The second article is indeed better, but it is an in-vitro study. While the in-vitro results are interesting and definitely an indicator as to how these substances might act in-vivo, it is not the whole story.
The slashdot headline and summary is a little misleading and alarmist, but the takeaway, that artificial sweeteners might not be good for our gut biome, is probably worth further investigation.
IMO, those problems are mostly overblown.
Yes, there are Thunderbolt cables that look like USB but don't pass USB data, but unless you're one of those rare people who actually uses Thunderbolt, you'll never encounter one, so that's not a meaningful reason to be concerned.
Thunder cables are a different story entirely and work great for devices that support it. The Lightening cables are a totally worthless unless you're in the Apple handheld ecosystem. They're also pretty awful in that they can't do more than about 12W due to the skinny wires Apple chooses to use. This means you're stuck with slow charging for no good reason other than a fat cable isn't svelte and sexy.
And yes, it is possible for a crappy cable to reduce your charging speed by limiting the current. Buy quality cables and you won't have this problem.
I'd love to, but other than shopping directly from the Benson Approved site, how can anyone know it's a quality cable that is "quality?" Most folks won't ever even know there's a difference. The huge variety in quality indicates that something in the USB-C spec is difficult to meet. Either the spec is too rigorous, too expensive, or not clear enough for the average chinesium supplier to meet.
Having a clear, open standard that everyone can meet and that is mandated to all portable devices would be a huge boon for consumers. Yes, it might limit innovation, but with some proper collaboration with industry, it could be a very good thing and replace the current mess we have today.
Even among the non-Apple devices there are still issues. The USB-Micro standard is fragile, uni-directional and has skinny-ass wires that can't cary much current for fast charging. The USB-C standard is anything but standard with a mixed bag of features and compatibility from device to device.
Apple's Lightening charger is nice that it works for all of Apple's recent handhelds and is reversible, but is incompatible for all the new laptops (USB-C). The Listening cable is also only good for ~2A of current meaning that fast charging is right out. But what good is a charging cable that only works one line of devices?
USB-C *could* be great and last us for the next 10 years if only the industry could standardize the standard. It would also be great if you could count on USB-C cables actually being 100% compliant and not worry that your E-Bay special was going to toast your new phone, or burn down your house. Judging by the plethora of shitty cables out there, I would guess that the standard is simply too expensive or too difficult to comply with.
I would definitely welcome a standard that could do something about the giant box of standard, half-standard, and proprietary cables that I've accumulated. We can do it with headphones and lights and HDMI cables (sort of), why can't we do it with phone and laptop chargers?
I pay for content when I can get it, honestly these services are MORE CONVENIENT than fiddling around with torrents / content streaming sites
Does the industry make more money by blocking content than not?? If so how???
Why even create a pirate economy? To sell DRM which is expensive and easily circumvented??
I don't understand it and I probably never will...
Yes, the industry does make more by blocking content. They do this by selling the rights to a show in each market at a value they perceive to be fair for that market. The owners of "Myth Busters" lease the rights to show it in Norway and the Netherlands on Discovery. Discovery wants **exclusive** rights to show the new episodes and whatever rerun deal they've worked out. If viewers in these markets get the show on demand via Netflix that would dilute the audience that Discovery is counting on and thereby decreases the revenue they generate. They are expecting a certain number of eyeballs and sell their advertising slots based on that number.
The owners of a show can negotiate for larger sums for exclusive rights than diluted rights. Not only does Discovery **want** exclusive rights, but they've paid for those rights. It's in the contract somewhere.
I'm pretty sure that sites like FlixSearch will put an end to all this regional nonsense in the near future. Using FlixSearch along with UnoTelly it is possible to find a show in any region and then dynamically switch to that region to watch it. Unless Netflix works out a way around this reliably, I don't see exclusive deals lasting into the future. They just won't be worth it.
