I have no interest in a connected watch product. However, should the Apple watch or a third-party watchband that connects to an Apple watch start to offer the ability to monitor my blood sugar levels 24/7 in real time... this can't be said too strongly... I will buy one. Period, Full Stop.
Obviously this means that the way forward for the watch products is through Health Care. It has massive potential, actually.
The more serious danger of aircraft passenger travel is the nuclear medicine routinely transported in the cargo hold, a few feet through a thin aluminum floor from male testicles, which are more susceptible to radiation damage than the body as a whole (put your nuke badge on your pant zipper instead of your chest, and you will get fired from your Nuclear-related job, as the workplace exposure limit is significantly lower in the gonads, making the badge non-compliant as it is designed to react to a specific amount of cumulative radiation). Pilots are generally not exposed, as the cargo hold rarely extends to under the captain's seat.
The fundamental reason for the fall-back, aside from complaints, was that people voted with their money. By leaving in droves... it doesn't matter what fees Patreon charges... means Patreon itself was seeing a reduced income, not just those who were receiving pledges. Simple as that.
Is there life on other planets? How about *intelligent* life on other planets?
Given what we know about the size of our own Galaxy, let alone the size of the Universe... some portion of which is so far away that the light cannot reach us (ie more Light Years than Earth time from the Big Bang), the chances that extra-terrestial life *doesn't* exist is by far the greater likelihood.
However, that doesn't change the fact that there is no known mechanism for such life to reach Earth. "Space Ships" cannot travel at the speed of light... some fraction is all that is reasonable. At high near-lightspeeds the mass of the object gets to the point where just arriving at another planet would destroy that planet. We don't see planets being vaporized for no apparent reason.
So, there is no reasonable explanation as to how an alien spacecraft could reach Earth. Thus UFO sightings must have another explanation, even when that explanation isn't discoverable.
I support one Patreon member at $2/mo. The member offers genuine value to me (electronics repair, troubleshooting, and DIY test equipment designs that, if I were to purchase them at retail, would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars). So, for the $24/year (or whatever it works out to with the new fees) is genuine value to me. He makes about $US 4400/mo from people like myself, so apparently he is one of the better paid members.
Perhaps the problem is so many Patreon members don't actually offer anything of value? Why would we expect them to succeed on the site?
I am always mystified by the comments that US teachers are "underpaid". It's a $60K a year job here ($US 48K), starting wage full time teacher in the Public School system right out of college. Any idea what the actual wage would be in the US for an entry level Public School position?
It may seem strange, considering my rant, but I felt I used the word "actually" in a relevant manner. It was carefully chosen; I considered dropping it; I could have dropped it and the meaning would not have changed, but it emphasizes the question posed, versus the typical "you can actually charge the battery" drivel you usually see and hear.
Maybe not appropriate for release notes (which I agree with others here who suggest they should be to the point and functional) but I just wish more software developers or the companies they work for would just tell me one thing: What does this application actually DO? I tire of marketing-speak and general superlatives when the app name is cryptic or cute, something somebody thought was clever, but doesn't actually identify the app's function. So you have to read the marketing blurb, which far to often doesn't say what the thing does, or uses acronyms that someone who uses the software would know but someone who wants to know if it will be useful may not.
Really why does this have to be like pulling teeth?
Oh, and let's drop the word "actually", can we? About 98% of the time, dropping that stupid word from speech, reviews, or marketing enhances the clarity. It usually doesn't mean anything in the context of what is trying to be conveyed. I don't know how it became some kind of language crutch for tech about a bazillion years ago, but please, just stop it. Already.
I have from time to time worked at remote jobsites; you are there for various lengths of time (two weeks, three, sometimes longer, but in any case 7days/week 12 hours/day) and then flown home for what are the equivalent of your days off.
Sooo...
We board the plane at home, six AM, go through security, yes the boots, belt etc are a hassle because you only have limited luggage and you need your tools and proper dress for the job, typically outdoors or a combination of indoors and out. So I have to remove workboots with ankle support and many laces, etc.
At the jobsite we disembark and go to work, typically starting at about 10AM on travel days.
On the way home, we board the aircraft, no security, and travel to the nearest city 250 miles away.
THEN we disembark, all luggage is unloaded from the aircraft, and you carry your bags and go through security. Yes, after flying for the majority of the trip.
