Honestly, Facebook is just a social obligation at this point. Too many people use it for too much that I can't ignore it, even though I'd never use it for those things volunterily.
Thus the problem. I am uninterested in friends or social activity that even remotely hint at "obligation."
The problem is that they're not used to non-Facebook workflows. Once I introduce things like Hangouts or Trello, they jump all over it.
With true friends, it's never obligation. I would do just about anything to help out my friends if they needed it, but I am not, in any sense, obligated to, nor are they so to me.
I've often helped friends with things that were the opposite of fun.
Anybody I do any "active" interaction with (ie, not just Facebook "Hey I exist, look at this cool lamp I bought!" pings) is on Hangouts now, either through Google or SMS. The barrier to entry is basically zero.
Same here, pretty much... I only check it once or twice a day from a full browser on a real computer when I can put up all sorts of filters like Social Fixer and whatnot to get rid of the crap.
I don't understand people who are so distracted by web garbage that they'll spend hours or days finding plugins to filter it all out, which they then have to maintain and update and manage, killing more time.
I skim Facebook in like 5 minutes. If there's nothing new, it's less. I probably do this 3 or 4 times a day, so that's 20 minutes. I don't even notice the sidebar or the in-line advertising (well, not for more than 2 or 3 seconds) at all.
I can see how some of it can be ideologically offensive, but not worth the time and effort to circumvent it in a way that nobody but me will even care about anyway.
It takes 5 seconds to install Social Fixer... and it automatically checks for updates... and it takes 5 seconds to install the update (and all that time is just download time after you press "click here to install").
Also, there is another good reason to install AdBlockers, FlashBlockers, and other filters against web garbage (something like Social Fixer doesn't apply here, though, admittedly): security. A significant amount of today's malware is spread by some ad network being hacked or by a security hole in Flash/Java/etc. Installing appropriate blockers prevents you from being pwned even while browsing innocent sites like <insert your local newspaper's domain here>.com or even more major sites like Hasbro.com.
Security on the internet is by our government's good graces (of which they have none.) I give up on being tracked. I lose.
Geeze, that's old news there. I knew about this before Snowden. The fact is the NSA is like a person with split personality disorder. One side of them is actually good for security. They did good things like give us SELinux and fixed some serious flaws with the DES algorithm back when it was still a capable crypto algorithm (admittedly, this was quite a while back). On the other hand, they also purchase 0-days, snoop on everyone they can, install backdoors into software and hardware, and so on. That's the evil side. The problem is two-fold. First, the NSA is tasked with two mutually-exclusive missions: secure America's computers while gathering as much electronic intel as possible. You can't do the latter without fucking over the former and vice versa. The second problem is that the evil side of the NSA appears to be calling the shots right now.
What the article glossed over is that Google had some severe problems with Chinese hackers breaking into their systems and they called in the NSA for help for obvious reasons. This was before they knew about the NSA itself hacking their systems.
Agreed that the DHS isn't a prerequisite to a coast guard (which in the case of the US Coast Guard is not civil -- it is a military service that, except during declared wars, operates outside the auspices of the DoD).
The DHS itself mostly consists of things that predate its existence. It was created, for better or worse, to bring all those agencies under "one house" to better facilitate communication and cooperation. The only really new agency in the DHS that I can think of is the TSA, and that's a load of worthless crapola that either needs to be completely eliminated or torn down and built back up to be much less stupid and totalitarian.
Mate of mine was just at splendor in the grass, and was telling me about how they were using drones to take video of the acts, with a slight repair break after some bell-end lobbed a fucking empty vodka bottle at it.
Japanese child actress Mana Ashida (little Mako) was embarrassed that she couldn’t pronounce Guillermo Del Toro’s name so he gave her special permission to call him “Totoro-san” instead.
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I've often helped friends with things that were the opposite of fun.
I skim Facebook in like 5 minutes. If there's nothing new, it's less. I probably do this 3 or 4 times a day, so that's 20 minutes. I don't even notice the sidebar or the in-line advertising (well, not for more than 2 or 3 seconds) at all.
I can see how some of it can be ideologically offensive, but not worth the time and effort to circumvent it in a way that nobody but me will even care about anyway.
Also, there is another good reason to install AdBlockers, FlashBlockers, and other filters against web garbage (something like Social Fixer doesn't apply here, though, admittedly): security. A significant amount of today's malware is spread by some ad network being hacked or by a security hole in Flash/Java/etc. Installing appropriate blockers prevents you from being pwned even while browsing innocent sites like <insert your local newspaper's domain here>.com or even more major sites like Hasbro.com.
Security on the internet is by our government's good graces (of which they have none.) I give up on being tracked. I lose.
What the article glossed over is that Google had some severe problems with Chinese hackers breaking into their systems and they called in the NSA for help for obvious reasons. This was before they knew about the NSA itself hacking their systems.
Rule by the dollar is a separate issue, but you are right in that it is a major issue.
The DHS itself mostly consists of things that predate its existence. It was created, for better or worse, to bring all those agencies under "one house" to better facilitate communication and cooperation. The only really new agency in the DHS that I can think of is the TSA, and that's a load of worthless crapola that either needs to be completely eliminated or torn down and built back up to be much less stupid and totalitarian.
My Neighbor Guillermo Del Toro.
I was my brother's age when I started coming here.
I've been coming here for 3/14ths of my life.