Step out of the technical realm and try to understand economics. A whole metric ton of said software and functionalities only came to Macs and Windows PCs because there was financial incentive for it, when not direct sponsorship from the OS companies themselves. Deals with Apple and Microsoft, bundling schemes, the estabilished potential market, marketing itself... Hardware is pretty much like that too... high end features are often paid for and made exclusively for, when not directly developed by Apple and Microsoft engineers. But Linux already has other problems to deal with to reach the end consumer... image problems, easy maintenance and knowledgebase, among others. Depending on what you use a computer for, you can already get the "essencials" on any Linux distro. But what happens when you need help figuring something out, or getting something new everyone is talking about or starting to adopt? Enough time has passed to know that this won't change anytime soon unless there is some drastic change in how the entire PC/laptop conundrum works. Apple and Microsoft have a very strong and distant lead when it comes to presenting new hardware and software for consumers. Linux dominates on servers, IoT devices and embedded categories. Given the abuses in security and privacy that's happening on the commercial software and OS side, I sure would love to see Linux catching up... I'd at least want to see a successful mobile distro that is more widely adopted (and yes, I know it's the basis for Android). But unfortunately, up 'till now, the market has spoken - they really don't care a whole lot about privacy and security. So, it is what it is. At least Linux is still there, and I hope it keeps going. But for the majority of the market, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to switch, so things will remain as is.
The problem is with copyright law still not being updated and having proper provisions for cases like these that are all too common.
There are two sides to this.
1. It can be frightening to some people the slippery slope that this leads... being sued for embedding a tweet on your blog/website sounds a bit too much, and it shouldn't be allowed. But seeing things like this is just a very very one-sided outlook on the matter. This probably isn't what this case is about;
2. Why do you think big publication websites are being sued on this? Because most likely, they refused to pay the photographer for his work, and instead used the embedded tweet as a workaround to just steal and use his work free of charge. I'm gonna bet that intention was fully estabilished in this case. It's just these publications acting like assholes to exploit the photographer work without paying him. Cases like these have already happened before... in fact, it happens all the time, but in most cases the photographer doesn't have enough money to sue.
If you heard about cases of photographers being fired in masse on media publications, it also has a bit to do with this. Why pay a full time photographer when they can just steal photos online?
The details of the case should estabilish guilt... but I'm betting this is yet another case, like multiple ones I've already read in photography blogs, where the photographer saw the infringement, tried to contact publications about it, they played dumb or outright refused any acknowledgement, and it ended up in court.
And people should know about this: for media publications that will be actively using work of photographers and whatnot, they fully know they can't just yank a photo from the Internet and publish it willy nilly, doesn't matter where it's hosted or by whom. The basis here is that these publications are exploiting the work of photographers without paying for it, while using it to get advertiser or whatever more money for their own profit.
We had extremely debated cases in the past with artists using photography for their own work... I think it was Instagram photos or something to pass as art and reinterpretation, which caused a whole lot of discussion around copyright law, but in cases like media websites it's far more clear cut. As soon as a judge interprets it as intentional usage of photographer work without payment or licensing deal, as a significant part of the article, post, or whatever, they will be in the wrong and have to pay for it.
I guess it's something for soldiers to do, and planting trees is certainly better than nothing, but if anyone thinks this will have any major effect to combat smog, they'll be sorely disappointed... What Beijing needs are the harsh but necessary measures. Industry regulation. Vehicle inspection. Changing policies to incentivize usage of public transportation and alternative transportation usages. Infrastructure investments towards that goal. Trees are great and all, but they don't do magic. Specially in the case of Beijing smog... more likely that it'll kill or stunt growth of trees rather than trees having any significant effect.
For those not aware of how this works, it's not an illegal copy. To install Windows on a PC, you need a install disc PLUS a key... the content of those discs can be downloaded online or made with any Windows computer to be used in another. In order for you to install it in a new pc, you need a key that will be validated for that machine alone. The recycled computers had them... Dell desktops comes with a sticked on it with said key. No one getting those DVDs needed a pirated copy, just a install disc, which again, anyone can get without paying a dime. https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...
The restitution for lost sales is just bullshit, even if the dvds had pirated content, which they didn't. It is fucking shameful that a corporation this big would throw a guy that's trying to do some good in jail without understanding how their own OS works.
Interesting development... But my understanding of this whole deal, and I might be wrong, is that we already have more than enough to make AIs local... this isn't a problem of capability, this is companies behind AI assistants trying to harvest as much data as possible from their costumers and turn a profit from it, and/or to use it for themselves.
