Posts by Adrian 4 2289 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2009
I guess everyone in tech just saw the sense of Asimov's three laws .. but didn't imagine the barriers to implementing them would be political rather than technical.
Worse, the military are likely to build autonomous killers long before we have the technology for those machines to determine that they're actually killing, and the humans in the loop (if they exist) probably can't be trusted either.
This will get worse before it gets better.
Well, I'd vote for her. If I had a vote.
But I don't get that there's no easy alternative to Facebook. It's just doing what countless others have failed at before, from AOL to Yahoo, or G+. Admittedly I don't use it so perhaps I'm missing something, but it's just a communications platform isn't it ? Like email, newsgroups or forums. Except it fleeces its users while pretending to help them.
It does need killing for the abuse it heaps on its unwitting - or uncaring - users. But it's not a monopoly.
I don't see anything facebook does that can't be done elsewhere if you have a mind to. And you can do it piece by piece - it is supported by a network effect but eBay's is much stronger. Having all your comms in one place may be a convenience for some, but I find it a positive disadvantage and one of the many things that puts me off facebook is their wish to roll all my contacts in together.
I think it's a tiny but vocal minority that insist on an earphone and replaceable battery. They have use cases that demand them, but most don't. The first tough phone I got had rubber plugs on most orifices, which were a nuisance but with bluetooth earpieces and wireless charging a design could be completely sealed at least against low-pressure water.
However, most phones I see in use seem to have cracked screens. Perhaps the users really, really want to get inside. It seems fairly pointless making them fully waterproof while screens remain fragile and expensive to replace.
I occasionally buy bits of technical equipment from people who deal in NHS disposals. Their business is entirely legitimate and handled through all the proper procedures (which probably themselves cost another major sum to implement).
They regularly get hold of completely unused equipment for peanuts, bought because of the common budgetary strategy of 'if you don't spend it you won't get the money next year' and then costing more in storage and unused maintenance contracts than the hospital can afford.
If the government wants the country to run efficiently, the first thing they need to do is get rid of the accountants.
That's tricky. I hate facebook as much as the next man (more, probably). But if they're suppressing right-wing nutjobs like the ones on that project veritas page, it can only be a good thing.
I might support the right of another person to express their point of view. I don't support a notional right to stuff their hateful bile in every orifice they can find.
' former Republican representative for Michigan, Mike Rogers warned against "any linkage" between the issue, and urged the White House to drop the idea of tying national security and criminal charges to trade "like a hot potato."'
Isn't linking trade to national security exactly what the telecoms companies and their Republican patsies are thought to have done ?
"but to let me decide what should be done about it."
But that's not arbitration, as I understand it. Arbitration means going to a third party who will neutrally comment on the situation.
Whether such a third party - perhaps a lawyer paid by the employer - is actually neutral is a slightly different problem.
Because in a corporate environment, it's traditional to expect another right. The right to BLAME someone else. You don't get that with OSS : you're the first-line support. Of course, being able to do your own support is a feature, not a bug. Wanting someone else to shout at is a corporate bug.
The popularity of ad-blockers means that a large number of people would simply stop using chrome. Blocking ads is more important than browser features.
Similarly, the adblockers ultimate weapon is not to support a browser, as few users wanting a blocker are going to trust anything built in by google.
Recall the error made by the PD in that apple phone case where they shut down the phone, thereby making it necessary to know the password ?
1. Officers sometimes do stupid things
2. Officers are not always up to date
3. Officers sometimes choose the wrong action (stopping a remote wipe vs. needing a password)
4. Nobody likes being honest when it shows up their mistakes
It's fairly unlikely that we have the full story from either side.
But didn't everyone use Slack because email was too much to keep up with ?
Surely that couldn't have been the completely stupid 'solution' that it appeared to be ?
I guess we'll have to just keep generating pointless alternatives to email that will be used for a year and then discarded because the rest of the world came too.
Why do they call these 'tech companies' ?
Facebook isn't a tech company. It doesn't sell tech. It develops some poorly considered algorithms to support its main business, which is selling the personal data of its victims.
Google is an advertising company.
Amazon is a shopfront (except for its AWS arm, which is tech).
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