anexprogrammer

You may be right. I don't have answers. I'm not sure anyone does. I've often wished it were easier to see all the externalities and environmental issues in our stuff. So I can make decisions with my eyes open. I think it's likely we're making many poor choices for the right reasons at the moment.

I'd be surprised if unbleached brown paper, screwed up as padding, came out worse environmentally than oil derived plastic. It's probably polythene or variant which doesn't really biodegrade and lasts for centuries. Or leaches chemicals or ends up in the ocean and photodegrades to little bits.

How do we evaluate 1,000 year lifespan vs months for impact? Does that change if we consider it ending up inside wildlife or the ocean foodchain?

Here in my part of the UK at least it's essentially non-recyclable.

I think I'd like to use less, but that's very much an instinctive view. I'd rather corn starch replacements for much packing as it better suits a one time temporary use.

It works surprisingly well as cheap insulation. Put the bubble side to the glass and limit accidental popping. Ideal for garages and sheds!

Even seen it recommended for cheap double glazing for those of limited means or renting.

That's sensible. What isn't is the often vast oversize of Amazon packaging. Like sending one hard drive in a 2cu ft box with lots of packaging. There's now lots of scope for the item to move around so the single item inevitably ends up in a corner against the outer box.

Amazon never seem to actually bubble wrap anything any more - which has led to damage more than once. Neither the string of air pockets, as in the article, or paper is as effective as they rarely use enough to prevent movement.

Here in the UK Amazon seems to have switched solely to paper inner packaging. Environmentally I prefer this.

It's the scale, not the pace so much.

We have a terrible history of giving the opportunity to switch careers. I suggest you look into the history of former mining or steel towns in the US and UK. The majority of "regeneration" has been from younger people coming into the market rather than former workers being given opportunity. A significant proportion spend their lives depressed, broken and unemployed for the rest of it. Some of those communities never recovered.

If government gave retraining - by which I mean REAL retraining rather than a cheap (lowest private sector bidder running it, minimal quality requirements) course to draft a CV and perhaps import some low job security call centre work.

It wasn't "a problem" in the past as the scale meant that it was possible to ignore - unless you happened to live near one of those former industrial towns. This time the scale is such that ignoring it will potentially take us near anarchy. It will have to get very close for governments to do something actually substantive.

How does this compare for privacy with the recently failed Protonet Zoe?

Can it keep your Speech recognition and Io(broken)T devices to the local net?

"Quite good"? LOL

From a can it's always UHT so tastes, for want of a better word, industrial. Though I'd just call it horrible and would be offended if served it. Let's be clear, no one is going to mistake it for real cream.

Real whipping cream and a couple of mins with balloon whisk is the only way to go.

Not wrapping their cupcakes in a ton of petro chemical plastic either. So no instore bakery for Amazon I guess.

My trust of cloud for many things has dropped markedly, unless it's some form of private cloud.

Google has a long history of pulling the plug on things. Even successful things. Basecamp went from always going to offer a free tier to $99 a month cheapest (well only) tier. Now add in the countless acquisistions of "We're delighted to announce we got bought. Oh the service that got us there? It's dead. Please bugger off. Thanks for the exciting journey" style.

Granted for a fair number even paying wouldn't save you.

> they're way smarter than that.

Upon what do you base this assertion? Because they sure as heck don't seem to be. Way more arrogant, perhaps.

I'm stuck as half the addons I find useful aren't compatible.

The two most notable are 1password and Self Destructing Cookies

It should also be very cynically [1] noted that Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty for 12 years and excellent spokesperson, followed Labour party line and abstained [2]. So much for her strongly held beliefs. She wasn't a sell-out though - so she says [3]. No wonder voters are truly cynical about politics.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/shami-chakrabarti Just look at her history before and after Labour peerage (Aug '16).

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/shami-chakrabarti-has-...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/sep/04/shami-...

https://puri.sm/ seem to have picked up that baton. Looking at their machines, pretty successfully too. If they can survive and get past teething issues and a couple of silly choices they could have a great future.

I find it remarkable that a company the size and profitability of Apple seems unable to do more than one thing at a time. Simply not enough engineers?

For most non tech SMBs a website was a necessary evil, like all advertising. Then they get caught up in an SEO scam or two and talking of promotion or online advertising is like suggesting tax fraud.

Google could have dreamed up an Adwords Lite for SMBs and stop defaulting to broad match. If done well it could have made Adwords worthwhile for those who can't just hire an adwords consultant and spend 4 figures. I know several SMBs who would never touch Adwords again. The two I know who use adwords well both have someone pretty technical around. One of those does more on Etsy than their site.

As @tyingq says Google's updates have mostly promoted brands and large businesses. Now add the freshness updates and they're hurting all the mainly static small sites. Facebook did much the same when they hugely cut the views pages can achieve. FB went from hugely helpful to almost a waste of time for many.

It's little wonder so many aren't seeing the point.

If you're interested in everything, you may as well have clicked nothing. Your ad profile becomes meaningless. It certainly isn't representative any more as you're lost in noise.

Well there's https://adnauseam.io/

Sends a click to everything blocked in uBlock Origin.

