Recent Comments

Agreed.

Skype is horribly slow on android and sucks on Linux as well. Google took a step backwards with Hangouts, Talk before was actually almost usable. But nevertheless, XMPP is based on XML which sucks in itself. Is there a minimal, open source video conferencing solution that doesn't suck?

BTW there are at least 2 or 3 volunteer editors on deck, too.

As a buddy once said, 'the cream rises to the top.' Keep reading, posting, commenting, and the crowds will discover it and come to us. Feel free to spread the word to your friends, of course! That's what I'm doing!

I was also just recently poking around Adafruit and wishing I had considerably more disposable income and gumption than I do currently. Here I was feeling all pleased at finally figuring out how to turn my pi into an always-on VPN/Privoxy server for when I'm out and about on cellular, and then I see stuff like this guy's project and feel I've really set my bar too low. Always wanted to try circuit bending, too, and George Gleixner's recent project is something I would love to reproduce. So many awesome projects, so little talent and motivation.

Just a note from the proud first time submitter here.

This is yet another way that the good Pipedot folks (which I assume means Bryan) do a better job than either Slashdot or SN. Rather than slap up my submission, they edited it well, adding a short paragraph with two links (whereas I had only provided the Lifehacker URL) and also leaving an Editor's Note with some interesting background info.

Simple stuff, sure, but it's indicative of care and quality, and I appreciate it.

Again, though, we've got no article or comment volume to speak of. :(

The huge, huge problem is that you more or less need a centralized (or distributed) directory service to make connecting easy for people. Jabber/XMPP and Ekiga-style clients that do VoIP and H.264 video are all well and good, but without an easy directory to reach people, they're just dead meat walking. It seems Ekiga.net offers a directory, but who the hell uses it... Same with other providers of SIP / VoIP addresses...

But really, Jabber is the right way to do it; domain owners and ISPs should all be running their own video/telephony servers just as they do mail servers, so you@hyourdomain.com becomes your Videoconferencing address. Some day?

Who wants your youtube comments blasted out to everyone in your network? Not me.

When I add a comment to a YouTube video on my phone there is a checkbox of "Share Publicly". If it is unchecked I didn't see if in my feed, but I have not looked into this that much. I don't know about the website version.

I voted zero (0) for all options and the poll system might have crashed because I was taken to a blank page...

The secure internet is dead.

There is no trust.

The internet is over.

As someone who had their first website in 1993 (yes, hosted on a linux machine), I really don't think "noob" particularly applies.

I seriously doubt that since most of the network stack was not stable before 1.0 and IP over Ethernet was introduced in 1994.

I think I might buy your Dictators Handbook , it sounds like an adventure, at least for the mind, and I'm not likely to make Nicaragua in the near future.

I think you're right, that they tried to do away with anonymity on Youtube comments to get people to shape up. I'm not convinced it worked though. It's thrown a bucket of cold water on people who'd otherwise enjoy Youtube more. And the dumb*sses that don't care are still out there posting crap. Youtube has about the worst comments anywhere. Not cool though, the way Google asked you about a hundred times if you wanted to link your Youtube account to your Google account (I said no, every time) and then basically just did it anyway. I avoid Youtube now (made me more productive in life anyway not wasting time there).

The thing looks cool, and actually reminds me a bit of the old Handspring PDAs with cartridges that could make your Handspring into a cellphone, a GPS, a barcode scanner, etc. Probably too late for me, but I hope my son gets into this stuff. Just looking at the things they sell at Adafruit makes me wish I had the talent to get into these interesting projects. There's still some fun to be had out there!

to play with technology and do cool things like this...

I like both. I use Skype more -- but this is mostly because many of my contacts are on Skype. My experience with Skype is that it can be unstable on certain links, especially using wireless internet at some hotels and such. Then again, I have used it for international connections from all over Europe, Latin America and North America and would rate my satisfaction >95%. I like Google Hangouts as well and it has been stable for me in all cases. Then again, I have not tested Google Hangouts on the same connections where Skype has experienced difficulty. I have only used Google Hangouts from wired or otherwise strong internet connections where Skype works fine as well. My sense is that Skype/Hangouts connection quality is linked directly to internet connection quality.

The link between Google+ and Google Hangouts stopped me from using Hangouts for a long time (I have zero interest in social networks), but I finally joined to use Hangouts because certain work collaborations had a pre-existing culture of using Hangouts and not Skype. Since then, I have been surprised at the number of contacts who have joined Google+ principally to use Hangouts. Anecdotally then, I would say that Hangouts is competing well and perhaps this is why Skype dropped the fee. I think my ideal scenario would be an open or standard communication protocol like email for multi-head video chat so that different people, groups could all be using different clients without being centralized in some database. This probably exists, but if everyone is on Skype/GooglePlus/Facebook it is not necessarily suitable.

