What was once just a tool for communication has become a weapon, and citizens, governments, militaries, and criminals are all fighting for control of it.
Average people just want their email, watch movies, shopping, maybe a little research, and so on.
Governments want to control what flows over it, and the more authoritarian and dictatorial they are, the tighter they want to squeeze.
Governments also stupidly use it to connect all their important infrastructure control, which just makes it so much easier for terrorists and criminals to attack the things that the average person relies on for their day-to-day survival.
Financial institutions also stupidly connect themselves together with it -- which wouldn't be a problem, except they're so gods-be-damned stupid about it, that it seems a 12 year old child can break in and cause all sorts of havoc and mayhem.
Militaries use it as a weapon to attack other militaries and governments.
Criminals use it like a crowbar to break into companies to steal data, steal money, hold data hostage, and so on.
Terrorists use it to influence weak-minded people into becoming murdering monsters, and as a way to coordinate their attacks on soft targets (i.e. civilians).
Perhaps we don't deserve an Internet. Perhaps, like so many other technologies that started out bright and wonderful ideas, it's all Too Much Too Fast, evolving orders of magnitude faster than our poor Caveman selves have evolved our society and civilization, and We Can't Handle It -- therefore it gets twisted and abused and perverted, as we all see it's become.
At the rate things are going, we may not have an Internet at some point. It may all just fragment and collapse under the weight of all the corruption and misuse of the technology. ISPs may just divvy it up into the 'walled gardens' everyone is so afraid of, and even the highest, most expensive tiers of access will still have limits, controls, corporate censorship, and barriers against accessing anyone else's 'walled garden', that make it essentially useless. Governments, for all we know, may adopt Chinas' 'Great Firewall' model, picking and choosing what their citizens may and may not access, and watching every single byte sent like a hawk. Law enforcement, in their over-anxious drive to see and hear everything all the time without any barriers, may destroy all encryption for everyone, creating a utopia for criminals, who will be completely unfettered in committing cybercrime.
A 'free and open Internet'? Seems more and more unlikely, at least not the way it's being done now. There may need to be an 'Internet 2.0' (or 3.0, or 4.0, or whatever) that has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Internet infrastructure -- or they may try that, and have it quashed and made illegal by governments and corporations' lobbyists. Some talk of a 'mesh Internet', completely wireless. Some talk of expanding the 'dark web', and similar ideas -- but if all the above are made illegal, federal crimes, then are we all expected to become criminals? Do we go back to SneakerNet, and exchange ideas and data and entertainment via portable drives, delivered by hand from person to person?
Do we, as regular people, have enough of a voice to change these dystopian futures of the Internet? Are there enough of us, can we speak loudly and clearly enough, to make a difference? Are there too many average citizens who are complacent, or worse, apathetic, and those of us who would speak up would just be dismissed as fringe elements (or worse, as dissidents)?
What's the mechanism by which the Internet can be saved from possible dystopian futures? Is it technlogical? Or is it socio-political? Both? The answer is important.
I don't have answers. There's too many questions, and too many people involved. Who, really, is wise enough to have the right answers? Is this a problem for The Few, or for All?
You just became the poster-boy for everything I was talking about, yes. We're a chronically short-sighted species of cavemen who are rushing headlong to their own extinction, and who knows if there'll even be another species to take our place in 1,000,000 years? Maybe the dolphins? Maybe racoons? Who knows.
Do you think you can take a moment to put things in perspective? Here, let me help you:
Politics: very short-lived. Less than a human lifetime. The future of life on Earth: Measured in millions of years
Please get your priorities straight, okay? Once you do then go help two others do the same. And they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on..
Let's face the sad, dirty little fact: the 'average person' is not very smart, and can't really think very far in the future, either. The science of most things is so far over their heads, that they'd sooner believe they're being swindled out of something.
