Biotech types are only slightly less nerdy and unhip than computer people. If the luddite hipster brigade successfully chases the (software)tech people out, it's only a matter of time before they set their sights on the biotech people. Neither group is, by and large, cool, hip, or fabulous enough for their standards. So really, this sort of crap really needs to be stopped before it can gain any kind of momentum.
So, once Palo Alto chases out all of its businesses and sinks into urban decay, do we get to have our own Devil's Night here on the west coast? A friend on mine from Detroit has told me that it's a heck of a show, even if you're not actually participating in the festivities yourself.
Or, Apple's laid-off US assembly line workers could have taken one of the tens of thousands of new jobs the company has created in the US.
I'm not sure why Toyota is relevant to a story about Apple. But sure, let's use a Toyota scenario. If Toyota were to close a factory that employed 2000 workers; but then opened a design, engineering, and research campus that employed 6000, that's a net GAIN of 4000 jobs.
And in both cases, the reality with Apple and the hypothetical with Toyota, the jobs gained are better and more desirable.
More to the point, Apple have created far more jobs than they moved overseas. In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned, Apple employed about 8500 people worldwide. That includes their in-house manufacturing, done at the time in the US and Cork, Ireland. In 2015, they employed 110000 people, NOT including the outsourced manufacturing done in China. Even if fully half of their 1997 employees were manufacturing, the jobs added outnumber the jobs lost my more than an order of magnitude. Have you driven through Cupertino recently? You can hardly go a block without driving past an Apple building. The town is bursting at the seams with people who have much more fulfilling and stimulating Apple jobs than manufacturing. And that new spaceship HQ... which, by the way, has more capacity than their entire 1997 global workforce... is only going to supplement the facilities they use. They're continuing to hire and expect to go on filling up the town.
Frankly, the thought of sitting on an assembly line mindlessly inserting tab A into slot B all day is horrifyingly dreary. And I really just don't get the obsession people have over the tedium of assembly being done elsewhere; when the design, engineering, software, management, and operations are done here. And more than a small part of the retail, distribution, and support is done here as well.
There is a "Political Views" field available for you to set in your profile. Nothing sinister going on if you specify "Very Liberal" and Facebook therefore knows you're probably pretty liberal.
Because it's not like Apple has a history of dropping standards they feel are behind the times before everyone else. Nope. Dropping a connector would be totally uncharacteristic of them. There's no precedent for that at all.
Yo do realize that the TSA/DHS goonsquad has claimed sovereignty over all of North American airspace, whether the flight lands in the US or not, right?
I'd counter that by pointing out that my phone is the single most-used piece of technology. Setting aside its communication functions the sheer number of devices it has replaced makes it a with: camera, videocamera, PDA, iPod, alarm clock, car GPS. It's also my notebook, address book, and calendar. It controls my lighting and my TV. It tracks the quality of my sleep and replaces the white noise generator that I used to use to get there. It's the hub where that sleep data goes, along with the data from my scale, blood-pressure cuff, and watch (heartbeat, exercise) go, along with the calories and nutrient data from my food tracking app. I have a widget in my car's OBD2 port that logs my performance and trip data to the phone; and I get automatic reminders to move my car before the meter runs out or the space becomes a street cleaning zone. And when I'm taking MUNI or BART, the 3rd-party apps are more accurate wrt/ arrival times than the transit agencies' own displays. It replaces the Nintendo DS and Kindle I used to use to keep occupied when riding transit or airlines. I can also use it, and the watch, to pay my bill at many stores and restaurants. And none of these even touch upon its usefulness for work. I could knock out another whole paragraph for that.
Given the amount of utility I get out out of it, if there's any piece of technology which really does justify having the top of the line, the iPhone really is the one. That said, I do stick to the the 2-year cadence and get the s-models. Though if the 5s hadn't been able to store credit cards for use with the watch, I'd have early-upgraded to the 6 to get ApplePay. Happily, the 5s plus watch did that job, so I'm still on the s cadence.
Unless Amazon also changes their culture of overwork, those "30-hour" weeks are rapidly going to become 50 hour weeks, the same way "40-hour" weeks became 60-hour weeks. Rather than gimmicks, I'd rather just have an employer that was honest and upfront about what is expected, with competent enough project management to meet that expectation, from both sides.