Then you reboard the aircraft while your luggage is re-loaded, and fly a 25 minute leg to your home city.
There is no earthly use to this regimen on the return flight. It only exists to satisfy silly regulations. The jobsite, by the way, has explosives on site.
The Blu-Ray player needs to connect to the internet for updates to be able to play the latest discs.
What the hell are you talking about? My Blu-Ray player is several year old, has never been connected to the internet and never will be, and has never had an issue playing a disk.
Sorry, but a fucking content disk should NEVER require an update to the player. It's my fucking player, and the asshole who made the content doesn't get a vote on updating my player.
But I've simply never ever SEEN any disk which says "you must update your player to play this".
My TV and Blu-Ray player are devices which have no need to be connected to the internet, and I see no value in doing so. And they've worked just fine to date.
I don't trust the makers on consumer entertainment devices with security. In fact, I outright don't trust their intent or competence.
Your experience probably represents different versions of the Blu-Ray licensed chip embedded in your player.
An older, earlier version of the player may not require these permissions, while a newer version may. The player manufacturers really don't have any say in the matter; if they want to sell players they need to license the decoder chips, and the terms are not really under their control.
That's just based on a false premise. Why would anyone not buy at multiple stores to get the best price on each individual item? That's what I do. That and buy in bulk items which don't spoil when the price is lowest? As for Whole Foods, just as an example 90/10 ground beef is over $10 a pound. Walmart sells it for $3.28. I can often find a local grocer who has a sale on it for $1.83. If I go and buy only ground beef and not the 100 other items that have been marked up to support the sale I come out ahead.
Absolutely. But it takes time, and careful record keeping, it might mean putting up with mounds of flyers in the mailbox (you can't just indicate "grocery stores only"; I have a "No Flyers" label on my mailbox, and that takes care of almost all junk mail except that where the originator pays the much higher rate to the Post Office, whom guarantee delivery to every address in the zip code / postal code paid for). Still the newsprint variety is essentially non-existant in my home.
So that means checking online. Not difficult to do, just difficult to endure over time.
If you don't want to do either, that means physically visiting a group of stores, and keeping records on your smartphone (probably). That is, as a matter of fact, what I do. But the list of "price check" items is relatively short... certainly not my entire basket of goods, so the rest comes from memory and familiarization, which again I don't find difficult, just tedious.
But here's the thing... I only really began doing these things in earnest when illness forced me to live with a much reduced income. At my working salary, I cared a little less, which is not to say not at all, but still, it meant in at least some cases I just put stuff in the cart and left, done for the month (supplanted by weekly trips for smaller quantities of fresh fruit, dairy, and meat). Not any more, but I am not the average consumer anymore either.
Most consumers want to "get in and get out"... it may be the only category of retail where most women won't shop around; they see it as drudgery to buy for the family, week in and week out. Males... most simply don't care beyond minimizing the amount of time spent shopping for groceries.
You can game the system just as the system can game you. But guess which one happens more often?
I am not at all surprised by the findings. It succinctly summarizes the retail Food Industry in first-world nations.
During "one of those conversations"... note that this is purely anecdotical... a casual acquaintance piped in about a discussion on the day's grocery purchases and people's general food buying preferences. I liked Safeway, due to the quality of fresh meat and produce offered there, and someone said that they shopped at The Great Canadian Superstore, another food reseller in western Canada, owned by the Weston family, a massive conglomerate of food industry companies that dominate the Canadian market. They claimed Safeway food prices were "too high".
I replied that careful shopping (using a list being the most prominent) meant I didn't pay any more and that Superstore meat was of marginal cut quality (the grades were fine; but if you bought, say, a tray of Pork Chops, underneath the nice looking cuts were others that "looked like they were cut with a chainsaw").
Then the acquaintance piped up. He said he and his family had participated in a study by the Canadian Federal Government consumer agency whereby they created a standard shopping list, buying whatever they normally did but sticking strictly to the list they created themselves, and shopping at four major food resellers, alternating by month.
"The overall grocery bill was the same. There was almost no difference. You might save here, but they nail you there. The specific items changed from store to store, with one item lower in price while it may be higher elsewhere, but in the end, taken as a basket of goods, there was no difference. None"
I fully expect(ed) that Whole Foods, which is not "the same as everybody else" price-wise, would have the essentially the same outcome, in that, taken as a basket of goods, the overall price would be unchanged from before the Amazon buyout.