Short story: I used to know a guy who told me once that he thought he could put a bunch of little electric generators with propellers mounted on them on the hood of his car, and get 'free energy', that he'd somehow route to a motor that would improve his gas mileage. No matter how I tried to explain it to him, he just plain would not believe that the losses would far exceed the gains, and that the added air resistance would actually make his fuel economy worse. He literally believed something like this troll image was real. Nothing would persuade him differently.
The above story is more-or-less the Average Person when it comes to science. What's worse: take the average person and add religion? It's even worse, they not only believe most science is bullshit intended to trick them, they believe science is EVIL and Satanic and they're trying to mislead them away from their God. That's the sort of icecream-headache-causing nonsense we're fighting against here.
For linking to the pic, I'd mod you up. For the rest of it? I dunno. Why? Read:
Know what 99.999999% of every human on the planet prioritizes above all else? Day to day survival, and making their lives work, taking care of their families, and so on. They don't have TIME or ENERGY to think about things this big. So blaming them for propping up oil companies is bullshit so far as I'm concerned. There's supposed to be bigger brains with a more farsighted vision of things taking care of the long-term plans, with a sense of ethics and morality to serve the interests of all, so that the common person can take care of their own day to day business and survival. Clearly we do not have that; we have out-of-control capitalism, The Few (i.e. The Rich) only concerned really with This Quarters' Profits, and whether the Earth is habitable 100 years from now or now? That's someone else's problem so far as they're concerned, they'll be DEAD by then so why should they care so long as they have The Good Life NOW. Then there's the extreme religious types, who think the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that it's All Going To End Soon anyway, that the Apocalypse is coming, nothing can stop it, so why should they bother? Jesus is going to come take The Faithful home to Heaven anyway, why should they bother? The worst of those, they think hurrying along the demise of the Earth and all life on it, will make Jesus come back sooner, so they can go to Heaver with him sooner. This, of course, is not only a perversion of their own beliefs, it's utter and complete NONSENSE.
We have to rein in out-of-control corporations, we have to rein in The Rich, somehow, and prevent them all from fucking over the Earth and all living things on it, before it's too late -- and it may already BE too late. The one-two-ten-few thousand banding together won't do it. Governments have to be sent a clear unmistakable message that this will no longer be tolerated and make THEM rein in The Few who would sell our future, the future of the Earth, for a few bucks in profit TODAY. The sad fact is: good bloody luck getting anyone to organize anything. There may need to be a die-back of all living things, 99% of all humans dying, before any of it can be made to stop. Human civilization may just not be worthy to be the custodian of the Earth.
The left side is just ridiculous I don't need to explain what is wrong with it.
Putting political bullshit like 'them libtards' ahead of what is best for our ENTIRE SPECIES and the FUTURE OF THE EARTH does not make you look very intelligent, quite the opposite, it makes you look like a complete IDIOT. Fix your shit, get your priorities straight.
Are you an anti-vaxxer, too? Believe the Moon landings were faked? Think the Earth is flat? That the Earth is the center of the Universe and everything else revolves around it? A Creationist, perhaps? Science and scientists are evil, sent by Satan to mislead us? Fossils found contradicting the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old are all fakes, planted by Satan for the evil Satanic scientists to fool the Faithful, lead them astray from God? Well? Are you That Guy? Human-caused climate-change deniers sure sound like Those People to me. For fuck's sake GET A CLUE.
I don't need to 'cite' anything, the evidence is all around you, right under your nose, but you don't want to see it, don't want things to change. Doesn't matter, they're changing anyway, and if you can't keep up then I suggest you get the hell out of the way, because none of it is going to stop just because you don't like it. Non-renewable resources were always a limited supply, and were never good for the environment, and now we're starting to pay the price for it. Fossil fuels are not king anymore so get used to it, they have to go the way of the dinosaurs that helped create them in the first place, and renewables and nuclear are going to take their place or our civilization will fail completely at some point, and you can take that to the bank.
