GoPro 2 was rock-solid, but 3 and 4 had huge quality problems. Terrible customer service as well. I used to like GoPro, but since the GoPro 2 they've completely soured me. I don't know if the GoPro 5 is any better, but the Amazon reviews are terrible.
The wifi on gopro 3 is spotty at best. I wouldn't put GoPRo in the "quality" camera department, since it's essentially just another CMOS sensor with accessories.
A company I was working for was acquired and the first thing the new management said in the initial meeting was that they had no interest in owning us. They were only acquiring the company because another office had government contracts they wanted. Also, our equity was worthless now. But don't worry, because no one is getting fired! (Instead everyone resigned within a few months)
It may be widely believe in cryptography circles, but this release wipes away the plausible deniability that governments and American corporations have always depended on. Just last week, the German government was pooh-pooh'ing claims that Windows and TPM chips had backdoors inserted by the NSA.[1] These documents all but confirm it.
Even without naming the companies involved, it's very hard to imagine they are inserting backdoors in less-valued products while somehow missing the crown jewels of Windows and TPM.
I keep finding myself in the awkward position of trying to refute conspiracy theories, but not being at liberty to share everything I know about these scenarios (I really need to work somewhere besides DC), so I'll tread lightly.
Taking for granted that the NSA actually backdoored TPM's (which I can assert professionally is very unlikely, but I don't expect anyone to take my word for it), they are far from "crown jewels".
The only "meaningful" large scale use of TPMs is actually within the department of defense. It's been a pretty uphill battle getting them deployed and used in other environments.
You realize that these are exactly the same arguments that were brought up to argue against the details revealed in these documents, so perhaps appeals to authority and use of the words 'conspiracy theories' may be taken with a few more grains of salt. NSA backdoors have been alleged for decades now, and the response is always that they're a 'conspiracy theory'.
TPM 2.0 is a crown jewel for the NSA. Windows 8 full-disk encryption is based on TPM, and Windows 8.1 certification requires a TPM 2.0 module. It already is or soon will be universal in PC hardware. The NSA was involved its creation, and resisted changes to the standard. At the same time the German government was claiming there were no backdoors in Windows or TPM, privately they had already concluded it was compromised.
Yeah, I have to agree. The wide distribution of Windows makes it an important thing to have access to. In fact, I would go so far as to say that every commercial WDE is suspect.
"I keep finding myself in the awkward position of trying to refute conspiracy theories, but not being at liberty to share everything I know about these scenarios"
There are things I want to say about that sort of thinking, but I am afraid to say them. What a wonderful world...
Disagree. Over the medium term, TPMs (which message board geeks have been unhelpfully demonizing for years) are part of a system of technologies that could make laptop encryption much harder to break. Laptop encryption is a real operational challenge for both HUMINT and law enforcement.
That's true, but I've spent a good portion of the last year and half dealing with them and disagree on the likelihood of them ever achieving any widespread adoption. My company would love for me to be wrong about this.
No, but now we cannot just assume that cryptosystems are being developed in good faith or that mistakes are not actually covert sabotage. We need to check these systems before we put our trust in them.
But why would you ever have assumed this? I mean, I don't really care whether something was a mistake in good faith or covert sabotage; the useful question is whether something is secure or not as far as I can tell. Assessing the motivations is a complete waste of my time as an individual.
It does matter if the NSA is actively sabotaging our cryptosystems. If people are making mistakes we can solve the problem as a community by improving the techniques we use to develop, document, and test cryptosystems. If we are dealing with people who are deliberately weakening our cryptosystems, it will be harder to push better techniques because our adversary will push back against them, or sabotage the techniques themselves.
In my view this was true anyway, since any mistake could be the result of foolishness or malice - if not on the part of the NSA, on that of the Russian, Chinese, British, Israeli, (etc.) security services. Crypto is an arms race between people with conflicting interests, and always has been; I don't mean to be rude, but I think your former view of the way things operated was a bit naive.
