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Comment iOS "Browsers" are all Safari skins (Score 4, Interesting) 61

Given that all browsers on iOS are required to use WebKit, and Opera's investment in Presto and fallout for supporting Blink, I can see why Opera would cut their losses and cease development on what is ultimately only a skin for iOS functionality.

Also, I expect that the additional complexity of offering an app-specific VPN to iOS users factored in to the decision.

Comment "Soon" as in "4 years ago"? (Score 1) 53

Pretty sure Narrative Science has been doing this since 2012. At least for Little League.

Also, their competitor Automated Insights offered API access to small parties last year. Maybe "local sports" is too big?

Maybe this is new for Spain?

Regardless, seems like entry level writing positions are going to be more difficult to come by, at least for humans.

Comment Re:Sure about the Louvre? (Score 3, Interesting) 183

The "I don't speak French" tactic was what my dad and I used when I visited a couple of decades ago. I seem to remember it being no flash photography at that time, as well.

It was a legitimate language barrier. We later had a heck of a time getting our taxi driver to stop so that we could hop out and see the Shuttle being ferried over Paris on a big plane. Once he understood, he seemed rather happy that we had.

Comment Extensions? (Score 1) 353

Not really sure that any extensions that I install are particularly "useful". However, here's a list of tools that I find especially useful that have to do with web browsing.

  • Fiddler (now Fiddler4). Still a solid debugging proxy.
  • PrivateInternetAccess or any other system-level VPN. Running it as a browser extension seems risky, even given the WebRTC issue with VPNs.
  • On Chrome, the browser extension "Cookies", which enables reasonable cookie management when debugging.
  • WGET and cURL

OK, I snuck an actual browser extension in there. But it really only enables what should be core functionality.

Comment Re:How could they? (Score 3, Insightful) 179

How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.

I don't think that running a hotel requires any knowledge about spectrum licensing. The move to block was probably motivated on two fronts:

  1. Potential for additional profit
  2. Support requests from guests having problems with their personal hotspots

Also, when it comes down to it, once they'd made the initial plans to roll out blocking, the best possible path forward (legally, at least) would be to operate as if you fully thought it was legal, and to not document any dissent.

"Innocent mistake" is a much more defensible position than "informed infringement."

Comment False Comparison (Score 5, Insightful) 493

Sure, the fundamentals are similar - building a list of people who are threats to the health of the rest of the population.

But, while super/mutant power are generally something innate and unselected, not getting vaccinated is, by and large, a choice.

If you are making a choice to ignore what science has earned human society, and that choice is putting other people at risk, get on the list.

Additionally, if I could not get vaccinated against something for some specific medical reason, I'd want to be on a list to be notified in case of an outbreak, so that I could lock myself away until it passed.

Comment Transparancy (Score 1) 79

As I understand it, during surge pricing, Uber sets the price multipliers, which incentivizes additional drivers while simultaneously reducing demand, ensuring a consistently good experience for those customers who choose to go ahead with their trip.

How do consumers trust that Uber is acting responsibly with this ability to set prices?

Comment Slashdot Poster RTFA Please (Score 1) 914

The original article is here, which was obviously not read.

The question asked of Roache was a continuation of a thread about radical life extension, where people are expected to live 1,000 years or more, where Roache has already argued that denying convicts access to life-extending treatments would probably be considered inhumane, and also that it would be like punishing a series of completely different people for the crime of one.

The interviewer then asks:

Would it be unethical to tinker with the brain so that this person experiences a 1,000-year jail sentence in his or her mind?

To which Roache replies:

[...]there is a widely held view that any amount of tinkering with a person’s brain is unacceptably invasive. But you might not need to interfere with the brain directly. There is a long history of using the prison environment itself to affect prisoners’ subjective experience.

.

Through the entire piece, Roache argues for proportional and reasonable punishment, and finishes with the amazingly sensible:

When we ask ourselves whether it’s inhumane to inflict a certain technology on someone, we have to make sure it’s not just the unfamiliarity that spooks us. And more importantly, we have to ask ourselves whether punishments like imprisonment are only considered humane because they are familiar, because we’ve all grown up in a world where imprisonment is what happens to people who commit crimes. Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free?

.

I may be expecting more of Slashdotters than they're actually able to deliver, but seriously, imagine a two physical day session at a rehabilitation center that, in the criminal's mind, was a 5 virtual year punitive sentence followed by 3 virtual years of training/rehab. Costs of maintaining imprisonment and reintegration of ex-cons into society is significantly reduced. Prison "culture" is eliminated, because there's no longer any concurrency.

Comment Sponsored Links are now MORE obvious (Score 5, Interesting) 187

I'm in the test group.

It may be my eyes, the angle at which I use my screen, the brightness and contrast I prefer, or something else, but the background color has always been almost undetectable to me.

The new configuration, a simple yet obvious graphical element indicating "Ad" indenting the sponsored links, highlights them much more effectively for me.

+1 for this change.

Comment Re:Misunderstanding of risk (Score 1) 461

I came here to harp on the same things as many other posters have already said. DriedClexler says it best so far.

There are at minimum 20k planes, but possibly up to 100k. Let's estimate that half of 20k planes have this installed, at an expenditure of one trillion dollars.

This would result in this particular flight having a 50% chance of having a bit of extra information about where it crashed.

Sounds like a pretty expensive method for retrieving dead bodies. But then, I've always wanted to be buried at sea.

Comment Still Flogging That Horse, Quebec? (Score 5, Informative) 506

In the late 90s, I worked at an internet software company in Quebec - we developed software for servers and sold it over the internet. No boxed copies, but your standard suite of services - a knowledge base, online documentation, phone and email access to sales and support staff, all of which was based in the province of Quebec.

Eventually, we got big enough to be noticed by the Quebec language police. They sent a letter, and then there were phone calls. They provided us with a list of requirements - you must answer your phones in French first, your web site must have all content that is available in English available in French as well, and so on.

We started costing out the implications of this, especially the confusion of the majority of our international (as in, American) clients. Then someone asked the important question - what happens if we don't comply?

"Well, you won't be allowed to sell to anyone in Quebec!" came the indignant response.

From then on, I took so much pleasure in informing the our small number of Quebec government clients that no, they would no longer be able to buy upgrades, tech support contracts, or anything else. The 98% of our out-of-province sales were unaffected.

Unfortunately, it sounds like Eva runs a brick-and-mortar store, so will need to comply or face actual fines.

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