The article says that Apple "charges apps a percentage of revenue for subscriptions processed through the App Store". But what forces them to process the subscription through the app store???
Impulsivity. You're listening to Spotify and they play an ad that drives you over the edge, so you consider getting their paid service. Well, if you're in the app to do it, Apple will get their cut. Otherwise spotify will ahve to make you visit their website, log in, enter all your payment information and then buy the subscription.
Whereas using Apple Pay or Google Pay, it's a couple of taps and you're subscribed.
So the general user experience is you can capture the impulse shopper if you're willing to give up a part of the money or force the user to go through hoops and by the time they're done, they cancel because it was just taking too long.
The real question is - is the added hassle and abandoned purchases using the roundabout way get you more than if you gave in and simply let people impulse buy.
Adobe was actually working to phase it out with HTML5 implementation becoming common. Apple and Adobe working closely together. I expect that when Jobs approached Adobe, they were not willing to give a full effort in Flash support for the iPhone, that would meed Jobs standards, because Adobe (and Jobs probably too) knew this technology was on its way out and there is no long term plan with it. So Jobs did what jobs does. Talks around limitations on its device and says it is what the future holds.
However the smartphone market for consumers in general accelerated flashes demise. As average guy would be doing bulk of their browsing on it, and less with a more powerful computer.
Well, what really helped were two things.
1) Most legit uses of flash were to watch YouTube videos, and the iPhone came with a YouTube app.
2) Most other users of flash were ads. iPhones not supporting Flash thus had a small advantage in well, getting a faster web browsing experience. For a time Adobe tried to convince everyone Flash was necessary (it was used on 99% of websites - yes, it was true, since 99% of them had flash ads) and offered an Android version, but while you could use it to view other video websites (great!), it meant you also got all the flash ads and they bogged your phone down.
By the time the iPhone came out, people were disabling flash to avoid ads
NASA used to verify computer calcs multiple times using different algorithms to make sure the answers the computers were spitting out were correct.
Actually, NASA used real computers to double check the calculations. Especially in the early days, but it persisted long into the Space Shuttle program in the 80s. (See Katherine Johnson. If that name sounds familiar, she's one of the three African-Americans documented in Hidden Figures (book and movie) who made a name for herself for calculating trajectories from Apollo to Mars. Or double-checking them - NASA was among the first to adopt electronic computers but still had her double-check the results).
Really, this is a trivial patent. If no one's patented it yet, it's because it's stupid.
Good, because I can't figure out how the keyboard would figure out I was resting my fingers on the home row ready to type versus actually typing.
It's trivial, so I must be dumb. I mean, I have 9 fingers on the screen at the same time - 8 on the home row, one thumb on the virtual space bar. And yet, I expect that the screen should not be sending keystrokes because I'm not typing.
But I expect that if I were to type one of those 9 keys, it would be registered.
If you expect me to hover my fingers and not touch the screen, I find that would make the keyboard completely useless, since we all rest our fingers on the keys.
And feedback - you need feedback. How can you do it?
And no, while I have not read the patent, I expect those answers to be there. We know Apple already does it - their latest touchpads do NOT move at all, but yet can detect a normal movement versus a click. And that click can provide enough force feedback that it feels like you actually clicked the pad. (I've tried it, and I can't believe how real it feels. Ditto the iPhone - the home buttons aren't buttons anymore, but they click the same as if they were).
.... should extend only as far as any people who might be able to find out about a past transgression, by whatever means, are willing to forgive it.
That is, if they are willing to forgive it in the first place, then it doesn't matter if they know about it... and if they weren't willing to forgive it, then demanding that records be altered or erased so that they can't find out about it in the first place amounts to unwarranted historical revisionism, and basically only wanting to avoid the natural consequences of one's past choices.
Then you need to read about the law in question.
First off, it doesn't "delete URLs". It only deletes associations with them.
So if there's a news article about you being arrested for possessing a baggie of pot 20 years ago, the right to be forgotten will let you prevent google from suggesting say "arrested" if someone typed "nerdflat" into Google. It would not prevent someone from seeing the result of "nerdflat arrest news" that shows the link (because that is factual data).
The law also demands that if it's a crime, the punishment has been paid - so if you were jailed and served your time and released, you can have Google remove that link after a reasonable period of time. News will not be deleted, so you can't delete the BBC or CNN or anyone else from reporting it, but you can prevent a casual Google of your name from showing it.
Also, some things cannot be forgotten, period.
You may ask why I detail things that happened way in the past - that's the entire point of the law. Imagine how hard it is getting a job if the first thing someone sees when they Google you is your 20 year old arrest. Not only is it entirely irrelevant, especially if you've done the time, but is something that old still relevant? Perhaps you were 16 when it happened? Is it fair that a criminal or arrest record check won't show it, but Google remembers?
That's where the right comes into play - otherwise, you're going to have a whole generation of young kids too stupid to know better fail the Google test despite having clean records, all because while the law expunges adolescent criminal history, Google and the Internet don't?
And if you think "society should forget only if they deem it OK", then let me ask you - is child pornography OK? If not, then if a teenaged couple sent nude photos of each other and get arrested, that should remain? And if those photos get sent to someone else (an offense known as distribution of child pornography), that person who was probably just innocently forwarding photos onwards to their teenaged friends now a sex predator for life? (And yes, technically, while the teen couple sending sexy photos should not be child pornography, the forwarding of said photos by third parties isn't as clear-cut).
That's why there's the law - because we all make mistakes, and once we've paid the due, and sufficient time has passed, we should be able to move on.
The most egregious of the DLC and lootbox madness is Train Simulator 2016. To get everything for the game requires an over $3000 investment. At what point does it become less of a game and more of a senseless money grab?
Things like Train Simulator and the like are special. Namely, they consist of a LOT of licensed content. (Heck, think of it this way - the Swiss sued Apple because the clock looked a lot like the one at the train station).
So while a lot of what you buy is extra trains, remember that most of it is licensed - so there's contracts, payments, royalties, approvals, and lots of lawyers involved. Money goes to both the manufacturer or design holder, and often the railroad itself (since livery is often protected by copyright). And presumably, there's a fair bit of travel involved so the developers can capture train assets as well as performance characteristics. Locations are important too - doing mapping is expensive and what you want might not exist.