The Earth is flat and the Moon landings were faked! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I just created a cure for cancer! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I absolutely did not have sex with that girl. Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I know nothing about any 'tapes'; I am not a crook! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
No collusion! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
File that under 'growing pains'. The world is changing, this is a sign of it, electric utility companies have already been whining and crying about this for at least 10 years now, they're going to have to change the way they do business is what's going to happen, and they'll just as likely as not go kicking and screaming the whole way.
Meanwhile shitty irresponsible companies like PG&E are letting their infrastructure fall apart and mismanaging it all, causing entire neighborhoods to explode from gas line problems, and massive wildfires like the Camp Fire in the Paradise area destroying entire communities and many thousands of people are now homeless because of it. Believe you me shit's got to change anyway. Electric companies need to just STFU and roll with it.
I think any real estate agent who was told "okay, I'll write you a check for that" would probably fall over dead, just as soon as they stopped laughing and realized you were serious.
Also that being said, and knowing little about finances myself, I think there's probably some advantage to taking out a mortgage even if you could pay for it in cash, probably something about being able to make more money by investing all that money in something with a higher yield than the interest on the mortgage, am I right?
That's a bunch of bullshit. It'll cost less to install them while the home is being built versus installing them afterwards, and a company building an entire tract of new homes will buy the panels and other specific materials for less because they'll be buying them in quantity. The addition to the price of a new home will be negligible and new homeowners won't even notice since they're on loans paid over several decades anyway. Meanwhile there will be immediate monthly cost savings to the new homeowner in reduced electric bills. The solar installations might even be more efficient and higher capacity overall since how the house is built and situated on the lot might now be optimized when they lay out the tract, so even more value added for the homeowner.
Aston Martin is far from being a mass-production autobile manufacturer, in fact they're the antithesis of that, and while I applaud the thought and effort that must be going into this, there's at least one problem with it. A 'classic' Aston Martin, 'upgraded' or 'converted' to plug-in electric, will for all intents and purposes have it's value as a 'classic' car destroyed by this, even if it's done at the Aston Martin factory with Aston Martin components, because it won't be a 'classic' Aston Martin at that point; only with the original powertrain can it still be considered as such, so on that point I find this offer from Aston Martin to be surprising. Classic Aston Martin owners would essentially see the value in their classic car destroyed.
(assuming the AC above you will see this also)
My impression is that people are streaming Netflix, YouTube, and other video sources on their phones. That would eat up data like crazy. With higher-resolution screens on newer phones, capable of at least 30fps, it would be even worse, even with modern codecs providing more efficient compression. And, of course, wireless companies encourage people to do just that, because they want to make money on overages (i.e. it's a trap).
If I was any company potentially affected by this, and the data security of my customers was important to me, I'd probably pull my services out of Australia over this, and that's precisely what I'd recommend to any and all companies operating in Australia at this point in time. This is utter and complete bullshit from the Australian government and it should not be allowed to stand.
..and as others have pointed out in this instantiation of this subject, as in past conversations about it, as in many comments of my own in the past: now that encryption-for-all is essentially worthless in Australia, only Australian criminals, and terrorists, and other 'ne'er-do-wells' will have encryption -- and the idiotic Australian govenment will have no way to 'force' anyone to unlock any of that. Only legitimate communications, transactions, and data will be compromised.
The depths of utter stupidity our species is capable of astounds me. It's no wonder, if there are actually starfaring alien civilizations in our galaxy, that they would refuse to reveal themselves to us. Things like this are an embarassment.
It's been coming for the last few years, but The End is finally here for Facebook; everyone is now seeing what the true nature of the beast is, and it's ugly as sin. Time for you to all abandon ship just like the employees are. Formulate your own Facebook Exit Strategy and get off it now. Helping kill Facebook is probably the kindest thing you can do for everyone who is either still ignorant of how bad it is, is in denial about it, or just still sitting on the fence. Time for people to start being actually social, instead of social-media-fake-social.
