:w<CR> should count the same as ZZ for the purposes of hiding better solutions, else it's fairly easy to walk up the leaderboard even though the better solutions are ostensibly hidden.
When everybody was running Windows on a smorgasbord of hardware / patchlevel / plugins / fonts, it was easy to fingerprint. Are we moving towards a more monolithic landscape where fingerprinting is less able to track individual users?
* If I have a fleet of Chromebooks running the same version of Chrome OS, will they all have the same fingerprint?
* Will, say, all iPhones 6 with the same hardware parts, running the same Mobile Safari and iOS version, have the same fingerprint?
This is the kind of nonconsensual sureptitious user tracking that the EU privacy directive 2002/58/EC concerns itself with, not those redundant, stupid cookie consent overlays.
No, from my understanding cookies are allowed by default only if they are essential to the function of the site. If you only use the cookie to handle logins and sessions then you don't need the warning. I you use the cookie for tracking or analytics then you need the warning.
Note that you can use your webserver logs for analytics and that doesn't require the cookie banner.
Something that is best left to the browser to handle... by allowing the user to enable/disable 3rd party cookies. Which we already have. But no, the EU has stupid notifications on basically every single website as a result since everyone uses third party analytics. Why? If you want your analytics to be believed by anyone who wants to advertise with you, invest in you, partner with you, or buy you, they'd damn well better be third party analytics.
That's true. The implementation differs on the country, for example in the UK it is enough to just show the annoying banner. Here in Spain you cannot set any tracking cookie (i.e. Analytics) without explicit consent. Of course, governmental websites totally break this law: http://cfenollosa.com/blog/the-ignorant-eu-cookie-law.html
However, OP is right, governments spy on our webcams and analyze our traffic, and that's ok, but we need a stupid banner that overrides browser preferences to avoid all but session cookies. Duh.
If you can set cookies, the user has already expressed their consent by enabling the cookies in the browser. As long as cookies' existence is common knowledge (it is by now), there is no need to duplicate browser UI within every website.
This is the official stance of the ICO[1], the UK national authority: there was a need to educate users what cookies were when the directive was passed. No such need exists now. ICO itself briefly used consent overlays, but does not anymore (EDIT: Aaaaand they've apparently use them again; I'll try to find the policy release where they say this is not necessary.). Cookies not used for tracking of persons never needed any consent, as they have no privacy implications.
People who make their living creating cargo-cult UI designs, have predictably added cargo-cult law-compliance to their toolset. It is beyond stupid.
> If you can set cookies, the user has already expressed their consent by enabling the cookies in the browser. As long as cookies' existence is common knowledge (it is by now), there is no need to duplicate browser UI within every website.
Wrong. If I disable cookies in my browser, I can't log in to websites anymore, so they need to be allowed. A whitelist would be very inconvenient. On top of that, it's not explicit allowance, it'd be implicit (i.e. opt-out instead of opt-in).
I don't know if British legislation is different, but this is illegal at least in the Netherlands.
You can enable session cookies only, even in the current UIs. Ditto for third-party cookies. Duplicating UI in a website is a solution looking for a problem. The web devs can nag the 0.01% who don't have cookies enabled, and leave the 99.99% who have them enabled alone.
It has never been enforced that way to my knowledge, anywhere in the EU. Which law or court decision says that it is actually illegal?
How does my browser know that one PHPSESSID is used for tracking, and another is a session? You probably mean until I close the browser, which would be never -- at least, I would never want to, but I do every few months for browser updates. (My laptop always goes in suspend/sleep mode.)
> Ditto for third-party cookies
I don't know what third-party cookies are anyway, and I bet my peers could not give me an accurate description either. We're all in the software business, be it game development or general software development or something.
Two gave a rough description but couldn't answer a question about whether embedded Like buttons would work if the user is logged into Facebook. Another just said "I don't know".
I'm not sure "the public is informed about all their options by now". The ones who really care generally use uBlock, ABP, Self-Destructing Cookies, Ghostery, etc., the rest just click "ok" because the sites do not inform them about these aforementioned possibilities: that wouldn't be in their interest.