Voice search on the phone is natural. The phone is a device that historically is good at one thing, voice. Even though a modern phone has a decent keyboard input, t's still clumsy when on the go. When I'm out for a run or a ride and I want quick directions, or to dictate a note, send a text message, or check the train schedule, the voice interaction is vastly superior to wrestling my phone out of it's armband and typing something. The voice interaction isn't amazing, but it works about 80% of the time on the first try and that's good enough for me. I don't have to stop my workout and fumble around.
On the other hand, when I'm sitting at my desk I can, with two key strokes switch to my web browser and launch a new search tab. I can type about as fast as I can speak and my accuracy is probably around 95%; google makes up for the remaining 4% in spelling errors (searching for instead of ). I get better accuracy and less fumbling around if the room is loud. Also, in our quiet open-plan office I look like a total D-Bag talking to my monitor. That's a big plus. too.
The full-size keyboard isn't the end-all of interfaces, but for a desktop it's waaaay better than voice search. If voice search ever gets to the point where I can throw out a complex, natural language queries into the air a la ST-TNG, I'll switch. "Computer: Post a witty comment to SlashDot about voice interfaces and how bad they sucked in the naughties and teens"
I find it funny you think your vendors are somehow required to push updates to your device. They're not.
Next time before you buy, check the support list of a custom ROM.
Don't buy any no-name chinese crapware, then install some other custom Android OS, and be done with it.
Vendors are definitely not required to push updates, but they probably should be. It is pretty irresponsible for vendors to continue selling phones with known vulnerabilities, or ignoring vulnerabilities and not offering patches.
This is not unlike an automobile firm allwoing known safety related flaws in their cars to persist because it is too expensive to fix them. I'm looking at you GM. In this case the "safety" flaws are not life threatening, but are a threat to our privacy and security. The recent StageFright bug is a good example. This flaw not only compromised the usability of the device, but potentially compromised users banking and credit information. Plenty of phones will NEVER get patched and users will continue to use these shitty, vulnerable devices.
This is partially Google's fault for making Android so mutable; it's crazy hard and expensive for manufacturers to keep up with patches and there's no incentive for them to do so. That's not an excuse for us not to hold them responsible. We certainly expect our cars to not explode in our faces throwing metal shards into our eyes and thorax. We should hold phone makers to the same standard. We should expect that known security flaws will be patched and not ignored.
Will this increase the cost of phones? Probably. But would you rather have a slightly more expensive handset that gets security updates, or use a phone that's woefully out of date. If you are in the latter category, you're probably reading this in Internet Explorer 5 on Windows XP and in for a shock when you open your retirement account and find a balance of $0.00. Or worse -$53,000.99.
You're better off installing Facebook and just putting a bookmark to the web page on your launcher.
+1 For you sir! https://m.facebook.com/ is far superior to the shitey app. You can post pictures, message, and read all the wedding announcements and funny baby pictures without FailBook stealing your contact list, monitoring your location and generally being a douche. And to really put a cherry on top: it stops running when you're not using it! If you live and die by your FB messenger, this won't work for you, but if you actually want your phone to be a phone with some juice in the battery, this is the way forward!
It's amazing it took this long for MS to put out a truly cross-platform solution of Skype.
Keep waiting. There's yet another needless and painful UI change. There's no dial pad so you can only call people who are in your contacts list. Living abroad from the US, 90% of my Skype use is to call landlines in North America to deal with banks, government agencies and the like.
It seems like with every minor update MS somehow manages to obfuscate the UI and make simple tasks such dialing an actual number or removing or adding contacts difficult. Why do they need to keep making this useful application akin to gargling razors?
I used to think all trackpads were terrible, then I used one that actually worked well and haven't used a mouse on a laptop since.
Which trackpad did you like? We give our staff the option of running windows 7 or OS X on their MacBook Pros at work. Most of the staff that uses Windows ends up plugging in a mouse because the track pad support for the Apple pad is AWFUL and generally busted. Under OS X the support is amazing. I think the Apple track pad is the best designed track pad I've ever used. The gestures are great and the *actual* tracking is excellent.
At home I always connect my laptop to Ethernet unless I'm using it on the coach.
The trick is getting the spool of ethernet cable from getting caught in the wheels, or tripping up the horses.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes
