You are perfectly OK to choose Uber whenever you like and it is aviable for you but the rest of your post is just invalid.

> Sure, like you said, there are nice taxis therein Poland regulated
> by the government. And then there are all the other scammers around.

And what makes you think that Uber are not scammers? What real jurisdiction Uber has over transport in Poland?

> Now, me as a tourist, I land at Krakow airport and I have
> no clue which is which and I may as well end up in a shitty dirty
> unregulated cab paying 5x the fare

Well I don't know the airport in Kraków but Warsaw airport has like five accepted taxis which can pick you up straight from the terminal. Other ones (if you order them) can drive to further pickup lanes on the airport. So it is really not longer a problem with scammer taxis on aiports in Poland (it used to be). The same is for major railway stations. You can safely pick the ones recommended by airports - they are not the cheapest (in 2,4z per kilometer range) but they are safe.

> call a Uber driver and be sure to arrive at my destination in an accountable
> transport that charges me the minimum fare possible for that trip.

What makes you thint Uber is accountable?

> Guess which one the users choose.

I guess they choose airport aproved taxis.

I'am posting this from Warsaw, Poland. Taxi business here is OK I guess as a client - there are just a loads of taxis everywhere, you can call you favourite and it will come in 10 minutes - always. And it is great. Local regulations require that TAXI to be called TAXi is to have a license - fare with these guys is regulary between 2,60-1,50 (per kilometer +"shutting door" fare). There are also "people transfer" services which are like TAXI but are not formaly these but private lines - they can't have TAXI sign on car but would use something like TAKSI and so on. Also there is a law that anybody who can transport 7 people (large vans with seatings in back) can operate as private transporter. Also you have the thing called "Night Drivers" and it is like a person transfer (legally) but usually somebody with really fancy car shows up and drives you - and then gives you their card so you call them more often.

This is a mess I guess but if you know the differences you can pick the best way for you (which in my case is registered cheapest TAXI - since they can use exclusive lanes for them).

And there also was a case in Kraków in which the city forbided non registered taxis - so they operated as psychological services (sic! - you drive you get an advice). Etc.

Nevertheless I love taxi-and similar services in my city (Warsaw) - I can order whatever the fuck I want. :) TAXI, private transfer, Uber etc. - and get home....

So in my opinion Uber has no chance here (with their 1/4 provision going just about using the app - fuck you uber - clients PAY for tha) since you can get cheap rides anyway... Uber is only strong where old-school style city-regulated TAXIs are strong.

> The laptop niche seems okay,

Except it is not an niche. Personally I haven't used a desktop/workstation computer for like 5 years. And also it have been like 5 years (or more) since notebook shipments exceeded desktop/workstations. Of course in sane IT deployments loss of client computer should not be a problem but still there could be sensitive data there. Even system level stuff like password hashes and so on. Maybe it is rare but security breaches usually involve the weakest link - and be it that if stoling a notebook is easier than breaking in your network then attackers would go and steal that laptop.

> except laptops get hacked just like desktops way more often than they get stolen and offlined

True. Probably spear-phishing or something like that would be easier than physically stealing a notebook. But stealing is still possible so you should protect also that vector of attack.

It's funny that IRRC the guy behind SilkRoad was captured using his laptop. The FBI tracked him and waited for opportunity to seize his notebook without possibility for him to shut it down (as it was encrypted). The lesson here is maybe to have some low-range personal device like bluetooth LE smartband that makes the computer to shut down where you are not close to it (like very close). And also don't tell anybody about it. ;)

Oh and for the Silkroad guy it would be wiser to operate from a country in which FBI has no jurisdiction... ;)

I don't know why are you hostile? :) If you could describe a situation in which allowing divide by zero would be deadly. I don't disagree with you - I AGREE - YOU DONT DIVIDE BY ZERO - BASIC MATH. But also I wonder how one can explain this to another by example on how it could be deadly (a airplane example, nuclear powerplant maybe)?

It runs on Linux.

> so a vulnerability in one process cannot give you access to the content of the other

Unless it is a kernel vulnerability in LXC that allows you to escape the container.

But you are right about POSIX.

IMO containers are not about security - if you wanted security you would go with designs that were built with it in mind from hardware to software.

Containers and microservice architecture allow faster and better managed deployments of services in large distributed scale (aka the cloud) and this is the main selling point.

> I'm not a PS4 (or any other console) fanboy, but I read this and can't help wonder:
> It there anything that stops a user from replacing the hard drive in a PS4 with a larger
> drive themselves (wonky interfaces? self destruct when opened cases? magic formatting
> of the drive that can't readily be duplicated?)? Is it a typical 3.5 inch drive or a smaller drive?

