I won't be joining either of these class-action lawsuits, even though I've been affected. You know why? Because the overly litigious nature of our society is just getting far too stupid for words -- and I don't care in the least if my opinion on this is unpopular, either; I'm going to say it anyway.
Consider: my iPhone 6 performed well enough to play one particular game fairly seamlessly. I'm one of the crazies who likes to install beta software on his primary device, so I was one of the first people to get a taste of the disputed throttling. It was pretty significant, at first... not just something that you'd notice only in benchmarks, but something that actually made that one game entirely unplayable. I was actually quite annoyed at the inconvenience... but I was also fully aware that the issue was directly related to the beta I had just installed, so I simply submitted a bug report, and played that particular game less frequently. Over the course of improved releases of the beta, the game performed slightly better. It never quite reached pre-update performance levels, but it was largely playable again. I also did take personal note that the stability of that phone had indeed increased... there were no more spontaneous shutdowns. So even with the performance degradation, I still saw the updates as an overall improvement.
Fast forward to the present, and I now have a spiffy new iPhone X -- which plays almost all of my games flawlessly -- and my iPhone 6 has been passed down to one of my kids. So here's where I get to explain that asterisk above, and in-so-doing, explain why I'll be abstaining from the lawsuits: I wouldn't have been able to pass that phone down, if it were still randomly shutting down. It would simply be an out-of-warranty worthless brick, and I'd probably have no clue as to why! Apple gave that old iPhone a new lease on life, by fixing a serious bug. This change to iOS is not at all worthy of a lawsuit response... it's actually a good thing.
Further, consider what is most affected... it's basically just games. Nothing at all critical was ever affected by this reduction in performance, even during the earliest beta stages. The phone still makes calls just as well as it ever did. It still receives emergency dispatches from the local services, just as it always did. This is entirely a convenience issue. And if there is someone out there who has a non-game based use case for needing the absolute best performance out of their smart phone, which might conceivably affect them financially in some way? Well, I would submit to you that such a person had already updated their device to the newest, fastest device that they could get their hands on... and would therefore, be extremely unlikely to be affected by this issue.
People just need to stop suing over every little inconvenience that pops up in life.
... It's a growing problem that could cost pay-TV companies millions of subscribers -- and billions of dollars in revenue -- when they can least afford it....
My office mates are looking at me funny, because I quite literally laughed out loud when I read that.
if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere.
Something tells me this guy may not be true believer.
In line with that premise:
... No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is....
(Emphasis added.) So, how could the Earth have a "center" if it were flat?
Uh huh. This dude is a fraud, plain and simple. But the worst part is, no "real" flat-earthers would ever believe him, if he did survive to tell the tale and finally "realize" that the earth is round... because upon making such a statement, they would just label him as another brainwashed member of the "round-earth conspiracy." So ultimately, he doesn't even have any kind of legitimate end-game, here... it's all a pointless waste of time.
Every bit of that was hypocritical bull. It's an open secret that Russia has been conducting their own offensive operations for years now, and they have been getting away with it specifically because the US can't "intercept and tap global internet traffic" as the Russians claim.
But their excuses for segmenting off their own corner of the internet aren't really meant for us, anyway; they're directed inward. In fact, this entire maneuver is almost certainly directly linked to Russia's desire (and that of their allies) to more thoroughly block access at will to large swaths of the internet, for their own populace. Don't like the latest anti-Russian sentiment on Slashdot or on Facebook, because it comes to close to exposing the truth? No problem -- just block it! When they start implementing their real agenda, they'll likely position it as an "anti-porn" initiative or some such thing, but make no mistake; this is all about controlling the information that reaches the people that matter the most... the ones who might one day rise up against the Orwellian control being exerted by their government.
Information control only works for so long, before little bits of the truth leak through the cracks.
... I can launch him to 62 miles for about $300k. I do not see him volunteering....
I appreciate the thought, Elon -- but to be fair, most people can't afford your $300K price tag for what amounts to a simple joy ride. (Besides, all he really wants is to squeeze in his five seconds of fame before departing this world... and that apparently only costs about $20K.)
This is nothing more than your typical "correlation is not causation" scenario.
Whenever you find yourself reading a story which might lend itself to a questionable cause-and-effect relationship, the questions you have to ask yourself are simply: 1) Who wrote this? and 2) What is their agenda?
Let's not misunderstand what he's doing here; it has nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to prove or disprove anything at all. The whole flat-earth thing is just an excuse to get someone with deep enough pockets to fund his stunt rocket. The reality is, it would be so much cheaper (and safer!) to exceed the altitude he's going to reach by just chartering a flight on most any airline; they routinely achieve altitudes of 35,000 feet, (6.6 miles) and tickets for the flight wouldn't come even remotely near to the cost of his $20K publicity stunt.
Which, by the way, is all that this is, in the end... because you can't readily see the curvature of the earth until you reach at least 50,000 feet. (Modern airlines don't generally reach that high, since they grounded the Concorde.)
