An alternative for Linux users is KDEConnect (may work on Mac/Windows with some effort, but not supported). Not quite the same and requires an application installed on the desktop computer rather than working over the web, but offers more functionality and definitely more privacy.

A short features list from the github (https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-kde) page:

  - Shared clipboard: copy and paste between your phone and your computer (or any other device).
  - Notification sync: Read and reply to your Android notifications from the desktop.
  - Share files and URLs instantly from one device to another.
  - Multimedia remote control: Use your phone as a remote for Linux media players.
  - Virtual touchpad: Use your phone screen as your computer's touchpad and keyboard.

This operates over your existing WiFi network using TLS encryption.

The SMS support is still a work in progress, but currently you can receive notifications on your desktop of incoming text messages and reply to them. Can't initiate yet, but that's coming.

https://community.kde.org/KDEC...

Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class. This story isn't about you, so maybe hover your finger over the submit button before clicking to decide whether you are contributing to the conversation.

If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.

You, Mr. Frosty Piss, can use whatever calculator you want. Have fun with that.

> The human body is the most complex organism in the known universe ...

Found the anthropocentrist.

LOL. Post of the day. Thanks!

Asimov wrote fiction. Autonomous systems that kill are a threat to a small subset of humanity until they run out of ammo/fuel/energy/goals. Maybe if these autonomous systems are self-replicating, self-programming, and can manufacture their own fuel and ammunition, then they might pose a threat. All of humanity? Unlikely. As the most vicious predator on the planet atop the food chain, humanity is pretty good at eliminating threats. There won't even be any ethical constraints to worry about, so I suspect that rogue "advanced robot weapons" would not last very long.

I have music disks that I purchased in the mid 80's near the dawn of the CD era that still play fine. I buy used CDs from Goodwill that aren't quite that old, but I've yet to find one that doesn't play due to deterioration. Same with the public library. The only thing that seems to affect playability is scratches or actual damage to the data layer.

I'd call that pretty durable.

Bravo. Your post is "post of the day" for me. Well said.

I think what you're missing is that your calculation is rapidly becoming inaccurate. In the past, Microsoft had to make sure that their software met your (the customer's) needs or they would lose that customer. Their best interest was to prioritize the best interests of their customer base, because they would then keep buying Windows-based computers which is where the revenue came from. Now that the market has shifted, they are placing their interests before that of the customer, and the value of the OS is thus diminished. What people are talking about is not the status quo you refer to that has been true for a few decades, rather it's the status quo that seems to be coming which looks much different. It's one in which you are not the customer to which the software needs to provide value, you are the product. The software will be providing value to the actual customers of Microsoft, which are likely those who want to advertise to you, sell to you and monitor you.

Have you considered a career as a fiction writer?

This brings to thought several things:

1. It's a "sun roof" so keeping it clear in the winter isn't exactly a common use case.

2. The area covered by the sun roof relative to the rest of the roof is relatively small. Putting heating wires in the glass only won't do much good, since there will still be snow on the rest of the roof. You still have to clear the rest manually, often to comply with local laws about clearing vehicles of snow before driving.

3. You don't really need to see out the top of the vehicle to drive safely, so it's an added expense for dubious benefit.

4. Clearing snow off a vehicle isn't a bad thing to do, so really the problem to be solved is how to do that for the entire top of the car, not just the sun roof. But that's a lot harder and more prone to problems than the back window.

That seems to describe the conclusion that Netflix came to. Amazon as well. Maybe to a lesser degree some of the larger movie channels like HBO, Showtime, AMC. The latter were earlier to produce their own content, I think, but couldn't go very far with it because they still have to rely on the cable companies to deliver the content, so that limits their potential subscriber base and revenue. They can't sink too much into their own programming, because the cable companies still control the purse strings, so the best they can do is negotiate a higher rate for carrying their channels. If subscribership increases, the cable companies still benefit the most. Netflix and Amazon, on the other hand, don't have their hands tied to the same degree - the only real dependency on cable is the network connection. Any increase in subscribership means a real and substantial increase in revenue. Their efforts in producing quality original content has paid off, and seems to have been worth the investment, and if they continue to be successful, they will eventually build up a catalog that includes a large proportion of what people want to watch, and the content from the old media companies will have to compete with the reality that most of the people are on one of these services and won't watch their stuff unless it's available there.

I won't argue that the iPhone is a successful product - clearly it is. The uncritical leap from reasonable statements about its success as a product to the "so much more" and "enabler of change" bugs me a bit. The blatant worship makes me question the entire article and leads me to believe that the reality is somewhat less profound. And that's too bad, because it takes away from the deserved praise that the iPhone and Apple should receive for their success. I've heard of "damning with faint praise". Now I've actually seen "damning with overenthusiastic praise" in action. As always, the middle path is the place to walk.

No. It's irrelevant and doesn't belong. I didn't really notice this until today, but now that I have, I find it quite bothersome. I don't know if it's just being clever or a form of interstitial advertising. I don't know where the /. summaries are re-posted on the net, but I could see these unrelated references being an attempt to draw people to /. by other means if they aren't interested in the topic presented by the main body of the summary.

If I had to articulate why it's bothersome, it's because it violates one of the fundamental principles of clear communication that was taught to me repeatedly during my formative years: every word, sentence, paragraph and punctuation mark should be relevant to the self-contained bit of information you are trying to communicate. If not relevant, it doesn't belong.

That is prominently noted in the second paragraph of Haushofer's CV. He cites a 2010 Nature paper by Melanie I. Stefan as a source of inspiration and provides 4 examples of similar works (see the CV for that - I'm not doing all your work for you - LOL).

Typo in editorial addendum. Apple's CEO is *Tim* Cook, as it says right in the URL immediately following.

Measure twice, cut once.