Jerry2

So, do Amish consider solar power acceptable?

From the article:

>Retina-X and Johns marketed one of the apps, called MobileSpy, to monitor employees and children. Retina-X promoted two other apps, called PhoneSheriff and TeenShield, to monitor mobile devices used by children. Retina-X sold more than 15,000 subscriptions to all three stalking apps before the company stopped selling them in 2018.

MobileSpy's website [1] is still up but they now have an "apology" for getting hacked from 2018:

>Regrettably Retina-X Studios, which offers cutting edge technology that helps parents and employers gather important information on devices they own, has been the victim of sophisticated and repeated illegal hackings. Over the past year, Retina-X Studios has begun to implement steps designed to enhance our security measures which had the positive outcome of restricting data obtained by the hackers in the most recent intrusion. No personal data was accessed, but some photographic material of TeenShield and PhoneSheriff customers has been exposed.

These apps also appear to be Android only. I don't see how they could run something like this without a jailbreak.

[1] https://www.mobile-spy.com/

This is also an interesting one:

>WSJ: WeWork Founder Mixed Spiritual Group With Business

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-mixed-spiritual-...

I used to work for a well-known audio plugins company (if you're a musician, you've heard of this company) and 70% of our customers were Mac users (that was back in 2016).

Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder has an interesting blog post on LIGO [1] and a related HN thread [2].

[1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20881986

Love this quote:

>As Sarah Jamie Lewis, the director of the Canadian nonprofit Open Privacy, put it: “Can’t wait for a cryptocurrency with the ethics of Uber, the censorship resistance of Paypal, and the centralization of Visa, all tied together under the proven privacy of Facebook.”

Sean Carroll, the author, is a huge proponent and believer [1][1.1] in Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) interpretation of QM. MWI's basic idea is that the wavefunction is real and that there is no wavefunction collapse. Each time there's a decoherence, there's a universe split. Some physicists think this is pseudoscience or 'crackpottery' at best [2] since it can never be proven. A lot of physicists also don't see any value in MW's interpretation since it offers no predictive value (if you assume it to be true, there's nothing that this belief 'buys' you).

So when Carroll talks about 'physicists not understanding QM', he's just unhappy that most physicists don't share his view about QM and he's been known for trying to shame physicists for not sharing his view too. [3][3.1]

[1] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-...

[1.1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxgGYJ3OjM8

[2] https://motls.blogspot.com/2014/07/many-worlds-pseudoscience...

[3] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most...

[3.1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacggH9wB7Y

Gladwell's most famous book, 'The Tipping Point', suffered a similar fate. It was largely predicated on the 'broken window theory' [1] which too was proven not to be valid [2].

After his book 'David and Goliath' received numerous bad reviews for oversimplifying things and pinning causes on things that don't make sense, Gladwell lashed out at his critics and basically said that his books are not written for experts. [3]

Almost all of Gladwell's books are written in a style that categorically states that the subjects of his writing have a predetermined cause and effect. He doesn't leave much to chance, uncertainty or some other unknown cause. Everything is certain. His stories and narrations always imply a cause. That's the real secret of his writing.

[1] https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2016/11/14/the-tipping-po...

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sorry-malcolm-glad...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/29/malcolm-gladwe...

> Safari might be my next stop for a daily driver browser. I hear Apple’s doing an incredible job with power management and security.

I switched to it last year. Best decision I made when it comes to browsers. It's super-fast, light and doesn't drain the battery.

> That's why you do crime in airplane mode

Heh, are you a fed? ;)

>Google is tracking you. Even when you're in Airplane Mode without SIM card

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0G6mUyIgyg

> I guess they will answer soon

You're way too optimistic.

Whenever I see a news story about Amazon workers and robots, I'm reminded of Amazon's "workers in a cage" patent [1]. It has spawned a bunch of funny (or sad?) "Amazon Wagie Cage" memes as a result [2][3]... and even an art exhibit of a real-sized patent drawing [4].

Needless to say, I shop a lot less on Amazon these days and try to buy from other shops whenever possible.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-has-pate...

[2] https://i.imgur.com/QGeNley.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/LuEpNL4.jpg

[4] https://i.imgur.com/EhoEHqG.jpg

This page has a lot more photos including manuals:

https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900

The part about the OS caught my eye:

>Commodore chose the Mark-Williams "Coherent" clone for the CBM900 which is roughly UNIX System 7, but with a few twists and less features.

>The operating system is delivered on four floopy disks: Low-res and Hi-res boot, and common volume 2 & 3 with more programs. All four floppies contain a filesystem. We have made bit-for-bit images of these floppies, both on the CBM900 harddisk and offline.

