Level1 News May 9 2018: Too Ugly to Smash | Level One Techs

Motherboad Giveaway: https://gleam.io/4NBdg/msi-motherboard-mania-x470-gaming-m7-ac-z370-godl...


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/level1-news-may-9-2018-too-ugly-smash
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What is a motherboad? : P

Goodbye Cambridge, Hello Emerdata. It sounds like a plot from an episode of Silicon Valley. Especially given that they are still working in the same offices.

Also, speaking of Silicon Valley episodes, there was a recent episode where the fictional Hooli corporation releases a product called Box III with the signature of the CEO on it that is shaped like a penis. It was the design team screwing with the CEO guy. Kinda like the Bezos rocket thing. Though maybe not as extreme.

(Tesla)

The funny thing about Tesla is that they are still making money. Just because they aren’t meeting the goals that they’ve set for themselves doesn’t mean their margins are down. A lot of the reporting that is happening is nonsense. I suspect that Elon “hangs up” on such nonsense. I really doubt that it’s going to hurt them that much.

Say what you will about Elon but he’s probably got this; even if he’s making half the cars he promised. I would almost bet that he’s about to start making fun of someone.

(Web Design)

Not only web design but also interface design is being dumbed down to the level of Fisher Price and Playschool. Some of it is probably just Japanese influence with colors and cutsieness; but much of it is lack of adult appeal (the expectation of taking responsibility) “Oh no, allow us to be responsible”. It may have something to do with the psychology of cuteness. It has a guise of harmlessness. There are a lot of people who majored in psychology and wound up in marketing; because of our messed up healthcare system. Psychologists just don’t make the bank that they used to; and this has driven all but a small percentage of the men from those professions. Not activating the amygdala may be job one for many types of web sites. A combination of non-threatening and no responsibility is impulsively pretty appealing to all the 5/40 jobnaughts out there. Ontology over aesthetics is big in design now days.

On businesses not handling their shit IT - there are a few interesting reasons for this:

  • No test environment.
  • No regression testing to detect whether the packaged update you just installed in your test environment really was all it claimed to be, or does it now - out of the blue - do a lot of other shit you’ve never even asked for.
  • Packaged updates with new features and defaults. You update one thing, but all of a sudden, you got a lot of other shit you’ve never even asked for to happen. And now you have to test all that, or find a way to suppress it - at least to buy time until you can get your thumbs out of your ass and get back to school - become an expert or at least expert enough to understand whether you have hired an expert or a dumb-ass to explain the things for you. An explosion of new regression tests and research into relevance in a web of possibly interconnected causalities.
  • Continuous change. For example in past few years, IPv6 support, 64-bit architectures, i.e. some things just force you to upgrade. Also changed regulations and laws. You can’t ignore the change, yet it is a cost to embrace it.

A multi-billion dollar company won’t, because they are too big to fail. They can either pay the failure away, and they can just get bailed out because failure isn’t an option.

A smaller company won’t, because they may not even be able to do the right thing. To them, this is all an additional taxation they haven’t asked for.

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The financial incentives, or lack there of rather, are interesting as well. For instance, insurance has to be paid whether or not a breach occurs; so security expenditures are weighed against insurance expenditures. This becomes even more favorable for shareholder value when breaches can be obscured. The vast majority of them are. They are literally, actively leveraging “user” data and are not incentivized in any way to secure it.

Exactly. There is a harsh whip that hurts a lot, but it hits so seldom it barely matters - you could experience a direct lightning strike more often. And there is no carrot. When there is only whip, or only carrot, things don’t work out well in the end. Both whip and carrot are needed, and both need to be used and useful.

Insurance is an interesting way to see it. Perhaps insurance is a reasonable model to simulate for smaller companies - as a small company you outsource your security for an “insurance-like fee”, and whoever you outsource it to is going to pay you damages if they fuck up or get hacked, and are responsible in turn for dealing with any cyber-crime involved (like if someone else hacked them) towards the authorities?

GDPR proposes a similar in effect (yet fundamentally different) approach through “assistance agreements”. You hire a company to handle your IT, and if they fuck up, they are getting punished. Not sure whether they pay repairs though (the full insurance model), because your business still does get damaged. And quite importantly still - GDPR in and of itself is that same additional taxation I’ve mentioned. So the problem is the solution to the problem… But then what does it solve? Some other problem? How did we ever get here!?

