First fix the flaw in the system that allows any scammer to spoof any number they want, which is the only explanation for why I keep getting robocalls from numbers that match the first 6 digits of my own number.
It's not a flaw, it's a feature. It permits employees of legitimate businesses to show a different callback number (e.g. customer service) rather than their personal extensions.
But robocalling can still be fixed from the user end. I've got an Obihai Obi110 on my home phone configured as a call screener. When someone calls, it answers in two rings and says, "You've reached xxx-xxxx. Please press 1 to continue." When a live caller hears that, pressing "1" then causes my phone to ring.
But robocallers are stopped cold. The autodialer pushes the call to the next operator in the call center, but that process takes several seconds. By the time the guy in the call center connects to the call, all he hears is silence, at least until the "disconnected number" tone is played by the Obi110 after another 20 seconds. My phone never rings.
In nearly three years, not one robocall has made it past the Obi110. Call logs show that scam call attempts have dropped from 5 to about 1 per day over the past three years, so my home number is clearly falling off the phone lists of the big call centers.
The pickup-to-handoff delay is built into the robocall system. Scammers can't afford to have a live person listen to every call. Give consumers the ability to implement a similar system for home and cell phones, with a challenge / response that can be modified, and you'll cripple the robocall industry.
Spammers are now spoofing numbers in your local exchange in hopes that you'll think they might be someone you know because it's a local number. If you call the number, you'll find that it is a real person's number, not the spammers. If you start blocking all of those numbers, you're not blocking spammers - they'll use a different local number every time - you're blocking your neighbors.
Yep. I got a somewhat annoyed text message from someone just the other day, wondering why I called his number. Same area code, same prefix. I explained to him what had happened. The entire Caller ID concept is falling completely apart under the new spammer attacks. I've even had one friend say that she's been repeatedly called by her own phone number.
What I don't understand is why the spammer problem hasn't long since been dealt with. It's not as if the technology is particularly new or novel. I've got an Obihai Obi110 attached to my home landline, configured as a call screener. If someone calls my number, they hear "You've reached xxx-xxxx. Please press 1 to continue." Unless 1 is pressed within 30 seconds, they'll get the "disconnected number" message, but my phone will never ring. In nearly three years, not one robocaller has made it through the screener, because the human in the call center never hears the opening message due to the switching delay.
Why can't cell phones do something similar? The economics of robocalling rely on the call pick-up switching delay. The spammers can't afford to have a person listen to every phone message and punch the proper number to ring through. Make it so the challenge can be modified by the end-user, with whitelisted numbers from the user's directory, and you'll have a filter that will cripple the industry, at least until someone constructs an AI that is smart enough to listen to the challenge and answer it correctly.
In related news, Apple also announced the MacBook Ultra Pro, which features no internal GPU or graphics card. As an accessory, users may purchase the GPU dongle with an associated external graphics card for the low, low price of $1499.
Rumors are also swirling about the anticipated MacBook Mega Ultra Pro laptop, which is rumored to feature no screen or keyboard, and handles all I/O through the Touch Bar. Users can purchase optional dongles for attaching a keyboard and screen to the single USB-C port. Users can also purchase a matching keyboard and screen with a special Apple carrying case for just $999.
Let's also remember here that Uber rides are priced artificially low. After taxis are out of business they will move to charging rates that will make them money. It would be interesting to know what level that rate would be at today. Significantly more expensive than they are now, probably similar to a taxi.
Even if Uber cost the same amount as a taxi, I'll still choose an Uber every single time.
I'll choose an option where I don't have to worry about being cheated by the driver, and he won't have to worry about me robbing him.
I'll choose an option where I can press a button and know that the driver will be there to get me in 3 or 4 minutes.
I'll choose an option where I can hop into the car and hop out with payment handled electronically instead of actual money or credit cards changing hands.
I'll choose an option where the vehicle will be clean and reasonably well maintained, and the driver reasonably courteous.
I'll choose an option where the names of both parties involved are known, and all details of the ride can be recovered in case something goes wrong.
I'll choose an option where I can complain to Uber and actually get some satisfaction if something goes wrong, as opposed to the proverbial middle finger from a taxi company.
And most of all, I'll choose Uber because I know that if they ever start to go bad, another ride sharing company can compete with them, instead of them being protected as a government-regulated monopoly.
Studies like this one make me wonder if the people writing them ever ride public transportation themselves, or if they drive to work every day while trying to figure out ways to get everyone else off the road.