The streaming-music business reminds me of Netflix in its early days, before movie studios became worried that it was cannibalizing rental/VOD revenue for new releases. There are a certain group of fans who are willing to pay $10-20 per album for access to music the moment it's released. With Spotify, those fans are treated like any other stream even though they're willing to pay more. It's inefficient pricing, except from Spotify's perspective as they're able to use immediate access to new release music as a lure for subscribers. So really, you can look at Spotify as capturing that demand and converting it into free advertising for themselves. I don't see that as sustainable in the long run. Some artists are already holding back new releases from streaming services. Like Netflix, I think that in the future you will see few new releases from popular artists until they've been available through premium services long enough to capture demand from hardcore fans.
Spotify treats all songs as if they have equal value, but that's obviously not true from the listener's perspective. For any given person, there are going to be some songs that they're willing to pay a premium to hear, and some that they'll only listen to if it's free. Spotify is a good deal for the latter case, but not if it offers a discounted version of the former to people who could pay for it. Just because Spotify counts every stream as a single interchangeable unit of value doesn't mean that listeners value every stream equally.
I think Spotify is in a great position right now, they are building up a huge userbase right now (first step for Facebook etc. too). But the service will monetize very well. For example I would pay extra per album to get to stream a couple albums on the day of their CD release just because it's convenient to have all my music in one application.
Or charge me 15$ a month for a gold account and add a feature on the artist page to leave a 1$ tip. This extra 5$ goes into my "wallet" that I can then disperse straight to my favorite artists each month. Like a microtransaction.
Because radio is not a substitute for recorded music. The inability to choose what you're listening to was always the stick that compelled listeners to purchase a recording. If you have Spotify, there is no reason to ever purchase that music in a download store.
Fast, reliable, and unmetered wireless is by no means ubiquitous. There is still the benefit of being able to play offline, burn to CD for the car, share with friends, etc.
Admittedly, the incentive to want offline music may continue to diminish over time.
So goes the old saying: "No highs? No lows? Must be Bose!"
While that saying might be a tad unjustified, I find that their products are often purchased by people who don't do adequate research into other headphones that might suit them better. I often see people wearing the "QuietComfort" brand headphones in situations where they gain no benefit from active noise cancelling, although for all I know they could be heavy travelers and only own a single pair of headphones. But honestly, a comparable pair from another brand would run them $200 less...
I have several sets of high end headphones. For a period of times, wearing a headset was a part of my profession (tactical action officer for a Navy battle group). Training is an MD with a BS in physics.
Bought some QC15s at 2 am in the Atlanta airport on a cross-country-twice-in-48-hours trip. Probably the best $300 ever spent. Slept like the dead. No one bothers you with those headphones, and they aren't nearly as heavy as a lot of fancier stuff, or as insulated, so your ears don't sweat.
That's usually what it is. I bought a pair of the QuietComfort after getting to use it on an international business flight on AA. It made a huge difference with plane noise so I bought it for travel, and now I use them most of the time since I haven't gotten around to buying another pair of headphones.
Almost all startup offices I've been in have high levels of low frequency noise. I have other headphones (including the ATH-M50s), but I've taken to using noise canceling headphones more often than any of my others. You may be underestimating their benefit.
No clue regarding active noise cancellation. If you're okay with passive (aka, they go on your head and keep sound out just by virtue of surrounding your ear), a few popular low-cost options include the Audio Technica ATH-M50s and Sennheiser HD280Pros. Everyone in the audio world has their own opinions on this sort of stuff, but I've owned a pair of each of those and, despite their small flaws, both are decent pairs of cans.
The only time you really want the active stuff is when you're traveling and there exists a lot of low-frequency noise, such as on a train or airplane. Looking around on Hydrogenaudio confirms that the QC are okay if that's all you need, and also that alternatives exist, such as IEMs, which might have a wider range of use as they simply have very heavy passive isolation.
