webwanderings

iCloud is encrypted, isn't it? You can also double lock your Notes with its own password.

iCloud's Notes are not bad as a solution for simple password storage solution. No need to worry about syncing and it is secured.

I'll be damned. I confused the udemy with udacity. I guess I cannot edit my comments, or else I was going to remove them for a major affed up.

When it comes to Internet, i.e, virtual material which you can't touch or feel...branding is all there is.

Look at the quality of some of the content; extremely poor, but the cost does not reflect. The word scam may be too harsh, but I can't tell what it may be like when you pay for something and feel ripped off. Most of such content I have noticed, are generally referred through reddit via free coupons. But that does not negate the fact that they are being sold.

I spend a good deal of time on various MOOC platforms as a learner and observer. In my opinion (no association with anyone), I think Udacity is a scam!

There are way too many courses I have come across, which are there only to grab the money. There is no quality control there.

In my opinion, Edx, Coursera, Khan Academy, are a better deal.

The real problem with the comments on the Internet, is of logistics of huge number, and lack of human ability to process them at scale. Just look at any of the popular HN threads. You cannot expect anyone to be reading all the comments when they show up in large numbers under one thread. The rest of everything else is secondary.

I was using this service back when many people were using RSS and Twitter was somewhat of a sane platform for interaction and information. It isn't as much as the lack of RSS use (I still use RSS) but more so of the lack of use of Twitter itself, which made me abandon this service. Twitter eventually became somewhat reasonable to follow via Lists. They don't want you to use RSS anyways, so ... we move on. Twitterfeed was a good and reasonable service.

Is this private or public?

Gmail lets you export your Yahoo emails to itself. I did that once a long time ago and abandoned Yahoo altogether. You then just enable permanent vacation responder and be done with it.

It is a product/platform/community's failure if you even have to ask such a question. Remember the days when "a/s/l" used to be common like "lols" or "IMHOs" of today? Well, nobody cares about gender, age or location. But these attributes make all the difference in how one communicates, and how communities (authentic communities) are formed anywhere.

This looks interesting. Which programming language is this geared towards? (PS: am not a programmer).

Edit: never mind, just read the preface.

I would hate for Facebook to buy Nextdoor out. But I think Facebook knows how deep the Nextdoor has gotten itself into their market.

> We’re determined to make Microsoft Edge the safest and most secure browser.

You should enable Ad/tracker-block by default and across the board.

I asked somewhere here, if there is a way to extract the email addresses out of Facebook (or Twitter), of friends etc. Apparently there is no solution (probably because these locked walled-gardens do not allow such extraction, even when you have first layer of trust established, i.e, I am only talking about extracting the email addresses of friends on Facebook).

So the gist is, that it is not really technically easy to have people move back to email's personal communication. I gave up on Facebook and I am not on any of these other social networks. I'd rather just communicate with people via email or personal text.

Instead of building, strengthen the independent pipe which is responsible for flowing the data/information across the Internet. I am talking about RSS. I wish more technical and policy people would consider supporting, or reviving, the RSS. RSS is practically not owned by anyone (like how email flows from one platform to another without ownership restrictions). The modern API world has proliferated silos and boundaries, which is ridiculous.

Makes sense. Each news outlet is a platform in itself (if they choose to be one). They should "own" their own platform, instead of relying on others. It is one thing to not set the stage for the world to interact on your platform, but it is another to not own your own thing.

Speaking of NPR. I got tired of their non-stop coverage of one particular presidential nominee. I thought NPR should be the last news outlet in the world to be going for the rating wars, but they did.

>> In response to an article that quotes the United States House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, criticizing her Republican counterparts for agreeing to pay for the legal defense of a federal ban on gay marriage: “This is so much political correctness. The family, men plus women = children is the basis of society. Scientific facts are not altered by political correctness and neither is the law and design of man by God. Two men can create a relationship, but not a child. This is not marriage. This is sodomy. Check out Sodom & Gomorrrah if you would like God’s opinion about it. A lie is not the truth. Stop it Obama.” <<

You should reject because it shouldn't be about Obama.

There's nothing wrong with that. I'll let Will McAvoy of Newsroom (Aaron Sorkin) answer that for you. Take a look at one of the first season's episodes.

How does one scroll on a laptop without the browser's scroll bar on the right? What's the point of the "software" if you take away the base feature of a browser?

Damn, those Compaq bios floppies! I can still feel the heavy weight of those desktops!

I've always been of the opinion that all reality shows are produced with actors, or aspiring actors. None of the people are everyday, average folks. This view was reinforced after watching a few seconds of this Battlebots show which you speak of. Either that, or the producers hunt down and look for TV-suitable people from the average crowd. All those people who "want to be on TV" are in that category.

GV is long been dead. But its death is not as important as the slow death of RSS itself. Your tweet makes no mention of the value of RSS, which is a tragedy in itself.

Well, good thing RSS is still not completely dead and there are services like Digg which are still maintaining a good Reader.

They are spam accounts, not porn accounts. Please don't tell me you can't tell the difference.

It is difficult probably because they don't want to employ real humans to discern the difference.

I'd take their policy over Twitter's. Know how many spam/porn accounts littering on Twitter? At least Facebook is not a home for spammers.

Off topic: is there a way to extract the email addresses (or phone numbers) of the friends?

I have disabled my FB but would like to extract the contact information of the people I am friends with.

This latest upgrade of Chrome uses a lot more memory on my Win7. I run 5 tabs and I see 10 chrome.exe running processes. WTF and why?

EDIT: I take the above comment back. The chrome.exe processes match with the process running in the Chrome's Task Manager. I stand corrected.

However, I think there's something new about the latest upgrade. The interface looks heavy and different. This is the same upgrade which has removed the green colored SSL identifier in the URL bar.

I agree. I think "please advise" simply means "you better answer or I'll get mad at you" :)

> you go to facebook....

As I mentioned in my first comment, you create network with whom you wish to create network with. So it doesn't matter where your friends are (be that Facebook, or at home, just a phone call away); it is you who is going to reach out to them, to create a social network.

> provide appropriate tools for your friends to create your network

Each individual creates his or her own network. So if someone reaches you first, seeking your company to get you into their network, it is as same as you reaching them, asking them to join yours.

My ultimate point is, that the "platform" does not create a social network (for humans). The best they can do, is create bells, whistles and tools. Humans create their own social network.

The real social network is the one you create on your own, with people you wish to network with. And it has to be small by design, otherwise it doesn't work.

Now, it doesn't matter what you use to create such a network, be that email list, facebook group, whatsapp, or fill in the blank.

No company or platform have been able to "create" such a social network for you. The best they can do, is provide appropriate tools for you to create your network.

And as far as I can tell, email lists still serve that purpose, irrespective of the hype the platforms like Facebook, Slack etc may generate.

That's it. Thanks.