I dunno about mass market, but the RSS reader advantages from early days remain true, and there isn't a proper replacement for it to this day. I might miss some stuff here, but I think they are:
1. Speed and efficiency - the ability to read through multiple news sources updates fast, in a non-polluted platform. My reader is setup like webmail/Gmail. Most readers offer keyboard shortcuts that once you learn and start using makes going through the list even faster. So it's a really good tool for people who read news from multiple fixed sources. It is by far faster than opening up pages one by one, or even opening a list of bookmarks all at once - no load times, no going through pages all with different designs. It's also lighter on a limited data plan, for instance, or a machine with limited power. And if the blog/portal you read stuff from is properly formatted, you can also pull only the summary of each item, which also helps on speed;
2. Standardization - most RSS readers offer you a few options of interface. It can look like a regular webmail interface, it can present one article per page, it can give you a list of summaries of the articles. It also offers some standard ordering (chronological, alphabetical, oldest first), standard filters (unread only, all, starred only) among others. The RSS format is largely responsible for news/blog content standardization too - categorizing portions of a news article or blog post into summary, body, title, tags, and a whole bunch of other stuff - some came with the RSS format, most of it is used for it's advantage;
3. Control - RSS readers will give you a raw full list of everything new that's getting published in a certain news portal, website, blog, or subsection of those. You have tools to filter and manage it by yourself, but you will be doing it yourself. No 3rd party curation, no opaque social network's algorithms filtering and ordering it for you, no business controling what you get to read;
4. Alerts for new content in infrequent sources - say you have a bunch of sources that publish stuff very infrequently, but it's important for you to know everytime they do. Comics, business websites, artist blogs, a business website you have interest in official updates, press releases of some website, etc. It'll show up for you as a new item reliably, which is why tons of journalists make use of RSS readers. Wanna keep up with the latest announcements of some business that isn't big enough to make the mainstream news, yet they always update a blog or portal - RSS is the way to go;
5. Advanced filtration - Some readers do offer a way to filter through content, commonly by keywords, but you set it up yourself. So if you follow say a tech blog that publishes a ton of content, but you don't want anything from Apple, you can blacklist the keyword. Show me all articles from Slashdot minus anything that has keywords like Apple or iPhone, for instance. I know you can get browser plugins and whatnot to do that, but plugins suck, and RSS feeds are more reliable. Whitelisting is also available in some - you want to read only Apple related news on Slashdot. And as those things are in your control, you can turn on or off whenever is more convenient for you;
6. Researching - again, something that some readers offer, is to search keywords through your personal feed. It's easier to go back to something you read before that way than using a search engine like Google when you are not exactly sure about the source and whatnot. It's going to look only at the content you are subscribed to, not the entire Internet;
7. Portability - due to standardization and how the format works, it becomes easy to use an RSS reader in pretty much all your devices - and the content will reliability adapt. It's CSS for content instead of styling/design. Most of them are web based, so you can just access in any device with Internet connection and a browser. Nowadays this isn't a huge deal anymore as most websites works well in any format, but specially in early days of smartphones
The problem with the RSS model is how companies can't find a good way of profitting out of it, which is unfortunate. I've been using RSS readers before Google Reader even existed (I remember using Foxmail and some other types of RSS readers in the past), currently on Feedly, but already have TinyTiny RSS reader as a backup strategy and I'm trying to also see if I can make my Synology NAS work with Selfoss... no success so far.
For those wondering what's good about it, once you are used to the format it's kinda hard to use anything else. It displays feeds in an e-mail like format, chronological order, and it enables you to go super fast through the news - even more when you get used to keyboard shortcuts and use it to reshare, republish or store. Depending on what reader you are using there are also features like filters, search options, and whatnot. And then there's a bunch things you can do with it if the service is also available on automation services like IfTTT.
I would be perfectly fine with the system dying off.... IF there was a proper replacement to it. But that's the real problem with Google Reader and now this one dying. I absolutely and completely do not want to rely, nor I will ever, on social networks as news sources. They make an absolute mess of it, not reliable at all, comparatively ultra slow, cumbersome, inconvenient, increasingly invasive and without any tools for sorting and research. But I think since Google Reader's demise, plenty of open source self hosted readers popped up in response. I think there's at least half a dozen options nowadays... I wanted something that worked well with my NAS, but if that doesn't work out I might just get a devboard or spare computer, install some linux distro on it, and install one of the open source options to do the job.
