>"the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram"
While that is neat looking, is it temporary? It appears to fill almost the entire parking lot, leaving no place to park... Are there other lots? Looks like maybe 150 spots gone. Power is important, but parking is kinda important too, isn't it?
>"Snapchat expected demand for its camera-equipped glasses "
I am guessing that the masses got the "glasshole" messages from the last several rounds. It isn't cool to be creepy, thank goodness. We all have cameras on our phones- they aren't hard to use, and it is far less rude/antisocial/ego-centric than making everyone constantly wonder if you are recording them every moment, especially in bathrooms, when having private conversations, when trying to eat, in sensitive business meetings, during exams, etc.
So please, take your "camera glasses" and shove them somewhere more appropriate than on people's faces!
I don't disagree with what you are saying, especially about the volume and such. But, obviously, Hawking is famous and demand for his single document could certainly justify someone performing an OCR of the text with bitmap of the figures, as needed. Good work for a intern or graphic design student:)
>"The Cambridge Library made several PDF files of the thesis available for download -- a high-resolution "72 Mb" file, digitized version that's less than half the size, and a "reduced" version that was even smaller"
Why not just provide TEXT or a vectorized PDF? OCR it and do some clean up and then, compressed, it would be what, a few hundred kilobytes, if that? This isn't rocket science:)
>"The three Apple patents covered design elements of the iPhone such as its black rectangular front face, rounded corners, and colorful grid of icons for programs and apps."
Ridiculous. Every full touch screen phone both before and after the iPhone has been rectangular and with a black face with rounded corners. That is so generic that it should have been immediately rejected by the patent office. What, should phones have sharp corners that cut the user? Should they had a red or purple face for the LCD screen? I have never seen anything but a rectangular phone... or was circular or triangular the norm?
And "colorful grid of icons"? Really? Hasn't ANYONE at the patent office used a computer or phone for the last zillion years? Every PalmOS phone, which proceeded the iPhone had such a screen. Even generic flip phones of the time had such colorful grids of icons for programs and launchers.
>"Nobody has time to watch a bunch of youtube links. Articulate the arguments yourself, or at least summarize, if you want to participate in the conversation."
It doesn't take a lot of time (they are all short), and they can say it (and support it) much better than I can in a soundbyte. But the summary is that teacher unions, lack of competition, and limited school choice is what ends up making things much worse (among other arguments).
What I have found is that almost all modern websites just break horribly when you turn off javascript. It is unfortunate, but it is the way of modern sites now. Rather than presenting information, they have to totally control everything about the "presentation" and make sure there is enough totally useless "eye candy." Crap, one site I went to yesterday somehow REMOVED my browser's scroll bar so it could force me to use THEIR OWN scroll bar- complete with nasty SMOOTH SCROLLING and denying me the ability to just jump to any single place in the bar. Why????!!!
>"Thanks to conservatives cutting the penchants promised"
Irrelevant stab at conservatives. Perhaps you should understand what many conservatives are saying about education before saying such things. Here are some interesting examples:
>"By 2011 the Gates' foundation had already spent $5 billion on education projects -- and admitted that "it hasn't led to significant improvements." "
That's because education improvement is not about throwing laptops in schools. It isn't about giving away "free" licenses to proprietary products. And it isn't about token "coding" projects. It is a lot more complex than that.
The main problems with schools is that there is little flexibility and competition. Teacher's unions slap down any real innovation and oppose any form of family choice. Lots of kids simply do not learn well with "traditional", large-class, 6-period, lecture-style, standardized-test type education.
What a wonderful idea. So you can get insurance from the company that has, essentially, unlimited spyware in your car. So they can charge you for your "risk" based on how hard you brake, how hard you accelerate, how hard you corner, how fast you drive, where you like to drive, what times you drive, and so much more, and all regardless of the ACTUAL outcomes or how actually safe you are.
>"Could it turn out users actually prefer to trade a little CPU time to website owners in favor of them not showing ads?"
No. And for a variety of reasons:
1) If it can be done, it will.... 2) Which means they will BOTH show ads AND attempt to mine. 3) Browsers and plugins WILL give us control over this. Hopefully sooner than later. 4) Once people realize it is destroying their batteries, eating up electricity, slowing down their systems, creating heat, and kicking on louder fans, there will be a backlash. 5) I doubt there is enough money in mining, especially once people start blocking it.
