I'd say if these guys are providing a service that further avoids switching environments back and forth, maybe it's worth it.
The real question is: why isn't the FOSS community making such tools or preparing distros like these? If there's gimp, Open/LibreOffice among other FOSS apps for Windows, and they have a solid user base and provide necessary functionality for the community (which gives back), why is the FOSS community allowing this niche, but each day more meaningful scenario left to business players devices? It might get to a point this service becomes essential for WSL and they will have a monopoly. If the FOSS community acts now, future endeavours won't be overshadowed by the paid-for alternative that did everything first, and will keep "doing" it better for years in the eyes of those that paid for the only thing available before it (*wink Office *wink MacOS *wink Adobe Suite).
Isn't this a beauty. Like someone else put it - judge jury, and executioner.
I guess the best thing that could happen to someone is getting the contract terminated for them - something that would, at least in my country, is a terrible endeavour to do by the client, since we basically have to pay the full remainder of the contract. This way ATT is basically begging other customers to use another provider. That's probably the best thing ATT could do to all their clients! Why just a dozen though? Is this some sort of ploy to demonize those 12 guys, as if not everybody else in their network hadn't committed some form of piracy...
Quit my very first serious job after the MsC exactly because it wasn't optional, and didn't pay any overtime with shenanigans. The local Deloitte shop puts newcomers on a 2-month low-pay, "training" contract that mostly comprised 3-week actual training and 7 weeks of "peak" work in a finantial client.
I asked if the 50-70h weeks would last a lot longer before signing a full contract, and they said it would be at least 3 more months of peak work. I told them "bu-bye" and took a 3 month break afterwards which is still the talk of every interview as they think I was fired (which, to the eyes of most employers, is an effective dismissal for not accepting the work conditions, but whatever).
They also used shenanigans like a "no schedule salary fee" (~100 Euro), in order to prevent counting hours and avoid overtime pay. From colleagues that stayed in other projects, this was mostly the norm but I do believe I was unlucky on the client/project to a degree.
I'm not even from the US and I know there must be a company paying very good money for making sure any fault on these boys reaches widespread news. It's getting to a point those planes don't look so cool anymore to us common mortals.
I'll be fair and correct myself: apparently the only PT's-backed claims were about laptops, from 3 separate PDF files (all separately commissioned from the looks of the them). All other product text appears either unsubstantiated or based on internal testing.
It's the second time I hear this company's name in less than a month. Some days ago I read a press release by Dell about a panoplia of new products, and the entire list, ranging from laptops to server computers was full of performance improvements (vs competitors) claims. all of them referring to paid-for reviews by this same company.
I personally find their motto - "win the attention war" - amusing. Also of interest is the fact (pun setup) they interchange links with their main domain and with a redirect from my country's TLD subdomain "facts.pt" (pun successful..?), as a subtle way to include their initials as something factual, and for the unsuspecting eye to believe it's a different company or to provide credit to their reviews with such a "reputable" subdomain. Genius stuff.
These companies are the audit companies of tangible products. Usually, you have Big Four conducting external audits for finantial institutions, country elections and whatnot, gathering data only these auditors are given access. The process is usually compulsory, but still paid by the targets of the audit, and there's always the sense the best auditors are usually the more positive. Now we get these paid product reviewers acting exactly the same way, getting paid to review products before they come out so companies can make bold claims. Then just NDA every other actually independant party interested in reviewing the product. See a pattern?
Well, unless they really REALLY cheaped out on the first Switch, I'm sure they used a combo stereo+microphone mini jack on the switch, and they could very well solve the wired mic comms situation with a software update. But I might be wrong.
Bluetooth latency is almost guaranteed when the device is already using BT for 2+ controllers, using battery and likely connected to a 2.4Ghz WiFi. This is a problem not even laptops and smartphones got to solve with a single BT device connected, and will be hard to fix. One solution is to to what PS/XBox do - put a jack in one of the controllers (or even the pro controller, but that's not as portable), and it takes one interference out of the equation.
As for the stand options, that isn't really something a new switch needs. It's just a new peripheral that can be released whenever they want. It doesn't need base hardware updates. What is unnacceptable is that they made the first iteration have a kickstand but not allow charging while using that kickstand. But a simple small bar-like adapter that redirected the USB C socket to the front, and still kept balance above a solid surface, is something that could also fix the first switch problem.
1. real bluetooth headset support 2. secondary USB on top so it can charge while playing on the kickstand 3. Cellular Network support (yes, a SIM card, either physical or eSIM) 4. Last but not least, better materials on the tablet section casing 5. More brightness on the screen. It doesn't need to be better or worse, or have more pixels, or be OLED. All it needs is a bit of more backlight
Do you know what's worse than not having a manual? Having a manual that tells you something outdated that no longer applies.
