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Gasp! You bastards! That millionaire's kids have to get their prada allowance from somewhere! Beast!

that's NOTHING! I carry around 5 256GB flash drives and 1 3TB hard drive IN MY RECTUM!

I'm not sure it would be that super.

Here in Aus we can only afford for one company in the entire island to do this work, badly: the NBN! Trying to install a fibre network in AU since 2009 (and failing big time!)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a kangaroo pouch full of hard drives, hopping across the outback...

We're supposed to get fibre to the home, rather than just the cabinet. My brother's neighbours get 800 megabits, he only gets 250 on a good day. If he turns on his broadband Sky, which his ISP claim won't impact his network speeds at all, he drops down to 50 megabits or less. (I suspect he's mixing up connection speed, and network transfer rates.)

Our ISP is a state-owned one, who were well known for shady deals and typical big-business reasoning. Their CEO went on TV around 2008 and complained that opening up the market to competition was unfair, because they'd be forced to compete in areas where they made the largest profits and that just wasn't fair. Didn't even try to disguise what she was saying.

Here in Aus we can only afford for one company in the entire island to do this work, badly: the NBN! Trying to install a fibre network in AU since 2009 (and failing big time!)

Well FTTC (fiber to the cabinet) is much more common than FTTH (fiber to the home). It's not an issue per se, it can still deliver speeds of 100Mb/s - 400Mb/s depending on the configuration. They don't use just one cable though (not because of the speed, the theoretical capacity of a fiber cable is somewhere north of 1 Pb/s, well above of what your ISP will power it with), the reason why they use multiple cables is because fiber cable is quite fragile and you don't want to end up redoing miles of cabling because you were stupid enough to just use 1 cable. It seems to me that your local electrician might be exaggerating the story.

In Dunedin, New Zealand, we "won" a marketing campaign called Gigatown. It was supposed to present us with the fastest internet in the southern hemisphere, we would have gigabit and we would have it first. Nobody else would have it until well after we did.
It turns out that the competitors of the company installing it have finished a half dozen towns, at least one of them much bigger than Dunedin, and the company installing it here - Chorus - have completed installation in a bunch of smaller towns. I'm told by a local electrician that Chorus are doing a terrible job, instead of doing fibre to the door of each house they're splitting a fibre cable between houses, something which they'll have to redo across the entire nation in a few years, and are refusing to guarantee their connection speeds with some people experiencing xDSL-like speeds.
Anyway, we've got construction crews running up and down the street, stereos blaring from very early in the morning until the end of the day, digging up holes, blocking roads, low speed zones, that kind of thing. It's annoying as all hell, but nowhere near as bad as that crap!

You need look no further than what happened with Wiki leaks, to see the kind of painful embargo a large country like Brazil could use against an uncooperative foreign website like Facebook:

http://www.cnet.com/news/mastercard-pulls-plug-on-wikileaks-payments/

That's a very naive view considering WhatsApp is not simply WhatsApp, it's Facebook. And Facebook needs a presence in Latin America in order to sell ads for example (read: money). Just because you can send some money to a guy in China using PayPal doesn't mean a company can do the same, there are much stricter laws for business. And before you say that they should pull out of a market, yes you can do that but where do you draw the line? USA? China? Brazil? EU? If you continue like that eventually you will be out of a business.

What we (as citizens of these countries) have an obligation to do, is inform our fellow countrymen and try to steer the country away from these kind of policies. After all, politicians are still elected by the majority.

Define "their market". What would WhatsApp have to gain by having a business presence in Brazil? Why doesn't it just move its headquarters to some place that is not fascist? Why would anybody care where the physical locale of its server and plant are? This is the era of international business, for heaven's sake. I can send PayPal to some guy in China or Switzerland (just arbitrary examples) to buy something. If that something is software, I just get a download license, and there is no issue of importing anything physical. Even if it is hardware (I have done this many, many times), it just shows up in the mail. It very seldom shows any evidence of customs nosiness.

Brazilian and US (and all other) fascists: bite me.

How can a Brazil court fine an American company?

By having a large market.

If you don't obey them, they can kick you out of their market, and you would lose more money by being left out. Admittedly, this is somewhat difficult to do with websites.

How can a Brazil court fine an American company?

I placed 91 orders in 2015, 'mkay? I care a lot about 2 days vs 7 days. I use Prime Video all the time. So it is a huge bargain FOR ME.

Your numbers made me curious, so I checked on mine and Amazon reports I placed 123 orders in 2015, and that's a bit lower than the previous year. All this without paying a cent for Prime, and depending on free shipping.

