You want google to be able to lock side-loaded apps? You realize the whole point of the article was the app was not installed via the play store right?
With respect to malware or a serious infection vector for malware, why not? Play or non-Play is irrelevant. Its little different than anti-virus software quarantining or deleting detected malware.
True, I'm just making the point that if we are to judge actions by Epic's "creating an unnecessary risk for Android users" criteria then there may be appropriate actions Epic is not considering.
"We asked Google to hold the disclosure until the update was more widely installed," tweeted Tim Sweeney. "They refused, creating an unnecessary risk for Android users in order to score cheap PR points."
Allowing the unpatched game to continue running also unnecessarily risks Android users. Doesn't google have the ability to delete an app in Android? If so perhaps they should have deleted the unpatched game versions?
Looking forward maybe google should have the ability to lock out a vulnerable version of an app. Don't delete it, just prevent it from running, only allow it to be updated to a newer version.
Bitcoin is actually useful as a way to transfer funds. Sender buys bitcoins and immediate transfers them, recipient immediately sells them. Volatility usually isn't an issue as neither is holding bitcoins for any non-trivial amount of time.
A merchant accepting bitcoins is usually a PR stunt. The merchants usually never see or touch a bitcoin. A payment processor handles the exchange rate from the merchant's USD/EUR/etc price, the payment address, the validation and then credits the merchant's account in USE/EUR/etc.
Cryptocoin don't constantly rise in value, they constantly jump madly around like giant random number generator
Its not so random in the long term, just the daily / weekly / monthly sense. The enthusiasts, hoarders, are BETTING that history repeats itself. In the long term we see an exponential 10-20x spike, then a fast decline of about 75-80%, a 3-4 year plateau, repeat. I think this has happened 4 times so far and we seem to be finishing up on the current 75-80% decline. Assuming of course that this 4th time is like the last 3. That's a HUGE assumption, but that's how the hoarders are thinking. Get out near the top, maybe trade in and out during the decline, there are plenty of temporary local 10-20% recoveries on the way down, then sit tight and hold on the plateau, maintaining the FAITH that another exponential spike will occur someday.
Far more profitable than bitcoin (a huge loss), but still barely profitable at the moment and likely unprofitable in the near future.
Right now, an Nvidia 1060 earns US$0.06 per day at a kwh price of $0.12, a 1070 earns $0.13 per day, an AMD 580 earns $0.19 per day, and that's a rather low kwh rate in the US. Now factor in the cost of those video cards, even at manufacturers suggested retail (ignoring the last year's inflated prices) those cards are $300 to $400. Yes, some casual miners are just using their personal computers, maybe they upgraded their video card purchase from 1050 to 1060, or 1060 to 1070 with mining in mind. Even at such an incremental $100'ish expense their mining will never pay for their "upgrade". At current prices even this incremental expense would theoretically take a couple of years to pay off but earnings aren't constant, they are declining due to difficulty increases. Those cards will become unprofitable long before they can even pay for themselves or even a tier upgrade (ie 1060 to 1070). As many who bought cards last winter are now learning.
Fortunately I can wear cargo pants/short much of the time but I just upgraded from the 6 to the SE over a more convenient size. The 6 seemed just barely comfortable in jeans and I'm over 6ft with a large frame. I can't use back pockets since I will forget and sit on the phone. I don't dislike the 6/7/8 size, I just didn't find the extra screen worth the extra size. Maybe it is an age thing, I don't watch movies on the phone, I'll use an iPad for that, maybe the occasional youtube video on the phone.
poaching the right people from the competition or getting in first to capture some new PhD research.
Apple, Google, Tesla, etc will overwhelmingly get the better people. Uber seems not to be operating with the top people: "Uber's self-driving car system detected an Arizona pedestrian about six seconds before the vehicle it was in killed the woman in March. But the system never took action to prevent the incident, according to the preliminary results of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation.
