Reacher's first season was good. Second season turned into a bad action movie. Bad writing, little time spent on characters/development while adding six new characters we were given no reason to know or care about.
It is legitimately too bad, they really had something with S1.
"Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn. Its moral turpitude is only exceeded by the risible "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" that somehow wants me to like protagonists who kill and hurt strangers without any justification. I've loved everything Donald Glover was in, until now. Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn that utterly disrespects everything Tolkien made. Above all, Amazon's blatant anti-labor practices and monopolistic size makes it an important company to avoid. There are many smaller, better companies that specialize in different markets and offer better deals and support, and if they do err at least they will do so at a much smaller scale (personally I like alibris for books, discogs for music, b&h photo for electronics, the local dollar store for supplies like toothpaste and detergent, and the local thrift store for everything else).
In the books, Reacher was violent when he needed to be. The author made him ‘huge/large’ and his size enabled his act of violence/ability to mete out justice to the bad guys. Reacher’s size in the books is why folks complained when Tom Cruise starred as Reacher in the movies
I think it's an accurate description that successfully conveys the manipulative, puerile, and harmful nature of these shows in a compact way. My description isn't political in the "right vs left" sense although I admit it may be political in the "extremism vs moderate" sense. Personally, I think that the information we consume cannot help but shape our world-view, so identifying how it shapes our world-view is valid criticism. Reacher and Galadriel are, in my view, icons of their respective flavors of extremism, and I think Amazon does poorly to produce such content.
Have you actually watched Reacher? There is no politics in it at all. It's reminiscent of poorly written 80's action flicks, disguised as a noir mystery.
Again, sometimes bad television is simply bad television. Not everything needs political coloring.
"Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder" is an inherently political framework for a story. It is as politically tainted as the old show "24", where any and all ethical frameworks were shredded on the altar of the ticking bomb scenario.
That the maintenance of the rule of law requires One True Man to stand outside the law and protect us through extrajudicial killing and torture. It is a statement on the core concept of law and justice.
You seem to have some definition of politics that differs from the one I use. Politics is discourse and debate about the form of government and the exercise of power. As such, the political statement of "Reacher" or "24" is exactly what I described above: the implication that it is necessary to have someone who breaks all the laws, in order to maintain the system of laws.
Note that in the past we have had pop culture artifacts that argue the opposite, that stand for the triumph of the rule of law over individuals who arrogate extrajudicial powers to themselves. "A Few Good Men" was such a statement.
Would you still need more financing if you cut costs enough? Are you able to cut costs enough to become profitable, cashflow positive and still grow revenues?
It wasn't omitted. It was covered in the keynote. It's also on their website:
Let friends know how remote you go.
If you’re on an adventure without cell service,
you can now use Find My to share your location
via satellite so friends and family know where you are.
Apple's always-on pingback no matter where you go in the globe, even if you disable cell networks. I do believe they care about privacy, though if you look at features like this it's easy to see that they can be worse than Google if they wanted.
Except this (currently) requires users to point their phone at a satellite so it can connect and transmit, with clear line of site of the sky. It seems it will be more likely something you'd do when you get to your "campsite" and want friends/family to know where you are located.
edit: I didn't realize this will apparently be required due to the antenna design in the iPhone, seems very cumbersome, you can't easily see where the satellites are...
You don't really need to point it, at least with my inreach if its near the top of my pack and I'm not in a canyon or something I can get a message out.
> you can't easily see where the satellites are...
Which is why when you're using it they guide you on how to orient the phone (per their released info so far, we'll have actual user reports in a few weeks).
Of course if you don’t trust that, you shouldn’t be buying an Apple product anyways. They could ship an always on microphone streaming to their servers if they wanted to. But we trust that they won’t.
Edward J. Snowden insisted that a group of lawyers advising him in the Chinese territory “hide their cellphones in the refrigerator of the home where he was staying, to block any eavesdropping,”
I had the (dumb) idea of putting an AirTag in the family car, with the idea of being able to get a rough idea of where it is parked without depending on the terrible manf provided app. Every time my partner would drive the car it would ping away for a good 2-3 minutes due to the safety notifications. We're all part of the same family account, I don't really understand why it isn't an option to just ignore it.
> We're all part of the same family account, I don't really understand why it isn't an option to just ignore it.
