There are better (licensed, copyrighted, non-free) codecs for sure. There might also be better free codecs. None of them are ubiquitous as the OP states, and in the end, that's what matters most. MP3 has been so popular because of its ubiquity working so well alongside its versatility - you can encode better or worse depending on your quality and space necessities.
Cloud streaming, be it music or video might be popular, but nobody has the same internet developed countries get. People in Africa, Asia and South America are still pumping those flash memory devices full of 128kbit crappy rips that give joy to their hard days. And nobody can say or do anything about it, no matter their finantial or ethical motivations.
When IE was the standard, Chrome was blooming and Firefox was all the rage on our group (the Geek), from around 2006 through 2010, I used Opera almost exclusively. I can safely say that was the browser's best period, although I have been using Chrome and the odd Firefox the past 6 years.
I've looked at Vivaldi, but it felt crude with a UI that passes a "Windows Millennium" - it just tries too hard to be fresh, when all it needs is to be simple. After this post, I will try back Opera's latest but with the amount of extensions (especially ad-blocking and privacy ones), and the Google services I got going with Chrome integration, I feel it might be a bit too hard to switch now.
The moment people stop realizing the choices they make are actually being done for them - that's when we should be worried. But we should mostly be worried on a personal level, not as a forum.
You, me, whoever, need Google, and Google's business is not that they want you to use it, is that they want you to need it. Android being open-source should be a clear testament to that - they knew FOSS would get all the big players in line and the loud players in check, and now the world eats Android for breakfast, even though some still eat Apples at the end of that meal. Google has known full well, for long, they can pretty much do that with diversity and centralization - Play, Play Services, Docs, Gmail, Analytics, Photos, Chrome, etc. But even so, big data and big diversity is still not their true goal, it's their means to get you hooked up on that Google sugar. Like Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever service from whatever else, adoption is the exit strategy, and so they keep entering in new markets so they can exit eternally, recurrently. It gets to a point when it's actually hard to fuck that up, and I guess that is what the OP defines as Natural Monopoly.
This isn't intrinsically evil, in my opinion, but it ends up being necessarily bad, just like every decision from every business who has to answer to stock/share holders - they need to grow. Stagnation is the point a company stops making money and starts surviving, and everybody knows in the current market, not evolving is no longer such a slow death. So yeah, Google's strategy eventually led up to the "monopoly of digital choice", but everybody still gets to be individually responsible for what they do and what they share. This is actually why the state gets away with secret subpoeanae for supposedly private data to such companies - they are supposed to call dibs on a such a system because that system has your agreement to PPs, ToS's and/or EULA's. So since you have to abide to those, and those are "regulated", just be careful at the individual level on your uses, not your choices, and educate the ones you love (or the ones you for some reason teach for a living) in the very special art that is managing your digital life, much like the AFK one.
On a side note, I think Google has always been a step ahead of others mostly because it has better ways to centralize (create the theorists so-called Content) individual, personal needs in a much more organic fashion. Even Facebook, who pretty much rides the viral wave, looks blatantly doomed to the eventual mass awareness of intellectual self-respect. I can LAMELY summarize: Facebook will die out of individual needs of individuality - when everyone is liking and doing the same, the hipster factor will kick in.
All in all, I actually believe most of Google's B2B endeavors only exist for Silicon Valley internal "politics". Such as Adsense, which ultimately is just the big money point of entry. And it's not even being effective that makes it profitable, it's being ubiquitous and constant (as in time). Like Google. Man they should make "Like Google" their tagline.
In IT jobs you are basically junior, [no designation], then senior at "something". Sometimes years, decades after that you might be a lead in your role, if the wind favors you (e.g. C++ Lead). Lead is basically the guy between management and the lower ranks of a particular team - someone being introduced to the management BS that still has a soft touch for instilling the BS on the team. Then maybe manager in-between, but eventually you get another a horizontally displaced title, such as "Build Master", "Systems architect", "IT Manager", "QA Supervisor", "Product Lead" (not your normal lead), or even "Client Relationships" - yes, eventually you can get to stop coding when you move up and sideways of the corporate structure.
The thing is: there is nothing else other than static or weather-prone progress. You go through the 3 junior/standard/senior stages automatically with time, but not fixed time since the company might simply not be in the mood to improve low-rank salaries. More commonly in our industry, you also do this with a job hop. The same can be said for the other steps, just a lot harder. The hopping part becomes essential for the last vertical jumps, unless you're really good on your craft or really lucky. But you either are good, or you find you are good because you never tried; you don't really progress in something you have done for 2-3 years or so - there is no technology that allows for such mastering, that is for fields such as medicine, philosophy and metaphysics. In IT you learn new stuff, you don't complement the old one.
In IT, learning is not progress: learning is learning (think of it like filling up memory with a different dataset - it's more data, for a different purpose) - every year that passes you gain experience but not real ability - so unless you're gonna be doing the 2 things at once, you're only just changing what you do with something you're more novice at - you don't really get to be your old you and the new one doing the crafts you know and the crafts you just learned.
So all in all, the only feedback you need is the one that tells you "I'm learning, thus I'm improving, and eventually I can force myself to a better position wherever I'm at or at a new employer". Better here is you either liking it more or making more money - just that.
With this set, if you still crave for feedback, you're really craving for praise more than guidance, and even the guidance you get is one that better suits others' needs and not yours - all you need is to learn the role you want to have, and eventually MAKE someone give that role to you. If you wanna ask for feedback, ask for new responsibilities and you'll get everything you asked and then some.
And yes, if you're negged, it's gonna suck. But that's life.
1050gt/x and 1060gt/x 2017 machines are actually quite decent and get to be portable, and when you look at the model prices, you don't even need to go beyond the $1.8K marks. But granted, most models on these are either not as sleek (losing on cooling solution, which defeats the purpose), are way heavier, or get to be sleek with a half-decent cooling solution but cost loads more (case in point being the XPS15, the FHD models of course).