I live about 1.5 miles from my office. Some days I walk, some days I drive, and some days I walk two blocks to catch a bus. If I time everything just right, the bus is actually the fastest commute, because I don't have to waste several minutes looking for a parking space.
However - the bus only runs every 20 minutes, even during rush hour (and this is on one of the major thoroughfares to the downtown area). So if I miss the bus, I might as well walk, and if it's raining or blazing hot, I'm not going to slog for 30 minutes through bad weather carrying my computer case. In that case I drive my car. And in any case, if I'm running late, I will drive if I have to.
So all else being equal, if I had no car, what would be my fallback mode of transportation? It wouldn't be a bus (or a train) that runs every 20 minutes. It will be Lyft or Uber, which will pick me up in 3 minutes and drop me next to my office building. When you can't afford to be late, but you know that mass transit absolutely will make you late, you will take a car, one way or the other. So of course people will choose personalized door-to-door transportation over mass transit that may force them to wait for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes in bad weather, or force them to be late. Is anyone really surprised by this, beyond some social engineers trying to force people to behave the "right" way?
I personally think the tipping point will occur when autonomous buses start driving along every road, with a new bus coming by every 5 minutes, and riders' smartphones navigating them from one bus to the next. A system like that will at least eliminate the "mass transit makes me too late" excuse, but it won't happen as long as city planners are stuck in the 20th century mindset of fixed subways and light rail as the be-all and end-all of mass transit.
I just visited Atlanta last week, and took Uber rather than MARTA to go two miles, even though a rail station was near my departure and arrival points. Guess why? Because it was 11 p.m. at night, and I didn't want to wait 20 minutes for the next train. People vote with their wallets and their feet, and ride sharing isn't going anywhere unless mass transit makes some dramatic changes.
As long as Apple keeps selling more iPhones at higher price points, everything will be "good", i.e. lots of revenues and profits.
But Cook has hollowed out the rest of the Apple product line, and made design decisions that have nothing to do with usability but everything to do with "style". No updates to the Mac Mini or Mac Pro in years, the MacBook Pro is an absolute joke, no attempt to improve on the Airport Extreme, etc. Sure, those products are tiny blips in Apple's quarterly revenue, but they are the foundation that makes the iPhone a success.
I can no longer tell family and friends "buy an Apple computer" without reservation. I myself am carrying around a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that is really starting to show its age, but there is nothing in the Apple line that I care to replace it with. Thankfully a Samsung SSD has kept it going up till now, but at some point I will need a new computer. And then what? Perhaps a Dell with some flavor of Linux is in my future, because I can't see myself dealing with the abomination that is Windows 10.
Under Cook's reign, Apple has lost something fundamental: its proselytizers... the experts who convince dozens or hundreds or thousands of others to try an Apple computer. If some manufacturer would sell a high quality laptop with a good GUI over some flavor of UNIX, I would probably buy it. For that matter, if Microsoft would take a page from the MacOS playbook, and sell a premium laptop with a new operating system built on UNIX foundations, I would switch in a second. But Microsoft is bound and determined to shove Windows 10 down the world's throat instead.
At some point Apple is going to reach "peak iPhone", or it is going to stumble with the next iPhone upgrade, and the Apple revenue monoculture will crash and burn in a very big way. Cook will be out the door, and a new CEO will step in, who more likely than not will make things even worse. It will be a sad ending to a once great computer company.
Perhaps at that point some manufacturer will shake off the "we must slavishly copy Apple" mindset and actually bring some innovation back to the laptop and desktop consumer computer market. The question is, will anyone care by the time it happens?
Detroit has 31,000 empty houses. Wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy a house to stay in for a few days and burn it down or something when you're done with it?
While the rent would be dirt cheap, the thousands of dollars of guns, ammunition, body armor, and guard dogs you'd need to survive your stay would offset the savings.
"Hi, I'm Bill Gates, and this is a computer. To run a computer, you must have software that tells the computer what to do. The most important software is the operating system that controls every aspect of the computer's operation."
"Windows is an operating system created by Microsoft, the company I founded. So let's put Windows on this computer. Now let's make few adjustments to Windows so that our competition's programs won't run on it any more. Now let's sit back and let the money pour in." (At this point dollar bills start showering down on Bill.)
"Let's make it better. Let's cut deals with computer manufacturers so that Windows is the only operating system they will install on their products. Now even more money pours in." (The shower of dollar bills increases.)
