Oh come on, I think we can do better than that. It takes virtually zero effort for people like us to be encouraging when a friend is interested in a thing. Or, at my age, when a friend's kid is interested in a thing. We're supposed to be a society, not just an agglomeration of individuals that have no care for the well being of others.
You don't have to go out and protest, but a few kind words and a bit of enthusiasm takes little and gives a lot. (And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're probably already like that--the fact that you know that women experience any social stigma at all and are a nerd yourself says to me that you're more likely to be encouraging if a female friend approaches you with an interest in nerdy pursuits.)
Boys do not have a 'prefer trucks' gene, nor do girls have a 'prefer dolls' gene. Kids play with the toys they're given and encouraged to play with. It has everything to do with societal norms and conditioning.
This is particularly obvious when you start looking at how things work in other cultures. Women in slavic countries, for instance, have better success at being chess players and mathematicians than in North America, because it's not considered a pursuit for men only. Even here, when studies are done to measure interest in things that are considered male dominated (math again, for example--it's an easy target), children show similar skills and predilections for it until a certain age where things start to diverge, and it stops being okay for girls to be interested in math.
If it were actually a matter of sexual dimorphism, as you declare, women would have no capacity for math at all, and men wouldn't have the capacity to teach children at all.
Why the insistence that we keep either gender in a box and declare it bad that they want to do things that they like? Why not remove these encouragement gaps? The talented and driven will still do the things they like, but we may be able to grab the attention of some really gifted women or some really nurturing men along the way. Nature isn't nothing, but nurture does a lot more than you give it credit for.
A surprising number of people seem to have read the article only half way. Near the end, it confirms that there was a bug that in some cases, would send the gif even if the correct button was clicked.
But that aside...
Muscle memory is a powerful feature of user interfaces. Anyone that's ever done research into HCI--and frankly, anyone that's had an interface change unexpectedly underneath them--knows that muscle memory and consistency of interface are principles you design around. Being able to send an email without looking at the buttons is a FEATURE, NOT A BUG. If the interface changes without warning, you are GUARANTEED to cause problems. With a service the size of gmail, this outcome wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
I'm not terribly impressed by your story. For instance, I still have my iPad 3--which is older than your Android tablet--and it works well enough, if a bit slowly. Still plays the games I want, runs the Facebook app and my RSS app.
ALL marketing targets people that want new things. That's how it works. I don't know why we pick Apple marketing out of crowd just because they're BETTER AT THEIR JOBS. It's not Apple's problem that HTC's marketing department doesn't know how to make legitimately nice phones actually appealing to people.
Apple's job is to sell things. It's fine if you don't like it or don't buy it, but man, try and be real here. They just happen to play the game better than everyone else--that's not a good reason to hate them.
Say that Apple helps the FBI and somehow this case goes to court--let's pretend that data on the phone leads to a new suspect and now they're going to prosecute the guy.
This new suspect would now have the right to demand the phone AND the software that cracked it. After all, how would we know that Apple didn't just write some software that plugged some sucker's name into the iMessage logs and handed that over to the FBI? The defense would want to have that software analysed by an independent audit. At that point, the software is no longer just living inside some vault at Apple. The tool they created must pass legal muster and be admissible in court or everything is useless.
If Apple's in for a penny, they're in for a pound. That's the situation they're desperately trying to avoid. Even in the case of just one phone, it's not just about the phone.
Not only do they have to do validation on the OS, they'd have to let other people do validation on the OS. You have to be guaranteed that it doesn't change or wipe any data in the process, and you have to be able to prove that it doesn't because otherwise the data is invalid. Otherwise, it doesn't really have a legal leg to stand on. For the FBI's fishing expedition, maybe that matters less, but anything that goes to court needs to be validated for forensic purposes.
So they have to remove the limit on attempts, provide a method of attack (that is, allow someone to enter passcodes without touching the screen), and ensure that it doesn't have any deleterious effects on the data on the device.
