shapetables

Lyft receiving $1B line of cash is GREAT news. They seem to really do a good job of screening drivers and handling issues. Self-driving cars won't happen until they make it economically impractical to own a driver-based car, but all the hyperbole builds great excitement.

jbdragon said: Well now lift us spying for Google.  Where you get picked up where you were stored of, the time. Etc.  All valuable data to add to all the other crap they have on you.

So most drivers already use Google Maps or Google Waze, regardless of which transit service they are affiliated with. It doesn't matter if you use those apps on your phone while taking a ride because...

All recent phones can broadcast themselves as "beacons" using BLE, as do all WiFi devices and it's possible for other phones/devices to obtain a list of those nearby beacons (or WiFi devices), along with a Relative Signal Strength Indication for each of them (that can be further mathematically translated into a loose "physical proximity") and then uploaded to the Cloud for correlation of which phones AND computers AND vehicle-infotainment-systems are near each other and for what duration and what transit vector. From there the machine learning algos go to work determining what types of people a given user is likely to hang around and when, what kind of establishment, where they start and end journeys (both specifically and generally), when they are likely to use which of their devices/computers, etc. and that can be fed into more correlation to serve ads to you, marching you closer and closer towards doing something stupid with your money. The initial code that makes this possible is probably built-in to Android and Google Waze, Facebook Messenger, AccuWeather, etc.. but would have to be added to other apps (most like Uber's driver and/or rider apps) and is integral to a lot of social networking systems.

As far as abuse of this, Congress is already heading towards regulation of Facebook and Google (in multiple phases, starting with accountability over who is advertising what). BTW, there is an interesting article over on The Verge today that covers a class of students that used a modest budget to sign up to distribute some online ads that, in turn, allowed them to track any specific person or group of persons they so chose.

Awesome because VMware Inc. laid off most of its "Fusion" team and outsourced development to a different country last year.

the-other-one said: Apple is well positioned 

..except they let another company gain control of both the ARM architecture and a huuuuuuuuuuge amount of domestic wireless spectrum. In all fairness, the guys seem like they're being forced to work long after everyone has gone home and the sun has come up.

bestkeptsecret said:

I bought Things and have had buyer's remorse, mainly because the only way to store the tasks on the Cloud and to retrieve it is by creating a Things account and their ToS state that they can use the data for advertising and stuff - something I wasn't too comfortable with.

I haven't used the app since.

I'll probably shell out for OmniFocus on iPhone and Mac and look into getting the iPad version at a later date.

..they don't really sell an iPad-only version anymore (to new users), but their iPhone app is now universal and includes an AppleWatch complication.
I have to say it is really a convoluted mess that will drain your life for many months trying to set it up the way that works best for you. The Omni dweebs were OG coders under the pre-Apple version of NextStep which gave them a leg up. Their apps were a smash hit with v1.0 but atrophied a bit in v2.x and are ripe to be knocked off by lean mean newcomers using Swift and/or JavaScript frameworks from this century.

You might instead (or also) grab NextCloud (search YouTube, starts at $50 and hangs off your cable modem's router, or run it on Digital Ocean for $10/mo if you trust Digital Ocean, spend more on the setup if data loss would cause more than frustration). It has various apps (mostly free), including one that syncs your Contacts, Reminders and Calendars across all of your devices (by adding to the Accounts in Settings on your iOS devices or equivalent on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android or Tizen) and your web browsers. (NextCloud also works as a cloud platform for OmniFocus via it's WebDAV server). A little ways back they stopped building this stuff on toy Linux laptops and obscure Linux tablets and began using Apple gear, so the integration is pretty tight. It is NOT secure from pro hackers, but will at least keep your data from being commercially exploited (except for what you would grant something like FB Messenger access to).

I get the new thermal dynamics system but they had better remember to drill enough holes in this one and I will skip using this one in any environment that has to be dusted frequently or with an internal drive optio that spins in any way