Didn't Ubuntu already have something like this, but as an opt-in option? I remember having to check some privacy or something in configuration to see if it wasn't spying on me.
Anyways, good place as any, regarding hardware compatibility and ease of use, what's a good distro to go for instead of Ubuntu? Preferrably some distro that won't be pulling some shit like this in at least the near future.
I'm - admitedly slowly - moving away from Windows because of crap opt-out stuff, and anti-privacy changes in updates, which innevitably turns into hidden crap, so Ubuntu has just become another no-go for me. But I'm often installing Linux in machines with weird hardware configurations, so maximum compatibility is needed, and I need the basic package to already be there to simplify installs... the usual browser plus image editor plus media viewing and whatnot... Should I go Fedora?
Seems like I was right to open up a few ProtonMail accounts sometime ago, I knew Google stupidity for trendy crap and messing with stuff that shouldn't be messed with would eventually catch their more traditional services and platforms... Well, perhaps they are sane enough to make it an opt-in feature, depending on the real intentions behind the move. To me, it's pretty simple: the more you enable "advanced features" in a given service or platform, the more potential it has to be exploited for all the bad reasons. And it's ok when the potential threat makes sense for the service.. but e-mail shouldn't be messed up with. What's the current source of most problems regarding e-mails right now? It matches perfectly with AMP description: "engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences". It's being able to click on a link with a suspicious URL behind it that people don't care or know to check, which ends up in phishing scams, ransomware and whatnot. Oooh, but Google will make sure this new thing is secure. Like the Play Store? Seems it's time to switch to a platform that knows when to keep the right things as is. It's fine to give alternatives to the interface itself, with stuff like Inbox. I didn't like it, others did, it's an option. But if I wanted engaging, interactive and actionable something, I wouldn't be reading my e-mails. Not everything needs to be like that, and there are good reasons for it.
They just moved the intention to support Linux to never. It's a business, you don't get to make decisions as to what platform they'll support for them, period.
That's incredibly bad if the vote wasn't completely against MIUI, which was basically born as a total iOS rip off. But I imagine the vast majority of voters cannot see past the superficial UI... they'll choose whatever they are more used to, or that makes more usability sense to them personally, discarding the fact that you can pretty much emulate whatever MIUI has with stock Android. Nevermind the fact that Android One is more secure, will always receive updates first, and has some guarantees in place to avoid telemetry and stuff. I'd love to see the entire mid range to low end class get either Android One or Android Go. It's the only thing that still makes me consider a Pixel phone sometimes, because I really don't think what they are offering over the mid-rangers worth double the price or more. As for Xiaomi, I got my mom a Mi A1 Android One version. Didn't test it too much just yet, but so far so good.
Social Networks are only a tool. A tool that enables people to be in constant contact and share their inner thoughts and interests with everyone. It removes some filters people have when talking face to face with someone else, which is a powerful thing both for good and bad. The problem here is that Internet culture, specially western Internet culture is just this bad. What happened with Internet tools such as social media is that the inherent culture that has been growing up for decades now is unleashed at people without filters. So you end up with: the vain, empty and fruitless celebrity cutlure. Worshipping of individuals, erasure of critical reasoning, and relying on content that is constantly bombarded with sponsorship matterial and hidden agendas. Extremists from all and every side - religious, brand loyalism, closet racists coming out, the fashion and beauty dictatorship, political polarization, among other crap. Sensationalism is on an all time high. With "fake news" agencies, tabloid style journalism, and news organizations overall just aiming for the fastest click, all you get is empty content blasting on 11 that adds nothing of value to anyone. But this isn't a problem with social media, this is a problem with the entire culture in itself. Kids, teens and young adults are just more exposed to it via social media. The new generations are born into this transitional period and are not equipped to distinguish one (real world) from another (virtual/Internet world), so they can easily go for one over another. Limits are not being clearly explained and implemented, and the fact that kids keeping their attention to a virtual world eases up parents life in the real world only exaccerbates this confusion. There's pressure on western society for kids to be knowledgeable and get used fast to the Internet, which is yet another overall culture thing. It's becoming less and less expected for kids to have friends to play on a daily basis. And with current political climate, lots of parents even prefer if their kids play only with kids from similar backgrounds, similar social class, race, religion, etc. This all leads to less diverse experiences, less tolerance for new situations, and a sort of destructive mindset that cannot handle change. And the funny thing is that the Internet could be just as much used as a tool to help depressed people. But they are simply not there. Because it's that much easier for kids and adults to be swayed by crap that only makes things worse.
