The Tech Industry Is Getting Ridiculous 102
An anonymous reader writes "Columnist Jon Evans points out that the tech industry has been slowly getting stranger over the past several years. When you look at the headlines individually, they all seem to make sense, but putting them together and trying to imagine them popping up a decade ago really illustrates how odd it has become. Quoting: 'In Japan, some half-billion dollars' worth of cryptocurrency vanished from a site founded to trade Magic: The Gathering cards. In New Zealand, the world's greatest Call of Duty player has launched a political party to revenge himself on those who had him arrested and seized his sports cars. In Britain, the secret service is busy collecting and watching homegrown porn. Here in Silicon Valley, mighty Apple just revealed that a flagrant, basic programming error gutted the security of all its devices for years. Google, "more wood behind fewer arrows" Google, now has its own navy, to go with its air force and robot army.'"
You have to admit (Score:0)
The Secret Service loves their porn. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Good for them!
Re:You have to admit (Score:4, Informative)
"mighty Apple just revealed that a flagrant, basic programming error gutted the security of all its devices for years"
I believe this is actually "for months", as that specific bug [the gotofail bug] only applies to Mavericks [10.9.x], which was released in October 2013, and iOS shares this code with MacOSX, so it wouldn't have had the bug for much longer [likely introduced with iOS 6.1.5/Nov 2013 and some version of iOS 7 [Sept 2013].
Android FTW (Score:1)
It's Android that has contained a massive (Master Key) vulnerability for 4+ years--since Android 1.6--and for which most existing handsets will never see a patch. [Related: Android 4.3 contains a second MK vulnerability that was fixed in 4.4]
Re:Android FTW (Score:0, Flamebait)
Re:Android FTW (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Thanks for the compliment, but that's a terrible effort on your part. The Android bug affects virtually ALL Android devices today, it allows malicious code to be surreptitiously inserted in apps made available outside Google Play, and most Android handsets in existence today will never be patched for it. If you wondered why, among millions of other Android devices, yours got infected, this bug was likely the reason.
Now tell us how many iOS 7 devices got compromised by the SSL bug (which has existed for months, not years), and tell us how many devices running iOS 7 can't be patched. (Hint: zero)
Re: Android FTW (Score:1, Funny)
Shill detected. Citation needed.
Re:You have to admit (Score:0)
Actually there have been tests done on older versions of OSX, I personally tested all the way back to 10.3 and every version had the same flaw. So years is correct. Decades may be more correct.
Re:You have to admit (Score:1)
Re:You have to admit (Score:0)
OSX is not decades old.
No mod points... (Score:1)
I can't say I'm surprised that neither the OP nor any editor did any actual research before making such a claim, though. This is slashdot, after all.
Re:You have to admit (Score:2)
Getting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Getting? (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Getting? (Score:1)
I think the same thing could be said of $Party. ;)
ftfy
Literacy (Score:1)
Zactly. Every day we are confronted with what, to the old tech guard is old new, stories about what you post online is not private etc and so on. Everyone who got on the tech train early needs to learn how to be patient with the latecomers. They will keep getting online for a long time. Forever, actually. We need to figure out how to give everyone a gentle introduction. We can't just shame people for being ignorant of internet norms. IT literacy, whatever that means, should be societies number one priority.
Re:Literacy (Score:5, Insightful)
While that's a nice ideal, you are speaking of a group of people who lose their minds over trivial shit like what brand of phone someone bought. Or that someone else may find a tablet useful/desirable. These are not people with the slightest bit of social grace.
Re:Literacy (Score:1)
Ah yes, of course, the those digerati elitists giving out sage advice too rudely. It must be their fault your phone got hacked, your email account got hacked, your home network got hacked, your laptop computer got rooted, (despite not even being sure what "rooted" means in this context) your credit card numbers got stolen, and all your home made porn ended up on 4chan and then your girlfriend found out and dumped you. Its obviously all their fault for not being more polite to you when they told you how much of a fucking idiot you are for leaving your wireless access point unsecured with your whole windows C drive as an open share. After all, you're so god damned pretty you must deserve to be treated like a god regardless of how incompetent and inept and belligerently ignorant you are, right? Right?? God damn their lack of social graces!
Re:Literacy (Score:2)
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but aren't you kind of making the previous poster's point?
Re:Literacy (Score:2)
The funny thing is that I don't necessarily disagree with him either. And yeah, that post indicates he may be the poster child for the type of person of whom I'm speaking .
Re:Literacy (Score:0)
It's just a fucking phone dude. Get a grip.
Re:Literacy (Score:1)
Whenever I hear of a data spill, I recall that twice in the Before Digital era I, just an average nobody, stumbled on to great big piles of paper medical records just piled on the corner waiting for the garbage truck, not even in a sealed plastic bag, from two completely unrelated institutions.