Because there are way too many spouses who go to as absurd lengths as setting private investigators on their partners. Stalking is just as much a concern inside families as it is for everyday persons - I might be tempted to say that the impact is worse given the potential for domestic violence. Or just imagine fundamentalist parents tracking their children to Planned Parenthood, a known LGBT-friendly place or whatever.
Ideally, there would be laws and regulations on trackers - and not just hardware-ones like the AirTags, but also software-based ones - that mandate features to prevent abuse, but sadly politicians haven't caught up on tech developments yet.
That still doesn't explain why it's not an option _for nikdoof's partner_ to choose to disable notifications from that particular AirPod. It makes total sense why nikdoof shouldn't be able to disable it for their partner.
Wait, I might not be understanding the threat model here. The situation I imagined was: persons A and B are spouses, A wants to track B, so since A and B are in a family unit, A would want to disable the "You're being followed" alert for B without B knowing.
If A had to coerce B to turn of the alert, then the alert would have already served its purpose to tell B that they're being tracked by A. Moreover, there should still be some interface which B can use to figure out which AirTag is following them, so person B would 1) know that A is tracking them in general, and 2) have the ability to check whether A is tracking them in the moment.
Please explain what additional information or utility the continued notification is giving person B in this moment, or if my understanding of the hypothetical is wrong.
The threat model is that B has no way of knowing if she is actually being tracked (or if she could potentially be), or if A has just made empty threats. By coercion - or by manipulating the setting on his own on B's phone without A knowing -, A could prevent her from finding out that she could be tracked by someone.
Apple however can't differentiate between someone wishing to track their dog and someone wishing to track their spouse - at that point basic ethics come to play. It's bad enough that AirTags even exist, the absurd amount of stalking cases proves it, but now Apple is all but forced to rein the bullshit in.
Its amazing to me how easily people are willing to give Apple their data compared to Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Specially looking at how Apple was to willing to put its servers in countries that want control of the data. I think people seem to forget the privacy fight was not about privacy from advertisers but from government over reach. People are looking at Google for building skynet but Apple seems to be successfully building it and people are enthusiastically adopting it.
Apple has a really strong track record of resisting Government intrusion, within the bounds of the law, not selling customer data to third parties, and holding app developers to account for the privacy of their apps. The others have business models based entirely on selling user data.
The contentious element is the "within the bounds of the law" bit. In the US and Europe that means a lot, because Apple can use the courts to block government overreach and they have done so. In China they can't do that, so they don't just as nobody else operating within China can.
Google does deserve credit for refusing to operate their search services within China, while Apple and many other companies decided they were willing to do business there on Chinese government terms.
I'm genuinely getting pretty annoyed by this increasingly prevalent style of know-it-all neo-ludditism that manifests as middlebrow, pithy dismissals of entire technologies with obvious benefits.
If you have a viewpoint on the relative risks of these technologies, the I genuinely wish you'd use your time to talk productively about what you think the risks are to help others make an informed choice – instead of sarcastically assuming that anybody who doesn't have the exact same set of priorities as you is a fucking idiot. It's making the quality of discussion on this site totally unbearable.
Well, asbestos has obvious benefits. It's an amazing, cheap way to insulate things, and it's very resistant to fire.
We knew abestos was dangerous even before the WW2, and kept using it because it was so convenient.
That's the thing about know-it-all neo-ludditism pithy dismissals. They started 30 years ago witha much more soft tone. But since not only people ignored the warnings, but eventually even came to insult the people performing said warning (even after the warning proved to be true), the same people turned kinda sarcarstics.
Poor you to have to read a rational argument in a comment using history and logic to underline our societies shit where they eat and ignore the asymetry of risk.
Sacarstic people are mean and don't understand how to have quality discussions. They should always stay perfectly calm and neutral while they feel like half of the population is setting us up for troubles.
>Poor you to have to read a rational argument in a comment using history and logic
Your comment above didn't actually contain any such thing. It contained a vestigial semblance of them too trivialised by vitriol to land a persuasive point.
>Sacarstic people are mean and don't understand how to have quality discussions.
Not always for sure, but yes that's often the case.
Because 3 letters agencies never, ever had backdoors in popular systems. It's not like the US had an illegal massive secret cabale dedicated to mass spying on its own population after all.
