I've been to planetarium shows where they highlight light pollution. The closest one to me does a "night sky" routine where they darken the sky and make it look like night. Then, they note that we live in an urban area so light pollution limits how many stars we can see. They keep the position the same, but pretend that we've removed all light pollution. Suddenly, it's extremely dark and there's a TON of stars in the sky. Having grown up in suburban and urban places all my life and no matter how many times I see it, I'm always amazed at how many stars appear when you remove light pollution.
On the flip side: My father used to come home from work every day with huge piles of work. After dinner, he'd sign into work and begin going through the piles. I asked him why he did all this since he wasn't being paid overtime. He responded that his boss expected this level of work from him. I told him that he set his boss' expectations by delivering on this level of work via unpaid overtime.
When I started my current job, I made it very clear that I work during business hours but leave the work behind when I go home. I'm available if there's an emergency, of course, but in normal day-to-day operations I won't be checking e-mails or working on projects simply to squeeze some more work time out of my day. My home life is important and I'm not going to sacrifice it to devote additional unpaid hours to my company. I got some mild push back (once asking me what if someone e-mails the info@ mailbox I checked with an emergency to which I responded "If you have an emergency and e-mail an info@ mailbox, you deserve to wait until Monday morning for your reply). Eventually, they relented. I'll be here 18 years in a couple of weeks.
Back in the days when Windows Scripting Host and viruses based on it reigned supreme, I wrote a small program to stop them. It took over the WSH file association. It would check the file when run, warn you of any potential issues (e.g. "this script will delete files") and give you the opportunity to either stop the script from ever running or run it (if it was a valid script you meant to run). As the years passed, this program had a small following but it died out as other anti-virus tools got this capability (and more).
Getting back to the MHT vulnerability, couldn't you simply break the MHT-IE association? Either with a program that would warn the user and give them a chance to back out, or just by deleting the association entirely?
Which is baloney. Some luxury cars are so well insulated you can't hear a damn thing outside -- not even road noise from your own tires. Car stereos with subwoofers are perfectly legal, even when they are loud enough to blow out windows.
I can't count how many times a car has pulled up to me at a red light and their music is blaring so loudly that my car is vibrating. If I can clearly hear their music through their car, the gap between our cars, and through my car, then it must be extremely loud inside their car. To the point that I doubt that they can hear any road noises. If anything should be illegal, that should be.
I think plain YouTube constitutes about 40% of my kids' video entertainment nowadays. Another 40% is video games and the remaining 20% is streamed shows. (There's a sliver in there for DVDs Borrowed From The Library, but it's negligible.)
Partly because the cable companies want to make money with big bundle packages and partly because the content owners will only offer their popular channels bundled with a ton of other junk nobody wants (that they charge the cable companies for, which the cable companies charge you for).
To be fair, there's blame on more than just the cable TV/Google/etc. The content owners will frequently say "If you want Popular Channel X, then you must also provide Not As Popular Channels Y, Z, and Q." So the cable TV companies (and Google) will be forced to include (and pay for) more and more channels just to get the few that most people want. Even if they wanted to give you ala carte (which they really don't), they couldn't because of these bundling agreements.
I actually tried CBS' streaming service when it first came out. I cancelled before the free trial was over. It had too many ad breaks (even more than Hulu) and was very light on content. They would claim to have all the favorite shows and then it would turn out that this was only a couple of seasons. I couldn't even catch up on CBS shows I fell behind on.
I'll admit that I like Disney's content. From the classic stuff to their acquisitions (Star Wars, Marvel), Disney+ is definitely going to be a service I try out. Whether I'll pay for it will depend on the content, price, and interface.
When I cut cable four years ago, Spectrum wanted to charge me $115 a month for cable TV. Instead, we signed up for Hulu. We already paid for Netflix and Amazon Prime - the latter for free shipping primarily though I've grown to like their video offerings. I had a couple of one-time costs (an OTA antenna), but otherwise I was saving over $70 a month. Since then, the price for Cable has gone up much quicker than Netflix/Amazon/Hulu. Could I subscribe to ALL of the streaming services? Sure, but I don't need to. I sign up for the ones I want and that's it. The goal isn't to get everything that I could possibly watch on cable TV, but to get the shows that I'm interested in and that's it. I figure that I'm saving about $100 a month now over what I'd spend if I signed back up with cable.
