially when injury or loss follows.
Should I go on and look up "reprehensible", "ignorance", "negligence", and "injury" for you?
"we need more security... now move it all onto the cloud"
What's really ironic is given Trumps hatred of Jeff Bezos, he's basically demanding the government start spending billions and billions on Amazon's offerings. Perhaps no one alerted him to this?
I still have an ATV2, which had Youtube until it disappeared from the home screen...
No matter. Apparently, at the time I typed this, Amazon and Apple came around to my viewpoint, and Amazon has made a Prime App for the Apple TV 4. You can thank me later, meanwhile, my conundrum about which little black box to buy got easier.
They're both for Net Neutrality. But they're also both for the DCMA act, which allows them to pull this stuff.
Let's not forget, both Amazon and Google don't have their applications on Apple TV. Which is incredibly lame, since they both have free downloads for iOS, which is what Apple TV runs, a variant of it at least. But they both said "F the customers". They have no problem offering their apps on the iPhone, but won't offer the same exact apps for Apple TV unless they can get different terms. It's only us that suffer by this meaningless battle.
I'm not buying a Google device. Although I much prefer having youtube than not, I already have small libraries in both Amazon and Apple, I'm not about to add a third entity.
Nah, things like Colbert, Daily Show, Morning Show, etc, are all on YouTube if you can stand to watch with a little delay. I always start out the night with Youtube to catch up the days news and commentary, and the previous nights laughs. Then I might go looking for something interesting on Netflix. If there's nothing there, I then need decide whether I want to look for something on Amazon and stay in the living room thanks to the Roku, or check out Apples offerings on their little black box in my bedroom.
All I want is a box to plug into my TV to watch my media. I don't want to have to worry about who I bought the media from.
Currently, I have an Apple TV. I'm fine if my Music stays apple-only, but since Apple Music is available for Android, I feel like that's portable enough. Which leaves me with video.
I do Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. I used to do Youtube on the Apple TV, and still can (last I checked) by running the app on my phone and streaming THAT to my Apple TV.
There is no combination of devices that allows me to play all 3 vendors' material. Roku might be the closest.
I think these giants are all dropping the ball here, and perhaps they oughtn't not be the ones selling the media. Why can't the studios sell media licenses directly, so that if I buy a WB or Miramax movie, I can play it on ANY device with a WB or Miramax player, which they could then develop for Roku, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. I guess that's the Model HBO is taking actually. I'm just sick of these disputes, where Company X wants to make money from selling someone elses content, and therefor moves to cripple its competitor by NOT letting it play the same content (even though that content is available for it on another App), etc.
It's just getting beyond frustrating, for us consumers.
I'd say follow Apple's lead and make the money off your hardware, but given that Apple won't let Amazon onto the Apple TV unless they get their slice of in-app purchases, that's not the way either.
These movie studios need to realize that consumers would be happy as hell to buy from them without the middle man, and wind up with media purchases that are portable across platforms. That seems like the only real solution.
As a current iPhone owner of a somewhat older model (5S), I'm torn between going with a 6S or 7 in the future. Should the 8 arrive and be within the "regular" iPhone price range, my debate will change to whether to get a 7 or 8. If it arrives at the $1200 price range, no matter what cool new features it offers, it would probably be uninteresting until software developers actually wrote stuff to take advantage of the new features. Meaning, I'd just assume wait til the iPhone 9 arrives, so that software is available, and (presumably) the part shortages the author alludes to would be remedied.
But somewhere I read that Apple refuses to use a part in their phone unless they can obtain them from two independent sources. Makes me think the scenario that the author alludes to wouldn't occur at all. Yes, Apple sells pricey gear, but they're in the "pricey but reasonable" area, in order to maximize both sales and profits. Going all in on price to the exclusion of sales at all, that would be a reversion to the tactics of the 80's/90's which saw them in doom and gloom mode...
My late 2013 MBP with retina is still serving me just fine... At least, when i look at each new batch that comes out, I don't see any compelling reason to upgrade... Well, no... there is an upgrade path, but it involves going Dell and Ubuntu.
Sad that its 2017 and Apple can't deliver a knockout punch to its own 2013 tech.
WHat'd the latest round bring? Touchbar and removal of all ports except USB C... I"m sure those were features everyone in the world was dying for...
I came here to say something like that. Read the headline and was like "altbaba? really?"