Uber engineers had intentionally disabled the Volvo's emergency braking system "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior" but did not program the system to alert the human operator to manually brake the vehicle, NTSB reported Thursday." https://www.usatoday.com/story...
If I had to guess, they were operating on the public roads prematurely rather than the closed test track in order to give the illusion of better progress on their R&D. I've seen other companies play games to manufacture the impression of progress to acquire or maintain investments.
And it makes sense to me that Uber is not able to recruit the top tier, they aren't really a high tech company, a serious research organization. Sure they are a raise investment capital success, but their success lies in a unique business model not in any technological development. I.e. they use ordinary citizens and their cars for a taxi service. They organized these citizens with a phone app. A novel business process, quite mundane technology.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
Graphics card have not been able to mine bitcoin for many years. GPUs are only able to mine some alternative cryptocurrencies. And as these "alts" get popular they sometimes follow the bitcoin path and end up being mined by ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware. GPU mining is relatively insignificant compared to bitcoin mining.
The "other" significant cryptocurrency, ethereum, one that GPUs were able to profitably mine this last year, is planning on moving from a proof-of-work scheme to a proof-of-stake scheme for maintaining its block chain and rewarding the miners/forgers who do so. This is in part to avoid the power demands but also to allow ordinary users to help maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers.
Right now bitcoin has deviated from its design and its security has been compromised by not having ordinary people maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers, by no longer having a decentralized system. By evolving to an ASIC system mining has become more centralized, both in terms of large commercial operations where a 51% cartel is more plausible and geographically by have the vast majority of mining located in a single country. A country not known for a hands off approach to economic matters.
"It is well-established established that Bitcoin mining -- aka, donating one's computing power to keep a cryptocurrency network up and running in exchange for a chance to win some free crypto -- uses a lot of electricity."
Not quite. No one is using their computer to mine bitcoin. That hasn't been profitable in many years. People are using dedicated highly specialized hardware that can do nothing else except mine, ASIC, application specific integrated circuit. This isn't really donating your computer power since these ASICs can do absolutely nothing else. "Computing power" implies something a little more general purpose.
It is questionable that the inventor/manufacturer of the self driving car would want to get into the taxi business. Its not their area of expertise. Using you logic Ford and GM could have taken over the taxi business decades ago.
The taxi business is highly regulated, as uber is increasingly aware of. And once you are operating those self driving cars yourself you no longer have the facade of the independent contractor to attempt to isolate yourself from those regulations.
The odds of Uber ever receiving rent is quite low. They were behind and highly unlikely to catch up, more likely to slowly fall farther and farther behind.
The last time I put a gaming PC together was a long time ago; maybe even 10 years. But a premium video card back then was around $400 CDN. I guess those days are just over.
Not really. A 1070 is a pretty damn good card and is US$400 from Nvidia, and if we ignore the last year's crypto-inflation less than that from ASUS, MSI, etc. Which should be about the C$ conversion? I'm sure some will violently disagree but I think the difference between a 1070 and 1080 isn't worth the additional US$150.
No, why would they? A 1080 from Nvidia is $550, a 2080 from Nvidia is $800.
Prices have come down in the sense that crypto-inflated pricing is ending, but prices from Nvidia itself never reflected that inflation, only retail prices did. Nvidia was simply out of stock and new orders were wait listed. At retail a 1080 could have been $1,000 or more. Currently retail is $500-550, maybe slightly higher than pre-crypto mania pricing. Hopefully we get back to pre-crypto, but that's about it, 2080 are so much more expensive they won't have any real downward pressure. At least for these first gen 20xx cards.
I wonder how much prices will drop on the 1060 and 1070 now that the next series is announced.
Probably zero. Nvidia currently sells the 1070 for $400, the 2070 will supposedly be $600 from Nvidia. Other vendors -- ASUS, MSI, etc -- sell for less than Nvidia's prices, a 2070 from these sources in expected to be $500, pre-cryto mania they were selling 1070 for well under $400.