And the result is, the FBI couldn't access half the smartphones they wanted to last year. Nor could they access any of the guns they failed to find last year. Or read any of the documents shredded and burned. Or transcribe any of the phone calls they failed to tap and/or record. Or, for that matter, understand any of the dead languages they could not translate, or drink any of the coffees they failed to pour.
Apparently they need to seek out evidence, via, you know, police work. I feel so sorry for them, being forced to do the jobs they were trained to do. None of that justifies backdoors into secure devices.
I think the OP should have been clear that this is MasterCard USA only. I haven't signed for a card-present credit card payment or debit card payment in probably 15 years.
This one's pretty easy to figure out. It's the manufacturer... or in the modern world, the company that creates the product, sent out for manufacturing... who is responsible for IoT security.
But there is a problem. There is the rush to get the product to market, which means bad code is "good enough", and the lack of any repercussions if security is an afterthought, or worse.
Consumers have a responsibility to insist companies make an effort with security. They simply don't, as they aren't generally sophisticated enough to see a problem exists.
That leaves Government... yeah, I know... to protect consumers with legislation. That's how consumer protection works, and it's the only way we know to make it work.
Which brings up another issue... Government is not very good at technology, and in the current fast-paced digital landscape, they are inclined to let the market sort itself out.
You can see the problem here... it's a circular situation. No-one is willing, and you can make a good argument that no-one is able (that is, amongst either Consumer watchdogs or the buying public), to identify security as a priority./. readers might be aware of the problem, but we are not the majority. Tech writers, whom are generally not very good at anything beyond cheerleading for the latest gadget, need to step up and make consumers aware that security should be a buying criteria.
They should be shaming manufacturers (putting aside that the term has changed in meaning) into hiring competent code developers and creating secure products. And maybe then at least the problem could be minimized.
Although the Geolocation with my connection is often accurate (defining the city I live in) it occasionally puts me at another city 150 miles away.
Perhaps more interestingly, when I was in a remote area and we connected via a dish satellite link, I often got geolocation that put me in New York City, some 2500 miles away an in a different country.
The above is from ads, especially shady dating ads, that would suggest I could find many "available" dates in xx city. These days that doesn't happen because I use effective ad blocking, so the ads simply don't appear anymore, but I suspect similar things would happen if I turned ad blocking off.
If we want to return to secure for the user..... computing, the only option at this point is fabbing new chips with end user configurable management engines, with no built in manufacturer keys, and electron microscope verification of the final fabbed chips to ensure that remains so.
I'm not sure either country has the willingness or ability to, but Venezuela+Cuba would be the perfect pair of countries to start a computing rebellion, assuming they could buy all the necessary fab gear and get a unit spun up.
If they could and were willing to work at fully verifiable consumer grade processors, even if they ~2009 era performance, I know I for one would buy them.
Ousting dangerous tech from our CPUs, our Motherboards, and our GPUs are the first steps towards taking back our systems. Without this, we are on a slow decline into the sort of dystopian nightmares that sci-fi writens have been pushing for years.
I think the problem with this specific approach is that Cuba and Venezuela are knee-deep with the Chinese. Everything from cellular tech to routers to buses to new cars to oil and gas rigs are China-sourced in Cuba in particular. I suspect that the US's realization that it may already be too late to displace China's influence in these two nations might be behind efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, while there is still a chance of US influence.
FBI does not give a fuck about external affairs. You are full of crap.
The FBI most certainly does "give a fuck about external affairs". They interact extensively with law enforcement in other nations. Sometimes that law enforcement is the nation's Military. Or some other agency that blurs the lines between espionage and crime.
When it comes to US Citizens, there is a line drawn between the FBI and agencies like the CIA. But that line doesn't exist when it comes to other foreign nationals.
If US ignores the ruling, WTO will probably grant Russia the right to ignore intellectual property rights of US firms. It did in the past for Antigua if I recall correctly.
The difference is that Antigua is not full of high-skilled programmers that could turn leaked Windows sources into a rival commercial product.
The WTO generally does not operate in that manner.
If Antigua was a signatory to the WTO, they agree as a condition of membership to respect and support the enforcement of the IP rights of other members.
What they will do, is if a harm is determined, is to give the harmed party the right to impose specific sanctions. Exactly what those sanctions are are left to the harmed party, rather than specified by the WTO. They do have to be reasonable, that is, in general equivalence with the harm done by the first (losing) party.