Apple has already succeeded in proving that people are willing to pay a premium for their phones. As such, higher prices across the board are a reasonable expectation -- but I don't expect Apple to push them quite as high on their "low end" model as The Verge is speculating. Rather, I think that the LCD model is going to be initially positioned as a direct replacement for the iPhone 8 Plus, and thus, will be priced accordingly: $799.
Further, I think it will be a short-lived product, with maybe one or two years before being discontinued entirely in favor of OLED models... and I think Apple has already made obvious plans towards that end, because they've left an opening for it's name: It'll be called the iPhone 9.
Additionally, just as has often been the case in the past, any "lower-end" phones below that price bracket will be served by older models, or derivative products based upon those older production lines; thus, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone SE will both still have a place in next year's lineup.
And according to the formula, this is where I put the obligatory, "You heard it here first, folks!" declaration... right?
If you're specifically looking for something that can tap into the Apple ecosystem, I'd personally recommend scavenging over on eBay for a 2nd-gen or 3rd-gen AppleTV.* At a glance, it looks like you could probably get one for under $50. Configure it for your network by attaching it to a screen temporarily, disconnect from that screen (if you prefer a headless implementation) and move it to the location where you want to hear music, and pair it up with any audio output device which has either an optical audio input or an HDMI input. (If you don't have such a device lying around, you can grab a cheap sound bar from someplace like Best Buy or Walmart... a quick search showed me several options on their respective websites for between $35 and $50.)
Once you have it configured as described, you can use any iOS device to either stream music from any app on your device to the AppleTV, by selecting it as the audio output device for that iOS device, or you can use the Apple TV Remote app on the iOS device to remotely control music directly on the AppleTV. You can also control the AppleTV similarly from a computer (either PC or Mac) which has iTunes installed.
Speaking of which: alternatively, if you happen to have a computer in the area where you want music -- or a spare computer just lying around that you could put in place -- you could load up iTunes and play music through that computer, controlling it from the iTunes Remote app on your iOS device. It gives you the same basic end result as a headless AppleTV, possibly even with slightly more flexibility, since computers usually have a standard headphone jack; it's just not necessarily the most cost-effective solution unless you already have that computer on hand.
* Note: I excluded 4th-gen AppleTVs above because they're a bit more expensive, and because they only have HDMI (no optical) for output, so keep that in mind if you decide to splurge on something newer.
I'm personally suspicious of anyone who asks me for my private data -- all the more-so, when the first thing out of their mouth is that they only need it to protect me. And the thought that promptly entered my mind upon reading this particular blurb, is that perhaps somebody deep within the confines of Facebook HQ is positively drooling at the prospect of all those uploaded nudes that will soon be coming his way...
The info that you (and other Facebook users) provide voluntarily is certainly the primary source, but I think it's reasonable to speculate that it is by no means the sole source of Facebook's "connections" capabilities. Just like anyone else who wants to know something about someone, Facebook almost certainly Google's you. In this particular situation, it's worth mentioning that court cases are typically public record, and many of those records have been made available online. Therefore, a comprehensive search of the web would likely eventually turn up a record which includes the names of the two counsels on each side of any given case, as well as other people who were involved in that case. Cross-reference those names against the Facebook user list, and there you have it: several new potential connections.
With all of the rumors related to issues sourcing the parts necessary for Apple's forthcoming iPhone X and the anticipated short supply at launch, this causes me to wonder: where does Apple assemble their iDevices, again?
(Spoiler... it's predominantly Foxconn, in China.)
So Amazon is trying to say that their tech is going to power the shipboard communications of our starships?
But snark aside, it actually would be a pretty impressive feat, if you think about it. You tell the local device who you are ("Picard...") and who you'd like to connect with ("... to Riker...") and the device communicates with the broader network, automatically geo-locates your intended recipient, activates the communicator on their end, replays your query for them to receive ("Picard to Riker.") and they respond. (... "Go ahead.")
And we're almost there, technologically speaking. Neat.
Alternatively, math undergraduates are often told that Nobel was jealous of a Swedish mathematician who had an affair with his wife (though this story is ruined by the fact that Nobel didn't actually have a wife).
Maybe the details of the story are just a tiny bit off... could it be that Nobel's jealousy drove him to seduce and have an affair with the wife of a Swedish mathematician? Hmmmm....
If corporations cared at all about unemployment, they already know exactly what they could do to remedy that problem: Let the cream rise to the top. That is to say, offer additional training to existing highly skilled employees, so that they can easily qualify for the next job up the ladder, and then move them up. Then fill the now vacant lower level jobs with people who are presently unemployed and living on the street (or in their parents basement). The newly hired wage earners will be thrilled just to have a job at all, and won't be quite as picky about how much they're earning, and the highly skilled workers will be thrilled to get the raise, and to be recognized for their contributions.
The problem, as I see it, is that far too many companies are more interested in the bottom line than in anything else. And one of the easiest ways to turn a profit is (and always has been) to milk existing employees for all that they're worth for as long as possible, and make them do tasks above their pay level, because they "can't find anyone qualified for that position, right now"... which basically causes that old adage, "You have to move out to move up," to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've moved out because of that, myself. If you're in the workforce at all, you've probably done it, too.