However you look at it these first 20xx cards are expensive enough that they will not be pushing 10xx card prices down. If 10xx card prices go down it will more likely be due to the crypto demand ending. 10xx and the announced 20xx will likely coexists just fine for a while. Maybe 10xx will get cheaper when there is a 20xx process shrink or something, a second generation of 20xx -- 2060, 2050.
Note this works out well from an economics perspective too. It collects the higher "willingness to pay" from those early adopters.
Prospectors don't have to carry a payload, they travel much lighter. Like our current probes they land, conduct tests, radio back the results. If they travel its not back to earth or the moon, its on to another asteroid in the neighborhood. Not dissimilar from 1970s space probes traveling from planet to planet on minimal fuel collecting data and radioing it back.
Pick various rocket fuels and you will likely find the necessary chemical elements on some asteroid.
The "heavy" stuff lifted in pieces is going to the moon not an asteroid, and is infrastructure equipment that will be assembled on the lunar surface not in earth orbit.
The two guys with 8.x on the Microsoft Store will be terribly disappointed. Then again, they are likely used to disappointment.
Who did not downgrade to 7 or take the free upgrade to 10? Outside of rigidly controlled corporate machines that probably aren't buying much on the Microsoft Store.
People often talk about mindshare and network effect but often forget about switching cost. The former only work with high switching costs. Uber is very easily replaced by a consumer.
Sorry but even two years ago the chance of them being first was quite dim. And we're talking about a project that will take a decade, probably multiple decades. That's the way AI projects work.
Slashdot Mirror
You want google to be able to lock side-loaded apps? You realize the whole point of the article was the app was not installed via the play store right?
With respect to malware or a serious infection vector for malware, why not? Play or non-Play is irrelevant. Its little different than anti-virus software quarantining or deleting detected malware.
True, I'm just making the point that if we are to judge actions by Epic's "creating an unnecessary risk for Android users" criteria then there may be appropriate actions Epic is not considering.
Google can do that for Play apps. This whole pissing match started because Epic decided NOT to publish Fortnite on the Play Store.
If they can remove a Play app then they can remove a non-Play app. They may not do so currently but that is a choice not a technical issue.
"We asked Google to hold the disclosure until the update was more widely installed," tweeted Tim Sweeney. "They refused, creating an unnecessary risk for Android users in order to score cheap PR points."
Allowing the unpatched game to continue running also unnecessarily risks Android users. Doesn't google have the ability to delete an app in Android? If so perhaps they should have deleted the unpatched game versions?
Looking forward maybe google should have the ability to lock out a vulnerable version of an app. Don't delete it, just prevent it from running, only allow it to be updated to a newer version.
Bitcoin is actually useful as a way to transfer funds. Sender buys bitcoins and immediate transfers them, recipient immediately sells them. Volatility usually isn't an issue as neither is holding bitcoins for any non-trivial amount of time.
A merchant accepting bitcoins is usually a PR stunt. The merchants usually never see or touch a bitcoin. A payment processor handles the exchange rate from the merchant's USD/EUR/etc price, the payment address, the validation and then credits the merchant's account in USE/EUR/etc.
Cryptocoin don't constantly rise in value, they constantly jump madly around like giant random number generator
Its not so random in the long term, just the daily / weekly / monthly sense. The enthusiasts, hoarders, are BETTING that history repeats itself. In the long term we see an exponential 10-20x spike, then a fast decline of about 75-80%, a 3-4 year plateau, repeat. I think this has happened 4 times so far and we seem to be finishing up on the current 75-80% decline. Assuming of course that this 4th time is like the last 3. That's a HUGE assumption, but that's how the hoarders are thinking. Get out near the top, maybe trade in and out during the decline, there are plenty of temporary local 10-20% recoveries on the way down, then sit tight and hold on the plateau, maintaining the FAITH that another exponential spike will occur someday.
