Meh. I'm split here. On one hand, I totally agree with his recommendation that Gmail lets people opt-out of catchall or at least provide a phishing warning similar to his provided mock-up.
On the other hand, I think he is wrong to find Gmail that most at fault instead of the users and/or Netflix.
Look at his numbered outline for how the phishing scheme works. In step 6, this is where the other parties have failed. You shouldn't be able to go from an email to the behind-authenticated section of an account.... without authenticating! I'm not sure if this is how Netflix actually works, but I do know other companies follow this poor security practice which allows this phishing scam to work. Shame on companies that do this.
And shame on users who don't visit the site first and authenticate. We already tell everyone to not click links in their emails but to instead visit the site starting with their known homepage.
I think James needs to call out the behavior of companies and users a bit more before throwing the blame to Gmail. After all, forgetting catch-all email addresses, almost every adult I have needed to help with technology has multiple email accounts on their phones. They forget the login, or the existence, of an email address and just sign up another. The same phishing James mentions would be possible here without that catch-all. These older adults often have no idea that they are pulling a hotmail, yahoo, and Gmail to their mail apps on their phones/tablets concurrently. In James' scenario, the victim would have johnsmith@gmail.com on file with Netflix, and an attacker would only need to sign up as johnsmith2@gmail.com, because John Smith created this (or johnsmith@hotmail.com) last week when he couldn't remember how to sign in on a different device. In this scenario, John Smith would get the phishing link from johnsmith2@gmail.com and be none the wiser.
tl;dr James makes some good points, and when it comes to financial institutions, I'm not surprised that a hashed link via email counts as authentication, which is what allows this exploitation to begin with. But catch-all email address doesn't solve the issue that the average adult has a catch-all email addresses (PLURAL) ecosystem on their device and does not look at the TO field, so don't state the blame is mostly on Gmail.
The blame should be placed on USERS, followed by COMPANIES that allow LINKS with a hash to BYPASS AUTHENTICATION.
Whoops, forgot what even started this.
Sensors have been used for predictive maintenance in the past, but they were unable to transmit information in real time. Advances in processing data at the edge of the network, referred to as edge computing, enables companies to collect and analyze real-time sensor data from machines.
The last 2 sentences imply that data processed not at the "edge" of a network means it can't be transmitted in real time. Fact or fiction?
Yes, I just posted basically the same. I think repeating the chorus more than twice is starting to get old. We can do better. If that makes the song even shorter, so be it.
For some songs I get tired of hearing the chorus repeated. Did I say tired? Sometimes it is downright annoying/painful, once it goes from background to conscious (can't unhear). Perhaps for some genres I would prefer a shorter track length.
The interface for Hulu on my LG tv is SHIT compared to what it used to be (or could be). I can only access More Episodes/Seasons via a button on my remote that will only function if I am already in the place it wants me to be. In other words, there aren't enough places to launch a context menu. And we need to do this a lot, because 3-4 times a week, Hulu incorrectly picks up an entire episode ahead of where we left off.
So, when I had to update my credit card 2 weeks ago, I tried accessing Hulu from Chromium web browser and it wouldn't let me login. Because, for the "best user experience", I needed to use the latest browser. What experience? The experience of entering a credit card number? I used the user agent switcher to trick the system and continue on.
Funny how they don't give a shit about the user experience on a smart tv, or Roku (it started getting bad there too), but they outright restrict me from accessing the billing area of the website if they think my experience will be less than best.
My respect has been shaken on two similar occasions. Twice while my sister has been driving, the police have straight up lied about smelling alcohol after pulling us over.
The first time was in a small town, on a sunny afternoon. Probably only 4 PM. My sister rarely drinks (maybe a wedding?). And I was young and poor and just didn't have money to keep a nice bottle of bourbon or anything, so it was a completely sober day. We get pulled over while she is driving and the officer comes up and tells us she could "smell alcohol". She made my sister do a sobriety test, which she passed, then sent us on our way.
