Geek Stuff category archive
iJunk, Their Day in Court Dept. 0
This should be fun.
Law firm PCVA said on Friday that it had brought a class-action lawsuit in the US district court for the northern district of California in response to Apple’s “error 53” iPhone controversy.
(snip)
He (attorney Darrell Cochran–ed) dismissed Apple’s security argument as spurious. “If security was the primary concern, then why did the phones work just fine without the software update?”
Facebook Frolics 0
A Parisian protests the petty puritanism of prissy poseurs. A precis:
The ruling by the Paris appeal court could set a legal precedent in the country, where Facebook has more than 30 million regular users.
A court will now be entitled to hear the case of the 57-year-old Parisian teacher and art lover whose Facebook account was suspended five years ago without notice. It was closed on the day he posted a photo of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting The Origin of the World, . . . .
No Place To Hide 0
Just lie back on the couch. Let your thoughts roam free. Let your digital Candy Crusher tell the good doctor all about yourself . . . .
That information and more is then fed into a vast database containing details about nearly every adult in the United States to build psychological profiles that target individual voters with uncanny accuracy.
Cruz’s sophisticated analytics operation was heralded as key to his victory in Iowa earlier this month — the first proof, his campaign said, that the system has the potential to power him to the nomination.
You have been assimilated.
Afterthought:
Your smartphone is not your friend. It is your enemy, a tool of its corporate masters. Use it with caution.
Before you install an app, look at the permissions it requests. If they appear hinky in any way, don’t install that app.
And what the hell is the deal with Candy Crush anyway? Chess Checkers it’s not.
No Place To Hide 0
Can you really trust your thermostat?
Twits on Twitter 0
I think the judge is quite correct. If school administrators do one thing consistently, it’s overreact. They did it when I was in school and they will likely still be doing when my great-grandchildren are in school.
Facebook Frolics 0
I fear this horse is already out the barn door and into the next county.
The French order is the first significant action to be taken against a company transferring Europeans’ data to the US following an EU court ruling last year that struck down an agreement that had been relied on by thousands of companies, including Facebook, to avoid cumbersome EU data transfer rules.
Details at the link.
Facebook Frolics 0
India refuses to be assimilated by the Zuckerborg (emphasis added–follow the link for the full article):
TRAI today ruled (PDF) that: “No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content.”
(snip)
Facebook’s Free Basics project was ostensibly intended to extend some of the internet to those in the developing world – for free. It was billed as a charitable exercise by the Zuckerborg, but was met with considerably more hostility than charity usually is.
Critics have noted that the Zuckerborg’s curated collection of sites which were available distorted the view of the web for new netizens.
Afterthought:
My attorney will not be contacting El Reg over use of the term, “Zuckerborg,” because the comparison is so damned obvious that it’s public domain.
iJunk 0
Apple wants you to stay confined in their walled orchard.
Relatively few people outside the tech world are aware of the so-called “error 53” problem, but if it happens to you you’ll know about it. And according to one specialist journalist, it “will kill your iPhone”.
Droning On 0
The Empire states back.
The 29-year-old man was taken into custody after a small aircraft he was piloting struck the iconic building before coming to rest on the 35th floor on Thursday evening, the New York City Police Department said.
We are a society of stupid.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do.
It’s not hard; it’s just different.
What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.
When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, February 4.
Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)
Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (JANAF Shopping Center). (Map)
Join the forums.
Facebook Frolics 0
Aside:
In case you are not aware of it, you can indeed have a very nice much better online life without Facebook and other social leeches media.
Droning On 0
Boys and their toys . . . .
The UK Airprox Board investigated seven incidents last month involving drones, four of which were classified as being in the most serious bracket.
So far, a total of 30 incidents involving drones and manned aircraft from 2015 have been confirmed, compared to just six in 2014.
No Place To Hide 0
Thom talks with the ACLU’s Chad Marlow about privacy.
No Place To Hide 0
We are being assimilated.
The technology, which has been available for the last couple of years in some form, is capable of tracking a smartphone using the unique identifier that it broadcasts via Wi-Fi. It is the same as that used by beacons which track smartphones using the unique Bluetooth identifiers every smartphone puts out when the wireless communications service is switched on.
I keep the GPS on my phone turned up when I’m not actively using it. Think I’ll start doing the same with the Wi-Fi.
It may not do much, but at least I don’t have to help our mercantile Big Brothers.
Vim with Vigor 0
I have a new podcast up at HPR about how to check your spelling in Vim.
You too can podcast at HPR. Do you have something to say? Say it.
Light on Lumos 0
At Science 2.0, Brandon T. Bisceglia tries to shed some light on Lumosity. Reacting to the FTC’s levying a significant penalty against Lumos Labs, Inc, Lumosity’s owner, for false advertising clams, he takes a critical look at that advertising.
He is not impressed.
A snippet:
The company has long used scientific terms in a dubious manner to increase its cred among potential customers.
(snip)
But Lumosity’s pitch goes beyond this (that is, in the vernacular, that practice makes perfect–ed.). Its central argument is that its regimen of simple games is broadly transferable to other skills, and that those games are better than other forms of activity.
Seen in this light, the company has a tougher row to hoe. In real life, we don’t suggest that learning to ride a bike will make you better at driving a car.
If you want to learn to drive a car, you drive a car.
Full Disclosure: I got no dog in this hunt.
No Place To Hide 0
The EFF reports on Senator Al Franken’s attempt to investigate Google’s business practice, in particular their tracking of school students’ activities on Chromebooks. Here’s a bit from the story. Read the rest, then you can join the EFF at the link on the sidebar, over there.————————————>
Yet without parental consent the company tracks and records students’ online activity in certain Google services and feeds it into an ad profile attached to the students’ educational accounts. Is there an educational purpose in that practice? Senator Franken has asked Google to explain why it collects this information, and as we raise in our FTC complaint, whether “Google [has] ever used this kind of data for its own business purposes.”