That's for sure. If you read the article (I know, right?) you will learn the methodology that these "economists" used:
1. Take a period of time when the minimum wage went up from $6.77 to $7.77, specifically 1980 to 2015.
2. See how many low-skill jobs were lost to automation in that time.
3. Assume that the automation was implemented purely to avoid paying the extra buck an hour to those greedy people making $7.77/hr and had nothing do with, I don't know, technological advances in automation.
4. Conclude that companies won't implement automation if we can just keep wages low enough, and that people would be better off if they just accepted their lot in life. Just think of how many jobs would be created if workers stopped expecting to be paid altogether!
If you think I'm kidding, read the article (and the linked "research" by these "economists")
You've got the salient point.
Automation has been going on pretty much consistently for a while now, and when you automate a plant, you replace x number of low-skilled workers with fewer, higher skilled workers.
What is missed, or what is blamed on minimum wage increases, is that the road to future manufacturing jobs is through automation. If businesses avoid automation, they will find they cannot compete and will disappear, they no longer will be viable enterprises.
Employees and employers must embrace automation, accept that this means fewer workers in a given enterprise, and work to increase the number of manufacturers, not to attempt to maintain the same number of manufacturers and the same number of staff at the plant. Failure to do so will kill the manufacturing sector, not maintain it.
It's Partly because of Actors whom are often smaller sized... the ideal TV/Movie actor and actress have a distinctive body type that is not that common in the general populace. To be on screen you need a large head in relation to the torso. "Big" people have difficultly obtaining that body type... their heads are more in proportion to their body size.
On the screen, that won't do. If you've ever had much contact with on-screen personalities you may have been surprised at how small they are in real life. The Dustin Hoffman type.
The women, who have to be love interests to these leading men and can't be lording over them size-wise, so big headed small bodied women get the roles. It's not just about being skinny, it's about being skinny in proportion to your head.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no interest in a connected watch product. However, should the Apple watch or a third-party watchband that connects to an Apple watch start to offer the ability to monitor my blood sugar levels 24/7 in real time ... this can't be said too strongly ... I will buy one. Period, Full Stop.
Obviously this means that the way forward for the watch products is through Health Care. It has massive potential, actually.
The more serious danger of aircraft passenger travel is the nuclear medicine routinely transported in the cargo hold, a few feet through a thin aluminum floor from male testicles, which are more susceptible to radiation damage than the body as a whole (put your nuke badge on your pant zipper instead of your chest, and you will get fired from your Nuclear-related job, as the workplace exposure limit is significantly lower in the gonads, making the badge non-compliant as it is designed to react to a specific amount of cumulative radiation). Pilots are generally not exposed, as the cargo hold rarely extends to under the captain's seat.
On a related note, Canada has banned all production of Champagne starting in 2039.
You can do the same thing with any online Contact Lens vendor.
The fundamental reason for the fall-back, aside from complaints, was that people voted with their money. By leaving in droves ... it doesn't matter what fees Patreon charges ... means Patreon itself was seeing a reduced income, not just those who were receiving pledges. Simple as that.
Is there life on other planets? How about *intelligent* life on other planets?
Given what we know about the size of our own Galaxy, let alone the size of the Universe ... some portion of which is so far away that the light cannot reach us (ie more Light Years than Earth time from the Big Bang), the chances that extra-terrestial life *doesn't* exist is by far the greater likelihood.
However, that doesn't change the fact that there is no known mechanism for such life to reach Earth. "Space Ships" cannot travel at the speed of light ... some fraction is all that is reasonable. At high near-lightspeeds the mass of the object gets to the point where just arriving at another planet would destroy that planet. We don't see planets being vaporized for no apparent reason.
So, there is no reasonable explanation as to how an alien spacecraft could reach Earth. Thus UFO sightings must have another explanation, even when that explanation isn't discoverable.
I support one Patreon member at $2/mo. The member offers genuine value to me (electronics repair, troubleshooting, and DIY test equipment designs that, if I were to purchase them at retail, would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars). So, for the $24/year (or whatever it works out to with the new fees) is genuine value to me. He makes about $US 4400/mo from people like myself, so apparently he is one of the better paid members.
Perhaps the problem is so many Patreon members don't actually offer anything of value? Why would we expect them to succeed on the site?