And here's where it gets even more frustrating: the "requirements" for any given position do not remain static. It's quite common for employers to adjust the requirements based upon the skillset of the person who just left that position. "Hey, Ralph became a freaking genius at SharePoint while he was working for us. We can't possibly hire someone who knows less than him, now! Change that job req for his position to include senior SharePoint experience, okay? Years of experience? I dunno... how long did Ralph work here? That long? Really?"
And thus, the position that Ralph left -- specifically because he was being underpaid for the skills he'd gained over his years there -- is now entirely un-fillable. Because nobody with those skills would take the job, at the offered pay.
Employers shoot themselves in the foot like that, all too often. My previous employer did it, too... that's why they're my previous employer. And over the past few weeks, I've sat by and watched as my up-line supervisor is being run through the beginnings of the scenario I've described above... so I would imagine she's currently evaluating her options.
There are clearly some conflicting agendas, here. Apple wants the $20 price point, because that's already the target price for most new movies; thus, they would be able to justify contract language which allows them to upgrade recent movie purchases which were made in that price bracket to the new 4K versions, making it a very attractive bullet point during their pitch for the new AppleTV. I'd even wager that the stage script has already been crafted; perhaps something along the lines of, "So you might ask, how much am I going to pay for all this new 4K content? I have good news! If you've purchased new movies from us recently, you probably already have some 4K movies, just waiting for you to download!"
In contrast, the movie studios all want to sell you brand spanking new 4K copies of all of the movies you already bought... at $25 to $30 a pop. "Upgrade? What on earth are you talking about? Who cares if you already bought the 1080p version? That was yesterday -- this is today! Either buy the 4K movie or don't, and that's my final offer. Geez -- what do these people think... that us movie studios are just made of money?"
The US is a wonderful place for innovators... as long as they don't want to do anything too risky, or in any way even remotely derivative. The legal structure within the US has become so antagonistic towards anyone who experiments with technology, that the very second something goes awry, and (as an example) a drone randomly falls out of the sky, a dozen ambulance-chasing lawyers pounce out of the nearby brush and start screaming, "Lawsuit! Lawsuit! Wait -- can we make this a class action lawsuit? Even better!" But to make matters worse, sometimes nothing actually goes awry, and the very real potential for a profitable venture starts to peak over the horizon... at which point a different group of lawyers eagerly leap to the ready, and these lawyers are screaming, "Patent! Trademark! Perpetual royalties! Lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit!!"
Thus, our litigation centric society sometimes forces innovators to take their ball and glove, and go play in somebody elses backyard. And..... who exactly is surprised by this?
My preferred solution actually shoves even more features out to peripheral devices than the OP would prefer... but frankly, you're not going to hit all of those bullet points with most available solutions, anyway. That said: I went with an Optoma HD26 projector for ~$650 in my home theater room, and I (and my family) have been very happy with the results. I get a 1080p image at 110" -- which is a reasonably achievable size for projectors, but outrageously expensive for conventional TVs, smart or otherwise. I'm projecting directly on a light-gray wall, which works quite well with a digital projector, so no screen is really necessary. Additionally, the money you save by going with a middle-tier projector can be put into other devices, such as a mid-to-high end audio head unit with HDMI pass-through to output to the projector. (That gives you the array of inputs that the OP is looking for.)
Obviously, projectors don't work in all scenarios; you do have to have a windowless room (or an easily darkened room) to get the best experience, and the most optimal install option is usually ceiling mounted -- especially if you have kids. But if those hurdles don't seem too high for you, I'd say take the leap. It's well worth it, in my opinion.
As a cord-cutter who has quite happily used an internet-only service provider, alongside a standard antenna for access to broadcast television... I would absolutely never consider a fully blown out cable package for my own use. I mean, sure... the author's math sounds mildly interesting and all, but let's glance at the math required to replicate something like my own setup, for comparison:
* Antenna in the attic or on the roof - one time cost of $30 to $100 or so
* A couple of Hauppauge USB television tuners - one time cost of $50 to $150 or so each
* A home theater computer capable of recording shows from those tuners - one time cost of $400 to $3000 or so (it's a computer... you can pretty much pick your price)
* Your preferred media streaming receiver(s), to allow you to stream from your HTPC out to any other TVs in your house over your LAN - one time cost of $40 to $200 or so each
Are you sensing the theme here? No matter how cheap your cable subscription is, it's only a matter of time before my own one time cost setup -- much of which I'd have bought anyway -- saves me money.
"But it's not one-to-one! You're missing out on sports channels and HBO and SyFy!"
Yup: all true. And honestly, I'm no worse off for it, either.
And here, I was starting to wonder if Facebook reviewers had gone over the wall into approving of porn, based upon their response when I reported a link, several months back. It actually makes so much more sense that the porn purveyors are just more adept at technical manipulation, and the content reviewers (literally) didn't see what I saw.