Tech companies now make a profit for novelty. "Windows (10) as a service" is the perfect example - try looking up online ways to do something particularly complex on W10, and chances are you will land on a non-official blog post from, say, 2016, which has instructions to access a setting that no longer exists, or simply changed names. Bummer. Now here's the tricky part - companies change so fast, they even neglect their own documentation being up to date. And yes, Microsoft does this too.
Microsoft is a good example because it's a company that once was known for great documentation and professional-level software QA. Now it stillbrags about that, yet more and more it hypocritically tries to follow Google's software. LOL Google - a company known for having no support at all on their software, and about as loop-hole'y as an ISP's or Utility's company support page. And no, Google Product Forums isn't support, and Google hardware support lines don't count - it's not their core business, google hardware is a branding stunt for their core market.
Meanwhile, what these and every company right now is making sure of is they provide documentation FOR DEVELOPERS - because that's the only empathy these tech companies still find - engineers ask tough questions, so they need accessible answers. Clients? Hell no. Instead of providing documentation for the end-user, they'd rather "formulate UX" that is understandable enough that usage itself becomes the documentation.
That is so cool, right? It is a load of bullcrap.
Let me tell you about the perfect UX for silicon valley these days: it doesn't last long. UX right now is a tragedy because, even though my 1990's Yamaha keyboard brought a bigg-ass manual that I didn't even have to read because I learned from pressing them buttons and listening to sound, the best thing about that experience is that it didn't fucking change. It was rock-solid usability - I pressed power and it always worked like expected. No hangs, no update nags, no new search bars, no unexpected arbitrary text pasword prompt, no deleted instrument because a royalty was no longer in place, no confusion because my PEANO instrument got a typo fixed, so now I longer know if it's the right piano when switching to it mid-performance.
You don't get manuals in today's stuff because they are a liability. You're a tech company. You push a change, and forget to update the manual, and you're gonna get users calling CS. Do this on paid, licensed, professional, critical stuff, you're gonna get sued. Another example: do you like Tesla cars and are saving up to buy that Model 3 ASAP? Imagine Elon 420 decides to push an OTA that makes you go armageddon on your 1st child's birthday. Unlikely you say? So was the weather channel getting a windows update live.
Manuals aren't necessary because the webapp and the stores and the always-connected commandment made it all transient. If I could put a logo on Silicon Valley as a whole, it would be Hermes (the greek god) wearing a pair of Nikes with wings, and with his back turned to the viewer. Because they expect you to keep up, but don't give a fuck.
I personally, and most of my friends will not commit to a show with less than 7 on our aggregator of choice, usually iMDB, and that is of a topic that is interesting to us. The reason I don't watch Cobra Kai, for instance, is because even though I'm a sucker fo retro, I just don't like the narrative of that show. The same reason I quit watching the highly praised, good production-valued Orange is the New Black - it simply stopped appealing to my senses.
Granted, my social circle is mostly comprised of working-age geeks who micro-manage their free time, and even though we have some mainstream habits, we're not the type to turn on netflix and see the suggested stuff before a decent, out-of-band ratings/review fix.
This is exactly the same with movies. I'll give the popular example - I for one enjoy some Marvel movies, but it is a given that a high score on a Marvel movie usually means nothing. There are both good and bad Marvel movies out there with ratings completely opposite of their quality.
... or better put - doesn't even come close to the stuff that ensures privacy and anonymity, as opposed to, say, the many good suggestions in the great Intercept's tutorial for anonymous sources.
This makes you wonder if Google purposely created such a feature at the request of US authorities, in order to trick unsuspecting whistleblowers (and yes, criminals too) into a system that is already compromised and gagged by default. The OP does raise a relevant problem - we need a feature to prevent retieval, hell, even sending of such emails, because we might simply not want people to expose themselves trying to tell us something relevant. For now it seems that option is not using your gmail address at all as a public contact...
Everybody knows Netflix has hit peak finantial performance from sheer user-base growth alone, so they now have to cut the losses And that's mostly by reducing the number of views popular, expensive content. This is absolutely no different than what Spotify is doing with their Discover system - they will suggest you stuff based on your tastes BUT most of it will be stuff they play for cheap from their catalogue. Or worse, suggest you stuff their catalogue owners want you to listen.
So this is not about trolls of good movies bombing them, or trolls of bad movies praising them - it's about real people giving honest reviews that will obviously troll their business model.
You now get a thumbs up/down by percentage, which can be 1 person or 1 million, so you might be watching The Room because of its 100% rating by the sole positive rating by weird-Tommy. Ever wondered why play counts disappeared on Spotify?
Those are interesting articles... aside from the fact they all conclude a priori that these internet and Smartphone use "addictions" are bad. One of them is simply studying the levels of such "addictions" and taking no conclusions whatsoever on their consequences, which in itself is turning the scientific method upside down, starting from conclusion and not from a plausible hypothesis.
The fact most parents, or worse, scientist parents observe their children use a smartphone more intensively than they do or did back when they were their age (as there were no smartphones or ubiquitous internet in most cases) only contributes to their opinion being biased to a flawed scientific method - formulate a biased hypothesis; find only contributing factors that support that hypothesis and gather them for statistical analysis; take conclusions based solely on biased arguments for an already biased hypothesis.
I am in a privilleged position as an observer of 2 children now aged 6 and 8 - my young sister and a cousin. Most hypotheses I spontaneously formulate while interacting with them are stuff like "how much smartphones and other connected (or not) portable devices such as tablets, game consoles and others, have improved their basic school education and actually gave them an edge in first and", or "how it hasn't really detracted their home study or work because parenting (and my "brothering") hasn't neglected the correct steering of these devices' correct use (and I don't mean embedded parental controls on the devices, I mean good old "make sure you do these [insert important children errand] while/before/after you get to the leisure part of using these devices). These are the kind of things that go through my mind in my practical scenarios. Not skeptical or last century's idea of social interaction being automatically overridden by the time they take cater connected device use. It's not like in the 90's/00's where most parents would put their children in front of a TV and let them educate themselves on 80% their free time at home. They actually learn and make associations while googling or binge-youtubing just like we do on our young adult-elder lives. I can say my little sister learned doing Google Image searches by herself, like about animals she heard the name but never seen. She also learned how to find websites for her own interesting topics such as cartoons and games by herself, to a point I had to tell her not to look for some topics without my support in order for her not to get to the dark corners of the web, which also exist in real life btw.
Unfortunately, I am still a software developer in a scientific environment and my academic work has been limited to reviewing/supporting paper authoring and not really authoring them, but I do work on the field of improving quality of life through smart devices available to the consumer. But I am in no way biased for or against smartphone/connected devices, I simply see them for what they are - gadgets that will only rise in use and in paradigms of use through the times, and that aren't the harbinger of illiteracy and anti-social behaviors everyone and wants to make of them.
Where is the peer-reviewed, academically acclaimed study stating screen addiction is bad? I see lots of successful people, both socially and professionally, that have been addicts of technology for as long as basic school. I think this is another populist measure based on wanting to show the electorate "there's stuff being done and it is relevant", only it isn't.
Plain and simple: when you start neglecting mid-level workforce - those that have 2 or more years of seniority - it's a bad sign for any IT-related work. IT already has a high job-hopping rate, and not keeping your no-longer-new signings motivated is a recipe for generalized demotivation.
So when all the happy faces you see are either from management or fresh acquisitions, you know the company is abusing the lower ranks, keeping them stagnant for margins. This is especially excruciating when your company publicly states it wants to hire more high-level workers - resources that will jump the ranks straight to the top from outside - once again showing their lack of appreciation for the in-house, long-commited workforce.
I'm not saying this is why I quit my last job. It's just something I see a lot in my peers that leave tech companies around here (south Europe), including my current employer.
Whoever had the bright idea of adding VAR in a World Cup hosted by Russia is to blame. I agree, like others here, bad calls where rightly fixed by VAR, but I think many of them were either bad on purpose just to showcase VAR, or could have been good calls in the first plkace if the referee consulted his on-field colleagues.
The real problem though, is I have noted VAR has been used to reverse good calls. How you say? Because the angles provided by VAR were intentionally vague to induce the ref in cancelling his initial call. Of note is a match where the Iran team called out the ref 5 times, prompting the VAR Room team to force a review 3 times, and only one of those did NOT benefit them, while the other 2 calls were bad calls because of VAR. I could really see some gambling house power in that specific game, which ended in a tie and should have ended in a 2-goal advantage for Portugal due to VAR, clearly winning a lot of cash for the house with the weird result. And then there's news of chinese activity with crypto-gambling in the WC, which makes referee payouts much more anonymous and schemable.
Some facts: the US has forced, and further wants to force companies to provide backdoors to their hardware and software; the US has barred the sale of, or outright banned Chinese, Russian, etc. companies, both at the state and consumer-level, such as ZTE, Huawei or Kaspersky, for allegedly (and in the case of ZTE, admitedly) using backdoors in their hardware/software to spy on the US; China and Russia have obviously done the same, or heavily scrutinized US companies and/or forced them to have local servers and fully transparent operations to the state and even banned like the US (see China and Cisco/Apple/Microsoft); other countries have done similar things to data companies such as Facebook, Reddit, Google, either because they don't hand the keys to the kingdom to their own state authorities like they do the US, or because they can't control data flow like they can on state-based data; and last but not least, due to the Patriot Act, we know of 3 US companies that for sure have had spying on their own citizens, due to warrant canary expiration - we don't know of any other country that has done things similar, but we can assume from their own actions, that China (...), Russia (see the Telegram, VK and other shenanigans), and Iran (...) have as well.
