Funny I just setup my Quest 2 today. Made a fresh facebook account with a new email and chose a fake name and birthday. Breaking the FB ToS is NOT a crime. Why would anyone pay an extra $500, and then $180/yr when the worst that can happen is the $300 headset gets bricked/banned? This is a stupidity tax.
Your FB account will most likely be flagged/ banned if you don't use it as a normal person, unless you are lucky. Not respectiing the TOS is not a crime but them enforcing them is also not a crime...
I don't think that's true. They don't have time to police billions of facebook accounts for 'normal' behavior. I'll friend a few random people. In the super unlikely worst case I'm out $300 but probably so is FB. It's in their interests to collect data and sell it under the fake name I gave. Only if I explicitly state to them the name is fake do they lose out. They don't ask and I won't tell and the advertisers will purchase shit. Win, win, win.
I'm saying that their automated tools can't tell the difference between 'normal' and 'fake' use. And the fact that I'm still using my dummy account is proof
So planes can't crash because I fly regularly and never crashed.
There are enough people whose new account got banned exactly because the tooks can't tell the difference. If they decide you're account is a bot or fake you are done.
It can happen to you anytime.
The main problem is that you lose access to paid software if they ban you.
I created an email alias on my domain to start the FB account. Works fine, not banned. If they get data to sell, probably they don't care. I can run credit card payments on the store as well.
Wouldn't buy the iwatch or the new iphone, and I have been a Apple longterm user. Like the motorola 360 better, round design is a huge win and again Apple are last to market with a inferior product. The iphone's main feature for me was that it was more secure than android phones. But after the celebrity icloud hacks and the iphone backdoors that were revealed (then denied by Apple) I have had enough - Apple products have lost premium status in my eyes. Other than that my nexus 5 had all these features at $350 unlocked last year - including NFC payments. It also doesn't help that my $3000 retina macbook dies after a few months of use bc of bad ram, and now I need a new logic board. Planned obsolescence is a huge problem with Apple. They were caught out slowing the older versions of their phones right before the release of the new ones by analyzing google search data, and this unserviceable expendable model they are pushing just won't fly anymore. Don't tell me laptops without dimm sockets and exchangeable batteries are a necessary design compromise for slimmer devices. Thats total bullshit. My iphone 4s ground to a halt right at the release of the iphone 5. It had become comically slow - a product I would never have bought if it had been presented that way in store. Apple is the worlds largest computer manufacturer and they don't need to pull underhanded tricks like that. It says a lot to me that Apple joined PRISM one year after SJ passed. Right there on the NSA slides.
Yes the article from the Times has a different opinion, but I wanted to share the slides mostly, as I cant find the original paper by Laura Trucco. His theory is that its the ios release that slows the phone, no denying that they are slowed. But leaving the phone functional should be the first priority. Any developer who tested ios 6 on the iphone 4 and approved it should have been shot.
Wow, this comment is really full of FUD. Planned obsolescence? iPhone backdoors? You need to reevaluate where you get your Apple-related news from.
> They were caught out slowing the older versions of their phones right before the release of the new ones by analyzing google search data
Where did you even get this from? That's 100% made-up. But it's also oddly specific in a way I've never heard before. What site is pushing this particular brand of garbage?
It's from a google trends graph showing that the number of searches for "why is my iphone so slow" or something similar consistently peaks (at a 300% above baseline rate or more) right before a new iphone model is released.
Ok I read it. That "article" states from the very beginning that it's wacky theory. It doesn't even attempt to offer evidence for anything. It's literally just "hey, what does Google Trends show for the search 'iPhone slow'".
Apple has been accused of planned obsolescence before, and the claims have always proven to be complete bullshit. There's a very simple explanation for why people complain about their phones being slow around the time new devices come out, and that's the fact that a new OS is released at the same time (as your link even states), and it's very common for new OS's to not perform as well on old hardware as the previous OS. This is partially because the new OS typically adds more functionality, which takes computing resources to use, and partially because the new OS is predominately only tested on new and current-gen hardware, and not tested much on older hardware. This is very well-known, and it affects pretty much every computing product ever. The only reason you're not really seeing this with Android phones is because a) new Android phone releases don't correlate with OS upgrades, and b) most Android phone users either don't or can't upgrade to the latest OS anyway.
Did... you even read the article? Yet that's all it shows: People suddenly feel that their phone is slowing down. It doesn't show that our iPhones actually became slower.
And provides some possible reasons related to consumer psychology.
I think you need to read the Times article more carefully. It's about how correlation is not necessarily causation in big data analysis, and uses the iPhone theory as an example.
Apple planned obsolescence is a myth. Yes it might be true that the new iOS updates will require more resources, and thus the older models perform less well - but that's akin to running Windows 7 on a PC that was released formerly running XP, with all of the "Aero" features enabled.
I agree Apple does some crappy things; but every large company, government and organisation does. Does that make it right? No. Is there any point in complaining about it in an iPhone 6 release thread? Not really.
Let's talk hardware and new features instead of grabbing our pitchforks.