Because they are cheap, generally convenient, proven, and understood. Passwords actually work quite well *IF* they are managed correctly. And despite the summary, dictionary attacks are generally useless when servers are configured correctly.
For high security, when necessary, combining a password with a token of some sort is extremely effective.
I agree with most of what you said except that US poverty is not growing. That is a "left myth". The poverty rate is just about the same as it has been since 1965.
> or what content it could offer beyond saying it was likely to be built "around live programming."
To me that is code speak for content that contains unskippable commercials. Exactly what consumers do not want. "Live" also implies no time shifting and no storage. Exactly what consumers do not want.
Wow, what wonderful way to fight declining video customers!
>"Consumer Reports has yet to buy a Model 3 and put it through a battery of tests, as the magazine does for dozens of vehicles"
And even if they did, how are they supposed to know how "reliable" it is based on that? A day? A few weeks? A month? Knowing RELIABILITY comes with at least many months, if not years, of use and observation. The ONLY thing they can do is SPECULATE based on their hunches about the technology and materials, and SPECULATE based on OTHER models. So hopefully people won't freak out over being called "average" without any real data to back up such a claim.
>"If a site is using more than XX% CPU for more than YY seconds, then we put the page into 'battery saver mode' where we aggressively throttle tasks and..."
We should have already HAD this in ALL browsers. I suggested it for Firefox years and years ago. It isn't just cryptomining, but some sites have HORRIBLE programming with endless animation and crap moving and changing and calculating and re-loading things all the time. And who knows what is next.
If the browser IS the next OS, then regardless of the actual OS or browser, we need more controls in the browser to control resources.
>"Musk is South African and white South Africans love their racism."
That is a completely unfair statement on many levels. In fact, it probably, itself, is a racist statement.
For example, to claim that all or even most European Americans are racist is a racist statement (it is hatred and slander based on race generalization). It is also fact that all races have within them, people are are racist (and the number will vary wildly depending on how you define "racist" and who you put into groups, and geographical area, and sociology-economic status, and a zillion other factors).
This whole ordeal is likely to be a stunt by the unions; but without actual facts, ANYTHING is speculation. But throwing out such accusations about Musk and certainly about all South Africans of European decent is intolerable.
As long as it has 64+GB of storage, it is probably the least important of what I listed, for me. The problem in the past was that 32GB was just not enough, especially when half of it is gone for the OS and other reserved space. So that is finally becoming less of an issue.
>"with both the 5-inch Pixel 2 and 6-inch Pixel 2 XL sporting identical electronics, save for their displays and chassis sizes"
And they also share the:
* Lack of headphone jack * Lack of wireless charging * Lack of swappable batteries * Lack of SD card support * Lack of serviceable battery?
But not the lack of price... so, go ahead and cough up $650 or $850, anyway, because we are giving the public what they want. And to think I am STILL using a Nexus 5 which has at more than half of the above lacking features, and was around HALF the price.
>"'Significant' Number of Equifax Victims Already Had Info Stolen, Says IRS"
Then what would the IRS have possibly gained by trying to use Equifax's services to help prevent fraud?
Or perhaps this is code for "don't look at the man behind the curtain" or "oh, don't worry, we got ya covered anyway" or "see, none of this really mattered anyway, so let's not talk about security or misuse of the SSN as a universal ID number anymore." So many possibilities. Yeesh
>"If you're nerdy enough, you could get one that satisfies everything but no crapware, and put the Android build of your choice on it."
I have given it serious consideration but it seems there was always something majorly wrong- either it would break Netflix or break TiVo, or was missing the Google apps, or was too dangerous, or required a lot of maintenance, etc. And if it was a NEW device, it would void the warranty, which is just too risky on a $400-$800 device.
I suppose I will have to do SOMETHING eventually. Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
>"the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram"
While that is neat looking, is it temporary? It appears to fill almost the entire parking lot, leaving no place to park... Are there other lots? Looks like maybe 150 spots gone. Power is important, but parking is kinda important too, isn't it?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba...
