I'll just add GasBuddy to Greenify's list, and not care.

Why don't I care? Because I'm already sending my GPS coordinates to GasBuddy when I use it, as part of the app's basic functionality. If it wants to gather up some more stats like nearby Bluebooth and Wifi when I use it, I don't care: They've already got the most personal of my personal data.

You're full of shit.

CD-Rs are not bin-sorted in this way. The data that differentiates a "music" CD-R from any other CD-R is mechanically molded into the disc itself at the same that the disc is manufactured.

And so, by the time the molding is done, BEFORE the dye is applied, the sputtering of the reflective coating is complete, and the protective lacquer is applied, BEFORE a batch is ready to test before (possible) batch bin-sorting and silkscreening: The music CD-Rs are already irrevocably music CD-Rs.

The designation is part of the ATIP data. It is as set in stone as any non-recordable, molded/stamped CD ever was -- despite the rest of the contents being recordable.

For mini-jack to dual RCA cable (line level audio) you can absolutely go for the cheapest cable. Sometimes a more expensive cable will have a complicated RCA connector that breaks down.

Some cables are worth more, because of reliability.

My preference is the same as the broadcast standard (where failure isn't an option): Canare. Made in Japan, generally sold in bulk lengths or reels. They've got stuff for 75-Ohm video, speaker, a couple of variations on balanced (for microphones or other), and a cable made for electric guitars which I find particularly reliable.

It terminates like a breeze, isn't alarmingly expensive (though it's certainly not cheap), and interconnects made with it (even plain-old RCAs) tend to last for decades. It survives trucks being driven over it and touring duty of being used and abused on a daily basis, and lays flat by default so that it only becomes a trip hazard if you really try to make it one.

In contrast, I recently sold for scrap a pound or two of cheap/free-in-the-box dual-RCA cables. I was doing some work on my little home theater, and needed 24 sets (12 pairs) of RCA leads to integrate a new project I'd built.

Of course, I had a box full cheap/freebie 3-foot RCA interconnects, all used but neatly-sorted and wrapped, and most of unknown heritage. I dug into that and started hooking up my new kit.

Most of them had only one channel that worked. Some didn't work at all. And most frustratingly, I found that of the many dozens (hundreds?) of feet of cheap RCA cables in front of me, I only had exactly enough that worked reliably to get things connected: Some seemed to work but only did so part of the time, which made me question my own soldering on the project and made trouble-shooting a multi-hour process instead of a hook-it-up-and-go sort of thing.

A wire that doesn't work (or worse, one that only works sometimes) is worth less than no wire at all.

And wire that tends to work tends to cost also more than wire that tends to fail, because (if for no other reason) copper is expensive.

Does that mean that one should spend $340 on an Ethernet cable? No. Does that mean that one should spend $60 or $600 on a short RCA patch cable? No. Does that mean that $10 or $20, well-placed, might garner a much more reliable solution than a freebie RCA? A thousand times, yes.

You don't need cables made out of gold, but you often do need them to conform to the specs. I've had this problem with cheap as shit HDMI cables where my components wouldn't recognize each other until I replaced the cables with monoprice cables. So it's not like I had to spend a ton, but I did have to get actual certified cables.

In days past, I've had issues with HDMI cables. And I don't mean some hodge-podge "the colors were much richer with the expensive wire, and the blacks were more black" I-just-spent-$900-on-a-bottle-of-snake-oil type of issues.

I mean real, tangible brokenness: Green screens, sparklies, failure to sync culminating in 15-minute-long cycles of hard-cycling the cable box, subsequent angry wife -- that sort of thing.

And I'm not even talking about long runs. 6 feet, tops.

So I went to Monoprice, as one does, and ordered a handful of differently-colored (because wiring is easier with colors) heavier-gauge ("premium") cables. And lo, the cables showed up and they were colorful and the wiring began.

Much to my surprise, the new Monoprice cables worked even worse than the old and crappy cables that barely worked previously.