And licensing is not fun - some companies, like CBS (yes, Columbia Broadcasting System), want a $40,000 deposit just to sit down to discuss licensing. This is to ensure you're serious, but if you're a small developer, that's a huge chunk of cash flow to plunk down before you can even get the lawyers talking. Before you know it, you've spent $100,000 negotiating a license, and probably a 20% per unit sales fee, and other things. And they get final approval - if they don't like what you've done, they have the right to kill it then and there
And then it becomes a huge decision - do you include it in a pack or not? Because some customers will not want that company and thus will not pay to license it (but if it's included in the base pack, you still have to pay the royalties on it) so there's never any real choice in the matter. Either the developers make a million DLC and have people pay for it, but at least they pay for the license they want, or they make bundles and people end up paying for stuff they don't. (Sort of the bundle versus a la carte)
Of course, for some people, $3000 isn't a lot of money - railfans with the $100,000 layout in their basement probably would buy the entire kit and kaboodle because they want it all, and it's a small drop in the bucket for their hobby.
Well, except that in order to update *those* apps, you need to connect to...the iTunes store. If Netflix stops supporting older versions, you're hosed.
Now we know you're just trolling.
Because the first gen AppleTV does not have apps. In fact, one of the biggest drawbacks is Netflix is not supported at all. The original 720p second gen AppleTV was the first to feature Netflix before AppleTV got apps (2nd gen and onwards, and only when the 4th gen AppleTV came out a few years ago). First gen was the original x86-based AppleTV, second gen was the 720p version, third gen was 1080p, 4th gen was the 32/64GB version with apps (only about 2 years old now), and 5th gen is the 4K version out now.
The only use of iTunes Store on the original Apple TV is to buy movies and music. That's it.
Granted, it does have a hard drive so you can download the movie to it and watch it there, but I believe you can transfer movies from iTunes to it as well over the network.
Losing iTunes Store support on the original AppleTV is less of a limitation than you think. As long as iTunes still supports AppleTV over the network (transferring music and movies to its internal hard drive), then it's not really an issue.
Anyhow, it also means the old vulnerable SSL ciphers are being removed from the iTunes store.
One of the biggest complaint about the Dell XPS 13 laptop is the camera is at the bottom of the bezel instead of the top (where it is on most laptops). This results in a camera taking photos at less than flattering angles, notably, your nostrils.
This camera, being hidden in the keyboard, has the same issue - it points upwards from the computer, leading to everyone seeing your face and being distracted by your nostrils.
Hope you trimmed your nose hairs, because that's all anyone you're going to be chatting to will be seeing.
They do, however, buy third party servers for their infrastructure, including parts of iCloud hosting.
I would have also expected Apple to have more in-house cloud hosting, as *generally* when you get to very large scale, it becomes cheaper to own it rather than to rent it in absolute terms. From a capital expense versus operational expense, there is still a set of companies that are very averse to having capital, but Apple doesn't strike me as being in a position where they should have to fret about having too much capital.
Perhaps Apple is offshoring the data because Google, Amazon and Microsoft have distributed data centers. The phone and other metadata is small and can hit Apple directly, but backup data is large and if it all came from Apple's few data centers, people in Asia and other places might have a long wait, whereas by using Google/Amazon/Microsoft, they have a mini-CDN set up so your large amount of data can come from a nearby server.
It would not surprise me if Apple used the same thing to cache iOS and macOS updates worldwide - iOS update day has been known to generate so much traffic it beats Netflix, so Apple is using them as a simple CDN. (And I believe since the files are signed anyways, Apple uses HTTP so intermediary cache servers will cache the file as well)
This is truly an excellent opportunity to make money off of charging people a monthly fee for what used to be a fairly affordable one-time purchase. Sad that the big thing Microsoft is pumped about is a stale word processor and spreadsheet package. Satya's idea of innovation is a payment plan almost nobody actually likes.
Obviously you never bought Office.
A year of O365 is around $100. A full blown standalone version of Office (yes, you can buy those, the cards actually are right where the O365 cards are - look carefully and you'll find them) is around $3-400.
If you're a student, it's around $80 and you get a pile of more benefits, namely the $80 gives you 4 years of O365.
And the Office you get from O365 is good on 5 PCs (and 5 "other devices"), while the standalone Office is good for one PC only.
Yes, the Office is the same - you download the same software and can use it offline. Though the O365 version comes with cloud storage, which for 99% of home users out there, is essential as it'll be backed up automatically.
So yes, they do make O365 quite attractive - especially for home. You get the latest version of Office, you can run it on 5 separate PCs and given there's a new version every few years, it costs around the same.
And like I said, you can still buy the standalone version if you want. Just don't try to install it on more than 1 PC at a time.
Of course there are good reasons why no other automakers are bothering, with the possible exception of Nissan, automakers do not want electric cars.
No, DEALERS are not bothering with electric cars.
Because it cuts into the #1 source of income for the dealer.
Automakers don't care - as long as they're making a profit selling cars, they win.
Dealers make crap all on new car sales, and very little on used car sales. (This does not mean they don't charge above cost - it just means once you take into account overheads, car sales are not a big part of what makes them profitable).
It's service that makes them the most money. All the usual car maintenance and the like - a dealer will charge way more than what an independent garage would charge. (And dealers know it, so they get automakers to purposely withhold specialized tools).
Electric cars though, require very little service. When 90% of the drive train is electronic (and thus, very reliable and self-diagnosing as well), the only mechanical parts are brakes, potentially a single speed transmission (if you don't have to shift gears, these require practically no maintenance at all) and the rotor shaft of the motor. Thus you don't need to pop in 2-3 times a year to change your oil or other matters. At worst, you'd pop in every couple of years for a once-over inspection. So yes, dealers lose out when you buy an electric car. Thus they will not sell electric cars - you are not going to be a recurring source of revenue for them.
I'll have to get myself a man-purse to carry it in.
Too small a screen.
Asians use screen size as status symbol (hence why iPhone X sales are soft - the screen is sized for practicality, not status). If you can hold your phone in one hand, and use it, you are basically a beggar. If it takes two hands, you poor thing, how do you get about your life? If you need at least three hands to carry your phone, great, you're making it big!
Doesn't matter if you need 6 hands to actually use it. Size is king.
