biff's comments

I'm sure it was a well-intentioned guard against spammers that mercilessly attack Yahoo! accounts, but it's effectively locked me out as a genuine user. I'm definitely miffed because it'll cost me, but at the same time, I implement systems like this for small businesses for a living, and it's a constant thing on my mind how what I do will impact users down the line. I get so nervous about inadvertently pulling something like this!

In fact, late last week, the CTIA wrote the FCC to tell it that the kind of blacklist approach taken by Foss’s company wouldn’t work. According to the lobbying group, it raises privacy concerns—and causes other problems too.

“Even assuming an accurate database of blacklisted and whitelisted numbers can be compiled and maintained, the ease with which modern equipment and software can allow a caller to spoof a caller ID would present significant challenge,” the group says.

I thought the phone companies had access to more information than caller ID for the calls they handle. Surely you can't fake caller ID details to dodge your phone bill? I'd love it if they'd give out a star code we could all dial after a call we didn't want to receive that would, if enough people did it, disallow future calls from that entity from reaching any phone line for which a customer has requested the blocking of calls reported as bothersome. No exemptions for charities or politicians either.

I'm sorry to see how little this has changed in fifteen years.

One can imagine a solution that requires significant effort or cost to create a Twitter account, perhaps involving proof of identity, but how high can you set the bar without putting legitimate users off?

It may not sit well that people can't practically be removed for reprehensible behavior as it occurs, and I get that it can come across like victim-blaming to tell people they should ignore it, but somehow letting someone yell themselves hoarse (metaphorically) without realizing they've been muted seems even more satisfying than giving them a ban page and having them make a new account in five minutes.

Devo is my go to for programming music (Freedom of Choice, New Traditionalists, Oh No! It's Devo). Not gonna lie, you may well hate them, but for whatever reason Devo works for me when I'm trying to focus.

Also a big fan of the album Love by The Cult and pretty much anything by David Bowie or Rush. For newer stuff, Zero 7's Simple Things is really chill. Also, if you're really looking to zone out to something esoteric, Bethany Curve and Children of the Bong are nicely mellow. The album Who's Next by The Who is also great. Guess I'm just dumping my Spotify playlist out at this point, pick and choose what you want? :)

Nevertheless, at this moment there's a PHP programmer somewhere in the world writing new code that stores passwords hashed with one round of MD5.

Tragedy after tragedy veers into "discussions" about gun control, violent videogames, violent music, violent movies, and lately, misogyny. This is not to be dismissive of those topics, but it's frustrating to realize the common element is mental illness and watch, yet again, that particular topic become eclipsed by the issue of the day in the national media.

How long did it take for electricity to be considered a necessity? And I'm legitimately curious how much of a factor radio was in motivating people to make the switch...

On the other hand, I guess video game items having real world value already allows young adults to test these waters somewhat. Just seems that when actual money is involved you're moving beyond simply playing a video game. Or I'm old and panicking morally.

On a different note, me and my friend and his wife went to see Roger Waters perform The Wall a couple years back. The tickets said "No photography", but the band was very careful to say "When you take photos, please make sure the flash on your cameras is off. There are effects during our production that camera flashes will disrupt." I'm paraphrasing, but they were projecting video on the bricks that were assembled onstage as part of the performance. Sure enough, not minutes into the first set, flash flash flash flash flash.

My friends were taking photos. I made sure not to look over at them.

Presumably that HoS performance covers an entire audience hearing that song, whereas the Spotify performances are per-person. Wonder if the HoS fee also includes playing back old streams from the site?

At any rate, doesn't seem like enough money to live on. But I wonder if a Spotify is even possible if 14,000 performances could make a reasonable paycheck for a quarter. That'd be, what, around a buck a play per person? Why not just buy the CD at that point?

To be fair, he has had ample opportunity to say if this is the case by now.

Though, while I don't personally agree with his position at all, I do respect him for not backing down under pressure if it's what he truly believes. Some of my buying decisions in the past have been made on the basis of company politics, but I don't think an individual's participation in the political process (which, unfortunately, money is now part and parcel of) should be able to get them fired.

And I felt the same way when "job creators" were talking about firing employees for voting for Obama. One thing shouldn't have to do with the other.

Clearly somebody has realized that's a fixable situation.

If Facebook puts itself to be in this position without possibility of opting out, that is what I hope would trigger people to seek an ethical competitor. And, similarly, that is what I hope would occur to them would be for consumers in aggregate to be an intolerable consequence of forcing on their customers Facebook's ability (and anybody's who could subpoena Facebook) to be privy to this sort of personal information.

I won't buy one of these if it can't be operated without a phone home. I don't mind sacrificing a bit of resolution or refresh rate with a competitor if the alternative is what you say. My hope is that Facebook recognizes that there is a significant market share they'd miss out on if they pushed that point... and, more importantly, that there would actually be a significant market share that they'd miss out on if they pushed that point.

Oculus under Facebook might not bring the finished product most of us were looking for, but having a device that's solved the technological challenges of consumer VR is the heavy lifting. And it puts Facebook in the position of being The Name in consumer VR.

Are they going to alienate that right off the bat by building a walled garden, putting heavy content locks on it, watching everything you do? Or will they do the soft touch of making their helmet the easiest (and perhaps only) way to tie your VR into the Facebook network when you wish, get special savings on new software, offer perks to developers that find Facebook-friendly features for their VR software?

I think if they squeeze too hard people will upgrade right out of them into the competition. Which is sure to follow shortly if the hardware is a massive success and the implementation is driving people away. So, cautiously optimistic.

But "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" is another perspective some folks take on matters like this.