> Duplicating UI in a website is a solution looking for a problem
Oh I agree it's an issue, I hate this cookie wall as much as anyone. I would love for there to be no need to ever see this wall.
> It has never been enforced that way to my knowledge, anywhere in the EU. Which law or court decision says that it is actually illegal?
I am not sure fines have been dealt, but the Dutch ACM ("authority for consumer and markets", literally translated) did give out warnings to non-compliant sites and they subsequently places cookie walls.
The law simply says no such cookies may be placed, it doesn't say "for a few months while users are unaware, and after that, oh well, have some fun picking your own privacy laws as you wish."
And yes, I know functional cookies and simple tracking is allowed if you don't invade a person's privacy. This means practically every major website knowingly tries to invade your privacy, because they have these walls in place. What do people say? "Fucking government does not understand the internet, look at all these walls." What should we be saying? "Wait why are they trying to create detailed profiles of me in the first place?"
Ah but it isn't really free money. By installing two if these things, you've essentially hooked yourself to your insurance provider for six years. I'd happily give away two $300 bags of crap to get a customer handcuffed to me for six years.
Disclaimer: I hate car alarms with a vengeance. I think if a car alarm sounds and does not shut down within ten minutes (automatically or owner's intervention), there should be a large fine (I'd say the value of the car).
That's a very good point. I would argue that insurance is a long-term relationship, it's a very mature industry, I don't expect there will be great savings in changing providers, and finding the best provider means doing due diligence and reading through dozens of small print — not something I would relish anyway. They're offering a 33% annual ROI. If they can guarantee an option to re-up for at least four years, we're good.
You should adjust the car alarm's settings. If you don't, and you happen to live in my neighbourhood, I have a stack of bricks in my back yard, one of which will just about fit through that hole in your windshield.
Anyone wanting to bypass the 140 limit is already doing so using an image with text in it. And anyone who spams really long messages using URLs is going to see their followers count drop pretty rapidly.
Hasn't twitter been replacing long URLs with their own short URLs for a while now? So this change probably won't make a difference, assuming users will still have to hover the link to see the tooltip of the full URL.
Twitter's job right now is to figure out how to make their UX less niche and grow market share before they lose ground to the Whatsapps and Snapchats of the world, not to police edge cases that are better managed by simple social norms.
My point is that this will become the new social norm, much like now it is the norm to write short cryptic messages that readers may or may not understand.
If AAPL were interested in selling more shares (their cash reserves growth indicates they don't), they would usually sell the whole bunch of them at once, either to one investment bank, or a consortium (who then resell it on the open market). So yes, Berkshire is buying a lot, so instead of selling to Goldman Sachs, Apple may sell to them.
It all comes down to whether both Apple and Berkshire can agree on a price and cash flow that is better than buying/selling on the open market. This would probably not be a great discount for the buyer. Other companies would probably still ask Goldman to broker the sale (at a lower fee) and take care of regulatory compliance, but both AAPL and BRK like to maintain in-depth knowledge of the intricacies of the stock market in-house, so they may just do everything themselves.
The liability in car insurance is virtually unlimited. Cars are very good at killing people and damaging property. You don't have to insure against small payouts (large excess gives you small premiums), and this is an area where the insurance companies want to upsell you.
The risk you're insuring is negligent or wilful bad driving, and risks inherent in the technology.
All of the above is true for self-driving cars, only with much-reduced negligent risk. The premiums will go down significantly, but the consumer motivation and the public policy interest to have insurance will remain. It may be assumed by the manufacturers for 100% self-driven cars, but insurance of outsized payouts is not something unique to the current iteration of the car industry.
Revenue is an iffy yardstick anyway. If you're the only player who is squeezing blood from that stone, it is not to the credit of the other players that they're squeezing harder. Apple still capture almost all profits in the sector, they take the meat and leave bones to the others. If there were more meat, they would be taking it, but there isn't.
:w<CR> should count the same as ZZ for the purposes of hiding better solutions, else it's fairly easy to walk up the leaderboard even though the better solutions are ostensibly hidden.