My last trip to Beijing I asked if they would take a credit card before sitting in a restaurant as most only took WeChat or AliPay. Cash could be used in some places, but credit cards were not readily accepted.

Moving to a digital currency and prohibiting visitors from using digital currency (must have a national ID to get a bank account, and must have a bank account to use digital currency) is a great way to stop tourism. I was there for business, with the trouble I had finding a place to eat, I don't plan on touring there at all.

The benefit of being in Arizona is that we never change our clocks (unless you are on the Navajo Indian Reservation).

The problem with this is that meetings and events scheduled in other states move an hour each time you all go through your silly time change dance.

You should all agree to stay on Standard Time and stop the time change insanity. But that isn't going to happen with some states wanting Daylight Time and others wanting Standard Time. Letting the states choose is a mistake.

Exactly. A bunch of reviewers paid minimum wage knows what is real vaccine information and what is not.

Puncturing a lithium ion battery is bad enough. Add sulfur to the mix, and imagine that explosion.

Airlines don't allow lithium batteries in the cargo hold today, there is no way (even if they solved the weight problem that apparently still exists per other posters) they will allow these bombs onto a plane in the US.

I haven't seen any ads on Facebook.

But then the Like button is blocked by my ad blocker on all websites, and I don't post or click anything on Facebook, so maybe I am just not their typical customers.

Haven't seen any in the last several years of every few days checking on the family posts. Maybe blocking Facebook like buttons, not using Facebook to login anywhere but Facebook and never posting on Facebook has some advantages. Added the Facebook Container extension to Firefox may even further reduce their ability to track me.

Why would you advertise on Facebook? I also think advertising anywhere is pretty pointless. If I need something I'll go looking for it, and I won't click an ad to get it.

False Positive:
How would the app know if the infected person is on the other side of a wall from me? For example, I was in Starbucks, they were in FedEx. We never met. Not to mention that GPS and BT are not the most accurate technologies on our phones.

False Negative:
Non-app using person is infectious and I get it from them. The app has no knowledge that there was a contact.
If I were to get infected from a contaminated handrail, then the app wouldn't be alerting for that.

Privacy:
The Google/Apple solution does not include GPS data in it, and the crypto sounds like it is very good at dealing with privacy. Random IDs that rotate, hashing, no MAC or IP addresses used. The lack of GPS also hurts the contact tracing effectiveness when needing to notify non-app users.

I wouldn't use it just for the false positive/negative aspect.

Their navigation is more than weird. It is terrible.
- Apple mixes in their stuff with potentially linked account stuff. Even if you have no linked accounts. (Suggestion: Only show linked account contents I have linked to unclutter)
- Eventually you can find the button that filters down to just the Apple TV+ stuff, even then navigation is difficult.
- There is no direct way to see all the episodes available, you have to scroll through all their "new" content to see if an episode has been added. (Suggestion: Overlay indicator on shows that have new episodes you have not seen)
- There is no way to determine if a show is in season or complete (Suggestion: Show season dates when selecting a show)
- There is no way to see if a show will have a second season (Suggestion: Show next season coming fall 2020)
- It is difficult to see which episodes of a season you have already watches (Suggestion: Watched/New indicator)
- On a PC through a web browser, at least you don't get all the linked content trash. But the HUGE tiles used for each show is really unnecessary.
- On a PC through a web browser, the Play Episode button on the huge tile usually plays the episode you have not watched, but it occasionally repeats the previous episode.
- On a PC through a web browser there is no indication of new shows available on the huge tile, there is no indication that you completed the season either.

The lack of AppleTV+ app on most systems is really going to limit viewership. Most people are not willing to buy hardware to watch a service they can't try through some other method. Fortunately I can cast from my PC to the TV but it reduces the picture quality.

I also have my "free year" and have watched several shows. The navigation issues and lack of content are probably going to make me not bother to pay for this service in the future. If I do, then it will be for a month in the summer to watch some show, and quit again.

Anti-virus isn't really needed anymore as this is not the typical mode used to attack our systems these days. Scanners are typically behind on signatures to scan for so they aren't really effective anyway.

Phishing attack prevention means the app is getting URLs you are tapping on, and who knows who is seeing/tracking your URLs. There are too many bad URLs to have as a list on the device, and new ones are created all the time.

As for malware, sandboxing should prevent most of that, and mobile operating systems typically do that.

Seems like yet another app we don't need on our smartphones....

Must be someone who never paid for cable TV.

Cable companies bundle 20-40 channels together and if you only want 1, you need to pay for the bundle. The bundles are expensive because they put a few high cost channels in there that you may have zero interest in, but since you want to watch 1 channel from the bundle, you get to pay for them all.

If you try to reduce your costs by eliminating cable TV and land line, keeping only the internet connection, costs go up because you have less services. It is cheaper to have basic cable, a land line and internet than just internet.

I figured that being government, it would take a year or 2 before anything really happened.
If they actually implemented something they are really doing horribly. Nothing is improved yet.

I have actually started to embrace the "lower your credit card interest rate" calls by talking to these people, insisting they read off my credit card number to me to verify (instead of the other way around they want), and providing them bogus information to look me up. While they are "looking me up". I hang up.

The Verizon Call Filter app actually blocked 1 call (SSN was being used for nefarious things...) but the credit card guys just keep calling. I don't think the app is doing much. 1 call blocked, 6 calls I had fun with in the last 2 weeks.

The UWP experience has been poor for the user. Apps that have a desktop counter part are severely limited by UWP.

Look at Overdrive for example. Desktop app can download audiobooks from your library and play or sync to MP3 players or iPods. The UWP app can only download and play the audiobooks, no option to sync.
VLC is similar. The UWP app can play a local video, of several formats. The Desktop app can handle playlists, devices, streaming and more.

Developing in UWP has been painful too. Limited features, each OS version has different features that are supported, things that look like they are implemented in the OS are incomplete, and the OS can break your app in some circumstances.

UWP apps are the second thing I uninstall from a new system. The first being 3rd party anti-virus. If there is a move to a UWP world, I'll be looking at other operating systems.

You are right, Altus is wrong.

I reset mine at least 5 times a day. A game I play uses the ID to identify me to ads they play so I get in free game stuff.
If I don't reset it, the ads don't play, because I already got my free stuff that day.
If I reset it, I can see another set of ads, which play while I am doing something else, and get more free in game stuff.

Settings->Privacy->Advertising there is a Reset Advertising Identifier button to do this.

It seems that the elderly that use Facebook Messenger on their PCs are getting their Facebook accounts hijacked at a pretty good clip.
Having banking information assigned to their Facebook account sounds disastrous.

Losing your Facebook account is not a huge deal, losing your bank account because of Facebook, especially when you are unlikely to know that the link is there being a retiree, could be the worst case scenario.