Unfortunately, I think that would pretty much be doomed to fail. This (http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5645) a great article on some of the problems inherent in this request by the FBI from a forensics and court-case point of view.
tl;dr
The FBI wants Apple to create an *instrument*, and this instrument needs to pass forensic muster. That means it can't modify the data on the phone, it just has to unlock it. But how do you check that? Well, it turns out tools like this need to be tested and validated by a third party. But then, if it comes up in a court case (because the owner is actually still alive) it would be well within the defendant's rights to request a copy of the software so the defense can validate whether or not it does what it says it does. If the software isn't peer reviewed, any retrieved data could be thrown out as evidence. If the defense can't get their hands on the software to test it themselves, that's not fair.
The can of worms is huge. Apple would be forced to make a tool that exploits weaknesses in their devices and then DELIVER those weaknesses to other parties so they can validate those weaknesses. Here's the concluding paragraph from the article:
"Not only is Apple being ordered to compromise their own devices; they’re being ordered to give that golden key to the government, in a very roundabout sneaky way. What FBI has requested will inevitably forse Apple’s methods out into the open, where they can be ingested by government agencies looking to do the same thing. They will also be exposed to private forensics companies, who are notorious for reverse engineering and stealing other people’s intellectual property. Should Apple comply in providing a tool, it will inevitably end up abused and in the wrong hands."
Oh, I love the deniers here on slashdot. It brings out the actual scientists, and it gives me insight on some important science and what the current tropes are in the denier community. I've got a minor in Earth and Atmospheric science, and I'm not at a high enough level to synthesize a lot of the arguments myself, but I'm able to discern between science and non-science fairly readily, and follow up on good leads so I can verify some of the arguments.
It's actually an interesting opportunity to learn a lot of climate science more deeply.
People arenâ(TM)t inherently selfish. Iâ(TM)m very generous to my family and friends. Iâ(TM)m even sufficiently generous that I donâ(TM)t grumble too much at my taxes because I know that other people need that money. I donâ(TM)t want to be the sort of person that denies the needy when I can afford to help.
But thereâ(TM)s a matter of scale and community at work here. Iâ(TM)m not so generous that I want to give you money (sorry). I donâ(TM)t know you. I donâ(TM)t even know where you live. You may not have my best interests at heart, or you may actively be a danger to me and the people I care about.
Humans work very well collaboratively, but in smallish groups where we can align our priorities. Once things get too big, we have to use a proxy (government, bureaucracy) to get anything done at all.
More and more, it obvious that we should treat the microbiome as an organ in and of itself. It's responding to hormonal signals and regulating a significant portion of the metabolism in such a way as to adapt to external conditions.
On the other hand, this isn't terribly surprising to me. Under normal circumstances, most swimmers put on a thin layer of subcutaneous fat to insulate themselves from the cold water. That's why they're not as absurdly cut as some of their warmer temperature athletic counterparts. (Abnormal circumstances in this case refers to Olympic level swimmers close to competitions, where nothing could keep that fat on their bodies; the energy expenditure is just too high.)
In that case, the risk of you or your family dying in a motor vehicle accident--the same kind of systemic risk that you're talking about--is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of dying in a terrorist attack. Similarly with dying from domestic gun violence. That's with laws in place to mitigate those risks. The reality is that terrorism is a really marginal cause of death, and to spend too much time and money worrying about it (certainly any time and money beyond the enormous amounts we're already spending) is madness.
So in a very narrow sense, I suppose we could probably argue that for this one phone, the FBI is right. The problem is that this isn't just about one phone--whatever happens here sets precedent. If the FBI can compel Apple to go along with things here, we have to know that without some other significant change of law, they'll be able to come after private phones and private data again. In this case, the perpetrator is almost certainly guilty and also happens to be dead, so they can't fight back. It's a situation that the FBI can press on because most people will be willing to abrogate the rights of a probable murderer that's dead anyway--his right to privacy may not even exist anymore. (I honestly don't know; I'm not American and I'm not a lawyer--it seems like even American lawyers have it out over topics like this all the time.)
The FBI's staff aren't dummies. This is an opportunity for them to crack a nut wide open, and they're going to take advantage of that as best they can.
(As for why I care about this at all given that I'm not American--not only do American politics set expectations in countries like mine, Canada, I'd rather that I don't have to think about this sort of thing when I cross the border. Border guards have a surprising amount of power to seize property, and I feel like I deserve my privacy, even if I've done nothing wrong.)