Now, we see this report that companies are fighting back. I am no US citizen or even live there, but I have to admit, this fight is a losers' fight and nothing more than PR stunt for privacy-centric, non-tech savvy consumers. All these companies are US-based and/or have main operations in the US, and whatever they do, they have to abide to US law. And most of all, in a game where every state is playing dirty, there is no room to play fair, especially when you are (still) the player with the better hand. IRIS and secret court orders and gag orders and whatnot were scandalous when they got out, but really, one should really see them for what they are - not killing people in all-out-war, yet killing privacy indiscriminately. Violation of privacy is, in a way, like nukes and any WMD but instead of affecting life, it affects a core freedom. So unless everybody starts signing some very closed, transparent non-proliferation agreements, things aren't really gonna improve for us, the small folk, forever exploited, previously by compulsory military service, and now by compulsory data-gathering exploitation. If there's one thing certain, it is that countries like China, Russia, Iran, or even the US, as they are today, democratically, will never sign such accords because they allow spying on their own citizens, let alone sign it to foreign citizens. None of these countries are even enforcing this on people protected with diplomatic passports, who supposedly should have immunity at all levels to perform their tasks, even on data-snooping.
So whatever you want to make of it, things are dead simple - companies themselves have to take the initiative of NOT using data as they do today for their business models, and in the same way, states cannot indiscriminately enforce their own citizens to surrender non-essential data with a bureaucratic excuse. It's never been about encrypting data or using data anonymously - it's like R. Stallman put it in his recent opinion piece. Companies can stop pretending to care, and should start caring for real.
So how is this any different than lobbyist groups targetting political entities for support of their interests, with mostly not-so-transparent financing from all-industry heavy hitters with money to spare in "deep marketing" and whatnot? What about Media conglomerates partially or totally owned by pollitically-inclined organizations? Or even TV channels, newspappers fully flavoured to a social entity? Isn't every part of the pollitical spectrum supposed to have the right to the same alloted audience? Or should it be limited to a time-slot on national TV on campaign period?
Democracy "sucks", because, like communism, its correct implementation depends on trusting everybody granted power will use that power for the sake of what it was granted for. In demoracy, part of the relevant people don't vote because they are part of a no-voting-biased demography, and thus situations where Republicans find comfort in southern states and the elder folks for their patriotism and sense of responsibility, or Democrats finding comfort in winning California (unless, you know, it gets split into 3 or gets reduced college votes, like many are trying to make true). In the meantime, elected governments go on to break down the rules that were first made to preserve elected, democratic power transition. Just see Russia, Turkey, China, and even the U.S. on things like consolidation of power or the lack of separation of powers. The same way, in communism, the most relevant people being parties, unions and, once again, those with transient, temporary power, are easily corrupted or engage in corruption of the system itself, and abuse Media, either by keeping a tight grip and ubiquity of state-sponsored Media outlets or flat-out undermine Media outlets that attempt to offer unbiased reporting, let alone opposing reporting.
True democracy needs untainted, direct, and constant interaction from all the interested parties - actual people within legal age to vote. A country's population should engage directly in legislation, and not be restricted to referendums (a.k.a. the pollitical scap-goat of any government not wanting guilt over a divisive, controversial decision. People need to have direct legislative power. Not elected college votes that may or may not vote to their polls will, and that effectively elect a legislative body to act on "trust" alone. There is no trust in the democratic chain anymore.
I'm not saying democracy should mandate the vote - like in Brazil - but there should be a very informed, very publicized, transparent education on voting up until individuals reach voting age. That is the only way direct, people-based legislation can be a thing. Voting (and why it matters) should be the second most important educational factor after alphabetization, and it just isn't for some reason in every single democracy that I have heard of. You see more initiatives for people to buy stuff and engage in consumerism than to effectively engage in the public forum of suffrage, and that goes to show how flawed the democratic system is - it has a tendency for capitalism and pseudo-meritocracy.
Don't quote me on this, but this issue came up while talking to a Netflix customer support assistant (I had an issue with someone registering an email similar to mine with an ignored character "." and I started getting his emails). In the course of the conversation, this CS representative told me he himself splits his (paid) account with 3 friends who do not share a household. He surely does not have any special benefit or authorization for being their employer, I believe. So there's that.
Obviously, Netflix CEO clarified this at some point and said they did expect people to be fair on that, but it does not actually enforce this. I strongly doubt Netflix would be 20% of what it is today without this type of shared subscriptions, just like Spotify would be nothing with people piggybacking on telecom providers plans with Spotify (we had those for 3 years here), family plan schemes like Netflix and their free offers for limites times hooking up customors for a period. What I mean to say is: unless things change considerably, it should be considered fair game to breach their ToS because they benefit from having this type of customers. It's either the 4 people sharing one account or none at all paying.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say if these guys are providing a service that further avoids switching environments back and forth, maybe it's worth it.