Of course, without a dollar figure, this isn't too revealing... One $1 item can count as an order, and Amazon often splits up a single cart into multiple orders.

I will be curious to see how the increased threshold for free shipping affects their sales this year.

Walmart is closing stores and emphasizing online ordering these days.

Walmart is only closing 3 percent of its US locations... A tiny figure. And that's after a building boom, where they were putting new Walmarts EVERYWHERE. 66 percent of the store closures are their "smallest-format [convenience] stores called Walmart Express". Nearly all (95 percent) "of the stores set to be closed in the U.S. are within 10 miles of another Walmart." There are 4 Walmarts within just 12 miles of my location. And as I said, ordering online doesn't preclude picking up your online order in-store, for free. Not to mention the many other retailers with lower free-shipping thresholds.

Walmart also offers free $0 in-store pickup on ALMOST anything you can order online.

I find it nowhere near "almost everything"; also the nearest Walmart to me is over 50 miles away and I haven't driven that far in years. Finally, Walmart is closing stores and emphasizing online ordering these days.

Fuel is at something like a 20 year low

And labor, a much more important factor, balloons continually, year after year. Think about it. A UPS truck gets about 10-13 mpg and runs an average of 84 miles per day. Even at $4/gal that is no more than $34 per day. Now compare to 1/250 of the driver's annual salary + benefits + overhead. I can't see how that is any less than $200 per day.

I still never order more than 2-3 times a year, don't care about 2 days versus 7 days, and never ever used Prime Video. Prime is NOT a bargain

FOR YOU. Absolutely agreed. OTOH, I placed 91 orders in 2015, 'mkay? I care a lot about 2 days vs 7 days. I use Prime Video all the time. So it is a huge bargain FOR ME. Even at the new rate.

When gas prices soared to the point when I factored in travel to the store to buy stuff. Do I spend $10 in gas for a $8 part? I found Amazon Prime to be a big cost savings on items that I could wait for. We were having Amazon ship stuff because not only was the online price cheaper, we also didn't have to pay for gas. (We live 30 minutes away from the largest city and 60 minutes from large metropolitan shopping centers.) Now, even though gas prices have hit a 10 year low, we still have Prime and continue to use it. We still drive for groceries, but other non-food items all come from Amazon. From clothes to carbon gaskets. I do 100% of my holiday, anniversary, and birthday shopping through Amazon. In our household Amazon holds a brand recognition to that of Google.

There's no legitimate reason for shipping costs to be rising.

US Post Office rates have gone up, I thought this was due to their new requirement to fully fund all their pensions? Or something like that? This requirement was likely caused by FedEx and other shippers lobbying the government. Just another case of companies/capitalists that really want to be monopolists -- in this case driving business away from the Post Office by forcing higher USPS rates.

$50 happens to be the cutoff for Walmart online, too.

Walmart also offers free $0 in-store pickup on ALMOST anything you can order online. No such option with Amazon.

Target is just $25 for free shipping. Sears/Kmart is at $35. Frys.com is still $34 to get free shipping.

Of course many 3rd party sellers listed on Amazon have free shipping included in the price, with no minimum order size, but Amazon commonly sells the item much cheaper, if they have it available at all.

dancing box men

i'd be ashamed if i worked for them after watching that commercial.

"The company's management has proven repeatedly that it can effectively monitor and manage those risks," it said. "This is an incredibly complex project unlike any infrastructure build anywhere in the world."

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/nbn-malcolm-turnbulls-faster-cheaper-rollout-falters-20160228-gn5l0s.html

WTF? How is this different from fiber networks in any other country?

This was a one time deal and I hope it was worth it for the FBI. Because Apple is about to button up their OS so even if it is court ordered to break into a device they cannot. Hince, they will attempt to make the perfect black box apparatus. I expect Android to follow suit. Windows, well to much is at stake with the amount of government contracts and vendors they have. Expect that to be the least secured.

Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you for acknowledging me.

Actually, what I'd really like to know is how to permanently remove that purple circle thing which pops up. Irritating, annoying, it's like a little popup ad on its own. No setting change so far has disabled it.

The reason for shipping costs to rise now is profit margin. Then, when fuel prices rise, they can whine that they're losing money on shipping and increase the costs more, and the "Just World" brigade will leap to their defense, claiming that no business should lose money to its customers. People who don't track what happens will be convinced, and increased shipping costs become the norm.

Sure it costs quite a bit once a year - but I more than make it back. Every time I order something I'll look for "Prime Only" and verify that against stuff that may happen to have free shipping otherwise. The first year I used it I saved enough on shipping bicycle parts alone to justify its existence. Throw in the movies and TV shows I get with the Prime membership it runs the value up a lot, I generally am anti-music streaming (I'm an ogg hoarder) but I used the Prime streaming one day and actually found a new band to listen to.