It's unfortunate that the format isn't still going on, don't have a mass appeal, and isn't profitable to be kept up. But people who do use it won't be giving up anytime soon. I guess lots of people don't know about this, but journalists specially rely a whole lot on them.
A win is a win, and of course a drastic reduction in pollution for China is a great thing. But all the sources sounds extremely one sided, like propaganda or something. 32% decrease OF WHAT?
Because you know, there is a big difference between reducing 32% of normal pollution that's expected on any major urban center, and reducing 32% of a smog so dense and deadly that it looks like you are around a volcano that just erupted.
Yes, an improvement is still an improvement, but for those curious not about the reduction but about the current state, here's a more informative map: http://berkeleyearth.org/air-q...
So the thing is, yes, 32% reduction is awesome, but it's still nowhere near good enough. It's not even close even to major urban centers in the rest of the world. To get to the same level of some other countries, China would probably need something more towards 70 or 80% reduction.
And yes, I know that China's air polution problem is largely the fault of basically the entire global industrialized society - the polution is there because most major countries with the biggest economies in the world just shifted the entire industrial production, with all it's polution problems, straight to China, where we all knew regulation was lax, and welfare basically doesn't exist. So this isn't an attack against China.
But perhaps let's not celebrate too much when we still have such a long way to go... I'm only saying this because perhaps some people don't realize how bad it really is there. It is not a joke when people say that kids, seniors and people with some health conditions could straight up die and suffocate in a normal hot day in some chinese cities without warning, while they could live pretty well in other parts of the world. There were days when people walking around on big city streets there got home looking like they just emerged out of a coal mine - exposed skin brown or black with layers of particulate matter. India is another country that will have to do a whole ton of work and invest a whole ton of money to get their pollution levels back to a tolerable state. And both countries needs help on this, because in the end it affects all of us.
Nothing hard about this... just take some stock photo that tries to represent multi cultural ethnicity in several age groups. If it needs to be a single individual, it'll probably need to be, by average, a male chinese poor guy. There's no way around this. You either go subjective, which then the image could be just about anything, or go objective, which would tie the image to statistics.
Much like any other social networks on the Internet, it all depends on how you use the platform. I personally have a fixed number of subscribed channel that I watch everyday. The recommendations I get from YouTube usually goes around the themes of channels I'm already subscribed to. So, there's a bunch of science, tech, and currently trip to Japan channels on the recommendation list. Nothing radical or extreme at all. But of course, if you already watch and follow a bunch of videos and channels that are always about sensitive or hot button topics, the algorithm will suggest popular videos with similar themes, which will eventually end up in radicalized content. It's only logical that it'd end up that way, since it'll always try to show you popular videos. On the trending list there's always a bunch of shit recommendations that are mostly sensationalistic in nature, but I won't ever touch that crap with a 10 foot pole, so no harm done.
But you gotta see that this isn't unique to YouTube. Facebook and Twitter do the same crap. Facebook has suggested pages, people and posts, their annoying suggested news feed order that always put the crap on top, plus a bunch of other stuff that always suggest crap to you if you don't take good care of the content you keep on the news feed. Twitter has the cancerous trending crap, plus that Moments page that is always littered with garbage. Perhaps neither are as radicalizing as YouTube, but it probably depends on how you use those platforms.
The problem in all of those is not how the platforms itself works... it's the people. The users. The ignorant masses that are always posting and then feeding, watching all this crap. It's a popularity contest, and popular shit often times is the worst.
Gutenberg was german, he invented the printed press process with movable type, which effectively took literacy as a skill away from nobles and the church and started a revolution of book access to the masses. He died largely unknown and with merrits unrecognized.
Get a popular service, find a way to go around regulations, taxation and obstables put in place to stop overgrowth and abuses, find a way to skip welfare and minimum wage/conditions for workers to make a living with it, and sell it as a new paradigm.
There is no easy route or shortcut for this people. If you are paying less to stay somewhere, paying less for transportation, paying less for services in general, someone is paying more. And there will be consequences for that.
It's no coincidence that some workers on those sectors are living in conditions reminiscent to the Industrial Revolution era. Crazy hours not enough to even make a living.
And yes, I fully agree that regulations are far from perfect, that they often don't do what they are supposed to, and that they frequently compose of abuse themselves for business owners... but skipping them away or going around them will eventually have predicted consequences.