... except that the porn link was attached to a Facebook profile that had friend requested me.
... and that profile itself had adult oriented content in it.
... and for some reason, the reviewer didn't seem to have a problem with some random person friending everyone and their brother, while posing in flimsy negligees in their public profile photos.
...
Umm, yeah... I'm just going to go ahead and opine that they still have quite a bit of work to do, before they're going to fully regain my trust. (And my kids won't be signing up for Facebook, anytime soon.)
Once in awhile, a company gets called out for tracking, such as in this case -- but they are by no means the only offenders. There are plenty of other companies out there who are simply more adept at not getting caught. One of the things that you'll see every time you open an app with an obviously youthful target audience, is an initial query when the app is first opened: "How old are you?" The obvious takeaway should be, if the user opening the app is under thirteen, turn off tracking... right?
But consider this: we all know perfectly well that companies don't want to turn off tracking -- and in fact, the habits of the younger generation are dramatically more valuable, since those are tomorrows big consumers that we're talking about... and ironically enough, making it illegal to track them makes their usage data that much more valuable.
The solution? Simple: disable features when a user says they're under thirteen. How many times have you opened an app intended for one of your younger children, entered their age, and been abruptly informed that you either need to get parental permission to use the app, or simply can't use the app at all? Personally, I've seen it at least a few times. At first glance, it means (at the very least) that someone who can be legally tracked needs to log into the app for their child... or, alternatively, the increasingly tech savvy youth -- who in many cases is already staring at the screen themselves when this query pops up -- simply needs to go back one screen and lie about their age.
To wit, it has become in the best interests of these app companies to socially engineer their youthful target audience into becoming pathological liars. It wants to know my age? Oh... I better lie, or they'll turn stuff off. The immediate results are, it gets that much easier for these companies to track their users with relative impunity... because after all, the users said they were over thirteen... didn't they?
But I honestly have to wonder: aside from all that never-ending tracking... what exactly are the long term results of this social engineering experiment?
I'm a long-time Mac-user and Apple fan in general -- and while I feel far more confident when using MacOS than when using Windows, I also feel that it is folly to try to convince anyone that Macs are somehow immune to computer viruses. The way I see it, you have to be realistic and recognize that your own personal vulnerability to hacking efforts is dependent upon a great number of factors. In fact, just like any other crime, the most obvious factors to consider are means, motive and opportunity.
Means could perhaps refer to vulnerabilities. Everyone knows that Microsoft's code sucks -- but let's be frank: Apple releases security patches, too. Therefore, there have been security vulnerabilities in their code. Therefore, human nature being what it is, it is extremely likely that there are still security vulnerabilities in their code. It may sound an awful lot like a logical fallacy, but anyone who really knows computers will tell you that this is almost certainly true, nonetheless.
Motive is most often addressed by Mac advocates (and PC advocates alike, for that matter) who trumpet Apple's small market share as a reason for ignoring the platform. The thing is, Apple's market share figures do not by any stretch of the imagination convey the shear raw number of Mac users; believe it or not, there are somewhere around 100 million Mac users, according to recent figures from Apple. That's not such a small target, if you think about it. But perhaps more intriguing than that, is the finicky nature of this so-called "security through obscurity" argument... because it's not exactly universally true; that is to say, it's only valid until someone interesting to a hacker starts using the platform in question. At that point, the return-on-investment isn't so much a question of how many people they can scoop up in their net... so long as they successfully scoop up the intended target.
And finally, opportunity: We could interpret this as the "human" element, or simply the question of how many Mac users happened to commit the specific type of opsec failure, which causes them to fall into whatever trap had been laid. The small infection rate could suggest that the window of opportunity was small, for some reason; perhaps the nefarious entity who laid the trap was just messing around for a little while, or perhaps (as implied above) they caught up their intended target in the trap, and promptly pulled down their trap to minimize further chances of discovery, and prolong access to the intended target. (Looking at the facts of the case, it might be reasonable to state that they quite succeeded in this goal!)
So regardless of your preferred platform -- this means you too, *nix users -- never, ever assume that your favorite platform is absolutely perfectly secure. Unless it's disconnected from the network entirely. And disconnected from power. And sealed in a locked safe. At the bottom of the ocean. With explosive booby traps. Surrounded by trained sharks with fricken lasers mounted on their heads.
I'm having difficulty seeing exactly how Microsoft's emulation of the x86 instruction set on a competing platform is really any different from the various other emulation efforts -- and sometimes outright copies -- in both past and present products. (Such as AMD chipsets, SoftPC/SoftWindows/RealPC, Virtual PC... and that's just off the top of my head.) I mean, other than the notion that most past emulation efforts weren't really a threat, whereas this is the biggest gorilla in the jungle shifting all of their efforts over to a competitor, which might conceivably cause Intel to go bankrupt. Yeah... no real difference except that, of course.
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I won't be joining either of these class-action lawsuits, even though I've been affected. You know why? Because the overly litigious nature of our society is just getting far too stupid for words -- and I don't care in the least if my opinion on this is unpopular, either; I'm going to say it anyway.