Smartwatches are niche, just the reality of it. Apple watches lives in a separate realm because Apple successfully sold it's image as a status symbol of fanboys and such, which is harder on Android land. Truth of the matter is though that the first generations of Android watches didn't sell enough to justify investing more on it. Qualcomm doesn't have a domination on making chips for smartwatches because they somehow blocked others from trying. It's just that not many chipmakers are even interested in investing much on that area. It's too much investment for something that people don't seem to be buying much. So it isn't really "Qualcomms fault" if they don't want to invest in something that doesn't seem to turn a profit for them. They are also not blocking any other chipmaker from trying.
Here's the thing though: you can go into eBay, Aliexpress, Gearbest and other chinese vendors websites and get an Android smartwatch for half, if not one fourth the price of big brand smartwatches right now. I know western tech blogs don't cover it all that much, perhaps another thing that big brands successfully managed to hide because I see no other reason for this to have happened. I have a couple of chinese brand smartwatches. They fit my needs. It runs a kind of customized version of Android 5.1, I can make calls with them, and they last enough for my needs (take them when I go for a run). It's really an emergency device as I'm not all too interested in health app crap, but they can also do that. It also has access to the full app store, though things work kinda janky as you are trying to run smartphone apps on a watch that has a round display. The entire problem of it, and the reason why lots of people who bought smartwatches on a wim have them collecting dust in the bottom of some drawer right now, is usability. Most people get those to track stuff, and they abandon them as soon as they get tired of the tracking game. I tried that before buying one on my smartphone and quickly realized it's something not worth bothering with. Like I said though, a smartwatch is useful when you want to still be reachable in an emergency, but don't wanna cary a smartphone around.
For that, a 100 bucks chinese smartwatch that can take a SIM card is good enough. And to make things worse, as chinese smartwatch manufacturers have probably realized, improving SoC and other functions isn't really all that necessary. Even chinese smartwatches have stopped evolving around a year ago... they are still all on Android 5.1, the hardware hasn't evolved much.
Call me when they have a dual boot ready for Android, or more specifically, using the Switch as a full nVidia Shield TV. I mean, I'm getting one anyways, but that would certainly double the value in my page. xD
Must be a hard thing to balance the corporation's interests with the paranoia machine from the extreme right and military patriots. Notice how the public interest is nowhere to be found in that equation.
ROFL... wrong release date aside, can Google be any more clueless these days?
I think it's sort of a Sillicon Valley syndrome at this point... they live in such a disconnected place from reality that they don't even realize how much money they are wasting in ressurecting dead concepts, abandoning products people really use, and churning out the most obvious mistakes that basically anyone outside their campus can point out to them. Even people who work there sometimes quit to open start ups with some of the most ridiculously bad ideas, like that Bodega thing. Perhaps they are relying too much on what their data collection and AI overlords tell them instead of just going around to ask what people think of it, real people, their costumers.
Not only game streaming services have failed a long time ago, all the reasons people both from the client to the provider side pointed out as to why they failed have not changed. And they are incredibly easy to understand. Basically, you don't really have enough people with stable connections to make this work that fits the profile required. And the people who actually do have stable connections and cares about paying more for high bandwidth and whatnot, are that much more likely to care about unsolvable streaming problems like latency in controls, and as much high res as possible without it killing the game multiplayer stream in itself. They are that much more likely to just pay extra for a gaming PC or console instead.
With how much game prices are dropping, specially on mobile and PC side, plus how you'd still need to invest some money to keep game streaming going on - like a stable and beefy connection, either Ethernet or powerful routers, plus some monthly subscription plan -, and then the knowledge and understanding on how streaming works... it all adds up to an extremely limited market.
The most exemplary case was the entire nVidia Shield concept... nVidia got an adequate device (which is still among the most powerful in it's class despite being 3yrs old already), had a whole ton of publisher support, it worked well not only for game streaming but also as a media streaming device... and yet it's still niche and sold kinda poorly for what it was, with a reasonable price to boot. The whole investment justified only because Nintendo got in the mix and used the SoC in the Switch.
And it's not like we had one or two cases of failures and meltdowns, plus still surviving services that would compete directly with whatever Google is trying to offer... it's a full list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm telling you, people working at Google and several other companies in Sillicon Valley live in some alternate reality without even realizing it. I can't explain it in any other way. I mean, sure, Google does have some highly valuable and always improving stuff, but that's usually limited to teams that have good leadership running a tight ship. But the moronic ideas that I constantly hear from these huge corporations at times makes me wonder what sort of environment can lead to such stuff even coming out of meetings in the first place, let alone being announced out to the press and sometimes becoming real products.