You see, if Microsoft was somehow paying to get all the rights possible to these names, buying off dev teams, and subverting open source agreements, then I might have agreed. But in this particular case, nothing like that is being done. It's just Microsoft facilitating access to distros into their store. It's win-win. No one uses the Windows Store because it has almost nothing better to offer... perhaps putting Linux distros there might get some attention in untapped markets. And those distros could use a bit more visility and ease of use for the general consumer. Furthermore, it's absolutely not in the best interest of Microsoft to do any damage to Linux, nor in the best interest of almost any other company. Linux is not a threat to consumer faced OSs by any stretch of the mind, and I highly doubt any of those companies would risk damaging such a huge asset that they actively use on the server side.
...Microsoft can't just outright kill agonizing products, it needs to expose it and watch it die off a miserable death. Surface RT, Windows Phone, Zune, Windows Store...
...without knowing for what the patent was. But it's awfully predictable how a company that has sold it's brand for 3rd party generic smartphone manufacturing and is being relegated to a part of smartphone history would now resort to becoming a patent troll business, what with it's history:
It's too bad that you got yourself a phone with a dead platform, but move over, it's not going anywhere. I jumped ship back in the Lumia 1020 days because I knew this ship was going to sink.
...how much of the US was pretty much given on a silver plate to the current ISP monopolies, and how much ISPs are still paying politicians for things to remain that way... it's just sad. For anyone thinking this is Google's fault, you really need to search around and read articles that explains it from the company's side.
To put it very simply, it was taxpayer money that paid the entire infrastructure to handle the Internet, rights to it was haphazardly given up to ISPs, now everytime Google needs to pass fiber through existing infrastructure (which sometimes is the only way), it needs to gently ask permission to the likes of AT&T and Comcast to do so, which of course will do everything not to let them, including suing Google when the local government tries to expedite the whole thing.
Google Fiber failed because the government gave US infrastructure on a silver platter to existing ISP monopolies. That's why. It's the same reason why the FCC is working the way it is right now. You guys have an effective telecommunications mafia up there and it's gonna stay that way.
It's why Google caved in and started working on the next high speed transmission technology instead of wasting time and money in something that won't work out. Don't take it from me though, just search around for the information.
If they already know that, plus the invasion of cheaper chinese brands, why the fuck would they launch an entire new wave of phones that are too expensive for most people to buy? Fuck you Apple and Samsung, you brought this on yourselves.
"We discovered that some were able to use the demo to unlock the full game."
Nope. According to people who got full access to the game, they didn't have to do anything to unlock the game... it was already unlocked. They just kept playing it past the demo part.
Here in Brazil the thing rolled out but off as default, much like it was reported in US. I wonder what Facebook is taking in consideration to make it off or on by default. I'd think that in EU it'd be the last place on Earth that Facebook would force something related to privacy erosion as on by default, but we'll see how that goes for them. If they end up sued, it's their own fault.
No need for a deep dive here, anyone who knows anything that has been happening in Venezuela for the past decade or so would know this petro thing is just another scam bullshit.
It's just a continuation of Chavez sociodictatorship running the entire country to the ground. Brazil, with some stupid socialist politicians, also lent money for some business there which was promptly stolen and their government already announced they are giving nothing back. The only hope I have left is that all the people behind those decisions end up in jail, because most of them are likely to receive a corruption sentence in the wave of revelations that have been happening for a good part of the past half decade or so. And unfortunately, venezuelans are likely to keep receiving the short end of the stick until they can get rid of their so called socialist president who's actually a dictator and his entire ilk, party and everything else. Because they will keep abusing their power... 'till half the population is dead from famine, mark my words. It's the populist plague that infected a whole bunch of south american countries, including mine. Huge swaths of the respective populations were all swayed into their discourse, with some bullshit talk about humble origins and fighting against the mid to upper class, and we're all now in deep deep shit with huge corruption schemes, and organized crime running the countries. It'll be an entire lost decade or more for several south american countries.
This isn't being backed by oil, it's being backed by Maduro, a compulsive liar prototype dictator that has fallen back on his promises over and over and over again. It's the guy who seized a whole lot of private foreign assets. You'll be safer putting your money on practically anything else.
It starts to get really tiring all this talk about descentralization matters when you lived enough to see all the attempts of making that work that ended up in failure or lesser competition. This idea of replacing currently centralized systems with descentralized ones is nothing new, it doesn't give you any brownie points anymore, and it's always lopsided with this one perspective view pointing out all the bad deeds of big corporation ignoring everything they made to get there. So if you wanna talk the talk, walk the walk. Let's see you create a descentralized system that will topple any of those services. Go ahead, I'm waiting. I'll even volunteer to be an early adopter. Let me know when it happens.