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Hey @ryan add this to you smashing association.

Hahaa, I watched this as a kid and it still floored me laughing.

As far as the toxic social media, if the police who want every possible chance to interact and bring people into the institution would take the threats/toxicity seriously that would do wonders for it. Make a death threat on twitter… get a visit, get an arrest. Threaten to rape someone on facebook… you get a visit, get an arrest. It would not take very many prosecutions of this to really curtail the village idiots. One of the worst things about the internet is the village idiots now can be e-thugs and spout their shit, law enforcement has the power to stop this… they need to use it. And as an added bonus they can do no knocks and get live target practice.

As far as dinner with Krysta, can we discuss the menu?

For Art Paul, press F to pay your respects.

Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata -

Shocker? Nope. This is the horrible world we live in.

Equifax board members re-elected despite massive data breach -

Honestly I really can’t believe they kept all their board members. I’d love someone in the know to provide more detail on that.

Tesla Plunges After a Bizarre Conference Call -

This here is not good news. Tesla represents paving the way for a healthier, cleaner future and this just can’t happen on a conference call.

Comcast won’t give new speed boost to Internet users who don’t buy TV service -

Tv is pretty bad in terms of commercials but geezus Ryan if they give you it for free how can you say there is nothing on tv that you would want to watch? I find that extremely hard to believe.

Blue Origin launches its first test flight of 2018 -

Competition is good for sure but as for this looking like a penis I never thought about it until Ryan brought it up. Why Ryan?

UK officials will summon Mark Zuckerberg to testify -

Good. That is all I got to say on that.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg unveils privacy tool ‘clear history’ ahead of F8 -

I believe that clear history will erase all my history for sure …

said nobody ever.

Facebook commits to civil rights audit, political bias review -

Let’s be clear about this one. It is a total Republican bias person that is reviewing the situation. Unbelievable that Facebook talks about this being an open platform for everyone but is going to let a Republican only do the heavy lifting in this situation. I don’t think it was made clear in the show but I have seen this info. shared elsewhere. If it was said in the show sorry but I guess I wasn’t listening close enough.

Facebook security analyst is fired for using private data to stalk women -

Ok so the right thing was done here in firing him. Wow!

Facebook shrinks fake news after warnings backfire -

For the people who can’t tell what fake news is they should just be …

Eh no further comment.

Confessions of a marketer: Agencies forced brands to in-house more marketing -

Duh! When the company has control of their branding of course they are going to cheap out and save money and hell I am surprised they don’t just automate the job or maybe they have already started.

Art Paul, Playboy magazine art director who created bunny logo, dies at 93 -

Did it say what he died from? Don’t assume he wasn’t smashing Playboy bunnies til the end.

Smashing Magazine Embarks on Radical Redesign -

Until I heard that sex is called smashing these days I didn’t know this but hey I haven’t gotten any since the stone ages it seems. Also the prescribed drugs I am on make it pointless. LOL!

PS: As for Krista saying nice things about the mods …

Talking shit about Musk REEEEE
That guy wears so many hats, he has to divide up his week with SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, Boring, going to parties and that tube thing that won’t work. I don’t think he feels sitting on the phone rehashing the same old crap is a good use of his time.
Sure they are hurting, but time will heal those wounds. Now they learned a good lesson in making cars, they should get back to figuring out why the robots were not up to scratch, and making some that are. There is a growth industry. But, it isn’t about making money at the end of the day.

Evil corporations keep being evil, and no one has the balls to stop them. It seems most become so big they become evil, despite their best intentions early on. I sort of expect these days. And with enough money you can buy the government, so what ya gonna do? Buy more shit from Amazon, that’s what you are gonna do. As long as money exists and has value, things won’t change.

Facebook clearing history is no big loss to them. Probably reduces the size of their database. But when they have a running trend on you, it’s of no consequence. I guess you would have to delve into the details and see what they mean by history. Might not mean what we think it means. I guess it is good for them to try and remain nuetral. I don’t know how you do that in USA though, place seems to be so divided. So much talk of people being left, right, black, white, minority, majority, milktoast, male, female, nazi, you name it. If people spent less time putting labels on each other, might actually get something good done.