The entire smartphone approach from Microsoft, persistense on Windows 10S and Window Store, the entire idea of churning out multiple apps and services for the exact same thing from Google, how they handled Hangouts, payment systems, chat, social networks... damn, it's a level of corporate and employee blindness that's incredibly hard to understand. And it's not a hindsight thing... tons of people saw those as failed ideas as soon as they were announced. It's a bit baffling. Hello, do you even market research anymore?
Heck, one of Google's latest "project" is pretty telling... that lifecasting camera thing that seemingly came out straight from the past decade or so. Wasn't there really anyone working at Google that knew about the lifecasting fad of early 2000s that spawned multiple devices just like that, and how shortlived the whole thing was? Really?
As some might have suspected (duh!), this "study" is bullshit. No need for verification or whatnot - a study that contains predictions of the future that we have no means to know if it'll happen or not is not a study, it's just speculation. Uber might envision several ways the industry "could go", but they have no actual way to tell if things will really shift that way. They cannot stipulate with any degree of certainty how truckers, infrastructure, transportation industry and whatnot would react with an influx of driverless trucks, they cannot really say how it'll work, nor they can guarantee that any of the stuff they are saying will really happen. It's nothing more than an utopic scenario where driverless trucks fits the overall jigsaw puzzle without too much impact.
Clickbait title. From the source: “The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use, and exposed the rodents’ whole bodies. So, these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage” I know the original title is just as clickbait-y, but do not spread this shit. It's just fodder for the ignorant paranoid people. No cellphone user ever gets exposed to as much radiation as these studies used.
This sounds like the iPhone 6 touch ID disease... cold solder joints. Putting it in a freezer or nuking it won't solve the problem... it might fix things for very short periods of time, but definitive fixes will probably be hard and expensive to do. Weird how Surface Pro seems to always get both good and bad reputations overtime. From what I read, there are some very satisfied users that had great experiences with the thing, and then a flurry of users with defective products which Microsoft never fixes nor offers a reasonable solution for.
I see that Seagate continues being a piece of shit drive, and quite unfortunately the only one at reasonable price that I can find in the local market. Oh well...
You should dig a bit further into fingerprint reader technology before pulling all your conclusions from a Mythbusters episode... for good measure. Because they really aren't 100% safe today (nothing is), but not because of that Mythbusters episode.
Let me tell you something about this, if you are interested: the often misused Mythbusters episode is not from "a few years ago"... it's almost 12 years old now, from an episode aired in 2006 (http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/fingerprint-scanners-unbeatable/), and it was tested against an external laptop fingerprint reader and an electronic lock fingerprint reader that uses older deprecated tech (optical). The ones used today are using an entirely different mechanism (active capacitance, among others)... well, at least the ones coming out in newer devices - like smartphones, security systems and whatnot.
Capacitance fingerprint reader, as well as newer technologies like multispectral and ultrasonic ones, are more secure than the old optical scanners. None of them are 100% secure, but most of them today wouldn't be broken by the technique used by Mythbusters back then. Some of them have been fooled by similar methods, but demanding a degree of precision that is impractical for most criminals to reproduce... like having an extremely high resolution scan of a fingerprint, making a 3d print using composite materials with multiple rounds of testing with very expensive 3d printers, stuff like that.
Which is to say, it's still spoof-able, but it'd probably be better for the criminal to just force someone to put their finger there instead of trying to recreate it from scratch. It could be done, but it'd require a whole lot of time, social engineering, specialized machinery and materials, and work.
Lawsuits like that are nothing new, plenty of other meme-related owners or authors have been involved in successful lawsuits. But the Grumpy Cat case is certainly an exception ammong viral memes... a brand, full blown company with big celebrity-like apparatus was built quickly after initial explosive success. Can't blame them for doing so, they took the opportunity and went with it. Most memes don't exploit this as well as they did.
It's all about convenience. This has less to do with price, which is still important of course, and more to do with how they setup the system to work with the payment systems, social networks, and chat apps that are majorly used throughout the country. Similar thing happening in Brazil, but related to businesses. Even though WhatsApp still didn't implement comprehensive and easy payment systems inside the app that everyone can use, no businesses in Brazil go without a WhatsApp contact, and a whole ton of transactions are happening there, specially with small businesses. If WhatsApp and Facebook were smart enough, they'd have long integrated a store and payment system into the app. They have been working for quite a while on it, rumored to go out, etc... but up to now they still didn't figure an easy way to make it happen. Lost opportunity, really. Because they already have the convenience factor working for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Step out of the technical realm and try to understand economics.
A whole metric ton of said software and functionalities only came to Macs and Windows PCs because there was financial incentive for it, when not direct sponsorship from the OS companies themselves.