There are some 14'' machines which also sport half-decent cooling and the 1050 range (gigabyte, msi are the usual suspects on such niche products, or razer if you go the extra $K), but the XPS15 really has no contender on the balancing act, especially considering you almost get the footprint of a 14'' with the signature quasi-edge-less display.
eGPU is a nice paradigm, just not for me. I move around every weekend and I could not see me carrying a 5x5'' usb-c brick along with the laptop and its PSU, when I can just live very fine with the well above average 1050 soldered mobile card - I mean, a mobile 1050 is way close to 2014 high tier (not titans of course). But that's just personal preference.
Oh I love the way branding goes these days, as if it wasn't enough to say it has "i5" or "i7" CPUs while omitting they're actually ULV CPUs. But claiming it to be more powerful than an MBP makes me digress, but I'm calling that BS since they started to compare it with a Macbook Air.
But man, that marketing BS with the "PixelSense", "Iris Plus" and deceptive numbers like "3.4 Million pixels". So basically it's not 4k in 2017. It is less than a Dell XPS 4k (2y old, but ok, 15''), it is less than a Chromebook Pixel (a 4y device, a DISCONTINUED one at that!). It is also less than an MBP. So basically it is up-to-or-less-than par with the competition.
Granted: it looks good; a ULV CPU will be decent enough for most; and so will WQHD (2560x1440). But that "Iris Plus", at first glance, doesn't convince, especially due to the fact the the real dedicated GPU contender we know on the Iris family is named Pro, you know the one used in soldered variants such as Gigabyte cubes and "cost-efficient" macs. I also have serious reservations about 50% performance of an MBA on what pretty much looks like a passive cooling solution. XPS15 and MBP (not the XPS13 though, don't know about the air, think not) all come with better BASE MODEL, dedicated GPUs. For getting that Intel-beefed-up-Iris you need to shell out for the i7 model (which, to be fair, puts it in the XPS15 price range).
AH! And that SD Card teaser! Everybody on the youtube video was praising it, apparently it is just a sheet-thinned PSU connector. Well who knows, maybe MS decided to do what no other company wanted to do because they wanted to profit either from cloud-storage or the "more-storage-in-200-bucks-increments-variants". If they added an SD Card reader in a super-premium range device, they have probably discovered the best new feature of 2017.
My precocious verdict is this will be like all niche products in the ultra-portable category: either M or C-Level word+slideshow machines, like the XPS13 or the the Surface Pro, or under-adopted, "almost-powerhouses" like the Chromebook Pixel.
Typically, our employers decide our jobs should be somewhat different from normal "day jobs", and pay us salaries rather than hourly pay. This is normally to cover cases where we work outside normal work hours, and is often used to pressure or require employees to work extra hours for free.
Yeah, my very first job had this. Consequentially, it was the only preiod in my work life I left work at midnight, and worked a 70h week without overtime pay. Granted, I knew the "no-schedule extra pay" (~100$) was no excuse to work more than the legal 40h around here, but well, it was my first job, and I wanted to look committed. I quit 2.5 months in when I probed the manager about the workload, and he told me the "test battery" was gonna last another 4 months at least. I said that't not what I signed up for and subliminally told them to shove the extra ~100 up theirs.
Most of the ones I know didn't look into that seriously, unless they can't find a job.
I guess it varies by area, but I re-read my sentence and I might have induced in a different thought: by "CS grads eventually looking..." for something else I meant CS grads on their 2nd to 5th years of work life mostly looking for higher profit or better/more interesting hours after a starting period of "scheduled" work with very basic pay for the industry average. Around here, I see a lot of people on very good companies, getting ~10-20% raises every year, deciding that is not enough for them because they don't consider it worth their work. And they're right: 2-5 years is about the time it takes for you to notice middle-management and top tier make a lot more income sans the work (e.g. not a single LOC per week), and basically delegate their extra responsibility to lower levels, which is the best task a CS grad can do in management positions (personal opinion).
You sign a contract, you must abide to it. If you have to work 8 hours a day, you must "supply" them to your employer in whatever form he allows it (along a day, week, month, year-span, eventually they must add up). If you work on a schedule, the same applies: that schedule is theirs.
We engineers have a highly intellectual job, so for some reason, at some point closely after we first start our adult life, we feel our jobs are harder and should be somewhat different than normal "day jobs". What we forget is that our day job (which we sometimes do at night, because well, we work better depending on a lot of mood modifiers, that's intellectual work) is just under the same type of contract any other job, and thus legally, it's pretty straight forward.
If an employer wants to enforce that, all they need is an enter-exit system, just like factories. If a company has this, you can pretty much be sure they will be nitpicking on everything you do that they can, in a legal fashion, state is breach of contract. This can go from procrastinating to other more interesting things ending in "ing" (even some very disgusting ones), but the ones employers care the most are those that end in "cha'ching!" - basically everything that involves the entering or prospective entering of money in your pocket and not theirs.
The real problem is people still allowing their hard intellectual work to be offered as a time-lease of their brains. That's why most CS grads eventually look into startup or freelance work: they want a job that eventually pays them for features, which they can do in their own schedule (the former being a super-intensive first phase of work then no work at all when they get paid that big unicorn bonus, the later being whatever schedule they feel like for above average pay, but never explosively big in order to have month-long vacations, like startups).
I believe having those 2 is probably the key to a happy life. It doesn't even mater if you're wise or intelligent - as long as you do what you like and make enough to get whatever you feel you need, you will be OK. Of course society and its consumerism step in to screw that amazing balance, but that's what society needs to move forward, not you, at least not immediately. What YOU need is either the endurance to keep that balance, or allow some risk for your own inclusion in that innovative, ever-evolving club. Mid-life crisis is known to be a catalyst for people losing that balance, and that's why its called a crisis - a lot of people "let go" of their balance around this time, many by suicide.