Luckily, Apple plateforms are notoriously open so it will be easy to check. It's great that we don't have to take their word for it after they lied about not being part of any PRISM-like program.
Anyways, all that doesn't matter much. Why would it be a problem when the economy, climate, international politics and the democracy are so stable these days? I can't see any reason why history would repeat and powerful entities would abuse any power they get.
Somebody who thinks like that would be a crazy tin hat conspirationist, and not at all a concerned citizen.
No, only the part of the population ready to spend hundred of dollars on an upgrade to get copy/paste must be capable of rational thinking. Anybody else is biased.
There is an optional feature where you can choose to share your current location using a satellite even if you don’t have coverage.
It would be stupid to use this capacity to track users because the data is not worth more than what you can get for free if you just cache the location and wait for the user to move into cellular coverage again. There is no conspiracy here.
Well, it's fairly easy to turn off. If you are in a situation in which you think you might be stalked through technology, you should certainly check your Find My along with any applicable location sharing Applications (both Android and Apple, such as google maps location sharing).
So I doubt this will be used much as a stalker feature. Unless of course they hide a phone on your person/vehicle in such a way that it is both totally unnoticeable to you AND maintains a very clear view of the sky. Apple said that sending messages could take a minute or more with even light foliage, so hiding it in/under a car will be a total no-go.
You have control over who can see your location in Find My. If a stalker has access, that means they're already someone you trust or you've never looked at the list of people you're sharing your location with.
When they don't charge money for it and you're not using it (so no views for ads), they aren't getting paid and it's costing them storage money. How is it hard to see that they are giving it away for free?
Huh. I've never gotten this and my default browser is Firefox. Does this happen when you import bookmarks into Firefox from Safari, or every time you use Firefox?
Is it? It's a nudge at best, which you can probably taxonomize as "advertising" but its for a thing you already have and users genuinely might not have noticed.
Now, they had a different notification in the past for MobileMe that was truly an ad because you didn't have to be an existing customer for an upsell nor did it come with the OS by default (this was after iTools got rebranded by Apple), and it just wanted you to go to their website to look at the product and maybe buy it, download it and install it. (this was mostly the pre-iCloud-Drive backup solution that was itself a holdover from iTools)
I think technically anything that points you to a place where money could be made is an advertisement, and even advertising mDNS devices on a local network is doing the "hey you, there is a thing over here"-thing. But there is a big difference between creating a universal spot in software to load arbitrary advertisements for new products vs. in-product purchase options (which obviously tend to lean more into the upsell category of ads than the nudge for mindshare category of ads).
The whole 'try safari' thing is one I do actually see on new accounts, and sometimes on first startup with browsers, but IIRC once dismissed they don't come back again. Heck, it even is less persistent than the post-install highlights notification you got from major OS upgrades.
Perhaps the Browser-notification is best compared with Microsoft's OneDrive notification in the Security settings where they suggest that using a free OneDrive account is the "One True Way" to stop ransomware.
I think the fact that you already have the app installed is not a mitigating factor, it actually makes it worse: I can't uninstall Safari. They put it on my computer, I chose not to use it, and now they're specifically targeting other applications they want me to switch away from.
It's not only a new installation issue either; I've had this laptop for 7-8 months. It's only happened 4-5 times, and I assumed (without verifying) that I get it whenever Safari has updated. For what it's worth, I have turned off notifications from Safari; this is the OS itself saying "I see you're using another browser; have you thought about using ours instead?"
I guess it's perspective-dependant. Computers are really more sold like appliances the last decade or so, and as such the specs they are sold on depend on the combination of hardware and software. For the general consumer, any deviation from the expected and advertised performance would be A Bad Thing™, and modifying the base facilities would count as such.
Now, for me (and perhaps you too) I see it much more as a collection of interconnected hardware devices, with various firmwares in ROMS and Flash EEPROMs, boot loaders and operating systems on mass storage devices, and a few ISAs, ABIs and APIs to make sure it all works to a certain standard. In practical terms, that doesn't really matter to anyone else, not to Apple, but also not to Microsoft, HP, Dell etc. So we're back at "the thing is a black box appliance" and as such, the base advertised features should be properties of the appliance as bought by the customer. This also means that any deviation from that will either mean someone has to spend (or waste) time and energy on telling an angry customer that their BitCoinBrowserXXL is the reason the battery is empty after an hour, and that it is their own fault, or that the device is defective, or that the advertisement was false. If you are a for-profit company, would you not cut that "waste" of support by 33%?
There is always the fear that the company is doing an evil thing and wants to harvest your life, but if Apple wanted to do that, they could. It's more likely that it's just part of the energy saving subsystem to direct users to optimal usage scenarios and things like "dim display automatically" and "use safari" are part of those scenarios. There really isn't much else gained by using Safari, not by Apple and not by the user. So either both gain a "yes the battery does last longer and the computer is responsive", or they both lose that. There is no PII telemetry in Safari, and cross-device data sharing (like Bookmarks) are encrypted within the iCloud Circle if you are using that, so Apple can't see that either (except if you also enable iCloud Backup on an iOS device), so for data harvesting, it's not really an incentive.
What would be an interesting option is a "do not use notifications to suggest optimal software-hardware interactions" checkbox somewhere so they can just list side-effects near the actual preferences instead of all over the place.
Never had that one, but from the docs you apparently can select it, say you do not want the free thing and it will never come back and also not be replaced with an ad for unrelated products. Edit: until you apparently log in on a new device and if it is new enough you get the same offer.
Still only once per account though. If you have a family setup it's actually only once per family even, I'd imagine it reverts back to once per account if you leave the family.
So basically, if you don't like seeing it, activate it and then immediately cancel it, and it should never come back.
Interesting, I haven't checked with the rest of the family, but would that also mean that the trial is family-scoped so that you can't all trial it individually?
If you dismiss that it’ll never come back again. This goes for all their music, tv, etc. services. And this also goes for features like Siri and Apple Pay, if you opt out there’ll be a reminder in settings and if you decline it’ll never come back.
It's a very Apples to Oranges comparison to be honest. Settings is an app that you don't really need to open that much to begin with, and the "ads" they show are more like promotions that you can use only once on your account. It's a bait for sure, but it's at least a bit beneficial to users if they are ever interested in trying that service.
Explorer is something Windows users interact with constantly, putting ads right next to the actual content view is SO different to ads in settings, at least to me.
As others have mentioned this isn't the only ad Apple has tinkered with recently, I don't think they should be off the hook by any means, I just think Microsoft have been way more dubious recently.
Why can't the OS just be an OS though without ads anywhere? Clearly if you install firefox you want to use firefox, otherwise you'd switch back to safari.
Because ads is the only way to make constant money from consumers if you don't sell hardware with the OS. That said, not all notifications are ads. Sometimes, a notification is just a well-intentioned notification that only a small portion of users take offence to. I bet that if they made a "Safari Rewards Points" program that would annoy the hell out of everyone.
I believe they are referring to Apple’s encouragement to sign up to/in to iCloud within the Settings app on iOS, suggesting that this is an ‘ad’ on a par with the Microsoft ad shown in the OP.
Not even close. If you go to iCloud (a tiered service with one free offering and only paid options beyond that), you get product messaging about iCloud. Not "how to write confidently in this other unrelated product that you don't have but you can buy from us".
Not showing up for me at any time, perhaps this is that complementary thing you get for new iCloud accounts and new Apple devices? (Or was that the one free year thing?)
While it is probably advertising for a service, it's not a generic place for arbitrary advertisements. I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
My iCloud account isn't new. It's many years old. The device I have is old but only 3 months old. I bought it from someone else and it's still under warranty so maybe that's why.
> I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
That's a fair point. I do notice Apple going in the wrong direction though. Even the "search" tab in the App Store now shows ads for random apps (before doing a search). That's fairly odd.
For the store I sort-of understand it, it's a store after all, the only purpose is to extract money from customers (in exchange for services/goods), and with a non-physical store the only real distinction you can make is how high at the top of a list your product sits. That said, I don't really use it that often anymore as I already have all the apps I want or need. Perhaps also why I tried the arcade a while back but didn't really end up using much of it for long.
> Even the "search" tab in the App Store now shows ads for random apps (before doing a search). That's fairly odd.
The random searches I've seen always have to do with my previous searches in that box. I think this is probably a case of Apple not having a good App Store search suggestion engine. (This happens in the Podcasts app as well.)
