Recent Comments

The NYT article is good but not revolutionary, concluding that communities ought to be better at self-policing because implementing policies that limit free expression have more downsides than benefits. That's sound advice, I think, but I'm disheartened by the ruckus. I think communities like Reddit have proven they are all but totally unable to self-police, and their echo chamber can be dangerously misinformed. The article mentions the Boston bombers and I think it's a great example of communities totally losing their heads. 4Chan of course was never about self-policing. They are intensely proud of their anarchy and frankly, so am I, sort of.

Man time flies. That guy started the site when he was, literally, a kid! Like 15.

And yet he ALWAYS outclassed Tom's.

I don't get it - two people or more complementing each other's knowledge and sharing information. How is that not a conversation? I'm not averse to controversy or differing opinions, but there are other ways to relate and contribute. Conversation is multifaceted.

*face palm*

backups are a form of security

Two different forms of security, making backups will ensure you can retrieve that data if your primary source is lost/wrecked/stolen/whatever. The security John's arguing about is where and how that backup is kept safe from people it doesn't belong to. One type of security helps you if you lose the data, the other type of security helps keep others from stealing your data.

Not like life insurance in the least.

John Gruber has a long piece up about this at http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs, and of course he rushes in to defend Apple, because that's what he usually does.

The single-worst piece I've seen regarding last week's iCloud celebrity photo leak is, by far, this one from David Auerbach at Slate. To see where Auerbach is coming from, let's skip ahead to his conclusion first:

But whether or not any of these problems were directly responsible for the leak, Apple users, from Jennifer Lawrence to corporate executives to laptop musicians to you, should be out for blood, and other companies should use this as a lesson to double- and triple-check their own security stories. Apple will probably survive though. IPhones [sic] are so cool and pretty.

The old "Apple customers are shallow fools drawn to shiny things, and easily swayed by popular opinion" angle.
Here's the problem with Auerbach's piece:

Whether or not this particular vulnerability was used to gather some of the photos - Apple is not commenting, as usual, but the ubiquity and popularity of Apple's products certainly point to the iCloud of being a likely source - its existence is reason enough for users to be deeply upset at their beloved company for not taking security seriously enough. Here are five reasons why you should not trust Apple with your nude photos or, really, with any of your data.

Don't trust Apple "with any of your data" isn't just wrong because it's a hyperbolic overreaction, it's wrong because it's potentially dangerous. What has been mostly overlooked in the reaction to this photo leak scandal, and completely lost in Auerbach's argument, is that backups are a form of security - in the same sense that life insurance is a form of security for your children and spouse.

Oh jeez, that link is NSFW!

I'm not sure if they're targeting obsessive people, or if they're simply unable to create a product that doesn't look so awkward and bulky.

This just shows that Intel has no style - but we already knew that from the x86 ISA, didn't we?

Huge, ugly, gaudy. That's the big problem with "watch-based" PIDs - they're so big and noticeable, they instantly put your nerditude on display as your fundamental characteristic. And, if that's what you want to show as your primary characteristic and all, that's fine, I guess. But you're never going to breed, either - just saying... It's just like the idiots running about with Nike fuel bands and the like - thanks, but I'd much rather deal with someone a little less "body obsessed", if you get my drift.

So basically all of these manufacturers are targeting obsessive people. It makes sense - they're more likely to be early adopters. Luckily, the fact that obsessives are willing to put these ugly things on their bodies and mark themselves as such (thanks to you Glassholes, too!), allow the rest of us more normal people to avoid them (and their idiotic stories about how life-changing their new toy is) like the plague they wear.

You want a toy to keep with you all the time that's worth talking about? Here's one. And the best thing? No one can see it while you're wearing it.

revolutionary? Frontiersman? Blazing the trail to a better tech news aggregator?

The models are pretty scary. They look like mannequins come to life, which, maybe is the real purpose of the smart watch, to create an Intel army to do battle with AMD.

How is

"I tried that thing, but I like this other one better because ..." or "that reminds me of something I read here" or "if you're interested in that thing you might also be interested in this other thing"

a discussion?

"Your opinion is wrong" gets boring very fast.

If you keep it at that level, sure. I usually expect actual arguments and reasoning as part of a discussion. "I like this." "Me too!" is not a discussion.