"Now let's charge hundreds of dollars for Microsoft products, because only our software will run on our operating system. Boy, are we making money now!" (The torrent of money buries Bill up to his neck.)
"And now I'm one of the richest people on earth. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how computers work."
Agreed on the thinness of evidence, but also remember this was 1971, before personal computers or even the first public key cipher. Assuming for sake of argument the people behind this latest "solution" to the mystery are correct, then the text would have been ciphered by hand using some rudimentary shared-secret cipher. An expert wouldn't need much text to recover the key -- and in fact this might have been necessary if the sender had no secure channel to transmit the key over.
In 1971, any publicly broadcasted cypher would have almost certainly been encoded with a one-time pad. They were routinely used in espionage in the early days of the Cold War, and are still used today (e.g. the "numbers stations" on shortwave radio). Given that the cyphers in question were a few 10-character alphanumeric strings, a one-time pad would be the obvious means to send a short, unbreakable message... assuming that's what it really was, a not simply a random string of characters put together by the letter writer to make it appear mysterious.
Realistically, this entire "investigation" is just another example of a lot of people with too much time on their hands looking for patterns in what is effectively random noise.
You (the consumer) are not their customer. Their customers are banks, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other entities that loan you money, or let you buy on credit.
It is not in Equifax's interests for you to freeze your credit. A frozen account is a customer account that cannot be monetized (e.g. by being sold to banks who want to push their credit card on you). So of course Equifax will try to convince you that their "freeze that is not really a freeze" app works. But the thing is, they don't want it to work. If it works, they lose money. So of course it will fail, and you will be the one holding the bag when you are targeted by credit thieves.
Don't screw around with Equifax. Freeze your credit report, and be done with it (and them).
You can't compare a movie like "Justice League" being shown in the theaters with a movie like "Bright" being shown on Netflix.
If I decide to watch "Bright", it costs nothing beyond the monthly Netflix fee I'm already paying. If I hate it, what of it? I turn it off and move on. I can afford to ignore the Rotten Tomatoes score and take a gamble.
But with a film like "Justice League", I'm going to pay about $30 for two people at a minimum, so I pay attention to the reviews to determine if I'll get my money's worth. In effect, Netflix has made itself largely immune to bad critical reviews with its monthly fee model, and there is no way the traditional studios can compete with their pay-per-view model.
I'd think it would be more the This-is-why-we can't-have-nice-things department.
About 20 years ago, a small community group operating out of some local bike shops in Tucson, AZ tried something similar. They decided to assemble several dozen free-to-use bicycles out of various old, mismatched parts, and put them in racks around the downtown area for anyone to use. The idea was that the bikes were worthless for resale, so there would be no incentive to steal them, and people could borrow a bike out of one rack, ride a few miles, then stow the bike in a different rack. There was a lot of fanfare in the local paper about the project on the day it kicked off.
Two weeks later, not a single bike could be found in the bike racks. Many of them were found smashed to pieces, thrown off of highway overpasses or onto train tracks by bored teenagers. Others vanished without a trace, despite pleas by the organizers to return them to the racks. And that was the end of Tucson's free-to-ride bicycle experiment.
It's not as if the city of Tucson was the only place where people had to learn this lesson the hard way. What interests me is that (1) Google failed to look at what had been tried in the past before implementing their program, and (2) continues to do it despite overwhelming evidence that it isn't working.
Facebook's CEO ends 2017 a very changed man: scrambling to curtail (some of) the manipulation he now acknowledges exists, and to save the most powerful platform in human history.
Hmm.... reading between the lines, I would guess that Zuckerberg's real concern is that engagement metrics are falling for Facebook users. I can't imagine that he gives a flip one way or the other about "fake news" or manipulation, as long as people use Facebook.
Just this morning, I unfollowed yet another friend who couldn't resist screaming at everyone with yet another political post. It's getting very, very tiring. Facebook has caused friends of mine to stop speaking (in person) to each other. It's a great platform for seeing family photos, but beyond that I no longer see much utility in using a platform that exists to promote and monetize "us vs. them" mindsets.
Yes indeed, there's no point to destroying society. Facebook fully realizes that doing so would not be profitable.
In fact, what would be even more profitable would be if Facebook ran the world. And by the way, doesn't "Mark Zuckerberg for President" have a certain ring to it?