We cut the cord 4 years ago. My kids (age 15 and 11) have gone from only watching Cable TV, to watching Netflix-Hulu, to primarily getting their video entertainment from YouTube videos. They will watch cable when they go to their grandparents' house, but other than that they really don't care that we don't have cable. Every so often, Spectrum tries to win us back with "deals" along the lines of "only" $45 extra a month (for 12 months after which the price will rise, taxes and fees not included in this price). I laugh as I rip them up.
Birds can be very intelligent. My wife's parents have a cockatoo that picked a master lock to escape from her cage. She's affectionate also... until she decides not to be at which point you'd best remove your fingers from her cage. She can bite a whole walnut in two with her beak. You don't want to know what she can do to fingers.
Does it say anything about a reporting mechanism? For example, if a person were to upload a video of them shooting another person but labeled it "happy puppies jumping in the grass", YouTube might not realize what it really is about. Yes, there are ways to automatically detect things, but they aren't foolproof. If Google/YouTube is liable from the moment the video is uploaded, then this is an unfair law. You can't hold them liable for every video everybody uploads. Doing that will just mean that only "approved content creators" (aka big businesses) will be allowed to upload videos. Any service with user generated content should have a reporting system where people can flag potentially objectionable content for human staff members to look at.
As a victim of identity theft, I can personally attest that the credit agencies don't just view this as "not their problem", but actively see it as the victim's problem. When my identity was stolen, a credit card was opened in my name and only a stroke of luck made the card go to me. (The card was mailed out before the identity thief's address change was processed.) When I called the company (*cough*Capital One*cough*) about it, they not only told me they couldn't give me information ("because if you go and shoot these people, we're liable" - but you're not liable for opening accounts under my name?!!). They insisted that my wife likely opened the account - when my wife was right next to me freaking out over this. Finally, they refused to let the police speak with them. They told the police that they needed to call a special line. That line went right to voicemail and it was never answered. I've heard of other times where credit agencies like Experian harassed identity theft victims, telling them that the fraudulent accounts would remain on their credit report unless the victims produced massive amounts of proof.
Basically, these companies treat identity theft and data leaks as minor annoyances. Close the account if someone complains, write off the tiny losses, push the burden of proof onto the victims, and then go back to raking in tons of money. If any actual laws are going to be put in place to protect consumers, fight those laws tooth and nail. They never suffer any actual consequences - just look at Experian's data breach. Millions of people's personal information leaked and what penalties has Experian suffered? They settled a $22 million class action lawsuit, but they earned $5.2 billion last year. I don't think 0.4% of their income really hurts them much. If I was fined $300, it might sting slightly, but it wouldn't really hurt. Especially not if what I was fined for made me that much in 1.5 days.
There need to be actual consequences or things aren't going to get better.
The Internet is a double-edged sword. It lets communities form based on shared interests regardless of how far apart they physically are. For example, I don't have many people I know locally that I could talk with about some games I play, but online I can find dozens (if not more) of people to discuss it with.
On the other hand, it can let communities based on falsehoods or hatred form and fester. A person who hates Group A might be the only one in his community that hates this group. If this is the case, he'll be forced to hide his hatred and it won't be encouraged. Normal societal pressure will keep to "socially acceptable levels." (Whether these levels are too high or not is another conversation entirely.) With the Internet, though, he can find a bunch of people who hate the same people he does. They can feed off each other and grow ever more extreme. Add in the anonymous nature of the Internet (either actually anonymous or perceived anonymity) and things that they wouldn't ever say in person (like physical threats) can come spilling out online. Eventually, these can flow from the online world to the physical one.
Social media can speed this along more, but social media is just one application of the Internet. Take Facebook/Twitter away and you'll still have sites like Reddit where these groups can thrive. Take Reddit away, and they'd set up their own forums in their own corners of the Internet. There's no way to get the good of the Internet (faster communications/building positive communities) without getting the bad as well.
That's true. And many parents (myself included) do trust doctors/experts even though they have no first hand information on the diseases that vaccines prevent.
To expand my previous comment, herd immunity was also a double-edged sword that let the anti-vax movement grow. When the number of anti-vaxxers was low, they could skip the vaccinations and say "see? our children are just fine" because their kids were still protected by herd immunity. It helped to reduce the perceived threat of the diseases while they increased the perceived risk of the vaccines. Now that the movement has grown, though, they're breaking herd immunity which means we're getting outbreaks.