While salary might have been an indirect reason not to quit, I'm gonna lay it out and say "father of 2" pops to mind. The responsibility of having dependents is something I can only grasp. Then again, he committed suicide, so I digress. I think the human mind is too complex and, pardon the obvious, moody to blame such an extreme action on a specific reason. But my personal view is, with 2 kids and that salary, and a managerial position (apparently he did interviews, from the comments below), it was either psychological disease outright, or some very drastic professional/family event that triggered it. Some people just can't cope with the life they chose, even with the freedom and ability to change that life easily. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy.
The property business was getting too complex. So now it's clearer to invest in properties where the good neighborhood will mean prospective owners will care that their children have internet access on their school.
I didn't say it couldn't run them, I said there don't seem to be plans for it since I know of no marketing associations, other than the fact an XBOX controller can be used with the Rift, and that you can stream Xbox One games to the Rift, both of these scenarios using a PC. I don't see MS partnering up with a now Facebook owned company that serves absolutely no commercial purpose, especially when Microsoft itself has it's own AR/VR stuff coming (e.g. Hololens).
In any case, my personal opinion is it won't have enough power to play VR in what I, once again, personally consider to be a consistent, enjoyable VR experience (2k per eye at 60hz, rendering separately to achieve consistent 3D). This is also why I won't own any current market option: no matter the hardware they still don't output close to this.
I previously mentioned 1080p as goal, and that was misleading, just like the 3 devices market themselves across the board: a consistent, pixel perfect experience on googles should be something I predict close to the pixel count of actual 16/9 FHD, or 1920x1080, per eye, in whatever comfortable aspect ratio for maximum FOV. With the current standard of 960-1200 x 1080 I see pixels everywhere, at least the 2 devices I tried (PSVR and Samsung VR on an S6). And the 3D effect kept losing "depth" but I won't blame performance or frequency directly as it might simply be bad placement on my head or lack of my eye/brain adjustment to it.
Well there's nothing VR announced for the XBOX market that I know off, and even the PS4 Pro makes use of the extra CPU add-on from the PSVR for actually processing the VR experience. Scorpio and the Pro are mostly 1080p60 or 4k30 machines, and even then they struggle. But for VR, it's not only the TFlops though - there's a lot of optimization required software-side for consistent 60fps experience. The real problem of VR is the "dual-monitors" combined with the need for 60FPS on both of them while current gen is mostly prepared for optimal 1080p30. In theory, you need at least 4x the processing power of current gen to achieve 2x 1080p60, and it's just not feasible commercially yet. And I will be honest: I have tried 1080p60 vr and I don't think it's enough for a decent experience - closeness to the eye hampers both pixel-perfect, 3D perception and fluidity a lot. I think VR will only take off mainstream when we get something like 2 or 3k at 90fps, and by rough moore's law standards, that is a good 6-10y from now. Which is good, considering we still need other advancements to make it more ergonomic, more engaging, more responsive. I have no doubt though that in most millenial life-span, we will get or get very close to a seamless VR experience, maybe even a "neural-laced" one. Fingers crossed!
Ahahaha! Funnily enough I have the same card and I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but I don't do 4k "desktoping". I'm guessing you're on Linux - likely Chrome under Ubuntu. You probably got something running on software rendering, either because of Chrome defaults or lacking drivers. But this is speculation, I have yet to test 4k on a daily basis.
Even so, that card, especially in the 2GB or more variant should be OK as long as it stays out of 4k gaming or recent games' higher settings. I doubt you need to spend 175$ to browse at 4k and not stirring up the fans. I would first advise on a better PC case, more/better/silent-er coolers and a bit of research on your case airflow intake and extraction. There are also soundproof cases, some actually helping airflow because they restrict the passage of air from entrance to exit better, if your system isn't too exotic of course. 100usd will also get you a dedicated closed liquid loop that supports your graphics cards I bet, but well, liquid loops can be more noisy and perhaps less effective depending on conditions, so I digress.
...for the consumer. Pumping 60fps+ @1080p, graphics ticket to the max on a 175$ card, even in a 2013-era CPU is gonna make 'em consoles up their game next gen... Or at least lower their prices.
Quality-wise, I have other Sci-fi-themed movies further up my all time "Movies top" (such as The Matrix, Alien, Total Recall or Blade Runner), but as pure a Sci-Fi flick and based on things I personally enjoy most from Sci-fi, I consider this one to be "most Sci-fi".
It's true: 2001, Matrix, or even Blade Runner might have applied more relevant individual Sci-fi elements, less nonsensical and/or actually referencing stuff that might or even has actually become science (rather than stay fiction), but if you look at it from perspective, the best thing about Sci-fi is not predicting innovation or making applying nice uses to current tech, but creating a perplexing, stylish universe from plausible or even implausible science, past or present. And that's why Star Wars gets it: the lore is just immense and every bit of it applies scientific fiction with a style that is on a class of its own.
In that same perspective, but on different grounds other than lore, I believe my second choice on such a list would definitely be Nolan's Interstellar. No other movie captures an out-of-this-world feeling like Interstellar, and that's special. Sci-fi special.
They are probably counting people forced to see "My Day", aka Stories on top of everything they actually want to use, without the possibility to remove it. I will gladly send 5 bucks (or whatever premium beer costs around where you live as long as you make your case) via PP to anyone that knows a setting that disables it in both Messenge and Facebook for Android (no older version install included, and Facebook employees are also excluded for good measure).