No, more like a giant poker game where a few people will win and a lot more will lose. Oh, and the game may or may not be fixed, but if it is, there's not a thing you can do about it.
Or more accurately, like the pyramid parties and pyramid letters that were so popular back in the early 1980s, where a bunch of people would pass money to the people at the top of the pyramid. You could make money at it, provided you brought in some greater fools to the next party to pass money to you.
Bitcoin is a zero-sum game. No one is walking away from the table with any money that didn't come from someone else's pocket. Or in some cases, from someone else's credit card, mortgage, retirement account, or college fund.
Nope. The forgotten passwords are a Good Thing, because each lost btc means mine are worth more.
Which leads to a world where if other people can't steal your wallet, at the very least it makes financial sense for them to try to destroy it, so their own BTC will be more valuable. Think of all the people who (even today) can't be bothered to keep backups of critical files, and lose all their data when their computer is lost, is stolen, or crashes. Think of all the people who lose or forget their passwords. Over time, it is inevitable that more and more BTC will become inaccessible.
Think of a brave new cryptocurrency world where a crashed hard drive impoverishes a family, with no hope of recovery. Think of a world where stealing or destroying the life savings of others is effectively impossible to prosecute, and completely impossible to reverse or repair. And this is somehow supposed to be a good thing?
I expect that a decade from now, most of us will look back on the cryptocurrency craze, shake our heads, and say to ourselves, "What in the world was everyone thinking?"
When human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US, but autonomous solutions "only" kill 30,000 people a year due to avoidable glitches, Greed will still arrogantly sell that as a win.
Even if autonomous vehicles resulted in 30,000 deaths a year (which they won't), saving 10,000 lives a year is a win. And the difference is that while the number of human-driver deaths keeps climbing (because people are too busy talking or texting on their smartphones to pay attention to the road), the number of autonomous deaths will decline as the software and hardware improves.
In fact, greed will drive auto makers to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles, because they'll want to minimize their legal liability.
In related news.... the average BTC transaction fee is now at $6 USD, and climbing fast. Could be worse, however. Two weeks ago, it spiked above $19.
Does anyone seriously think that BTC is being used for anything except speculation? It sure isn't being used for "money". You've got people buying BTC using their credit cards, and converting their savings to BTC. It's a classic bubble.
It's gonna be nasty, and when the bubble pops the transaction backlog will be huge as people try to dump their BTC before they lose everything. Transaction fees will shoot through the roof. Boom or bust, the Chinese mining pools will make money hand over fist.
Still... I'm not so sure there won't be a significant number of computers running full Bitcoin nodes and continuing the original blockchain for a long, long time, if only for some obscure geek cred. And those remaining users could still use it as currency.
Bitcoin will never completely go away after it crashes. There will always be a new crowd of suckers to fleece.
Just at look at gold and silver investment scams. Those have been around in various forms for centuries (literally). You can always find some newbie to convince that, "The economy is going to collapse! Invest in gold now! Buy our silver futures now!" I had a friend in college who got suckered into buying silver using credit card debt. It took him years to pay off the money he lost.
So BTC will hang around, and periodically boom and bust as a new crop of sheep get sheared. But I expect most of the copycat cryptocurrencies will fade into obscurity.
US coins/bills that are lost are simply made again. You can't do that with bitcoin.
Which is precisely the point of using money. Money should be a measure and facilitator of economic value and activity, not a finite resource that is intrinsically deflationary. (The historical lessons of gold and silver as deflationary currencies are completely lost on the cryptocurrency crowd.)
If I write a check for $1000 and give it to someone, and he accidentally destroys the check before cashing it, that $1000 is not "gone". The check had no intrinsic value to begin with. It was just a way to transfer value from me to him. All I need to do is write him another check. But once a BTC is lost, it is gone forever. The Bitcoin ecosystem has become a bizarro world where it makes economic sense for someone to find a way to sabotage your wallet and destroy your keys, as it makes the value of his own BTC that much greater (a la "Goldfinger" in the James Bond movie).
The use of BTC as "money" has all but disappeared. Average transactions fees are currently above $5 USD. What is left is a speculative frenzy that is going to pop very dramatically. Sure, you might make some money as a speculator right now, but a lot of people will be left holding the bag when BTC crashes.
Texas Instruments had a similar screwup in the early 80's. After capturing a huge chunk of the U.S. calculator market (TI and HP were the brands to buy), Texas Instruments released a series of lower-cost scientific calculators where the keys were not properly debounced . It was practically impossible to type in a long equation without having multiple double or triple press errors.