No idea why you're being downvoted, you're completely right [1]. CCTV does nothing to reduce crime, and can lull people into a false sense of security - as the GP illustrates. It perhaps increases convictions. To reduce we'd need Police near enough to react quickly. Visible Police on the beat again would probably have other societal benefits.

But they keep rolling out the security blanket. Someone is making a mint selling CCTV.

It would be better if we stopped letting the terrorists win repeatedly by completely changing our society in response.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-...

When I've switched back and forth (to Thinkpads), I don't miss the touchpad as I love the trackpoint. I do miss trackpoint a few months when I've switched to Mac, despite the excellent touchpad.

Quite a few of the cab firms did - many used the same app skinned for each taxi co. I forget who made it now.

Probably mainly smoke and mirrors. I've lost count of the number of UK stories where some terrorist or criminal was known to authorities, or already on a watch list. They never manage to catch or prevent despite all these huge surveillance programmes. Then the news almost inevitably follows up that they've found out there were public exchanges of messages on Twitter 2 days before the incident or some such.

It would be comical were it not for people dying.

My take is it's utterly irrelevant. The chance, even with Daish and current events, of dying in a terrorist attack are less than by falling off a ladder. Something like 20 times less. It's firmly down there with the silly and odd causes of death. I see no war on ladders.

There's probably scope for an open project here. There might be one - never searched as Zoe ticked all the boxes for me. Local voice recognition, open to the cloud for better accuracy, and set exactly what gets to talk to the net. From a company with some experience in private cloud and hardware.

I don't know enough of IoT specs, protocols etc to know what would be needed other than the broadest terms. Probably yet another use for a Pi 3.

Was more offering a counterpoint for the OP than trying to get argumentative. :) I found his life fascinating, not least as it's very much one that would be too remarkable for the biopic!

Click into the updates, 3 months ago. I think the only thing on the main page, now the funding has closed, is the updated FAQs at the end including info about refunds.

In short 5 months ago all seemed to be going OK, then they went a tad quiet. Three months ago there was another update including a CEO statement.

"Due to unforeseen delays in the development, we are not going to deliver the ZOE in the current form and all contributors will be refunded." They mention it's a partner having development delays in some critical component, but all very vague with no details.

Supposedly the project is alive and we'll get an update email when they're ready to try again. I infer from refunds all round it's not going to be soon. If it was just a few months I figure they'd ask for patience to work around whatever issue.

There's indication that 00/FF contrast can be problematic, especially for dyslexics [1].

The ridiculous part is the amount the contrast is often toned down as a result. No one benefits from a sea of grey on grey bordering on unusable.

[1] http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/eyes-and-dyslexia

Quite. So it becomes a matter of trust. Amazon and Google are probably on the wrong side of that balance. For a lot of IoT apps the net isn't the appropriate place at all - local net is better. I'm not a fan of thermostats that prevent you having heating because some cloud server is being DDOS'd etc.

I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund...

[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...

In the interests of balance you should read up on the life of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, and his history of fraud.

You could follow up with Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell: https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html It's pretty short.

This is good advice. Combine it with some of the other good suggestions in the comments here, like Improv and taking on some activities and hobbies.

Forget about the "finding a date" aspect of it. If you're having fun in a relaxed setting, like in a class, you'll make friends of both sexes. You'll have more confidence as you're not trying to impress but just have an enjoyable evening wine tasting or learning Salsa. The conversation will be far easier without that agenda too. There's a good chance a dating opportunity or two will just naturally follow.

Ever notice you annoyingly seem to get more opportunity when you're happily dating, especially in the earlier phases? That's the confidence and happiness projecting on how you're perceived by others. So work on the happiness and confidence first...

Great. I hope we'll see some movement soon - it's sorely needed. CAPTCHAs seem to trigger more and more often lately.

Shame RWC don't put out videos of past talks - there's a couple of others look pretty interesting too.

Well there was something on Github of a browser addon to mitigate the worst of the challenges, back in summer. I remember it hitting front page here. Seemed hopeful a solution was on the horizon. It seems to have been untouched since, and no sign of an actual solution...

Now the UK is stepping up surveillance silliness I use the VPN rather more, and expect many others are, or will. Which today just means endless unintelligently implemented CAPTCHAs.

> The best digital products improve our lives ...

The trouble is, vanishingly few current products are designed to improve our lives first. We became the product existing to provide more data.

So we ended up with social networks that show us what produces most ad views not what's most helpful to network your friends and relatives. We've got phone "apps" that are just thin clients and give us todo apps that can't trigger an alarm unless it's got 4G.

I've ended up with an eclectic, almost intentionally obsolete, version of digital minimalism. I use old desktop apps, command line, text editors and old widgets. There's barely a web 2 app installed on phone or laptop, and browser visits social media less than once a month. Back to the 90s?

I'll visit here, reddit and one or two others for an hour a day. I need the net far less than 5 or 10 years ago unless I'm working, well researching.

The most interesting thing about the article, some of my tech friends, and where I've ended up is the number of techies who are starting to reject much of what we built!