Well, since there's absolutely no way I can disable stories, both in Facebook, Facebook for Android and Messenger for Android, I can really see them selling this to advertisers:
"Hey, we have this new feature that engages users to . Furthermore our 7B user-base is adhering so much we have already surpassed Snapchat. You can purchase ad-space on Facebook for just and you also get access to our random FB marketeering crap"
a.k.a the double reverse Robin Hood - taking from the small and poor to the rich and established groups, that in turn sell value created from that to the small and poor again. Basically corporations get to sell the taxpayer, a product that the taxpayer paid itself. That is some convoluted definition of capitalism.
TL:DR Portugal's government pretty much payed installation of high-speed internet infrastructure, in the 2000's, to then state-owned company PT. Now that company is no longer state-owned, and they got to keep the taxpayer-payed infrastructure, and a monopoly clause for rural, non-competitive areas. Service by PT hasn't improved much the last 10y in rural areas, and companies intending to service those areas (which stopped being non-competitive long ago), are being blocked from it by the monopoly that our FCC allowed. Mobile services are booming in those areas as a consequence to that landline monopoly.
In the 2000's, Portugal's ANACOM (kind of our very own FCC, but much more "lobby-able") allowed the subsidization of copper, cable and fiber installation to unserviced areas exclusively to Portugal Telecom (PT, now commercially known as MEO), then a mostly public company with a big monopoly on phone and internet services but none in cable or satellite TV, with the state itself covering up to the 90 %'s of the cost but ownership being kept by PT. All PT had to do was compromise on maintenance and also service the rural areas where they already had a presence, thus providing close to 100% home owners with basic cable DSL. It was very good - for the 2000's, many villages ended up with 256kb internet services with copper, although they were more expensive than in cities.
Problem: rural lines were never maintained or upgraded. By 2010, internet users in rural areas had ascended to more than 80% due to population renewal - most schools, services and even income tax forms or civil services are now internet-based and people need a solid bandwidth for accessing these services, and these services are not made for 2000'ish bandwidth. Our income tax website for instance is a 50MB Java Applet that constantly fails and requires refresh, does bad caching. Moodle and other educational web platforms, even email, demand decent down and upload speeds for word, pdf or other assignments. In technological terms, we have the xDSL protocol but not even close to the throughput to support it effectively. I've seen multiple cases of people subscribing to 24mbit services, effectively getting 2mbits tops, and the instability at that speed prompts most people to even request a reduction to 1.2mbits to PT so they get a stable service.
Bigger problem: PT/MEO was sold by our previous right-wing government under pretext that it was a demand for targeted Troika goals for having received a bail-out, and a known company dismantler Altice, spearheaded by Luso-French CEO, took the majority share (and abolished the state-owned golden share) of PT, while managing to include a monopolizing contract clause specifically for rural areas, where the installed lines were mostly payed for by the state, but are still fully owned by the company. And they pretty much payed below asking price. Better offers were denied from more decent parties for reasons that were never actually disclosed. PT is now a super-aggressive marketing company, with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and our best comedians stepping in their commercials. The service, obviously, hasn't improved sh*t the last 5 years.
So now, in Portugal we have at least 4 fiber providers, 2 of them expanding their own line strongly to rural areas not serviced by PT, but they are constantly blocked from providing service because they can't use the tubing that is now owned by PT (part of the lines deal), and new licenses for cabling will not be issued because of the monopolizing clause. They can't even demand the lease of existing lines or tubing in some instances. That's how strong ANACOM is defending PT.
For this reason, Portugal is now becoming a home-3g/LTE playground with actual decent speeds. I am seeing more and more people switching to home-LTE plans because they are much cheaper and immensely more modern and reliable. They are provided by all ISPs unlike landlines because PT does not have a monopoly there, and so prices and plans are a lot more competitive. And yes, I said mobile services in Portugal rural areas are more reliable than landline. That's how bad it gets.
Now, why do I have to live in a country where rural areas get the same treatment as 3rd-world countries, who pretty much skipped landlines for cost, and are jumping to mobile data instead. It is appalling.
Man, this is such good news I'm gonna bash all my coworkers who still use that INFERIOR UNITY CRAP....although, I understand their crappy decision, partially: most of them are lazy to change or simply found Unity good enough, and the fact it is the default choice on the login screen also helps.
Like many of the greatest writers (e.g. Kafka, Tolstoy...), Orwell did fiction/drama that was written with political and philosophical bias (like everything is, to a degree), and going beyond bias to novelty on such fields and other fields too. He introduced the concept of Big Brother, and made aware censorship and psychological segregation - the complete nullification of the ego by a party with complete aversion to individual thinking.
Sometimes works of fiction such as this even lay the groundwork for technological evolution. It's not a manual so much as it is a warning sign - a look ahead a possible future, which we as one society must assess and prevent if deemed wrong.
I am not super-savvy about UK and US politico-philosophical topics, but I think it's pretty universal to state that if the guy grew and lived there most of the time, you can credit his work, to some extent, to a place, society, nation... That's why people visit famous people environments after their deaths. I see it like an attribution tax: just as when you trade in a country, you have pay tribute to that country, the same applies to science, art and whatever publication even when fictional or for entertainment. When you have a job and invent something for your employer, it's theirs, even though you might have done it all for yourself. I'm not saying I agree, I'm saying it is what it is.
Some will argue this is not true every time, and I agree, but I dare say this is a pretty blatant case of a view that was generalized across UK, or even most of those that would later become the western block states/NATO - 1984 was (without taking any of its author's writing merits) a great distillation of the views on abuse of power back then, views which have, unfortunately, stood the test of time and still apply because we still have those abuses. We, as a species, don't learn from all our mistakes, because are proving time over time we cannot collectively oppose the threat of ill-intentioned, opportunist individuals and privileged groups in positions of power.