The real question is: why isn't the FOSS community making such tools or preparing distros like these? If there's gimp, Open/LibreOffice among other FOSS apps for Windows, and they have a solid user base and provide necessary functionality for the community (which gives back), why is the FOSS community allowing this niche, but each day more meaningful scenario left to business players devices? It might get to a point this service becomes essential for WSL and they will have a monopoly. If the FOSS community acts now, future endeavours won't be overshadowed by the paid-for alternative that did everything first, and will keep "doing" it better for years in the eyes of those that paid for the only thing available before it (*wink Office *wink MacOS *wink Adobe Suite).
Isn't this a beauty. Like someone else put it - judge jury, and executioner.
I guess the best thing that could happen to someone is getting the contract terminated for them - something that would, at least in my country, is a terrible endeavour to do by the client, since we basically have to pay the full remainder of the contract. This way ATT is basically begging other customers to use another provider. That's probably the best thing ATT could do to all their clients! Why just a dozen though? Is this some sort of ploy to demonize those 12 guys, as if not everybody else in their network hadn't committed some form of piracy...
And to a larger extent: does it run anything useful? It's not gonna beat a laptop until it has a laptop OS. OSX or otherwise.
Quit my very first serious job after the MsC exactly because it wasn't optional, and didn't pay any overtime with shenanigans. The local Deloitte shop puts newcomers on a 2-month low-pay, "training" contract that mostly comprised 3-week actual training and 7 weeks of "peak" work in a finantial client.
I asked if the 50-70h weeks would last a lot longer before signing a full contract, and they said it would be at least 3 more months of peak work. I told them "bu-bye" and took a 3 month break afterwards which is still the talk of every interview as they think I was fired (which, to the eyes of most employers, is an effective dismissal for not accepting the work conditions, but whatever).
They also used shenanigans like a "no schedule salary fee" (~100 Euro), in order to prevent counting hours and avoid overtime pay. From colleagues that stayed in other projects, this was mostly the norm but I do believe I was unlucky on the client/project to a degree.
I'm not even from the US and I know there must be a company paying very good money for making sure any fault on these boys reaches widespread news. It's getting to a point those planes don't look so cool anymore to us common mortals.
I'll be fair and correct myself: apparently the only PT's-backed claims were about laptops, from 3 separate PDF files (all separately commissioned from the looks of the them). All other product text appears either unsubstantiated or based on internal testing.
:'(
It's the second time I hear this company's name in less than a month. Some days ago I read a press release by Dell about a panoplia of new products, and the entire list, ranging from laptops to server computers was full of performance improvements (vs competitors) claims. all of them referring to paid-for reviews by this same company.
I personally find their motto - "win the attention war" - amusing. Also of interest is the fact (pun setup) they interchange links with their main domain and with a redirect from my country's TLD subdomain "facts.pt" (pun successful..?), as a subtle way to include their initials as something factual, and for the unsuspecting eye to believe it's a different company or to provide credit to their reviews with such a "reputable" subdomain. Genius stuff.
These companies are the audit companies of tangible products. Usually, you have Big Four conducting external audits for finantial institutions, country elections and whatnot, gathering data only these auditors are given access. The process is usually compulsory, but still paid by the targets of the audit, and there's always the sense the best auditors are usually the more positive. Now we get these paid product reviewers acting exactly the same way, getting paid to review products before they come out so companies can make bold claims. Then just NDA every other actually independant party interested in reviewing the product. See a pattern?
Well, unless they really REALLY cheaped out on the first Switch, I'm sure they used a combo stereo+microphone mini jack on the switch, and they could very well solve the wired mic comms situation with a software update. But I might be wrong.
Bluetooth latency is almost guaranteed when the device is already using BT for 2+ controllers, using battery and likely connected to a 2.4Ghz WiFi. This is a problem not even laptops and smartphones got to solve with a single BT device connected, and will be hard to fix. One solution is to to what PS/XBox do - put a jack in one of the controllers (or even the pro controller, but that's not as portable), and it takes one interference out of the equation.
As for the stand options, that isn't really something a new switch needs. It's just a new peripheral that can be released whenever they want. It doesn't need base hardware updates. What is unnacceptable is that they made the first iteration have a kickstand but not allow charging while using that kickstand. But a simple small bar-like adapter that redirected the USB C socket to the front, and still kept balance above a solid surface, is something that could also fix the first switch problem.
1. real bluetooth headset support
2. secondary USB on top so it can charge while playing on the kickstand
3. Cellular Network support (yes, a SIM card, either physical or eSIM)
4. Last but not least, better materials on the tablet section casing
5. More brightness on the screen. It doesn't need to be better or worse, or have more pixels, or be OLED. All it needs is a bit of more backlight
Do you know what's worse than not having a manual? Having a manual that tells you something outdated that no longer applies.
Tech companies now make a profit for novelty. "Windows (10) as a service" is the perfect example - try looking up online ways to do something particularly complex on W10, and chances are you will land on a non-official blog post from, say, 2016, which has instructions to access a setting that no longer exists, or simply changed names. Bummer. Now here's the tricky part - companies change so fast, they even neglect their own documentation being up to date. And yes, Microsoft does this too.