FIFOer?

mmmmh, encoding problem, it's supposed to be an R in a circle as last letter. Let's try again:

|.3® or |3®

why not |.3 or |3 ? (instead of |.er)

No, it's not the internet that's caused this. The only thing that changes is that on the internet, everyone gets to see it, while on the regular' table only the people who happen to be there at the very time it gets said hear it.

Looks like they could use some assistance, but I'm not sure if it's a marketing person they need or just someone to knock them about the heads and convince them they're not qualified to enter a market as complicated and nuanced as women's fashion. Those models scare me off. The one grimacing almost makes it look like wearing the bracelet is painful or unpleasant, so that makes it a thing to avoid. The bracelet looks a bit ugly, too. This is a job for Apple or Samsung, working in close partnership with Chanel or Donna Karan [sp] or equivalent. They are way, way out of their comfort zone.

Then there's the functionality aspect - is this just functionally the equivalent of the smart watch, which is, itself, struggling? The article makes it clear we'll have to wait until October to find out what it even does!

Hmm - you're right. Since negatively modded things aren't shown at my threshold I didn't even see the post. Just modded it back up: informative.

Mod war - go!

Be glad this is the only problem we're faced with at the moment. Over at Soylent they've got one - or a couple of - jokers that are littering comment threads with obnoxious, "Fuck Soylent" posts reminicent of the "GNAA" - or whatever it was called - thing on Slashdot back in the day.

This is why we can't have nice things.

BTW, I usually find on online forums that the best discussions don't come necessarily out of disagreement but rather out of differing experiences. "I tried that thing, but I like this other one better because ..." or "that reminds me of something I read here" or "if you're interested in that thing you might also be interested in this other thing" and so on.

"Your opinion is wrong" gets boring very fast.

Wow, I wish I could mod this both informative and insightful. Alas, only one mod.

I still wonder if it's the Internet that has 'caused' this, if human nature and peoples' expectations for online interaction, or if this is simply the consequence of a new and younger generation. As for Pipedot, small and steady growth isn't a bad thing. But I highly doubt there's anything magical about Pipecode that prevents asshattery, same as any other site. Set up a perfectly reasonable subreddit and you run the risk of some schmuck taking it over and harrassing other users offline. Usenet newsgroup "protectors/guardians" are infamously boorish. And the list goes on ...

Most times I don't have much to say about a certain topic, because there's no controversy between me and my opinion,
Only when we disagree is a discussion interesting. But when the initial comment is borderline rude, I can't imagine any useful discussion taking place. And I have better methods to waste time than to engage in a shouting match with strangers online.

If everyone refrains from commenting on an article just because there's a bad comment already, then the bad comments will take over.

I agree. But I'm not sure that's my problem.

and let moderators care about the bad apple.

Unfortunately, some inflammatory comments get actually modded up. That says to me: "If you disagree, go somewhere else." Which I do.

You don't need to reply to the initial comment. Just add a separate top comment, and let moderators care about the bad apple.

If everyone refrains from commenting on an article just because there's a bad comment already, then the bad comments will take over.

If I don't write a comment to an article (after having opened it), it's usually because I don't feel I've got anything to say about it. It certainly is not because someone left a bad comment earlier.

Are those watches in the image really the smart watches? I can't identify a display on them.

but the civility and quality we have here are becoming increasingly rare online.

I happen to disagree. I have refrained from commenting on more than one article because the initial comments were so hostile that I couldn't imagine any useful discussion would come out of it.

Simply don't get an account. I don't need to remember a password for Pipedot because I don't have an account. Also, since I don't have an account, it cannot get hacked. ;-)

What I miss is programs that often were more responsive than many programs nowadays, despite the computers literally being orders of magnitude slower.

QuickBasic was an interesting cross between a compiler, IDE, and a live environment. Code was parsed as you typed, and after running the program, you could interact with it in immediate mode after the program stopped running, or after breaking out of execution. You could then type in BASIC statements and query and set variables. It was a unique blend of the live environment the author seems to be pining for, and the modern compiler IDE.

Python for me fits this niche rather well. I can fire up the interpreter in a second or two, run a few statements, etc. Modules I'm currently working on can be imported quickly and tested interactively. I understand the IDLE provides something similar in a full IDE environment.