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There are better (licensed, copyrighted, non-free) codecs for sure. There might also be better free codecs. None of them are ubiquitous as the OP states, and in the end, that's what matters most. MP3 has been so popular because of its ubiquity working so well alongside its versatility - you can encode better or worse depending on your quality and space necessities.
Cloud streaming, be it music or video might be popular, but nobody has the same internet developed countries get. People in Africa, Asia and South America are still pumping those flash memory devices full of 128kbit crappy rips that give joy to their hard days. And nobody can say or do anything about it, no matter their finantial or ethical motivations.
When IE was the standard, Chrome was blooming and Firefox was all the rage on our group (the Geek), from around 2006 through 2010, I used Opera almost exclusively. I can safely say that was the browser's best period, although I have been using Chrome and the odd Firefox the past 6 years.
I've looked at Vivaldi, but it felt crude with a UI that passes a "Windows Millennium" - it just tries too hard to be fresh, when all it needs is to be simple. After this post, I will try back Opera's latest but with the amount of extensions (especially ad-blocking and privacy ones), and the Google services I got going with Chrome integration, I feel it might be a bit too hard to switch now.
The moment people stop realizing the choices they make are actually being done for them - that's when we should be worried. But we should mostly be worried on a personal level, not as a forum.
You, me, whoever, need Google, and Google's business is not that they want you to use it, is that they want you to need it. Android being open-source should be a clear testament to that - they knew FOSS would get all the big players in line and the loud players in check, and now the world eats Android for breakfast, even though some still eat Apples at the end of that meal. Google has known full well, for long, they can pretty much do that with diversity and centralization - Play, Play Services, Docs, Gmail, Analytics, Photos, Chrome, etc. But even so, big data and big diversity is still not their true goal, it's their means to get you hooked up on that Google sugar. Like Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever service from whatever else, adoption is the exit strategy, and so they keep entering in new markets so they can exit eternally, recurrently. It gets to a point when it's actually hard to fuck that up, and I guess that is what the OP defines as Natural Monopoly.
This isn't intrinsically evil, in my opinion, but it ends up being necessarily bad, just like every decision from every business who has to answer to stock/share holders - they need to grow. Stagnation is the point a company stops making money and starts surviving, and everybody knows in the current market, not evolving is no longer such a slow death. So yeah, Google's strategy eventually led up to the "monopoly of digital choice", but everybody still gets to be individually responsible for what they do and what they share. This is actually why the state gets away with secret subpoeanae for supposedly private data to such companies - they are supposed to call dibs on a such a system because that system has your agreement to PPs, ToS's and/or EULA's. So since you have to abide to those, and those are "regulated", just be careful at the individual level on your uses, not your choices, and educate the ones you love (or the ones you for some reason teach for a living) in the very special art that is managing your digital life, much like the AFK one.
On a side note, I think Google has always been a step ahead of others mostly because it has better ways to centralize (create the theorists so-called Content) individual, personal needs in a much more organic fashion. Even Facebook, who pretty much rides the viral wave, looks blatantly doomed to the eventual mass awareness of intellectual self-respect. I can LAMELY summarize: Facebook will die out of individual needs of individuality - when everyone is liking and doing the same, the hipster factor will kick in.
All in all, I actually believe most of Google's B2B endeavors only exist for Silicon Valley internal "politics". Such as Adsense, which ultimately is just the big money point of entry. And it's not even being effective that makes it profitable, it's being ubiquitous and constant (as in time). Like Google. Man they should make "Like Google" their tagline.
In IT jobs you are basically junior, [no designation], then senior at "something". Sometimes years, decades after that you might be a lead in your role, if the wind favors you (e.g. C++ Lead). Lead is basically the guy between management and the lower ranks of a particular team - someone being introduced to the management BS that still has a soft touch for instilling the BS on the team. Then maybe manager in-between, but eventually you get another a horizontally displaced title, such as "Build Master", "Systems architect", "IT Manager", "QA Supervisor", "Product Lead" (not your normal lead), or even "Client Relationships" - yes, eventually you can get to stop coding when you move up and sideways of the corporate structure.
The thing is: there is nothing else other than static or weather-prone progress. You go through the 3 junior/standard/senior stages automatically with time, but not fixed time since the company might simply not be in the mood to improve low-rank salaries. More commonly in our industry, you also do this with a job hop. The same can be said for the other steps, just a lot harder. The hopping part becomes essential for the last vertical jumps, unless you're really good on your craft or really lucky. But you either are good, or you find you are good because you never tried; you don't really progress in something you have done for 2-3 years or so - there is no technology that allows for such mastering, that is for fields such as medicine, philosophy and metaphysics. In IT you learn new stuff, you don't complement the old one.
In IT, learning is not progress: learning is learning (think of it like filling up memory with a different dataset - it's more data, for a different purpose) - every year that passes you gain experience but not real ability - so unless you're gonna be doing the 2 things at once, you're only just changing what you do with something you're more novice at - you don't really get to be your old you and the new one doing the crafts you know and the crafts you just learned.
So all in all, the only feedback you need is the one that tells you "I'm learning, thus I'm improving, and eventually I can force myself to a better position wherever I'm at or at a new employer". Better here is you either liking it more or making more money - just that.
With this set, if you still crave for feedback, you're really craving for praise more than guidance, and even the guidance you get is one that better suits others' needs and not yours - all you need is to learn the role you want to have, and eventually MAKE someone give that role to you. If you wanna ask for feedback, ask for new responsibilities and you'll get everything you asked and then some.
And yes, if you're negged, it's gonna suck. But that's life.
1050gt/x and 1060gt/x 2017 machines are actually quite decent and get to be portable, and when you look at the model prices, you don't even need to go beyond the $1.8K marks. But granted, most models on these are either not as sleek (losing on cooling solution, which defeats the purpose), are way heavier, or get to be sleek with a half-decent cooling solution but cost loads more (case in point being the XPS15, the FHD models of course).