I tossed mine in disgust, tried out one of the new Sharp scientific calculators just hitting the market, and never looked back. Texas Instruments basically handed over their share of the scientific calculator market to Sharp and Casio in the space of two years.
At least Apple has the advantage of being able to fix this in a software update.
I'm curious the strategic use of bombers on 24 hour standby, when there are enough ICBMs, including those in nuclear subs which are likely really, really close to North Korea already, to totally decimate that country.
The advantage that bombers have over sub-launched missiles and ICBMs is that a bomber can be recalled from an attack. It is a human-guided delivery system, with crews that can potentially adapt tactics and switch targets in wartime.
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It's not a flaw, it's a feature. It permits employees of legitimate businesses to show a different callback number (e.g. customer service) rather than their personal extensions.
But robocalling can still be fixed from the user end. I've got an Obihai Obi110 on my home phone configured as a call screener. When someone calls, it answers in two rings and says, "You've reached xxx-xxxx. Please press 1 to continue." When a live caller hears that, pressing "1" then causes my phone to ring.
But robocallers are stopped cold. The autodialer pushes the call to the next operator in the call center, but that process takes several seconds. By the time the guy in the call center connects to the call, all he hears is silence, at least until the "disconnected number" tone is played by the Obi110 after another 20 seconds. My phone never rings.
In nearly three years, not one robocall has made it past the Obi110. Call logs show that scam call attempts have dropped from 5 to about 1 per day over the past three years, so my home number is clearly falling off the phone lists of the big call centers.
The pickup-to-handoff delay is built into the robocall system. Scammers can't afford to have a live person listen to every call. Give consumers the ability to implement a similar system for home and cell phones, with a challenge / response that can be modified, and you'll cripple the robocall industry.
Yep. I got a somewhat annoyed text message from someone just the other day, wondering why I called his number. Same area code, same prefix. I explained to him what had happened. The entire Caller ID concept is falling completely apart under the new spammer attacks. I've even had one friend say that she's been repeatedly called by her own phone number.
What I don't understand is why the spammer problem hasn't long since been dealt with. It's not as if the technology is particularly new or novel. I've got an Obihai Obi110 attached to my home landline, configured as a call screener. If someone calls my number, they hear "You've reached xxx-xxxx. Please press 1 to continue." Unless 1 is pressed within 30 seconds, they'll get the "disconnected number" message, but my phone will never ring. In nearly three years, not one robocaller has made it through the screener, because the human in the call center never hears the opening message due to the switching delay.
Why can't cell phones do something similar? The economics of robocalling rely on the call pick-up switching delay. The spammers can't afford to have a person listen to every phone message and punch the proper number to ring through. Make it so the challenge can be modified by the end-user, with whitelisted numbers from the user's directory, and you'll have a filter that will cripple the industry, at least until someone constructs an AI that is smart enough to listen to the challenge and answer it correctly.
In related news, Apple also announced the MacBook Ultra Pro, which features no internal GPU or graphics card. As an accessory, users may purchase the GPU dongle with an associated external graphics card for the low, low price of $1499.
Rumors are also swirling about the anticipated MacBook Mega Ultra Pro laptop, which is rumored to feature no screen or keyboard, and handles all I/O through the Touch Bar. Users can purchase optional dongles for attaching a keyboard and screen to the single USB-C port. Users can also purchase a matching keyboard and screen with a special Apple carrying case for just $999.
Even if Uber cost the same amount as a taxi, I'll still choose an Uber every single time.
I'll choose an option where I don't have to worry about being cheated by the driver, and he won't have to worry about me robbing him.
I'll choose an option where I can press a button and know that the driver will be there to get me in 3 or 4 minutes.
I'll choose an option where I can hop into the car and hop out with payment handled electronically instead of actual money or credit cards changing hands.
I'll choose an option where the vehicle will be clean and reasonably well maintained, and the driver reasonably courteous.
I'll choose an option where the names of both parties involved are known, and all details of the ride can be recovered in case something goes wrong.
I'll choose an option where I can complain to Uber and actually get some satisfaction if something goes wrong, as opposed to the proverbial middle finger from a taxi company.
And most of all, I'll choose Uber because I know that if they ever start to go bad, another ride sharing company can compete with them, instead of them being protected as a government-regulated monopoly.