Most people never run out of fuel, because there's a gauge to tell them that they need to fill it up.
You'd be surprised, but running out of fuel is one of the most common ways a car basically "stops".
It's not because they forget to fill up, it's that they did fill up, but attempt to stretch it. All it takes is a sudden traffic jam, a road closure, diversion, or something else that idles them by the driveway and boom, they're out of gas.
Especially when gas prices rise and people toss $20 of gas in the tank when it hits E. They have barely enough gas to do all their stuff and reach another gas station.
Personally, once the gauge hits half I refill the tank - mostly because of a used car I had where if the tank was below half, it would basically be useless and jump all over the place. But above half, it was fine. Since I never "stretch it", once it hits half, it's time to fill up. In the winter months, I raise it to 3/4 - ensuring I have gas in the tank for emergencies, or in case things go sideways.
But that takes someone who is disciplined enough to visit the gas station often. Most people prefer to stretch it the other way and fill up when it hits E.
Trust isn't binary. No code is fully trusted. There is a whole spectrum from core kernel security functions in an open source OS to random Javascript served up by ads.
Most people run some proprietary software. Most people have not carefully security audited all their open source software. That's why operating systems have feature to isolate tasks, to protect the kernel and manage hardware access rights.
For most people the Meltdown patch is essential. Exploits are already in the wild.
No, it's overhyped. Perhaps if you're running a VM and intermix publicly accessible services with internal services, then you will want to worry about meltdown and spectre potentially causing the public VM to grab data from the secure VM. Of course, the other solution can use is to separate the machines physically, so someone exploiting meltdown on your public VM gets access to the other public VMs.
Here, the threat is not from the software on the VM, but from someone finding an exploit in the software and exploiting it. But there is nothing you can run that will get you access to the other private servers, especially with proper firewalling in place.
For single-server machines, the patches aren't as useful - if you break into the server via an exploit and then get root, just because you have patched it against meltdown means nothing - since you can access kernel memory anyways much more easily.
Plus, there are plenty of user-mode meltdown patches out there - the whole javascript exploit is now useless because all the major browsers have made it so "high resolution timers" aren't so high-resolution - they're around the 1msec range which is enough for scripts, but too coarse to actually do a meltdown exploit (the timing difference between cached and uncached is small and 1msec is not fine enough to tell).
The goal is to recognize that the problem is localized to one machine, and it inadvertently allows processes to read memory they're not supposed to. For a VM server, this is bad, since it means once VM can read memory of another VM. For a cloud service provider, this is disastrous since it means an evil VM can read other customer's data.
Within a company, it's a lot less serious if you already have the proper network segregation in place, you don't mix internal and externally accessible VMs on the same machine and other precautions. In a non-VM situation, it's a non-event - exploiting the service grants you access to the machine. And once that's happens, it can be assumed you can access the entire filesystem and everything accessible to the machine anyways.
If there is really no way for a 911 dispatcher to tell that a call is arriving from somewhere outside the local area through a commercial VoIP service, that is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be addressed. Probably all SWATing hoaxes involve that kind of proxy to reach the target dispatch, and probably vanishingly few legitimate emergency calls use those services.
If a dispatcher sees a VoIP call that indicates a high risk of violence or strongly points to heavily armed response, that should be good grounds to watch out for a hoax.
Many problems.
First, there are lots of VoIP providers out there. The big ones like Vonage and the ilk will route a 911 call to the right 911 emergency call center, within limitations (it's VoIP, so your call can come from anywhere).
Second, many smaller VoIP providers route 911 to some non-emergency number because they could not get direct emergency call center access numbers.
Third, your location is not known. At best, you can do an geographic IP lookup and get an approximate area to determine if the person is "in the area", but we all know how easy IP addresses are to fake (aka VPN services).
Fourth, VoIP is a legitimate service. 911 calls come from VoIP services all the time because people have replaced their home phone service with VoIP calls. So no, an emergency call from a VoIP service is not grounds for saying a call is fake - because there is way more real VoIP 911 emergencies than swatting calls.
FIfth, we considered denying 911 service to VoIP, but it was determined it would be a hassle to those who really did need it. The reason we considered denying it was everyone had a cellphone, and 911 is geo-located for that - the cell towers provide approximate location for you, and since E911 is mandatory, 911 operators can use your phone's GPS to get a more precise location. However, it was determined that even in an emergency, a phone should be able to dial 911, even if it's VoIP.
That's the real problem. There was even talk of installing GPS chips inside of VoIP terminals, but that eliminates a major advantage of VoIP - soft phones and such. While a lot of devices for VoIP do have location services capability (including many PCs), it's not as accurate and is trivially fooled.
One solution might be for the VoIP provider to provide two pieces of information to 911 - their IP location AND their billing address data - after all, VoIP services need to be paid for somehow, and knowing who is paying for the service might help in determining if it's fake or not. Of course, for those who move and thus have a billing address in their old location while they set up their new location, this may prove problematic.
And I still maintain, we should treat fake calls as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the cops. Ultimate liability will fall from the cop to the actual perpetrator, so if the cop shoots someone, the cop gets lucky - any damages, liability, sentences, monetary compensation, etc, ultimately get paid for by the caller. And yes, I say this because you don't know it's fake until after, so the cop will go through the usual process, and only find out at the end that instead of ending his career, he got one magical mulligan save. If he repeats his behavior, he may not be so lucky next time (because how often is it fake?).
Call it the once-in-a-lifetime event. IF you're a bad cop, it won't help you. But if you're an otherwise upstanding citizen and a misunderstanding happens, it's the ultimate. (And people seem to think you have all the time in the world - you don't. You have 3 seconds to figure out if the guy will shoot you from when the door opens, and 2 of them are spent identifying yourself and demanding he get down. If the home owner hesitates, misunderstands, or just wants to know what is going on, well, you have to decide - is it really a threat and he'll pull out his gun and shoot, or is it just a confused person wondering why he's surrounded by cops?).
Irony is that by celebrating the end of Net Neutrality, they're opening up the possibility for ISPs to block the NRA!
I mean, gun owners are a fairly hard core group, so why shouldn't ISPs now create a "gun lover's package" or set of packages? Access to the NRA and other gun related forums all for another $50 a month? Less than what you spend on ammo a month!