I personally don't worry about a computer being "instant on." Wasn't useful back then either. At least, Cassette BASIC was never useful to me anyway. I needed to have a disk operating system running so I could load and save files to the disk drive. Even on Apple II I rarely used the command-reset to break out to integer basic. I much preferred teh BASIC that booted up with Apple DOS. Kind of funny to think that BASIC pretty much was DOS back then. At least the user interface to it on Apple. And it did provide a fairly low barrier to entry to budding programmers. Boot it up, break out a book and start coding. I wish I still had the book that my parents gave me when I was about 7. Can't even remember the title but it contained simple games (guessing games, etc) in BASIC that taught basic skills like input, variable, logic, loops, output.

If you enjoyed the Alan Jacobs article, here are some related critiques.

Freddie deBoer, a social liberal, on viciousness in online forums:
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/21/where-online-social-liberalism-lost-the-script/

David Sessions, a social conservative, on the quality on online media:
http://www.patrolmag.com/2014/08/25/david-sessions/the-state-of-the-internet-is-awful-and-everybody-knows-it/

Pew survey on Social Media and the Spiral of Silence:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/26/social-media-and-the-spiral-of-silence/

Xianhang Zhang on the Evaporative Cooling Effect:
http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/

Pipedot still has a small number of articles and comments, but the civility and quality we have here are becoming increasingly rare online. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that Pipedot is small and growing slowly.

"There's not more dumb people, we're just hearing more of them."

The post didn't describe what Tails actually is. One AC (not me) was kind enough to explain, and got nodded down as "redundant", even though it is currently the ONLY comment in the thread besides this one.

There is one (I hope just one) registered Pipedot user who does this all the time, downmodding ACs into invisibility because he doesn't like their opinion or their attitude.

He is to every rational interpretation a resident, registered troll, and he damages this site, which is often starved for good commentary.

Zafiro and Brian, I suggest you hunt down this miscreant and consider controlling him before he continues to hurt your site with short sighted flippancy.

As the AC who pleaded again and again and again for Pipedot to freely "repurpose" content from both Soylent and Slash (with little to no agreement) I have to say:

1. Sorry I missed the experiment, and

2. You're doing it wrong. Why the devil did you bring foreign COMMENTS in too?

The whole point was to have a decent feed of article content that WE could comment on here, at a site that doesn't still look and function like complete crap (sorry Soylent, it's just true) or one that alienated its users.

Mirroring the original comments entirely defeats and misses the point. Bring good topic starters in (automatically or with very light editing), not other sites' discussions.

:) Apology accepted, my anonymous friend. I hear you loud and clear about the quality of this submission (although it was interesting to me). But I feel bad that on a site with so few submitted articles, the guy who finally takes the effort to submit something gets it rejected offhand. I won't publish any old thing, but in the short term, it seems like bad manners unless the article really is off topic. When we have the luxury of more submitted articles, the voting mechanism will determine what makes it to the front page and what doesn't. Unfortunately, that's not our problem.

For what it's worth, I see Soylent is having similar trouble, although there are usually well over ten things in their submission queue, while ours echoes in the darkness ...

It's the PUBLIC key being downloaded for verification of the signature, as the context on the page linked by the picture shows. But yes, amusing at a glance.

I apologize (in a cowardly manner). I truly appreciate all the effort you put into the site, and just wanted to call attention to the lame (IMO) nature of this article. And hey, people are always bemoaning the lack of comments. Note that this meta-thread now comprises the majority of comments on this article, if that's any indication as to how many people found this puff piece worthy of discussion. :-P

Seriously ... we'll cross that hypothetical bridge if and when we ever come to it.

The pipe remains almost totally dry, and even the most cursory glance at the history (http://pipedot.org/pipe/history) shows most of the content here was written, edited, and posted by yours truly. So I aint takin no guff from no anonymously cowardish troll, thankyaverymuch. And if you dislike my editorial preferences, well we could use a couple more editors helping around here, now that you mention it.

No, there were cleaning staff, food and drink stalls, and stuff broke. Part of what made RCT popular is that you could just play around with the rides, get way into micromanagement, or anywhere in between. The only new thing here I saw is that you need to manage supplies as well.

It's not like folks are submitting tons of articles left and right here. I also found it interesting, as I loved the original RCT games, and had not yet heard about this project.

If more folks submit more articles, then there's a process of sifting through the junk to find the good stuff. If there's only a handful of articles submitted then there's no reason not to post them all.