>"Snapchat expected demand for its camera-equipped glasses "
I am guessing that the masses got the "glasshole" messages from the last several rounds. It isn't cool to be creepy, thank goodness. We all have cameras on our phones- they aren't hard to use, and it is far less rude/antisocial/ego-centric than making everyone constantly wonder if you are recording them every moment, especially in bathrooms, when having private conversations, when trying to eat, in sensitive business meetings, during exams, etc.
So please, take your "camera glasses" and shove them somewhere more appropriate than on people's faces!
I don't disagree with what you are saying, especially about the volume and such. But, obviously, Hawking is famous and demand for his single document could certainly justify someone performing an OCR of the text with bitmap of the figures, as needed. Good work for a intern or graphic design student :)
>"The Cambridge Library made several PDF files of the thesis available for download -- a high-resolution "72 Mb" file, digitized version that's less than half the size, and a "reduced" version that was even smaller"
Why not just provide TEXT or a vectorized PDF? OCR it and do some clean up and then, compressed, it would be what, a few hundred kilobytes, if that? This isn't rocket science :)
>"The three Apple patents covered design elements of the iPhone such as its black rectangular front face, rounded corners, and colorful grid of icons for programs and apps."
Ridiculous. Every full touch screen phone both before and after the iPhone has been rectangular and with a black face with rounded corners. That is so generic that it should have been immediately rejected by the patent office. What, should phones have sharp corners that cut the user? Should they had a red or purple face for the LCD screen? I have never seen anything but a rectangular phone... or was circular or triangular the norm?
And "colorful grid of icons"? Really? Hasn't ANYONE at the patent office used a computer or phone for the last zillion years? Every PalmOS phone, which proceeded the iPhone had such a screen. Even generic flip phones of the time had such colorful grids of icons for programs and launchers.
>Citation needed.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
They have their own citations.
>"Nobody has time to watch a bunch of youtube links. Articulate the arguments yourself, or at least summarize, if you want to participate in the conversation."
It doesn't take a lot of time (they are all short), and they can say it (and support it) much better than I can in a soundbyte. But the summary is that teacher unions, lack of competition, and limited school choice is what ends up making things much worse (among other arguments).
What I have found is that almost all modern websites just break horribly when you turn off javascript. It is unfortunate, but it is the way of modern sites now. Rather than presenting information, they have to totally control everything about the "presentation" and make sure there is enough totally useless "eye candy." Crap, one site I went to yesterday somehow REMOVED my browser's scroll bar so it could force me to use THEIR OWN scroll bar- complete with nasty SMOOTH SCROLLING and denying me the ability to just jump to any single place in the bar. Why????!!!
>"Thanks to conservatives cutting the penchants promised"
Irrelevant stab at conservatives. Perhaps you should understand what many conservatives are saying about education before saying such things. Here are some interesting examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
>"By 2011 the Gates' foundation had already spent $5 billion on education projects -- and admitted that "it hasn't led to significant improvements." "
That's because education improvement is not about throwing laptops in schools. It isn't about giving away "free" licenses to proprietary products. And it isn't about token "coding" projects. It is a lot more complex than that.
The main problems with schools is that there is little flexibility and competition. Teacher's unions slap down any real innovation and oppose any form of family choice. Lots of kids simply do not learn well with "traditional", large-class, 6-period, lecture-style, standardized-test type education.
>"I've had control over this stuff in my browser for about two decades, what are you doing differently?"
Oh, I don't know, NOT turning off Javascript so sites actually work?
What a wonderful idea. So you can get insurance from the company that has, essentially, unlimited spyware in your car. So they can charge you for your "risk" based on how hard you brake, how hard you accelerate, how hard you corner, how fast you drive, where you like to drive, what times you drive, and so much more, and all regardless of the ACTUAL outcomes or how actually safe you are.
Pass
>"Could it turn out users actually prefer to trade a little CPU time to website owners in favor of them not showing ads?"
No. And for a variety of reasons:
1) If it can be done, it will....
2) Which means they will BOTH show ads AND attempt to mine.
3) Browsers and plugins WILL give us control over this. Hopefully sooner than later.
4) Once people realize it is destroying their batteries, eating up electricity, slowing down their systems, creating heat, and kicking on louder fans, there will be a backlash.
5) I doubt there is enough money in mining, especially once people start blocking it.