The first said it's a strong password with a score of 69%. The second said it was a medium password that would take 30 hours to crack. Making it "NCC-1701-d" upgraded it to very strong and 100% on the first and very strong at 112 years to crack on the second.
So yeah. Those meters are garbage. Don't trust them. Much better to generate random strings with the maximum length and character set the site will allow; and use a password manager locally.
It's not the password strength meters that bother me. I generally just ignore those. What drives me utterly insane are the restrictions on my password. And these are far too common. The two biggies are:
1) Restricting what characters I may use in my password (no / or % or & or whatever) == Oh hai, We're not bothering to sanitize my inputs. We are a bunch of morons and you shouldn't use our site or service.
2) Restrictions on the maximum length of my password. == Oh hai, we're not bothering to hash your password but are, instead, just storing it in a fixed-length field somewhere. We're a bunch of morons and you shouldn't use our site or service.
What really Really REALLY drives me up the wall is that these sorts of restrictions seem to most often be present in places where security is most important and where I don't have the *choice* not to use their service. (My current employer's medical and 401k providers, for example.)
Your "article" is nothing more than a pair of links and two lines of bitching. It doesn't deserve to be published.
What would have been useful and potentially worth publishing would have been a writeup with an analysis of *WHY* T-Mobile doesn't offer lifeline credit in California. This is critical, as one of your own links points to a list of states in which T-Mobile DOES offer that credit. So why, exactly, offer it there and not here. Is it actual malfeasance on the part of T-Mobile? Some way in which T-Mobile doesn't meet California's requirements? Simple bureaucratic delays and screws?
See, I did just a little more checking, and put my own (California) zip code into the lifeline program's search page:
NONE of the big four national carriers are available; just a bunch of MVNOs. Since you neglected to mention this fact, my guess is that you just have some axe to grind against T-Mobile ands are grasping onto any reason to do s.
Tesla's autopilot exceeds the capabilities of many, perhaps even most, autopilots in use in aviation. The fact that it's not completely hands-off and capable of engaging in witty banter in the voice of William Daniels does not change that fact.
And Hollywood movies? Really? The Hollywood movie I saw the other night claimed that flying DeLoreans and hoverboards are available right now and that the Cubs won the World Series last year. Just because I saw it on TV doesn't make it so.
The really hilarious thing is the way they practically worship at the altar of Ronald Reagan. This, despite the fact that the modern republican party has lurched to far to the extreme right that when you actually review Reagan's implemented policies, he'd be viewed as too liberal to be welcome in the GOP. About the only thing Saint Reagan and the modern republicans have in common is the cold-war militarist mentality and their hatred of the GLBT community. Hell, even Nixon would be a stark-raving liberal by modern GOP standards, what with the creation of that pesky interfering-with-industry EPA, and the policy of rapprochement with China vs. sanctions and trade wars.
> Manufacturers only seem interested in releasing new > models, not in making models that will last a long > time.
Really? A buddy of mine didn't upgrade from his 4S until earlier this year when Apple released the SE (Basically the body of the 5s, but with much of the guts of the 6s inside.) That comes out to a lifetime of about 4.5 years. And while that's not as long as those old-school Nokia candybars; it's not bad for something that gets the use and abuse of a phone. How long do you *expect* a phone to last? It's not as though even Nokia makes the tough-as-a-tank phones like they used to.
> Changing phones is a pain in the ass
Eh? Backup the old one & restore to the new one. If you have a lot of data to shovel around, it can take a while but it's basically effortless. If you use an encrypted local backup, it'll even preserve the login credentials to all your email accounts and such.
If you are a subscriber to Apple Music, Spotify, or one of the also-ran services; the RIAA gets its 30 pieces of silver regardless of whether you have the DRM-free mp3 or not. Also, legitimization of peoples' "pirated" music was part of the deal the RIAA made years before when iTunes Match was released.
To be fair, people who've been here since the days of goatse.cx and tubgirl tend to be fairly hesitant to click on outside links from slashdot; for very good reason, especially if they're on a work machine.
And yes, it has been the case that links in the summary had redirects to goatse.cx. The editors aren't exactly careful or competent themselves.
Yeah. 90% of it is easy and I can think of a good way to replicate. The thing that required XP, because UAC in Vista broke it, was the bit where the key was kept in RAM, not swapped, and purged if the VPN connection was broken. I'm not sure how I'd replicate that on my own. And a cursory check would indicate VeraCrypt doesn't do it.