Also, don't underestimate the stupidity of some people. There are all too many people who think they don't need doctors or professional medical help to have a baby. They just need some crystals, homeopathic remedies, essential oils, or whatever other fad junk science they heard about online. After all, a social media post shared by a non-medical professional is just as good as medical advice from someone with years of training who has personally examined you, right?
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)
Part of the problem is that vaccines were too successful. Most parents nowadays have no first hand knowledge of how bad these diseases were. This is a good thing, of course, but it also means parents can easily assume that a low severity for measles ("you just get a rash for a week and then you're fine") and other diseases (Whooping cough: "you just cough for a bit"). Combine this with Internet misinformation inflating the risk of vaccines ("They've got toxins... TOXINS!!!") and you have a recipe for a bad risk calculation. Sadly, it might take a few more outbreaks before some parents really get the message that the vaccination risk is much lower than the disease risk.
Don't force your users to use passwords like "J4Al4&/rO1.P9DeErxL )" because then they'll simply write them down on sticky notes and your enhanced security will collapse to zero. There's a third option between "12345" and "J4Al4&/rO1.P9DeErxL )". Encourage them to use password phrases ("correct horse battery staple" or "We're Off To See The Wizard"). You'll have increased security AND they'll be able to remember their passwords without resorting to sticky notes.
If an attacker wants to cause mass carnage to top 9-11, they need to take control of the plane and the post-911 security improvements that are actually effective (locked cabin doors and non-passive passengers) help prevent that. How many other instances of attacks have there been since 9-11? How many were successful? How many were stopped by TSA vs passengers? While I don't have the numbers on hand, my guess is that attacks were very tiny compared with the number of flights. The risk of airplane terrorism - at least for US domestic flights - is overblown to sell expensive security gear to the TSA and to enact laws so politicians can win votes by "doing something about it." Of the few incidents that have occurred, my guess is that most are stopped by crew/passengers, not TSA. TSA actually has a horrible record when they're tested. They'll stop you from bringing on that water bottle, but guns somehow manage to sneak by them repeatedly.
In fact, the TSA creates a new security issue. Now, if an attacker wanted to get maximum carnage, disruption, and panic, they don't even have to board an airplane. All they would need to do is get on line at a busy airport during a high travel season. When they're in the middle of the line - before they reach the TSA checkpoint - they could explode whatever device they chose to use. They'd kill a bunch of people, shut down the entire airport, and throw millions into panic. Coordinate this with a couple other people at other airports and they could bring air travel to a halt in this country. All because TSA checkpoints generate long lines and big crowds.
We could go back to pre-911 security levels with two exceptions and be as safe as we are now.
Those two exceptions:
1) Locked cabin doors so any hijacker can't easily gain control of the plane. (And instructions to pilots that they are to land at the nearest airport in the event of a hijacking no matter how many passenger fatalities are threatened.)
2) Passenger awareness. It used to be that a hijacking meant you went to Cuba, sat quietly until the hijacker gave himself up, and then were returned safely. You were inconvenienced, but as long as you played along you were safe. 9-11 broke this script. Now passengers know that hijacking means nearly certain death if the hijackers get control of the airplane and they will fight back - even if outgunned.
With those two in place, we could roll everything else back to pre-911 levels and not lose one iota of security.
I think their primary purpose was to make links more Twitter friendly. When you had 140 characters to work with, a long URL could take up your entire tweet. For example, the URL to this page is 133 characters long. That leaves me a mere 7 characters were I tweeting this under the old Twitter length restriction. If, however, I used a URL shortener, I could get this down to about 25 - freeing up over a hundred characters. Of course, since then Twitter has expanded the length of tweets which makes this less of a concern.
I used Google+ a little bit when it launched. It had some good ideas like putting all of the people you wanted to share items with into "circles." You could have a Friends circle, a Family, circle, a Co-Workers circle, etc. People could be in multiple circles. Then, you could share with just a particular circle. Want to share that dirty joke? De-select the Co-Workers circle. Posting a highly technical article? Take off the family circle and select the Co-Workers circle. And so on.
Unfortunately, it just never caught on. For others because Facebook was too massive. For me, because I was using one app to post to multiple social media networks and Google+ didn't let third party apps post to their network. So to post the same thing across all my social media profiles, I'd need to copy/paste it into Google+. It was too much of a hassle so I gave up Google+.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been to planetarium shows where they highlight light pollution. The closest one to me does a "night sky" routine where they darken the sky and make it look like night. Then, they note that we live in an urban area so light pollution limits how many stars we can see. They keep the position the same, but pretend that we've removed all light pollution. Suddenly, it's extremely dark and there's a TON of stars in the sky. Having grown up in suburban and urban places all my life and no matter how many times I see it, I'm always amazed at how many stars appear when you remove light pollution.
On the flip side: My father used to come home from work every day with huge piles of work. After dinner, he'd sign into work and begin going through the piles. I asked him why he did all this since he wasn't being paid overtime. He responded that his boss expected this level of work from him. I told him that he set his boss' expectations by delivering on this level of work via unpaid overtime.
When I started my current job, I made it very clear that I work during business hours but leave the work behind when I go home. I'm available if there's an emergency, of course, but in normal day-to-day operations I won't be checking e-mails or working on projects simply to squeeze some more work time out of my day. My home life is important and I'm not going to sacrifice it to devote additional unpaid hours to my company. I got some mild push back (once asking me what if someone e-mails the info@ mailbox I checked with an emergency to which I responded "If you have an emergency and e-mail an info@ mailbox, you deserve to wait until Monday morning for your reply). Eventually, they relented. I'll be here 18 years in a couple of weeks.
Back in the days when Windows Scripting Host and viruses based on it reigned supreme, I wrote a small program to stop them. It took over the WSH file association. It would check the file when run, warn you of any potential issues (e.g. "this script will delete files") and give you the opportunity to either stop the script from ever running or run it (if it was a valid script you meant to run). As the years passed, this program had a small following but it died out as other anti-virus tools got this capability (and more).
Getting back to the MHT vulnerability, couldn't you simply break the MHT-IE association? Either with a program that would warn the user and give them a chance to back out, or just by deleting the association entirely?
I wish that were the law in more states.
I can't count how many times a car has pulled up to me at a red light and their music is blaring so loudly that my car is vibrating. If I can clearly hear their music through their car, the gap between our cars, and through my car, then it must be extremely loud inside their car. To the point that I doubt that they can hear any road noises. If anything should be illegal, that should be.
I think plain YouTube constitutes about 40% of my kids' video entertainment nowadays. Another 40% is video games and the remaining 20% is streamed shows. (There's a sliver in there for DVDs Borrowed From The Library, but it's negligible.)
Partly because the cable companies want to make money with big bundle packages and partly because the content owners will only offer their popular channels bundled with a ton of other junk nobody wants (that they charge the cable companies for, which the cable companies charge you for).
To be fair, there's blame on more than just the cable TV/Google/etc. The content owners will frequently say "If you want Popular Channel X, then you must also provide Not As Popular Channels Y, Z, and Q." So the cable TV companies (and Google) will be forced to include (and pay for) more and more channels just to get the few that most people want. Even if they wanted to give you ala carte (which they really don't), they couldn't because of these bundling agreements.
I actually tried CBS' streaming service when it first came out. I cancelled before the free trial was over. It had too many ad breaks (even more than Hulu) and was very light on content. They would claim to have all the favorite shows and then it would turn out that this was only a couple of seasons. I couldn't even catch up on CBS shows I fell behind on.
I'll admit that I like Disney's content. From the classic stuff to their acquisitions (Star Wars, Marvel), Disney+ is definitely going to be a service I try out. Whether I'll pay for it will depend on the content, price, and interface.
When I cut cable four years ago, Spectrum wanted to charge me $115 a month for cable TV. Instead, we signed up for Hulu. We already paid for Netflix and Amazon Prime - the latter for free shipping primarily though I've grown to like their video offerings. I had a couple of one-time costs (an OTA antenna), but otherwise I was saving over $70 a month. Since then, the price for Cable has gone up much quicker than Netflix/Amazon/Hulu. Could I subscribe to ALL of the streaming services? Sure, but I don't need to. I sign up for the ones I want and that's it. The goal isn't to get everything that I could possibly watch on cable TV, but to get the shows that I'm interested in and that's it. I figure that I'm saving about $100 a month now over what I'd spend if I signed back up with cable.
We cut the cord 4 years ago. My kids (age 15 and 11) have gone from only watching Cable TV, to watching Netflix-Hulu, to primarily getting their video entertainment from YouTube videos. They will watch cable when they go to their grandparents' house, but other than that they really don't care that we don't have cable. Every so often, Spectrum tries to win us back with "deals" along the lines of "only" $45 extra a month (for 12 months after which the price will rise, taxes and fees not included in this price). I laugh as I rip them up.
Birds can be very intelligent. My wife's parents have a cockatoo that picked a master lock to escape from her cage. She's affectionate also... until she decides not to be at which point you'd best remove your fingers from her cage. She can bite a whole walnut in two with her beak. You don't want to know what she can do to fingers.
Does it say anything about a reporting mechanism? For example, if a person were to upload a video of them shooting another person but labeled it "happy puppies jumping in the grass", YouTube might not realize what it really is about. Yes, there are ways to automatically detect things, but they aren't foolproof. If Google/YouTube is liable from the moment the video is uploaded, then this is an unfair law. You can't hold them liable for every video everybody uploads. Doing that will just mean that only "approved content creators" (aka big businesses) will be allowed to upload videos. Any service with user generated content should have a reporting system where people can flag potentially objectionable content for human staff members to look at.
As a victim of identity theft, I can personally attest that the credit agencies don't just view this as "not their problem", but actively see it as the victim's problem. When my identity was stolen, a credit card was opened in my name and only a stroke of luck made the card go to me. (The card was mailed out before the identity thief's address change was processed.) When I called the company (*cough*Capital One*cough*) about it, they not only told me they couldn't give me information ("because if you go and shoot these people, we're liable" - but you're not liable for opening accounts under my name?!!). They insisted that my wife likely opened the account - when my wife was right next to me freaking out over this. Finally, they refused to let the police speak with them. They told the police that they needed to call a special line. That line went right to voicemail and it was never answered. I've heard of other times where credit agencies like Experian harassed identity theft victims, telling them that the fraudulent accounts would remain on their credit report unless the victims produced massive amounts of proof.
Basically, these companies treat identity theft and data leaks as minor annoyances. Close the account if someone complains, write off the tiny losses, push the burden of proof onto the victims, and then go back to raking in tons of money. If any actual laws are going to be put in place to protect consumers, fight those laws tooth and nail. They never suffer any actual consequences - just look at Experian's data breach. Millions of people's personal information leaked and what penalties has Experian suffered? They settled a $22 million class action lawsuit, but they earned $5.2 billion last year. I don't think 0.4% of their income really hurts them much. If I was fined $300, it might sting slightly, but it wouldn't really hurt. Especially not if what I was fined for made me that much in 1.5 days.
There need to be actual consequences or things aren't going to get better.
The Internet is a double-edged sword. It lets communities form based on shared interests regardless of how far apart they physically are. For example, I don't have many people I know locally that I could talk with about some games I play, but online I can find dozens (if not more) of people to discuss it with.
On the other hand, it can let communities based on falsehoods or hatred form and fester. A person who hates Group A might be the only one in his community that hates this group. If this is the case, he'll be forced to hide his hatred and it won't be encouraged. Normal societal pressure will keep to "socially acceptable levels." (Whether these levels are too high or not is another conversation entirely.) With the Internet, though, he can find a bunch of people who hate the same people he does. They can feed off each other and grow ever more extreme. Add in the anonymous nature of the Internet (either actually anonymous or perceived anonymity) and things that they wouldn't ever say in person (like physical threats) can come spilling out online. Eventually, these can flow from the online world to the physical one.
Social media can speed this along more, but social media is just one application of the Internet. Take Facebook/Twitter away and you'll still have sites like Reddit where these groups can thrive. Take Reddit away, and they'd set up their own forums in their own corners of the Internet. There's no way to get the good of the Internet (faster communications/building positive communities) without getting the bad as well.
That's true. And many parents (myself included) do trust doctors/experts even though they have no first hand information on the diseases that vaccines prevent.
To expand my previous comment, herd immunity was also a double-edged sword that let the anti-vax movement grow. When the number of anti-vaxxers was low, they could skip the vaccinations and say "see? our children are just fine" because their kids were still protected by herd immunity. It helped to reduce the perceived threat of the diseases while they increased the perceived risk of the vaccines. Now that the movement has grown, though, they're breaking herd immunity which means we're getting outbreaks.
Also, don't underestimate the stupidity of some people. There are all too many people who think they don't need doctors or professional medical help to have a baby. They just need some crystals, homeopathic remedies, essential oils, or whatever other fad junk science they heard about online. After all, a social media post shared by a non-medical professional is just as good as medical advice from someone with years of training who has personally examined you, right?