Studies like this one make me wonder if the people writing them ever ride public transportation themselves, or if they drive to work every day while trying to figure out ways to get everyone else off the road.
I live about 1.5 miles from my office. Some days I walk, some days I drive, and some days I walk two blocks to catch a bus. If I time everything just right, the bus is actually the fastest commute, because I don't have to waste several minutes looking for a parking space.
However - the bus only runs every 20 minutes, even during rush hour (and this is on one of the major thoroughfares to the downtown area). So if I miss the bus, I might as well walk, and if it's raining or blazing hot, I'm not going to slog for 30 minutes through bad weather carrying my computer case. In that case I drive my car. And in any case, if I'm running late, I will drive if I have to.
So all else being equal, if I had no car, what would be my fallback mode of transportation? It wouldn't be a bus (or a train) that runs every 20 minutes. It will be Lyft or Uber, which will pick me up in 3 minutes and drop me next to my office building. When you can't afford to be late, but you know that mass transit absolutely will make you late, you will take a car, one way or the other. So of course people will choose personalized door-to-door transportation over mass transit that may force them to wait for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes in bad weather, or force them to be late. Is anyone really surprised by this, beyond some social engineers trying to force people to behave the "right" way?
I personally think the tipping point will occur when autonomous buses start driving along every road, with a new bus coming by every 5 minutes, and riders' smartphones navigating them from one bus to the next. A system like that will at least eliminate the "mass transit makes me too late" excuse, but it won't happen as long as city planners are stuck in the 20th century mindset of fixed subways and light rail as the be-all and end-all of mass transit.
I just visited Atlanta last week, and took Uber rather than MARTA to go two miles, even though a rail station was near my departure and arrival points. Guess why? Because it was 11 p.m. at night, and I didn't want to wait 20 minutes for the next train. People vote with their wallets and their feet, and ride sharing isn't going anywhere unless mass transit makes some dramatic changes.
As long as Apple keeps selling more iPhones at higher price points, everything will be "good", i.e. lots of revenues and profits.
But Cook has hollowed out the rest of the Apple product line, and made design decisions that have nothing to do with usability but everything to do with "style". No updates to the Mac Mini or Mac Pro in years, the MacBook Pro is an absolute joke, no attempt to improve on the Airport Extreme, etc. Sure, those products are tiny blips in Apple's quarterly revenue, but they are the foundation that makes the iPhone a success.
I can no longer tell family and friends "buy an Apple computer" without reservation. I myself am carrying around a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that is really starting to show its age, but there is nothing in the Apple line that I care to replace it with. Thankfully a Samsung SSD has kept it going up till now, but at some point I will need a new computer. And then what? Perhaps a Dell with some flavor of Linux is in my future, because I can't see myself dealing with the abomination that is Windows 10.
Under Cook's reign, Apple has lost something fundamental: its proselytizers ... the experts who convince dozens or hundreds or thousands of others to try an Apple computer. If some manufacturer would sell a high quality laptop with a good GUI over some flavor of UNIX, I would probably buy it. For that matter, if Microsoft would take a page from the MacOS playbook, and sell a premium laptop with a new operating system built on UNIX foundations, I would switch in a second. But Microsoft is bound and determined to shove Windows 10 down the world's throat instead.
At some point Apple is going to reach "peak iPhone", or it is going to stumble with the next iPhone upgrade, and the Apple revenue monoculture will crash and burn in a very big way. Cook will be out the door, and a new CEO will step in, who more likely than not will make things even worse. It will be a sad ending to a once great computer company.
Perhaps at that point some manufacturer will shake off the "we must slavishly copy Apple" mindset and actually bring some innovation back to the laptop and desktop consumer computer market. The question is, will anyone care by the time it happens?
While the rent would be dirt cheap, the thousands of dollars of guns, ammunition, body armor, and guard dogs you'd need to survive your stay would offset the savings.
I can just imagine the first video:
"Hi, I'm Bill Gates, and this is a computer. To run a computer, you must have software that tells the computer what to do. The most important software is the operating system that controls every aspect of the computer's operation."
"Windows is an operating system created by Microsoft, the company I founded. So let's put Windows on this computer. Now let's make few adjustments to Windows so that our competition's programs won't run on it any more. Now let's sit back and let the money pour in." (At this point dollar bills start showering down on Bill.)