Microsoft is a good example because it's a company that once was known for great documentation and professional-level software QA. Now it stillbrags about that, yet more and more it hypocritically tries to follow Google's software. LOL Google - a company known for having no support at all on their software, and about as loop-hole'y as an ISP's or Utility's company support page. And no, Google Product Forums isn't support, and Google hardware support lines don't count - it's not their core business, google hardware is a branding stunt for their core market.
Meanwhile, what these and every company right now is making sure of is they provide documentation FOR DEVELOPERS - because that's the only empathy these tech companies still find - engineers ask tough questions, so they need accessible answers. Clients? Hell no. Instead of providing documentation for the end-user, they'd rather "formulate UX" that is understandable enough that usage itself becomes the documentation.
That is so cool, right? It is a load of bullcrap.
Let me tell you about the perfect UX for silicon valley these days: it doesn't last long. UX right now is a tragedy because, even though my 1990's Yamaha keyboard brought a bigg-ass manual that I didn't even have to read because I learned from pressing them buttons and listening to sound, the best thing about that experience is that it didn't fucking change. It was rock-solid usability - I pressed power and it always worked like expected. No hangs, no update nags, no new search bars, no unexpected arbitrary text pasword prompt, no deleted instrument because a royalty was no longer in place, no confusion because my PEANO instrument got a typo fixed, so now I longer know if it's the right piano when switching to it mid-performance.
You don't get manuals in today's stuff because they are a liability. You're a tech company. You push a change, and forget to update the manual, and you're gonna get users calling CS. Do this on paid, licensed, professional, critical stuff, you're gonna get sued. Another example: do you like Tesla cars and are saving up to buy that Model 3 ASAP? Imagine Elon 420 decides to push an OTA that makes you go armageddon on your 1st child's birthday. Unlikely you say? So was the weather channel getting a windows update live.
Manuals aren't necessary because the webapp and the stores and the always-connected commandment made it all transient. If I could put a logo on Silicon Valley as a whole, it would be Hermes (the greek god) wearing a pair of Nikes with wings, and with his back turned to the viewer. Because they expect you to keep up, but don't give a fuck.
I personally, and most of my friends will not commit to a show with less than 7 on our aggregator of choice, usually iMDB, and that is of a topic that is interesting to us. The reason I don't watch Cobra Kai, for instance, is because even though I'm a sucker fo retro, I just don't like the narrative of that show. The same reason I quit watching the highly praised, good production-valued Orange is the New Black - it simply stopped appealing to my senses.
Granted, my social circle is mostly comprised of working-age geeks who micro-manage their free time, and even though we have some mainstream habits, we're not the type to turn on netflix and see the suggested stuff before a decent, out-of-band ratings/review fix.
This is exactly the same with movies. I'll give the popular example - I for one enjoy some Marvel movies, but it is a given that a high score on a Marvel movie usually means nothing. There are both good and bad Marvel movies out there with ratings completely opposite of their quality.
wtf is going on here? There are similarly named, different-branded chromebooks, and a lot of them have FF9 (and other game characters) device names.
I just think it's a thing of beauty what Valve has been doing for Linux gaming this past decade.
... or better put - doesn't even come close to the stuff that ensures privacy and anonymity, as opposed to, say, the many good suggestions in the great Intercept's tutorial for anonymous sources.
This makes you wonder if Google purposely created such a feature at the request of US authorities, in order to trick unsuspecting whistleblowers (and yes, criminals too) into a system that is already compromised and gagged by default. The OP does raise a relevant problem - we need a feature to prevent retieval, hell, even sending of such emails, because we might simply not want people to expose themselves trying to tell us something relevant. For now it seems that option is not using your gmail address at all as a public contact...
Everybody knows Netflix has hit peak finantial performance from sheer user-base growth alone, so they now have to cut the losses And that's mostly by reducing the number of views popular, expensive content. This is absolutely no different than what Spotify is doing with their Discover system - they will suggest you stuff based on your tastes BUT most of it will be stuff they play for cheap from their catalogue. Or worse, suggest you stuff their catalogue owners want you to listen.
So this is not about trolls of good movies bombing them, or trolls of bad movies praising them - it's about real people giving honest reviews that will obviously troll their business model.
You now get a thumbs up/down by percentage, which can be 1 person or 1 million, so you might be watching The Room because of its 100% rating by the sole positive rating by weird-Tommy. Ever wondered why play counts disappeared on Spotify?
Those are interesting articles... aside from the fact they all conclude a priori that these internet and Smartphone use "addictions" are bad. One of them is simply studying the levels of such "addictions" and taking no conclusions whatsoever on their consequences, which in itself is turning the scientific method upside down, starting from conclusion and not from a plausible hypothesis.