The one thing that Google's doing that's really getting under my skin is asking for my cell number. Drives me up the wall every time I log in to G-mail it was the number so if I ever get locked out of my account they can send me a text. Good in principal, but I don't trust anyone outside my immediate friends with my cell number. The last thing I want is to start getting telemarketer calls while I'm at work like the lady in the cubical next to me does. I'm sure Google would be responsible, but I'm still not going to take the chance, after all telemarketers are the reason I got rid of my land line in the first place. I'm so sick of "You've won a cruise for TWO!!" and "Hi, this is RBC calling to see if you'd like a credit card that has no limit!", especially right in the middle of dinner or right after I put my two year old to bed.

Not that I approve, but the reason I believe they linked YouTube and G+ was specifically because of the YouTube comments. Hasn't seemed to change anything, but I seem to remember reading they were hoping that if people had to use an account linked to them personally rather than anonymous posting they'd think a little harder about leaving troll comments. Too bad the generation that's leaving the majority of troll comments on YouTube is a generation that doesn't care about privacy anyway so they don't care that in 20 years they'll have a ton of public postings that any employer will fined in 5 minutes that shows what kind of person they really are.

Great stuff, Bryan - thanks!

One issue - when I reply to someone who replied to me, I get notified about a new reply, namely my own. I don't need to know I've just replied to (a reply to) myself.

The only thing I use(d) yahoo for was email, have done for a very long time. I never felt shamed by having such an address. As someone who had their first website in 1993 (yes, hosted on a linux machine), I really don't think "noob" particularly applies.

However, the reason I don't trust them further than I can spit them is that as of about a year ago, they made it impossible for me to log into my account. Initially, due to me not wanting to run their shitty javascript, and not wanting to upgrade to their shitty beta site, but now, even if I drop my scripting prejudices, I still can't get in. So fuck'em, if they can't do something as simple as letting me log in, they I don't trust them to do *anything* correctly, even if their intentions are good, which is a premise I've seen no basis for.

Ah, OK, I had misinterpreted the explanation (if high is low, and low is high - what's nothing?). Thanks.

There's no way to say "1" for X, "4" for Y, and "8" for everything else.

Actually, that's almost exactly how it seems to work. Type a "1" in "Your website", type a "4" in "Google", leave the rest blank. This will give 8 points to "Your website", 5 points to "Google", and 0 points to all the others. Looks like you can vote as many times as you want (resetting your previous choices), so you can experiment and observe how the results change.

I understood the process just fine, I just thought it was very poorly designed. There was no amount of explanation that was going to make "rank your preferences in order, with the largest integer for your first choice" a reasonable way to conduct a vote.

Fair enough. So if it's a warm-up for soft landing on land ... well, so much the better.

It's what my parents always told me...

But why Borda anyway? There's no way to say "1" for X, "4" for Y, and "8" for everything else.

Honestly, I have *zero* trust in almost all of those other ones, why should I be expected to distinguish between them?

Somebody, somewhere once said this about Googleplus and Facebook back when Facebook was forcing you to get and use a facebook.com email address:

"Join Facebook and get an email address shoved down your throat. Get a Gmail account and get a social network shoved down your throat." Same goes for anyone who ever wanted to comment on a youtube video. Crikey - makes me not even want to use Youtube because of that alone. Who wants your youtube comments blasted out to everyone in your network? Not me.

It isn't in my opinion. Maybe I did the poll wrong. Its really my own website is #1, and everything else is far, far behind. However, in order to rank them, I just considered how much data I currently store in each one. Figuring, that over time I already made the decision of which I trust. I'd prefer not to have to trust any of them, If I didn't have to.

It should be grayed out or show the result when a user already took part in the vote ;)

5 years ago everyone with a yahoo email looked like a noob, I don't think that changed

Nice. Seems like a good choice. Hopefully it doesn't become too popular; a look at the sample questions on their site made it seem pretty easy to break if someone devoted their attention to it.

Assuming you've used both Skype and Hangouts video chat a fair amount, how would you compare the quality/stability etc.? Do you ever use them over a sketchy connection, on either side?

Although I looked at a number of different CAPTCHA systems, including rolling my own, I ended up going with http://textcaptcha.com/

It's simple to implement, accessible (blind people, etc), and much easier than reading a fuzzy/garbled image. :)

Ha ha - you get a point just for being you!

A change was made a couple of weeks back to raise the default moderation score of non-AC posters to 1. It's a new-ish development, but so many additional things have evolved on Pipedot in the interim that it feels like it happened quite a while ago.