It's my understanding that when Windows 7 came along, MS had fixed what Vista broke and the they were able to get an updated solution that works similarly. But that was after I left the company
A company I used to work for had a system such as that. Whenever anyone travelled, they were issued a temporary laptop, with two partitions on the HD. The first was unencrypted and contained the OS, some basic applications (but critically, NOT email), and a VPN client. The second was encrypted and contained the important applications and any company data. We'd bought a solution such that the user never had the key to decrypt the other partition. Rather, he'd VPN in, and the key would be provided over the tunnel, stored in RAM, never paged out to swap, and used to access the encrypted data. By some voodoo possible with XP but not Vista and above, (And no, I have no idea what solution they switched to after the upgrade to 7.) if the VPN client quit or termed the connection, the key would be removed from RAM and the data drive once again would become so much gibberish. IT was simply informed of the travel arrangements and suspended the employee's VPN access for the duration and until they were safely checked into their hotel or field office. So there was no way the the Airport SecurityGoons could get access, even if the employee were beaten with the $2 wrench from that xkcd cartoon.
Laptops are cheap... trivially so... compared to the data that they contain. That data belongs to the company. And if the ASGs think they have a legitimate need to see it; they can goto a real LEO who can goto a real judge who can issue a real subpoena; which company could and would fight. Otherwise, they can go piss off.
Well, there should be a corollary to the axion that "power corrupts"; along the lines of "positions with power attract the corrupt who wish to abuse it.". I find both to be equally true.
Well, when the BP/INS/TSA/customs/whatever goons do their jobs correctly and respectfully and don't falsely accuse you, either explicitly or implicitly, of wrongdoing or otherwise abuse their "au-thor-i-tah"; it *shouldn't* be a noteworthy occasion to be reported on. That's the way it should occur every... single... goddamn... time!
When they harass, wrongly accuse, or in any other way abuse their position; they bloody well should be taken to task and not just be publicly vilified, but professionally punished as well.
Search for evidence, or assist in doing so: No. The government should not be able to conscript you into actual and unwilling service. With a proper warrant, as you describe, sure: "Turn over the 12 emails between party $x and party $y, sent on 2015-09-14." is okay. "Search for and provide us with every email in the last three years where person $x discussed topic $y with persons $a, $b, or $c, or anyone residing in country $foo." is not acceptable. That requires affirmative work, not just turning over specific (virtual) items they ask for. It steals productivity from the person and the employer. And, frankly, if I liked government work, I could have stayed in the one government contractor job I had; or actually gone to work for the government. "Build custom software, that otherwise would not exist, to insert a backdoor and destroy your product's security for us." is obviously entirely unacceptable as well.
and:
Force you to break the laws you're subject to in your business: no, No, NO! If our government wants access to data stored in the EU, that is nominally illegal to export out of the EU thanks to their data privacy laws; it should go through proper international channels to get access to it within the EU. It should not do an end-run around the law, and force some admin from Microsoft (Yes, this is a specific and, I think, still-ongoing case.) to open himself up to liability, and perhaps criminal charges; should he ever go there for vacation.
Yes, But that's a known limitation of gmail. And if you're using the service, you've accepted that limitation.
Besides, it's a limitation that can be mitigated. Gmail allows access by standalone IMAP clients. So you can use whatever GPG-enabled client you like, on a computer running with full-disk encryption, and go ahead and use gmail. Google will know who you're talking to, but not what you're saying. And you would still be able to search your mailboxes locally.
As in many other cases, Drumpf is a raging hypocrite. In the real world, vote fraud is a republican thing. And they're not even subtle about it. One of their operatives, the CEO of Diebold, manufacturer of many of the voting machines in the US, went so far as to openly state his intention to divert votes to the republicans:
^ This, so very much this. It seems like every week or so, I notice something new in the AWS console. A new feature, or service, or region...
Just today, I noticed that they've recently added a new class of ELB that works at the application level instead of the TCP layer. Device farm also caught me by surprise when it went online. I've a buddy who does QA on mobile who'd not seen it before either, and the look on his face when I showed it to him was priceless.
(Though I'm still a bit annoyed that EFS stayed in "preview" for so long before going life.)