The fact most parents, or worse, scientist parents observe their children use a smartphone more intensively than they do or did back when they were their age (as there were no smartphones or ubiquitous internet in most cases) only contributes to their opinion being biased to a flawed scientific method - formulate a biased hypothesis; find only contributing factors that support that hypothesis and gather them for statistical analysis; take conclusions based solely on biased arguments for an already biased hypothesis.
I am in a privilleged position as an observer of 2 children now aged 6 and 8 - my young sister and a cousin. Most hypotheses I spontaneously formulate while interacting with them are stuff like "how much smartphones and other connected (or not) portable devices such as tablets, game consoles and others, have improved their basic school education and actually gave them an edge in first and", or "how it hasn't really detracted their home study or work because parenting (and my "brothering") hasn't neglected the correct steering of these devices' correct use (and I don't mean embedded parental controls on the devices, I mean good old "make sure you do these [insert important children errand] while/before/after you get to the leisure part of using these devices). These are the kind of things that go through my mind in my practical scenarios. Not skeptical or last century's idea of social interaction being automatically overridden by the time they take cater connected device use. It's not like in the 90's/00's where most parents would put their children in front of a TV and let them educate themselves on 80% their free time at home. They actually learn and make associations while googling or binge-youtubing just like we do on our young adult-elder lives. I can say my little sister learned doing Google Image searches by herself, like about animals she heard the name but never seen. She also learned how to find websites for her own interesting topics such as cartoons and games by herself, to a point I had to tell her not to look for some topics without my support in order for her not to get to the dark corners of the web, which also exist in real life btw.
Unfortunately, I am still a software developer in a scientific environment and my academic work has been limited to reviewing/supporting paper authoring and not really authoring them, but I do work on the field of improving quality of life through smart devices available to the consumer. But I am in no way biased for or against smartphone/connected devices, I simply see them for what they are - gadgets that will only rise in use and in paradigms of use through the times, and that aren't the harbinger of illiteracy and anti-social behaviors everyone and wants to make of them.
Where is the peer-reviewed, academically acclaimed study stating screen addiction is bad? I see lots of successful people, both socially and professionally, that have been addicts of technology for as long as basic school. I think this is another populist measure based on wanting to show the electorate "there's stuff being done and it is relevant", only it isn't.
I got context-fooled by the collapsed replies, so my tongue in cheek was missdirected. He was being sarchastic to begin with and I just looked dumb.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, no congenital disorders right?I remember someone using that policy sometimes last century. Didn't work out for them.
Keep it ut US of A.
Plain and simple: when you start neglecting mid-level workforce - those that have 2 or more years of seniority - it's a bad sign for any IT-related work. IT already has a high job-hopping rate, and not keeping your no-longer-new signings motivated is a recipe for generalized demotivation.
So when all the happy faces you see are either from management or fresh acquisitions, you know the company is abusing the lower ranks, keeping them stagnant for margins. This is especially excruciating when your company publicly states it wants to hire more high-level workers - resources that will jump the ranks straight to the top from outside - once again showing their lack of appreciation for the in-house, long-commited workforce.
I'm not saying this is why I quit my last job. It's just something I see a lot in my peers that leave tech companies around here (south Europe), including my current employer.
Whoever had the bright idea of adding VAR in a World Cup hosted by Russia is to blame. I agree, like others here, bad calls where rightly fixed by VAR, but I think many of them were either bad on purpose just to showcase VAR, or could have been good calls in the first plkace if the referee consulted his on-field colleagues.
The real problem though, is I have noted VAR has been used to reverse good calls. How you say? Because the angles provided by VAR were intentionally vague to induce the ref in cancelling his initial call. Of note is a match where the Iran team called out the ref 5 times, prompting the VAR Room team to force a review 3 times, and only one of those did NOT benefit them, while the other 2 calls were bad calls because of VAR. I could really see some gambling house power in that specific game, which ended in a tie and should have ended in a 2-goal advantage for Portugal due to VAR, clearly winning a lot of cash for the house with the weird result. And then there's news of chinese activity with crypto-gambling in the WC, which makes referee payouts much more anonymous and schemable.
Some facts: the US has forced, and further wants to force companies to provide backdoors to their hardware and software; the US has barred the sale of, or outright banned Chinese, Russian, etc. companies, both at the state and consumer-level, such as ZTE, Huawei or Kaspersky, for allegedly (and in the case of ZTE, admitedly) using backdoors in their hardware/software to spy on the US; China and Russia have obviously done the same, or heavily scrutinized US companies and/or forced them to have local servers and fully transparent operations to the state and even banned like the US (see China and Cisco/Apple/Microsoft); other countries have done similar things to data companies such as Facebook, Reddit, Google, either because they don't hand the keys to the kingdom to their own state authorities like they do the US, or because they can't control data flow like they can on state-based data; and last but not least, due to the Patriot Act, we know of 3 US companies that for sure have had spying on their own citizens, due to warrant canary expiration - we don't know of any other country that has done things similar, but we can assume from their own actions, that China (...), Russia (see the Telegram, VK and other shenanigans), and Iran (...) have as well.