There are some 14'' machines which also sport half-decent cooling and the 1050 range (gigabyte, msi are the usual suspects on such niche products, or razer if you go the extra $K), but the XPS15 really has no contender on the balancing act, especially considering you almost get the footprint of a 14'' with the signature quasi-edge-less display.
eGPU is a nice paradigm, just not for me. I move around every weekend and I could not see me carrying a 5x5'' usb-c brick along with the laptop and its PSU, when I can just live very fine with the well above average 1050 soldered mobile card - I mean, a mobile 1050 is way close to 2014 high tier (not titans of course). But that's just personal preference.
Oh I love the way branding goes these days, as if it wasn't enough to say it has "i5" or "i7" CPUs while omitting they're actually ULV CPUs. But claiming it to be more powerful than an MBP makes me digress, but I'm calling that BS since they started to compare it with a Macbook Air.
But man, that marketing BS with the "PixelSense", "Iris Plus" and deceptive numbers like "3.4 Million pixels". So basically it's not 4k in 2017. It is less than a Dell XPS 4k (2y old, but ok, 15''), it is less than a Chromebook Pixel (a 4y device, a DISCONTINUED one at that!). It is also less than an MBP. So basically it is up-to-or-less-than par with the competition.
Granted: it looks good; a ULV CPU will be decent enough for most; and so will WQHD (2560x1440). But that "Iris Plus", at first glance, doesn't convince, especially due to the fact the the real dedicated GPU contender we know on the Iris family is named Pro, you know the one used in soldered variants such as Gigabyte cubes and "cost-efficient" macs. I also have serious reservations about 50% performance of an MBA on what pretty much looks like a passive cooling solution. XPS15 and MBP (not the XPS13 though, don't know about the air, think not) all come with better BASE MODEL, dedicated GPUs. For getting that Intel-beefed-up-Iris you need to shell out for the i7 model (which, to be fair, puts it in the XPS15 price range).
AH! And that SD Card teaser! Everybody on the youtube video was praising it, apparently it is just a sheet-thinned PSU connector. Well who knows, maybe MS decided to do what no other company wanted to do because they wanted to profit either from cloud-storage or the "more-storage-in-200-bucks-increments-variants". If they added an SD Card reader in a super-premium range device, they have probably discovered the best new feature of 2017.
My precocious verdict is this will be like all niche products in the ultra-portable category: either M or C-Level word+slideshow machines, like the XPS13 or the the Surface Pro, or under-adopted, "almost-powerhouses" like the Chromebook Pixel.
MS make me eat my words please.
Typically, our employers decide our jobs should be somewhat different from normal "day jobs", and pay us salaries rather than hourly pay. This is normally to cover cases where we work outside normal work hours, and is often used to pressure or require employees to work extra hours for free.
Yeah, my very first job had this. Consequentially, it was the only preiod in my work life I left work at midnight, and worked a 70h week without overtime pay. Granted, I knew the "no-schedule extra pay" (~100$) was no excuse to work more than the legal 40h around here, but well, it was my first job, and I wanted to look committed. I quit 2.5 months in when I probed the manager about the workload, and he told me the "test battery" was gonna last another 4 months at least. I said that't not what I signed up for and subliminally told them to shove the extra ~100 up theirs.
Most of the ones I know didn't look into that seriously, unless they can't find a job.
I guess it varies by area, but I re-read my sentence and I might have induced in a different thought: by "CS grads eventually looking..." for something else I meant CS grads on their 2nd to 5th years of work life mostly looking for higher profit or better/more interesting hours after a starting period of "scheduled" work with very basic pay for the industry average. Around here, I see a lot of people on very good companies, getting ~10-20% raises every year, deciding that is not enough for them because they don't consider it worth their work. And they're right: 2-5 years is about the time it takes for you to notice middle-management and top tier make a lot more income sans the work (e.g. not a single LOC per week), and basically delegate their extra responsibility to lower levels, which is the best task a CS grad can do in management positions (personal opinion).
You sign a contract, you must abide to it. If you have to work 8 hours a day, you must "supply" them to your employer in whatever form he allows it (along a day, week, month, year-span, eventually they must add up). If you work on a schedule, the same applies: that schedule is theirs.
We engineers have a highly intellectual job, so for some reason, at some point closely after we first start our adult life, we feel our jobs are harder and should be somewhat different than normal "day jobs". What we forget is that our day job (which we sometimes do at night, because well, we work better depending on a lot of mood modifiers, that's intellectual work) is just under the same type of contract any other job, and thus legally, it's pretty straight forward.
If an employer wants to enforce that, all they need is an enter-exit system, just like factories. If a company has this, you can pretty much be sure they will be nitpicking on everything you do that they can, in a legal fashion, state is breach of contract. This can go from procrastinating to other more interesting things ending in "ing" (even some very disgusting ones), but the ones employers care the most are those that end in "cha'ching!" - basically everything that involves the entering or prospective entering of money in your pocket and not theirs.
The real problem is people still allowing their hard intellectual work to be offered as a time-lease of their brains. That's why most CS grads eventually look into startup or freelance work: they want a job that eventually pays them for features, which they can do in their own schedule (the former being a super-intensive first phase of work then no work at all when they get paid that big unicorn bonus, the later being whatever schedule they feel like for above average pay, but never explosively big in order to have month-long vacations, like startups).
"fortune and fulfillment" - this. I
I believe having those 2 is probably the key to a happy life. It doesn't even mater if you're wise or intelligent - as long as you do what you like and make enough to get whatever you feel you need, you will be OK. Of course society and its consumerism step in to screw that amazing balance, but that's what society needs to move forward, not you, at least not immediately. What YOU need is either the endurance to keep that balance, or allow some risk for your own inclusion in that innovative, ever-evolving club. Mid-life crisis is known to be a catalyst for people losing that balance, and that's why its called a crisis - a lot of people "let go" of their balance around this time, many by suicide.