If you order from them more than four to six times in a year I would say it's absolutely worth getting.

Fuel is at something like a 20 year low. Everything is automated and optimized out the wazoo. There's no legitimate reason for shipping costs to be rising.

This sucks a bit for me, as after several trials and 2 paid years I realized I still never order more than 2-3 times a year, don't care about 2 days versus 7 days, and never ever used Prime Video. Prime is NOT a bargain and, worse, I've noticed that many/most of the things I shop for lately are MORE expensive at Amazon, making the entire Amazon+Prime proposition nothing but a gimmick and from what I see in others it approaches Apple-y levels of cult stickiness.

Prime is charged annually.

An interesting perspective. I like it.

$50 happens to be the cutoff for Walmart online, too. And for quite a few other places.

The skyrocketing cost of shipping is a real problem for everybody. It really frosts me to order ten bucks worth of tea leaves or electronic parts and then have shipping to double the cost to me.

Aren't you special?

I am actually... Although I just pay for shipping.. to get the items purchased.. shipped..

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. So, there are no doubt tens of millions of people who will care very, very much. If you're not one of them, no problem, just move on.

Amazon wants to drive their customers to Prime - the service with a monthly fee even if you don't use it for anything for the month.

why should anyone care?

This shows that the U.S. Federal Government is out of control, acts counter to the constitution and it's own laws. Just from a cursory glance the DOJ has just asked Apple to commit acts which are illegal under the DMCA. Of course that law has nothing to do with copyright, and everything to do with allowing big Hollywood and big Publishing to have ownership interest in the public's computers and digital files. With the DMCA you no longer own a book, you rather rent it from the copyright holder.

Fair enough. Just very sad to see another tech giant fade away

To believe any of these companies care about your data privacy over their pr image is funny, but to declare it as official seems to flaunt one's naivety.

Article poster here. That was not intended on starting a holy war. More going for perspective based on facts. Feel free to post a story, anecdote, tech spec or something to even out or bolster the competition side.

Ignoring the pronouncement that is intended to start an OS holy war (seriously? Grow up!) I've seen a number of people raise points which indicate that this is simply a play by the security apparatus to extend their reach into citizen's lives a little further.

The following countries will allow people to temporarily enter the country as part of this agreement... but not the US!!! WTF

Temporary Entry for Business Persons (PDF 97 KB)

12-A. Australia (PDF 172 KB)
12-A. Brunei Darussalam (PDF 232 KB)
12-A. Canada (PDF 215 KB)
12-A. Chile (PDF 169 KB)
12-A. Japan (PDF 181 KB)
12-A. Malaysia (PDF 185 KB)
12-A. Mexico (PDF 253 KB)
12-A. New Zealand (PDF 172 KB)
12-A. Peru (PDF 182 KB)
12-A. Singapore (PDF 142 KB)
12-A. Viet Nam (PDF 179 KB)

It's actually very, very difficult to prosecute because they can always claim it's just a different interpretation of the same data, or certain details weren't known at the time, or the means of measuring have changed, or whatever. All of those are legitimate issues that have come up time and again, so it wouldn't be hard to use them as an excuse for your asbestos-is-a-safe-food-additive paper. Look at Robert Kehoe, the man who's most famous for telling us that tetraethyl lead was safe, he got his start at Kettering Labs "proving" that the known carcinogen naphthylamine was actually perfectly safe for use in paints, and went on from there. It took decades of fighting by some US cancer foundation whose name escapes me at the moment to get this overturned. So if it's that hard to overturn bought research "proving" that a carcinogen that produces cancer in nine out of ten employees exposed to it is safe, imagine how hard it'd be to overturn something far more vague.

This won't stop until people are prosecuted and sent to jail. That won' happen until there are laws on the books criminalizing this behavior. That won't happen until the same corporations peddling this information aren't the same corporations that buy politicians.

USA! USA! USA!

We even have our own full time troll!

Meh ubuntu worked fine :-)

yeah, this story is 100% borked just do one on those stuff in that link Solar Movie Watch Series Tube Plus Kiss Cartoon sounds like fun

it is like some kind of news site or something

It's a good one!

here's some more:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11142986

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/46tdcj/beware_of_hacked_isos_if_you_downloaded_linux/

https://lwn.net/Articles/676613/

https://twitter.com/Linux_Mint/status/701222478178340864

"Mint has never booted on any device I have installed it on. My choice of laptop must not be mainstream enough."

Neh.. chomp chomp chomp.. What's up, Doc?