>"Why Are We Still Using Passwords? "
Because they are cheap, generally convenient, proven, and understood. Passwords actually work quite well *IF* they are managed correctly. And despite the summary, dictionary attacks are generally useless when servers are configured correctly.
For high security, when necessary, combining a password with a token of some sort is extremely effective.
I agree with most of what you said except that US poverty is not growing. That is a "left myth". The poverty rate is just about the same as it has been since 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...
> or what content it could offer beyond saying it was likely to be built "around live programming."
To me that is code speak for content that contains unskippable commercials. Exactly what consumers do not want. "Live" also implies no time shifting and no storage. Exactly what consumers do not want.
Wow, what wonderful way to fight declining video customers!
>"Consumer Reports has yet to buy a Model 3 and put it through a battery of tests, as the magazine does for dozens of vehicles"
And even if they did, how are they supposed to know how "reliable" it is based on that? A day? A few weeks? A month? Knowing RELIABILITY comes with at least many months, if not years, of use and observation. The ONLY thing they can do is SPECULATE based on their hunches about the technology and materials, and SPECULATE based on OTHER models. So hopefully people won't freak out over being called "average" without any real data to back up such a claim.
>"If a site is using more than XX% CPU for more than YY seconds, then we put the page into 'battery saver mode' where we aggressively throttle tasks and..."
We should have already HAD this in ALL browsers. I suggested it for Firefox years and years ago. It isn't just cryptomining, but some sites have HORRIBLE programming with endless animation and crap moving and changing and calculating and re-loading things all the time. And who knows what is next.
If the browser IS the next OS, then regardless of the actual OS or browser, we need more controls in the browser to control resources.
Please let this happen!
>"In the UK? Yes, we have private-funded healthcare as an option - go take out any one of the dozens of private healthcare plans "
And you can get back the money you "contributed" to the NHS?
>"Musk is South African and white South Africans love their racism."
That is a completely unfair statement on many levels. In fact, it probably, itself, is a racist statement.
For example, to claim that all or even most European Americans are racist is a racist statement (it is hatred and slander based on race generalization). It is also fact that all races have within them, people are are racist (and the number will vary wildly depending on how you define "racist" and who you put into groups, and geographical area, and sociology-economic status, and a zillion other factors).
This whole ordeal is likely to be a stunt by the unions; but without actual facts, ANYTHING is speculation. But throwing out such accusations about Musk and certainly about all South Africans of European decent is intolerable.
>Nail in the coffin for casual users right there
As long as it has 64+GB of storage, it is probably the least important of what I listed, for me. The problem in the past was that 32GB was just not enough, especially when half of it is gone for the OS and other reserved space. So that is finally becoming less of an issue.
>"with both the 5-inch Pixel 2 and 6-inch Pixel 2 XL sporting identical electronics, save for their displays and chassis sizes"
And they also share the:
* Lack of headphone jack
* Lack of wireless charging
* Lack of swappable batteries
* Lack of SD card support
* Lack of serviceable battery?
But not the lack of price... so, go ahead and cough up $650 or $850, anyway, because we are giving the public what they want. And to think I am STILL using a Nexus 5 which has at more than half of the above lacking features, and was around HALF the price.
>"'Significant' Number of Equifax Victims Already Had Info Stolen, Says IRS"
Then what would the IRS have possibly gained by trying to use Equifax's services to help prevent fraud?
Or perhaps this is code for "don't look at the man behind the curtain" or "oh, don't worry, we got ya covered anyway" or "see, none of this really mattered anyway, so let's not talk about security or misuse of the SSN as a universal ID number anymore." So many possibilities. Yeesh
>"You're agreeing with him. He said the issue is manufacturer support, not OS version, and that's exactly the problem you described."
Yeah, I am probably too tired to be replying right now ;)
>"If you're nerdy enough, you could get one that satisfies everything but no crapware, and put the Android build of your choice on it."
I have given it serious consideration but it seems there was always something majorly wrong- either it would break Netflix or break TiVo, or was missing the Google apps, or was too dangerous, or required a lot of maintenance, etc. And if it was a NEW device, it would void the warranty, which is just too risky on a $400-$800 device.
I suppose I will have to do SOMETHING eventually. Sigh.