This is what? The 5th attempt from Google on the digital payment market? I love it because apparently Google's strategy on a whole lot of things (messaging for instance) is to keep changing it and promptly abandoning it afterwards to keep the market and potential costumers confused, so that no one knows what to use anymore. I have something installed called Hands Free! Can I pay with that? https://www.theverge.com/2017/... Oh no, this one was discontinued. Oh, can I pay with Wallet then? That one was merged with Android Pay and became Google Pay. But isn't this logo here saying Android Pay? Oh, but Google Pay now works with that too. Ah, nice then... next time I'll just pay with cash or credit.
At least they are consolidating the Google digital payment graveyard into a single thing, but man, Google never learns, does it? They could have both a consolidated messaging system and a consolidated digital payment system as well as several other services directly competing with major players by now... but the company completely lost the will and the way of simply commiting to something and keep improving it aside from already estabilished systems. They can't create anything new and keep focus on it to improve things anymore. Most if not all of the more recent ventures are all like that - they give it a new name, "revamp" the thing, launch it, give it a couple of updates, then abandon the whole thing, and start preparing for the next round of renaming, revamping and launching again. It's just fucking stupid.
The next million system seller. If they can install a Linux distro in it with everything working, they probably can install Android on it too, which means replacing cheap-o Android tablets that a whole ton of kids want/have. I was kinda hoping Nintendo would release a revised hardware soon-ish, but I don't think it'll happen... they are selling it enough already the way it is now.
The problem lies on a way more fundamental level... For instance, how much Equifax had to pay for leaking a whole ton of sensitive data? It was obviously less than enough. How much other companies who leaked medical data, credit card data, governmental data, electors data, had to pay for weak security? Not enough. US is it's own cyber threat, it doesn't need to label other ships as the enemy, it's sinking by itself. What's the response around security from US politicians? Let's use fearmongering against smartphone companies without any proof and bar them from the US market without any proof of doing anything wrong, because we think the chinese government might exploit connections to spy on us. It applies because we'd certainly do the same in their position.
We don't punish incompetence, we put in question the competence of others, and we accuse others of the unethical behaviour that we practice and deserve to be called for. US gets exactly what it deserves. Leaders who thinks they own the place and keep pushing others away while making unreasonable demands all the time eventually gets overthrown. Those who still didn't get this will be forced to given time.
It's about time people wake up to what's happening there... for the curious, there are some interesting documentaries specifically about Shenzhen you should watch on YouTube, search it up.
Yes, China still has a very problematic governmental regime, poverty is still prevalent and horrific in part of the country, censorship is incredibly bad there, they don't have welfare, lots of human rights violations, etc etc.
But there are parts of China that are far more advanced than US and European cities. They have basically been the industry of the world for a very long time now with products related to tech, and it might have been true that the country was limited to producing and mostly copying things years ago, but this has changed drastically in recent years.
Now it's more of a mix. Sure, there are tons of companies still copying stuff designed in other countries at lower quality and costs, but there's plenty of companies that are on the forefront right now.
DJI is one good example, but there's lot of advanced chinese research into several areas. I also think most people don't know to what extent chinese conglomerates already own some very traditional american companies... here's a glimpse: http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/...
I'm not even including Taiwan there too, because that's a whole step above. Even for very high end stuff, if you are paying attention, like pc component parts, smartphone tech, digital imaging, and other areas... they might not be right there with the biggest companies just yet, but you'll see that they at the very least have a 3rd or 4th place in many areas, that are ever getting closer despite humble beginnings... Huawei is the 3rd largest smartphone brand, AllWinner and Rockchip are advancing in low powered SoC, Motorola and parent company Lenovo are pretty much estabilished, Blackberry mobile is owned by TLC... well, a whole truckload of former traditional european or american companies are now owned by chinese conglomerates.