No - lets decide if we want to give this company more of our money before comparing features. They are absolutely using planned obsolescence and the non exchangeable batteries across their product lines and removal of dimm sockets are a clear signal. You don't own the product, or control the data you put on it. You appear to purchase but in reality - you effectively rent. Apple designs are pretty, but not made to last. And while they like to hand you the 'license' of security, the backdoors and icloud breaches and PRISM participation show that is not backed by any real substance. Jokes on the user.
That may be true - but the world is run by consumerism. There's a reason people don't always buy store or generic-brand products where the quality is the same. There's a reason people will spend $1000 on a phone comparable to a $300 one.
People buy brands and aesthetics, not function.
And people don't care about privacy or security, not yet anyway. I'm a hobbyist pen-tester, I've reported breaches which would allow full identity theft - and what happens? Nothing.
I swear I'm getting more and more pessimistic by the day, time to go camp in the woods.
As in, do you have some empirical basis for that statement -- as in, you know, something related to actual statements made by the creator(s) of the original bitcoin protocol itself? Or is it just something you find nifty to believe in (therefore it must be true)?
The original creator(s) just envisioned money designed to work in a digital medium. From there people derive that if Bitcoin is money for the internet it can replace PayPal, though in practice is more complex than that.
The reality is that as it stands now, Bitcoin is hard to understand and properly use, so even though it can be used as-is if you know well what you are doing and are careful, for Bitcoin to be usable for the vast majority of people a layer on top that makes it more consumer friendly is most likely necessary. Thus Bitcoin itself probably won't replace PayPal on its own, but a service that "consumerizes" it like Coinbase or Circle might, if Bitcoin were to become massive.
Because they know once bitcoin starts getting accepted nobody is going to put up with their ridiculous system of rules or give them a cut out of every transaction. And its tax free too. They just became irrelevant. Makes me wish I believed in a deity so I could give thanks :) Holy shit Paypal were a awful service. Customer service was like a colonoscopy. Ferreting out information with that suspicious tone. A million arbitrary limits and hoops to jump though. They got away with that because they were the only game in town. Not anymore.
They are looking for a life raft. Thats what coinbase move is about... appeasing their shareholders. But heres the thing about coinbase.... nobody needs them either.
This is a nightmare and we need to fight it tooth and nail.
Those aren't just cameras, they are networked to a facial recognition database (thanks facebook), which is cross referenced with criminal records and commercial profiles built from your every online purchase, gmail and facebook post.
This is what you can expect after the police get this as socially accepted
1. Facial recognition and additional suspicion of anyone walking down the street with a criminal record.
2. During an encounter with a officer micro facial expressions, speech patterns, eye movement and heart rate will be analyzed at high speed by AI to assess reasonable suspicion, to detect deception and emotional state and to direct the line of questioning in real time. The kind of technology the Gestapo could only dream of.
3. Body language of everyone in view will be analyzed for suspicion as they pass by.
4. These AIs will analyze anything you say in real time for factual accuracy against a huge database of personal information (half of which comes from your phone) and for context based on your commercial profile.
The implications here are that these databases represent a power shift and will redline demographics and make living in society with a record far more unpleasant than it is now. You can get a felony for forgetting your bus ticket. This effects everyone.
Bravo. I have never thought of this, and I commend you on your insight. I just want to add one more thing.
Right now, police dogs are our "Fourth Amendment experts." Cops routinely allege that the dog "hit" on a person or vehicle, and courts uphold the notion that this is alone is sufficient cause for detainment and a search. Just wait until police are equipped with "scientific biometric sensors." If your eye so much as twitches or your voice cracks or your heart beat is not "steady," that will be sufficient. Science, don't you know!
In other words, there will be absolutely no more Fourth Amendment.
Well if you really care about security you should run OpenBSD not linux. And it installs secure by default. Just grab the book of pf and write out your firewall rules.
This is theater. They have absolutely no intention of ever shutting down the NSA, or restricting them, or deleting one single file in their database... the one that's so huge they had to put it in the desert.
The location in Utah is between the state's two largest population centers. That picture looks back into a live-ammunition range for the Army reserves and up into mountains that are pretty much owned by a mining company (so no developments), but that doesn't reflect the reality around it. The location wasn't chosen for the space (sure, it's big, but there is a lot of federal ground around the US); it was chosen because of cheap, plentiful electricity and good connectivity to the Internet.
If it's any consolation, there have been efforts underway to get the water rights for the NSA's Utah DC revoked[1]. Personally, I think it is deplorable that they built a data center that will use nearly two million gallons of water a day in one of the driest places in the US. It irks me every time I look across the valley and see it.
What could they possibly need that much water for? They can't build closed loop cooling? Can the water not be reclaimed afterwards and used for other purposes?
Provo was looking to get out of the fiber infrastructure they owned after a failed attempted at state-wide fiber left them holding the ball. Utah has a very strong tech sector, of which Provo is one of the hubs. It basically gave them a nearly free entry into the Utah market, a market that tends to be much more business friendly than, say, the Bay Area.