Of course they did! NSA issued an RFP for Skype intercept in 2009 [1] and everyone assumed that MS took them up on it:

>An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic.

And then Snowden revelations confirmed that MS was intercepting Skype [2]:

>Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

>In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

Bless you. And this reminded me to donate to Archive again.

Please, folks, donate to Archive so we don't lose all the amazing things they've archived over the decades.

As for LJ, so sad to see them go. I was a subscriber since 2012 or so. I'm still hopeful someone buys out their assets and resurrects the journal at least in an online-only form.

This paragraph made me smile:

>Elsevier alleges that “one senior library official has repeatedly pointed to illegal sources of articles, including a Russia-based piracy site.”

>We are unaware of any library employee who has been directing users to illegal sources of articles. On the contrary, UC explicitly published a statement on its website, in response to questions asked by users, that states: “The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it.”

By naming Sci-hub.tw, they're basically educating people that there's a way to get articles they want but it might be less than legal than some other methods.

> What does "lawless by design" mean?

It's a euphemism for sites that are not censored and still allow free speech. Matthew Prince used to support freedom of speech but he's abandoned that concept a while back.

The first article that reported this [1] has way more info on what he did with the money and how he fenced it and how he was caught (this is auto-translated so I have no idea how accurate it is since I don't speak spanish):

>The scam didn't end there. So many times they repeated the scam, which were made with a huge amount of electronics. They could keep them ... or they could further stretch the deception. And that's what they did. James set up an online sales company. A kind of Wallapop to which he named Kwartech, a fusion of his surname Kwarteng and the word tech (technology in English). They founded a Limited Company that served to sell the merchandise online. They offered unused products, but without a package (which was back in Amazon full of land, a fact that they did not tell their customers) and at a very reduced price.

>The Barcelona police began the investigation, which immediately passed to the Group of Technological Crimes of the Upper Balearic Headquarters. Agents arrested them both last week. They have passed to judicial disposition and have left free with a deposit of 3,000 euros. They are on the street, waiting for the final trial ... and with their Amazon accounts closed. And is that between James and Juan have hit the biggest stick that has ever been given to Amazon in Europe.

[1] https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20190723/estafo-james-a...

The reasons why you consider Baidu not as good are probably not technical, but are due to censorship and Baidu's abandonment of non-Chinese websites and pages.

It's quite shocking to me how many social science and social psychology experiments have been debunked in recent years. It's as if the whole field is filled with false research. They should do what psychology has done and start a massive replication effort of most cited results. [0] That should bring back some credibility back to the field.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-rep...

Huawei incident has taught that Android is proprietary too. Any country that's at odds with the US will eventually find out that Android will be blocked to their companies too.

>Those who bear the brunt of that abuse aren’t just the impatient and impulsive. More than 50 percent of people still can’t differentiate between an ad (redirect or not) and an organic result on Google.

Some reasarch [0] suggests the figure is much higher and around 60% (from 2017).

Over the past 12-13 years, Google has been steadily making changes as to how they display ads to make them more and more invisible to the user. See the graphic [1]. By making them more invisible, there's a greater chance that they'll get clicked on and make Google more money. With each change, Google probably added tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

[0] https://www.smartinsights.com/paid-search-marketing-ppc/paid...

[1] http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/07/...

Absolutely fascinating! After watching all that CGI, I wanted to see an actual machine in action and came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlrZ3G0tAzY

it's by the company that makes these massive boring machines.

So, what will KKR have to do to Corel to flip it? How will they improve revenues?

In the past few years, Big Tech has gone full Orwellian. I fear for our future.

TFA starts off with a piece of actual news and then veers off into rumors and unsubstantiated BS which is presented as facts.

>Apple is in the process of migrating its Mac line to ARM processors as it looks to reduce its reliance on Intel.

A massive pro-Google bias.

Has any city tried taxing short-term rentals at a higher rate?

Why aren't the DoJ and FBI involved in this yet? International money laundering should be prosecuted severely.

This is the best description of how Valve's "flat" structure works in practice:

>Some of Geldreich's comments are similar to comments Ellsworth made after being let go by Valve. "...There is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company and it felt a lot like high school," Ellsworth said in 2013. "There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company, then there's the trouble makers, and everyone in between."

>Geldreich similarly describes 'barons' who are in with the executive arm of the company in question, and a culture in which employees must curry favor with influential 'sponsors' to enjoy stability.

>At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends.July 16, 2018

Rest: https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...