And if you think about it, it's kinda obvious... you are producing all these technological components, eventually you learn all there is to learn about them, and start improving designs by yourself, spreading knowledge about them, building education around it, and getting new generations to work and improve on tech. This happened in Japan and South Korea decades ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno about mass market, but the RSS reader advantages from early days remain true, and there isn't a proper replacement for it to this day. I might miss some stuff here, but I think they are:
1. Speed and efficiency - the ability to read through multiple news sources updates fast, in a non-polluted platform. My reader is setup like webmail/Gmail. Most readers offer keyboard shortcuts that once you learn and start using makes going through the list even faster. So it's a really good tool for people who read news from multiple fixed sources. It is by far faster than opening up pages one by one, or even opening a list of bookmarks all at once - no load times, no going through pages all with different designs. It's also lighter on a limited data plan, for instance, or a machine with limited power. And if the blog/portal you read stuff from is properly formatted, you can also pull only the summary of each item, which also helps on speed;
2. Standardization - most RSS readers offer you a few options of interface. It can look like a regular webmail interface, it can present one article per page, it can give you a list of summaries of the articles. It also offers some standard ordering (chronological, alphabetical, oldest first), standard filters (unread only, all, starred only) among others. The RSS format is largely responsible for news/blog content standardization too - categorizing portions of a news article or blog post into summary, body, title, tags, and a whole bunch of other stuff - some came with the RSS format, most of it is used for it's advantage;
3. Control - RSS readers will give you a raw full list of everything new that's getting published in a certain news portal, website, blog, or subsection of those. You have tools to filter and manage it by yourself, but you will be doing it yourself. No 3rd party curation, no opaque social network's algorithms filtering and ordering it for you, no business controling what you get to read;
4. Alerts for new content in infrequent sources - say you have a bunch of sources that publish stuff very infrequently, but it's important for you to know everytime they do. Comics, business websites, artist blogs, a business website you have interest in official updates, press releases of some website, etc. It'll show up for you as a new item reliably, which is why tons of journalists make use of RSS readers. Wanna keep up with the latest announcements of some business that isn't big enough to make the mainstream news, yet they always update a blog or portal - RSS is the way to go;
5. Advanced filtration - Some readers do offer a way to filter through content, commonly by keywords, but you set it up yourself. So if you follow say a tech blog that publishes a ton of content, but you don't want anything from Apple, you can blacklist the keyword. Show me all articles from Slashdot minus anything that has keywords like Apple or iPhone, for instance. I know you can get browser plugins and whatnot to do that, but plugins suck, and RSS feeds are more reliable. Whitelisting is also available in some - you want to read only Apple related news on Slashdot. And as those things are in your control, you can turn on or off whenever is more convenient for you;
6. Researching - again, something that some readers offer, is to search keywords through your personal feed. It's easier to go back to something you read before that way than using a search engine like Google when you are not exactly sure about the source and whatnot. It's going to look only at the content you are subscribed to, not the entire Internet;
7. Portability - due to standardization and how the format works, it becomes easy to use an RSS reader in pretty much all your devices - and the content will reliability adapt. It's CSS for content instead of styling/design. Most of them are web based, so you can just access in any device with Internet connection and a browser. Nowadays this isn't a huge deal anymore as most websites works well in any format, but specially in early days of smartphones
The problem with the RSS model is how companies can't find a good way of profitting out of it, which is unfortunate.
I've been using RSS readers before Google Reader even existed (I remember using Foxmail and some other types of RSS readers in the past), currently on Feedly, but already have TinyTiny RSS reader as a backup strategy and I'm trying to also see if I can make my Synology NAS work with Selfoss... no success so far.
For those wondering what's good about it, once you are used to the format it's kinda hard to use anything else. It displays feeds in an e-mail like format, chronological order, and it enables you to go super fast through the news - even more when you get used to keyboard shortcuts and use it to reshare, republish or store. Depending on what reader you are using there are also features like filters, search options, and whatnot. And then there's a bunch things you can do with it if the service is also available on automation services like IfTTT.
I would be perfectly fine with the system dying off.... IF there was a proper replacement to it. But that's the real problem with Google Reader and now this one dying. I absolutely and completely do not want to rely, nor I will ever, on social networks as news sources. They make an absolute mess of it, not reliable at all, comparatively ultra slow, cumbersome, inconvenient, increasingly invasive and without any tools for sorting and research.
But I think since Google Reader's demise, plenty of open source self hosted readers popped up in response. I think there's at least half a dozen options nowadays... I wanted something that worked well with my NAS, but if that doesn't work out I might just get a devboard or spare computer, install some linux distro on it, and install one of the open source options to do the job.
It's unfortunate that the format isn't still going on, don't have a mass appeal, and isn't profitable to be kept up. But people who do use it won't be giving up anytime soon. I guess lots of people don't know about this, but journalists specially rely a whole lot on them.
...just in time for that Gung Ho reboot?
A win is a win, and of course a drastic reduction in pollution for China is a great thing.
But all the sources sounds extremely one sided, like propaganda or something.
32% decrease OF WHAT?
