Yeah, I stressed hard about my new MacbookPro Retina not having an optical drive... for about the 5 minutes it took for me to order an external USB3 DVD drive online. Oh, then I also remembered that I removed my previous Macbook's DVD drive and replaced it with a 2nd SSD, and hadn't missed it at all during the 3 years it did me proud. Plenty of choice - just not dumbass ones like having optical disk on a portable computer (or even a desktop) anymore, when you can get it with a $40 extension module for those one-off times.

This is not true, at least where I live (California). They have to get permission for the smallest thing. I have to jump through hoops to get my daughter's inhaler stored at the Nurse's office (doctors letter, signed, verified) just because she could become asthmatic when heavily exercising. They have to get all sorts permission just to share the kids personal information with the doctor. They need parental consent forms for field trips... the list goes on and on.

School most definitely doesn't have anything near limited power of attorney, much less full parental discretionary powers.

Also known in consumer circles as creating a sense of urgency. I mean, you have a few short months in order to setup your new company such that you can take advantage of the double Irish, or you'll be playing against an unlevel field for the next 5 years.

Talk about land rush.

For basic accounts, please name a major cloud provider that has 2-factor auth as default. Google definitely doesn't, and neither do Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon.

2-factor auth is simply a pain in the ass - especially for the non-digerati out there.

I second this. I also benefited from only paying $40 for using my phone as normal while traveling in France - making calls to the US, making calls to my relatives - for 2 1/2 weeks - and the bill was only $40 more... oh and that's for both me and my wife.

Also I don't have bill anxiety anymore - with AT&T and Verizon, every month I was checking my bill to see if my wife's data quota went over (she refused to pay for 2-3GB, and insisted on the 250MB plan) or if one of my calls went over my monthly quota or if my wife accidentally called her mom's mobile number instead of her home number in France (big rate difference).

Now I pay +$15/mo per line and can call mobile numbers in Europe for free. No worrying about anything. My bill has been constant for the past year and much less than we were paying with either AT&T or Verizon (oh, and we have 3 more lines for relatives on the bill too).

T-mobile has disrupted mobile carriers like Google disrupted webmail in 2004 with GMail.

I have gotten comments and run into situations where my T-mobile data and voice coverage in major metropolitan areas are better than Verizon. If you're in a big city or dense areas, it's not clear to me that Verizon is better. T-mobile has also been looking to improve their non-metro coverage [1]. And they've purchased 700Mhz spectrum from Verizon also good for non-dense coverage [2]. Finally, T-mobile "uncarrier" push is constantly striving to improve customer features and services. They are setting the pace with which other carriers follow.

I currently very rarely go outside of big metros so T-Mobile is a great choice for me - and I've had HD Voice for the past year and absolutely love it. Welcome to the club, ATT/VZ - glad you are finally rolling that out.

There is at least one carrier making it their focus to improve their coverage both voice and data significantly over the past 2 years, and T-mobile is definitely on that list.

[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/...
[2] http://www.telecompetitor.com/...

So this is in effect, a way of bypassing the carriers? If not, then would we need to have Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-mobile branded LTE-Direct spots?

I sure see this as a way for warehouse-like stores like Ikea and Costco to offer cell services and have a captive portal for web users (and potentially voice users as well - ugh).

But what is preventing a rogue actor from setting up their own LTE direct hotspots and MITM-ing a large group's entire communications? Especially if said actor were doing so with tacit approval from the carriers?

Is it really the case, or was this justification for conquest of the new world - I don't think the business world has changed significantly in the past few centuries - we put a new name on some business model, but the underlying goals and direction is the same.

In this case, I can clearly see it as "something to tell the people and our competitors" - if the mission fails, no hint is left that it is the "new world" that was failed, only what others have failed at before (ie, faster route to India). If the mission succeeds... well, again we want exclusive access the plunder and possibilities.

Are you sure you understand the interstate commerce? What you're describing sounds exactly like interstate commerce. Are you saying that Iowa could prevent a California-based internet company from selling products over the internet to be delivered in Iowa?

Clearly technology in fingerprint scanners could never have improved since then.

Exactly - those prints they have on file for you from many years ago should perfectly translate into TouchID-compliant proofs. They likely already stocked up on latex milk and the various things that CCC used.

Basically sounds like the OSX keychain, but using your name/credentials/etc to login to public wifi spots automatically - I wonder what kind of coverage they'll have?

Other than that, though - seems like they're de-mobilifying the desktop OS part. Such a waste of money, attention and marketshare - all because Steve wanted to be more like the other Steve.

What would you recommend? Morse is well understood and standardized in many contexts like HAM radio. Perhaps an adapter that can the breaths and turn them into phonemes that then get converted into text? A cloud NLP application tying into such a device (simple as querying Google with the output and seeing what it suggests) could result in some very useful (and maybe even tailored) responses.

Just wondering, though, how would backspaces be handled...

All hail open source - Chrome is not (completely) open source, Firefox is. Google doesn't want or care if you want 64bit (or don't want it).

I posit that the rise of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and the like allowed people to share and discuss about things they actually care about, rather than TV shows or even movies. Hell, I spend more time on /. than watching TV - and I'm increasingly feeling like most of my family is the same (not on /., but you get the picture).

For those who still watch TV, TiVo and Netflix have set the standards too high for many to really give a crap about last century's TV model anymore.