Slashdot Mirror
Biotech types are only slightly less nerdy and unhip than computer people. If the luddite hipster brigade successfully chases the (software)tech people out, it's only a matter of time before they set their sights on the biotech people. Neither group is, by and large, cool, hip, or fabulous enough for their standards. So really, this sort of crap really needs to be stopped before it can gain any kind of momentum.
So, once Palo Alto chases out all of its businesses and sinks into urban decay, do we get to have our own Devil's Night here on the west coast? A friend on mine from Detroit has told me that it's a heck of a show, even if you're not actually participating in the festivities yourself.
Or, Apple's laid-off US assembly line workers could have taken one of the tens of thousands of new jobs the company has created in the US.
I'm not sure why Toyota is relevant to a story about Apple. But sure, let's use a Toyota scenario. If Toyota were to close a factory that employed 2000 workers; but then opened a design, engineering, and research campus that employed 6000, that's a net GAIN of 4000 jobs.
And in both cases, the reality with Apple and the hypothetical with Toyota, the jobs gained are better and more desirable.
More to the point, Apple have created far more jobs than they moved overseas. In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned, Apple employed about 8500 people worldwide. That includes their in-house manufacturing, done at the time in the US and Cork, Ireland. In 2015, they employed 110000 people, NOT including the outsourced manufacturing done in China. Even if fully half of their 1997 employees were manufacturing, the jobs added outnumber the jobs lost my more than an order of magnitude. Have you driven through Cupertino recently? You can hardly go a block without driving past an Apple building. The town is bursting at the seams with people who have much more fulfilling and stimulating Apple jobs than manufacturing. And that new spaceship HQ... which, by the way, has more capacity than their entire 1997 global workforce... is only going to supplement the facilities they use. They're continuing to hire and expect to go on filling up the town.
Frankly, the thought of sitting on an assembly line mindlessly inserting tab A into slot B all day is horrifyingly dreary. And I really just don't get the obsession people have over the tedium of assembly being done elsewhere; when the design, engineering, software, management, and operations are done here. And more than a small part of the retail, distribution, and support is done here as well.
There is a "Political Views" field available for you to set in your profile. Nothing sinister going on if you specify "Very Liberal" and Facebook therefore knows you're probably pretty liberal.
Because it's not like Apple has a history of dropping standards they feel are behind the times before everyone else. Nope. Dropping a connector would be totally uncharacteristic of them. There's no precedent for that at all.
Yo do realize that the TSA/DHS goonsquad has claimed sovereignty over all of North American airspace, whether the flight lands in the US or not, right?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
I'd counter that by pointing out that my phone is the single most-used piece of technology. Setting aside its communication functions the sheer number of devices it has replaced makes it a with: camera, videocamera, PDA, iPod, alarm clock, car GPS. It's also my notebook, address book, and calendar. It controls my lighting and my TV. It tracks the quality of my sleep and replaces the white noise generator that I used to use to get there. It's the hub where that sleep data goes, along with the data from my scale, blood-pressure cuff, and watch (heartbeat, exercise) go, along with the calories and nutrient data from my food tracking app. I have a widget in my car's OBD2 port that logs my performance and trip data to the phone; and I get automatic reminders to move my car before the meter runs out or the space becomes a street cleaning zone. And when I'm taking MUNI or BART, the 3rd-party apps are more accurate wrt/ arrival times than the transit agencies' own displays. It replaces the Nintendo DS and Kindle I used to use to keep occupied when riding transit or airlines. I can also use it, and the watch, to pay my bill at many stores and restaurants. And none of these even touch upon its usefulness for work. I could knock out another whole paragraph for that.
Given the amount of utility I get out out of it, if there's any piece of technology which really does justify having the top of the line, the iPhone really is the one. That said, I do stick to the the 2-year cadence and get the s-models. Though if the 5s hadn't been able to store credit cards for use with the watch, I'd have early-upgraded to the 6 to get ApplePay. Happily, the 5s plus watch did that job, so I'm still on the s cadence.
Unless Amazon also changes their culture of overwork, those "30-hour" weeks are rapidly going to become 50 hour weeks, the same way "40-hour" weeks became 60-hour weeks. Rather than gimmicks, I'd rather just have an employer that was honest and upfront about what is expected, with competent enough project management to meet that expectation, from both sides.
For giggles I just tried the top two hits in Google for "password strength meter".
http://www.passwordmeter.com/
https://www.my1login.com/resou...
I typed in "NCC-1701".