Re:Getting? (Score:0)
This story tries to sound profound, but it's just bullshit.
Re:Getting? (Score:1)
I don't know, social media and the marketing BS around tech is pretty ridiculous. So much attention and money is focused on pursuits that are shallow and meaningless, even though the underlying science and engineering is not. I have been on the warpath over the way blogging degrades conversation. That is a far cry from the technology needed to run the networking and applications needed to do it. It is that mature markets dumb everything and everyone down, the human condition reasserts itself, which is, people are selfish and stupid, that latter term is "Unaware" so that intelligent people can be stupid.
reads like clickbait to me (Score:4, Interesting)
generalization based upon outliers
Re:reads like clickbait to me (Score:3)
It *is* clickbait. 20-30 years ago, this wouldn't be remarked. Rather it would be a case of outliers in society trying to do something to make the world a better or worse place depending your views.
Re:reads like clickbait to me (Score:0)
Though 20-30 years ago, the tech industry wasn't quite this ridiculous either.
Re: reads like clickbait to me (Score:0)
When did companies have such intimate knowledge of our lives and... I think they know what we
Re:reads like clickbait to me (Score:1)
To be fair, anything that google does falls into the center of the distribution more or less by default.
Re:reads like clickbait to me (Score:0)
Read the comments around here and you'll realize that these really aren't outliers, these are just the ones most people are familiar enough with to have a conversation about. We have plenty of loons around here too.
This is new, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Places that handle large amounts of money get taken by thieves and embezzlers, people of all stripes go into politics because they're vengeful, overgrown security services monitor lots of petty and unimportant things, minor errors get overlooked for years on end, and massively wealthy people maintain semi-militarized forces.
Congratulations, you've just described literally any point of time in human history.
Re:This is new, how? (Score:0)
"Congratulations, you've just described literally any point of time in human history."
But technology managed to string those points closer together.
Yay for technology!
Meh - not really the tech industry (Score:1)
Most of the incidents mentioned have nothing to do with the "tech industry". Mt Gox was not part of the "tech industry" - it was a financial exchange. Neither are the NSA or GCHQ or the world's best Call of Battle player (although he might have a day job in the tech industry, dunno). These stories are about various nontechnical parts of society adapting old behaviors to a new medium. This is mostly a consequence of real, mostly invisible tech industry being so successful.
Oracle has it's own navy and air force too... (Score:5, Funny)
Google, now has its own navy, to go with its air force and robot army.'"
How else do you expect them to defend themselves from Oracle?
Re:Oracle has it's own navy and air force too... (Score:1)
Re:Oracle has it's own navy and air force too... (Score:0)
with an army of lawyers?
Re:Oracle has it's own navy and air force too... (Score:0)
How else do you expect them to defend themselves from Oracle?
If they support their products Oracle is done for..."
more awareness not more ridiculousness (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA's premise is off...the whole 20th Century was a giant clusterfuck of human rights & technology.
"getting" ridiculous...that notion itself is ridiculous
Here's what I find really ridiculous...this happened in 1968 [slashdot.org]& basically all computing now is just an upscale version of that tech...faster, more colors, bigger...
The only difference is that so many people have been screwed over by so many different expressions of our modern greed that **they can't hide anymore**
Re:more awareness not more ridiculousness (Score:2)
The only difference is that so many people have been screwed over by so many different expressions of our modern greed that **they can't hide anymore**
WTF are you talking about exactly? Be specific...
Re:more awareness not more ridiculousness (Score:2)
I mean that artificial scarcity & consumer manipulation is so common it's virtually everywhere you look in business & society.
Re:more awareness not more ridiculousness (Score:2)
Working link to the "Mother of All Demos" wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
Slashdot doesn't appear to like a missing "http://"
Re:more awareness not more ridiculousness (Score:2)
thnx for fixing that
Its not jut tech (Score:2, Insightful)
Over the last 10 years, the NSA has declared war on privacy while having secret courts and our president got the nobel peace prize for something he didn't end up doing.
Egypt has gone through 2 governments, and there have been uprisings in many other places, including now Ukraine.
I could legally marry another man while smoking pot, but telling people in Russia being gay isn't evil is now a crime.
All these would seem pretty crazy 10 years ago. Its not just Tech, its simply time: Things happen, and stuff changes. Heck, the CoD players's political stuff isn't even tech news, thats political and could have happened at any point.
Context is odd that way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, when you remove context from misleading headline excerpts, things sure do get wacky!