Now, we see this report that companies are fighting back. I am no US citizen or even live there, but I have to admit, this fight is a losers' fight and nothing more than PR stunt for privacy-centric, non-tech savvy consumers. All these companies are US-based and/or have main operations in the US, and whatever they do, they have to abide to US law. And most of all, in a game where every state is playing dirty, there is no room to play fair, especially when you are (still) the player with the better hand. IRIS and secret court orders and gag orders and whatnot were scandalous when they got out, but really, one should really see them for what they are - not killing people in all-out-war, yet killing privacy indiscriminately. Violation of privacy is, in a way, like nukes and any WMD but instead of affecting life, it affects a core freedom. So unless everybody starts signing some very closed, transparent non-proliferation agreements, things aren't really gonna improve for us, the small folk, forever exploited, previously by compulsory military service, and now by compulsory data-gathering exploitation. If there's one thing certain, it is that countries like China, Russia, Iran, or even the US, as they are today, democratically, will never sign such accords because they allow spying on their own citizens, let alone sign it to foreign citizens. None of these countries are even enforcing this on people protected with diplomatic passports, who supposedly should have immunity at all levels to perform their tasks, even on data-snooping.
So whatever you want to make of it, things are dead simple - companies themselves have to take the initiative of NOT using data as they do today for their business models, and in the same way, states cannot indiscriminately enforce their own citizens to surrender non-essential data with a bureaucratic excuse. It's never been about encrypting data or using data anonymously - it's like R. Stallman put it in his recent opinion piece. Companies can stop pretending to care, and should start caring for real.
So how is this any different than lobbyist groups targetting political entities for support of their interests, with mostly not-so-transparent financing from all-industry heavy hitters with money to spare in "deep marketing" and whatnot? What about Media conglomerates partially or totally owned by pollitically-inclined organizations? Or even TV channels, newspappers fully flavoured to a social entity? Isn't every part of the pollitical spectrum supposed to have the right to the same alloted audience? Or should it be limited to a time-slot on national TV on campaign period?
Democracy "sucks", because, like communism, its correct implementation depends on trusting everybody granted power will use that power for the sake of what it was granted for. In demoracy, part of the relevant people don't vote because they are part of a no-voting-biased demography, and thus situations where Republicans find comfort in southern states and the elder folks for their patriotism and sense of responsibility, or Democrats finding comfort in winning California (unless, you know, it gets split into 3 or gets reduced college votes, like many are trying to make true). In the meantime, elected governments go on to break down the rules that were first made to preserve elected, democratic power transition. Just see Russia, Turkey, China, and even the U.S. on things like consolidation of power or the lack of separation of powers. The same way, in communism, the most relevant people being parties, unions and, once again, those with transient, temporary power, are easily corrupted or engage in corruption of the system itself, and abuse Media, either by keeping a tight grip and ubiquity of state-sponsored Media outlets or flat-out undermine Media outlets that attempt to offer unbiased reporting, let alone opposing reporting.
True democracy needs untainted, direct, and constant interaction from all the interested parties - actual people within legal age to vote. A country's population should engage directly in legislation, and not be restricted to referendums (a.k.a. the pollitical scap-goat of any government not wanting guilt over a divisive, controversial decision. People need to have direct legislative power. Not elected college votes that may or may not vote to their polls will, and that effectively elect a legislative body to act on "trust" alone. There is no trust in the democratic chain anymore.
I'm not saying democracy should mandate the vote - like in Brazil - but there should be a very informed, very publicized, transparent education on voting up until individuals reach voting age. That is the only way direct, people-based legislation can be a thing. Voting (and why it matters) should be the second most important educational factor after alphabetization, and it just isn't for some reason in every single democracy that I have heard of. You see more initiatives for people to buy stuff and engage in consumerism than to effectively engage in the public forum of suffrage, and that goes to show how flawed the democratic system is - it has a tendency for capitalism and pseudo-meritocracy.
Don't quote me on this, but this issue came up while talking to a Netflix customer support assistant (I had an issue with someone registering an email similar to mine with an ignored character "." and I started getting his emails). In the course of the conversation, this CS representative told me he himself splits his (paid) account with 3 friends who do not share a household. He surely does not have any special benefit or authorization for being their employer, I believe. So there's that.
Obviously, Netflix CEO clarified this at some point and said they did expect people to be fair on that, but it does not actually enforce this. I strongly doubt Netflix would be 20% of what it is today without this type of shared subscriptions, just like Spotify would be nothing with people piggybacking on telecom providers plans with Spotify (we had those for 3 years here), family plan schemes like Netflix and their free offers for limites times hooking up customors for a period. What I mean to say is: unless things change considerably, it should be considered fair game to breach their ToS because they benefit from having this type of customers. It's either the 4 people sharing one account or none at all paying.