Deals with Apple and Microsoft, bundling schemes, the estabilished potential market, marketing itself...
Hardware is pretty much like that too... high end features are often paid for and made exclusively for, when not directly developed by Apple and Microsoft engineers.
But Linux already has other problems to deal with to reach the end consumer... image problems, easy maintenance and knowledgebase, among others. Depending on what you use a computer for, you can already get the "essencials" on any Linux distro. But what happens when you need help figuring something out, or getting something new everyone is talking about or starting to adopt?
Enough time has passed to know that this won't change anytime soon unless there is some drastic change in how the entire PC/laptop conundrum works. Apple and Microsoft have a very strong and distant lead when it comes to presenting new hardware and software for consumers. Linux dominates on servers, IoT devices and embedded categories.
Given the abuses in security and privacy that's happening on the commercial software and OS side, I sure would love to see Linux catching up... I'd at least want to see a successful mobile distro that is more widely adopted (and yes, I know it's the basis for Android). But unfortunately, up 'till now, the market has spoken - they really don't care a whole lot about privacy and security.
So, it is what it is. At least Linux is still there, and I hope it keeps going. But for the majority of the market, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to switch, so things will remain as is.
...so kudos to him
The problem is with copyright law still not being updated and having proper provisions for cases like these that are all too common.
There are two sides to this.
1. It can be frightening to some people the slippery slope that this leads... being sued for embedding a tweet on your blog/website sounds a bit too much, and it shouldn't be allowed. But seeing things like this is just a very very one-sided outlook on the matter. This probably isn't what this case is about;
2. Why do you think big publication websites are being sued on this? Because most likely, they refused to pay the photographer for his work, and instead used the embedded tweet as a workaround to just steal and use his work free of charge. I'm gonna bet that intention was fully estabilished in this case. It's just these publications acting like assholes to exploit the photographer work without paying him. Cases like these have already happened before... in fact, it happens all the time, but in most cases the photographer doesn't have enough money to sue.
If you heard about cases of photographers being fired in masse on media publications, it also has a bit to do with this. Why pay a full time photographer when they can just steal photos online?
The details of the case should estabilish guilt... but I'm betting this is yet another case, like multiple ones I've already read in photography blogs, where the photographer saw the infringement, tried to contact publications about it, they played dumb or outright refused any acknowledgement, and it ended up in court.
And people should know about this: for media publications that will be actively using work of photographers and whatnot, they fully know they can't just yank a photo from the Internet and publish it willy nilly, doesn't matter where it's hosted or by whom. The basis here is that these publications are exploiting the work of photographers without paying for it, while using it to get advertiser or whatever more money for their own profit.
We had extremely debated cases in the past with artists using photography for their own work... I think it was Instagram photos or something to pass as art and reinterpretation, which caused a whole lot of discussion around copyright law, but in cases like media websites it's far more clear cut. As soon as a judge interprets it as intentional usage of photographer work without payment or licensing deal, as a significant part of the article, post, or whatever, they will be in the wrong and have to pay for it.
I guess it's something for soldiers to do, and planting trees is certainly better than nothing, but if anyone thinks this will have any major effect to combat smog, they'll be sorely disappointed...
What Beijing needs are the harsh but necessary measures. Industry regulation. Vehicle inspection. Changing policies to incentivize usage of public transportation and alternative transportation usages. Infrastructure investments towards that goal.
Trees are great and all, but they don't do magic. Specially in the case of Beijing smog... more likely that it'll kill or stunt growth of trees rather than trees having any significant effect.
For those not aware of how this works, it's not an illegal copy. To install Windows on a PC, you need a install disc PLUS a key... the content of those discs can be downloaded online or made with any Windows computer to be used in another. In order for you to install it in a new pc, you need a key that will be validated for that machine alone. The recycled computers had them... Dell desktops comes with a sticked on it with said key. No one getting those DVDs needed a pirated copy, just a install disc, which again, anyone can get without paying a dime.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...
The restitution for lost sales is just bullshit, even if the dvds had pirated content, which they didn't.
It is fucking shameful that a corporation this big would throw a guy that's trying to do some good in jail without understanding how their own OS works.
...24 hours before a plugin comes up to get the functionality back.
Interesting development...
But my understanding of this whole deal, and I might be wrong, is that we already have more than enough to make AIs local... this isn't a problem of capability, this is companies behind AI assistants trying to harvest as much data as possible from their costumers and turn a profit from it, and/or to use it for themselves.
Didn't Ubuntu already have something like this, but as an opt-in option?
I remember having to check some privacy or something in configuration to see if it wasn't spying on me.
