Damn, this is brilliant. Now I can automatically send google photos to my luddite parents, in-laws, and grandparents to answer the age-old question of "what have you been up to this month?" I mean, my wife already prints out cell phone pictures at our local drug store and sends them to her parents - they live in the rural mountains where broadband, WiFi, and cell phone reception is as plentiful as "actual good advice" from an anti-vaxxer (hence none). But now I have to worry about the algorithm selecting the dick pick I might have taken last week (for health purposes, yeah) and forgot to delete...

I'll just file this one under, "I saw this one coming a mile away."

YouCall seems to be a typo - I know that never happens, but work with me here - the service is actually YouMail. YouMail replaces your voicemail, but the app ALSO takes over your inbound calls and decides what to do with them - you can set up a blacklist, a whitelist, and so on. I have YouMail set up to block phone calls originating from my area code with the first three digits of my phone number but that ARE NOT in my contacts list already - generally those are fake scam calls with altered phone records made to look local but are not. Those phone calls immediately go to the custom voicemail instead of ringing my phone.

I'm all in favor of throwing away the baby with the bath water, because the bath water is poisonous and the baby is a zombie. We need a better system!

From the article:

So what you're saying is that everyone who vapes has a chance of being a Toxic Avenger? Swamp Thing? The Joker? DareDevil? Or one of billions killed by it? I play the lottery, odds mean nothing to my dreams of striking it rich (and becoming a freak of nature)!

Oh please, these technology researchers clearly don't know much about technology. Let me give you an example. I have been watching a spanish TV show on Telemundo called Exatlon, but since I don't speak Spanish it's quite difficult. So, I tried using Google Translate on my phone to translate some of the audio - however, Google Translate knew that the audio was coming from a device and wasn't "someone speaking", so while it showed that it was receiving audio it didn't perform any translations. However, if I then repeated what I just heard, it immediately picked up and translated that. (I can only believe it determined that based on frequencies it was or wasn't hearing from the audio coming out of my TV vs what frequencies it was hearing from me). If the researchers just played TV ads, any technology using the same system Google was using would be able to ignore everything it heard from a device, and only was trying to listen to "real" people in the room. By the way, Amazon Alexa sucks, it still responds to the wake word when it hears it from a TV, whereas Google Home doesn't respond to the wake word from a TV.

Oh please. Anyone can pass the Catholic School 8th-grade science test by answering, "God wanted it, so He made it so" for each question. Boom, done.

Meatless chicken - don't you mean a "Chicken McNugget"? Even though my wife argues with me, I firmly believe McDonald's chicken nuggets have been meat-free for years (99.9% filler, 0.1% bone flakes so they can claim there's "chicken" in the nugget). Maybe this is McDonald's chance to turn the tide and finally come clean and admit they were a pioneer in this field before it was cool.

When did Pizza Delivery people get classified as "Professional Drivers"? How long do you have to be delivering pizzas to be considered "professional"? I drive to work every day to my job - does that make me a professional driver, too?

Trump please. This is just another US/China trade tactic. Tell the world that Huawai gear is going to spy on you, so nobody buys the Huawai gear. ANY Huawai gear. Or any Chinese gear. And then the chinese electronics industry starts going into a downturn because the United States started a big nasty rumor that Chinese goods can't be trusted. But if China decides to start to play nicely, maybe Trump will have a bit of a change of heart with the finger pointing, and we'll call off the witch hunt and say "oops, sorry, we actually love the Chinese. See, I love eating pork fried rice, and a little Chinese woman takes the stains out of my underwear (God bless her soul)."

I bet the employees that were laid off were part of a company they bought to specifically address autonomous driving, and no employees that were actually hired by Apple itself to work on Apple-related projects. Such is life when your company gets bought out by a monolithic entity, at that point you're pretty much expendable. Sure, I'm betting some (like software devs or hardware experts) were able to shift, but not everyone's roles are that movable.

I like to remember that most significant scientific finds never start with, "Eureka! I have found it!" but more, "That's odd."