I brought a pair of Sennheiser PXC-450s - they are nice in that you can turn off the noise cancellation and use them without batteries (and get a boost to the sound quality by doing so), but if you are on a plane or just have loud neighbors in the office I can turn it on and cut down on the outside noise. The cancellation itself isn't quite as good as the QuietComfort ones but it's close enough.
The only time you want ATH-M50s is when you're cold and want to feel your ears sweat. I break them out on occasion for close listening to something or other, but holy crap, they're miserable. The Bose QC-15s go for hours at Starbucks while studying. I'll probably buy a pair for each of my kids when they go to college.
Shure is fantastic. I've owned countless pairs across various price levels and have never been disappointed. While I find that their top of the line SE535 break easily at the gym, their warranty service has been exception and lighting quick -- usually next day servicing.
Not sure why you got downvoted for this, other than brand snobbery. That's also been my experience with Shure. As well as Sennheiser HD650 & Fostex T20RP, I own pairs of Shure e5c and e215 in-ear phones. The e5c are getting on a bit, and are perhaps fragile, but I had custom ear molds made for them. Out of the lot, the e215 are the best bang-for-buck I've come across.
The e5c's main problem is they are SO sensitive they are completely unforgiving about the amplifier used - almost anything with a gain block after a volume control is going to have too high an intrinsic noise floor for them to not show it up.
I recommend the Bose for flying. I also had the Creative Aurvana for a while until they broke, which were decent too, but not quite as good. For just walking around town, I like my Etymotic in-ear phones, but those are uncomfortable on a long plane trip. When plugged in though, they have great isolation.
An open headphone like the HD 600 (which I'm wearing now) is really unfair to compare against noise canceling; I use Beyerdynamic DT770 for "closed", and in-ear from etymotics or ultimateears, rather than active noise canceling -- the only active noise canceling headphones I have are Pro Ears and MSA Saladin (shooting/military ear protectors which take radio input).
I'd be upset if my home environment were loud enough to warrant noise canceling, though.
If you are willing to go with in-ear headphones then a good deep seating pair of passive noise isolating headphones will kick the pants off any active noise cancelling pair.
In terms of pure isolation, Etymotic makes some of the best out there (>30dB isolation), and I think they sound absolutely brilliant.
I can't see many developers putting the time to offload calculations when they'd have to make the game work seamlessly with varying levels of latency or the servers becoming unavailable. Just look at how difficult it has been for games to utilize a handful of CPU cores. Microsoft's claims about the cloud remind me of ten years ago, when the .net label was being applied to everything they made and all software was somehow going to be delivered as web services. Plus I doubt MS is offering cloud server time to developers for free. Every service they provide to devs comes at a cost.
Because the technology industry depends on a lot of idealistic young workers putting in plenty of unpaid overtime, and no one ever motivated that commitment with a call to increase shareholder returns by 17%.
Developers can always quit. The only reasons they don't is that they love to code, and they are hoping for an equity cash-out from an IPO or acquisition down the line.
>Developers can always quit. The only reasons they don't is that they love to code, and they are hoping for an equity cash-out from an IPO or acquisition down the line.
Or they need to feed their family.
Seeings as a lot (MOST!) developers are not "rock stars" by any stretch of the imagination, don't make that much, and some are not willing to relocate to another state/city.
I've heard that if you're a "good" developer it shouldn't be too hard to get at least 100k a year if you try. Seems like a pretty good amount to me. Depends where you live, I guess - that might only go as far in SF as 80 would go elsewhere, or something like that.
After researching the issue deeper, apparently there are exceptions to the time-and-a-half regulation, and programmers are an exception. I'm not sure why you're specifically mentioning the word salary though.
I think what jimmaswell was getting at is that salary does not equate to overtime exempt. There's plenty of overlap, but salaried workers who aren't exempt get paid overtime on a calculated basis.
While we claim people are addicted to FB etc because of their devices, it's somehow okay to let developers drive themselves mad so that we can ask 10 years later: So what IDE do you think axed your brain?
Startups will categorically enfeeble more people than any war. And we'll do it in the name of GTD and competition with our own machines.
