I'm not currently worried about my programming job, but seeing stuff like this snippet ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) does make me less confident that I should *never* be worried about my job.

Seems like a bit of a harsh judgement of other people... But I'm sure that you would never own a device capable of this, so I guess you are allowed to judge.

I'm sure you don't have a smart TV (many smart TV's support voice command, or have video chat, and 'smart' features almost certainly require an internet connection. Internet+Mic = possible hot-mic).

You certainly don't have a smart phone with Google Now or Siri on it. Especially with wake word enabled! That would just be foolish.

Some people like the convenience of a voice assistant. Some people just like the 'futuristic feel' of commanding a computer to say and do things. No matter what the reasons, you are going to be seeing more of these type of devices, not less. At least Alexa isn't shipping audio off to Amazon until you speak the locally-recognized wake-word, so I'd consider it the exact same privacy risk level as smart TVs and smart phones, except that the average user is more likely to realize that what they say to Alexa is being sent over the internet.

At least Amazon treats the audio recordings at a similar privacy level as they do credit card information. How much do you trust Amazon to protect your privacy vs the manufacturer of your TV?

Thanks! This was the feature I missed the most. I never would have thought of right-clicking on a webpage; I always just expect my browser's context menu.

I don't know... I see your point, but I'd wager that the likelihood of a false positive on the eFUSE is less likely than the user actually overclocked it to trigger it. It's kind of like those 'water damage' stickers they have in phones. Maybe it's possible that it claims damage when there wasn't any, but it's sure a good indication that something happened that wasn't supposed to, and it makes it harder to lie your way into a warranty replacement.

Don't think I'm siding with NVidia on this, though; I'm just discussing the subject. I still feel like they owe me a laptop after their defective Geforce 8400m cost me my previous one :).

You're thinking of an overcurrent protection fuse. An eFUSE, however, could probably be used for exactly this situation (permanently marks that the device has been overclocked) without the risk of accidentally triggering.

I still install new custom ROMs with obsolete Android because it runs much smoother on my obsolete hardware. (I'm only addressing your last question here, I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about the rest of the post)

No idea if this has any relation to the GP's issue, but my Galaxy Nexus would drain the battery very quickly when Wi-Fi was enabled. It ended up being caused by Location Services. I disabled 'Use nearby WiFi to improve location accuracy' and my battery life doubled.

I'm sure there was some other actual root cause to the issue, but I got my desired result (acceptable battery life), so I didn't look into it any further.

The best way (for me) that I have come across to handle rebate debit cards is to, on receipt of the card, immediately purchase an Amazon gift card with the full amount of the debit cart. This works great for me because I know I will be spending money at Amazon at some point anyway, and now I don't have to worry about keeping around the rebate card, the card expiring, or leaving the card with $1.27 left on it which then becomes difficult to spend.

You may be mistaking what you use it for with what it is capable of. You can send any arbitrary information over it, as long as an application on both ends understands what you are doing. I believe that Apple devices may impose additional restrictions on what you can pair with (I know that I use Bluetooth to connect to a $5 OBD-II reader in my car, but that my friends with iPhones are unable to make this pairing and have to use the $15 WiFi version).

Maybe take a look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Yes, I read that exact document. I'm not saying that this is not what happened. I am saying it is not *proven* this is what happened. Which, if my comment wasn't too long for you to read, you would notice is exactly what I said.

I remember reading through that analysis a few months back. It was showed that a single flipped bit could cause the unintended acceleration. What was not shown was how this bit could possibly be flipped. So, it is far from proven that it was a software error.

Does anyone know what kind of interference these LIDAR systems would have? If we had a bunch of driverless cars on the highway driving next to eachother, would their LIDAR interfere with eachother?

I don't think they intentionally sabotage them, but they are definitely slower. It's just that they keep getting pushed new OS updates, and new app updates, and the new updates expect faster hardware.

I bought a Galaxy Nexus 2 years ago, and when I got it everything was blazing fast. By a few months ago, my phone was frustratingly slow. For a while I considered that I was just looking at newer phones and thinking "Wow, that's so much faster than mine" but just thought that it was the comparison that made mine feel slow, not that it really was slow. I finally decided my phone was objectively slow, not just by comparison.

A few weeks ago I 'downgraded' to Android 4.2.2 (Had been running Android 4.3), and turned off auto app update. (I had previously tried various ROMs with 4.3, but they were all still slow.) Now my phone is fast again. Maybe not as blazing fast as it was brand new, but I no longer feel like I'm ever waiting for the phone.

So, I don't think there is a real 'conspiracy' to slow down old phones, but I think that old phones *are* slower, they know they are doing it, and just don't care. Why would they? They think we should be happy they are pushing updates to us, but they don't think they should have to worry about the experience on devices they sold years ago. But, I have the ability to refuse these updates, so I can keep my personal phone usable for the foreseeable future.

This sounds familiar.

http://xkcd.com/927/

If you are talking about C/C++, the variable is *not* null in either case. If you assigned null to it, then it is null. If you never assigned any value to it, then it is whatever happened to be in memory at that location. It's a pretty good warning to let you know you are using a variable without it being assigned a value.

int* ptr;
if( ptr != NULL )
{
*ptr = 0;
}

This code will at some point crash. Maybe not on the first run, but at some point ptr will not be null, but will not be a pointer to valid memory.