The first said it's a strong password with a score of 69%. The second said it was a medium password that would take 30 hours to crack. Making it "NCC-1701-d" upgraded it to very strong and 100% on the first and very strong at 112 years to crack on the second.
So yeah. Those meters are garbage. Don't trust them. Much better to generate random strings with the maximum length and character set the site will allow; and use a password manager locally.
It's not the password strength meters that bother me. I generally just ignore those. What drives me utterly insane are the restrictions on my password. And these are far too common. The two biggies are:
1) Restricting what characters I may use in my password (no / or % or & or whatever) == Oh hai, We're not bothering to sanitize my inputs. We are a bunch of morons and you shouldn't use our site or service.
2) Restrictions on the maximum length of my password. == Oh hai, we're not bothering to hash your password but are, instead, just storing it in a fixed-length field somewhere. We're a bunch of morons and you shouldn't use our site or service.
What really Really REALLY drives me up the wall is that these sorts of restrictions seem to most often be present in places where security is most important and where I don't have the *choice* not to use their service. (My current employer's medical and 401k providers, for example.)
Your "article" is nothing more than a pair of links and two lines of bitching. It doesn't deserve to be published.
What would have been useful and potentially worth publishing would have been a writeup with an analysis of *WHY* T-Mobile doesn't offer lifeline credit in California. This is critical, as one of your own links points to a list of states in which T-Mobile DOES offer that credit. So why, exactly, offer it there and not here. Is it actual malfeasance on the part of T-Mobile? Some way in which T-Mobile doesn't meet California's requirements? Simple bureaucratic delays and screws?
See, I did just a little more checking, and put my own (California) zip code into the lifeline program's search page:
https://www.californialifeline...
NONE of the big four national carriers are available; just a bunch of MVNOs. Since you neglected to mention this fact, my guess is that you just have some axe to grind against T-Mobile ands are grasping onto any reason to do s.
Tesla's autopilot exceeds the capabilities of many, perhaps even most, autopilots in use in aviation. The fact that it's not completely hands-off and capable of engaging in witty banter in the voice of William Daniels does not change that fact.
And Hollywood movies? Really? The Hollywood movie I saw the other night claimed that flying DeLoreans and hoverboards are available right now and that the Cubs won the World Series last year. Just because I saw it on TV doesn't make it so.
The really hilarious thing is the way they practically worship at the altar of Ronald Reagan. This, despite the fact that the modern republican party has lurched to far to the extreme right that when you actually review Reagan's implemented policies, he'd be viewed as too liberal to be welcome in the GOP. About the only thing Saint Reagan and the modern republicans have in common is the cold-war militarist mentality and their hatred of the GLBT community. Hell, even Nixon would be a stark-raving liberal by modern GOP standards, what with the creation of that pesky interfering-with-industry EPA, and the policy of rapprochement with China vs. sanctions and trade wars.
> Manufacturers only seem interested in releasing new
> models, not in making models that will last a long
> time.
Really? A buddy of mine didn't upgrade from his 4S until earlier this year when Apple released the SE (Basically the body of the 5s, but with much of the guts of the 6s inside.) That comes out to a lifetime of about 4.5 years. And while that's not as long as those old-school Nokia candybars; it's not bad for something that gets the use and abuse of a phone. How long do you *expect* a phone to last? It's not as though even Nokia makes the tough-as-a-tank phones like they used to.
> Changing phones is a pain in the ass
Eh? Backup the old one & restore to the new one. If you have a lot of data to shovel around, it can take a while but it's basically effortless. If you use an encrypted local backup, it'll even preserve the login credentials to all your email accounts and such.
If you are a subscriber to Apple Music, Spotify, or one of the also-ran services; the RIAA gets its 30 pieces of silver regardless of whether you have the DRM-free mp3 or not. Also, legitimization of peoples' "pirated" music was part of the deal the RIAA made years before when iTunes Match was released.
To be fair, people who've been here since the days of goatse.cx and tubgirl tend to be fairly hesitant to click on outside links from slashdot; for very good reason, especially if they're on a work machine.
And yes, it has been the case that links in the summary had redirects to goatse.cx. The editors aren't exactly careful or competent themselves.
Yeah. 90% of it is easy and I can think of a good way to replicate. The thing that required XP, because UAC in Vista broke it, was the bit where the key was kept in RAM, not swapped, and purged if the VPN connection was broken. I'm not sure how I'd replicate that on my own. And a cursory check would indicate VeraCrypt doesn't do it.
