bobjohnson

About

Username
bobjohnson
Joined
Visits
6
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
45
Badges
0
Posts
154
  • Microsoft, Signal add end-to-end encryption to Skype

    Um - what? Signal will have been (or will be in the future) the recipient of a midnight knock at the door by someone holding a court order to provide them access to the encryption. Personally I couldn’t care less since I don’t do anything interesting (or dodgy) in my spare time, but no one should be under the illusion that this is completely impenetrable.
    Barring a flaw in the protocol itself, this isn't really possible. The core concept of end-to-end encryption is that the only parties capable of reading messages are the parties sending the messages, because they generate the keypairs directly. You can't have a "master key."
    Rayz2016lostkiwisandorgatorguydjames4242watto_cobra
  • How to buy HomePod using Apple's financing options

    Is it just me or is it that if you can’t afford to buy this outright you shouldn’t be buying it. If I used credit I would reserve it for necessities - like an appliance going out, not a HomePod?? Call me crazy...
    Even though I can afford to pay cash for most things I buy, I still take advantage of interest-free financing options. There's very little downside to improving your personal float when it costs you nothing.
    macgui2old4funredgeminipajony0lollivermavemufc
  • 2016 Apple Watch will be internal 's' upgrade, major design changes to wait until 2017, in...

    sog35 said:
    Calling Kuo a "well-connected insider" is not helping casual readers or any readers at all. Why?  Because it is totally FALSE and a flat out LIE.  By definition an insider is someone WHO ACTUALLY WORKS AT APPLE or HOLDS SIGNIFICANT OWNERSHIP OF APPLE. PERIOD. 
    ...
    Kuo is a guy who has a bunch of contacts to Apple supply chain vendors. Thats it. Calling him anything else is ridiculous and misleading.
    "A guy with a bunch of contacts" is well within the colloquial definition of "insider. [1]" Your constant attempts to narrowly define the English language to fit within your own narrative are as or more deceiving than whatever you constantly bitch about the AI staff doing.

    1. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/insider "a person belonging to a limited circle of persons who understand theactual facts in a situation or share private knowledge"
    nhughesargonautgatorguymacgui
  • FBI forensic expert calls Apple 'evil genius' for strengthening iPhone encryption

    cincymac said:

    However, if the recipient is not using iMessage, your text will go plain on the internet highway from your phone to your party's.
    That...that is not how SMS works.
    StrangeDaystokyojimufastasleep
  • Apple's Tim Cook talks education, says he wouldn't want his nephew using social media

    dewme said:
    I agree with Tim Cook's sentiment that learning coding is more important than learning a foreign language, but only if you do not have to collaborate across a team composed of members from countries with different written & spoken languages. 
    English is the lingua franca (lol) of international business. English is the lingua franca of the tech industry. English language instruction is one of the fastest-growing segments in education. English - not Mandarin or Spanish and certainly not Portugese - is the future of spoken and written communication.
    SpamSandwichlostkiwi
  • Patriots quarterback Tom Brady stars in new 'Above the Noise' Beats by Dre commercial

    I've found Beats headphones don't fit people with larger noggins. They seem to be engineered for kids or small adults.
    I wonder if that's why so many professional athletes wear them.
    SpamSandwich
  • DJI unveils Phantom 4 drone with obstacle avoidance, new Apple partnership

    "...a new obstacle avoidance system..." LOL... and we all now know Google's smart car reversing at a snail's pace couldn't even avoid a huge bus!

    1 accident per 1.2 million driven miles -- how's your record?
    maxxe2
  • PSA: If you don't want to fry your new MacBook, pay attention to the quality of your USB cables

    elijahg said:
    Apple's Macbooks are protected against reverse polarity and Vcc to D+, D- or GND shorts. Not sure about the iPhone, but it likely is. Cheap Chromebooks aren't because they'd have to spend a couple of cents on a few resistors and diodes. I find cheapo cables tend to fall apart, though none as bad as Apple's Greenpeace compliant ones.

    The Pixel sells for $1,000 and is quite well engineered. Go ahead and grab a USB-C cable, wire the Vbus pin on one end to Gnd on the other, then use it to charge your MacBook and let us know it goes. 
    mac fan
  • Apple's $59M Australian tax bill in the spotlight as international tax row continues

    sog35 said:
    Nobody working a normal 9-5 filing their 1040EZ with TaxSlayer every year knows what their effective tax rate is, but they damn sure know that they paid for example $5,000 of their $50,000 total salary. Can we please show some respect for the people you call "the ignorant," who have to worry about putting food on their table rather than learning tax law and have a right to have things explained in a straightforward manner that they can easily understand? 
    You are comparing taxes on an individual vs a mega corporation. That's the biggest Apple's to Orange's comparison you can make.

    Like I said NO CORPORATION USES GROSS SALES TO CALCULATE TAXES. That's why using that metric is absolutely ridiculous and misleading. In 99.9999% of articles about corporate tax they talk about tax rate on PROFITS.

    The whole point is to put in perspective how little Apple is paying relative to its income, which a gross rate does very nicely. If our salary man who thinks he has a 10% rate because he pays $5k of his $50k salary sees a story that says Apple pays a 40% rate, he's not going to understand the issue because "wow, that's 4x what I pay!" Just because a number makes Apple look bad doesn't make it misleading. 

    For the record, I have no problem with Apple practicing good corporate governance and taking every legal avenue to minimize their tax burden. It's the government's job to make sure the law doesn't allow for wiggle room.