Because you know, there is a big difference between reducing 32% of normal pollution that's expected on any major urban center, and reducing 32% of a smog so dense and deadly that it looks like you are around a volcano that just erupted.
Yes, an improvement is still an improvement, but for those curious not about the reduction but about the current state, here's a more informative map:
http://berkeleyearth.org/air-q...
So the thing is, yes, 32% reduction is awesome, but it's still nowhere near good enough. It's not even close even to major urban centers in the rest of the world.
To get to the same level of some other countries, China would probably need something more towards 70 or 80% reduction.
And yes, I know that China's air polution problem is largely the fault of basically the entire global industrialized society - the polution is there because most major countries with the biggest economies in the world just shifted the entire industrial production, with all it's polution problems, straight to China, where we all knew regulation was lax, and welfare basically doesn't exist. So this isn't an attack against China.
But perhaps let's not celebrate too much when we still have such a long way to go...
I'm only saying this because perhaps some people don't realize how bad it really is there. It is not a joke when people say that kids, seniors and people with some health conditions could straight up die and suffocate in a normal hot day in some chinese cities without warning, while they could live pretty well in other parts of the world.
There were days when people walking around on big city streets there got home looking like they just emerged out of a coal mine - exposed skin brown or black with layers of particulate matter.
India is another country that will have to do a whole ton of work and invest a whole ton of money to get their pollution levels back to a tolerable state. And both countries needs help on this, because in the end it affects all of us.
Nothing hard about this... just take some stock photo that tries to represent multi cultural ethnicity in several age groups.
If it needs to be a single individual, it'll probably need to be, by average, a male chinese poor guy.
There's no way around this. You either go subjective, which then the image could be just about anything, or go objective, which would tie the image to statistics.
Much like any other social networks on the Internet, it all depends on how you use the platform.
I personally have a fixed number of subscribed channel that I watch everyday. The recommendations I get from YouTube usually goes around the themes of channels I'm already subscribed to.
So, there's a bunch of science, tech, and currently trip to Japan channels on the recommendation list. Nothing radical or extreme at all.
But of course, if you already watch and follow a bunch of videos and channels that are always about sensitive or hot button topics, the algorithm will suggest popular videos with similar themes, which will eventually end up in radicalized content. It's only logical that it'd end up that way, since it'll always try to show you popular videos.
On the trending list there's always a bunch of shit recommendations that are mostly sensationalistic in nature, but I won't ever touch that crap with a 10 foot pole, so no harm done.
But you gotta see that this isn't unique to YouTube. Facebook and Twitter do the same crap. Facebook has suggested pages, people and posts, their annoying suggested news feed order that always put the crap on top, plus a bunch of other stuff that always suggest crap to you if you don't take good care of the content you keep on the news feed.
Twitter has the cancerous trending crap, plus that Moments page that is always littered with garbage. Perhaps neither are as radicalizing as YouTube, but it probably depends on how you use those platforms.
The problem in all of those is not how the platforms itself works... it's the people. The users. The ignorant masses that are always posting and then feeding, watching all this crap. It's a popularity contest, and popular shit often times is the worst.
Gutenberg was german, he invented the printed press process with movable type, which effectively took literacy as a skill away from nobles and the church and started a revolution of book access to the masses. He died largely unknown and with merrits unrecognized.
Get a popular service, find a way to go around regulations, taxation and obstables put in place to stop overgrowth and abuses, find a way to skip welfare and minimum wage/conditions for workers to make a living with it, and sell it as a new paradigm.
There is no easy route or shortcut for this people. If you are paying less to stay somewhere, paying less for transportation, paying less for services in general, someone is paying more. And there will be consequences for that.
It's no coincidence that some workers on those sectors are living in conditions reminiscent to the Industrial Revolution era. Crazy hours not enough to even make a living.
And yes, I fully agree that regulations are far from perfect, that they often don't do what they are supposed to, and that they frequently compose of abuse themselves for business owners... but skipping them away or going around them will eventually have predicted consequences.
You see, if Microsoft was somehow paying to get all the rights possible to these names, buying off dev teams, and subverting open source agreements, then I might have agreed.
But in this particular case, nothing like that is being done. It's just Microsoft facilitating access to distros into their store.
It's win-win. No one uses the Windows Store because it has almost nothing better to offer... perhaps putting Linux distros there might get some attention in untapped markets. And those distros could use a bit more visility and ease of use for the general consumer.
