Until recently, all Apple devices used a common charger. At some point in the not-too-distant future, all Apple devices will use a common charger again.

So, by platform, Android isn't that much different than iOS.

Apple made some design decisions vis-a-vis their connector. You don't have to agree with them, but they had some specifications that they wanted to meet that USB didn't and still doesn't allow them to. (Having a reversible connector that doesn't need to be aligned a specific way is a perfectly reasonable design decision from the point of view of usability.)

Anyway, you can plug that cable into basically anything that accepts a common USB 2 connector and it'll work. So it's compliant on at least one end of the cable.

I don't know what expensive proprietary software you're talking about--iOS? I mean, yeah, I don't want to stop using iOS because I like it. I'm not sure what you're getting at.

In other words, you have this insane idea that since a few people have made out like bandits from Bitcoins extreme volatility, that it is somehow this magical deflationary entity that is a better investment than any of the thousands of securities one can purchase on the regulated stock market. That, somehow, magically, is a store of value that can beat inflation and, somehow, will magically be able to beat all the other umpteen crypto currencies out there that anyone can create with a flick of a finger (literally).

You also seem to believe that bitcoin exchanges are somehow magically governed by banking and securities laws that allow people to 'invest' and 'trade' safely, and that one can be insured against theft by putting their trust in unknown third parties running piss-ant little companies who happen to be able to set up a web site and throw some glitter on it.

I will tell you what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is worthless as a currency (too volatile and too illiquid), meaningless as a commodity (because anyone can create their own crypto currency with a flick of a finger), not even remotely deflationary except in the minds of the true believers, and unusable as any sort of store of value except by idiots who think that quoted numbers on an exchange lend it credibility and back-of-the-hand calculations that someone, somewhere has gotten filthy rich trading it (ignoring the thousands of people who have gone broke trying to do the same).

There are always a few people with crazy views. It doesn't mean the views are any less crazy just because the internet lends them a voice. You actually believe that the stock market is some kind of scam and that bitcoin is somehow magically better? The level of stupidity required to form your opinion is beyond my comprehension.

-Matt

There are plenty of ways to hedge against inflation through a standard brokerage account. Literally thousands of ways to do it.

Bitcoin is not one of those ways. A whole lot of people seem to think that Bitcoin has a magical deflationary property simply because there's a limited supply of it, and that it can simply be hoarded. That's grade-school thinking at best. It's nature gives it no such property.

-Matt

Not quite true. Nobody has lost any insured money in a bank failure. Up to the FDIC limit. Plenty of people have lost money due to bank failures who had more than the insured amount in their account.

Strangely enough, very few people with balances over the FDIC limit actually lost any money due to the larger bank failures which occurred in 2008 and 2009, because the U.S. government brokered agreements with other large banks to buy their assets whole in exchange for some big tax breaks. Wells Fargo's purchase of Wachovia, for example.

Wells Fargo took on almost $30B in liabilities which would normally have made the purchase impossible, but the U.S. government relaxed some laws and allowed Wells to declare those liabilities against future profits to reduce their tax bill. Essentially, the U.S. government bailed out the bank customers of Wachovia.

However, a good chunk of the bank failures since 2008 were liquidations and any customer with a balance greater than the FDIC limit will have lost the difference.

-Matt

What regulations surrounding the dollar? Perhaps you mean regulations on banks and brokerages. Unfortunately, MtGox was neither a bank nor a brokerage. Plus they are run out of Japan, so they are hardly going to be subject to U.S. law.

Customers who got creamed by MtGox were idiots. I feel sorry for them, but sometimes it takes a hard lesson to punch through blind idealism.

-Matt

If you are looking for a riskless investment that maintains your buying power over time then no such beast exists anywhere in the world.

I haven't paid a single dime in bank fees in over 30 years. If you are, then you don't have the minimal amount of sense required to avoid it. It isn't rocket science. Or perhaps you are just parroting what the media heads are shoveling into your head?

The stock market in 2008 crashed. And it recovered. Big difference between that and something crashing and not recovering ever. My parent's retirement portfolios dropped 40% in 2008. And 2 years later they had recovered completely.

-Matt

Hey, that would be great... because, ya know, all the MF Global customers are likely to get all of their money back (if you haven't been keeping track of it). But the victims of MtGox and other exchanges that have gone dark probably never will.