The second time we were coming back from a club at night. Everyone but myself were underage, so only I drank. The car was full with 5 people, with me in the back middle seat. We get pulled over on a US highway. Two officers get out but only one comes up to the window. This time she says, "I could smell the alcohol from back here". BULL SHIT. I was the only person who drank, 2 drinks, and it had been 2 hours since I finished the last drink! How can you smell anything from our car, on a busy US highway which probably smells like fuel and rubber to begin with. And before someone says they smelled the club, it was underage night so the other 4 were only surrounded by people dancing, and smoking cigs (right on the dance floor, kinda weird but whatever).
I knew after that second time that I could not trust the police. They will blatantly lie and make up situations that didn't even happen. Either that, or female police officers have genetically fucked up sense of smell.
If you are going to break the law, like this guy probably did, that is a choice you are going to have to make.
This is just an example of how to catch lazy criminals. Similar to the New Zealand border search story on the front page. Anyone worth their salt would take a burner device, and simply remote/VPN into a server once they reach the destination.
If you have something to hide, and pick convenience over security, be prepared to have that choice come back to bite you. A criminal only relying on their primary phone... lame.
elections.
I've always found it interesting that the same Americans who aggressively oppose socialism, do not bother questioning how their choice presidential candidate is going to "create jobs". I know it isn't as simple as signing an executive order named "Jobs", but it still feels inorganic for capitalism.
I'm not a fan of one system or another. Just pointing that out.
"They can't be mere drones, either, because access to that data is undoubtedly restricted to the ranks of managers and above."
I've been dealing with Amazon for 8 years. Trust me, they are drones. Spend some time on the seller forums.
A glaring example of this from earlier this year is when a seller called in to get help with a policy issue. The person "at" Amazon wound up using the Amazon forums and unknowingly cited a forum post from the caller themselves as an answer.
If you see anything online about Amazon Customer Service being outsourced, note that isn't limited to buyer interactions. It is the entire marketplace platform. People who can end your business of multiple employees, because they are in fact drones who don't understand left from right.
I purchase things a few times per week on Amazon. I have the Prime card which is basically a perpetual 5% off discount forever. On the flip side, I walk to an actual mom and pop market in my town.
Anyway, despite my interest in the online marketplace when it comes in handy, I don't care about this since I already have Spotify and I'm happy that Spotify does one thing and does that one thing very well. With the family plan it comes out to like $3.00 per month, to have synced playlists across all devices, with different devices set to automatically download for offline listening per-playlist (certain playlists are ready to go for a weekly car trip that includes a few dead zones, just add the songs to those playlists).
But if Amazon video and the Kindle Stick are anything to go by, I don't think Spotify and Apple need to worry. The Amazon video applications on smart TV's, Roku, etc have the user interface elegance of a fisher-price edition of WebTV. They are frustrating to use. Not optimized to be efficient to navigate, and dog-slow. Speaking of dog-slow - the Kindle Stick.
The point of my ramble is there are others like me who may use Amazon marketplace a lot, but they probably wouldn't leave Apple or Spotify because while Amazon does try to have their hand in everything, they clearly do not try to polish all those things. Amazon marketplace may be pretty decent (to each is own I suppose), but the Kindle Stick and Amazon Video are just 3rd world technologies with the Amazon brand slapped on top of it from an experience perspective.
I am a believer that old rusty businesses and educational institutions are the only thing keeping Microsoft Office relevant, due to such feudalistic formatting requirements. I think their own weird requirements are forcing them to pay for this software.
I understand that a research paper needs some margin to write notes. But they have their heads so far up their asses that you'd think they spend more time measuring the margins than reviewing the actual content of the research paper.
I work at a fortune 5000 company (under 2000 actually, in 2015) that 8 years ago was in our founders bedroom. When new employees ask why we use Google Docs (and G Suite) instead of paying for Microsoft Office, I tell them it is because that is money we don't have to spend. Too many businesses "play business" by printing out every correspondence, or making sure their pencils are sharpened. It doesn't increase our bottom line, so we don't invest in it.