Consider: my iPhone 6 performed well enough to play one particular game fairly seamlessly. I'm one of the crazies who likes to install beta software on his primary device, so I was one of the first people to get a taste of the disputed throttling. It was pretty significant, at first... not just something that you'd notice only in benchmarks, but something that actually made that one game entirely unplayable. I was actually quite annoyed at the inconvenience... but I was also fully aware that the issue was directly related to the beta I had just installed, so I simply submitted a bug report, and played that particular game less frequently. Over the course of improved releases of the beta, the game performed slightly better. It never quite reached pre-update performance levels, but it was largely playable again. I also did take personal note that the stability of that phone had indeed increased... there were no more spontaneous shutdowns. So even with the performance degradation, I still saw the updates as an overall improvement.
Fast forward to the present, and I now have a spiffy new iPhone X -- which plays almost all of my games flawlessly -- and my iPhone 6 has been passed down to one of my kids. So here's where I get to explain that asterisk above, and in-so-doing, explain why I'll be abstaining from the lawsuits: I wouldn't have been able to pass that phone down, if it were still randomly shutting down. It would simply be an out-of-warranty worthless brick, and I'd probably have no clue as to why! Apple gave that old iPhone a new lease on life, by fixing a serious bug. This change to iOS is not at all worthy of a lawsuit response... it's actually a good thing.
Further, consider what is most affected... it's basically just games. Nothing at all critical was ever affected by this reduction in performance, even during the earliest beta stages. The phone still makes calls just as well as it ever did. It still receives emergency dispatches from the local services, just as it always did. This is entirely a convenience issue. And if there is someone out there who has a non-game based use case for needing the absolute best performance out of their smart phone, which might conceivably affect them financially in some way? Well, I would submit to you that such a person had already updated their device to the newest, fastest device that they could get their hands on... and would therefore, be extremely unlikely to be affected by this issue.
People just need to stop suing over every little inconvenience that pops up in life.
... It's a growing problem that could cost pay-TV companies millions of subscribers -- and billions of dollars in revenue -- when they can least afford it. ...
My office mates are looking at me funny, because I quite literally laughed out loud when I read that.
Something tells me this guy may not be true believer.
In line with that premise:
... No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. ...
(Emphasis added.) So, how could the Earth have a "center" if it were flat?
Uh huh. This dude is a fraud, plain and simple. But the worst part is, no "real" flat-earthers would ever believe him, if he did survive to tell the tale and finally "realize" that the earth is round... because upon making such a statement, they would just label him as another brainwashed member of the "round-earth conspiracy." So ultimately, he doesn't even have any kind of legitimate end-game, here... it's all a pointless waste of time.
Every bit of that was hypocritical bull. It's an open secret that Russia has been conducting their own offensive operations for years now, and they have been getting away with it specifically because the US can't "intercept and tap global internet traffic" as the Russians claim.
But their excuses for segmenting off their own corner of the internet aren't really meant for us, anyway; they're directed inward. In fact, this entire maneuver is almost certainly directly linked to Russia's desire (and that of their allies) to more thoroughly block access at will to large swaths of the internet, for their own populace. Don't like the latest anti-Russian sentiment on Slashdot or on Facebook, because it comes to close to exposing the truth? No problem -- just block it! When they start implementing their real agenda, they'll likely position it as an "anti-porn" initiative or some such thing, but make no mistake; this is all about controlling the information that reaches the people that matter the most... the ones who might one day rise up against the Orwellian control being exerted by their government.
Information control only works for so long, before little bits of the truth leak through the cracks.
... I can launch him to 62 miles for about $300k. I do not see him volunteering. ...
I appreciate the thought, Elon -- but to be fair, most people can't afford your $300K price tag for what amounts to a simple joy ride. (Besides, all he really wants is to squeeze in his five seconds of fame before departing this world... and that apparently only costs about $20K.)
This is nothing more than your typical "correlation is not causation" scenario.
Whenever you find yourself reading a story which might lend itself to a questionable cause-and-effect relationship, the questions you have to ask yourself are simply: 1) Who wrote this? and 2) What is their agenda?
Because there is almost always an agenda.
Let's not misunderstand what he's doing here; it has nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to prove or disprove anything at all. The whole flat-earth thing is just an excuse to get someone with deep enough pockets to fund his stunt rocket. The reality is, it would be so much cheaper (and safer!) to exceed the altitude he's going to reach by just chartering a flight on most any airline; they routinely achieve altitudes of 35,000 feet, (6.6 miles) and tickets for the flight wouldn't come even remotely near to the cost of his $20K publicity stunt.
Which, by the way, is all that this is, in the end... because you can't readily see the curvature of the earth until you reach at least 50,000 feet. (Modern airlines don't generally reach that high, since they grounded the Concorde.)
Apple has already succeeded in proving that people are willing to pay a premium for their phones. As such, higher prices across the board are a reasonable expectation -- but I don't expect Apple to push them quite as high on their "low end" model as The Verge is speculating. Rather, I think that the LCD model is going to be initially positioned as a direct replacement for the iPhone 8 Plus, and thus, will be priced accordingly: $799.