And the NRA's cheering the guy that's making it happen...
Is Elon Musk's vision for the future really one where there are proprietary fueling stations which only work on certain vehicles?
No, Tesla's vision is to break every stereotype of electric cars you may hold, so you can get a reasonably informed opinion that for the most part, an electric car and a gas car are mostly interchangeable.
Things like Ludicrous mode, the Roadster and the like are to dispel the myth that electric cars are like golf cars - slow and not very good. No, an electric car is sporty, even more so than a regular car.
The Supercharger network is to dispel the myth that you cannot go on long road trips - I believe you can go between major cities using the Supercharger network and a bit of careful planning and well placed rest stops. You can't do marathon 24 hour drives, but if you're reasonable about taking a reasonable break every few hours to stretch, use a bathroom, take a short walk, get fresh air, get something to eat, etc, you can do it. 40 minutes isn't a long time after you park and walk a bit and get a quick bite.
And the Supercharger is to show that while it's not as quick as a 10 minute gas station stop, you can still do a reasonable stop while the car charges in the parking lot. (And charging in the parking lot is a great idea).
If you don't want Tesla's proprietary fast charger, you can plug them straight into a standard wall socket or a dryer plug. Two utterly common sockets. No need for special chargers to be purchased and installed - just run a standard dryer plug (really, a 230V 50A plug) to the garage and there you go. Nothing proprietary about charging.
Browse FB (if you must) with your UserAgent string set to FreeBSD. Do they even MAKE a "malware scanner" for FreeBSD? If it doesn't exist for the platform, it's not likely to be offered.
Of course they do. Not for FreeBSD malware, mind you, but it'll scan for any sort of malware to prevent your FreeBSD machine from being an inadvertent carrier of malware.
It's the same reason why Linux is hacked - not because it's to spread Linux malware, but to infect some service so it can spread malware to Windows machines to connect to it. That's why it's almost never Linux itself proper that's hacked, but common services like WordPress.
Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?
Don't you have to have an IQ of around 50 to even be able to stand and walk around or something? I think at room temperature IQ they're not really anything more than moaning blobs unable to do anything.
Or is it one of those Celsius-Fahrenheit-Kelvin things?
I don't think you're inherently wrong, but "I keep hearing" is a tired refrain. How about, "There are peer-reviewed, replicated study results"? Violence in media, last I checked, has not shown a strong correlation with violence in society. Gun availability has shown a weak-to-moderate correlation. The FBI not taking obvious tips and especially blatant threats seriously would seem likely to have a strong correlation. As much as I'd like to see reasonable adjustments to gun policy, it's hard to argue the laws need revision when they aren't enforced now.
Media influence on violence, especially video games have shown a weak correlation. It's been studied to death, event though we do know that video game violence does desensitize players. Though, TV does the same as well. (And yes, the military uses these games to train soldiers as well for the same reason). However, there have been no correlations that either leads to violent people.
Gun correlation is hard, because there is no data. The reason there is no data is because studies are hard to get. And the reason they're hard to get is literally industry - the NRA lobbies hard and pays a lot of money to ensure that no one studies gun violence and related effects
The CDC, which is tasked with studying what kills and ails Americans cannot study guns. You might think gun violence isn't a disease, but they're not allowed to even keep statistics about it. Well, they are allowed to study it, but no taxpayer money is allowed to be spent on gun violence research over say, the common cold Obama tried to repeal this in an effort to at least get more information since none practically exists - the stuff that's out there is either from other countries, or paid for by NRA or gun control advocates. Other country data does not work, as the US has the most liberal gun ownership laws around (it's in the Constitution after all), and biased studies go both ways.
Also, in other countries, a lot of the guns found freely available in gun shops in the US is simply illegal. Everyone harps on the AR-15, but it's a gun that is prohibited by most countries from ownership, or at least from use.
The country that is the primary producer (DRC) is politically unstable and corrupt so it could make a lot of sense.
That makes it even worse to own the mine. Think about it for a moment - the mine could be nationalized (you lose your mine). The country could decide you're a special snowflake, and pay up billions in bribes right now, etc.
The government is too unstable to do business with, and tin-pot dictators really can change their mind at any moment, so what was once a secure supply can be suddenly a complete writeoff.
Presumably to help keep it from happening the chosen mines will keep quiet on who their big customer is to keep their mines secure.
I think it's an "app" the young people use to send naked pictures to each other with the naive belief that they magically disappear from the other end,
Old fart here. I think people underestimate security through obscurity.
Security through obscurity won't save you from a determined attacker like the NSA. But, security through obscurity will save you from the majority fo attackers who are looking for an easy target.
Except the workaround is so easy, anyone can do it.
As in, if you wanted to preserve the image, you took a screenshot. That's it.
Now, on Android, the app would disable the screenshot service, while on iOS this wasn't possible, so it would detect that it would happen (and thus supposedly send a message to the sender that their image was saved). This of course broke in iOS 8 or 9 when the mechanism Snapchat used no longer worked due to changes in the OS (since screenshots should be done with as little impact as possible)
Then it was discovered the app was not deleting the images as promised, and on both Android and iOS it was possible to recover the "deleted" images.
I think it was that, plus the iOS change that did Snapchat in - because they could no longer rely on images being fleeting that they had to pivot. That and well, I believe on Android some people had apps that simply scanned Snapchat's data directory and snatched a copy of the files too.
No, it means putting it on your devices. Apple does not see nor use this data - iCloud stuff is encrypted, Apple does not look at it, and you do not have to use iCloud if you do not wish.
To be correct, iCloud doesn't back up a lot of data. Like HealthKit data is NOT backed up. Or passwords. Or anything sensitive.
Remember, if it's backed up, it's potentially available to law enforcement via a request. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted or whatnot, if Apple holds it, Apple may have to give it up.
And there are some things Apple realizes that could open a can of worms. Like passwords - if Apple had a user's passwords, then Apple becomes a very enticing law enforcement target because people want those passwords.
So the best way for Apple to do this? Simply not back up passwords (including innocuous things like WiFi passwords) at all to iCloud. Apple cannot give up to a third party that which they don't have. So if Apple is forced to give law enforcement access to your iCloud account, Apple cannot give them your passwords because they don't have them.