To me, if you have a formatting issue, you (or the source) spent too much time making something pretty. I'm all for readability. I understand making use of the formatting tools to make it easier to understand the information presented. But you don't need to be spending hours on the clock making a report pixel-perfect. Pixel-perfect precision is what gets people locked into paid software and in the case of printers, perhaps sometimes extra hardware too.
But I agree with you completely. Outside of a graphic designer, no one here really uses software on their computer except for a web browser. Our computers are just a gateway to the outside world, where the real work is being done. Just like you said, in our case the applications are web based. We actually had Ubuntu back in the bedroom days.
I wish Excel got the same attention as the convoluted licensing models. Have you ever tried to open more than one file at a time in Excel? I have 4 monitors at work which make it easy to have source, destination, and documentation all visible at the same time with most programs. But Excel is autistic.
And have you ever tried to make a quick CSV file? Check out this level of autism:
*Begin saving file* The selected file type does not support workbooks that contain multiple sheets.
Expected warning, though the default in Excel is to create a new workbook with multiple sheets. How arbitrary. Google Sheets does not have this problem, nor default to more sheets until you need them
Book1.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV.
Fair enough, though this delay occurs every single save which means they aren't even trying to see if such features even exist. Google sheets does not have this problem
Now I am done, so it is time to close Excel and be on my merr...
Do you want to save the changes you made to Book1.csv?
I thought I just saved them? It's not like I hit an export button like in Gimp or Photoshop.
Book1.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV.
ARE YOU SERIOUS? The SAME message again?
"The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball."
Or you could just browse the web to get the same content? I suppose there is always the possibility for exclusive content locked behind some obscure URL that is unique to whatever is stored on the chip, but really? I find this stuff interesting from a technical perspective but cringe-worthy if actually marketed and desired.
* are charged sales tax, at checkout (so to the customer), by Amazon. So while we aren't doing it directly, it is false to imply that a buyer purchasing from a 3rd party merchant will not have to pay sales tax.
"Amazon's 3rd party sellers don't charge sales tax"
This is becoming false.
100% of our sales on Amazon to PA customers are charged sales tax by Amazon.
Also I'm glad you put "Free" in quotes for the free 2 day shipping. All sellers on Amazon utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon pay Amazon for every shipment. If you have ever wondered how 119 a year is enough for Amazon to cover the bill to a shipping carrier for a member who purchases a few times a week - it isn't.
They are charging you annually for two day shipping, but us sellers are the ones actually paying for it.
Agreed.
I really don't want extended family and friends sending me push notifications, so I'm happy they message me on Facebook. Like a pager, I'll check for messages when I have time.
I prefer only close family and friends who are likely to have a time-sensitive issue use SMS.
There are some people I see daily but are only Snapchat buddies. That is perfect. I don't want to see their posts on Facebook, I don't want them to text me. A photo once in a while when they see something we both are interested in is more than enough.
I couldn't imagine having to somehow tweak relationships manually using only one platform. I agree with you - having multiple platforms and communities is a-okay and automatically puts people into the "circles" G+ probably has, just by virtue of what it is.
Not saying I don't agree with certain points in the summary, but I've never once desired for every contact on ever platform to all be in the same place.
One of Pandora's pluses was the ability to find new bands that were actually relevant, and not were just paid promos
When Minecraft was still in beta I used to listen to Minecraft radio on Pandora. It had mostly ambient music.
I tried again two years ago to listen to the station, and it had everything from One Direction to Metallica. It wound up becoming music people must have enjoyed while playing Minecraft, instead of something related to the Minecraft OST albums. Pandora could use a moderation system similar to Slashdot instead of a two-option thumbs up/down. I didn't want to thumbs down Metallica songs, because the only actual cassettes I ever owned and still have to this day are Metallica. I want Metallica to still show up on rock stations.