- normal search for the list of apps that exist
- paid search positioning on top of that
- previous searches you made
- suggested results just for you
and then somehow blending that into a bad list of search results. (this is just a crappy guess on my part)
On one hand I don't care all that much, on the other hand I know there are people that do go browsing the store looking for new stuff to try out, and using search seems to be the only reasonable way to go looking for things with so many apps being available.
After combining that with your other post, perhaps the formula they are using is iCloud account on a 'difference' device where it calculates if the new device is 'better' than the old one, thus was a device upgrade and therefore you may want to try the arcade. Personally I don't care for the arcade, but it does seem to be some sort of one-off notification when something in your device/account mix changes.
Reminds me of the Office365 trial tile in Windows that doesn't actually do anything but when you open the start menu it is always there in accounts that are newly signed in to a computer. It's not really in the way, but it is always in your face until you remove it (but then it does stay away).
It's definitely annoying indeed. I do wonder how this could be done better because after asking around for a bit there do seem to be a lot of people that aren't aware of any free trials yet are definitely interested in trying it out.
I think they’re referring to the upsell of iCloud. If you’re not subscribed to even the $1 tier or wherever, there is a line under the iCloud menu item to upgrade. I don’t think it’s especially egregious but some might have a different opinion.
They're probably talking about notifications probing you to add your card to Apple Wallet.
I'm not sure if you get them if you never touch Apple Wallet, I always get them when I transfer to a new phone or reset my current phone and need to setup my cards again before they can fully transfer.
It's annoying, but never felt it was comparable to Microsoft.
Imagine telling someone in 2003 that this was going to happen. It would have been seen as a joke (as some are seeing it today) or something that absolutely wouldn't happen.
If this is not a joke, this seems like the best indicator that Tesla is meeting it's mission to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."
I don't believe that at all. These giant companies are not just in the business of fending off bad PR, they're looking to make a lot of money for their investors, for decades to come.
Reminds me of the Netflix / Qwikster fiasco. They can still transform without changing their name. Less effort and resource on PR, more effort on the sustainability part.
Isn't it more likely that it's just electric's time? Like when you see a bunch of people inventing similar things, not because they're copying the first person, but the rest of the context is such that the invention is finally important and achievable? Maybe I'm just being contrarian, but I feel like this "first mover was a visionary compared to the second or third" thing is like the Great Person theory of history and overdone.
And people will twist it either way. A second mover doesn't appear soon, so the first is way ahead, or a second mover does appear, so it must be because of the first's influence.
>> Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads.
A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.
What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, perhaps it could be. <<
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
There are numerous comments that essentially are saying "he shouldn't be doing this." That's shortsighted. You don't have insights into how this is working in practice for them. He, together with the other people at the company, have built an offering that is serving and satisfying millions of people. If there are problems with it, they are his problems to deal with. Why are you so hot and bothered about it? Focus on building your own cool shit. Be productive.
Ignoring that your comment is about the wrong company, I'd also like to point out that in the music world Spotify is just a convenient scapegoat (as a consumer-facing brand) for practices that are actually the fault of record labels.
Spotify pays out most of its income (iirc around 70%) to labels, but it's up to the contracts between the labels and artists how much money ends up being paid out. Spotify is out of the loop at this point.
Fu*k ME, sorry.
Three days of little sleep and too much internet.
I’m definitely taking a break for the weekend.
Sorry again. I’m not deleting my comment, needs to stay as a moniker and demand everyone’s forgiveness.
Well, Shopify is still a crappy service. They refuse to do business with merchants engaged in legal trade if they sell items Shopify doesn't like. Knives are out, so are facial skin masks, and you better put down that tube of whitening toothpaste. Of course, if you are a whale like Target, Shopify has no problem with those prohibited items.
The business plan of my new startup Dopify is to help other startups not make silly naming decisions - but we might pivot to selling dope later if it doesn't work out.
The cynical response is probably that all tech is either ad tech, uses ad tech or builds things used by ad tech.
You don't really need ad tech to make that statement about selling out those beneath you applicable for most tech though. Work on self-driving cars? Good bye to people earning money driving cars. Yes, you can rationalize that by saying "no, we're just automating what can be automated to free human productivity and make sure their capacity isn't wasted on these trivial tasks", but this isn't Star Trek and they won't be freed from driving cars, they'll be out of a job.
Yes, there are exceptions, but yes, they are exceptions.