It's my understanding that when Windows 7 came along, MS had fixed what Vista broke and the they were able to get an updated solution that works similarly. But that was after I left the company
A company I used to work for had a system such as that. Whenever anyone travelled, they were issued a temporary laptop, with two partitions on the HD. The first was unencrypted and contained the OS, some basic applications (but critically, NOT email), and a VPN client. The second was encrypted and contained the important applications and any company data. We'd bought a solution such that the user never had the key to decrypt the other partition. Rather, he'd VPN in, and the key would be provided over the tunnel, stored in RAM, never paged out to swap, and used to access the encrypted data. By some voodoo possible with XP but not Vista and above, (And no, I have no idea what solution they switched to after the upgrade to 7.) if the VPN client quit or termed the connection, the key would be removed from RAM and the data drive once again would become so much gibberish. IT was simply informed of the travel arrangements and suspended the employee's VPN access for the duration and until they were safely checked into their hotel or field office. So there was no way the the Airport SecurityGoons could get access, even if the employee were beaten with the $2 wrench from that xkcd cartoon.
Laptops are cheap... trivially so... compared to the data that they contain. That data belongs to the company. And if the ASGs think they have a legitimate need to see it; they can goto a real LEO who can goto a real judge who can issue a real subpoena; which company could and would fight. Otherwise, they can go piss off.
Well, there should be a corollary to the axion that "power corrupts"; along the lines of "positions with power attract the corrupt who wish to abuse it.". I find both to be equally true.
Well, when the BP/INS/TSA/customs/whatever goons do their jobs correctly and respectfully and don't falsely accuse you, either explicitly or implicitly, of wrongdoing or otherwise abuse their "au-thor-i-tah"; it *shouldn't* be a noteworthy occasion to be reported on. That's the way it should occur every... single... goddamn... time!
When they harass, wrongly accuse, or in any other way abuse their position; they bloody well should be taken to task and not just be publicly vilified, but professionally punished as well.
I'd like to add:
Search for evidence, or assist in doing so: No. The government should not be able to conscript you into actual and unwilling service. With a proper warrant, as you describe, sure: "Turn over the 12 emails between party $x and party $y, sent on 2015-09-14." is okay. "Search for and provide us with every email in the last three years where person $x discussed topic $y with persons $a, $b, or $c, or anyone residing in country $foo." is not acceptable. That requires affirmative work, not just turning over specific (virtual) items they ask for. It steals productivity from the person and the employer. And, frankly, if I liked government work, I could have stayed in the one government contractor job I had; or actually gone to work for the government. "Build custom software, that otherwise would not exist, to insert a backdoor and destroy your product's security for us." is obviously entirely unacceptable as well.
and:
Force you to break the laws you're subject to in your business: no, No, NO! If our government wants access to data stored in the EU, that is nominally illegal to export out of the EU thanks to their data privacy laws; it should go through proper international channels to get access to it within the EU. It should not do an end-run around the law, and force some admin from Microsoft (Yes, this is a specific and, I think, still-ongoing case.) to open himself up to liability, and perhaps criminal charges; should he ever go there for vacation.
Yes, But that's a known limitation of gmail. And if you're using the service, you've accepted that limitation.
Besides, it's a limitation that can be mitigated. Gmail allows access by standalone IMAP clients. So you can use whatever GPG-enabled client you like, on a computer running with full-disk encryption, and go ahead and use gmail. Google will know who you're talking to, but not what you're saying. And you would still be able to search your mailboxes locally.
As in many other cases, Drumpf is a raging hypocrite. In the real world, vote fraud is a republican thing. And they're not even subtle about it. One of their operatives, the CEO of Diebold, manufacturer of many of the voting machines in the US, went so far as to openly state his intention to divert votes to the republicans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11...
^ This, so very much this. It seems like every week or so, I notice something new in the AWS console. A new feature, or service, or region...
Just today, I noticed that they've recently added a new class of ELB that works at the application level instead of the TCP layer. Device farm also caught me by surprise when it went online. I've a buddy who does QA on mobile who'd not seen it before either, and the look on his face when I showed it to him was priceless.
(Though I'm still a bit annoyed that EFS stayed in "preview" for so long before going life.)