I voted for Yahoo first, largely because of this: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232807 Here's another article at the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25001373 Somewhere I thought I read Yahoo was out in front of the pack with regard to their new encryption and security platform, but now I can't find the link. Maybe I was fooled? Or maybe I just like rooting for the underdog, and it's now cool to root for Yahoo again, since Google is slowly turning into Satan ;)

Previously, I've never modded my own posts up -- now they get a 1 automatically immediately upon posting? Is that expected behaviour? Maybe I haven't been paying attention...

Just checked my account, I appear to have auto-received a Skype Premium promotion until early 2015, interesting...

I actually paid for Skype for group video chat... and I joined GooglePlus for Hangouts...

Personally, I would prefer to pay Skype than have to join a Social Network, but this is the pressure of modern collaboration, you have to go where your colleagues are or you just look ludite.

Maybe this means I won't need to renew my Skype subscription to retain this feature. Unfortunately, they had it set up on auto-renew when I signed up, so I will have to check my preferences, which is something I frequently forget to check... thanks for the heads up in any case

Why is it easier to trust Google?

Perhaps because they own the entire ecosystem and it's in their best interests to protect your data because it is also *their* data? Also, despite all the Google-hate, they do generally do a lot more stuff that is good for the 'net at large than the other companies on the list, so even if you don't trust them outright there is probably at least some feel-good factor at play.

It's interesting, I agree with the poll that Google makes the appearance to be way more capable and responsible to handle your data than all the other companies. Even though they're a datamining company, most people are not worried about them but have usually huge reservations about facebook, yahoo and microsoft.

Why is it easier to trust Google?

Very cool! Thank you for all the hard work on this site.

Right, but for what it's worth I do think it was a good idea of zafiro to remove the language about the points in the summary. 1 is 8 and 8 is one, just no. :)

(These are the best damn (and most human-friendly) captchas I've ever seen. Was this your own idea?)

Reading the comments on Soylent shows there are a bunch of pissed off people who didn't understand the process and wonder if the thing wasn't rigged or stacked on purpose. I don't think it was unfair, just think they could have been a bit more clear in the instructions. Not good to have frustrated voters; it leads to unhappy, angry, violent people .

I've got strong feelings about the topic: I've written and published three books since 2000, and while it's been a rewarding and ultimately satisfying experience, I'm glad I've done so on the margins of better paid work. I wouldn't recommend any kid decide to "be a writer" when he grows up - it's too hard, the money isn't great, and frankly people aren't reading as much as they used to anymore.

There are two routes: get lucky and a publisher picks you up, and takes care of marketing, distribution, arranging talks on radio and TV shows, etc. Or self-publish and do all that yourself. With a publisher, you've got to be the best; publishers are extremely selective now and they all want the next best seller in an already-defined genre, and very infrequently something crazy or innovative or 'new.' They're all gun-shy. But you pay hefty percentages of your profits to a publisher, who does a lot on your behalf but also gets paid for it.

On the self-publishing side, watch out! There's too much garbage out there so the word 'self-publish' has strongly negative connotations. These days, anyone with $100 and a copy of Microsoft Word can self-publishing the most astonishing drivel. You also get to do your own distribution, marketing, promotion, hand out free copies, mail stuff to book stores etc, and it's a horrific amount of work. If you're lucky you can make millions - there are a couple of authors, mostly publishing teen fiction, who have made serious money selling books for $1.99 to huge audiences of admiring readers. But the bulk of the self-published stuff only sells a handful of copies.

Either way, it's good to have a source of income in the meantime, and especially in the years and years that you toil away at the keyboard. Otherwise, you're going to be eating a lot of catfood.

That guy's website is bog-slow on this old computer by the way. Not sure how they designed it, but they clearly stuffed it full of fail.

The linked wikipedia article goes into great detail (with samples!) of how points are given. There is also a rather large "voting methods" section in wikipedia that give sample ballots of actual elections. I did find it odd that the name-vote from Soylent had the order swapped. In every ballot on wikipedia, "1" is always the highest priority.

...and you fixed it already. :)

Howdy, editor here. I also had trouble with the instructions so I've rewritten them so they'll be more clear. Don't want any Palm Beach Florida s on this site. Got to say, I'm learning a bit about tech here on Pipedot, but I'm also learning a bit about voting systems, too!

Ugh, I didn't find that out until deliberating and making all my selections.

:(

Also, the 1 is most trusted, 8 is least trusted (but yield 8 and 1 point respectively) methodology could be made more clear.

It's this kind of confusion that may have led to inaccurate voting results on another site recently.

More information on this poll can be found here .

I've not found any issues, and I look forward to comment reply notifications.