While salary might have been an indirect reason not to quit, I'm gonna lay it out and say "father of 2" pops to mind. The responsibility of having dependents is something I can only grasp. Then again, he committed suicide, so I digress. I think the human mind is too complex and, pardon the obvious, moody to blame such an extreme action on a specific reason. But my personal view is, with 2 kids and that salary, and a managerial position (apparently he did interviews, from the comments below), it was either psychological disease outright, or some very drastic professional/family event that triggered it. Some people just can't cope with the life they chose, even with the freedom and ability to change that life easily. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy.
The property business was getting too complex. So now it's clearer to invest in properties where the good neighborhood will mean prospective owners will care that their children have internet access on their school.
I didn't say it couldn't run them, I said there don't seem to be plans for it since I know of no marketing associations, other than the fact an XBOX controller can be used with the Rift, and that you can stream Xbox One games to the Rift, both of these scenarios using a PC. I don't see MS partnering up with a now Facebook owned company that serves absolutely no commercial purpose, especially when Microsoft itself has it's own AR/VR stuff coming (e.g. Hololens).
In any case, my personal opinion is it won't have enough power to play VR in what I, once again, personally consider to be a consistent, enjoyable VR experience (2k per eye at 60hz, rendering separately to achieve consistent 3D). This is also why I won't own any current market option: no matter the hardware they still don't output close to this.
I previously mentioned 1080p as goal, and that was misleading, just like the 3 devices market themselves across the board: a consistent, pixel perfect experience on googles should be something I predict close to the pixel count of actual 16/9 FHD, or 1920x1080, per eye, in whatever comfortable aspect ratio for maximum FOV. With the current standard of 960-1200 x 1080 I see pixels everywhere, at least the 2 devices I tried (PSVR and Samsung VR on an S6). And the 3D effect kept losing "depth" but I won't blame performance or frequency directly as it might simply be bad placement on my head or lack of my eye/brain adjustment to it.
Well there's nothing VR announced for the XBOX market that I know off, and even the PS4 Pro makes use of the extra CPU add-on from the PSVR for actually processing the VR experience. Scorpio and the Pro are mostly 1080p60 or 4k30 machines, and even then they struggle. But for VR, it's not only the TFlops though - there's a lot of optimization required software-side for consistent 60fps experience. The real problem of VR is the "dual-monitors" combined with the need for 60FPS on both of them while current gen is mostly prepared for optimal 1080p30. In theory, you need at least 4x the processing power of current gen to achieve 2x 1080p60, and it's just not feasible commercially yet. And I will be honest: I have tried 1080p60 vr and I don't think it's enough for a decent experience - closeness to the eye hampers both pixel-perfect, 3D perception and fluidity a lot. I think VR will only take off mainstream when we get something like 2 or 3k at 90fps, and by rough moore's law standards, that is a good 6-10y from now. Which is good, considering we still need other advancements to make it more ergonomic, more engaging, more responsive. I have no doubt though that in most millenial life-span, we will get or get very close to a seamless VR experience, maybe even a "neural-laced" one. Fingers crossed!
Ahahaha! Funnily enough I have the same card and I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but I don't do 4k "desktoping". I'm guessing you're on Linux - likely Chrome under Ubuntu. You probably got something running on software rendering, either because of Chrome defaults or lacking drivers. But this is speculation, I have yet to test 4k on a daily basis.
Even so, that card, especially in the 2GB or more variant should be OK as long as it stays out of 4k gaming or recent games' higher settings. I doubt you need to spend 175$ to browse at 4k and not stirring up the fans. I would first advise on a better PC case, more/better/silent-er coolers and a bit of research on your case airflow intake and extraction. There are also soundproof cases, some actually helping airflow because they restrict the passage of air from entrance to exit better, if your system isn't too exotic of course. 100usd will also get you a dedicated closed liquid loop that supports your graphics cards I bet, but well, liquid loops can be more noisy and perhaps less effective depending on conditions, so I digress.
...for the consumer. Pumping 60fps+ @1080p, graphics ticket to the max on a 175$ card, even in a 2013-era CPU is gonna make 'em consoles up their game next gen... Or at least lower their prices.
Quality-wise, I have other Sci-fi-themed movies further up my all time "Movies top" (such as The Matrix, Alien, Total Recall or Blade Runner), but as pure a Sci-Fi flick and based on things I personally enjoy most from Sci-fi, I consider this one to be "most Sci-fi".
It's true: 2001, Matrix, or even Blade Runner might have applied more relevant individual Sci-fi elements, less nonsensical and/or actually referencing stuff that might or even has actually become science (rather than stay fiction), but if you look at it from perspective, the best thing about Sci-fi is not predicting innovation or making applying nice uses to current tech, but creating a perplexing, stylish universe from plausible or even implausible science, past or present. And that's why Star Wars gets it: the lore is just immense and every bit of it applies scientific fiction with a style that is on a class of its own.
In that same perspective, but on different grounds other than lore, I believe my second choice on such a list would definitely be Nolan's Interstellar. No other movie captures an out-of-this-world feeling like Interstellar, and that's special. Sci-fi special.