In fact, if you want to back up everything, including sensitive data, the only way to do so is physically - you need to use iTunes, and have iTunes create an encrypted backup. (Non-encrypted backups don't have sensitive data - no point in making that giant a loophole by having device data encrypted, but an unencrypted backup of said data on the user's PC).
Remember - what data Apple has, Apple may have to give up. What data Apple doesn't have, Apple can never give up. Apple doesn't collect a lot of data they don't have to for that reason.
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple kept each element of your data in a separate database just to keep the privacy policy honest - Siri can't access your other data because it's not only not allowed to by the privacy policy, but it's in a separate database that Siri cannot access period, keeping everything nice and firewalled.
As for the Mini, I'm sure we'll see a revamp before too long. It's not like processors have had a massive leap in that time, all an update would bring is better I/O options (which still would be welcome).
Here's a dirty little secret. The Mini is the worst selling mac of the entire lineup. Not because it's way outdated (but that's a factor), but it just never moved as many units. Even when it was a PowerPC Mac when Steve Jobs was around.
Now, one thing Tim Cook is good at is keeping products that "coast" alive as long as possible. If Steve Jobs was still around, he'd kill both the Mac Pro and Mac MIni as literally, they never sold. In fact, there was good period of time when companies pleaded with Jobs to keep the Mini alive because rumors were strong that Apple was going to kill it.
With Tim Cook in charge, he's of the opinion that while it may not sell well, it still sells, and Apple would rather keep a product on the market they can still build and sell than really kill it and end all sales. That's why the iPod pretty much coasted as long as it did - honestly it should've been killed years ago, but Tim Cook kept it going basically until parts ran out and Apple couldn't build any more.
Likely the Mac Mini is the same - it doesn't sell well, but it sells, and maybe this year Apple will commit some engineering resources to build a new version - not much, mind you, since you don't want to pre-spend all your profit away from Mini sales unless it's likely to perk up sales. And given the sales history, it's not likely. However, updates are generally cheap, so new processor options will keep it alive. But a top-down redesign isn't likely
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Impulsivity. You're listening to Spotify and they play an ad that drives you over the edge, so you consider getting their paid service. Well, if you're in the app to do it, Apple will get their cut. Otherwise spotify will ahve to make you visit their website, log in, enter all your payment information and then buy the subscription.
Whereas using Apple Pay or Google Pay, it's a couple of taps and you're subscribed.
So the general user experience is you can capture the impulse shopper if you're willing to give up a part of the money or force the user to go through hoops and by the time they're done, they cancel because it was just taking too long.
The real question is - is the added hassle and abandoned purchases using the roundabout way get you more than if you gave in and simply let people impulse buy.
Well, what really helped were two things.
1) Most legit uses of flash were to watch YouTube videos, and the iPhone came with a YouTube app.
2) Most other users of flash were ads. iPhones not supporting Flash thus had a small advantage in well, getting a faster web browsing experience. For a time Adobe tried to convince everyone Flash was necessary (it was used on 99% of websites - yes, it was true, since 99% of them had flash ads) and offered an Android version, but while you could use it to view other video websites (great!), it meant you also got all the flash ads and they bogged your phone down.
By the time the iPhone came out, people were disabling flash to avoid ads
Actually, NASA used real computers to double check the calculations. Especially in the early days, but it persisted long into the Space Shuttle program in the 80s. (See Katherine Johnson. If that name sounds familiar, she's one of the three African-Americans documented in Hidden Figures (book and movie) who made a name for herself for calculating trajectories from Apollo to Mars. Or double-checking them - NASA was among the first to adopt electronic computers but still had her double-check the results).
Good, because I can't figure out how the keyboard would figure out I was resting my fingers on the home row ready to type versus actually typing.
It's trivial, so I must be dumb. I mean, I have 9 fingers on the screen at the same time - 8 on the home row, one thumb on the virtual space bar. And yet, I expect that the screen should not be sending keystrokes because I'm not typing.
But I expect that if I were to type one of those 9 keys, it would be registered.
If you expect me to hover my fingers and not touch the screen, I find that would make the keyboard completely useless, since we all rest our fingers on the keys.
And feedback - you need feedback. How can you do it?
And no, while I have not read the patent, I expect those answers to be there. We know Apple already does it - their latest touchpads do NOT move at all, but yet can detect a normal movement versus a click. And that click can provide enough force feedback that it feels like you actually clicked the pad. (I've tried it, and I can't believe how real it feels. Ditto the iPhone - the home buttons aren't buttons anymore, but they click the same as if they were).
Then you need to read about the law in question.
First off, it doesn't "delete URLs". It only deletes associations with them.
So if there's a news article about you being arrested for possessing a baggie of pot 20 years ago, the right to be forgotten will let you prevent google from suggesting say "arrested" if someone typed "nerdflat" into Google. It would not prevent someone from seeing the result of "nerdflat arrest news" that shows the link (because that is factual data).
The law also demands that if it's a crime, the punishment has been paid - so if you were jailed and served your time and released, you can have Google remove that link after a reasonable period of time. News will not be deleted, so you can't delete the BBC or CNN or anyone else from reporting it, but you can prevent a casual Google of your name from showing it.
Also, some things cannot be forgotten, period.
You may ask why I detail things that happened way in the past - that's the entire point of the law. Imagine how hard it is getting a job if the first thing someone sees when they Google you is your 20 year old arrest. Not only is it entirely irrelevant, especially if you've done the time, but is something that old still relevant? Perhaps you were 16 when it happened? Is it fair that a criminal or arrest record check won't show it, but Google remembers?
That's where the right comes into play - otherwise, you're going to have a whole generation of young kids too stupid to know better fail the Google test despite having clean records, all because while the law expunges adolescent criminal history, Google and the Internet don't?
And if you think "society should forget only if they deem it OK", then let me ask you - is child pornography OK? If not, then if a teenaged couple sent nude photos of each other and get arrested, that should remain? And if those photos get sent to someone else (an offense known as distribution of child pornography), that person who was probably just innocently forwarding photos onwards to their teenaged friends now a sex predator for life? (And yes, technically, while the teen couple sending sexy photos should not be child pornography, the forwarding of said photos by third parties isn't as clear-cut).