There isn't a way to tell Pandora "I don't like this song on this station. I cancelled Pandora One shortly after, since I already had Spotify premium. The thing you describe used to be the only thing that was a plus for me. They lack the logic to stop the hivemind from up-voting pop songs on stations that shouldn't even have words. Doesn't cost a lot for Pandora one but now there is nothing of value for me. A tiny rant, but I have no one else to discuss this with. Rarely comment on Slashdot.
Nah man, by now there are enough comments to dispute that and I'm surprised the post is still at +5 Insightful. Third sentence "you're still paying the same monthly rate" - yes, the higher monthly rate that took the cost of the phone into consideration yet never drops even if your don't upgrade your phone (or bring your own) for eternity.
The entire time you were overpaying. When I see a Verizon or AT&T phone bill I cringe. Trust us and our replies - the subsidy was being shared by everyone, at all times not just 24 months.
One thing the Linux desktop environments got right (for the most part) was placing programs in the menu by category. Terrible program names aside (GIMP..), it was a lot more intuitive to see programs listed by category on those interfaces, than on Windows where it was under a manufacturer's name. So much easier to find the music player under sound/video, than browsing folders/menus named after the last name of the company founder.
We have these readers at our new facility, but we also have an alarm that has to be disabled once you enter. When you have to mutilate the reader to insert this tool, you are just a few steps away from a 5 dollar wrench anyway. Who doesn't have a burglar alarm? For our facility this news is zzzz. Only a foolish company would rely solely on just an RFID reader.
Now a huge business that isn't concerned about access after hours, but is instead relying solely on RFID during the day for some secured parts of the building - sure something like this could be an issue. But even then, for the amount of work for a one time event you might as well pickpocket someone else's card.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh. I'm split here. On one hand, I totally agree with his recommendation that Gmail lets people opt-out of catchall or at least provide a phishing warning similar to his provided mock-up.
On the other hand, I think he is wrong to find Gmail that most at fault instead of the users and/or Netflix.
Look at his numbered outline for how the phishing scheme works. In step 6, this is where the other parties have failed. You shouldn't be able to go from an email to the behind-authenticated section of an account.... without authenticating! I'm not sure if this is how Netflix actually works, but I do know other companies follow this poor security practice which allows this phishing scam to work. Shame on companies that do this.
And shame on users who don't visit the site first and authenticate. We already tell everyone to not click links in their emails but to instead visit the site starting with their known homepage.
I think James needs to call out the behavior of companies and users a bit more before throwing the blame to Gmail. After all, forgetting catch-all email addresses, almost every adult I have needed to help with technology has multiple email accounts on their phones. They forget the login, or the existence, of an email address and just sign up another. The same phishing James mentions would be possible here without that catch-all. These older adults often have no idea that they are pulling a hotmail, yahoo, and Gmail to their mail apps on their phones/tablets concurrently. In James' scenario, the victim would have johnsmith@gmail.com on file with Netflix, and an attacker would only need to sign up as johnsmith2@gmail.com, because John Smith created this (or johnsmith@hotmail.com) last week when he couldn't remember how to sign in on a different device. In this scenario, John Smith would get the phishing link from johnsmith2@gmail.com and be none the wiser.
tl;dr James makes some good points, and when it comes to financial institutions, I'm not surprised that a hashed link via email counts as authentication, which is what allows this exploitation to begin with. But catch-all email address doesn't solve the issue that the average adult has a catch-all email addresses (PLURAL) ecosystem on their device and does not look at the TO field, so don't state the blame is mostly on Gmail.
The blame should be placed on USERS, followed by COMPANIES that allow LINKS with a hash to BYPASS AUTHENTICATION.
Thank you for the explanation, now I understand better!
Whoops, forgot what even started this.
Sensors have been used for predictive maintenance in the past, but they were unable to transmit information in real time. Advances in processing data at the edge of the network, referred to as edge computing, enables companies to collect and analyze real-time sensor data from machines.
