zachlipton

Compared to what? Unaudited security-related closed source software? That's not an improvement.

So? This is not particularly uncommon if you run a large number of EC2 instances.

The site is down. Not a good start. Why do we need a new URL shortener anyway?

???

The Danger Hiptop was an incredible device. At a time when RIM basically thought the web was a useless feature on a mobile device, Danger built an amazing mobile browser (discussed in the article) that wouldn't be matched until the iPhone. Instead of a handful of limited text-based WAP sites, the Hiptop rendered full desktop sites and did a pretty darn good job of making them usable on a mobile device.

I still miss that General Magic bunny though.

Odd. It works for me on a Samsung Smart TV. Was able to authenticate to my account (Comcast sub) with no problem.

HBO Go (in the US anyway) doesn't have "paid subscribers." Comcast customers who have subscribe to HBO as part of their TV packages get access to HBO Go as an additional service. Comcast authenticates subscribers to tell HBO Go whether to allow users access to the service. But in this case, they aren't supporting their authentication on Roku devices.

Yep. See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140305/14254626446/comcas....

This could be one of the few remotely practical uses of QR codes in existence, easily capturing ephemeral data. Now, most kernel messages can get logged to a file, but there are cases in which that's not practical.

Outside business travel? Bahahhahaa. Airlines make most of their money on business travel.

MetaFilter's moderators are some of the most considerate and caring people I've seen on the internet. Sure, if you're approaching the site in bad faith they are going to tell you to take a hike, but they also put a huge amount of effort into working one-on-one with people through private messages. This is especially important when people are posting about difficult and sensitive personal issues on AskMe.

Programmer to moderator ratio is a pretty meaningless metric. I'd far rather see a great community with limited programming support to a fancy site with tons of new features and a toxic community.

The $5 entry fee has never been about revenue and my understanding is that it never netted all that much revenue. Most of the money, to my knowledge, came from AdSense ads shown to logged-out users through search traffic. The gatekeeper fee does a lot to build a community of people who are committed to the site and want to be there.

Presumably iTunes is part of their base system image for all workstations, along with Office, Firefox, Adobe Reader, and the like. In other words, a basic set of software to handle standard officework tasks. iTunes is free and IT would probably rather distribute it everywhere than have people trying to install it themselves (or calling the helpdesk to get someone with administrator rights to do it). They then offer additional applications on an as-needed basis to individuals and departments with specific tasks. So the designers who do print publications and the faculty who teach digital art might get the Adobe suite, while people in Facilities who plan construction will get Project. This keeps licensing costs down and simplifies systems according to their uses.

Until "Blogger Clarissa" gets a subpoena demanding that she hand over her emails with the guest blogger and testify as to her knowledge of the employer.

Right, because no men ever behave badly in the workplace?

Sure, there are stereotypical ways in which a small number of people from each gender behave like assholes and create toxic work environments. The solution is to not hire jerks and to get rid of them if you've made a mistake, not blame all ones ills on a particular group of people.

Remember that the advertising tagline was "rip, mix, burn." Not "find a cable, connect your headphone jack to your microphone jack, painstakingly copy each track in real-time, trim and organize the audio files, encode to mp3, mix, burn."

And, to engage in some historical guesswork, if the iPod never happened, what would have happened to the iPhone and iPad? It's not that smartphones and tablets in some form never would have happened without the iPod, but it's hard for me to see Apple having a role.

Not working for my account (also in SF, already logged in). Based on the TC story, it appears to be specific to a certain set of accounts.

Gruber's second footnote really sums it up for me:

"You know you’re in poor company when you’ve chosen the same word as Valleywag’s Sam Biddle, who describes Cotton as “the queen of evil tech PR” in his headline, and quotes an anonymous source who describes her as “wicked witchy”. Jiminy."

Even by Valleywag's phenomenally low standards, an anonymous source describing a female executive as "wicked witchy" is atrocious.

Google Maps can pretty much do this with its built-in flight search. See [1] for an example (Google automatically converted the destination lat/long to an address, but you can replace them with the coordinates of your choice).

1: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/%27%27/40.754515,+-73.979477...

It seems pretty likely that the legal tools they are using really apply to European flights, although they are incredibly vague on that point. In the US, you're really only legally entitled to compensation if you are involuntarily bumped from an overbooked flight, and that's less than 100,000 people/year compared to the millions who have delays and cancellations.