It is no problem to replace PS4 disk. You just get compatible (in size - 2,5", max 9,5mm tall, similar performance - nothing fancy, you can even pop SSD) drive, open the console, pop in the new drive, download and install OS from USB flashdrive and it is done. There are plenty of guides on Internet if you Google it. You can also buy an accessory which adds 500gb storage to PS4.

Also you wouldn't be buing entire new PS4 system if you were short on storage. So this is not the case here.

So really this is not a big news. I don't quite get why they haven't launched with a bigger drive but it just normal that they release new hardware revision later after launch and adress problems (like limited storage) - it is for people who _do_not_own_PS4_yet_.

As I know from my job experience large scale IT deployments inside their WAN networks can filter whatever the fuck they want. Sudden appearance of ADP as an enterprise deployable package - who the fuck cares? We are right now black/white listing all the stuff we need. Who needs to introduce something like ADP that probably can mess with loads of internal services and need to be tested if you could just not use it? if an user has a problem with advertisements he/she is probably far away of what he/she should be doing on their workstation.

> Growing up in the 80's, I played video games quite frequently. Now, though, I find myself avoiding them.

You were (I assume) a child then so you've liked playing games in general. I guess if you were your 80's age now you would be gaming since games now are AWESOME... if you have time for gaming (which you don't)..

> One reason is cost. I realize the cost really has probably not gone
> up that significantly from the NES days, but at that time it was my
> parents paying for a new console and games. Now I have to figure
> out how to justify a $60 game.

That is how I've justified building RaspberryPi ($40) +2 classic controllers ($6) +SD card ($4) and RetroPie ($0) and some hacking (and maybe a charger and HDMI cable and so on) so I casually can play Contra or Bomberman with my girlfriend and it rocks PLUS I get a feeling that I am a geek which is nice. ;)

> No, you don't just ignore this problem and you absolutely don't put a system wide
> rule in effect to ignore the problem. If you get such an error it indicates a very
> fundamental problem wit the logic of the program. It is not trivial, and in real world
> situations could be deadly.

First of all I don't object you - you just don't divide by zero cause math. And it is it.

But could you please describe one (or more if you wish) situation in which such behavior could be deadly?

Seriously I briefly thinked about it in this context (programing) and can't think of any serious practical aplication. I know I feel bad about myself about it... but I really don't know.

I only have experience with customer grade SSDs and not with enterprise ones. But as it comes for customer SSDs most of the ones I've used or maintained caused no problems. But I recall one HP made drive that used crash after about a year - total data loss after a year of usage. Reformat and the drive was ok - another year passed and crash and data loss. As it turned out the disk had some encryption procedures in firmware which were faulty - firmware upgrade (hopefully) fixed it but also said firmware update required to erease all data. I've always had decent backups as monthly system image and daily data so recovery was easy. But I am aware that SSD drives are much less reliable than HDDs due to controller/firmware problems. And this is IMHO a general known fact.

[Citation needed] - seriously are you sure?

It is obvious by these limitations that Nintendo uses backward compatibility to ease up prev to next gen transition for users and thus drive up sales. The later editions as Game Boy Micro and so on are usually released some time after initial launch in time that game library is large enough for the new system that they can sell it. Also Nintendo is known for making revised editions to - again - drive up sales. Like the new versions of devices on which only few exclusive titles use the full potential of the hardware. And the new exclusives are not backward compatible (which is sane from a marketing point of view).

Nintendo handhelds were always technically inferior to competition (like Sega and Atari in GB days) so they figured out that backward compatibility will get them a heads start so each of their new (technically inferior to competition) handheld console would launch with broad game library and convince current users to switch. In my opinion it is a smart move but also induces some (minor) technical limitations. Nintendo has a tradition of one gen backward compatibility (in some way) for each of their systems and launch. Sony and MS should learn from that. MS is learning. :)

> The reason they didn't want this to begin with (i'm speculating here) is profit.

Duh. And what is wrong with doing anything for profit? I guess they want more sales. Duh. It is in my opinion good for Microsoft and good for the users with large Xbox360 games library that they can get a new console and benefit from playing prev and next gen games. What is wrong with that? It is how business should be done - everybody (supplier/consumer) is happy.,

> They wanted to make people buy newer and more games.

Duh. That is the way gaming industry works. Nothing wrong with that.

> That didn't work, so now they have to pretend when
> they said it couldn't be done that they weren't lying.

They said that? Quote please.