I am always mystified by the comments that US teachers are "underpaid". It's a $60K a year job here ($US 48K), starting wage full time teacher in the Public School system right out of college. Any idea what the actual wage would be in the US for an entry level Public School position?
" ... What does this application actually DO? ..."
It may seem strange, considering my rant, but I felt I used the word "actually" in a relevant manner. It was carefully chosen; I considered dropping it; I could have dropped it and the meaning would not have changed, but it emphasizes the question posed, versus the typical "you can actually charge the battery" drivel you usually see and hear.
Maybe not appropriate for release notes (which I agree with others here who suggest they should be to the point and functional) but I just wish more software developers or the companies they work for would just tell me one thing:
What does this application actually DO?
I tire of marketing-speak and general superlatives when the app name is cryptic or cute, something somebody thought was clever, but doesn't actually identify the app's function. So you have to read the marketing blurb, which far to often doesn't say what the thing does, or uses acronyms that someone who uses the software would know but someone who wants to know if it will be useful may not.
Really why does this have to be like pulling teeth?
Oh, and let's drop the word "actually", can we? About 98% of the time, dropping that stupid word from speech, reviews, or marketing enhances the clarity. It usually doesn't mean anything in the context of what is trying to be conveyed. I don't know how it became some kind of language crutch for tech about a bazillion years ago, but please, just stop it. Already.
I have from time to time worked at remote jobsites; you are there for various lengths of time (two weeks, three, sometimes longer, but in any case 7days/week 12 hours/day) and then flown home for what are the equivalent of your days off.
Sooo ...
We board the plane at home, six AM, go through security, yes the boots, belt etc are a hassle because you only have limited luggage and you need your tools and proper dress for the job, typically outdoors or a combination of indoors and out. So I have to remove workboots with ankle support and many laces, etc.
At the jobsite we disembark and go to work, typically starting at about 10AM on travel days.
On the way home, we board the aircraft, no security, and travel to the nearest city 250 miles away.
THEN we disembark, all luggage is unloaded from the aircraft, and you carry your bags and go through security. Yes, after flying for the majority of the trip.
Then you reboard the aircraft while your luggage is re-loaded, and fly a 25 minute leg to your home city.
There is no earthly use to this regimen on the return flight. It only exists to satisfy silly regulations. The jobsite, by the way, has explosives on site.
What the hell are you talking about? My Blu-Ray player is several year old, has never been connected to the internet and never will be, and has never had an issue playing a disk.
Sorry, but a fucking content disk should NEVER require an update to the player. It's my fucking player, and the asshole who made the content doesn't get a vote on updating my player.
But I've simply never ever SEEN any disk which says "you must update your player to play this".
My TV and Blu-Ray player are devices which have no need to be connected to the internet, and I see no value in doing so. And they've worked just fine to date.
I don't trust the makers on consumer entertainment devices with security. In fact, I outright don't trust their intent or competence.
Your experience probably represents different versions of the Blu-Ray licensed chip embedded in your player.
An older, earlier version of the player may not require these permissions, while a newer version may. The player manufacturers really don't have any say in the matter; if they want to sell players they need to license the decoder chips, and the terms are not really under their control.
That's just based on a false premise. Why would anyone not buy at multiple stores to get the best price on each individual item? That's what I do. That and buy in bulk items which don't spoil when the price is lowest?
As for Whole Foods, just as an example 90/10 ground beef is over $10 a pound. Walmart sells it for $3.28. I can often find a local grocer who has a sale on it for $1.83. If I go and buy only ground beef and not the 100 other items that have been marked up to support the sale I come out ahead.
Absolutely. But it takes time, and careful record keeping, it might mean putting up with mounds of flyers in the mailbox (you can't just indicate "grocery stores only"; I have a "No Flyers" label on my mailbox, and that takes care of almost all junk mail except that where the originator pays the much higher rate to the Post Office, whom guarantee delivery to every address in the zip code / postal code paid for). Still the newsprint variety is essentially non-existant in my home.
So that means checking online. Not difficult to do, just difficult to endure over time.
If you don't want to do either, that means physically visiting a group of stores, and keeping records on your smartphone (probably). That is, as a matter of fact, what I do. But the list of "price check" items is relatively short ... certainly not my entire basket of goods, so the rest comes from memory and familiarization, which again I don't find difficult, just tedious.
But here's the thing ... I only really began doing these things in earnest when illness forced me to live with a much reduced income. At my working salary, I cared a little less, which is not to say not at all, but still, it meant in at least some cases I just put stuff in the cart and left, done for the month (supplanted by weekly trips for smaller quantities of fresh fruit, dairy, and meat). Not any more, but I am not the average consumer anymore either.
Most consumers want to "get in and get out" ... it may be the only category of retail where most women won't shop around; they see it as drudgery to buy for the family, week in and week out. Males ... most simply don't care beyond minimizing the amount of time spent shopping for groceries.
You can game the system just as the system can game you. But guess which one happens more often?
I am not at all surprised by the findings. It succinctly summarizes the retail Food Industry in first-world nations.
During "one of those conversations" ... note that this is purely anecdotical ... a casual acquaintance piped in about a discussion on the day's grocery purchases and people's general food buying preferences. I liked Safeway, due to the quality of fresh meat and produce offered there, and someone said that they shopped at The Great Canadian Superstore, another food reseller in western Canada, owned by the Weston family, a massive conglomerate of food industry companies that dominate the Canadian market. They claimed Safeway food prices were "too high".
I replied that careful shopping (using a list being the most prominent) meant I didn't pay any more and that Superstore meat was of marginal cut quality (the grades were fine; but if you bought, say, a tray of Pork Chops, underneath the nice looking cuts were others that "looked like they were cut with a chainsaw").
Then the acquaintance piped up. He said he and his family had participated in a study by the Canadian Federal Government consumer agency whereby they created a standard shopping list, buying whatever they normally did but sticking strictly to the list they created themselves, and shopping at four major food resellers, alternating by month.
"The overall grocery bill was the same. There was almost no difference. You might save here, but they nail you there. The specific items changed from store to store, with one item lower in price while it may be higher elsewhere, but in the end, taken as a basket of goods, there was no difference. None"
I fully expect(ed) that Whole Foods, which is not "the same as everybody else" price-wise, would have the essentially the same outcome, in that, taken as a basket of goods, the overall price would be unchanged from before the Amazon buyout.
And the result is, the FBI couldn't access half the smartphones they wanted to last year.
Nor could they access any of the guns they failed to find last year. Or read any of the documents shredded and burned. Or transcribe any of the phone calls they failed to tap and/or record. Or, for that matter, understand any of the dead languages they could not translate, or drink any of the coffees they failed to pour.
Apparently they need to seek out evidence, via, you know, police work. I feel so sorry for them, being forced to do the jobs they were trained to do. None of that justifies backdoors into secure devices.
I think the OP should have been clear that this is MasterCard USA only. I haven't signed for a card-present credit card payment or debit card payment in probably 15 years.
Read a History book ... any subject ... and figure that one out pretty quickly.
Since it's built on KDE, I'm going to go ahead and assume it's going to run like a turd on less powerful machines.
*Minimum* requirement is a 2.66 GHz Quad Core "or better" and 4GB RAM, so, yeah. You are correct.
This one's pretty easy to figure out. It's the manufacturer ... or in the modern world, the company that creates the product, sent out for manufacturing ... who is responsible for IoT security.
But there is a problem. There is the rush to get the product to market, which means bad code is "good enough", and the lack of any repercussions if security is an afterthought, or worse.
Consumers have a responsibility to insist companies make an effort with security. They simply don't, as they aren't generally sophisticated enough to see a problem exists.
That leaves Government ... yeah, I know ... to protect consumers with legislation. That's how consumer protection works, and it's the only way we know to make it work.
Which brings up another issue ... Government is not very good at technology, and in the current fast-paced digital landscape, they are inclined to let the market sort itself out.
You can see the problem here ... it's a circular situation. No-one is willing, and you can make a good argument that no-one is able (that is, amongst either Consumer watchdogs or the buying public), to identify security as a priority. /. readers might be aware of the problem, but we are not the majority. Tech writers, whom are generally not very good at anything beyond cheerleading for the latest gadget, need to step up and make consumers aware that security should be a buying criteria.
They should be shaming manufacturers (putting aside that the term has changed in meaning) into hiring competent code developers and creating secure products. And maybe then at least the problem could be minimized.
Although the Geolocation with my connection is often accurate (defining the city I live in) it occasionally puts me at another city 150 miles away.