It's worth noting that this wouldn't work on any device that has a Secure Enclave and TouchID. The Secure Enclave can't be updated or tampered with without it erasing its keys, leaving the phone permanently encrypted. If the SE isn't modified, it imposes delays on responding to passcode requests so that after the 9th request, there's a delay of 1hr before you can try again.
Man, I can barely unlock my own phone when I'm in a panic (it happened once when my house was being robbed)--it may be worth considering for emergencies. It really is handy, and she probably doesn't need all those slots dedicated to her own fingers. Anyway, it's just a suggestion, I'm not meaning to be critical.:)
They're doing a piss-poor job of it, then. I kept my iPhone 4 for 4 years, which is about as long as I've ever kept any computing device in my life. I could've kept going with it, but I like having new devices now and then.
The first leg of that stool is the one that matters, and I don't know any company that doesn't try to entice people to upgrade that way.
As for the second leg of this metaphorical stool, the iOS updates have all run relatively well on my devices. Certainly well enough that I was willing to keep using them. But if they DIDN'T issue updates for their phones, that would ALSO be a flaw, wouldn't it? I'd be encouraged to upgrade because I was missing out on new OS features. So there's literally no way to win in this scenario. I don't think Apple is making iOS slower on purpose, it's just that time marches forward and making new things sometimes requires new hardware. As a games industry programmer, I've worked on 3 generations of console hardware, and it's the same thing. That's just how progress looks.
I don't think the repair costs are exorbitant, but then again, I've never needed to repair any of my phones in the 6 years I've owned them. Or my iPad. In fact, the only repair I ever needed to do on any of my Apple devices is when my cats knocked my iMac over while jumping up to a window. Apparently it wasn't designed for that.
I dunno, I think your three legged stool metaphor itself is lacking a leg to stand on.
I'm pretty sure the device will notice right away now. The problem is that previous versions of iOS didn't, and the new version did and immediately bricked the phone without warning.
Why don't you just add one finger to her list? My partner and I each have one finger that unlocks the other's phone. My passcode is well over 10 digits, and it would be a pain for her to remember it in an emergency.
Their magazine was also--in my opinion--a triumph of printed media. It wasn't just newsprint, it was thick, glossy paper. The pages were packed with content in new and interesting ways, and sometimes they'd try some dumb printing thing and it would flop, but at least it was interesting for a month. Wired was such a good magazine, back in the day. Honestly, it's still a good magazine now--it's just a really mediocre website. I was even subscribed to the iPad version for a long time before I realised it was a struggle to find time to read that much content from one place all at once.
I may consider subscribing to the site for $1/week...as long as I'm allowed to choose the weeks as I wish. Most weeks, I don't visit. If I want to read a story on some random week, I wouldn't object to throwing $1 their way for a week's worth of access to read a few articles.
It's not per year. It's a one-time charge when you buy your device. There's a replacement fee of $75 if they need to replace the phone. They'll do it no questions asked, for any type of damage.
We do most of our building through a build system, so I set up some compile commands to even do all my building in emacs so I can correct the errors straight from the build log. I've switched VS to an emacs key layout, but it still does weird things sometimes, so I gave up trying to square that circle.
I've spent a lot of time customizing my emacs setup, which I know some people think is a waste of time, but I like the intellectual stimulation of programming in a completely different language and learning elisp. It's definitely not the fastest way to do things, but I think it's good for programmers to solve problems like that from time to time. I've learned how to manipulate buffers and frames (emacs handles frames really badly, BTW--you end up having to write an obnoxious amount of handling code if you want to make sure that things are opened and closed the way you want), I've written major and minor modes, learned how to monitor processes and compilations...it's still amazing to me that using nothing but the editor and the built-in language that I can do so many things without diving into any source code.
(I think you can probably do that command line thing you're talking about--you'd just have to a wrapper around all the commands you want to call, wouldn't you? The emacs specific stack exchange probably has an answer for you, if you haven't checked it already.)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on, I think we can do better than that. It takes virtually zero effort for people like us to be encouraging when a friend is interested in a thing. Or, at my age, when a friend's kid is interested in a thing. We're supposed to be a society, not just an agglomeration of individuals that have no care for the well being of others.