Far more profitable than bitcoin (a huge loss), but still barely profitable at the moment and likely unprofitable in the near future.
Right now, an Nvidia 1060 earns US$0.06 per day at a kwh price of $0.12, a 1070 earns $0.13 per day, an AMD 580 earns $0.19 per day, and that's a rather low kwh rate in the US. Now factor in the cost of those video cards, even at manufacturers suggested retail (ignoring the last year's inflated prices) those cards are $300 to $400. Yes, some casual miners are just using their personal computers, maybe they upgraded their video card purchase from 1050 to 1060, or 1060 to 1070 with mining in mind. Even at such an incremental $100'ish expense their mining will never pay for their "upgrade". At current prices even this incremental expense would theoretically take a couple of years to pay off but earnings aren't constant, they are declining due to difficulty increases. Those cards will become unprofitable long before they can even pay for themselves or even a tier upgrade (ie 1060 to 1070). As many who bought cards last winter are now learning.
Fortunately I can wear cargo pants/short much of the time but I just upgraded from the 6 to the SE over a more convenient size. The 6 seemed just barely comfortable in jeans and I'm over 6ft with a large frame. I can't use back pockets since I will forget and sit on the phone. I don't dislike the 6/7/8 size, I just didn't find the extra screen worth the extra size. Maybe it is an age thing, I don't watch movies on the phone, I'll use an iPad for that, maybe the occasional youtube video on the phone.
I just upgraded to the SE from the 6, I wanted to return to a more convenient size. I upgraded now in case the SE got dropped in the upcoming refresh.
Not really. Google will be offering phones based on their Fuchsia operating system project by then. ;-)
poaching the right people from the competition or getting in first to capture some new PhD research.
Apple, Google, Tesla, etc will overwhelmingly get the better people. Uber seems not to be operating with the top people: "Uber's self-driving car system detected an Arizona pedestrian about six seconds before the vehicle it was in killed the woman in March. But the system never took action to prevent the incident, according to the preliminary results of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Uber engineers had intentionally disabled the Volvo's emergency braking system "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior" but did not program the system to alert the human operator to manually brake the vehicle, NTSB reported Thursday."
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
If I had to guess, they were operating on the public roads prematurely rather than the closed test track in order to give the illusion of better progress on their R&D. I've seen other companies play games to manufacture the impression of progress to acquire or maintain investments.
And it makes sense to me that Uber is not able to recruit the top tier, they aren't really a high tech company, a serious research organization. Sure they are a raise investment capital success, but their success lies in a unique business model not in any technological development. I.e. they use ordinary citizens and their cars for a taxi service. They organized these citizens with a phone app. A novel business process, quite mundane technology.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
Graphics card have not been able to mine bitcoin for many years. GPUs are only able to mine some alternative cryptocurrencies. And as these "alts" get popular they sometimes follow the bitcoin path and end up being mined by ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware. GPU mining is relatively insignificant compared to bitcoin mining.
The "other" significant cryptocurrency, ethereum, one that GPUs were able to profitably mine this last year, is planning on moving from a proof-of-work scheme to a proof-of-stake scheme for maintaining its block chain and rewarding the miners/forgers who do so. This is in part to avoid the power demands but also to allow ordinary users to help maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers.
Right now bitcoin has deviated from its design and its security has been compromised by not having ordinary people maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers, by no longer having a decentralized system. By evolving to an ASIC system mining has become more centralized, both in terms of large commercial operations where a 51% cartel is more plausible and geographically by have the vast majority of mining located in a single country. A country not known for a hands off approach to economic matters.
"It is well-established established that Bitcoin mining -- aka, donating one's computing power to keep a cryptocurrency network up and running in exchange for a chance to win some free crypto -- uses a lot of electricity." Not quite. No one is using their computer to mine bitcoin. That hasn't been profitable in many years. People are using dedicated highly specialized hardware that can do nothing else except mine, ASIC, application specific integrated circuit. This isn't really donating your computer power since these ASICs can do absolutely nothing else. "Computing power" implies something a little more general purpose.
