I think the new category is useful and much-needed, sadly. But I’m confused at the written descriptions for level 1 (yellow) and level 2 (orange) reading identically to me. Am I missing something? It seems odd to have two tiers that share the exact same definition.

The two went about security in very different ways. Until recently, Android was an “all or nothing” scenario: when you went to install the app, you’d get a notification of “TomApp wants to read your contact list, spy on you with the camera, listen to your audio, and send Facebook messages posing as you! Do you accept…

Um, no? I’m usually all for the Apple copycat bashing (I program for both Android and iOS devices), but in this particular privacy arena, Apple is lightyears ahead. Speaking as a developer, I can tell you it’s far easier (and permitted) to get various IDs on Android devices than on modern iOS devices. It’s a night and…

Much as I hate to defend giant corporations, the IDFA as Apple has it is actually pretty good. You can reset it at any point, or just tap the switch that zeroes out the value permanently. That’s the whole point of creating the IDFA as a wipeable/changeable value by the user, rather than allowing companies to see the…

Oh, no, I agree with you -- wasn’t intending to say that Musk could just pony up all the money himself. I just meant -- if “he” gets to take the IPO money, then “he” is also responsible for acquiring the money to take Tesla private. Maybe not by taking out his checkbook (side note: does Musk have a checkbook, or just…

Well, no, because he has to fork out the money to take the company private...

Um, no — actually the literature specifically says that case like “infant with heart defects” is a legitimate reason to avoid *any* not-immediately-necessary medical treatment. Yes, it doesn’t mean that it should be held off indefinitely, but common practice for this and other situations is to give the body some time,…

Look, we all know that lava volume can only be measured in units of Libraries of Congress. How many Libraries of Congress, dammit?

It’s not that the effectiveness of the cage would go down as the size increases, but rather that it needs to be a fully-enclosed volume of space. So a 6-foot sphere/cube would be easy to construct ... one that spans his property would be ... well, not like building the Death Star, but a lot more work. :)

I agree there will be challenges, but I think they’re not as insurmountable as you list (I write code for software and hardware for a living, although I have not worked on autonomous cars).

A weird one that gets me is in the pull-down-from-the-top search. I routinely use that to find apps, rather than scrolling through pages to search for them. With iOS 11 on my X, search has become magically unable to find “gmail” (which is, in fact, on the second screen). Nothing appears in the search results. I think…

(As with what others are saying, this is only according to Tesla, but) — the current specs say the truck can get a 400-mile charge in 30 minutes (which they contrast to a 15-minute diesel fill-up). I have no knowledge how accurate that statement will be, but at least on the surface it seems extremely reasonable.

Confirming what SeriousCyrus says — you don’t have to kill the app to background it. As soon as you switch away (visually, or by the phone falling asleep, etc.) the app can no longer access the camera, even though it’s still running.

That’s actually what the permission does on iOS right now: the app can only use the camera (as opposed to the camera roll of photos) when it is foregrounded. It can’t take photos if it’s not the front-running app.

I think one problem is that it means you can be enforcing conflicting rules. What if MikeLand rules that you need to remove any instances that mention Mike, while TomLand rules that you need to keep everything that’s not about Tom? Google’s interpretation makes sense there — each country gets what they want, within…

It’s what is known as protected classes, and gender and race are both part of that, yes. That’s why you can’t have a “whites only” sign in your store window, no matter how much of a jerk you feel like being.

If I rent my house to Julie, that’s fine. If I tell Jim that he can’t rent my house because he’s black, that’s not fine. That’s been the case for many years now. The text exchange above was pretty clear that “being asian” was the reason the rental was cancelled.

We actually did that a few years back. The problem — specific to our house — is that we’re kind of in a “dip” of hills between San Francisco and San Jose. Even climbing up on the roof and futzing with a big antenna for a few hours didn’t get us much. If I could just elevate up another 30 feet or so, that would…

The short answer for sports is “we pay through the nose,” from time to time, and have stopped our “casual” watching. Or we watch things like the Super Bowl, except that because everybody tries that, the servers invariably crash and burn. :) So, yeah — that’s definitely an area that even when we’re willing to pay,…

That’s a great summary. Thanks! To add my two cents, our household is now fully steaming — we ditched our DirecTV account and moved solely to an assortment of streaming packages, plus iTunes purchases for some movies and stuff like Sherlock that I just want available all the time, for some reason. :) That being…