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Comment Re:Translation (Score 2) 213

things will change as the watch becomes untethered from the iphone. first, over wifi, and then with a cellular connection. that's when the benefits really grow.

What benefits? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. What would you want an untethered wrist-worn computer to do? I can't think of anything, myself. It'd be nice to get notifications and texts, but the form factor is too small to actually respond to them. Maybe if voice recognition technology improved by a couple orders of magnitude it'd be useful.

Comment Re:nothing new under the sun (Score 1) 446

Perhaps most people "cheat" without their spouses knowing about it?

That is the reason it's called "cheating", after all. I would never cheat on my wife. That's not to say I'd never sleep with anyone else, just that I'd never do it without her knowledge and consent. It's only cheating if it's against the rules.

Comment Security? We don't need no stinking security! (Score 1) 91

There's nothing said anywhere in the source code or docs about authentication or authorization. There's an Encrypt() hook in the source code but it's merely a stub function in the section commented "Configurable hooks for use as an application library", which implies to me that encryption is intended to be completely up to the the application.

So the idea is that you're passing around executable bytecode from node to node in the clear, to be unquestioningly executed by the receiving node. Does anyone else see a problem here?

Sure, it's a brand-spanking-new language. It's incomplete. I get that. But the security model cannot be an after-thought for something like this! It needs to be designed into the foundation of a serious IoT framework. As far as I can tell it hasn't even been considered.

Comment Re:We already have this class of worker (Score 1) 273

I didn't say it was a good system, just that it wasn't a new system and therefore didn't need a new category of worker. As a matter of fact I actually expect Uber drivers will end up with all the prestige and advantages of any other day laborers -- which is to say none at all, and living hand-to-mouth unless they're simply using it to supplement some steady form of income.

Comment Re:absolute BS (Score 1) 242

You forget that unlike copyright, patents actually expire after 20 years. This invention is unworkable now, and is unlikely to be workable within the lifetime of the patent. But, the patent can be considered prior art when someone finally does figure out how to make one of these. In the best case this will be an unencumbered technology by the time it's ready to be used. (Yes, I know that's an idealistic statement, and that anyone actually doing this will be able to file dozens of patents regarding the implementation details. But no one should be able to claim that the basic idea is innovative again.)

Comment We already have this class of worker (Score 1) 273

We already have this class of worker. It's called a "day laborer". Show up looking for work, or don't, on a day to day basis. Get paid if you show up and somebody has work for you. Drop in and out of the labor pool at will. There's no fancy app to arrange day labor, but apart from that how is driving for Uber any different from hanging around outside Home Depot hoping someone happens by who needs half a dozen cheap construction workers or landscapers?

Comment Re:In the past this has been working under the tab (Score 1) 273

If you ALSO want me to behave like an employee, controlling my hours, sitting through useless HR presentations, and acting like an agent of a corporation, then I'm an employee and I want the full benefit package. It's pretty black-and-white and has never really been an issue in the dozens of contracts I've been involved in.

Glad that works for you, but you do realize that there are an awful lot of contractors who sign contracts stipulating that they'll be available certain hours, work in a certain place, and even dress a certain way? You're certainly within your rights to respond to such a contract with, "If you're going to treat me like an employee, then I want the full package." A lot of other people would rather be considered contractors despite the employee-like restrictions. It's not a black-and-white contractor-with-only-acceptance-criteria versus employee-with-working-restrictions choice for everyone.

Comment Re:Assumption is I trust all my contacts equally (Score 1) 487

No, you misunderstand. You're right that it goes to all contacts indiscriminately. You don't get to pick and choose who. But it's so much better than that. You don't enable it. You don't even have to have any equipment that runs Windows 10. Say you have a guest that you give access to. If they have a Windows 10 machine with this "feature" enabled, the password is shared to all of their contacts. Brilliant!

Comment Re:Craptastic Summary (Score 1) 128

Read the article? There is no article. There are six tweets (numbered and linked individually), a graph with data sets helpfully labeled "1", "2", "3", "4", and "5" but no other description, and a PDF of the test questions. And some comment about students not understanding the concept of "sparse arrays", but since the term is completely defined in the test materials I can only assume the real concern is that students can't be bothered to read the "unimportant" introductory material before trying to answer the actual test questions.

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