Perhaps more interestingly, when I was in a remote area and we connected via a dish satellite link, I often got geolocation that put me in New York City, some 2500 miles away an in a different country.
The above is from ads, especially shady dating ads, that would suggest I could find many "available" dates in xx city. These days that doesn't happen because I use effective ad blocking, so the ads simply don't appear anymore, but I suspect similar things would happen if I turned ad blocking off.
If we want to return to secure for the user.....
computing, the only option at this point is fabbing new chips with end user configurable management engines, with no built in manufacturer keys, and electron microscope verification of the final fabbed chips to ensure that remains so.
I'm not sure either country has the willingness or ability to, but Venezuela+Cuba would be the perfect pair of countries to start a computing rebellion, assuming they could buy all the necessary fab gear and get a unit spun up.
If they could and were willing to work at fully verifiable consumer grade processors, even if they ~2009 era performance, I know I for one would buy them.
Ousting dangerous tech from our CPUs, our Motherboards, and our GPUs are the first steps towards taking back our systems. Without this, we are on a slow decline into the sort of dystopian nightmares that sci-fi writens have been pushing for years.
I think the problem with this specific approach is that Cuba and Venezuela are knee-deep with the Chinese. Everything from cellular tech to routers to buses to new cars to oil and gas rigs are China-sourced in Cuba in particular. I suspect that the US's realization that it may already be too late to displace China's influence in these two nations might be behind efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, while there is still a chance of US influence.
FBI does not give a fuck about external affairs. You are full of crap.
The FBI most certainly does "give a fuck about external affairs". They interact extensively with law enforcement in other nations. Sometimes that law enforcement is the nation's Military. Or some other agency that blurs the lines between espionage and crime.
When it comes to US Citizens, there is a line drawn between the FBI and agencies like the CIA. But that line doesn't exist when it comes to other foreign nationals.
If US ignores the ruling, WTO will probably grant Russia the right to ignore intellectual property rights of US firms. It did in the past for Antigua if I recall correctly.
The difference is that Antigua is not full of high-skilled programmers that could turn leaked Windows sources into a rival commercial product.
The WTO generally does not operate in that manner.
If Antigua was a signatory to the WTO, they agree as a condition of membership to respect and support the enforcement of the IP rights of other members.
What they will do, is if a harm is determined, is to give the harmed party the right to impose specific sanctions. Exactly what those sanctions are are left to the harmed party, rather than specified by the WTO. They do have to be reasonable, that is, in general equivalence with the harm done by the first (losing) party.
That's for sure. If you read the article (I know, right?) you will learn the methodology that these "economists" used:
1. Take a period of time when the minimum wage went up from $6.77 to $7.77, specifically 1980 to 2015.
2. See how many low-skill jobs were lost to automation in that time.
3. Assume that the automation was implemented purely to avoid paying the extra buck an hour to those greedy people making $7.77/hr and had nothing do with, I don't know, technological advances in automation.
4. Conclude that companies won't implement automation if we can just keep wages low enough, and that people would be better off if they just accepted their lot in life. Just think of how many jobs would be created if workers stopped expecting to be paid altogether!
If you think I'm kidding, read the article (and the linked "research" by these "economists")
You've got the salient point.
Automation has been going on pretty much consistently for a while now, and when you automate a plant, you replace x number of low-skilled workers with fewer, higher skilled workers.
What is missed, or what is blamed on minimum wage increases, is that the road to future manufacturing jobs is through automation. If businesses avoid automation, they will find they cannot compete and will disappear, they no longer will be viable enterprises.
Employees and employers must embrace automation, accept that this means fewer workers in a given enterprise, and work to increase the number of manufacturers, not to attempt to maintain the same number of manufacturers and the same number of staff at the plant. Failure to do so will kill the manufacturing sector, not maintain it.
It's Partly because of Actors whom are often smaller sized ... the ideal TV/Movie actor and actress have a distinctive body type that is not that common in the general populace. To be on screen you need a large head in relation to the torso. "Big" people have difficultly obtaining that body type ... their heads are more in proportion to their body size.
On the screen, that won't do. If you've ever had much contact with on-screen personalities you may have been surprised at how small they are in real life. The Dustin Hoffman type.
The women, who have to be love interests to these leading men and can't be lording over them size-wise, so big headed small bodied women get the roles. It's not just about being skinny, it's about being skinny in proportion to your head.
They don't call them "talking heads" for nothing.