So if someone were to submit a piece about some artist you like who's trying to pay for making a new album on Kickstarter, you would post it? There have been plenty of great articles recently -- I really wouldn't expect that "because it's there" is a coherent reason for something making it to the front page of the site.

Can you elaborate a bit on your editorial decision process -- is it truly as simple as "it's there, I found it interesting, so I hit the green button"? No other inputs to the decision process?

If you miss having a "working" machine in a second, get a programmable calculator. Pretty sure they boot up and do nothing (just like those apple II era machines) in no time at all.

I'm pretty happy with flipping my laptop open and having it *working* - right where I left it - immediately.

Twitter is bad because people are dumb and there are now more dumb people on twitter.

Blah blah blah, used to be hip but now I'm leaving, blah blah blah. Part true, mostly who cares...

Fuck, I feel more ancient now, having worked on a PDP-8. I pity any poor bastard here who worked on a PDP-1 or an IBM 70xx. He or she must be feeling like they're ready for the dirt nap after reading this article.

On the other hand, it was pretty cool working in the industry back in 1960-1990 or so, when there was such an amazing cornucopia of processor architectures and OSes, back before computing became standardized, commoditized, shrink-wrapped, and (above all) an industry that made enough progress that the exploitation of that work could be left to dullards.

You're right, not far off. I'd like a "Web server and IRC server" cartridge. Click, turn on, you're online.

I thought Tycoon only let you design the coasters, not manage the whole park - maintenance, cleaning, concessions, and the like? This seems a bit different.

I'm most nostalgic for my old C64, and that thing had you at the READY prompt in about a second, I think. Obviously, "LOAD game ,8,1" would take up to 20 minutes if you were unlucky, but man, back in 1985 those were 20 delicious minutes of anticipation. Good times. My greatest hit was a BASIC program that would help you create a dungeons and dragons character, a choice of project that probably solidified my soul into nerddom forever.

What I'd like to see in my life time is the return of cartridges.

Isn't that basically what USB thumb drives are? A little stick you can carry around and plug into a terminal. You can even store a whole OS on one and boot right from USB if you want to take your whole PC with you. The limit seems to be drive size (I have a 128 GB drive, which is pretty nice) rather than heat.

Not sarcasm - just, the only pic available as a choice by the little routine that selects some pictures and lets you choose :(

I went thru the C=64/Amiga500/PC route as a teenager. I really liked the C=64 and the Amiga, but they were simple toys compared to even the 286s.

I did like many things about those computers: direct access to video memory, light pens, sprite animations etc, but they lacked seriously in the language/environment department. For example, there was no operating system to call if you wanted to do sound, you had to "poke" some value somewhere, kind of like a modern device driver. The BASIC language was also shitty. After hacking on it for a while, you eventually ran into problems like lack of composite types, pointers, subroutines etc. Anything serious had to be written in assembly and that wasn't the paradise the article mentions.

Amiga-500 was much better, with the Pascal compiler and whatnot. I did have a lot of fun times with that also but there was nothing special about it, really.

What I really miss from that era are the cartridges. You popped one in, and the game/whatever loaded immediately. There were even cartrigdes which extended the computer's functionality but I never got one of those.

Modern computers can boot very fast. My current system boots under 10 seconds, thanks to the SSD in it. What I'd like to see in my life time is the return of cartridges. If we could solve the heat problem, I think we have enough technology to pack a lot of power and space into a cartridge-size box. We could then carry that around to hotels, meetings etc.

If the story pic is sarcasm then I Like It

"But I do miss getting a working machine less than 1 second after turning on the on switch."

That's totally not how I remember it. I had an Atari 130XE, On top of getting the system booted, which was long enough for me to use the washroom and get a snack, I started my first program in BASIC when I was 7 and it took me over a year to finish. All it was was an elephant standing on a ball with some beeping noises. The ball moved back and forth a bit and every ten seconds or so a speech balloon would appear and the elephant would go "Cha-Cha-Cha". I think most of it, but not all, came from one of those monthly programing magazines. I showed it to my Dad and he dashed all my dreams of becoming a poet, something about wasting talent and I was going to work with computers... Wish I'd become a poet. I like computers, but to be honest they, or the people that use them anyway, drain the life right out of me.

I don't feel ancient now

Because someone took the time to submit it to the pipe, and I found it interesting. If you'd like to see other types of articles, you know where the submit button is. Meanwhile, if you don't like the project, feel free not to fund it.