Are the wireless companies going to increase your data cap size commensurate with the bandwidth increase? Probably not, I think.
Speaking as someone who has never owned a smartphone, in part because of how hideously wireless companies price-gouge you for an undersized 'data plan', I can't see the advent of '5G' as being anything to get too terribly excited over, at least not while the wireless companies in this country (U.S.) continue to stick to the same business plan they've been using for years and years now: screw the consumer every way they can get away with.
Between this and what a security swisscheese any smartphone is (even iPhones), I continue to see no reason to ever own a smartphone, and I feel sorry for anyone who does and actually pays for a 'data plan' from a U.S. wireless company.
Oh, believe you me, I know damned well I've had an FBI file with my name on it for decades now, and the scathing letter I sent to Trump at the Whitehouse, after his continual attacks on the 1st Amendment and then the 14th Amendment more or less guarantees that the S.S. has done at least a cursory investigation into me, but I don't care, I'm not going to let a loud-mouthed bully like Trump infringe on my 1st Amendment rights, either. Let 'em send their jackbooted thugs in suits after me, IDGAF.
ICEs are a dying breed and rightly so, we clearly can't keep using them and using fossil fuels, and VW sees that and is responding accordingly.
You can say this is because they've screwed themselves in the diesel market, but consider this: they cheated because it's becoming impossible to meet fuel economy and pollution standards with ICEs.
Once again I see I made a great decision so many years ago when I bought my first TiVo, a Series 2, and later on, dumping cable and getting an antenna. I can download anything else I want to watch, or wait for it on Redbox. Turn on TiVo's hidden 30 second skip, and I rarely see any commercials of any kind, and what I do see doesn't make it into my consciousness anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd think that seawater infiltrating freshwater sources, as ocean levels rise, would be a bigger long-term threat than de-icing roads.
What was once just a tool for communication has become a weapon, and citizens, governments, militaries, and criminals are all fighting for control of it.
Average people just want their email, watch movies, shopping, maybe a little research, and so on.
Governments want to control what flows over it, and the more authoritarian and dictatorial they are, the tighter they want to squeeze.
Governments also stupidly use it to connect all their important infrastructure control, which just makes it so much easier for terrorists and criminals to attack the things that the average person relies on for their day-to-day survival.
Financial institutions also stupidly connect themselves together with it -- which wouldn't be a problem, except they're so gods-be-damned stupid about it, that it seems a 12 year old child can break in and cause all sorts of havoc and mayhem.
Militaries use it as a weapon to attack other militaries and governments.
Criminals use it like a crowbar to break into companies to steal data, steal money, hold data hostage, and so on.
Terrorists use it to influence weak-minded people into becoming murdering monsters, and as a way to coordinate their attacks on soft targets (i.e. civilians).
Perhaps we don't deserve an Internet. Perhaps, like so many other technologies that started out bright and wonderful ideas, it's all Too Much Too Fast, evolving orders of magnitude faster than our poor Caveman selves have evolved our society and civilization, and We Can't Handle It -- therefore it gets twisted and abused and perverted, as we all see it's become.
At the rate things are going, we may not have an Internet at some point. It may all just fragment and collapse under the weight of all the corruption and misuse of the technology. ISPs may just divvy it up into the 'walled gardens' everyone is so afraid of, and even the highest, most expensive tiers of access will still have limits, controls, corporate censorship, and barriers against accessing anyone else's 'walled garden', that make it essentially useless. Governments, for all we know, may adopt Chinas' 'Great Firewall' model, picking and choosing what their citizens may and may not access, and watching every single byte sent like a hawk. Law enforcement, in their over-anxious drive to see and hear everything all the time without any barriers, may destroy all encryption for everyone, creating a utopia for criminals, who will be completely unfettered in committing cybercrime.