That's why there's the law - because we all make mistakes, and once we've paid the due, and sufficient time has passed, we should be able to move on.
Things like Train Simulator and the like are special. Namely, they consist of a LOT of licensed content. (Heck, think of it this way - the Swiss sued Apple because the clock looked a lot like the one at the train station).
So while a lot of what you buy is extra trains, remember that most of it is licensed - so there's contracts, payments, royalties, approvals, and lots of lawyers involved. Money goes to both the manufacturer or design holder, and often the railroad itself (since livery is often protected by copyright). And presumably, there's a fair bit of travel involved so the developers can capture train assets as well as performance characteristics. Locations are important too - doing mapping is expensive and what you want might not exist.
And licensing is not fun - some companies, like CBS (yes, Columbia Broadcasting System), want a $40,000 deposit just to sit down to discuss licensing. This is to ensure you're serious, but if you're a small developer, that's a huge chunk of cash flow to plunk down before you can even get the lawyers talking. Before you know it, you've spent $100,000 negotiating a license, and probably a 20% per unit sales fee, and other things. And they get final approval - if they don't like what you've done, they have the right to kill it then and there
And then it becomes a huge decision - do you include it in a pack or not? Because some customers will not want that company and thus will not pay to license it (but if it's included in the base pack, you still have to pay the royalties on it) so there's never any real choice in the matter. Either the developers make a million DLC and have people pay for it, but at least they pay for the license they want, or they make bundles and people end up paying for stuff they don't. (Sort of the bundle versus a la carte)
Of course, for some people, $3000 isn't a lot of money - railfans with the $100,000 layout in their basement probably would buy the entire kit and kaboodle because they want it all, and it's a small drop in the bucket for their hobby.
Now we know you're just trolling.
Because the first gen AppleTV does not have apps. In fact, one of the biggest drawbacks is Netflix is not supported at all. The original 720p second gen AppleTV was the first to feature Netflix before AppleTV got apps (2nd gen and onwards, and only when the 4th gen AppleTV came out a few years ago). First gen was the original x86-based AppleTV, second gen was the 720p version, third gen was 1080p, 4th gen was the 32/64GB version with apps (only about 2 years old now), and 5th gen is the 4K version out now.
The only use of iTunes Store on the original Apple TV is to buy movies and music. That's it.
Granted, it does have a hard drive so you can download the movie to it and watch it there, but I believe you can transfer movies from iTunes to it as well over the network.
Losing iTunes Store support on the original AppleTV is less of a limitation than you think. As long as iTunes still supports AppleTV over the network (transferring music and movies to its internal hard drive), then it's not really an issue.
Anyhow, it also means the old vulnerable SSL ciphers are being removed from the iTunes store.
One of the biggest complaint about the Dell XPS 13 laptop is the camera is at the bottom of the bezel instead of the top (where it is on most laptops). This results in a camera taking photos at less than flattering angles, notably, your nostrils.
This camera, being hidden in the keyboard, has the same issue - it points upwards from the computer, leading to everyone seeing your face and being distracted by your nostrils.
Hope you trimmed your nose hairs, because that's all anyone you're going to be chatting to will be seeing.
Perhaps Apple is offshoring the data because Google, Amazon and Microsoft have distributed data centers. The phone and other metadata is small and can hit Apple directly, but backup data is large and if it all came from Apple's few data centers, people in Asia and other places might have a long wait, whereas by using Google/Amazon/Microsoft, they have a mini-CDN set up so your large amount of data can come from a nearby server.
It would not surprise me if Apple used the same thing to cache iOS and macOS updates worldwide - iOS update day has been known to generate so much traffic it beats Netflix, so Apple is using them as a simple CDN. (And I believe since the files are signed anyways, Apple uses HTTP so intermediary cache servers will cache the file as well)
Obviously you never bought Office.
A year of O365 is around $100. A full blown standalone version of Office (yes, you can buy those, the cards actually are right where the O365 cards are - look carefully and you'll find them) is around $3-400.
If you're a student, it's around $80 and you get a pile of more benefits, namely the $80 gives you 4 years of O365.
And the Office you get from O365 is good on 5 PCs (and 5 "other devices"), while the standalone Office is good for one PC only.
Yes, the Office is the same - you download the same software and can use it offline. Though the O365 version comes with cloud storage, which for 99% of home users out there, is essential as it'll be backed up automatically.
So yes, they do make O365 quite attractive - especially for home. You get the latest version of Office, you can run it on 5 separate PCs and given there's a new version every few years, it costs around the same.
And like I said, you can still buy the standalone version if you want. Just don't try to install it on more than 1 PC at a time.
No, DEALERS are not bothering with electric cars.
Because it cuts into the #1 source of income for the dealer.
Automakers don't care - as long as they're making a profit selling cars, they win.
Dealers make crap all on new car sales, and very little on used car sales. (This does not mean they don't charge above cost - it just means once you take into account overheads, car sales are not a big part of what makes them profitable).
It's service that makes them the most money. All the usual car maintenance and the like - a dealer will charge way more than what an independent garage would charge. (And dealers know it, so they get automakers to purposely withhold specialized tools).
Electric cars though, require very little service. When 90% of the drive train is electronic (and thus, very reliable and self-diagnosing as well), the only mechanical parts are brakes, potentially a single speed transmission (if you don't have to shift gears, these require practically no maintenance at all) and the rotor shaft of the motor. Thus you don't need to pop in 2-3 times a year to change your oil or other matters. At worst, you'd pop in every couple of years for a once-over inspection. So yes, dealers lose out when you buy an electric car. Thus they will not sell electric cars - you are not going to be a recurring source of revenue for them.
Too small a screen.
Asians use screen size as status symbol (hence why iPhone X sales are soft - the screen is sized for practicality, not status). If you can hold your phone in one hand, and use it, you are basically a beggar. If it takes two hands, you poor thing, how do you get about your life? If you need at least three hands to carry your phone, great, you're making it big!
Doesn't matter if you need 6 hands to actually use it. Size is king.
You'd be surprised, but running out of fuel is one of the most common ways a car basically "stops".
It's not because they forget to fill up, it's that they did fill up, but attempt to stretch it. All it takes is a sudden traffic jam, a road closure, diversion, or something else that idles them by the driveway and boom, they're out of gas.
