McSira isn't hosting the files as indicated in the story. They merely link to Cellebrite's CDN. Cellebrite is exposing their own firmware, not the reseller.

Call your credit card company and list the charge as fraudulent.

As someone else stated, call the unreasonable company as well and talk with someone. Also, do some research and find the corporate number and give that a call if it's really bad. Their corporate overlords love getting those calls.

While on the surface it may appear their IT department is "incompetent" as one person pointed out, other factors could have contributed to the outage. Management not approving proper tests to be done or another datacenter in a completely different location. Improper maintenance on the generator(s). While IT may request things be done or placed a certain way, doesn't mean the facilities team care or understand why and do it their own way anyways. Like why have two generators located right next to each other? They probably shared the same resource for operating as well.

It takes an event like this for people to realize the importance of listening to the people who implement and maintain their infrastructure. I'm sure anyone who saw this happening is digging through their memos and pulling out the multiple requests for disaster recovery solutions to prevent these things. Not to show them, haha I told you so, but to cover their ass when they start looking for someone to fire.

It's easy to point out IT as the scapegoat but sometimes they just have to deal with what they're given by the higher ups.

Have you heard of Ingress, Niantic's other social game? www.ingress.com

Yes, I'm somewhat bitter about Pokemon Go and the players overtaking the areas I play for Ingress. The unfortunate, but obvious decision was to use the same location for portals in Ingress, for pokestops and gyms in Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go is less of a social game when compared to Ingress. Pokemon Go is also a game that will be ruined by cheaters and people who pay to play. Ingress has it's fair share of cheaters but you can't buy things to give yourself an incredible advantage. While I don't like that aspect of Pokemon Go and is part of the reason I dislike it, I know it'll only support Ingress and it's development as well. It's a double-edge sword. The game also has helped Ingress gain more players but, because the games are much different in how you play and level up it's unknown if any of them will stick around. Most probably will think it's way too hard in comparison to Pokemon Go despite our efforts to help them. There are many overlaying aspects between the two games that will ruin Ingress for some (same locations and cooldown periods). Most people can handle the initial surge of people in the areas but if this keeps up, Niantic may have just shot themselves in the foot with Ingress and some of it's players.

I can't wait for Pokemon GO to lead to the demise of any and all location based games. Niantic's other game, Ingress, was the basis for all the locations in Pokemon GO. I've seen an influx of people at the locations of portals. Mind you, there's usually an abundance of portals inside of cemeteries. I, along with others in the area I play, normally don't visit those portals often out of respect. With Pokemon GO and a younger (immature) group more apt to play, they will probably not have that same respect. It's an unfortunate thing that will probably lead to more problems for people playing Ingress. I'm sure it will also bring negative community attention if/when there's destruction of property.

On the flipside, it's brought many new players to Ingress.

You can have compromise without damaging effects on both sides. Limiting the magazine capacity, I believe, can and will have lasting effects and so I don't support that. I have an AR with 30 round magazines and a FN Five-Seven that can hold 20 rounds. I like high capacity magazines. Delaying when you get the gun you purchased by a couple days doesn't have damaging effects to my knowledge. It stops people from buying a gun out of anger to go kill their spouse or group of people. Didn't some of the shooters buy the guns within days of the shootings. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution but I think it's something most can get behind. It allows for further checks to happen by 3 letter agencies if it's a previous person of interest.

Regardless of my views on guns and gun control, I feel as though this needs to happen more often when our government fails to act on important issues. Issues like warrantless searches, etc need to be discussed and action taken. Stop slipping shit into irrelevant bills that have wide effects and discuss the problem. I support discussing the topic of gun control and coming up with ways to combat the ease at which you can purchase some guns. I believe a good start is mandating a wait period of no less than 3 days before a gun (commercial or private sale) with a certain size magazine to be given/sold to an individual. It is already difficult, in terms of paperwork, to acquire fully automatic or silenced guns. I believe all the recent shootings involved semi-automatic (correct me if I'm wrong).

I think because each side is the opposite extreme of the other, they don't even want to begin to listen. Mandate ethics classes for them all. Everyone should at least hear what the other has to say. At that point, a reasonable compromise should happen.

Disclaimer: As a responsible gun owner, I like the ability to buy the type of gun I want just like I can a car. Not apples to apples comparison but brings up a similar question, do you really need a car that can go 100+ MPH?!

Cheating was so two decades ago

I agree that it's fine for someone to monitor the public posts because that's what they are, public. My issue is that someone at the school is playing cop. What kind of background checks are done for the "cop" reporting the posts? What's their professional background? Sad that they would invest that much into the software plus the salary of one or more people to review the flagged posts. As other people said, it's nice to know they have $18,000+ annually to just piss away instead of improving the tools for teachers to teach.

Leave the monitoring to the correct, corrupt, group of individuals in the government to monitor the posts. Oh wait, they probably are and don't know how to handle all the data flowing in. Or god forbid they flow the information/posts in certain areas to local police/government to sift through.

they will pass laws saying we can't lock our doors with deadbolts or reinforce them.
Car alarms, who needs them?
bars on windows, psh.
machettes, we live in america not the jungle.

All because those are things terrorists might use along with a long list of other consumer items.

Overall, I've been pleased with my Nest. I've had it for about 1.5-2 years now. It's nice for me because I can't have the ideal schedules setup during the day because my wife doesn't work the same days every week. Auto-away has worked okay except when the Christmas tree is in the way and it goes to 64 F while we are home. Other times, if I remember, I'll set it to away remotely if I know she works that day. Working on a solution to know when both of us are not home to set to away automatically instead of waiting on auto-away.

I can't say I had this particular issue but I had a similar one where the blower on the furnace would run but not blow out any hot air. The furnace would light and have a flame for maybe a minute but then shut off with the blower still running. It would repeatedly do this and we only had warm air coming out of the vents for a couple minutes at a time. I had to disconnect the wire for the A/C and this solved my issue. Disconnecting the A/C during the winter in the midwest isn't a big deal for me but I'm sure others would have an issue with it. I also only have the heat or A/C enabled at a time, not both so that really left me wondering wtf.

I would've just modded you up but I'm out of mod points :( I guess I'll just have to comment instead. :P

Seriously though, you make an excellent point. It's bad enough people have a hard time even speaking with someone on the phone or in person. I'm mostly an introvert but I refuse to communicate solely over text or IM much less via buttons or emoticons. I can't even imagine what relationships, whether just friends or more, will be like in the near future if people never interact with each other like you stated.

I think that sums up my feelings about this particular topic in a nutshell without going full rant.