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)
Part of the problem is that vaccines were too successful. Most parents nowadays have no first hand knowledge of how bad these diseases were. This is a good thing, of course, but it also means parents can easily assume that a low severity for measles ("you just get a rash for a week and then you're fine") and other diseases (Whooping cough: "you just cough for a bit"). Combine this with Internet misinformation inflating the risk of vaccines ("They've got toxins... TOXINS!!!") and you have a recipe for a bad risk calculation. Sadly, it might take a few more outbreaks before some parents really get the message that the vaccination risk is much lower than the disease risk.
Or send a spaceship up there to do the job of firing on the debris. Here's a simulation.
Relevent XKCD: https://xkcd.com/936/
Don't force your users to use passwords like "J4Al4&/rO1.P9DeErxL )" because then they'll simply write them down on sticky notes and your enhanced security will collapse to zero. There's a third option between "12345" and "J4Al4&/rO1.P9DeErxL )". Encourage them to use password phrases ("correct horse battery staple" or "We're Off To See The Wizard"). You'll have increased security AND they'll be able to remember their passwords without resorting to sticky notes.
If an attacker wants to cause mass carnage to top 9-11, they need to take control of the plane and the post-911 security improvements that are actually effective (locked cabin doors and non-passive passengers) help prevent that. How many other instances of attacks have there been since 9-11? How many were successful? How many were stopped by TSA vs passengers? While I don't have the numbers on hand, my guess is that attacks were very tiny compared with the number of flights. The risk of airplane terrorism - at least for US domestic flights - is overblown to sell expensive security gear to the TSA and to enact laws so politicians can win votes by "doing something about it." Of the few incidents that have occurred, my guess is that most are stopped by crew/passengers, not TSA. TSA actually has a horrible record when they're tested. They'll stop you from bringing on that water bottle, but guns somehow manage to sneak by them repeatedly.
In fact, the TSA creates a new security issue. Now, if an attacker wanted to get maximum carnage, disruption, and panic, they don't even have to board an airplane. All they would need to do is get on line at a busy airport during a high travel season. When they're in the middle of the line - before they reach the TSA checkpoint - they could explode whatever device they chose to use. They'd kill a bunch of people, shut down the entire airport, and throw millions into panic. Coordinate this with a couple other people at other airports and they could bring air travel to a halt in this country. All because TSA checkpoints generate long lines and big crowds.
"Reasons" = Lobbyist Got A Politician To Approve This Purchase In Exchange For A Big Campaign Donation*
* Donation had nothing to do with this contract. wink-wink-nudge-nudge
We could go back to pre-911 security levels with two exceptions and be as safe as we are now.
Those two exceptions:
1) Locked cabin doors so any hijacker can't easily gain control of the plane. (And instructions to pilots that they are to land at the nearest airport in the event of a hijacking no matter how many passenger fatalities are threatened.)
2) Passenger awareness. It used to be that a hijacking meant you went to Cuba, sat quietly until the hijacker gave himself up, and then were returned safely. You were inconvenienced, but as long as you played along you were safe. 9-11 broke this script. Now passengers know that hijacking means nearly certain death if the hijackers get control of the airplane and they will fight back - even if outgunned.
With those two in place, we could roll everything else back to pre-911 levels and not lose one iota of security.
I think their primary purpose was to make links more Twitter friendly. When you had 140 characters to work with, a long URL could take up your entire tweet. For example, the URL to this page is 133 characters long. That leaves me a mere 7 characters were I tweeting this under the old Twitter length restriction. If, however, I used a URL shortener, I could get this down to about 25 - freeing up over a hundred characters. Of course, since then Twitter has expanded the length of tweets which makes this less of a concern.
I used Google+ a little bit when it launched. It had some good ideas like putting all of the people you wanted to share items with into "circles." You could have a Friends circle, a Family, circle, a Co-Workers circle, etc. People could be in multiple circles. Then, you could share with just a particular circle. Want to share that dirty joke? De-select the Co-Workers circle. Posting a highly technical article? Take off the family circle and select the Co-Workers circle. And so on.
Unfortunately, it just never caught on. For others because Facebook was too massive. For me, because I was using one app to post to multiple social media networks and Google+ didn't let third party apps post to their network. So to post the same thing across all my social media profiles, I'd need to copy/paste it into Google+. It was too much of a hassle so I gave up Google+.