You don't have to go out and protest, but a few kind words and a bit of enthusiasm takes little and gives a lot. (And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're probably already like that--the fact that you know that women experience any social stigma at all and are a nerd yourself says to me that you're more likely to be encouraging if a female friend approaches you with an interest in nerdy pursuits.)
Boys do not have a 'prefer trucks' gene, nor do girls have a 'prefer dolls' gene. Kids play with the toys they're given and encouraged to play with. It has everything to do with societal norms and conditioning.
This is particularly obvious when you start looking at how things work in other cultures. Women in slavic countries, for instance, have better success at being chess players and mathematicians than in North America, because it's not considered a pursuit for men only. Even here, when studies are done to measure interest in things that are considered male dominated (math again, for example--it's an easy target), children show similar skills and predilections for it until a certain age where things start to diverge, and it stops being okay for girls to be interested in math.
If it were actually a matter of sexual dimorphism, as you declare, women would have no capacity for math at all, and men wouldn't have the capacity to teach children at all.
Why the insistence that we keep either gender in a box and declare it bad that they want to do things that they like? Why not remove these encouragement gaps? The talented and driven will still do the things they like, but we may be able to grab the attention of some really gifted women or some really nurturing men along the way. Nature isn't nothing, but nurture does a lot more than you give it credit for.
A surprising number of people seem to have read the article only half way. Near the end, it confirms that there was a bug that in some cases, would send the gif even if the correct button was clicked.
But that aside...
Muscle memory is a powerful feature of user interfaces. Anyone that's ever done research into HCI--and frankly, anyone that's had an interface change unexpectedly underneath them--knows that muscle memory and consistency of interface are principles you design around. Being able to send an email without looking at the buttons is a FEATURE, NOT A BUG. If the interface changes without warning, you are GUARANTEED to cause problems. With a service the size of gmail, this outcome wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
I'm not terribly impressed by your story. For instance, I still have my iPad 3--which is older than your Android tablet--and it works well enough, if a bit slowly. Still plays the games I want, runs the Facebook app and my RSS app.
ALL marketing targets people that want new things. That's how it works. I don't know why we pick Apple marketing out of crowd just because they're BETTER AT THEIR JOBS. It's not Apple's problem that HTC's marketing department doesn't know how to make legitimately nice phones actually appealing to people.
Apple's job is to sell things. It's fine if you don't like it or don't buy it, but man, try and be real here. They just happen to play the game better than everyone else--that's not a good reason to hate them.
The consequences would materially affect Apple. You may be able to hold them 'liable', but at that point, the genie is out of the bottle.
It's worse than that.
Say that Apple helps the FBI and somehow this case goes to court--let's pretend that data on the phone leads to a new suspect and now they're going to prosecute the guy.
This new suspect would now have the right to demand the phone AND the software that cracked it. After all, how would we know that Apple didn't just write some software that plugged some sucker's name into the iMessage logs and handed that over to the FBI? The defense would want to have that software analysed by an independent audit. At that point, the software is no longer just living inside some vault at Apple. The tool they created must pass legal muster and be admissible in court or everything is useless.
If Apple's in for a penny, they're in for a pound. That's the situation they're desperately trying to avoid. Even in the case of just one phone, it's not just about the phone.
They need to listen to Jon Siracusa's Robot or Not podcast.
Not only do they have to do validation on the OS, they'd have to let other people do validation on the OS. You have to be guaranteed that it doesn't change or wipe any data in the process, and you have to be able to prove that it doesn't because otherwise the data is invalid. Otherwise, it doesn't really have a legal leg to stand on. For the FBI's fishing expedition, maybe that matters less, but anything that goes to court needs to be validated for forensic purposes.
So they have to remove the limit on attempts, provide a method of attack (that is, allow someone to enter passcodes without touching the screen), and ensure that it doesn't have any deleterious effects on the data on the device.
Unfortunately, I think that would pretty much be doomed to fail. This (http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5645) a great article on some of the problems inherent in this request by the FBI from a forensics and court-case point of view.
tl;dr
The FBI wants Apple to create an *instrument*, and this instrument needs to pass forensic muster. That means it can't modify the data on the phone, it just has to unlock it. But how do you check that? Well, it turns out tools like this need to be tested and validated by a third party. But then, if it comes up in a court case (because the owner is actually still alive) it would be well within the defendant's rights to request a copy of the software so the defense can validate whether or not it does what it says it does. If the software isn't peer reviewed, any retrieved data could be thrown out as evidence. If the defense can't get their hands on the software to test it themselves, that's not fair.