Furthermore, it's absolutely not in the best interest of Microsoft to do any damage to Linux, nor in the best interest of almost any other company. Linux is not a threat to consumer faced OSs by any stretch of the mind, and I highly doubt any of those companies would risk damaging such a huge asset that they actively use on the server side.
...Microsoft can't just outright kill agonizing products, it needs to expose it and watch it die off a miserable death. Surface RT, Windows Phone, Zune, Windows Store...
...without knowing for what the patent was.
But it's awfully predictable how a company that has sold it's brand for 3rd party generic smartphone manufacturing and is being relegated to a part of smartphone history would now resort to becoming a patent troll business, what with it's history:
- of litigations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
- of giving away the keys to the kingdom: https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
- writting a tone deaf blog post about it: http://blogs.blackberry.com/20...
- and then daring to continue labeling their phones as "most secure" for some reason: https://us.blackberry.com/smar...
This company should've been long dead by now.
Actual crimes should not be allowed on Facebook.
Is it that hard to get?
It's too bad that you got yourself a phone with a dead platform, but move over, it's not going anywhere.
I jumped ship back in the Lumia 1020 days because I knew this ship was going to sink.
...how much of the US was pretty much given on a silver plate to the current ISP monopolies, and how much ISPs are still paying politicians for things to remain that way... it's just sad.
For anyone thinking this is Google's fault, you really need to search around and read articles that explains it from the company's side.
To put it very simply, it was taxpayer money that paid the entire infrastructure to handle the Internet, rights to it was haphazardly given up to ISPs, now everytime Google needs to pass fiber through existing infrastructure (which sometimes is the only way), it needs to gently ask permission to the likes of AT&T and Comcast to do so, which of course will do everything not to let them, including suing Google when the local government tries to expedite the whole thing.
Google Fiber failed because the government gave US infrastructure on a silver platter to existing ISP monopolies. That's why. It's the same reason why the FCC is working the way it is right now. You guys have an effective telecommunications mafia up there and it's gonna stay that way.
It's why Google caved in and started working on the next high speed transmission technology instead of wasting time and money in something that won't work out. Don't take it from me though, just search around for the information.
If they already know that, plus the invasion of cheaper chinese brands, why the fuck would they launch an entire new wave of phones that are too expensive for most people to buy?
Fuck you Apple and Samsung, you brought this on yourselves.
These poor bastards that are still forced to use websites with Flash...
"We discovered that some were able to use the demo to unlock the full game."
Nope. According to people who got full access to the game, they didn't have to do anything to unlock the game... it was already unlocked. They just kept playing it past the demo part.
Here in Brazil the thing rolled out but off as default, much like it was reported in US.
I wonder what Facebook is taking in consideration to make it off or on by default.
I'd think that in EU it'd be the last place on Earth that Facebook would force something related to privacy erosion as on by default, but we'll see how that goes for them. If they end up sued, it's their own fault.
No need for a deep dive here, anyone who knows anything that has been happening in Venezuela for the past decade or so would know this petro thing is just another scam bullshit.
If people are not aware of this, the Maduro proto-dictatorship already "nationalized" (read stolen) a whole bunch of stuff:
Petroleum companies that had a whole ton of American investment:
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/0...
https://venezuelanalysis.com/n...
Toys from private business:
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/1...
General Motors factory:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
It's just a continuation of Chavez sociodictatorship running the entire country to the ground. Brazil, with some stupid socialist politicians, also lent money for some business there which was promptly stolen and their government already announced they are giving nothing back.
The only hope I have left is that all the people behind those decisions end up in jail, because most of them are likely to receive a corruption sentence in the wave of revelations that have been happening for a good part of the past half decade or so.
And unfortunately, venezuelans are likely to keep receiving the short end of the stick until they can get rid of their so called socialist president who's actually a dictator and his entire ilk, party and everything else.
Because they will keep abusing their power... 'till half the population is dead from famine, mark my words. It's the populist plague that infected a whole bunch of south american countries, including mine. Huge swaths of the respective populations were all swayed into their discourse, with some bullshit talk about humble origins and fighting against the mid to upper class, and we're all now in deep deep shit with huge corruption schemes, and organized crime running the countries. It'll be an entire lost decade or more for several south american countries.
This isn't being backed by oil, it's being backed by Maduro, a compulsive liar prototype dictator that has fallen back on his promises over and over and over again. It's the guy who seized a whole lot of private foreign assets.
You'll be safer putting your money on practically anything else.
It starts to get really tiring all this talk about descentralization matters when you lived enough to see all the attempts of making that work that ended up in failure or lesser competition.