You know those jokes that sometimes aren't funny from old movies, that your relatives laugh real hard about? A large number of those came from the same logic - taking a topical story, removing the context, and applying hyperbole to the idea. They know the idea is misleading, and are 'in' on a joke that they just can't explain to you and still be funny.
Just bundling some of those together with a 'technology' theme isn't making a point - its bungling a joke. Not as bad as that whole 'beta' attempt, but still, a bad attempt at a joke.
Ryan Fenton
More like, people are getting rediculous (Score:0)
These are not examples of the tech industry getting ridiculous. These are examples of PEOPLE getting ridiculous.
MtGox didn't happen because of tech getting ridiculous. It happened because there were ridiculous people willing to go in on an insane premise, their greed blinding them.
If a gamer can form a political party that is able to accomplish shady things, shame on the PEOPLE that let it happen. Where is the tech?
Busy collecting and watching homegrown porn? Uhh...okay dude. No tech needed there. Just sick people.
For Apple...hey, shit happens. All software manufacturers will experience this one day. Guess what? It's because of PEOPLE.
And Google has an air force and robot army? LOL! Perhaps a slight exaggeration?
I've got one for ya, this article's premise is ridiculous.
Re:More like, people are getting rediculous (Score:1)
Re:More like, people are getting rediculous (Score:1)
I agree facebook is tard-tech but never before have I seen the common folk expressing their desire to have a display of vanity via camera. click click post post. That I think is making the general populace a little more stanger than before
__________________
The media sells it
Yeah... (Score:3)
I can (and did) sum it up in a tweet (Score:2)
I can describe that insanity in 140 characters [twitter.com] or less.
Re:I can (and did) sum it up in a tweet (Score:0)
The common notion here is control (Score:1)
Secret Service? (Score:2)
In Britain we're surprised to learn we have a Secret Service. We have GCHQ, MI5, MI6, and various other things, but I don't think we have a Secret Service.
Re:Secret Service? (Score:0)
We have GCHQ, MI5, MI6, and various other things, but I don't think we have a Secret Service.
That's what you think. Because it actually is secret.
Re:Secret Service? (Score:2)
Come now, Ian Fleming wrote a documentary on it, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Re:Secret Service? (Score:2)
Technically that's SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service. Also known as MI6.
What is the new normal? (Score:1)
The tech industry does what people are willing to pay for, within the limits of the law (usually). We are bending norms at a pace far exceeding anything humanity has ever had to deal with before. It's enough to make even staunch liberals question their orthodoxy. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Change is easier than ever before, but there are good reasons for putting limits on the rate of change. We need time to adapt. "Revolution" used to be an anomaly, but these days it's becoming so commonplace that it's almost boring. It's a very large train, and it is moving very fast, so IMO, it's well worth considering what we should do to keep the train from running off the rails.
Kim Dotcom (Score:2)
And 3/4 of the tech news is suddenly about phones (Score:0)
%sub%
Downhill Since Byte Quit Running April Parodies (Score:2)
Back in the day, the April issue of Byte used to run several parody articles. Funny stuff, I miss it. They quit because too many people took the bait.
Re:Downhill Since Byte Quit Running April Parodies (Score:0)
The April Fools jokes can't keep up with reality.
Re:Downhill Since Byte Quit Running April Parodies (Score:1)
Sensationalist claptrap (Score:5, Insightful)
Any significant industry is going to be ridiculous if you first cherry-pick your examples, selecting for lunacy/idiocy, and then state them in the most exaggerated, sensationalist way you can think of.
Re:Sensationalist claptrap (Score:1)
This just in: the whole world is crazy. [fark.com] And it just happened. Just now. Nothing crazy has ever happened before. Anywhere. Ever.
What a worthless, piece of shit clickbait article.
Dice, if you want to do something to actually make Slashdot better, let us moderate articles, and let me browse them at +5.
And then add a rich text editor for comments. Doesn't need to be fancy, just support the tags you already allow. (Oh, and then fix how lists display.)
When I was young (Score:4, Interesting)
I wanted to live in the future, the future I read about, the future I saw on tv, in movies. Now that that future is here, I find myself increasingly wanting to go back to a past that's no longer there, scheduling 'no internet' days and turning off my cell phone so that I can go back to a more peaceful time, a more thoughtful time, a time with more focus, if only for a few hours.
Re:When I was young (Score:2, Funny)
It was none of those things. But it did have people wistfully pining for their own bygone Golden Age that never actually existed.
Re:When I was young (Score:1)
Re:When I was young (Score:0)
You must be white.
Re:When I was young (Score:1)
It was all of those things, because there was no constant stream of interruption from a gaggle (a glaring? a murder?) of devices calling for my attention at any time of day. This has nothing to do with rosy glasses and everything to do with how technology has come to play a different role in our lives over the years. I thought my examples made that implication clear, but alas, having all of the world's knowledge at your fingertips is apparently not enough to foster comprehension.