"Let's make it better. Let's cut deals with computer manufacturers so that Windows is the only operating system they will install on their products. Now even more money pours in." (The shower of dollar bills increases.)
"Now let's charge hundreds of dollars for Microsoft products, because only our software will run on our operating system. Boy, are we making money now!" (The torrent of money buries Bill up to his neck.)
"And now I'm one of the richest people on earth. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how computers work."
In 1971, any publicly broadcasted cypher would have almost certainly been encoded with a one-time pad. They were routinely used in espionage in the early days of the Cold War, and are still used today (e.g. the "numbers stations" on shortwave radio). Given that the cyphers in question were a few 10-character alphanumeric strings, a one-time pad would be the obvious means to send a short, unbreakable message ... assuming that's what it really was, a not simply a random string of characters put together by the letter writer to make it appear mysterious.
Realistically, this entire "investigation" is just another example of a lot of people with too much time on their hands looking for patterns in what is effectively random noise.
You (the consumer) are not their customer. Their customers are banks, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other entities that loan you money, or let you buy on credit.
It is not in Equifax's interests for you to freeze your credit. A frozen account is a customer account that cannot be monetized (e.g. by being sold to banks who want to push their credit card on you). So of course Equifax will try to convince you that their "freeze that is not really a freeze" app works. But the thing is, they don't want it to work. If it works, they lose money. So of course it will fail, and you will be the one holding the bag when you are targeted by credit thieves.
Don't screw around with Equifax. Freeze your credit report, and be done with it (and them).
You can't compare a movie like "Justice League" being shown in the theaters with a movie like "Bright" being shown on Netflix.
If I decide to watch "Bright", it costs nothing beyond the monthly Netflix fee I'm already paying. If I hate it, what of it? I turn it off and move on. I can afford to ignore the Rotten Tomatoes score and take a gamble.
But with a film like "Justice League", I'm going to pay about $30 for two people at a minimum, so I pay attention to the reviews to determine if I'll get my money's worth. In effect, Netflix has made itself largely immune to bad critical reviews with its monthly fee model, and there is no way the traditional studios can compete with their pay-per-view model.
About 20 years ago, a small community group operating out of some local bike shops in Tucson, AZ tried something similar. They decided to assemble several dozen free-to-use bicycles out of various old, mismatched parts, and put them in racks around the downtown area for anyone to use. The idea was that the bikes were worthless for resale, so there would be no incentive to steal them, and people could borrow a bike out of one rack, ride a few miles, then stow the bike in a different rack. There was a lot of fanfare in the local paper about the project on the day it kicked off.
Two weeks later, not a single bike could be found in the bike racks. Many of them were found smashed to pieces, thrown off of highway overpasses or onto train tracks by bored teenagers. Others vanished without a trace, despite pleas by the organizers to return them to the racks. And that was the end of Tucson's free-to-ride bicycle experiment.
It's not as if the city of Tucson was the only place where people had to learn this lesson the hard way. What interests me is that (1) Google failed to look at what had been tried in the past before implementing their program, and (2) continues to do it despite overwhelming evidence that it isn't working.
Hmm .... reading between the lines, I would guess that Zuckerberg's real concern is that engagement metrics are falling for Facebook users. I can't imagine that he gives a flip one way or the other about "fake news" or manipulation, as long as people use Facebook.
Just this morning, I unfollowed yet another friend who couldn't resist screaming at everyone with yet another political post. It's getting very, very tiring. Facebook has caused friends of mine to stop speaking (in person) to each other. It's a great platform for seeing family photos, but beyond that I no longer see much utility in using a platform that exists to promote and monetize "us vs. them" mindsets.
Facebook can't die quickly enough.
Yes indeed, there's no point to destroying society. Facebook fully realizes that doing so would not be profitable.
In fact, what would be even more profitable would be if Facebook ran the world. And by the way, doesn't "Mark Zuckerberg for President" have a certain ring to it?
No, more like a giant poker game where a few people will win and a lot more will lose. Oh, and the game may or may not be fixed, but if it is, there's not a thing you can do about it.
Or more accurately, like the pyramid parties and pyramid letters that were so popular back in the early 1980s, where a bunch of people would pass money to the people at the top of the pyramid. You could make money at it, provided you brought in some greater fools to the next party to pass money to you.
Bitcoin is a zero-sum game. No one is walking away from the table with any money that didn't come from someone else's pocket. Or in some cases, from someone else's credit card, mortgage, retirement account, or college fund.