One of my friends didn't upgrade to Windows 10 when it was first available. He's looking at doing it now, after other problems w/ his laptop.
Too bad, the upgrade is no longer free.
It is questionable that the inventor/manufacturer of the self driving car would want to get into the taxi business. Its not their area of expertise. Using you logic Ford and GM could have taken over the taxi business decades ago.
The taxi business is highly regulated, as uber is increasingly aware of. And once you are operating those self driving cars yourself you no longer have the facade of the independent contractor to attempt to isolate yourself from those regulations.
The odds of Uber ever receiving rent is quite low. They were behind and highly unlikely to catch up, more likely to slowly fall farther and farther behind.
The last time I put a gaming PC together was a long time ago; maybe even 10 years. But a premium video card back then was around $400 CDN. I guess those days are just over.
Not really. A 1070 is a pretty damn good card and is US$400 from Nvidia, and if we ignore the last year's crypto-inflation less than that from ASUS, MSI, etc. Which should be about the C$ conversion? I'm sure some will violently disagree but I think the difference between a 1070 and 1080 isn't worth the additional US$150.
Have 1080's come down?
No, why would they? A 1080 from Nvidia is $550, a 2080 from Nvidia is $800.
Prices have come down in the sense that crypto-inflated pricing is ending, but prices from Nvidia itself never reflected that inflation, only retail prices did. Nvidia was simply out of stock and new orders were wait listed. At retail a 1080 could have been $1,000 or more. Currently retail is $500-550, maybe slightly higher than pre-crypto mania pricing. Hopefully we get back to pre-crypto, but that's about it, 2080 are so much more expensive they won't have any real downward pressure. At least for these first gen 20xx cards.
I wonder how much prices will drop on the 1060 and 1070 now that the next series is announced.
Probably zero. Nvidia currently sells the 1070 for $400, the 2070 will supposedly be $600 from Nvidia. Other vendors -- ASUS, MSI, etc -- sell for less than Nvidia's prices, a 2070 from these sources in expected to be $500, pre-cryto mania they were selling 1070 for well under $400.
However you look at it these first 20xx cards are expensive enough that they will not be pushing 10xx card prices down. If 10xx card prices go down it will more likely be due to the crypto demand ending. 10xx and the announced 20xx will likely coexists just fine for a while. Maybe 10xx will get cheaper when there is a 20xx process shrink or something, a second generation of 20xx -- 2060, 2050.
Note this works out well from an economics perspective too. It collects the higher "willingness to pay" from those early adopters.
You missed the "on the Microsoft Store" qualifier :-)
Prospectors don't have to carry a payload, they travel much lighter. Like our current probes they land, conduct tests, radio back the results. If they travel its not back to earth or the moon, its on to another asteroid in the neighborhood. Not dissimilar from 1970s space probes traveling from planet to planet on minimal fuel collecting data and radioing it back.
Pick various rocket fuels and you will likely find the necessary chemical elements on some asteroid.
The "heavy" stuff lifted in pieces is going to the moon not an asteroid, and is infrastructure equipment that will be assembled on the lunar surface not in earth orbit.
The two guys with 8.x on the Microsoft Store will be terribly disappointed. Then again, they are likely used to disappointment.
Who did not downgrade to 7 or take the free upgrade to 10? Outside of rigidly controlled corporate machines that probably aren't buying much on the Microsoft Store.
People often talk about mindshare and network effect but often forget about switching cost. The former only work with high switching costs. Uber is very easily replaced by a consumer.
Sorry but even two years ago the chance of them being first was quite dim. And we're talking about a project that will take a decade, probably multiple decades. That's the way AI projects work.
No, the numbers don't add up. What they are spending, losing, seems far beyond any "rent seeking".