My solution (being of an engineer's mindset) was to look at the new ones vs the old ones. The Monoprice cables were apparently well-constructed with heavy wire, and had ferrite beads. The old ones also appeared to be well-constructed, but with much smaller wire and no ferrite beads.

I decided to minimize these differences. And so, using a sharp knife and a hammer, I removed the molded-on ferrite beads from the Monoprice cables. And the thus-modified the Monoprice cables have worked marvelously and flawlessly to this day.

So is it a matter of meeting spec, or is it a matter of a product that actually works? Was the gear non-compliant, or the cable, or both? (Further: Which end, source or destination? Both ends? Which cable? Are both cables non-compliant?)

Footnote: Consequent to this, for my own purposes, I've taken to buying cheap used HDMI cables through Ebay or Amazon from folks who appear to be hard up for cash and are able to take accurate-looking photos. Haven't been let down yet, with my own pile of gear. For my day job, I order from Monoprice as a rule, and haven't had any issues with their "premium" cheap cabling outside of my own system...even for lengthy 45' runs with wire the size of a thumb. It just works, just not for me with my stuff. Deductively, my gear is the problem...but my gear is the expensive part and I'm not looking forward to replacing it any time soon.

tl;dr, If the cabling doesn't fucking work in an application, it doesn't matter how much it cost. And if it does work, it *also* doesn't matter how much it cost.

Well, not to defend Microsoft, but this behavior is probably the most effective way to get the kinds of people who need to be kicked off of IE to actually be kicked off of IE. You know, the users who probably wouldn't even notice that Edge isn't IE in the first place.

The rest of us can take care of ourselves.

Out of all the stupid, evil or self-centered things Microsoft does, this one's frankly pretty low on my list.

I've been living with Windows 8 because I can work around most of the stupidities, but when I bought my wife a new laptop with 8, she hated it so much she traded it to one of the kids for their Windows 7 machine.

If I could ask for one thing in Windows 10, it would be the ability to make the desktop look like Windows 2000. That's the last version of Windows I thought actually looked good (although 7 wasn't bad). But with this stupid cult of "flat" you can't even do that any more. That was one of Microsoft's stupider and more arrogant moves in the UI field, because you could easily write a book out of all the many reasons why the "flat" look is inferior. The flat look is like reverting back to Windows 2, although at least with Windows 2, the color palette was so small stuff didn't all run together.

Yep. I can't remember the last time I chose to use Internet Explorer.

Well, you need something to download a browser on a clean install of Windows. Is it possible to do that with PowerShell?

So supposably, for all intensive purposes, he meant "case in point", right?

Here, here.

You're right; I was mistakenly conflating Wiegand (the protocol) vs Wiegand (the contact-required card format that defined the de-facto and like-named protocol).

Point remains: Yanking the biometric/Wiegand/prox/NFC/whatever reader off of the wall and poking at the wires still does not gain the attacker access, unless Hollywood.

Also: Wiegand wire (the material that allowed the card to exist) is clever stuff.

Case dismissed.

Hey maybe they should put a camera on the Google car! Then you could see if you were following a truck. Gee I wonder if they can add some cameras to them...

IF it was cheaper (or even close) to manufacture than NAND, then they ought to forgo profits and gain Marketshare and put the NAND business out. They would make more money in the long run. This is unique process, nobody else has, Marketshare means long term (this is electronics, which means 7 years max) profitability.

I can see charging a premium for early (beta) testers, and as they iron out the bugs (there will be a bunch) but as they ramp up production, the cost WILL come down, quickly.

If I were in the market for faster more durable short range data storage, I would be a heavy better and get in on early adoption, just so I can see what it can do and how useful it could be.

I've been saying this for a long time. There is a definitive hierarchy between all the different memory locations. Unfortunately we don't have an OS that looks at all these levels as one. We have abstarcted all the CPU Cache, RAM, NAND, Spinning disk, clout etc as separate levels, rather than a single level with varying degrees of capability.

When we have an OS that can view all the levels as one, intelligently, we'll have a much more efficient OS. It might take a whole new design from the hardware up to accomplish.