The last 2 sentences imply that data processed not at the "edge" of a network means it can't be transmitted in real time. Fact or fiction?
I am not familiar with the term edge computing. After a brief 2 Google searches, I'm skeptical this is isn't just a buzzword. Can anyone elaborate?
Yes, I just posted basically the same. I think repeating the chorus more than twice is starting to get old. We can do better. If that makes the song even shorter, so be it.
For some songs I get tired of hearing the chorus repeated. Did I say tired? Sometimes it is downright annoying/painful, once it goes from background to conscious (can't unhear).
Perhaps for some genres I would prefer a shorter track length.
Good god, I hate that. Similar word play ahead.
The interface for Hulu on my LG tv is SHIT compared to what it used to be (or could be). I can only access More Episodes/Seasons via a button on my remote that will only function if I am already in the place it wants me to be. In other words, there aren't enough places to launch a context menu. And we need to do this a lot, because 3-4 times a week, Hulu incorrectly picks up an entire episode ahead of where we left off.
So, when I had to update my credit card 2 weeks ago, I tried accessing Hulu from Chromium web browser and it wouldn't let me login. Because, for the "best user experience", I needed to use the latest browser. What experience? The experience of entering a credit card number? I used the user agent switcher to trick the system and continue on.
Funny how they don't give a shit about the user experience on a smart tv, or Roku (it started getting bad there too), but they outright restrict me from accessing the billing area of the website if they think my experience will be less than best.
My respect has been shaken on two similar occasions. Twice while my sister has been driving, the police have straight up lied about smelling alcohol after pulling us over.
The first time was in a small town, on a sunny afternoon. Probably only 4 PM. My sister rarely drinks (maybe a wedding?). And I was young and poor and just didn't have money to keep a nice bottle of bourbon or anything, so it was a completely sober day. We get pulled over while she is driving and the officer comes up and tells us she could "smell alcohol". She made my sister do a sobriety test, which she passed, then sent us on our way.
The second time we were coming back from a club at night. Everyone but myself were underage, so only I drank. The car was full with 5 people, with me in the back middle seat. We get pulled over on a US highway. Two officers get out but only one comes up to the window. This time she says, "I could smell the alcohol from back here". BULL SHIT. I was the only person who drank, 2 drinks, and it had been 2 hours since I finished the last drink! How can you smell anything from our car, on a busy US highway which probably smells like fuel and rubber to begin with. And before someone says they smelled the club, it was underage night so the other 4 were only surrounded by people dancing, and smoking cigs (right on the dance floor, kinda weird but whatever).
I knew after that second time that I could not trust the police. They will blatantly lie and make up situations that didn't even happen. Either that, or female police officers have genetically fucked up sense of smell.
"In Airline World, they call this densification, which is a silly word. Passengers call it arrrgh!"
Why does the author think densification is silly, but passengers grunting arrrgh! isn't?
Instead of desalination, would it be less silly to write "I am water, ARRRGH! I am becoming pure arrgggHHh woohoo!"
In my experience most of our freelancers from India write less-optimized code than freelancers from the United States.
If you are going to break the law, like this guy probably did, that is a choice you are going to have to make. This is just an example of how to catch lazy criminals. Similar to the New Zealand border search story on the front page. Anyone worth their salt would take a burner device, and simply remote/VPN into a server once they reach the destination. If you have something to hide, and pick convenience over security, be prepared to have that choice come back to bite you. A criminal only relying on their primary phone... lame.
elections.
I've always found it interesting that the same Americans who aggressively oppose socialism, do not bother questioning how their choice presidential candidate is going to "create jobs". I know it isn't as simple as signing an executive order named "Jobs", but it still feels inorganic for capitalism.
I'm not a fan of one system or another. Just pointing that out.
"They can't be mere drones, either, because access to that data is undoubtedly restricted to the ranks of managers and above."
I've been dealing with Amazon for 8 years. Trust me, they are drones. Spend some time on the seller forums.