I'd say MF Global is a case that shows just how good regulation can be when the shit hits the fan. Even if they didn't follow the law, there was enough there to make it recoverable for the customers, including the freezing of funds at the target institutions that had already been transfered out of MF Global.

-Matt

I think you are confusing Intel's under-powered mobile cpu's with the cpu's they are stuffing into the Chromebox and Chromebooks. These cpu's are MUCH faster than anything ARM has on offer.

-Matt

You can DD the whole disk... but unless you have another machine that can take a M.2 form factor SSD you have no easy way to restore it from the image.

The Acer c720 laptop will boot the Acer/Google recovery image from a USB stick but all it can do is completely wipe the M.2 SSD, so you'd lose whatever you had on there. If you do not follow the BIOS directions properly you might also get into a situation where it refuses to boot from the USB stick while the M.2 drive is installed with the non-conformant OS.

-Matt

I read a bit more on the ASUS Chromebox. There are three cpu choices. The 2955U, The i3-4010U, or the I7-4600U. The I7-4600U is very similar to the I7-4700MQ that I have in one of my laptops, and that is a very respectable cpu and very suited for desktop use.

The only one I see on Amazon is the one with the 2955U (1.4 GHz single-core/2-thread celeron).

From what I can google the chromebox uses an internal M.2 form factor SSD (16GB), which means you can potentially upgrade it to e.g. a 128GB SSD by buying it on newegg (another $100). This will be considerably faster than a SD card.

So this chromebox (with the i3 or i7) would definitely be powerful enough as a desktop.

It just comes down to whether the BIOS will allow third-party OS installs or not and I don't know the answer to that.

-Matt

The Acer c720 works great as a small laptop and will run Linux. It isn't quite a replacement for a workstation, it's not as fast as a desktop cpu but it is certainly much faster than the much-aligned netbooks from a few years ago. The keyboard and touchpad are pretty good considering the form factor.

Booting and setup is a bit hokey due to the minimal BIOS but it works. The c720 has a M.2 form factor SSD internally and it's *easy* to take apart the back (just a lot of screws) and replace it with a bigger one. I bought a 128GB M.2 SSD for mine.

For the Acer c720 my recommendation is to not overwrite the 16GB SSD in the machine. Instead buy a (bigger) replacement and leave chrome on the original. Also find the acer/google restore disk image (you should be able to google, it's officially supplied) which you can throw onto a USB stick. You need your chromebook's serial number. Always good to have a restore image handy in case you flub the instructions.

Read the instructions on how to install linux very carefully and do not skip any steps. Worst case you brick the laptop and have to put the original M.2 16GB SSD back into it to get back on track (which is why I suggest not overwriting the original SSD).

-Matt

I'm not sure of that. It is on my Acer C720 chromebook (laptop). If it's M.2 you may be able to just buy a bigger SSD on e.g. newegg, load linux or a BSD onto it, and throw it in. Google for instructions, not all chromebook BIOS's allow non-chrome OS installs.

-Matt

Yeah, see my UID? This has been happening for as long as I've been here. :)

The flat Earth hypothesis has a 'kernel' of truth in it as well. The Earth looks flat from our perspective. It's just that when you decide to look at it with a more analytical eye things start to break down.

The kernel of truth that you're seeing is one that we have to acknowledge: men and women have the opinion that women aren't as good at math, and over the course of history, it's abundantly clear that fewer women have been stand-out mathematicians than men.

The *actual* question is whether or not this is down to biology or societal conditioning. I'm on the side of societal conditioning at this point. It seems unlikely to me that evolution would select for women that aren't as good as math as men in a biological sense, or conversely, that only men would benefit from being better at math (or the prehistoric math analogue) and that would be a characteristic that is located only on the Y chromosome, or is enhanced by testosterone and muted by oestrogen.

Meanwhile, our species has had a long history of systematic and institutional sexism since we became agrarian. Women have only been openly welcome in Universities for less than 100 years, and they haven't even always been allowed to study 'male' subjects like science and engineering. It seems MUCH more likely that conditioning is a greater part of the equation than we've given it credit for until recently.

Actually, iOS *is* more developer friendly. Writing an App for Android's infinite screen dimensions and densities is a nightmare.

-Matt