Anyways, good place as any, regarding hardware compatibility and ease of use, what's a good distro to go for instead of Ubuntu? Preferrably some distro that won't be pulling some shit like this in at least the near future.
I'm - admitedly slowly - moving away from Windows because of crap opt-out stuff, and anti-privacy changes in updates, which innevitably turns into hidden crap, so Ubuntu has just become another no-go for me.
But I'm often installing Linux in machines with weird hardware configurations, so maximum compatibility is needed, and I need the basic package to already be there to simplify installs... the usual browser plus image editor plus media viewing and whatnot...
Should I go Fedora?
Thanks in advance!
Seems like I was right to open up a few ProtonMail accounts sometime ago, I knew Google stupidity for trendy crap and messing with stuff that shouldn't be messed with would eventually catch their more traditional services and platforms...
Well, perhaps they are sane enough to make it an opt-in feature, depending on the real intentions behind the move.
To me, it's pretty simple: the more you enable "advanced features" in a given service or platform, the more potential it has to be exploited for all the bad reasons.
And it's ok when the potential threat makes sense for the service.. but e-mail shouldn't be messed up with.
What's the current source of most problems regarding e-mails right now? It matches perfectly with AMP description: "engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences". It's being able to click on a link with a suspicious URL behind it that people don't care or know to check, which ends up in phishing scams, ransomware and whatnot.
Oooh, but Google will make sure this new thing is secure. Like the Play Store?
Seems it's time to switch to a platform that knows when to keep the right things as is. It's fine to give alternatives to the interface itself, with stuff like Inbox. I didn't like it, others did, it's an option.
But if I wanted engaging, interactive and actionable something, I wouldn't be reading my e-mails. Not everything needs to be like that, and there are good reasons for it.
They just moved the intention to support Linux to never.
It's a business, you don't get to make decisions as to what platform they'll support for them, period.
That's incredibly bad if the vote wasn't completely against MIUI, which was basically born as a total iOS rip off.
But I imagine the vast majority of voters cannot see past the superficial UI... they'll choose whatever they are more used to, or that makes more usability sense to them personally, discarding the fact that you can pretty much emulate whatever MIUI has with stock Android.
Nevermind the fact that Android One is more secure, will always receive updates first, and has some guarantees in place to avoid telemetry and stuff.
I'd love to see the entire mid range to low end class get either Android One or Android Go. It's the only thing that still makes me consider a Pixel phone sometimes, because I really don't think what they are offering over the mid-rangers worth double the price or more.
As for Xiaomi, I got my mom a Mi A1 Android One version. Didn't test it too much just yet, but so far so good.
Social Networks are only a tool. A tool that enables people to be in constant contact and share their inner thoughts and interests with everyone. It removes some filters people have when talking face to face with someone else, which is a powerful thing both for good and bad.
The problem here is that Internet culture, specially western Internet culture is just this bad.
What happened with Internet tools such as social media is that the inherent culture that has been growing up for decades now is unleashed at people without filters.
So you end up with: the vain, empty and fruitless celebrity cutlure. Worshipping of individuals, erasure of critical reasoning, and relying on content that is constantly bombarded with sponsorship matterial and hidden agendas.
Extremists from all and every side - religious, brand loyalism, closet racists coming out, the fashion and beauty dictatorship, political polarization, among other crap.
Sensationalism is on an all time high. With "fake news" agencies, tabloid style journalism, and news organizations overall just aiming for the fastest click, all you get is empty content blasting on 11 that adds nothing of value to anyone.
But this isn't a problem with social media, this is a problem with the entire culture in itself. Kids, teens and young adults are just more exposed to it via social media.
The new generations are born into this transitional period and are not equipped to distinguish one (real world) from another (virtual/Internet world), so they can easily go for one over another. Limits are not being clearly explained and implemented, and the fact that kids keeping their attention to a virtual world eases up parents life in the real world only exaccerbates this confusion.
There's pressure on western society for kids to be knowledgeable and get used fast to the Internet, which is yet another overall culture thing. It's becoming less and less expected for kids to have friends to play on a daily basis. And with current political climate, lots of parents even prefer if their kids play only with kids from similar backgrounds, similar social class, race, religion, etc.
This all leads to less diverse experiences, less tolerance for new situations, and a sort of destructive mindset that cannot handle change.
And the funny thing is that the Internet could be just as much used as a tool to help depressed people. But they are simply not there. Because it's that much easier for kids and adults to be swayed by crap that only makes things worse.
Smartwatches are niche, just the reality of it.
Apple watches lives in a separate realm because Apple successfully sold it's image as a status symbol of fanboys and such, which is harder on Android land.