The can of worms is huge. Apple would be forced to make a tool that exploits weaknesses in their devices and then DELIVER those weaknesses to other parties so they can validate those weaknesses. Here's the concluding paragraph from the article:
"Not only is Apple being ordered to compromise their own devices; they’re being ordered to give that golden key to the government, in a very roundabout sneaky way. What FBI has requested will inevitably forse Apple’s methods out into the open, where they can be ingested by government agencies looking to do the same thing. They will also be exposed to private forensics companies, who are notorious for reverse engineering and stealing other people’s intellectual property. Should Apple comply in providing a tool, it will inevitably end up abused and in the wrong hands."
Oh, I love the deniers here on slashdot. It brings out the actual scientists, and it gives me insight on some important science and what the current tropes are in the denier community. I've got a minor in Earth and Atmospheric science, and I'm not at a high enough level to synthesize a lot of the arguments myself, but I'm able to discern between science and non-science fairly readily, and follow up on good leads so I can verify some of the arguments.
It's actually an interesting opportunity to learn a lot of climate science more deeply.
I replace my (i)Phone once every 4 years. It hasn't been an issue for me. Maybe ask LG to use higher quality batteries.
People arenâ(TM)t inherently selfish. Iâ(TM)m very generous to my family and friends. Iâ(TM)m even sufficiently generous that I donâ(TM)t grumble too much at my taxes because I know that other people need that money. I donâ(TM)t want to be the sort of person that denies the needy when I can afford to help.
But thereâ(TM)s a matter of scale and community at work here. Iâ(TM)m not so generous that I want to give you money (sorry). I donâ(TM)t know you. I donâ(TM)t even know where you live. You may not have my best interests at heart, or you may actively be a danger to me and the people I care about.
Humans work very well collaboratively, but in smallish groups where we can align our priorities. Once things get too big, we have to use a proxy (government, bureaucracy) to get anything done at all.
More and more, it obvious that we should treat the microbiome as an organ in and of itself. It's responding to hormonal signals and regulating a significant portion of the metabolism in such a way as to adapt to external conditions.
On the other hand, this isn't terribly surprising to me. Under normal circumstances, most swimmers put on a thin layer of subcutaneous fat to insulate themselves from the cold water. That's why they're not as absurdly cut as some of their warmer temperature athletic counterparts. (Abnormal circumstances in this case refers to Olympic level swimmers close to competitions, where nothing could keep that fat on their bodies; the energy expenditure is just too high.)
In that case, the risk of you or your family dying in a motor vehicle accident--the same kind of systemic risk that you're talking about--is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of dying in a terrorist attack. Similarly with dying from domestic gun violence. That's with laws in place to mitigate those risks. The reality is that terrorism is a really marginal cause of death, and to spend too much time and money worrying about it (certainly any time and money beyond the enormous amounts we're already spending) is madness.
So in a very narrow sense, I suppose we could probably argue that for this one phone, the FBI is right. The problem is that this isn't just about one phone--whatever happens here sets precedent. If the FBI can compel Apple to go along with things here, we have to know that without some other significant change of law, they'll be able to come after private phones and private data again. In this case, the perpetrator is almost certainly guilty and also happens to be dead, so they can't fight back. It's a situation that the FBI can press on because most people will be willing to abrogate the rights of a probable murderer that's dead anyway--his right to privacy may not even exist anymore. (I honestly don't know; I'm not American and I'm not a lawyer--it seems like even American lawyers have it out over topics like this all the time.)
The FBI's staff aren't dummies. This is an opportunity for them to crack a nut wide open, and they're going to take advantage of that as best they can.
(As for why I care about this at all given that I'm not American--not only do American politics set expectations in countries like mine, Canada, I'd rather that I don't have to think about this sort of thing when I cross the border. Border guards have a surprising amount of power to seize property, and I feel like I deserve my privacy, even if I've done nothing wrong.)