I fail to see how it could be anything other than coincidence (with the possible exception of good connectivity to the rest if the world).
Let's be technically accurate. They put a data center in Utah, and a matching data center in San Antonio that most people forget about, because those are nearly ideal places to locate data centers that are survivable and efficient for their purposes. That it is in desert is only somewhat related.
Unlike the NSA headquarters location, the data center sites are in locales with low exposure to geological and other risks, both sites sit on major fiber aggregation points, and power is inexpensive. Frankly, it makes pragmatic sense to put them there.
It isn't that different than Facebook putting a huge data center in the Oregon high desert. It may be far from civilization but from a data center economics standpoint it makes perfect sense. One of the curiosities of the western high deserts is that there are several industries where that environment is conducive to efficient and economical facilities. Data centers are one of those use cases.
Criticism of use cases aside, I would hope that the government would build sensible and economically efficient data centers. If I was building a massive scale data center, I would probably locate similarly.
>those are nearly ideal places to locate data centers that are survivable
Yes, because we sure as hell wouldn't want all these these billions of records on random innocent U.S. citizens to die along with us in a nuclear blast, would we?
Actually, given how fragile and ephemeral (by design) most of the rest of digital media is and how much of our culture is tied up in it, no we wouldn't.
It may wind up being the case that the NSA's and similar surveillance architectures become the last great archive of human thought and culture, should something horrible happen. Unless archive.org has some serious Cryptonomicon-like servers hidden deep in a cave somewhere, governments seem to be at least putting more effort into the preservation of digital knowledge than anyone else has.
Many large-scale data-centers are located in desert areas with extremely reliable electricity.[1] Besides, size is irrelevant, they could achieve the same result by splitting them and placing them in smaller complexes. Might cost them a bit more, however.
I've participated on this site for almost three years, now. On what I hope are a variety of topics, with no particular agenda here. My comment history is available for your perusal.
I never understand why people place all their hope and faith in courts to fix what's broken.
I understand congress is broken. But it's like everyone wants courts to sit around as a council of learned elders and fix the stuff that congress won't.
They then get upset when courts just rule on the laws as laws, as they are supposed to.
> While I'm steadfastly rooting for this to happen, I also fear that whatever replaces it will be much worse.
You realize that when the next Reign of Terror happens, it's us on the chopping block, right? The real elite will be on the first chartered flight to Hong Kong or Singapore or some similarly authoritarian place. Meanwhile, militarized San Francisco natives will start burning Google Shuttles.
Then it wouldn't really be a Reign of Terror, would it? It's not that I disagree with what you're saying, but you seem to be implying that the 'real' elite weren't made into an endangered species by the French Reign of Terror, which afaik they sort of were.
@kordless I like your work on BTC and openstack but I disagree with the premise some Blockchain technologists evangelism about using a technology driven by a majority consensus theory to create or enforce laws. A form of government that doesn't protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority concensus is a dangerous thing.
> A form of government that doesn't protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority concensus is a dangerous thing.
Are you implying this is possible without blockchain technology, but impossible with? I can't imagine what attribute of an unforgeable ledger would do that.
People who believe in the mythic notion of "social contracts" should embrace blockchains with open arms. Minorities now have a concrete method to create enforceable agreements among each other. Isn't that what government should be -- an agreement amongst the people?
I think Satoshi must have read all of Szabo's work!
Long before the Bitcoin paper, Szabo argues that technology can supplant existing bureaucratic means of recording claims to property rights (but he notes that it doesn't directly supplant existing institutions for enforcing those rights, or beliefs about how the rights are acquired or transferred).
I thought of this piece when reading this week's xkcd what-if:
("[...] you could edit all the property records on Earth to say that you own all the land and edit all the banking records to say you own all the money. But everyone else would disagree with those records, and they would edit them back or ignore them [...]")
I agree with you regarding the dangers of consensus. Trust can be evaluated many different ways: through direct votes, aggregation, statistical analysis, and more. We should be cautious about implementing government control with the blockchain and I'm sure the current government will have a say about it when we do.
Whether they chose to arm themselves with a keyboard and coded editor is another matter entirely.
People don't matter. The vast majority of people are uneducated idiots who never decided one thing or another. The educated masses matter, those with knowledge as you call them, who have decided the trajectory of history at every turning point.
The US is, historically speaking and also when compared to many contemporary societies, very highly educated. If what you say is true, that even in the US most people are 'uneducated idiots' who never decide anything (or rather, for the sake of argument, should never decide anything, which I think is what you were getting at - correct me if I'm wrong), then it's a pretty compelling argument that democracy can never work.
I happen to disagree. Americans are not 'uneducated idiots' but rather the target of perhaps the most sophisticated, ubiquitous, and persistant propaganda effort ever seen in human history. When you consider the stakes involved (massive military, very large economy) it is not such a surprise. As for what to do about that, I propose going to the source: reduce the size of the military, and reduce the size of the economy (by splitting it into several pieces).
I think it is worse than this. The vast majority of people know about it but simply don't care. Jennifer Lawrence's private photos are much more important to the proleriat.
