indiefan

The number of people using messaging apps (not sms) daily has skyrocketed in the last couple years, has it not? The shift is probably less recognizable because it's not a shift to messaging in general (text messaging represented that shift years ago), but a shift in platform from sms to messaging applications that innovators actually have some control over. Personally, i think it's a combination of that and the machine learning thing you mention. I'd wager that the amount of time the average person spends looking at/using a messaging app every day is very significant. Especially for something that has yet to be integrated very well or monetized.

Is there a way for me to play maniac mansion legally on a modern computer?

If you think that's bad, you should see their public facing page.

I use ctrl+c. It's easy to hit than esc, and it's built in, so it always works, even on servers i haven't set my config for, etc.

You keep on using that acronym. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Sad that the user is being lost in these discussions. I get that people are worried about a slippery slope and boundaries, but this is clearly a better user experience for someone who searched for Southwest Airlines. Put yourself in the position of a human being who just performed a search for Southwest Airlines, would you honestly be angry with that result? No, of course not.

It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do.

Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you left out the step where a judge reviews the request to make sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning.

Aside from that I'd say it's a very clear, and it's sad that there seems to be a pervasive inference that these companies are something something beyond what our elected law makers have forced them to do. Why isn't more angst directed at the politicians responsible for this?

I think it's also worth noting that the intended audience of these slides wasn't the general public/press. It's possible the purpose of using wording like "directly from the servers" was simply to delineate the origin of the data from the data pulled off the wire, not the mechanism of retrieval (e.g. some backdoor outside of the existing legal procedure for acquiring such data). I just picture the person who wrote these slides and chose those words either laughing their ass off, or face-palming right now. The companies involved have been pretty explicit (at great risk I might add by putting their founders' names on the denials) that there isn't "direct access" or anything like it.

The real story here is the "Upstream" collection. Just horribly irresponsible behavior for a steward of much of the Internet's infrastructure. Shameful.

What scares me is that you know they're working on doing precisely this, and eventually they will probably be successful.

I don't think modifying already self-replicating seeds should give you a right to dictate what happens with subsequent generations of those seeds. Any such agreements should be rendered invalid (like non-compete agreements in California).

I realize this is an issue with the laws themselves and probably not within the purview of the Supreme Court, but I was kind of hoping they'd step in and end the madness.

How did this status quo come about to begin with? Was it through gender discriminatory practices? Is it possible (I'm just asking here) that the gender "imbalance" is the equilibrium?

Great comment. Am I the only person waiting for someone to provide the regular expression intimated at above?

At this point, I'm just waiting for people to start releasing games centered around the DCPU-16 before Notch even releases his.

Typical Google. Treating what should be platforms like products and treating what should be products like platforms.