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Comment Why the hyperbole (Score -1) 101

"Cruel" plan to "block" wifi.

There is no blocking of wifi going on here, just elimination of a program where some people's wifi is paid for by everyone else. The US Constitution never intended for the federal government to be buying stuff for individual private use, and does not grant such powers. Stopping something we were never supposed to be doing in the first place: So cruel!

Comment Re:What?! (Score 1) 41

maybe ISPs could quit oversubscribing their networks

That would cost more. You're welcome to ask your ISP for such a subscription (ask for enterprise connection pricing)...but most people want to pay less than that so oversubscription is the deal. Forbidding caps in the context of necessary oversubscription is just asking to subsidize the heaviest users who will negatively impact your experience. Pick your poison carefully.

Comment What?! (Score 2) 41

Banning data caps is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard...and there are a lot of dumb ideas out there on this interwebs thing. Caps can be a way to keep usage to reasonable levels in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all users. Let the providers and customers work it out in the market. Like with anything else they'll be smarter than central planners.

Comment Re:Geez... (Score 1) 24

They clearly like the online-only format because they can just produce it as a movie with a lot of production value, visual effects, etc.

Like you, I prefer the old, live, real, in-person events with some playing of topical videos as long as they are not too many or too long.

Comment Wait 'til these folks get their tax bill! (Score 2) 145

Making the credit available upfront seems unwise unless eligibility is fully validated and quantified at the point of sale. A majority of people do not quality for the full credit either because they make too little to have that much income tax liability, or they make too much to qualify at all. If those people get the full credit at time of purchase, they'll be paying some or all of it back at tax time.

Comment Does this REALLY lower environmental footprint? (Score 1) 283

While not making leather cases might lower Apple's environmental footprint, will it really lower footprint overall? At Apple's scale, the leather cases they make probably have a good bit lower footprint per unit than other brands made in smaller batches. So if 1/3 of folks keep buying leather cases, but from other sources, maybe the overall impact is zero.

The lowest-carbon (and best-user-experience) option would be a big advertising campaign to get people to stop using any of these unnecessary cases...which would make all of this mute.

Comment Re:I'd think they'd have it for internal anyway (Score 1) 74

One would think Alphabet / Google has a big enough infrastructure and enough engineers that they would use a significant amount of cloud themselves. At this point, maintaining a private cloud for their own use is probably a significant cost savings versus switching to Amazon. Amazon's cloud has some cool stuff, and it's costly for the hardware you get.

Assuming they aren't going to completely shut their cloud down, it seems reasonable to allow their large customers to keep buying from them, even if they aren't the second largest cloud provider in the world.

Except I think their private cloud (for hosting public services like mail, search, etc) and their public cloud business do not overlap.

Comment What is the significance of this? (Score 1) 66

Summary says "an encryption key that could be used to reverse engineer the Secure Enclave Processor."

That does not tell me a whole lot. Some context is missing. What does it mean to reverse engineer the processor? I suspect it doesn't mean that this key somehow will help me to eventually end up with a set of photomasks that I could have a foundry use to produce more of these. What does this key do for those who possess it (and whatever other tools/knowledge necessary to make use of it)?

Comment Re:Why only Apple? (Score 1) 62

Because Apple has a recall for these laptops because they are a fire risk.

It's like you replied to my comment without reading it.

Apple does not have a recall for all of their laptops. Even among the model/years with recall, it is a subset of them. Yet all Apple laptops, every single one of them, are being restricted by these carriers' policies. Apple's recall situation is pretty similar to that of other laptop makers (many/most have battery recalls), but they're being treated differently than the other brands by these carriers.

Comment Re: What about battery bloat? (Score 1) 122

Umm yeah no. Since the intel i3/5/7 core series the lifetime of a laptop/pc has been near indefinite. ...

Talk about missing the point. The shelf life / lifetime the previous commenter is talking about is because of the "will eventually die" keyboard. Not sure how you think the processors being i3/5/7/9 mitigate keyboard issues.

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