This idea of replacing currently centralized systems with descentralized ones is nothing new, it doesn't give you any brownie points anymore, and it's always lopsided with this one perspective view pointing out all the bad deeds of big corporation ignoring everything they made to get there.
So if you wanna talk the talk, walk the walk. Let's see you create a descentralized system that will topple any of those services. Go ahead, I'm waiting. I'll even volunteer to be an early adopter. Let me know when it happens.
This is what? The 5th attempt from Google on the digital payment market?
I love it because apparently Google's strategy on a whole lot of things (messaging for instance) is to keep changing it and promptly abandoning it afterwards to keep the market and potential costumers confused, so that no one knows what to use anymore.
I have something installed called Hands Free! Can I pay with that?
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
Oh no, this one was discontinued. Oh, can I pay with Wallet then?
That one was merged with Android Pay and became Google Pay.
But isn't this logo here saying Android Pay?
Oh, but Google Pay now works with that too.
Ah, nice then... next time I'll just pay with cash or credit.
At least they are consolidating the Google digital payment graveyard into a single thing, but man, Google never learns, does it? They could have both a consolidated messaging system and a consolidated digital payment system as well as several other services directly competing with major players by now... but the company completely lost the will and the way of simply commiting to something and keep improving it aside from already estabilished systems.
They can't create anything new and keep focus on it to improve things anymore. Most if not all of the more recent ventures are all like that - they give it a new name, "revamp" the thing, launch it, give it a couple of updates, then abandon the whole thing, and start preparing for the next round of renaming, revamping and launching again.
It's just fucking stupid.
The next million system seller.
If they can install a Linux distro in it with everything working, they probably can install Android on it too, which means replacing cheap-o Android tablets that a whole ton of kids want/have.
I was kinda hoping Nintendo would release a revised hardware soon-ish, but I don't think it'll happen... they are selling it enough already the way it is now.
The problem lies on a way more fundamental level...
For instance, how much Equifax had to pay for leaking a whole ton of sensitive data? It was obviously less than enough.
How much other companies who leaked medical data, credit card data, governmental data, electors data, had to pay for weak security?
Not enough.
US is it's own cyber threat, it doesn't need to label other ships as the enemy, it's sinking by itself.
What's the response around security from US politicians? Let's use fearmongering against smartphone companies without any proof and bar them from the US market without any proof of doing anything wrong, because we think the chinese government might exploit connections to spy on us. It applies because we'd certainly do the same in their position.
We don't punish incompetence, we put in question the competence of others, and we accuse others of the unethical behaviour that we practice and deserve to be called for. US gets exactly what it deserves. Leaders who thinks they own the place and keep pushing others away while making unreasonable demands all the time eventually gets overthrown. Those who still didn't get this will be forced to given time.
It's about time people wake up to what's happening there... for the curious, there are some interesting documentaries specifically about Shenzhen you should watch on YouTube, search it up.
Yes, China still has a very problematic governmental regime, poverty is still prevalent and horrific in part of the country, censorship is incredibly bad there, they don't have welfare, lots of human rights violations, etc etc.
But there are parts of China that are far more advanced than US and European cities.
They have basically been the industry of the world for a very long time now with products related to tech, and it might have been true that the country was limited to producing and mostly copying things years ago, but this has changed drastically in recent years.
Now it's more of a mix. Sure, there are tons of companies still copying stuff designed in other countries at lower quality and costs, but there's plenty of companies that are on the forefront right now.
DJI is one good example, but there's lot of advanced chinese research into several areas.
I also think most people don't know to what extent chinese conglomerates already own some very traditional american companies... here's a glimpse:
http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/...
I'm not even including Taiwan there too, because that's a whole step above.
Even for very high end stuff, if you are paying attention, like pc component parts, smartphone tech, digital imaging, and other areas... they might not be right there with the biggest companies just yet, but you'll see that they at the very least have a 3rd or 4th place in many areas, that are ever getting closer despite humble beginnings... Huawei is the 3rd largest smartphone brand, AllWinner and Rockchip are advancing in low powered SoC, Motorola and parent company Lenovo are pretty much estabilished, Blackberry mobile is owned by TLC... well, a whole truckload of former traditional european or american companies are now owned by chinese conglomerates.
And if you think about it, it's kinda obvious... you are producing all these technological components, eventually you learn all there is to learn about them, and start improving designs by yourself, spreading knowledge about them, building education around it, and getting new generations to work and improve on tech. This happened in Japan and South Korea decades ago.