Further, I think it will be a short-lived product, with maybe one or two years before being discontinued entirely in favor of OLED models... and I think Apple has already made obvious plans towards that end, because they've left an opening for it's name: It'll be called the iPhone 9.
Additionally, just as has often been the case in the past, any "lower-end" phones below that price bracket will be served by older models, or derivative products based upon those older production lines; thus, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone SE will both still have a place in next year's lineup.
And according to the formula, this is where I put the obligatory, "You heard it here first, folks!" declaration... right?
If you're specifically looking for something that can tap into the Apple ecosystem, I'd personally recommend scavenging over on eBay for a 2nd-gen or 3rd-gen AppleTV.* At a glance, it looks like you could probably get one for under $50. Configure it for your network by attaching it to a screen temporarily, disconnect from that screen (if you prefer a headless implementation) and move it to the location where you want to hear music, and pair it up with any audio output device which has either an optical audio input or an HDMI input. (If you don't have such a device lying around, you can grab a cheap sound bar from someplace like Best Buy or Walmart... a quick search showed me several options on their respective websites for between $35 and $50.)
Once you have it configured as described, you can use any iOS device to either stream music from any app on your device to the AppleTV, by selecting it as the audio output device for that iOS device, or you can use the Apple TV Remote app on the iOS device to remotely control music directly on the AppleTV. You can also control the AppleTV similarly from a computer (either PC or Mac) which has iTunes installed.
Speaking of which: alternatively, if you happen to have a computer in the area where you want music -- or a spare computer just lying around that you could put in place -- you could load up iTunes and play music through that computer, controlling it from the iTunes Remote app on your iOS device. It gives you the same basic end result as a headless AppleTV, possibly even with slightly more flexibility, since computers usually have a standard headphone jack; it's just not necessarily the most cost-effective solution unless you already have that computer on hand.
* Note: I excluded 4th-gen AppleTVs above because they're a bit more expensive, and because they only have HDMI (no optical) for output, so keep that in mind if you decide to splurge on something newer.
I'm personally suspicious of anyone who asks me for my private data -- all the more-so, when the first thing out of their mouth is that they only need it to protect me. And the thought that promptly entered my mind upon reading this particular blurb, is that perhaps somebody deep within the confines of Facebook HQ is positively drooling at the prospect of all those uploaded nudes that will soon be coming his way...
The info that you (and other Facebook users) provide voluntarily is certainly the primary source, but I think it's reasonable to speculate that it is by no means the sole source of Facebook's "connections" capabilities. Just like anyone else who wants to know something about someone, Facebook almost certainly Google's you. In this particular situation, it's worth mentioning that court cases are typically public record, and many of those records have been made available online. Therefore, a comprehensive search of the web would likely eventually turn up a record which includes the names of the two counsels on each side of any given case, as well as other people who were involved in that case. Cross-reference those names against the Facebook user list, and there you have it: several new potential connections.
... getting better and better and better. ...
Sure... because if you say it three times, people will be three times as likely to believe you!
Right? ...
Right? ...
Bueller?
Can we expect Sprint to finally get the **** off their laurels, and actually get back to improving their network infrastructure?
No... I didn't really think so, either. <sigh>
With all of the rumors related to issues sourcing the parts necessary for Apple's forthcoming iPhone X and the anticipated short supply at launch, this causes me to wonder: where does Apple assemble their iDevices, again?
(Spoiler... it's predominantly Foxconn, in China.)
So Amazon is trying to say that their tech is going to power the shipboard communications of our starships?
But snark aside, it actually would be a pretty impressive feat, if you think about it. You tell the local device who you are ("Picard...") and who you'd like to connect with ("... to Riker...") and the device communicates with the broader network, automatically geo-locates your intended recipient, activates the communicator on their end, replays your query for them to receive ("Picard to Riker.") and they respond. (... "Go ahead.")
And we're almost there, technologically speaking. Neat.
Alternatively, math undergraduates are often told that Nobel was jealous of a Swedish mathematician who had an affair with his wife (though this story is ruined by the fact that Nobel didn't actually have a wife).
Maybe the details of the story are just a tiny bit off... could it be that Nobel's jealousy drove him to seduce and have an affair with the wife of a Swedish mathematician? Hmmmm....
If corporations cared at all about unemployment, they already know exactly what they could do to remedy that problem: Let the cream rise to the top. That is to say, offer additional training to existing highly skilled employees, so that they can easily qualify for the next job up the ladder, and then move them up. Then fill the now vacant lower level jobs with people who are presently unemployed and living on the street (or in their parents basement). The newly hired wage earners will be thrilled just to have a job at all, and won't be quite as picky about how much they're earning, and the highly skilled workers will be thrilled to get the raise, and to be recognized for their contributions.
