I carry small bills loose in my pocket whenever possible in large cities. If a homeless person gives me a bad vibe, I'd rather appease them and give a couple dollars and I like to be able to do it without pulling out my wallet in front of them or anyone else who may be watching. Standing there on the street looking down and fumbling in your wallet is a bad idea.

No one thought of that because then the failure would be apparent. Nobody profits from failure, well, unless you sell the whole solution before anyone knows it failed. Hey wait, I see what happened...

The old version has fewer of the unnecessary permissions they want us all to allow. So, if we want maps on Android they expect us all to allow: Identity, Contacts, Location, Photos/Media/Files, WiFi Connection Information, Phone, Bluetooth Connection Info, Device ID & Call Information. No thank you. Do I really have to lug around an unregistered NAV device if I don't want Google seeing all this shit?

I'll be curious to see if white Americans actually still have rights. I know they are viewed as the privileged oppressors, but maybe we'll see if it can still be discrimination even if it's against white Americans.

So, Google gets to win at maps and we are just stuck with it? I can understand where can't very well offer free mapping software as a service for the whole planet and have multiple companies struggling to get people to use their version. I do hope for an alternate future where Google maps isn't the only game in town for mobile, but if Microsoft can't compete, I'm not sure who else ever will. It's not that I don't like Google Maps, but the less competition, the more leverage they have to disrespect our privacy.

I nearly learned that the hard way. As an idiot teenager I picked up a rectangular storm drain grate that was heavier than estimated. It went right into the hole and just about took me with it. It's funny I hear Google doesn't like to hire people who "just want to work for Google", but unless you really had some desire to specifically seek out Google, their interviews would seem really obnoxious. I only lasted a few interviews before it became clear I didn't want it bad enough, but I will say they didn't go off topic from the technical stuff in my case. If they pulled out some nonsense questions that far into the process I'd have been happy to explain that my job area doesn't involve golf balls, man holes, or explaining colors to fucking blind people.

Saying men negotiate harder than women do is about the most sexist thing I've heard lately from an executive.

I have long felt that companies should legally have to disclose if not, get consent to share your personal information outside your home country. I don't say this because people in other countries are any less trustworthy. My reasoning is that a person has more ability to control their risk exposure and be provided with known forms of legal recourse when their information isn't unknowingly shared or transmitted outside their own country. I've never been comfortable with the idea that when I call into a call center, they don't tell me where they are located. Now if I share my personal info with that agent, how would I possibly know if US laws and protections apply to the data I share or if the call center's IT environment is regulated to U.S. standards for audit compliance and data protection? How would I know if a breach of that unknown foreign call center network would be reported as it would under U.S. law?

Google's representative says she isn't defending the practices being right or wrong. Let me simplify that, if the tail is waging the dog, it is wrong. If they aren't going to book the revenue in their home country I can see the merits of booking revenue based on the true national origin (not shell company) of the advertiser or of the end customer, but booking revenue in a tax haven that is entirely unrelated to the transaction is indefensible.

  'These are international tax arrangements and what Google is doing in Australia is very very similar to what Australian companies are doing outside of Australia. I am not sitting here today trying to defend whether those practices are right or wrong, they are simply the way the global tax system is currently working and we are trying to operate within that.' Said [Google's Maile Carnegie]

Exactly. I haven't seen this specific show, but every other crime drama on TV seems to portray the cops as being able to go snatch information from just about anything they can get into, through any means, without any discussion of a warrant. These shows are training our young people that cops can do just about anything they want in the online world as long as they are chasing an alleged bad guy. Law enforcement may play pretty fast and loose in reality, but it isn't good to teach the public that it's standard procedure to hack into whatever they please and grab data from all sorts of sources that a reasonable person would consider private.

I was also bothered by this coverage. Not all attention is good attention in this case. To turn this into a joke isn't helpful to the cause in the slightest. I don't think the public is as stupid as Oliver makes them out to be, though studies have shown that far too many are too stupid to understand why government surveillance is an issue. I'd site the Pew Study from 2013, but most of the links fail for me currently. We certainly do have to keep discussing the issues as a nation and we have to keep finding new ways to frame the issues to get more people to understand the harm that is caused by overreaching surveillance, but turning it into a dick joke isn't very helpful. On the other hand one of the keys to getting the public to give a shit is demonstrating real world harm. If the sanctity of our collective dick pics is really what fucking matters then fine, as long as those people actually start paying attention and vocalizing their opposition to unconstitutional surveillance. Somehow yet, I doubt our elected officials will be getting many letters about the importance of dick pic privacy.

Sometimes doing the right thing is illegal. I don't expect the government to look the other way. Doing the right thing in spite of the consequences is what makes it heroic. I know they won't give him amnesty, I'll be happy enough if they just don't capture him abroad or have him killed.

Maybe we could just convince content providers to voluntarily substitute reported revenge porn images with nude photos of Al Franken. That would be punishment for all would be observers.

Darn Snowden and his outdated sense of patriotism. I guess he didn't get the memo that the Bill of Right's was downgraded the legal status of "Just a suggestion". It should have been clear to him that the American people couldn't be trusted with knowing what the government is doing to them. Good thing they already got all that money budgeted, because if there is one thing we know it's that once a program is a line item on the budget it can't be stopped.

License plates are visible and a single check at a point in time isn't very telling, but if you write a query that says "show me all the license plates that have been in the vicinity of this intersection by this church on Sunday between 9AM and 5PM more than 3 times in past 60 days", I bet you'd have a pretty good idea of who attends. You can apply the same logic to find residence, employer, or just about anything that is a consistent pattern. You can treat anyone who was present around the time of an incident as a potential suspect. The argument gets made that it is legal to follow a car on the street without a warrant so this is no different, but while cops can follow one car, they don't have resources to follow everyone and in this case the technology allows them to follow everyone all the time. All they have to do is ask the database the right question and they can find out just about anything they want about people's habits or about which people are likely connected to a specific location.