A glaring example of this from earlier this year is when a seller called in to get help with a policy issue. The person "at" Amazon wound up using the Amazon forums and unknowingly cited a forum post from the caller themselves as an answer.
If you see anything online about Amazon Customer Service being outsourced, note that isn't limited to buyer interactions. It is the entire marketplace platform. People who can end your business of multiple employees, because they are in fact drones who don't understand left from right.
I purchase things a few times per week on Amazon. I have the Prime card which is basically a perpetual 5% off discount forever. On the flip side, I walk to an actual mom and pop market in my town. Anyway, despite my interest in the online marketplace when it comes in handy, I don't care about this since I already have Spotify and I'm happy that Spotify does one thing and does that one thing very well. With the family plan it comes out to like $3.00 per month, to have synced playlists across all devices, with different devices set to automatically download for offline listening per-playlist (certain playlists are ready to go for a weekly car trip that includes a few dead zones, just add the songs to those playlists). But if Amazon video and the Kindle Stick are anything to go by, I don't think Spotify and Apple need to worry. The Amazon video applications on smart TV's, Roku, etc have the user interface elegance of a fisher-price edition of WebTV. They are frustrating to use. Not optimized to be efficient to navigate, and dog-slow. Speaking of dog-slow - the Kindle Stick. The point of my ramble is there are others like me who may use Amazon marketplace a lot, but they probably wouldn't leave Apple or Spotify because while Amazon does try to have their hand in everything, they clearly do not try to polish all those things. Amazon marketplace may be pretty decent (to each is own I suppose), but the Kindle Stick and Amazon Video are just 3rd world technologies with the Amazon brand slapped on top of it from an experience perspective.
Thank you!
I am a believer that old rusty businesses and educational institutions are the only thing keeping Microsoft Office relevant, due to such feudalistic formatting requirements. I think their own weird requirements are forcing them to pay for this software.
I understand that a research paper needs some margin to write notes.
But they have their heads so far up their asses that you'd think they spend more time measuring the margins than reviewing the actual content of the research paper.
I work at a fortune 5000 company (under 2000 actually, in 2015) that 8 years ago was in our founders bedroom. When new employees ask why we use Google Docs (and G Suite) instead of paying for Microsoft Office, I tell them it is because that is money we don't have to spend. Too many businesses "play business" by printing out every correspondence, or making sure their pencils are sharpened. It doesn't increase our bottom line, so we don't invest in it.
To me, if you have a formatting issue, you (or the source) spent too much time making something pretty. I'm all for readability. I understand making use of the formatting tools to make it easier to understand the information presented. But you don't need to be spending hours on the clock making a report pixel-perfect. Pixel-perfect precision is what gets people locked into paid software and in the case of printers, perhaps sometimes extra hardware too.
But I agree with you completely. Outside of a graphic designer, no one here really uses software on their computer except for a web browser. Our computers are just a gateway to the outside world, where the real work is being done. Just like you said, in our case the applications are web based. We actually had Ubuntu back in the bedroom days.
I wish Excel got the same attention as the convoluted licensing models. Have you ever tried to open more than one file at a time in Excel? I have 4 monitors at work which make it easy to have source, destination, and documentation all visible at the same time with most programs. But Excel is autistic.
And have you ever tried to make a quick CSV file? Check out this level of autism:
*Begin saving file*
The selected file type does not support workbooks that contain multiple sheets.
Expected warning, though the default in Excel is to create a new workbook with multiple sheets. How arbitrary.
Google Sheets does not have this problem, nor default to more sheets until you need them
Book1.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV.
Fair enough, though this delay occurs every single save which means they aren't even trying to see if such features even exist.
Google sheets does not have this problem
Now I am done, so it is time to close Excel and be on my merr...
Do you want to save the changes you made to Book1.csv?
I thought I just saved them? It's not like I hit an export button like in Gimp or Photoshop.
Book1.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV.
ARE YOU SERIOUS? The SAME message again?
"The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball."