Especially when gas prices rise and people toss $20 of gas in the tank when it hits E. They have barely enough gas to do all their stuff and reach another gas station.
Personally, once the gauge hits half I refill the tank - mostly because of a used car I had where if the tank was below half, it would basically be useless and jump all over the place. But above half, it was fine. Since I never "stretch it", once it hits half, it's time to fill up. In the winter months, I raise it to 3/4 - ensuring I have gas in the tank for emergencies, or in case things go sideways.
But that takes someone who is disciplined enough to visit the gas station often. Most people prefer to stretch it the other way and fill up when it hits E.
No, it's overhyped. Perhaps if you're running a VM and intermix publicly accessible services with internal services, then you will want to worry about meltdown and spectre potentially causing the public VM to grab data from the secure VM. Of course, the other solution can use is to separate the machines physically, so someone exploiting meltdown on your public VM gets access to the other public VMs.
Here, the threat is not from the software on the VM, but from someone finding an exploit in the software and exploiting it. But there is nothing you can run that will get you access to the other private servers, especially with proper firewalling in place.
For single-server machines, the patches aren't as useful - if you break into the server via an exploit and then get root, just because you have patched it against meltdown means nothing - since you can access kernel memory anyways much more easily.
Plus, there are plenty of user-mode meltdown patches out there - the whole javascript exploit is now useless because all the major browsers have made it so "high resolution timers" aren't so high-resolution - they're around the 1msec range which is enough for scripts, but too coarse to actually do a meltdown exploit (the timing difference between cached and uncached is small and 1msec is not fine enough to tell).
The goal is to recognize that the problem is localized to one machine, and it inadvertently allows processes to read memory they're not supposed to. For a VM server, this is bad, since it means once VM can read memory of another VM. For a cloud service provider, this is disastrous since it means an evil VM can read other customer's data.
Within a company, it's a lot less serious if you already have the proper network segregation in place, you don't mix internal and externally accessible VMs on the same machine and other precautions. In a non-VM situation, it's a non-event - exploiting the service grants you access to the machine. And once that's happens, it can be assumed you can access the entire filesystem and everything accessible to the machine anyways.
Many problems.
First, there are lots of VoIP providers out there. The big ones like Vonage and the ilk will route a 911 call to the right 911 emergency call center, within limitations (it's VoIP, so your call can come from anywhere).
Second, many smaller VoIP providers route 911 to some non-emergency number because they could not get direct emergency call center access numbers.
Third, your location is not known. At best, you can do an geographic IP lookup and get an approximate area to determine if the person is "in the area", but we all know how easy IP addresses are to fake (aka VPN services).
Fourth, VoIP is a legitimate service. 911 calls come from VoIP services all the time because people have replaced their home phone service with VoIP calls. So no, an emergency call from a VoIP service is not grounds for saying a call is fake - because there is way more real VoIP 911 emergencies than swatting calls.
FIfth, we considered denying 911 service to VoIP, but it was determined it would be a hassle to those who really did need it. The reason we considered denying it was everyone had a cellphone, and 911 is geo-located for that - the cell towers provide approximate location for you, and since E911 is mandatory, 911 operators can use your phone's GPS to get a more precise location. However, it was determined that even in an emergency, a phone should be able to dial 911, even if it's VoIP.
That's the real problem. There was even talk of installing GPS chips inside of VoIP terminals, but that eliminates a major advantage of VoIP - soft phones and such. While a lot of devices for VoIP do have location services capability (including many PCs), it's not as accurate and is trivially fooled.
One solution might be for the VoIP provider to provide two pieces of information to 911 - their IP location AND their billing address data - after all, VoIP services need to be paid for somehow, and knowing who is paying for the service might help in determining if it's fake or not. Of course, for those who move and thus have a billing address in their old location while they set up their new location, this may prove problematic.
And I still maintain, we should treat fake calls as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the cops. Ultimate liability will fall from the cop to the actual perpetrator, so if the cop shoots someone, the cop gets lucky - any damages, liability, sentences, monetary compensation, etc, ultimately get paid for by the caller. And yes, I say this because you don't know it's fake until after, so the cop will go through the usual process, and only find out at the end that instead of ending his career, he got one magical mulligan save. If he repeats his behavior, he may not be so lucky next time (because how often is it fake?).
Call it the once-in-a-lifetime event. IF you're a bad cop, it won't help you. But if you're an otherwise upstanding citizen and a misunderstanding happens, it's the ultimate. (And people seem to think you have all the time in the world - you don't. You have 3 seconds to figure out if the guy will shoot you from when the door opens, and 2 of them are spent identifying yourself and demanding he get down. If the home owner hesitates, misunderstands, or just wants to know what is going on, well, you have to decide - is it really a threat and he'll pull out his gun and shoot, or is it just a confused person wondering why he's surrounded by cops?).
Irony is that by celebrating the end of Net Neutrality, they're opening up the possibility for ISPs to block the NRA!
I mean, gun owners are a fairly hard core group, so why shouldn't ISPs now create a "gun lover's package" or set of packages? Access to the NRA and other gun related forums all for another $50 a month? Less than what you spend on ammo a month!
And the NRA's cheering the guy that's making it happen...
No, Tesla's vision is to break every stereotype of electric cars you may hold, so you can get a reasonably informed opinion that for the most part, an electric car and a gas car are mostly interchangeable.
Things like Ludicrous mode, the Roadster and the like are to dispel the myth that electric cars are like golf cars - slow and not very good. No, an electric car is sporty, even more so than a regular car.
The Supercharger network is to dispel the myth that you cannot go on long road trips - I believe you can go between major cities using the Supercharger network and a bit of careful planning and well placed rest stops. You can't do marathon 24 hour drives, but if you're reasonable about taking a reasonable break every few hours to stretch, use a bathroom, take a short walk, get fresh air, get something to eat, etc, you can do it. 40 minutes isn't a long time after you park and walk a bit and get a quick bite.
And the Supercharger is to show that while it's not as quick as a 10 minute gas station stop, you can still do a reasonable stop while the car charges in the parking lot. (And charging in the parking lot is a great idea).
If you don't want Tesla's proprietary fast charger, you can plug them straight into a standard wall socket or a dryer plug. Two utterly common sockets. No need for special chargers to be purchased and installed - just run a standard dryer plug (really, a 230V 50A plug) to the garage and there you go. Nothing proprietary about charging.