A 'free and open Internet'? Seems more and more unlikely, at least not the way it's being done now. There may need to be an 'Internet 2.0' (or 3.0, or 4.0, or whatever) that has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Internet infrastructure -- or they may try that, and have it quashed and made illegal by governments and corporations' lobbyists. Some talk of a 'mesh Internet', completely wireless. Some talk of expanding the 'dark web', and similar ideas -- but if all the above are made illegal, federal crimes, then are we all expected to become criminals? Do we go back to SneakerNet, and exchange ideas and data and entertainment via portable drives, delivered by hand from person to person?
Do we, as regular people, have enough of a voice to change these dystopian futures of the Internet? Are there enough of us, can we speak loudly and clearly enough, to make a difference? Are there too many average citizens who are complacent, or worse, apathetic, and those of us who would speak up would just be dismissed as fringe elements (or worse, as dissidents)?
What's the mechanism by which the Internet can be saved from possible dystopian futures? Is it technlogical? Or is it socio-political? Both? The answer is important.
I don't have answers. There's too many questions, and too many people involved. Who, really, is wise enough to have the right answers? Is this a problem for The Few, or for All?
Desperately hanging on to the past
You're not helping!
You just became the poster-boy for everything I was talking about, yes. We're a chronically short-sighted species of cavemen who are rushing headlong to their own extinction, and who knows if there'll even be another species to take our place in 1,000,000 years? Maybe the dolphins? Maybe racoons? Who knows.
Do you think you can take a moment to put things in perspective? Here, let me help you:
Politics: very short-lived. Less than a human lifetime.
The future of life on Earth: Measured in millions of years
Please get your priorities straight, okay? Once you do then go help two others do the same. And they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on..
Let's face the sad, dirty little fact: the 'average person' is not very smart, and can't really think very far in the future, either. The science of most things is so far over their heads, that they'd sooner believe they're being swindled out of something.
Short story: I used to know a guy who told me once that he thought he could put a bunch of little electric generators with propellers mounted on them on the hood of his car, and get 'free energy', that he'd somehow route to a motor that would improve his gas mileage. No matter how I tried to explain it to him, he just plain would not believe that the losses would far exceed the gains, and that the added air resistance would actually make his fuel economy worse. He literally believed something like this troll image was real. Nothing would persuade him differently.
The above story is more-or-less the Average Person when it comes to science. What's worse: take the average person and add religion? It's even worse, they not only believe most science is bullshit intended to trick them, they believe science is EVIL and Satanic and they're trying to mislead them away from their God. That's the sort of icecream-headache-causing nonsense we're fighting against here.
For linking to the pic, I'd mod you up. For the rest of it? I dunno. Why? Read:
Know what 99.999999% of every human on the planet prioritizes above all else? Day to day survival, and making their lives work, taking care of their families, and so on. They don't have TIME or ENERGY to think about things this big. So blaming them for propping up oil companies is bullshit so far as I'm concerned. There's supposed to be bigger brains with a more farsighted vision of things taking care of the long-term plans, with a sense of ethics and morality to serve the interests of all, so that the common person can take care of their own day to day business and survival. Clearly we do not have that; we have out-of-control capitalism, The Few (i.e. The Rich) only concerned really with This Quarters' Profits, and whether the Earth is habitable 100 years from now or now? That's someone else's problem so far as they're concerned, they'll be DEAD by then so why should they care so long as they have The Good Life NOW. Then there's the extreme religious types, who think the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that it's All Going To End Soon anyway, that the Apocalypse is coming, nothing can stop it, so why should they bother? Jesus is going to come take The Faithful home to Heaven anyway, why should they bother? The worst of those, they think hurrying along the demise of the Earth and all life on it, will make Jesus come back sooner, so they can go to Heaver with him sooner. This, of course, is not only a perversion of their own beliefs, it's utter and complete NONSENSE.