Or you could just browse the web to get the same content? I suppose there is always the possibility for exclusive content locked behind some obscure URL that is unique to whatever is stored on the chip, but really? I find this stuff interesting from a technical perspective but cringe-worthy if actually marketed and desired.
* are charged sales tax, at checkout (so to the customer), by Amazon. So while we aren't doing it directly, it is false to imply that a buyer purchasing from a 3rd party merchant will not have to pay sales tax.
"Amazon's 3rd party sellers don't charge sales tax"
This is becoming false.
100% of our sales on Amazon to PA customers are charged sales tax by Amazon.
Also I'm glad you put "Free" in quotes for the free 2 day shipping. All sellers on Amazon utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon pay Amazon for every shipment. If you have ever wondered how 119 a year is enough for Amazon to cover the bill to a shipping carrier for a member who purchases a few times a week - it isn't.
They are charging you annually for two day shipping, but us sellers are the ones actually paying for it.
Agreed.
I really don't want extended family and friends sending me push notifications, so I'm happy they message me on Facebook. Like a pager, I'll check for messages when I have time.
I prefer only close family and friends who are likely to have a time-sensitive issue use SMS.
There are some people I see daily but are only Snapchat buddies. That is perfect. I don't want to see their posts on Facebook, I don't want them to text me. A photo once in a while when they see something we both are interested in is more than enough.
I couldn't imagine having to somehow tweak relationships manually using only one platform. I agree with you - having multiple platforms and communities is a-okay and automatically puts people into the "circles" G+ probably has, just by virtue of what it is.
Not saying I don't agree with certain points in the summary, but I've never once desired for every contact on ever platform to all be in the same place.
One of Pandora's pluses was the ability to find new bands that were actually relevant, and not were just paid promos
When Minecraft was still in beta I used to listen to Minecraft radio on Pandora. It had mostly ambient music.
I tried again two years ago to listen to the station, and it had everything from One Direction to Metallica. It wound up becoming music people must have enjoyed while playing Minecraft, instead of something related to the Minecraft OST albums. Pandora could use a moderation system similar to Slashdot instead of a two-option thumbs up/down. I didn't want to thumbs down Metallica songs, because the only actual cassettes I ever owned and still have to this day are Metallica. I want Metallica to still show up on rock stations.
There isn't a way to tell Pandora "I don't like this song on this station. I cancelled Pandora One shortly after, since I already had Spotify premium. The thing you describe used to be the only thing that was a plus for me. They lack the logic to stop the hivemind from up-voting pop songs on stations that shouldn't even have words. Doesn't cost a lot for Pandora one but now there is nothing of value for me. A tiny rant, but I have no one else to discuss this with. Rarely comment on Slashdot.
Nah man, by now there are enough comments to dispute that and I'm surprised the post is still at +5 Insightful. Third sentence "you're still paying the same monthly rate" - yes, the higher monthly rate that took the cost of the phone into consideration yet never drops even if your don't upgrade your phone (or bring your own) for eternity. The entire time you were overpaying. When I see a Verizon or AT&T phone bill I cringe. Trust us and our replies - the subsidy was being shared by everyone, at all times not just 24 months.
One thing the Linux desktop environments got right (for the most part) was placing programs in the menu by category. Terrible program names aside (GIMP..), it was a lot more intuitive to see programs listed by category on those interfaces, than on Windows where it was under a manufacturer's name. So much easier to find the music player under sound/video, than browsing folders/menus named after the last name of the company founder.
We have these readers at our new facility, but we also have an alarm that has to be disabled once you enter. When you have to mutilate the reader to insert this tool, you are just a few steps away from a 5 dollar wrench anyway. Who doesn't have a burglar alarm? For our facility this news is zzzz. Only a foolish company would rely solely on just an RFID reader.
Now a huge business that isn't concerned about access after hours, but is instead relying solely on RFID during the day for some secured parts of the building - sure something like this could be an issue. But even then, for the amount of work for a one time event you might as well pickpocket someone else's card.