Normally I'd be right there with you. However, have you seen the god-aweful crap floating around even Facebook that *looks* real but isn't? And then the BS that gets posted that isn't true that leads to riots in the street and people being murdered? Something's gotta give. The problem seems to be the seemingly anonymous posting of garbage on the Web - it's almost impossible to call out purveyors of crap (except the Avocado dumbass) and approach them on the merits of their crap. In real life, when someone says stuff like that, they can be publicly shamed - on the internet, it's almost a badge of honor.

You're kidding, right? It's called the "Dark Side" because *we* never see it, it doesn't mean the sun never shines on it.

#Science

I just went through this with Comcast, and I feel like I was lied to every step of the way. Long story short it turns out you CANNOT purchase a cable modem compatible with Comcast's gigabit offering, because they ALSO require that the modem supports their Internet Voice service, and ONLY Comcast Modems support that. Grimey fuckers.

The long story is: I called into Tech Support because I wanted to upgrade to their Super Triple Play, because getting virtually EVERY channel and upgraded gigabit internet turned out to cost $10 LESS than I was paying for my stripped-down service offering. Though, this was only the case if I purchased my own modem and eliminated the modem fee - which is great, because renting equipment is insane. So the comcast tech told me I should be good to go, but I needed to upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 compatible modem (my current modem was only DOCSIS 3.0 compatible). Their recommendation was that I go ahead and use their modem for a month to make installation easier, and buy a modem later to save time.

I went on ahead and scheduled the upgrade, and quickly ordered a DOCSIS 3.1 compatible modem (newest Arris Surfboard they make) - Amazon Prime got it to me in 2 days, boo-yah. I called Comcast Tech Support again to make sure my modem was good, and that I could use my modem during the setup instead of theirs, and they said it was fine. Again they said their recommendation was to use their modem during setup and replace theirs with mine later, but that the plan was still solid.

Tech guy shows up, calls in my MAC address, everything initially seemed to go as scheduled. However, I wasn't getting gigabit speeds, but he said that should work itself out in about 30 minutes, once the account is "closed" and everything finalizes (I also couldn't see HBO, which also meant the account hadn't finalized). He closes the account, calls in to make sure everything is good, and leaves.

8 hours later, still cannot access HBO and still don't have gigabit speeds. I call back, and the tech tells me that my account hasn't been closed yet. The service tech still needs to close it out, and I should have the tech come back tomorrow to close it out. I argue that I won't be home, I have a goddamn job and all, and I demand to know what hasn't been closed out about the account that requires a service tech. They told me my voice service hasn't been set up, and it's required in order to close the account. They highly recommend that I have the tech come back, use their modem to set up the voice service since the modem I bought doesn't support voice, and then replace the modem with a different compatible modem later.

So I got into an argument about my modem, that I was told my modem was compatible with gigabit internet, and he kept telling me I needed to refer to the online info about supported third-party modems. He kept recommending I have the support tech come back, install their modem, and find a third-party replacement later. After about 10 minutes on the call, the tech starts acting like he can't hear me any more. Bullshit. Then he says if I can hear him to call back later. And then he hangs up.

So I call back, and explain my situation and the jackwad I had just talked to, and the new tech dude repeated the "I recommend you use our modem to set up the service, and replace with a new compatible modem." So at that point I said there isn't a modem compatible with their Voice service, and it was not within my budget to rent a modem from them. The dude didn't say a word more to me, but forwarded my call to someone else.

The new person answered, and I asked if I needed to repeat my situation. She said nope, she knew what the problem was. She verified that gigabit internet from Comcast only works with THEIR modem, if I wanted to use any other modem I had to back down to the fastest non-gigabit offering. And then she recommended several ways I could even further reduce my bill by asking me specific questions about how I use my DVR and other services, and even recommended a Roku with their new app instead of renting a cable box. I was so happy to talk with someone who wasn't a fucking iddiot that I didn't complain about the jackwads I had talked to, or the crap I had been through at that point. And within minutes my service was enabled and everything worked. And on top of that, she waived the service tech/setup fee and lowered my bill another $10/mo.

But goddamn it, Comcast, it would be nice if you didn't keep trying to trick me into using your modem and locking me into a service when you KNEW I couldn't buy a compatible modem. Jackwads, all of them.