The problem, as I see it, is that far too many companies are more interested in the bottom line than in anything else. And one of the easiest ways to turn a profit is (and always has been) to milk existing employees for all that they're worth for as long as possible, and make them do tasks above their pay level, because they "can't find anyone qualified for that position, right now"... which basically causes that old adage, "You have to move out to move up," to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've moved out because of that, myself. If you're in the workforce at all, you've probably done it, too.
And here's where it gets even more frustrating: the "requirements" for any given position do not remain static. It's quite common for employers to adjust the requirements based upon the skillset of the person who just left that position. "Hey, Ralph became a freaking genius at SharePoint while he was working for us. We can't possibly hire someone who knows less than him, now! Change that job req for his position to include senior SharePoint experience, okay? Years of experience? I dunno... how long did Ralph work here? That long? Really?"
And thus, the position that Ralph left -- specifically because he was being underpaid for the skills he'd gained over his years there -- is now entirely un-fillable. Because nobody with those skills would take the job, at the offered pay.
Employers shoot themselves in the foot like that, all too often. My previous employer did it, too... that's why they're my previous employer. And over the past few weeks, I've sat by and watched as my up-line supervisor is being run through the beginnings of the scenario I've described above... so I would imagine she's currently evaluating her options.
The wheel turns, and the cycle repeats itself.
There are clearly some conflicting agendas, here. Apple wants the $20 price point, because that's already the target price for most new movies; thus, they would be able to justify contract language which allows them to upgrade recent movie purchases which were made in that price bracket to the new 4K versions, making it a very attractive bullet point during their pitch for the new AppleTV. I'd even wager that the stage script has already been crafted; perhaps something along the lines of, "So you might ask, how much am I going to pay for all this new 4K content? I have good news! If you've purchased new movies from us recently, you probably already have some 4K movies, just waiting for you to download!"
In contrast, the movie studios all want to sell you brand spanking new 4K copies of all of the movies you already bought... at $25 to $30 a pop. "Upgrade? What on earth are you talking about? Who cares if you already bought the 1080p version? That was yesterday -- this is today! Either buy the 4K movie or don't, and that's my final offer. Geez -- what do these people think... that us movie studios are just made of money?"
Ummmmm... well, actually...
The US is a wonderful place for innovators... as long as they don't want to do anything too risky, or in any way even remotely derivative. The legal structure within the US has become so antagonistic towards anyone who experiments with technology, that the very second something goes awry, and (as an example) a drone randomly falls out of the sky, a dozen ambulance-chasing lawyers pounce out of the nearby brush and start screaming, "Lawsuit! Lawsuit! Wait -- can we make this a class action lawsuit? Even better!" But to make matters worse, sometimes nothing actually goes awry, and the very real potential for a profitable venture starts to peak over the horizon... at which point a different group of lawyers eagerly leap to the ready, and these lawyers are screaming, "Patent! Trademark! Perpetual royalties! Lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit!!"
Thus, our litigation centric society sometimes forces innovators to take their ball and glove, and go play in somebody elses backyard. And..... who exactly is surprised by this?
My preferred solution actually shoves even more features out to peripheral devices than the OP would prefer... but frankly, you're not going to hit all of those bullet points with most available solutions, anyway. That said: I went with an Optoma HD26 projector for ~$650 in my home theater room, and I (and my family) have been very happy with the results. I get a 1080p image at 110" -- which is a reasonably achievable size for projectors, but outrageously expensive for conventional TVs, smart or otherwise. I'm projecting directly on a light-gray wall, which works quite well with a digital projector, so no screen is really necessary. Additionally, the money you save by going with a middle-tier projector can be put into other devices, such as a mid-to-high end audio head unit with HDMI pass-through to output to the projector. (That gives you the array of inputs that the OP is looking for.)
Obviously, projectors don't work in all scenarios; you do have to have a windowless room (or an easily darkened room) to get the best experience, and the most optimal install option is usually ceiling mounted -- especially if you have kids. But if those hurdles don't seem too high for you, I'd say take the leap. It's well worth it, in my opinion.
As a cord-cutter who has quite happily used an internet-only service provider, alongside a standard antenna for access to broadcast television... I would absolutely never consider a fully blown out cable package for my own use. I mean, sure... the author's math sounds mildly interesting and all, but let's glance at the math required to replicate something like my own setup, for comparison:
* Antenna in the attic or on the roof - one time cost of $30 to $100 or so
* A couple of Hauppauge USB television tuners - one time cost of $50 to $150 or so each
* A home theater computer capable of recording shows from those tuners - one time cost of $400 to $3000 or so (it's a computer... you can pretty much pick your price)
* Your preferred media streaming receiver(s), to allow you to stream from your HTPC out to any other TVs in your house over your LAN - one time cost of $40 to $200 or so each
Are you sensing the theme here? No matter how cheap your cable subscription is, it's only a matter of time before my own one time cost setup -- much of which I'd have bought anyway -- saves me money.
"But it's not one-to-one! You're missing out on sports channels and HBO and SyFy!"
Yup: all true. And honestly, I'm no worse off for it, either.