Truth of the matter is though that the first generations of Android watches didn't sell enough to justify investing more on it.
Qualcomm doesn't have a domination on making chips for smartwatches because they somehow blocked others from trying. It's just that not many chipmakers are even interested in investing much on that area. It's too much investment for something that people don't seem to be buying much. So it isn't really "Qualcomms fault" if they don't want to invest in something that doesn't seem to turn a profit for them. They are also not blocking any other chipmaker from trying.
Here's the thing though: you can go into eBay, Aliexpress, Gearbest and other chinese vendors websites and get an Android smartwatch for half, if not one fourth the price of big brand smartwatches right now.
I know western tech blogs don't cover it all that much, perhaps another thing that big brands successfully managed to hide because I see no other reason for this to have happened.
I have a couple of chinese brand smartwatches. They fit my needs. It runs a kind of customized version of Android 5.1, I can make calls with them, and they last enough for my needs (take them when I go for a run). It's really an emergency device as I'm not all too interested in health app crap, but they can also do that. It also has access to the full app store, though things work kinda janky as you are trying to run smartphone apps on a watch that has a round display.
The entire problem of it, and the reason why lots of people who bought smartwatches on a wim have them collecting dust in the bottom of some drawer right now, is usability.
Most people get those to track stuff, and they abandon them as soon as they get tired of the tracking game. I tried that before buying one on my smartphone and quickly realized it's something not worth bothering with. Like I said though, a smartwatch is useful when you want to still be reachable in an emergency, but don't wanna cary a smartphone around.
For that, a 100 bucks chinese smartwatch that can take a SIM card is good enough. And to make things worse, as chinese smartwatch manufacturers have probably realized, improving SoC and other functions isn't really all that necessary. Even chinese smartwatches have stopped evolving around a year ago... they are still all on Android 5.1, the hardware hasn't evolved much.
Call me when they have a dual boot ready for Android, or more specifically, using the Switch as a full nVidia Shield TV.
I mean, I'm getting one anyways, but that would certainly double the value in my page. xD
Must be a hard thing to balance the corporation's interests with the paranoia machine from the extreme right and military patriots.
Notice how the public interest is nowhere to be found in that equation.
I dunno about Roku, but you know... water is wet, smart TVs are vulnerable to hacking.
A boost to nothing is still nothing.
ROFL... wrong release date aside, can Google be any more clueless these days?
I think it's sort of a Sillicon Valley syndrome at this point... they live in such a disconnected place from reality that they don't even realize how much money they are wasting in ressurecting dead concepts, abandoning products people really use, and churning out the most obvious mistakes that basically anyone outside their campus can point out to them. Even people who work there sometimes quit to open start ups with some of the most ridiculously bad ideas, like that Bodega thing. Perhaps they are relying too much on what their data collection and AI overlords tell them instead of just going around to ask what people think of it, real people, their costumers.
Not only game streaming services have failed a long time ago, all the reasons people both from the client to the provider side pointed out as to why they failed have not changed. And they are incredibly easy to understand.
Basically, you don't really have enough people with stable connections to make this work that fits the profile required. And the people who actually do have stable connections and cares about paying more for high bandwidth and whatnot, are that much more likely to care about unsolvable streaming problems like latency in controls, and as much high res as possible without it killing the game multiplayer stream in itself. They are that much more likely to just pay extra for a gaming PC or console instead.
With how much game prices are dropping, specially on mobile and PC side, plus how you'd still need to invest some money to keep game streaming going on - like a stable and beefy connection, either Ethernet or powerful routers, plus some monthly subscription plan -, and then the knowledge and understanding on how streaming works... it all adds up to an extremely limited market.
The most exemplary case was the entire nVidia Shield concept... nVidia got an adequate device (which is still among the most powerful in it's class despite being 3yrs old already), had a whole ton of publisher support, it worked well not only for game streaming but also as a media streaming device... and yet it's still niche and sold kinda poorly for what it was, with a reasonable price to boot. The whole investment justified only because Nintendo got in the mix and used the SoC in the Switch.
And it's not like we had one or two cases of failures and meltdowns, plus still surviving services that would compete directly with whatever Google is trying to offer... it's a full list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm telling you, people working at Google and several other companies in Sillicon Valley live in some alternate reality without even realizing it. I can't explain it in any other way. I mean, sure, Google does have some highly valuable and always improving stuff, but that's usually limited to teams that have good leadership running a tight ship. But the moronic ideas that I constantly hear from these huge corporations at times makes me wonder what sort of environment can lead to such stuff even coming out of meetings in the first place, let alone being announced out to the press and sometimes becoming real products.