Which leads to a world where if other people can't steal your wallet, at the very least it makes financial sense for them to try to destroy it, so their own BTC will be more valuable. Think of all the people who (even today) can't be bothered to keep backups of critical files, and lose all their data when their computer is lost, is stolen, or crashes. Think of all the people who lose or forget their passwords. Over time, it is inevitable that more and more BTC will become inaccessible.
Think of a brave new cryptocurrency world where a crashed hard drive impoverishes a family, with no hope of recovery. Think of a world where stealing or destroying the life savings of others is effectively impossible to prosecute, and completely impossible to reverse or repair. And this is somehow supposed to be a good thing?
I expect that a decade from now, most of us will look back on the cryptocurrency craze, shake our heads, and say to ourselves, "What in the world was everyone thinking?"
Even if autonomous vehicles resulted in 30,000 deaths a year (which they won't), saving 10,000 lives a year is a win. And the difference is that while the number of human-driver deaths keeps climbing (because people are too busy talking or texting on their smartphones to pay attention to the road), the number of autonomous deaths will decline as the software and hardware improves.
In fact, greed will drive auto makers to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles, because they'll want to minimize their legal liability.
In related news .... the average BTC transaction fee is now at $6 USD, and climbing fast. Could be worse, however. Two weeks ago, it spiked above $19.
Does anyone seriously think that BTC is being used for anything except speculation? It sure isn't being used for "money". You've got people buying BTC using their credit cards, and converting their savings to BTC. It's a classic bubble.
It's gonna be nasty, and when the bubble pops the transaction backlog will be huge as people try to dump their BTC before they lose everything. Transaction fees will shoot through the roof. Boom or bust, the Chinese mining pools will make money hand over fist.
Bitcoin will never completely go away after it crashes. There will always be a new crowd of suckers to fleece.
Just at look at gold and silver investment scams. Those have been around in various forms for centuries (literally). You can always find some newbie to convince that, "The economy is going to collapse! Invest in gold now! Buy our silver futures now!" I had a friend in college who got suckered into buying silver using credit card debt. It took him years to pay off the money he lost.
So BTC will hang around, and periodically boom and bust as a new crop of sheep get sheared. But I expect most of the copycat cryptocurrencies will fade into obscurity.
Which is precisely the point of using money. Money should be a measure and facilitator of economic value and activity, not a finite resource that is intrinsically deflationary. (The historical lessons of gold and silver as deflationary currencies are completely lost on the cryptocurrency crowd.)
If I write a check for $1000 and give it to someone, and he accidentally destroys the check before cashing it, that $1000 is not "gone". The check had no intrinsic value to begin with. It was just a way to transfer value from me to him. All I need to do is write him another check. But once a BTC is lost, it is gone forever. The Bitcoin ecosystem has become a bizarro world where it makes economic sense for someone to find a way to sabotage your wallet and destroy your keys, as it makes the value of his own BTC that much greater (a la "Goldfinger" in the James Bond movie).
The use of BTC as "money" has all but disappeared. Average transactions fees are currently above $5 USD. What is left is a speculative frenzy that is going to pop very dramatically. Sure, you might make some money as a speculator right now, but a lot of people will be left holding the bag when BTC crashes.
... where either the guy or his girlfriend catch on fire when the Samsung's battery explodes.
For much less money, he could launch a weather balloon with a camera on board. The curvature of the earth is obvious at an altitude of 100,000 feet.
I suspect he is more interested in the media attention heâ(TM)s getting from building his rocket.
Texas Instruments had a similar screwup in the early 80's. After capturing a huge chunk of the U.S. calculator market (TI and HP were the brands to buy), Texas Instruments released a series of lower-cost scientific calculators where the keys were not properly debounced . It was practically impossible to type in a long equation without having multiple double or triple press errors.
I tossed mine in disgust, tried out one of the new Sharp scientific calculators just hitting the market, and never looked back. Texas Instruments basically handed over their share of the scientific calculator market to Sharp and Casio in the space of two years.
At least Apple has the advantage of being able to fix this in a software update.
The advantage that bombers have over sub-launched missiles and ICBMs is that a bomber can be recalled from an attack. It is a human-guided delivery system, with crews that can potentially adapt tactics and switch targets in wartime.
Okay, okay, I admit it ... I'm a bot, too.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading over to Ashley Madison. I've got a hot date with a girl bot.