And here, I was starting to wonder if Facebook reviewers had gone over the wall into approving of porn, based upon their response when I reported a link, several months back. It actually makes so much more sense that the porn purveyors are just more adept at technical manipulation, and the content reviewers (literally) didn't see what I saw.
... except that the porn link was attached to a Facebook profile that had friend requested me.
... and that profile itself had adult oriented content in it.
... and for some reason, the reviewer didn't seem to have a problem with some random person friending everyone and their brother, while posing in flimsy negligees in their public profile photos.
...
Umm, yeah... I'm just going to go ahead and opine that they still have quite a bit of work to do, before they're going to fully regain my trust. (And my kids won't be signing up for Facebook, anytime soon.)
Once in awhile, a company gets called out for tracking, such as in this case -- but they are by no means the only offenders. There are plenty of other companies out there who are simply more adept at not getting caught. One of the things that you'll see every time you open an app with an obviously youthful target audience, is an initial query when the app is first opened: "How old are you?" The obvious takeaway should be, if the user opening the app is under thirteen, turn off tracking... right?
But consider this: we all know perfectly well that companies don't want to turn off tracking -- and in fact, the habits of the younger generation are dramatically more valuable, since those are tomorrows big consumers that we're talking about... and ironically enough, making it illegal to track them makes their usage data that much more valuable.
The solution? Simple: disable features when a user says they're under thirteen. How many times have you opened an app intended for one of your younger children, entered their age, and been abruptly informed that you either need to get parental permission to use the app, or simply can't use the app at all? Personally, I've seen it at least a few times. At first glance, it means (at the very least) that someone who can be legally tracked needs to log into the app for their child... or, alternatively, the increasingly tech savvy youth -- who in many cases is already staring at the screen themselves when this query pops up -- simply needs to go back one screen and lie about their age.
To wit, it has become in the best interests of these app companies to socially engineer their youthful target audience into becoming pathological liars. It wants to know my age? Oh... I better lie, or they'll turn stuff off. The immediate results are, it gets that much easier for these companies to track their users with relative impunity... because after all, the users said they were over thirteen... didn't they?
But I honestly have to wonder: aside from all that never-ending tracking... what exactly are the long term results of this social engineering experiment?
I'm a long-time Mac-user and Apple fan in general -- and while I feel far more confident when using MacOS than when using Windows, I also feel that it is folly to try to convince anyone that Macs are somehow immune to computer viruses. The way I see it, you have to be realistic and recognize that your own personal vulnerability to hacking efforts is dependent upon a great number of factors. In fact, just like any other crime, the most obvious factors to consider are means, motive and opportunity.
Means could perhaps refer to vulnerabilities. Everyone knows that Microsoft's code sucks -- but let's be frank: Apple releases security patches, too. Therefore, there have been security vulnerabilities in their code. Therefore, human nature being what it is, it is extremely likely that there are still security vulnerabilities in their code. It may sound an awful lot like a logical fallacy, but anyone who really knows computers will tell you that this is almost certainly true, nonetheless.
Motive is most often addressed by Mac advocates (and PC advocates alike, for that matter) who trumpet Apple's small market share as a reason for ignoring the platform. The thing is, Apple's market share figures do not by any stretch of the imagination convey the shear raw number of Mac users; believe it or not, there are somewhere around 100 million Mac users, according to recent figures from Apple. That's not such a small target, if you think about it. But perhaps more intriguing than that, is the finicky nature of this so-called "security through obscurity" argument... because it's not exactly universally true; that is to say, it's only valid until someone interesting to a hacker starts using the platform in question. At that point, the return-on-investment isn't so much a question of how many people they can scoop up in their net... so long as they successfully scoop up the intended target.
And finally, opportunity: We could interpret this as the "human" element, or simply the question of how many Mac users happened to commit the specific type of opsec failure, which causes them to fall into whatever trap had been laid. The small infection rate could suggest that the window of opportunity was small, for some reason; perhaps the nefarious entity who laid the trap was just messing around for a little while, or perhaps (as implied above) they caught up their intended target in the trap, and promptly pulled down their trap to minimize further chances of discovery, and prolong access to the intended target. (Looking at the facts of the case, it might be reasonable to state that they quite succeeded in this goal!)
So regardless of your preferred platform -- this means you too, *nix users -- never, ever assume that your favorite platform is absolutely perfectly secure. Unless it's disconnected from the network entirely. And disconnected from power. And sealed in a locked safe. At the bottom of the ocean. With explosive booby traps. Surrounded by trained sharks with fricken lasers mounted on their heads.
And... well... probably not even then.
I'm having difficulty seeing exactly how Microsoft's emulation of the x86 instruction set on a competing platform is really any different from the various other emulation efforts -- and sometimes outright copies -- in both past and present products. (Such as AMD chipsets, SoftPC/SoftWindows/RealPC, Virtual PC... and that's just off the top of my head.) I mean, other than the notion that most past emulation efforts weren't really a threat, whereas this is the biggest gorilla in the jungle shifting all of their efforts over to a competitor, which might conceivably cause Intel to go bankrupt. Yeah... no real difference except that, of course.