The entire smartphone approach from Microsoft, persistense on Windows 10S and Window Store, the entire idea of churning out multiple apps and services for the exact same thing from Google, how they handled Hangouts, payment systems, chat, social networks... damn, it's a level of corporate and employee blindness that's incredibly hard to understand. And it's not a hindsight thing... tons of people saw those as failed ideas as soon as they were announced. It's a bit baffling. Hello, do you even market research anymore?
Heck, one of Google's latest "project" is pretty telling... that lifecasting camera thing that seemingly came out straight from the past decade or so. Wasn't there really anyone working at Google that knew about the lifecasting fad of early 2000s that spawned multiple devices just like that, and how shortlived the whole thing was? Really?
As some might have suspected (duh!), this "study" is bullshit.
No need for verification or whatnot - a study that contains predictions of the future that we have no means to know if it'll happen or not is not a study, it's just speculation.
Uber might envision several ways the industry "could go", but they have no actual way to tell if things will really shift that way.
They cannot stipulate with any degree of certainty how truckers, infrastructure, transportation industry and whatnot would react with an influx of driverless trucks, they cannot really say how it'll work, nor they can guarantee that any of the stuff they are saying will really happen.
It's nothing more than an utopic scenario where driverless trucks fits the overall jigsaw puzzle without too much impact.
Clickbait title. From the source:
“The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use, and exposed the rodents’ whole bodies. So, these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage”
I know the original title is just as clickbait-y, but do not spread this shit. It's just fodder for the ignorant paranoid people. No cellphone user ever gets exposed to as much radiation as these studies used.
This sounds like the iPhone 6 touch ID disease... cold solder joints. Putting it in a freezer or nuking it won't solve the problem... it might fix things for very short periods of time, but definitive fixes will probably be hard and expensive to do.
Weird how Surface Pro seems to always get both good and bad reputations overtime. From what I read, there are some very satisfied users that had great experiences with the thing, and then a flurry of users with defective products which Microsoft never fixes nor offers a reasonable solution for.
I see that Seagate continues being a piece of shit drive, and quite unfortunately the only one at reasonable price that I can find in the local market.
Oh well...
You should dig a bit further into fingerprint reader technology before pulling all your conclusions from a Mythbusters episode... for good measure. Because they really aren't 100% safe today (nothing is), but not because of that Mythbusters episode.
Let me tell you something about this, if you are interested: the often misused Mythbusters episode is not from "a few years ago"... it's almost 12 years old now, from an episode aired in 2006 (http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/fingerprint-scanners-unbeatable/), and it was tested against an external laptop fingerprint reader and an electronic lock fingerprint reader that uses older deprecated tech (optical). The ones used today are using an entirely different mechanism (active capacitance, among others)... well, at least the ones coming out in newer devices - like smartphones, security systems and whatnot.
Capacitance fingerprint reader, as well as newer technologies like multispectral and ultrasonic ones, are more secure than the old optical scanners. None of them are 100% secure, but most of them today wouldn't be broken by the technique used by Mythbusters back then. Some of them have been fooled by similar methods, but demanding a degree of precision that is impractical for most criminals to reproduce... like having an extremely high resolution scan of a fingerprint, making a 3d print using composite materials with multiple rounds of testing with very expensive 3d printers, stuff like that.
Which is to say, it's still spoof-able, but it'd probably be better for the criminal to just force someone to put their finger there instead of trying to recreate it from scratch. It could be done, but it'd require a whole lot of time, social engineering, specialized machinery and materials, and work.
Lawsuits like that are nothing new, plenty of other meme-related owners or authors have been involved in successful lawsuits.
But the Grumpy Cat case is certainly an exception ammong viral memes... a brand, full blown company with big celebrity-like apparatus was built quickly after initial explosive success. Can't blame them for doing so, they took the opportunity and went with it.
Most memes don't exploit this as well as they did.
It's all about convenience.
This has less to do with price, which is still important of course, and more to do with how they setup the system to work with the payment systems, social networks, and chat apps that are majorly used throughout the country.
Similar thing happening in Brazil, but related to businesses. Even though WhatsApp still didn't implement comprehensive and easy payment systems inside the app that everyone can use, no businesses in Brazil go without a WhatsApp contact, and a whole ton of transactions are happening there, specially with small businesses.
If WhatsApp and Facebook were smart enough, they'd have long integrated a store and payment system into the app. They have been working for quite a while on it, rumored to go out, etc... but up to now they still didn't figure an easy way to make it happen.
Lost opportunity, really. Because they already have the convenience factor working for them.