When someone sells you something for "lifetime", it means "for as long as I live". Not you.
In an ideal world, sure. In the real world, shit happens, and you get what you get. Yeah, I didn't like having to buy AnyDVD HD again from RedFox after having a lifetime license from SlySoft. But you know, I respect the guys who resurrected it and brought it back to life, so they deserved getting my money again. Hell, the one thing I wanted was UHD support, and it's finally coming around. They wouldn't have had money for that kind of development if they just let everyone who had old SlySoft lifetime licenses keep use of the software. Might be the same software, but seriously, the fact that it really is two different companies - and the unique circumstances surrounding how this went down - makes this scenario very different from others.
If you're good at something, never do it for free.
I've owned a smartwatch since the first Galaxy Gear came out. Personally I am a big fan and I hate it when I forget to put mine on in the morning. Here are the reasons why I like having one:
- Vibrations for notifications on my wrist; my phone can stay in my pocket or face down on my desk. Very handy while at work or in any other situation where you need to keep your phone silent and out of sight.
- I can quickly glance at my wrist to see what's up versus having to pull my phone out of my pocket or pick it up. Customizing what notifications go to my watch also helps, as I filter out the crap I don't need to know right away and get texts and messages from the wife, other family, and friends.
- It's also a WATCH. I know everyone likes looking at their phones to see what time it is, but I'm old fashioned enough to enjoy looking at my wrist to see what time it is. It's amazing how many people ask. Also has the standard features of a stopwatch and a timer when you need one. "OK Google, set a timer for 15 minutes." So convenient. Also,thanks to modern updates, if I'm ever in a situation where I can't recharge it for a few days, I can disable all other functionality and reduce it to just being a watch and it'll stay on for days.
- Some of the apps available are actually helpful. Google Maps is handy; if you're in a vehicle without a heads up GPS or a way to mount your phone, just send the GPS directions to your wrist. It buzzes every time you're near a turn, and it's easier & safer to glance at your wrist rather than look down at your phone in the car. I also love Android Pay and NFC functionality available in newer models. Forgot my wallet and my phone's in the car? *push button* *hold wrist to pad* *BEEEP* Done. Taking a flight? Boarding pass barcode on my wrist. Need to turn the temperature down? Pull up Nest. Have a question. "OK Google,
what the hell is..." Taking an Uber? My drunk ass can just poke at my wrist to summon one and keep up with where it is.
- Customizability. Get tired of your watch looking one way? Pick a new face. Want something custom? Get Watchmaker and make your own. It's all in your control.
- Actually going to use it for fitness-related activity and tracking? Well there you go. I'm not there yet, but it IS cool to see it occasionally pop up with "Yay, you hit 10,000 steps today, good job!" or whatever.
- Control of playing media - I can skip songs without pulling out my phone and tapping the screen, it's right there on my wrist. Group photo? Prop up my phone and use the app to take the picture.
If none of this is useful to you, then don't buy one. Simple enough.
I understand that either you have an extreme lack of interest in the NFL, or this was an attempt at humor, or maybe you're butthurt over the protests (either for or against them), but at least attempt to be somewhat correct. Tens of millions of people. Hardly insignificant, especially considering companies are actually spending MORE money on advertising this year.
Seriously, has anyone bothered monitoring packets from an Echo or Google Home using their router or Wireshark? If these devices ARE uploading voice data when you're not actually using it then it's not difficult to figure out. I monitored mine at home for a month straight, and the only spikes in OUTBOUND traffic coincided with the precise times I asked Alexa for something. Beyond few bits here and there, which are too small to hold any meaningful audio of understandable quality, I failed to detect any secret surveillance.
With all of the engineers out there (who are smarter than me, for sure) there has to be folks who've tried what I have on a bigger scale with better tools, and if someone had found evidence of illegal surveillance, they would have come forward by now. It's what everyone wants, right? To PROVE these things are evil?
If you say audio uploads aren't detectable then give me a plausible method for ex-filtration of the data.
If I had mod points I'd mod this up because it told me that's what my mod points are for. I didn't even have to read your comment! I just knew it was the right thing to do!
A pretty good case was made here that it was, in fact, available as early as 2005 and became part of Windows Vista in 2006, in addition to rolling out with Office 2007.
I think you meant WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access. It's insecure as hell and should never be used - just Google around and you'll learn why. If that's the only way your printer will connect, get a new printer, or plug it into a cheap PC and share it on your network. You won't get WPA using PFSense anyway. I also don't understand why it's important to have USB 3.0 in a router. If you're wanting to plug in an external hard drive and serve it up as a NAS, the little chip in a router isn't going to be very efficient at distributing that across your network at much higher than USB 2.0 speeds anyway, so IMO it's better to just have a cheap PC serve it up on the network. Hell, Newegg had a basic refurbished PC running on a Celeron with USB 3.0 advertised to me in my email this morning for $90, and even an i3 for $120. Perfect to stick in a corner and have it run basic server tasks for you without running up the light bill, and still cheaper than a lot of fancy ass routers. Sexy? No. Efficient? Yup.
PFSense is pretty solid, but if you're looking for cheap and low powered but still get serious performance, check out the EdgeRouter Lite. Best decision I ever made. Way more bang for your buck.
I've logged the packets from my two Echoes since I got them at the router level. So far I've yet to see them upload any significant amount of data when someone in the house wasn't asking Alexa for something. Even when I saw something when I knew it wasn't me, I was able to find a corresponding log in the Alexa app showing my wife or daughter had done it.
I welcome someone to actually come forward with packet logs showing voice data that WAS transmitted when someone WASN'T using it. Should be easy enough to come up with if it's happening, and I can't be the only one who's been sniffing packets.
It's not hard to figure out. If your traffic gets prioritized higher over others on existing infrastructure, that's less infrastructure you have to invest in to run your business. Net neutrality actually makes those who use more bandwidth have to spend more to get what they want over those who sip at the pool of bits and bytes. Pai clearly wants to kick the plebes out of the pool, build a wall around it, and allow his capitalist buddies free reign while the rest of the crowd lines up at the gate.
The internet is not a commodity - it's a utility, a means to an end. It's essential that it remains balanced for all.
I used it once. A manager at the company I was working at decided to stop notifying employees about missing time on their time cards until AFTER it was submitted to payroll for processing and thus too late to correct it so the employee got their full pay. It was done as "training on the consequences of not properly reporting your time." I called BS on it, was told "If you want to get paid, submit your time," which is reasonable, but to not even give a person a chance to fix it before it's too late? Nope. I'm not down with screwing with someone's paycheck, so I called our hotline to report the practice. They didn't take any of my information, gave me a case number, and said to call back in a couple of days for an update. The very next day the office started reporting missing time again, word on the grapevine was the manager had a tough conversation with their boss, and not a single thing happened to me or changed in any way.
If your company doesn't do business in an ethical manner, it's time to find a new company, or raise hell and fix it yourself if you think it's worth the risk and effort.
This is why I maintain my license, mobile gear and some semblance of emergency power. I'm hardly ever on the air these days (was way more active when I had a long commute and used to travel a lot) but if the proverbial shit hits the fan I'll be able to do something.
I actually enjoy it. Once I trained it a little to understand what was an update versus a promo, it does a pretty good job of sorting my stuff. Things that don't get automatically sorted stand out more to me since they don't have a category attached. Plus just checking "done" on everything helps me keep my inbox clean without actually deleting anything. I wouldn't want to go back to regular GMail.
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When someone sells you something for "lifetime", it means "for as long as I live". Not you.
In an ideal world, sure. In the real world, shit happens, and you get what you get. Yeah, I didn't like having to buy AnyDVD HD again from RedFox after having a lifetime license from SlySoft. But you know, I respect the guys who resurrected it and brought it back to life, so they deserved getting my money again. Hell, the one thing I wanted was UHD support, and it's finally coming around. They wouldn't have had money for that kind of development if they just let everyone who had old SlySoft lifetime licenses keep use of the software. Might be the same software, but seriously, the fact that it really is two different companies - and the unique circumstances surrounding how this went down - makes this scenario very different from others.
If you're good at something, never do it for free.
The Joker had it right.
If none of this is useful to you, then don't buy one. Simple enough.
They're surveying the area for an interstellar bypass.
I understand that either you have an extreme lack of interest in the NFL, or this was an attempt at humor, or maybe you're butthurt over the protests (either for or against them), but at least attempt to be somewhat correct. Tens of millions of people. Hardly insignificant, especially considering companies are actually spending MORE money on advertising this year.
Seriously, has anyone bothered monitoring packets from an Echo or Google Home using their router or Wireshark? If these devices ARE uploading voice data when you're not actually using it then it's not difficult to figure out. I monitored mine at home for a month straight, and the only spikes in OUTBOUND traffic coincided with the precise times I asked Alexa for something. Beyond few bits here and there, which are too small to hold any meaningful audio of understandable quality, I failed to detect any secret surveillance.
With all of the engineers out there (who are smarter than me, for sure) there has to be folks who've tried what I have on a bigger scale with better tools, and if someone had found evidence of illegal surveillance, they would have come forward by now. It's what everyone wants, right? To PROVE these things are evil?
If you say audio uploads aren't detectable then give me a plausible method for ex-filtration of the data.
If I had mod points I'd mod this up because it told me that's what my mod points are for. I didn't even have to read your comment! I just knew it was the right thing to do!
*points finger* Ha ha!
Well I'll be dammed.
You mean Plex, right? Plesk is a pain enough of the ass on Linux, I can't imagine running it on a Windows phone to host multiple websites.
A pretty good case was made here that it was, in fact, available as early as 2005 and became part of Windows Vista in 2006, in addition to rolling out with Office 2007.
Anyone else find themselves yelling out loud (or in their heads) "HACK THE PLANET!!!" when they read the summary?
... WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access.
Dammit, I meant WPS - Wi-Fi Protected Setup.
I think you meant WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access. It's insecure as hell and should never be used - just Google around and you'll learn why. If that's the only way your printer will connect, get a new printer, or plug it into a cheap PC and share it on your network. You won't get WPA using PFSense anyway. I also don't understand why it's important to have USB 3.0 in a router. If you're wanting to plug in an external hard drive and serve it up as a NAS, the little chip in a router isn't going to be very efficient at distributing that across your network at much higher than USB 2.0 speeds anyway, so IMO it's better to just have a cheap PC serve it up on the network. Hell, Newegg had a basic refurbished PC running on a Celeron with USB 3.0 advertised to me in my email this morning for $90, and even an i3 for $120. Perfect to stick in a corner and have it run basic server tasks for you without running up the light bill, and still cheaper than a lot of fancy ass routers. Sexy? No. Efficient? Yup.
PFSense is pretty solid, but if you're looking for cheap and low powered but still get serious performance, check out the EdgeRouter Lite. Best decision I ever made. Way more bang for your buck.
I've logged the packets from my two Echoes since I got them at the router level. So far I've yet to see them upload any significant amount of data when someone in the house wasn't asking Alexa for something. Even when I saw something when I knew it wasn't me, I was able to find a corresponding log in the Alexa app showing my wife or daughter had done it.
I welcome someone to actually come forward with packet logs showing voice data that WAS transmitted when someone WASN'T using it. Should be easy enough to come up with if it's happening, and I can't be the only one who's been sniffing packets.
1. Cut a hole in a box
2. Put your droid in the box
3. Make Linux open the box
And that's the way you do it!
Gaaaaah, beat me to it.
It's not hard to figure out. If your traffic gets prioritized higher over others on existing infrastructure, that's less infrastructure you have to invest in to run your business. Net neutrality actually makes those who use more bandwidth have to spend more to get what they want over those who sip at the pool of bits and bytes. Pai clearly wants to kick the plebes out of the pool, build a wall around it, and allow his capitalist buddies free reign while the rest of the crowd lines up at the gate.
The internet is not a commodity - it's a utility, a means to an end. It's essential that it remains balanced for all.
We owe you one, eh!
I used it once. A manager at the company I was working at decided to stop notifying employees about missing time on their time cards until AFTER it was submitted to payroll for processing and thus too late to correct it so the employee got their full pay. It was done as "training on the consequences of not properly reporting your time." I called BS on it, was told "If you want to get paid, submit your time," which is reasonable, but to not even give a person a chance to fix it before it's too late? Nope. I'm not down with screwing with someone's paycheck, so I called our hotline to report the practice. They didn't take any of my information, gave me a case number, and said to call back in a couple of days for an update. The very next day the office started reporting missing time again, word on the grapevine was the manager had a tough conversation with their boss, and not a single thing happened to me or changed in any way.
If your company doesn't do business in an ethical manner, it's time to find a new company, or raise hell and fix it yourself if you think it's worth the risk and effort.
I don't know a lawyer that would take only 10%. Someone's looking to make it rain.
Wider availability, can't DVR anything, can't block ads, but most everyone will watch anyway. Boosh.
Certainly, but the process is a little hard on the cow, and thus would draw protests from PETA and the like.
It's ATSC now, buddy.
This is why I maintain my license, mobile gear and some semblance of emergency power. I'm hardly ever on the air these days (was way more active when I had a long commute and used to travel a lot) but if the proverbial shit hits the fan I'll be able to do something.
I actually enjoy it. Once I trained it a little to understand what was an update versus a promo, it does a pretty good job of sorting my stuff. Things that don't get automatically sorted stand out more to me since they don't have a category attached. Plus just checking "done" on everything helps me keep my inbox clean without actually deleting anything. I wouldn't want to go back to regular GMail.