The internet happened. Online venues (like slashdot) became places where self-selection happens. Being mostly male to begin with, that's the direction online forums went. More and more pure. This is where people exploring an interest in technology go, and learn it's a field where it's acceptable to say the kind of shit that gets up-moderated here. Fewer women enter the field. Online forums become more pure. Rinse and repeat.

So, the iPhone he says unhelpfully didn't tell him there was a rogue tower...was actually aware of the rogue tower, and therefore not compromised? That it would have warned him if he tried to communicate through it, and has therefore already, for years, been doing the same thing his secure phone does? You mean someone who is selling a secure phone is making up a use case for it?

You don't say.

So, a magazine website would rather you visit their local version, to serve you better targeted ads, or local interest stories, or load leveling, or prices in local currency, or subscription services on the same continent, or maybe even to serve you better with faster access, and this is some American scheme to abuse you? Did it ever occur to you that an Australian company (or a German one, or...) wanting to create content unique to multiple continents might do the same thing? Or do you actually think URL redirection is a uniquely American thing, indicating a character flaw of an entire nation?

It's not *necessary* to use URL redirection to accomplish any of these things, but the dork who implemented it is no smarter than your average slashdotter, and just like how they create crappy interfaces, incomprehensible documentation (if any at all), code that is way more complex than it needs to be, or just simply can't solve the problem they were given, maybe...just maybe...they didn't anticipate your desire to not be given localized content, or that you'd take offense at their solution.

Because they take viral IQ quizzes meant to flatter, so you'll share them.

On second thought, this sounds like a made-up story.

Sounds like the prof is a frustrated dork who hangs out in Linux discussion forums, getting reinforcement for being an antisocial jerk.

You might filter your news (in the conventional, informational sense) feed that way, but you filter your Facebook feed according to people you think are interesting. If you only interact with people who are like minded, and that's not unlikely, *you* are creating a filter bubble, not FB. But it's also not how people tend to use FB. You probably have some "friends" who post idiotic rants or divisive jokes, and if you ignore them you are training FB to not show them, but you might also hit "like" or comment on pictures of their kids or news of their vacation, telling FB that you are, in fact, interested in this person. The real trick for FB is to distinguish between the two.

The FB algorithm is a popularity-seeking thing. It's probably one unspoken reason geeks hate Facebook. Adding a bunch of "mundanes" to your friends list can be really humbling. Spoken from experience.

That's because in the 90's programming got more difficult, and programmers *liked* it. No more soccer moms entering the field because they heard it was a way to earn a decent wage.

Complexity makes programmers feel they can do things most people can't. So, they seek complex solutions. If it's not complex, it must not be the intelligent way to do it, since a lesser person could do the simpler thing.

They have it backwards, of course. The ability to reduce the complexity of a task is actually a higher skill.

And I've worked with enough people who were so smart at 18 years old that they decided they didn't need to go to college that I've decided the requirement of a degree has some merit.

Some of these people really are great at syntax and terminology, and a few of them are actually good at coding certain things, but mostly, they do things the hard way, they organize their projects around data when it is process that better defines what they're trying to accomplish, the write overly complex solutions to simple problems, they saddle their employer with unnecessary technology, and there are certain classes of problems that they simply can not solve at all. For one, why do they think it's funny that they don't know math, and that a solution involving guessing, approximation and unreasonable process limitation is an acceptable alternative to algebra?

In short, they suck at problem solving. That's not a surprise since the first adult problem they faced, they took a shortcut.

Second Life. They still make regular releases for the Mac (and Linux). It's open source, so you can grab a copy and see how they do it. Xcode not required.

Watch starting at 45:00:

http://www.apple.com/apple-eve...

Clearly a joke.

I'll lend two more points of visibility to this. The humor may not be apparent in the transcript. Watch the video, starting at 45:00:

http://www.apple.com/apple-eve...

*cough* fusion *cough*

Note that those projects are getting bigger and bigger. It may be that there aren't enough people or there isn't enough money to make a sentient AI. It may also be that there is something well short of it that will give us all the benefit we are willing to pay for.

There's a world of possible outcomes between physically impossible and inevitable. It isn't sure to happen just because it isn't impossible.

...sign up.

I tried to sign up for the streaming service today. I pressed the prominent "free trial" button, read the terms of service and privacy policy, and filled out the web form, only to be told "username not reserved." WTF does that mean? Temporary trouble? Hit the sign up button again...username not reserved. Picked a different user name. "Email not reserved."

So, I read some of their support forum, where other people are asking, "wtf is username not reserved", and found you had to sign up through their mobile app before you can sign up for the free trial on their website.

I checked again and found no instructions to that effect.

Maybe there are only 110K people who have figured out how to sign up.

I'm guessing, "tell me if it's crap and shouldn't be published" isn't something they're willing to pay for?