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Comment Not the first nor the last (Score 2) 34

Until Apple or Samsung put their efforts into AR, I don't see anyone else being able to go to market with a VR solution. Even Google tried and failed with the Google Glass a decade ago. While I love the idea, I don't think the market is there for this yet (and might not be for a long time outside of large cities).

Comment We hear this every year (Score 4, Interesting) 201

There are different and distinct uses for tablets and laptops. Until we get full power-user options for tablets such as shell access and the ability to install arbitrary files, its hard to do all workflows through a tablet. Even being able to ssh into a remote service and do tests, its still not completely viable for many of my workflows. The one advantage the Microsoft Surface has is that its a full Win10 operating system on standard processors, giving me a lot of flexibility without having to root the device.

I'd love to see VSCode or similar programs take this on as a challenge and provide the ability for me to work with my git repos, and provide some remote shells to test my code in. With Azure its all within their ecosystem if they are willing to spend the time / energy.

Comment Re:Modern UX design (Score 1) 138

by SiliconJesus (#58045482) Attached to: Google Cleans Up Gmail App With An All-White Redesign

How much of this is the vast technical resources Alphabet / Google have accumulated over the years needing something to do. Everyone wants to make their mark and instead of incremental improvements, they rely on massive change to stake out a claim. Youtube's problem is largely chasing dollars and wanting to rebrand themselves as TV instead fo what made Youtube great.

Comment Need better mac hardware (Score 0) 171

First off, I love my Macs. I have a couple MacBook Pros and the system is one of the best I've used. Unfortunately, its the Operating System that really seals it for me. The hardware on my MacBooks is terrible for the generation. The keyboards are terrible, they're extremely un-servicable and un-expandable. - the most redeeming qualities are the battery life and the touchpad. I appreciate the qualities of the walled garden atmosphere of the iPad, but sometimes I just need a real system.

Submission + - IRS Is Mining Taxpayer Data On Social Media In Violation of Federal Privacy Laws (typepad.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: This Article examines the privacy issues resulting from the IRS’s big data analytics program as well as the potential violations of federal law. Although historically, the IRS chose tax returns to audit based on internal mathematical mistakes or mismatches with third party reports (such as W-2s), the IRS is now engaging in data mining of public and commercial data pools (including social media) and creating highly detailed profiles of taxpayers upon which to run data analytics. This Article argues that current IRS practices, mostly unknown to the general public are violating fair information practices. This lack of transparency and accountability not only violates federal law regarding the government’s data collection activities and use of predictive algorithms, but may also result in discrimination.

While the potential efficiencies that big data analytics provides may appear to be a panacea for the IRS’s budget woes, unchecked, these activities are a significant threat to privacy. Other concerns regarding the IRS’s entrée into big data are raised including the potential for political targeting, data breaches, and the misuse of such information. This Article intends to bring attention to these privacy concerns and contribute to the academic and policy discussions about the risks presented by the IRS’s data collection, mining and analytics activities.

Submission + - Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will

Submitted by bumblebaetuna
bumblebaetuna writes: In many cases, it's not financially viable for big internet service providers like Comcast and CharterSpectrum to expand into rural communities: They're not densely populated, and running fiber optic cable into rocky Appalachian soil isn't cheap. Even with federal grants designed to make these expansions more affordable, there are hundreds of communities across the US that are essentially internet deserts—so many are building it themselves.

But in true heartland, bootstrap fashion, these towns, hollows—small rural communities located in the valleys between Appalachia hills—and stretches of farmland have banded together to bring internet to their doors. They cobble together innovative and creative solutions to get around the financial, technological, and topological barriers to widespread internet.

Comment But users (Score 1) 2

by SiliconJesus (#44609469) Attached to: A Future Without Email

The problem with succeeding it is A) it works B) it accounts for a large portion of the internet traffic (probably more than even social media). It needs to be replaced, as does DNS (the other insecure system left) with newer better protocols, but its a large task. Bigger at this point than writing the first UUCP mail systems that morphed into today's cloud based email systems.

Comment We're all old gods here (Score 1) 6

by SiliconJesus (#41744645) Attached to: Get off my Lawn!

Even I, at a mere 36 am the old gnarly neckbeard compared to the young whipper snappers they bring in. Sure some of them are older than me, but when I take away their gnome and remote desktop, they get all whimpery and whiney. "Use SSH!" I admonish them gently "Hell, pipe X over it if you really want to, but you're not going to load X11 on that server!" They don't understand that even though the server has plenty of ram and CPU to be able to run a window manager, that's not what a server is supposed to do. They look at my stripped down UI, runs a clock, CPU load on that workstation, a Firefox pointing to our monitoring stuff and a shortcut to gnome-terminal. All gnome terminals are green on black. Color tells me where I am, and who I am. My .vimrc is set up to deal with my colorblindness (as are my .dircolors). I teach them about netcat, tcpdump, strace, truss, /proc - the guts of the operating system. They look at me with pity. I throw my hands up and wait for them to tender resignation.

The life of the neckbeard is lonely, frustrating, and growing old. We are the dinosaurs upon whom our organic compounds fuel the new network. Streamlined and socialized, they reinvent the wheel; 8 bit this time because realism isn't real enough.

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