b2600

You don’t need a phone number to open a google or gmail account. It asks for it but it’s a skippable step

Gmail is slow to load compared to others. Notably, FastMail. I abandoned Inbox a while ago because of load time. Coming close to abandoning Gmail too. Takes way to long to load. This happens for me on low end laptops AND high end desktops.

Curious why you tossed Apple in there. In worldwide usage it's a fraction compared to the other three. (I feel compelled to state I use an iPhone in order to avoid this comment being interpreted incorrectly).

Just started diving into it. It's fascinating from a bureaucratic, administrative, and operational perspective. --we have to increase CI/Intelligence capability or we'll lose primacy to another agency-- Paraphrasing

So poor people don't/won't read the Economist? They "don't care to". wow. BTW, these click-bait sites are rewarded by your employer who then is able to pay you. As an aside: Doesn't google still provide a text only web cache that strips ads? What if I use wget or curl? What about reader view in safari or firefox, absent from chrome of course. Rss? Blocking ads is only one way to go.

I think there is some tremendous gap between what a site believes it's value to be and the value to the person behind the keyboard. My opinion is the reverse of yours. Internet users aren't necessarily cheap, the sites overvalue the content they provide. Just because someone provides content doesn't mean it's good enough to make a living. If people leave site A because they charge for site B that's free but of less value, it may mean that site A doesn't provide enough value for the price they want to charge.Personally, I don't care how intrusive you think they are, I'm not going to view them. Why would you want me to, I'm not going to click anyway. I do pay for several sites via subscription (FT, WSJ, NYT, and others) and I pay for my email service(s) and I pay for Amazon and Netflix and Mubi and Hulu. Oh, I also pay for my broadband connection. If you think that anyone who puts content online should be compensated by default, that's the weirdest contention I've ever heard.

In the comedy movie "Back to School", wealthy business man Thornton Melon hires Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay for him on Kurt Vonnegut for English Literature class. The professor knows Melon did not write the essay and tells him "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!." He got an F.

Engineer is liberally defined nowadays. It apparently no longer means someone who has a B.S.(or above) in Engineering.

Facebook has no idea how many fake accounts exist and neither do I. But it is definitely higher than 11.2%. That estimate was self-serving for business purposes not a serious analysis.

I guess I'm reading these two examples as: 1. an extra goto and 2. a strategy dealing with creating an ssl store that uses a 32(!) bit key. I'm not implying malice but they seem fundamentally different type of errors.

I don't know if comparing "bugs" from AV software and OSs is apples to apples. Also, goto followed by erroneous goto looks like an error (I know) but

"keys are generated, they're inserted using the first 32 bits of MD5(serialNumber||issuer) as the key. If a match is found for a key, they just pull the previously generated certificate and key out of the binary tree"

doesn't

That would be targeted to individual(s) not "all email from everyone" NSLs target a service or an individual or a corporation. Bad as that is, it's not intercepting, storing, scanning every email.

Leaving out Russian news sources of which there are numerous:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2...

https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-trainers-ukraine

https://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical-diary/west-hems-russia...

From the second link:

"[Nuland's] strong statement of preference for how Ukraine's government should be formed – and apparent confidence that the US has major influence over that – is a reminder of the disconnect between US government assurances that it doesn't meddle in nations' internal politics and its actual behavior (White House spokesman Jay Carney repeats this canard in his comment on the tape.) This was not a conversation analyzing unfolding events and how to respond to what comes next. This was about molding a situation according to US interests."

"the Pixel is a joke compared to the iPhone 6s in my opinion" That's a very unusual opinion. Most reviews I've seen contradict this. Hell, you could compare the 6p with the 6s and the iPhone would win (in my opinion) but it wouldn't blow it out of the water. I haven't had hands on with the Pixel yet so I'll reserve my personal judgement but I have owned the 6s, the 6p, and the iPhone 7 (daily driver). Furthermore, it made be different in your use case but most iPhone users have all sorts of Google apps making the ecosystem argument irrelevant.

I don't object to the veracity of your claims but I would note that "it's what everyone around me is using" doesn't scale very well. For example, if you're from the U.S. you might not know anyone who uses WhatsApp nevertheless it has over a billion users and is the default messenger app in many countries.

Everything is relative. He actually wasn't that bad for being an industry shill. The next commissioner will be worse (for consumers).

What you're describing is not possible given the database you tested. Are there more details that would clarify your post?

If your statement is accurate, why offshore the work?

The tangible benefit is working for less money.

Generally speaking, it is for their contacts

A NSL is a legal document that originates from the DOJ (via the FBI) that requires no judicial approval. Nevertheless it is a legal document. The NSA does not participate, authorize, approve, initiate, or distribute NSLs.

Re: Tor. It's very effective but users must read the documentation not just plug and play.

Really not trying to start an OS war but for the sake of accuracy Android is the dominant mobile OS in Japan, not iPhone.

I agree about the user name vs phone number. Federation issue was addressed here[1] for what it's worth.

[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

Never understood the comparison re: Microsoft and Google. At the time of the Microsoft litigation (and still), they were the dominant OS. The OS wasn't/isn't free. It restricted competition esp. browsers. Google is (mostly) free and ad based. They can't keep other search engines off the internet. They're just what people use (so far).

To clarify. I was responding to two separate arguments. App vs mobile web and ad blocker usage.

It matters because people don't want an app for every site they frequent. Furthermore, a lot of apps are simply exactly the same as the mobile site but with the burden of install, updates, permissions, etc. I think users prefer a single point of entry for sites.

If you have a good app or a good site, people will pay via ads or subs.

Patagonia on mobile web works fine for me. Everything functions properly and is easy to use. I don't know what device you use. Never used the other site you mentioned.

Mobile Safari is open on every single person's phone. Those apps that you listed are the A-list of what everyone has on their phone. That doesn't trickle down to all the other apps that aren't Facebook or Instagram. Literally no one wants an app for every single site they happen to visit regularly. Hell, I've seen people leave an app and go to the site because some functionality didn't work or didn't exist on the app.