Monthly Archives: January 2017

Deleted your @uber account and using @lyft? Does it really make a difference? Probably not. Here’s why..

31 Jan 2017 By in News, Technology Tags: , , , ,

But, as this article indicates, it doesn’t really make a difference. Why? This is why:

Both Lyft and Uber actively work against the interests of their employees.

…

Although Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was widely criticized for his ties to Trump, one of Lyft’s major investors is Trump’s tech adviser Peter Thiel, who notably funded an anti-First Amendment crusade that brought down our late sister site, Gawker.

…

Meanwhile, conservatives are starting a #DeleteLyft campaign. But joke’s on them! Ethical decision-making is impossible under late capitalism, and choice is an illusion. It’s Coke vs. Pepsi, and as even as a Diet Coke enthusiast, I can recognize they’re more or less the same damn bubbles in a different shiny can.

 

Lyft successfully capitalized off this weekend’s #DeleteUber campaign, besting its biggest competitor in the App Store for the first time ever.

Source: Lyft Beats Uber for First Time in App Store, But Under Capitalism All Choice Is Meaningless

 

So, for me, at least, I’m keeping Uber installed, but going to install Lyft as well and see which ones are nearby. Take a read of the referenced article and make your own decision.

The Man Who Didn’t Invent Email Attacks Free Speech | FOSS Force

30 Jan 2017 By in News, Technology Tags: ,

Let’s see if he comes after me now, for posting this….

The man who claims to have invented email is taking legal actions, or threatening such, against anyone who publicly disagrees with his version of history.

Source: The Man Who Didn’t Invent Email Attacks Free Speech | FOSS Force

Rings (2017) – TV Store Prank – YouTube

24 Jan 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , ,

Paramount decided to do some viral marketing ahead of the release of their new movie “Rings” – basically the next instalment of the rebooted Ring/Ringu series for the western audience and updated to use more recent tech. Is it as scary as the original Japanese? Do let me know if you watch it.

Official Galaxy Note 7 investigation blames small battery cases, poor welding | Ars Technica

23 Jan 2017 By in News, Technology Tags: , , ,

 

Samsung have finally revealed details regarding the battery explosions. It doesn’t stop me from keeping being a Samsung person – there’s not many other brands I trust out in the market at the moment. So I’ll keep with Samsung for now,

Two different production problems from two different suppliers killed the Note 7.

Source: Official Galaxy Note 7 investigation blames small battery cases, poor welding | Ars Technica

The Meitu selfie app unlocks your anime beauty and personal data

23 Jan 2017 By in Android, Terrorism Tags: , , , , , , ,

Meitu has been taking off — everywhere I look on my Facebook, Twitter, I see pictures run through the app.

But do you actually check to see what permissions it asks for? A crazy amount it seems. I just checked on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mt.mtxx.mtxx) and these are the current permissions

Version 6.1.0.2 can access:
Device & app history
  • retrieve running apps
Location
  • approximate location (network-based)
Phone
  • read phone status and identity
Photos / Media / Files
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Camera
  • take pictures and videos
Wi-Fi connection information
  • view Wi-Fi connections
Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity
Other
  • receive data from Internet
  • view network connections
  • change system display settings
  • full network access
  • change your audio settings
  • run at startup
  • reorder running apps
  • control vibration
  • prevent device from sleeping
  • Google Play licence check

For the most part, these aren’t too much of a concern but these two might be:

Phone
  • read phone status and identity
 Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity

These relate to reading the device information such as the IMEI and call information. I’m not too concerned about the call side — you can block this with later version of Android’s permission manager (and I use that a lot with different apps), but I’m not sure if I can block attempts to read phone status.

Their justification of this to track usage in China because it is blocked, I guess does make sense, but am I the only one who thinks doing it this way leaves it way too open for abuse and misuse?

Source: The Meitu selfie app unlocks your anime beauty and personal data

Update & Build Prep – Lineage OS – Lineage OS Android Distribution

23 Jan 2017 By in Android, Technology Tags: , , ,

Cyanogen’s fork is beginning to take shape. Currently my devices aren’t showing but fingers crossed it will.

Few points worth noting from their site:

  • The build roster is ever growing, but we are supporting Marshmallow and Nougat capable devices.

    • We’ll list the 80+ devices in a separate post.

  • Our release cadence will be ‘weekly’ by default (to be nice to all the donated hardware).

  • We will NOT be shipping root baked into the ROM.

    • Root will be a downloadable zip based install similar to gapps installation (only need to flash it once).
    • Home builders that want to bake su back into the ROM can use the command ‘export WITH_SU=true’ prior to building.

  • Our official builds will all be signed with a private key for authentication and signature permission control

However, also notable and I’m really happy about this:

Regarding installation, we recommend that users wipe when switching to LineageOS, and reinstall their gapps. However, we recognize that this can be time consuming, so we are offering an EXPERIMENTAL (read as, if it fails, you’ll have to wipe anyways) solution.

  • Alongside the ‘weekly’ release for your supported device, we’ll provide an EXPERIMENTAL data migration build.
  • This build will allow you to ‘upgrade’ from CM to the signed LineageOS weekly
  • This build may wipe permissions (you’ll have to re-allow app permissions), but should retain all user data
  • This build will be watermarked with an ugly banner to ensure that you don’t permanently run this EXPERIMENTAL release, and upgrade to a normal weekly after.
  • The process for this installation will be as follows:
    • Install EXPERIMENTAL migration build on top of cm-13.0 or cm-14.1 build (don’t try to install LineageOS 13.0 on top of CM 14.1, that will not work).
    • Reboot
    • Install LineageOS weekly build
    • Reboot
    • Re-setup your application permissions

Given the EXPERIMENTAL nature of this process, we are going to remove this option in two months time.

All systems operational

Source: Update & Build Prep – Lineage OS – Lineage OS Android Distribution

The foolproof way to never forgetting a name

18 Jan 2017 By in Uncategorized
The foolproof way to never forgetting a name

The Muslim Times

Source: BBC

By Renuka Rayasam

17 January 2017

In the early 1990s Mark Channon was working at a London bar, when a friend taught him a technique to remember names. At the time, Channon, who was an aspiring actor, could remember lines for a performance, but had a terrible memory for names.

One of the most powerful things is if you are able to walk into a room and use everyone’s names

With the name-memorisation technique, however, he was soon remembering customers’ names and drink orders even during busy nights. Within a few years he designed a game show for the BBC called Monkhouse Memory Masters where he would teach contestants memory strategies and they would then compete in memory games. By 1995 he had come sixth in the World Memory Championships, becoming one of the first International Grand Masters of Memory.

Today Channon teaches workers these memory strategies to…

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