They are probably counting people forced to see "My Day", aka Stories on top of everything they actually want to use, without the possibility to remove it. I will gladly send 5 bucks (or whatever premium beer costs around where you live as long as you make your case) via PP to anyone that knows a setting that disables it in both Messenge and Facebook for Android (no older version install included, and Facebook employees are also excluded for good measure).
well apparently a lot of my comment was eaten by my usage of larger/smaller operators. I thought I had this set to plaintext :(
Well, since there's absolutely no way I can disable stories, both in Facebook, Facebook for Android and Messenger for Android, I can really see them selling this to advertisers:
"Hey, we have this new feature that engages users to . Furthermore our 7B user-base is adhering so much we have already surpassed Snapchat. You can purchase ad-space on Facebook for just and you also get access to our random FB marketeering crap"
a.k.a the double reverse Robin Hood - taking from the small and poor to the rich and established groups, that in turn sell value created from that to the small and poor again. Basically corporations get to sell the taxpayer, a product that the taxpayer paid itself. That is some convoluted definition of capitalism.
TL:DR Portugal's government pretty much payed installation of high-speed internet infrastructure, in the 2000's, to then state-owned company PT. Now that company is no longer state-owned, and they got to keep the taxpayer-payed infrastructure, and a monopoly clause for rural, non-competitive areas. Service by PT hasn't improved much the last 10y in rural areas, and companies intending to service those areas (which stopped being non-competitive long ago), are being blocked from it by the monopoly that our FCC allowed. Mobile services are booming in those areas as a consequence to that landline monopoly.
In the 2000's, Portugal's ANACOM (kind of our very own FCC, but much more "lobby-able") allowed the subsidization of copper, cable and fiber installation to unserviced areas exclusively to Portugal Telecom (PT, now commercially known as MEO), then a mostly public company with a big monopoly on phone and internet services but none in cable or satellite TV, with the state itself covering up to the 90 %'s of the cost but ownership being kept by PT. All PT had to do was compromise on maintenance and also service the rural areas where they already had a presence, thus providing close to 100% home owners with basic cable DSL. It was very good - for the 2000's, many villages ended up with 256kb internet services with copper, although they were more expensive than in cities.
Problem: rural lines were never maintained or upgraded. By 2010, internet users in rural areas had ascended to more than 80% due to population renewal - most schools, services and even income tax forms or civil services are now internet-based and people need a solid bandwidth for accessing these services, and these services are not made for 2000'ish bandwidth. Our income tax website for instance is a 50MB Java Applet that constantly fails and requires refresh, does bad caching. Moodle and other educational web platforms, even email, demand decent down and upload speeds for word, pdf or other assignments. In technological terms, we have the xDSL protocol but not even close to the throughput to support it effectively. I've seen multiple cases of people subscribing to 24mbit services, effectively getting 2mbits tops, and the instability at that speed prompts most people to even request a reduction to 1.2mbits to PT so they get a stable service.
Bigger problem: PT/MEO was sold by our previous right-wing government under pretext that it was a demand for targeted Troika goals for having received a bail-out, and a known company dismantler Altice, spearheaded by Luso-French CEO, took the majority share (and abolished the state-owned golden share) of PT, while managing to include a monopolizing contract clause specifically for rural areas, where the installed lines were mostly payed for by the state, but are still fully owned by the company. And they pretty much payed below asking price. Better offers were denied from more decent parties for reasons that were never actually disclosed. PT is now a super-aggressive marketing company, with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and our best comedians stepping in their commercials. The service, obviously, hasn't improved sh*t the last 5 years.
So now, in Portugal we have at least 4 fiber providers, 2 of them expanding their own line strongly to rural areas not serviced by PT, but they are constantly blocked from providing service because they can't use the tubing that is now owned by PT (part of the lines deal), and new licenses for cabling will not be issued because of the monopolizing clause. They can't even demand the lease of existing lines or tubing in some instances. That's how strong ANACOM is defending PT.
For this reason, Portugal is now becoming a home-3g/LTE playground with actual decent speeds. I am seeing more and more people switching to home-LTE plans because they are much cheaper and immensely more modern and reliable. They are provided by all ISPs unlike landlines because PT does not have a monopoly there, and so prices and plans are a lot more competitive. And yes, I said mobile services in Portugal rural areas are more reliable than landline. That's how bad it gets.
Now, why do I have to live in a country where rural areas get the same treatment as 3rd-world countries, who pretty much skipped landlines for cost, and are jumping to mobile data instead. It is appalling.
Man, this is such good news I'm gonna bash all my coworkers who still use that INFERIOR UNITY CRAP. ...although, I understand their crappy decision, partially: most of them are lazy to change or simply found Unity good enough, and the fact it is the default choice on the login screen also helps.
Like many of the greatest writers (e.g. Kafka, Tolstoy...), Orwell did fiction/drama that was written with political and philosophical bias (like everything is, to a degree), and going beyond bias to novelty on such fields and other fields too. He introduced the concept of Big Brother, and made aware censorship and psychological segregation - the complete nullification of the ego by a party with complete aversion to individual thinking.
Sometimes works of fiction such as this even lay the groundwork for technological evolution. It's not a manual so much as it is a warning sign - a look ahead a possible future, which we as one society must assess and prevent if deemed wrong.
I am not super-savvy about UK and US politico-philosophical topics, but I think it's pretty universal to state that if the guy grew and lived there most of the time, you can credit his work, to some extent, to a place, society, nation... That's why people visit famous people environments after their deaths. I see it like an attribution tax: just as when you trade in a country, you have pay tribute to that country, the same applies to science, art and whatever publication even when fictional or for entertainment. When you have a job and invent something for your employer, it's theirs, even though you might have done it all for yourself. I'm not saying I agree, I'm saying it is what it is.
Some will argue this is not true every time, and I agree, but I dare say this is a pretty blatant case of a view that was generalized across UK, or even most of those that would later become the western block states/NATO - 1984 was (without taking any of its author's writing merits) a great distillation of the views on abuse of power back then, views which have, unfortunately, stood the test of time and still apply because we still have those abuses. We, as a species, don't learn from all our mistakes, because are proving time over time we cannot collectively oppose the threat of ill-intentioned, opportunist individuals and privileged groups in positions of power.