We have to rein in out-of-control corporations, we have to rein in The Rich, somehow, and prevent them all from fucking over the Earth and all living things on it, before it's too late -- and it may already BE too late. The one-two-ten-few thousand banding together won't do it. Governments have to be sent a clear unmistakable message that this will no longer be tolerated and make THEM rein in The Few who would sell our future, the future of the Earth, for a few bucks in profit TODAY. The sad fact is: good bloody luck getting anyone to organize anything. There may need to be a die-back of all living things, 99% of all humans dying, before any of it can be made to stop. Human civilization may just not be worthy to be the custodian of the Earth.
The left side is just ridiculous I don't need to explain what is wrong with it.
Putting political bullshit like 'them libtards' ahead of what is best for our ENTIRE SPECIES and the FUTURE OF THE EARTH does not make you look very intelligent, quite the opposite, it makes you look like a complete IDIOT. Fix your shit, get your priorities straight.
Are you an anti-vaxxer, too? Believe the Moon landings were faked? Think the Earth is flat? That the Earth is the center of the Universe and everything else revolves around it? A Creationist, perhaps? Science and scientists are evil, sent by Satan to mislead us? Fossils found contradicting the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old are all fakes, planted by Satan for the evil Satanic scientists to fool the Faithful, lead them astray from God? Well? Are you That Guy? Human-caused climate-change deniers sure sound like Those People to me. For fuck's sake GET A CLUE.
I don't need to 'cite' anything, the evidence is all around you, right under your nose, but you don't want to see it, don't want things to change. Doesn't matter, they're changing anyway, and if you can't keep up then I suggest you get the hell out of the way, because none of it is going to stop just because you don't like it. Non-renewable resources were always a limited supply, and were never good for the environment, and now we're starting to pay the price for it. Fossil fuels are not king anymore so get used to it, they have to go the way of the dinosaurs that helped create them in the first place, and renewables and nuclear are going to take their place or our civilization will fail completely at some point, and you can take that to the bank.
The Earth is flat and the Moon landings were faked! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I just created a cure for cancer! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I absolutely did not have sex with that girl. Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
I know nothing about any 'tapes'; I am not a crook! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
No collusion! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit! Here, let me show you this PowerPoint presentation as proof!
File that under 'growing pains'. The world is changing, this is a sign of it, electric utility companies have already been whining and crying about this for at least 10 years now, they're going to have to change the way they do business is what's going to happen, and they'll just as likely as not go kicking and screaming the whole way.
Meanwhile shitty irresponsible companies like PG&E are letting their infrastructure fall apart and mismanaging it all, causing entire neighborhoods to explode from gas line problems, and massive wildfires like the Camp Fire in the Paradise area destroying entire communities and many thousands of people are now homeless because of it. Believe you me shit's got to change anyway. Electric companies need to just STFU and roll with it.
I think any real estate agent who was told "okay, I'll write you a check for that" would probably fall over dead, just as soon as they stopped laughing and realized you were serious.
Also that being said, and knowing little about finances myself, I think there's probably some advantage to taking out a mortgage even if you could pay for it in cash, probably something about being able to make more money by investing all that money in something with a higher yield than the interest on the mortgage, am I right?
Almost 2019: Not using an APPITY APP APP APP to help you pay your mortgage
You're such a luddite.
That's a bunch of bullshit. It'll cost less to install them while the home is being built versus installing them afterwards, and a company building an entire tract of new homes will buy the panels and other specific materials for less because they'll be buying them in quantity. The addition to the price of a new home will be negligible and new homeowners won't even notice since they're on loans paid over several decades anyway. Meanwhile there will be immediate monthly cost savings to the new homeowner in reduced electric bills. The solar installations might even be more efficient and higher capacity overall since how the house is built and situated on the lot might now be optimized when they lay out the tract, so even more value added for the homeowner.