Of course they do. Not for FreeBSD malware, mind you, but it'll scan for any sort of malware to prevent your FreeBSD machine from being an inadvertent carrier of malware.
It's the same reason why Linux is hacked - not because it's to spread Linux malware, but to infect some service so it can spread malware to Windows machines to connect to it. That's why it's almost never Linux itself proper that's hacked, but common services like WordPress.
Don't you have to have an IQ of around 50 to even be able to stand and walk around or something? I think at room temperature IQ they're not really anything more than moaning blobs unable to do anything.
Or is it one of those Celsius-Fahrenheit-Kelvin things?
I don't think you're inherently wrong, but "I keep hearing" is a tired refrain. How about, "There are peer-reviewed, replicated study results"? Violence in media, last I checked, has not shown a strong correlation with violence in society. Gun availability has shown a weak-to-moderate correlation. The FBI not taking obvious tips and especially blatant threats seriously would seem likely to have a strong correlation. As much as I'd like to see reasonable adjustments to gun policy, it's hard to argue the laws need revision when they aren't enforced now.
Media influence on violence, especially video games have shown a weak correlation. It's been studied to death, event though we do know that video game violence does desensitize players. Though, TV does the same as well. (And yes, the military uses these games to train soldiers as well for the same reason). However, there have been no correlations that either leads to violent people.
Gun correlation is hard, because there is no data. The reason there is no data is because studies are hard to get. And the reason they're hard to get is literally industry - the NRA lobbies hard and pays a lot of money to ensure that no one studies gun violence and related effects
The CDC, which is tasked with studying what kills and ails Americans cannot study guns. You might think gun violence isn't a disease, but they're not allowed to even keep statistics about it. Well, they are allowed to study it, but no taxpayer money is allowed to be spent on gun violence research over say, the common cold Obama tried to repeal this in an effort to at least get more information since none practically exists - the stuff that's out there is either from other countries, or paid for by NRA or gun control advocates. Other country data does not work, as the US has the most liberal gun ownership laws around (it's in the Constitution after all), and biased studies go both ways.
Also, in other countries, a lot of the guns found freely available in gun shops in the US is simply illegal. Everyone harps on the AR-15, but it's a gun that is prohibited by most countries from ownership, or at least from use.
That makes it even worse to own the mine. Think about it for a moment - the mine could be nationalized (you lose your mine). The country could decide you're a special snowflake, and pay up billions in bribes right now, etc.
The government is too unstable to do business with, and tin-pot dictators really can change their mind at any moment, so what was once a secure supply can be suddenly a complete writeoff.
Presumably to help keep it from happening the chosen mines will keep quiet on who their big customer is to keep their mines secure.
Meh. That's only about 50-100% faster than what you get with current SSDs (the top end SSDs can do 2200MB/sec reads and 1500+MB/sec writes)
Except the workaround is so easy, anyone can do it.
As in, if you wanted to preserve the image, you took a screenshot. That's it.
Now, on Android, the app would disable the screenshot service, while on iOS this wasn't possible, so it would detect that it would happen (and thus supposedly send a message to the sender that their image was saved). This of course broke in iOS 8 or 9 when the mechanism Snapchat used no longer worked due to changes in the OS (since screenshots should be done with as little impact as possible)
Then it was discovered the app was not deleting the images as promised, and on both Android and iOS it was possible to recover the "deleted" images.
I think it was that, plus the iOS change that did Snapchat in - because they could no longer rely on images being fleeting that they had to pivot. That and well, I believe on Android some people had apps that simply scanned Snapchat's data directory and snatched a copy of the files too.
To be correct, iCloud doesn't back up a lot of data. Like HealthKit data is NOT backed up. Or passwords. Or anything sensitive.
Remember, if it's backed up, it's potentially available to law enforcement via a request. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted or whatnot, if Apple holds it, Apple may have to give it up.
And there are some things Apple realizes that could open a can of worms. Like passwords - if Apple had a user's passwords, then Apple becomes a very enticing law enforcement target because people want those passwords.
So the best way for Apple to do this? Simply not back up passwords (including innocuous things like WiFi passwords) at all to iCloud. Apple cannot give up to a third party that which they don't have. So if Apple is forced to give law enforcement access to your iCloud account, Apple cannot give them your passwords because they don't have them.
In fact, if you want to back up everything, including sensitive data, the only way to do so is physically - you need to use iTunes, and have iTunes create an encrypted backup. (Non-encrypted backups don't have sensitive data - no point in making that giant a loophole by having device data encrypted, but an unencrypted backup of said data on the user's PC).
Remember - what data Apple has, Apple may have to give up. What data Apple doesn't have, Apple can never give up. Apple doesn't collect a lot of data they don't have to for that reason.
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple kept each element of your data in a separate database just to keep the privacy policy honest - Siri can't access your other data because it's not only not allowed to by the privacy policy, but it's in a separate database that Siri cannot access period, keeping everything nice and firewalled.
Here's a dirty little secret. The Mini is the worst selling mac of the entire lineup. Not because it's way outdated (but that's a factor), but it just never moved as many units. Even when it was a PowerPC Mac when Steve Jobs was around.
Now, one thing Tim Cook is good at is keeping products that "coast" alive as long as possible. If Steve Jobs was still around, he'd kill both the Mac Pro and Mac MIni as literally, they never sold. In fact, there was good period of time when companies pleaded with Jobs to keep the Mini alive because rumors were strong that Apple was going to kill it.
With Tim Cook in charge, he's of the opinion that while it may not sell well, it still sells, and Apple would rather keep a product on the market they can still build and sell than really kill it and end all sales. That's why the iPod pretty much coasted as long as it did - honestly it should've been killed years ago, but Tim Cook kept it going basically until parts ran out and Apple couldn't build any more.
Likely the Mac Mini is the same - it doesn't sell well, but it sells, and maybe this year Apple will commit some engineering resources to build a new version - not much, mind you, since you don't want to pre-spend all your profit away from Mini sales unless it's likely to perk up sales. And given the sales history, it's not likely. However, updates are generally cheap, so new processor options will keep it alive. But a top-down redesign isn't likely