It would be far more honest to be clear at the start as to what customers can reasonably expect, how their service is different from just sending a form letter complaint to the airline, and why they need access to your email.

Right, because this is a problem with women?

This does seem like yet another "me too" move from Yahoo, but I am excited to see Paul Feig getting back to TV.

No, they don't. Google is quite clear that its prices for Google Shopping Express are the same as in store: https://support.google.com/shoppingexpress/answer/3423377?hl...

My iPhone 5 sleep/wake button has been pretty much dead for a month or so now (it would sort-of work if you pressed it multiple times with feeling) and this program was finally the kick in the pants I needed to deal with it. I had AppleCare, so it would have been covered either way, but the thing was getting on my nerves.

It was even more painless than I expected. Got a same-day Genius Bar appointment on Friday, backed up my phone, walked over to the Apple Store from work. Waited 5 minutes, spent maybe 5 minutes going through the replacement song and dance, and walked out with a new working iPhone in my pocket.

Well, the system-wide "internet available?" variable isn't completely useless from a user perspective.

If youtube.com happens to be down for whatever reason, there isn't much the user can do about it except wait, so there isn't much for the YouTube to do besides display a standard error message and call it a day.

But in the more common case where the user's internet connection is unavailable or misconfigured, there are troubleshooting steps the user can take (make sure it's plugged in, try turning the router off and on again, check network settings, etc...).

I suspect the design was to help users get their TVs connected to the internet by providing more useful diagnostics when they are offline. To do that, you need some kind of system-level check for connectivity. Now, there are certainly better ways they could have implemented the feature, ways that didn't involve a single point of failure where a fire at one building means that millions of TVs can't access Netflix or YouTube for no good reason, but the intent wasn't completely meaningless.

See, that doesn't really describe the situation here. The internet was working just fine, but samsung.com was down. As a result, the TV wouldn't let users get to Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, or other services because it insisted it was offline, even though those services were working perfectly fine. The problem is that that for virtually every user, the TV was insisting "the internet is down," but their connections were working just fine.

Apologies for trying to make a point. If anything, my analogy seems pretty much on point, as it barely changes the reality around the events here as described:

banging on door <=> text/phone call, which likely causes an audible alert stranger <=> contact/acquaintance/vendor/client/boss/relative/lover/ex-lover/dentist of a new user 6am <=> 6am their buddy <=> their contact the trash <=> a new user's cell phone contacts has photos to share <=> has photos to share there never were any photos <=> there never were any photos unbelievable jackass <=> unbelievable jackass

Seems close enough.

But my real question for you is which is it? Did a developer/Path act unethically, but you believe those actions are justified because people have families they need to care for? Or do you believe that Path/the developers did nothing wrong and I'm just applying my own morals to the situation? One or the other is a legitimate position to take (though I may disagree with your view), but you can't have both.

This isn't the hypothetical where you're stealing a loaf of bread from the market to feed your starving family. I certainly respect that taking the moral high ground isn't always easy and that some people are going to be in situations where it is more difficult for them to do so than for others.

But the standard for acting like an asshole has to be greater than simple expediency. The necessity of breaking the social contract has to be roughly proportional to the community inconvenience; that's why firemen get to use the siren and everyone is supposed to yield when they are headed to, well, fight a fire, but I don't get to use one when I'm headed to the grocery store.

If I bang on a stranger's door at 6am because their house is on fire and I'm trying to warn them, then that's great, because the "don't harass strangers at six in the freaking morning" social norm is less important than the "OMG THE FLAMES THEY BURN!" social norm. In contrast, if I bang on someone's door at 6am trying to sell Amway products, then I'm an asshole. Finally, If I bang on someone's door at 6am, insist that their buddy, whose name I found by going through the trash, has photos to share with them, and only later reveal that there never were any photos, then I'm an unbelievable jackass.

Very neat technology, and I think it could be of value in the developing world and sparsely populated areas, but is there that much need for this data in many parts of, say, the US or Europe? Here in San Francisco, I've got highly accurate weather stations at SFO and OAK, plus dozens of other stations on Weather Underground around the city. The variability of these readings over, say, 10 miles is quite low. Are there specific ways in which a more dense grid of barometric pressure measurements can give us further insight into weather patterns?

This would be a great augment in areas where the density of observations stations is much lower. Wind speed, which does vary a lot more due to terrain and structures, would be neat to map this way, but it's hard to measure the wind through our pockets on cell phones.