Aston Martin is far from being a mass-production autobile manufacturer, in fact they're the antithesis of that, and while I applaud the thought and effort that must be going into this, there's at least one problem with it. A 'classic' Aston Martin, 'upgraded' or 'converted' to plug-in electric, will for all intents and purposes have it's value as a 'classic' car destroyed by this, even if it's done at the Aston Martin factory with Aston Martin components, because it won't be a 'classic' Aston Martin at that point; only with the original powertrain can it still be considered as such, so on that point I find this offer from Aston Martin to be surprising. Classic Aston Martin owners would essentially see the value in their classic car destroyed.
(assuming the AC above you will see this also)
My impression is that people are streaming Netflix, YouTube, and other video sources on their phones. That would eat up data like crazy. With higher-resolution screens on newer phones, capable of at least 30fps, it would be even worse, even with modern codecs providing more efficient compression. And, of course, wireless companies encourage people to do just that, because they want to make money on overages (i.e. it's a trap).
If I was any company potentially affected by this, and the data security of my customers was important to me, I'd probably pull my services out of Australia over this, and that's precisely what I'd recommend to any and all companies operating in Australia at this point in time. This is utter and complete bullshit from the Australian government and it should not be allowed to stand.
..and as others have pointed out in this instantiation of this subject, as in past conversations about it, as in many comments of my own in the past: now that encryption-for-all is essentially worthless in Australia, only Australian criminals, and terrorists, and other 'ne'er-do-wells' will have encryption -- and the idiotic Australian govenment will have no way to 'force' anyone to unlock any of that. Only legitimate communications, transactions, and data will be compromised.
The depths of utter stupidity our species is capable of astounds me. It's no wonder, if there are actually starfaring alien civilizations in our galaxy, that they would refuse to reveal themselves to us. Things like this are an embarassment.
It's been coming for the last few years, but The End is finally here for Facebook; everyone is now seeing what the true nature of the beast is, and it's ugly as sin. Time for you to all abandon ship just like the employees are. Formulate your own Facebook Exit Strategy and get off it now. Helping kill Facebook is probably the kindest thing you can do for everyone who is either still ignorant of how bad it is, is in denial about it, or just still sitting on the fence. Time for people to start being actually social, instead of social-media-fake-social.
Are the wireless companies going to increase your data cap size commensurate with the bandwidth increase? Probably not, I think.
Speaking as someone who has never owned a smartphone, in part because of how hideously wireless companies price-gouge you for an undersized 'data plan', I can't see the advent of '5G' as being anything to get too terribly excited over, at least not while the wireless companies in this country (U.S.) continue to stick to the same business plan they've been using for years and years now: screw the consumer every way they can get away with.
Between this and what a security swisscheese any smartphone is (even iPhones), I continue to see no reason to ever own a smartphone, and I feel sorry for anyone who does and actually pays for a 'data plan' from a U.S. wireless company.
I think maybe astrophysicists have been watching too many Marvel movies because what they're talking about is basically gravitonium.
Oh, believe you me, I know damned well I've had an FBI file with my name on it for decades now, and the scathing letter I sent to Trump at the Whitehouse, after his continual attacks on the 1st Amendment and then the 14th Amendment more or less guarantees that the S.S. has done at least a cursory investigation into me, but I don't care, I'm not going to let a loud-mouthed bully like Trump infringe on my 1st Amendment rights, either. Let 'em send their jackbooted thugs in suits after me, IDGAF.
ICEs are a dying breed and rightly so, we clearly can't keep using them and using fossil fuels, and VW sees that and is responding accordingly.
You can say this is because they've screwed themselves in the diesel market, but consider this: they cheated because it's becoming impossible to meet fuel economy and pollution standards with ICEs.
Once again I see I made a great decision so many years ago when I bought my first TiVo, a Series 2, and later on, dumping cable and getting an antenna. I can download anything else I want to watch, or wait for it on Redbox. Turn on TiVo's hidden 30 second skip, and I rarely see any commercials of any kind, and what I do see doesn't make it into my consciousness anyway.