Lets see... names of some successful tech companies:
Google Apple Netflix eBay Tesla Slashdot:) Reddit Cloudflare
Two syllables is the charm.
3?
IBM Microsoft
more?
Hewlett Packard
I know, I missed gazillions of them, but just saying Altbaba doesn't exactly roll of the tongue. Even "The corpse of a company formerly known as Yahoo" has more cachet than "Altbaba".
We view everything in the past and describe it as if we saw it in real time. Only difference is, the light from the tree falling in front of me only took 20 nanoseconds to reach my eyes. Still, I just say "that tree just fell", not "that tree fell 20 nanoseconds ago and I just witnessed it now"
"Even if you estimate that they average a measly $15/hr with their autonomous cars, working an average of 20 hours per day, 50 weeks/yr, that's $105,000 per year. I think that's what they call profitable."
Slashdot Mirror
Got ya beat.
What are you going on about? Geez.
Kids these days...
A couple things to consider. Not that I'm trying to defend facebook, i'm not. But:
1) No one should ever think that their VPN can't see their traffic. They can. But they can prevent outside observers from seeing your traffic. I can use a VPN to prevent comcast from keeping logs on me, or when at the coffee shop on their crappy open wifi so that the rest of the patrons can't see what I'm doing.
2) Even though we're thinking that this app is only for those of us in the West, their VPN COULD (and, I repeat, could - not will) provide a way for people in more locked down countries to access the rest of the web. But that's only if Facebook actually keeps their VPN logs from the authorities.
Whether they would say "Hey, we're Facebook China, you can't demand that we provide logs from Onavo Protect, which is governed by the laws of California" - that's a different story.
But anyone in the Europe, their VPN is a downgrade. Anyone in the US, it's probably negligible. But people in more locked down countries could see benefit, but only if FB is offering it to provide them a benefit and not just try to vacuum up even more info.
But then you have to trust that the issuer of your virtual currency actually has the means to back it.
Rather than just trade tokens which are valued for being the tokens that they are, you're trading tokens which COULD be worth what they say they're worth, but they also could not be worth what they're said to be worth.
It's like depository reciepts from banks in the 1800's. You put gold in. You got a ticket. You can spend the ticket. But can you really turn in the ticket to get your gold back? A pegged currency is akin to that, I think.
The world has many currencies and things work fine. Software that functions with dollars works with euros. And you exchange when you go to a "zone" (country) that uses that currency. No reason a brand new currency needs to be pegged to an existing currency. The issue is that there will be a huge amount of value created seemingly out of thin air. How to account for it? By expending electricity? By sending dollars to a company who says they'll keep them safe for you? Unless it's the Federal Reserve or a suitably capitalized institution, tether being that credible of a custodian for too long. I could be wrong, though. I'vebeen wrong on lots of things before.
All I'm saying is that putting aside the libertarian thing is fine. But there's no reason a borderless currency should be pegged in value to any national currency. So if you accept that, then you need to accept that it'll take the "market" time to figure out how to value this new currency.
I fully agree that Bitcoin is not it, though. And its holders, I mean, HODLers accept that too, many refuse to actually spend it, use it as a currency, and just refer to it as digital gold, and are fine with a payment network with crushing fees. That's fine. They were first to market, but they'll lose the race probably. I think a new one (or maybe on the already existing ones) will arise that is built for transacting, and will attract people who want to transact rather than attempt to hoard or get rich quick. But alas, we're still in the wild west days, people staking claims all over in hope that they'll strike it rich. Soon, I hope people change their mindset and try to build a new economy or economic engine. But that'll take time.
Did they spontaneously cry censorship? Or did they fall for another troll campaign? I really want to know...
The summary makes it sound like exchanges are holding Tethers as part of their reserves.
Why would they do so? What advantage is there to holding a cryptocurrency pegged at $1, to just holding dollars, especially since when your clients cash out, they are also asking for dollars?
Side note, it shouldn't be that difficult to get and audit done to make sure they have sufficient backing for the currency they issued. Just a quick print out of a bunch of bank statements, or perhaps brokerage statements showing T-Bill holdings is all it would take.
As someone who just quit smoking in favor of vaping, yes, nicotine isn't the only thing that keeps you smoking. I think its the combination of nicotine AND the activity itself. Because I've NEVER been able to quite using nicotine replacement (patches, gum, lozenges) or just trying to divert my attention to other things (fiddling with things, etc). But the combination of nicotine AND an activity has done it, and broken the smoking cycle for me.
Right now i'm at 12mg of nicotine juice. Some friends have said "you should start cutting back on that", but for now, I'm not going to mess with it. Maybe a year down the road, I'll try to lower the nicotine intake, but for now, i'm more than happy. Physically, it's better. I was stunned when i started smelling things that I had missed out on for years. Who ever would have thought you'd smell gasoline at gas stations? I was looking for a spill or leak, but then realized "oh, i can smell again!". And, being in a high tax state, rather than spending $80 a week on cigarettes, I'm getting by with $6-$8 worth of nicotine juice.
I hadn't been able to achieve this in any other way but through vaping.
As a long time smoker who switch to vaping, I think these are fantastic inventions from a harm reduction standpoint. As far as I've read, it's a far safer nicotine delivery system than inhaling burning plant products and by products, not to mention the hundreds of additives used for flavoring and to insure even burning, and I'm happy as a clam that I switched.
That said.
Who asked these scientists to study whether nicotine (a chemical we already know is addictive) is still addictive when inhaled as a vapor rather than in smoke? Of course it is.
Next issue is all these vape shops selling their wares to everyone in the world, including varieties with 0 nicotine. Sure, there might be a small market of smokers who have successfully weaned themselves down to 0mg of nicotine. But the far bigger market is likely kids who aren't nicotine dependent at all, and are just vaping because it's cool. Just like they used to start smoking. So, get them started on 0mg, and you've got customers. If they graduate to the nicotine versions, then you have even more lock-in.
In my mind, these should be considered medical devices and sold at pharmacies to people who are smokers, not to the millions of adolescents that are just attracted because of the cool clouds of smoke. But, of course, if these were only sold at pharmacies, we wouldn't have the wide variety of flavorings... Probably just a few knockoff tobacco flavors and a few knock off menthol flavors.
TLDR 1: Of course nicotine is addictive.
TLDR 2: Yes. We should have a discussion about responsible marketing of these devices. That'll never happen, though. Or it'll happen so hard and they'll clamp down so much that we'll all be pushed back into the waiting arms of the tobacco companies.
Amazon, Google, etc. They all launch a service, get people to use it, but not enough people, and then pull the plug.
I have Apple Cloud, whatever its called, for music storage, myself. And it's great, I can stream or pull down my music anywhere I go. But I still need to keep it on my computer (don't save any space), out of fear that they might pull the plug one day. Or just have a server crash.
These companies shouldn't just arbitrarily end services like these. If they have a lot of users, at least put the service up for bids from other developers or companies to take it over.
If we have someone if office that broke the law, we shouldn't leave them in out of fear that their successor's policies are worse. That makes it even more political. If they did something wrong, they did something wrong, that's it. Not "it's illegal, but we'll selectively not enforce the law because..."
IS it the "lefts" fault for forcing people out of jobs after they've been abusing the power bestowed on them? Or is it the fault of the people doing those actions?
Whatever happened to "personal responsibility", which used to be the mantra of the right? Oh, that's gone...
Lawsuits are the punishment to insure they're doing their jobs correctly.
There aren't any "successful treatment lawsuits", but there are "malpractice" lawsuits galore.
Here is the definition of Malpractice from Dictionary.com:
Law. failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, especially when injury or loss follows.
Should I go on and look up "reprehensible", "ignorance", "negligence", and "injury" for you?
Your solution is to not require medicines get vigorously tested before being prescribed?
Or to not be able to sue the bejesus out of the surgeon who accidentally amputates the wrong leg?
"we need more security... now move it all onto the cloud"
What's really ironic is given Trumps hatred of Jeff Bezos, he's basically demanding the government start spending billions and billions on Amazon's offerings. Perhaps no one alerted him to this?
I still have an ATV2, which had Youtube until it disappeared from the home screen...
No matter. Apparently, at the time I typed this, Amazon and Apple came around to my viewpoint, and Amazon has made a Prime App for the Apple TV 4. You can thank me later, meanwhile, my conundrum about which little black box to buy got easier.
They're both for Net Neutrality. But they're also both for the DCMA act, which allows them to pull this stuff.
Let's not forget, both Amazon and Google don't have their applications on Apple TV. Which is incredibly lame, since they both have free downloads for iOS, which is what Apple TV runs, a variant of it at least. But they both said "F the customers". They have no problem offering their apps on the iPhone, but won't offer the same exact apps for Apple TV unless they can get different terms. It's only us that suffer by this meaningless battle.
I'm not buying a Google device. Although I much prefer having youtube than not, I already have small libraries in both Amazon and Apple, I'm not about to add a third entity.
Nah, things like Colbert, Daily Show, Morning Show, etc, are all on YouTube if you can stand to watch with a little delay. I always start out the night with Youtube to catch up the days news and commentary, and the previous nights laughs. Then I might go looking for something interesting on Netflix. If there's nothing there, I then need decide whether I want to look for something on Amazon and stay in the living room thanks to the Roku, or check out Apples offerings on their little black box in my bedroom.
IT's really getting maddening.
All I want is a box to plug into my TV to watch my media. I don't want to have to worry about who I bought the media from.
Currently, I have an Apple TV. I'm fine if my Music stays apple-only, but since Apple Music is available for Android, I feel like that's portable enough. Which leaves me with video.
I do Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. I used to do Youtube on the Apple TV, and still can (last I checked) by running the app on my phone and streaming THAT to my Apple TV.
There is no combination of devices that allows me to play all 3 vendors' material. Roku might be the closest.
I think these giants are all dropping the ball here, and perhaps they oughtn't not be the ones selling the media. Why can't the studios sell media licenses directly, so that if I buy a WB or Miramax movie, I can play it on ANY device with a WB or Miramax player, which they could then develop for Roku, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. I guess that's the Model HBO is taking actually. I'm just sick of these disputes, where Company X wants to make money from selling someone elses content, and therefor moves to cripple its competitor by NOT letting it play the same content (even though that content is available for it on another App), etc.
It's just getting beyond frustrating, for us consumers.
I'd say follow Apple's lead and make the money off your hardware, but given that Apple won't let Amazon onto the Apple TV unless they get their slice of in-app purchases, that's not the way either.
These movie studios need to realize that consumers would be happy as hell to buy from them without the middle man, and wind up with media purchases that are portable across platforms. That seems like the only real solution.
Well, the patent has either expired or is just about to. So the news is it'll soon be available to anyone.
As a current iPhone owner of a somewhat older model (5S), I'm torn between going with a 6S or 7 in the future. Should the 8 arrive and be within the "regular" iPhone price range, my debate will change to whether to get a 7 or 8. If it arrives at the $1200 price range, no matter what cool new features it offers, it would probably be uninteresting until software developers actually wrote stuff to take advantage of the new features. Meaning, I'd just assume wait til the iPhone 9 arrives, so that software is available, and (presumably) the part shortages the author alludes to would be remedied.
But somewhere I read that Apple refuses to use a part in their phone unless they can obtain them from two independent sources. Makes me think the scenario that the author alludes to wouldn't occur at all. Yes, Apple sells pricey gear, but they're in the "pricey but reasonable" area, in order to maximize both sales and profits. Going all in on price to the exclusion of sales at all, that would be a reversion to the tactics of the 80's/90's which saw them in doom and gloom mode...
Ditto.
My late 2013 MBP with retina is still serving me just fine... At least, when i look at each new batch that comes out, I don't see any compelling reason to upgrade... Well, no... there is an upgrade path, but it involves going Dell and Ubuntu.
Sad that its 2017 and Apple can't deliver a knockout punch to its own 2013 tech.
WHat'd the latest round bring? Touchbar and removal of all ports except USB C... I"m sure those were features everyone in the world was dying for...
I came here to say something like that. Read the headline and was like "altbaba? really?"
Lets see... names of some successful tech companies:
Google :)
Apple
Netflix
eBay
Tesla
Slashdot
Reddit
Cloudflare
Two syllables is the charm.
3?
IBM
Microsoft
more?
Hewlett Packard
I know, I missed gazillions of them, but just saying Altbaba doesn't exactly roll of the tongue. Even "The corpse of a company formerly known as Yahoo" has more cachet than "Altbaba".
We view everything in the past and describe it as if we saw it in real time. Only difference is, the light from the tree falling in front of me only took 20 nanoseconds to reach my eyes. Still, I just say "that tree just fell", not "that tree fell 20 nanoseconds ago and I just witnessed it now"
This is stupid. Here's his quote.
"Even if you estimate that they average a measly $15/hr with their autonomous cars, working an average of 20 hours per day, 50 weeks/yr, that's $105,000 per year. I think that's what they call profitable."