It's worth noting that this wouldn't work on any device that has a Secure Enclave and TouchID. The Secure Enclave can't be updated or tampered with without it erasing its keys, leaving the phone permanently encrypted. If the SE isn't modified, it imposes delays on responding to passcode requests so that after the 9th request, there's a delay of 1hr before you can try again.
This article goes into more detail: http://blog.trailofbits.com/20...
The phone in question is a 5c, so yes, Apple could theoretically do what is being asked of them. But the phones after that--no.
Man, I can barely unlock my own phone when I'm in a panic (it happened once when my house was being robbed)--it may be worth considering for emergencies. It really is handy, and she probably doesn't need all those slots dedicated to her own fingers. Anyway, it's just a suggestion, I'm not meaning to be critical. :)
They're doing a piss-poor job of it, then. I kept my iPhone 4 for 4 years, which is about as long as I've ever kept any computing device in my life. I could've kept going with it, but I like having new devices now and then.
The first leg of that stool is the one that matters, and I don't know any company that doesn't try to entice people to upgrade that way.
As for the second leg of this metaphorical stool, the iOS updates have all run relatively well on my devices. Certainly well enough that I was willing to keep using them. But if they DIDN'T issue updates for their phones, that would ALSO be a flaw, wouldn't it? I'd be encouraged to upgrade because I was missing out on new OS features. So there's literally no way to win in this scenario. I don't think Apple is making iOS slower on purpose, it's just that time marches forward and making new things sometimes requires new hardware. As a games industry programmer, I've worked on 3 generations of console hardware, and it's the same thing. That's just how progress looks.
I don't think the repair costs are exorbitant, but then again, I've never needed to repair any of my phones in the 6 years I've owned them. Or my iPad. In fact, the only repair I ever needed to do on any of my Apple devices is when my cats knocked my iMac over while jumping up to a window. Apparently it wasn't designed for that.
I dunno, I think your three legged stool metaphor itself is lacking a leg to stand on.
I'm pretty sure the device will notice right away now. The problem is that previous versions of iOS didn't, and the new version did and immediately bricked the phone without warning.
Why don't you just add one finger to her list? My partner and I each have one finger that unlocks the other's phone. My passcode is well over 10 digits, and it would be a pain for her to remember it in an emergency.
Their magazine was also--in my opinion--a triumph of printed media. It wasn't just newsprint, it was thick, glossy paper. The pages were packed with content in new and interesting ways, and sometimes they'd try some dumb printing thing and it would flop, but at least it was interesting for a month. Wired was such a good magazine, back in the day. Honestly, it's still a good magazine now--it's just a really mediocre website. I was even subscribed to the iPad version for a long time before I realised it was a struggle to find time to read that much content from one place all at once.
I may consider subscribing to the site for $1/week...as long as I'm allowed to choose the weeks as I wish. Most weeks, I don't visit. If I want to read a story on some random week, I wouldn't object to throwing $1 their way for a week's worth of access to read a few articles.
It's not per year. It's a one-time charge when you buy your device. There's a replacement fee of $75 if they need to replace the phone. They'll do it no questions asked, for any type of damage.
It only requires the fingerprint if you haven't signed in for 48 hours.
More memory doesn't help ergonomics or muscle memory. Nearly 20 years of using an editor isn't something an extra bit of RAM is going to change.
We do most of our building through a build system, so I set up some compile commands to even do all my building in emacs so I can correct the errors straight from the build log. I've switched VS to an emacs key layout, but it still does weird things sometimes, so I gave up trying to square that circle.
I've spent a lot of time customizing my emacs setup, which I know some people think is a waste of time, but I like the intellectual stimulation of programming in a completely different language and learning elisp. It's definitely not the fastest way to do things, but I think it's good for programmers to solve problems like that from time to time. I've learned how to manipulate buffers and frames (emacs handles frames really badly, BTW--you end up having to write an obnoxious amount of handling code if you want to make sure that things are opened and closed the way you want), I've written major and minor modes, learned how to monitor processes and compilations...it's still amazing to me that using nothing but the editor and the built-in language that I can do so many things without diving into any source code.
(I think you can probably do that command line thing you're talking about--you'd just have to a wrapper around all the commands you want to call, wouldn't you? The emacs specific stack exchange probably has an answer for you, if you haven't checked it already.)