Sheep looking up - or Neuromancer (Score:2)
Much was already predicted, society and hence laws if needed don't adapt as fast as 'progress' is made.
Keiretsu on the rize, interesting times indeed.
Not that surprising though for people who are into tech and into SiFi or other literature, and for most stuff you don't need a Ph D to predict them.
The Cherry Picking Fallacy (Score:2)
Weird outliers exist in every industry, and in every time. It's just that now get mroe examples of it worldwide, in realtime.
Five bits of anecdotal weirdness do not a trend make.
Yeah, because (Score:0)
Yeah, victims of bad laws and crooked cops should be forced to enjoy their misfortune! Or maybe, this is why politicians shouldn't piss-off rich people. A millionaire in Australia has also started a political party. We're seeing a return to the 1960s where people didn't blindly follow the rules of the rich moral minority.
There is one simple reason (Score:1)
Information technology is the only large-scale class of science/engineering work that "activists" will still allow to be built in the US, because its origins were too decentralized to attract their attention. There is no single large structure, like a dam, that they can focus their attention against. And because this area of technology has flourished, the inevitable mistakes that occur from time to time are what makes our news. You have to look at Asian news for stories about nuclear meltdowns, cost overruns on giant buildings, and bullet train wrecks.
Re:There is one simple reason (Score:1)
People are bored (Score:1)
There needs to be new challenges to the whole human race, or we need to start living over 200 years old to have enough time to retrain to something we consider meaningful. Perhaps the rapid rate of change is corroding the experienced value of the work. Tech industry is like the cycles of history in Battlestar Galactica, only sped up.
Was rediculuous back in 1999 (Score:0)
The tech industry was ridiculous back in 1999.
And the most ridiculous bit this year was missed in the headline: facebook paying $19Billion Dollars for WhatsApp.
"Programming error'? (Score:2)
Wait, some people believe "goto fail" was a "programming error"?
Heh.
Re:"Programming error'? (Score:2)
Re:"Programming error'? (Score:3)
Even worse is the assertion by the click bait summary that it "gutted Apple's security for years" when it only affected Mavericks and iOS versions 6 and 7.
Mavericks was released as a GM in September 2013, iOS 7 around the same time. iOS 6 was released in September 2013, which is hardly "years" ago - it is 16 months ago. "Over a year" might be a more accurate, if less click bait worthy, phrase to use there.
It was a programming error, though, through a simple lack of QA on the code. If you;re trying to claim it was deliberate then I have a tinfoil hat to sell you. I'll throw in the bridge for free.
In other news... (Score:3)
A former cowboy became President of the United States. Oh, that was in 1901. And the U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala to help out a fruit company. Oh, that was in 1954.
You can make anything sound crazy if you just say it in a silly enough way and leave out most of the important details. Heck, conservatives are fond of pointing out that Obama is a "former community organizer." Also a former senator, but who cares about that?
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
A former cowboy became President of the United States. Oh, that was in 1901. And the U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala to help out a fruit company. Oh, that was in 1954.
...and in 1979: https://xkcd.com/204/ [xkcd.com]
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
The USA fucked over more or less every south american nation.
But the US citizens don't know or don't care.
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
All too often, it sounds crazy because it is crazy. The 'important details' just distract us from the emperor's nudity.
Re:In other news... (Score:0)
Heck Mr. Universe [wikipedia.org] ran the state of California for almost 10 yrs.
Silicon Valley just follows it and it's the same old formula: retaining money and power.
Just that a. the Internet, the thing "they created", has exposed the fact in plain sight and b. There's so much cash and wall street networking in Silicon Valley that to preserved the current "techno elite" one only invests w/their social circles. And if the circle of friends runs out of ideas, which is guaranteed, stupid crap ideas like those mentioned in the OP come about in troves...
I remember several media articles back in 2002 about silicon valley trying to turn tech elites into "rock stars", making tech cool as rock-n-roll, and much like Hollywood. Well, I guess we've arrived at their goal.
Diversity in the valley stopped around 2004, and thus the true breakthru ideas. It's now like bottom feeding on wacko ideas and see what sticks on the wall w/o any tax impact... minimize risk as one says. It does explain why folks are spending $billions on user lists and profiles.
Re: In other news... (Score:0)
somebody mod up the above post. you are 100% dead on. I agree
Yes (Score:0)
A former cowboy became President... and in 1981 wasn't it (Reagan)
Its gonna get worse (Score:0)
You have in USA alone the next generation indebted to their masters for a trillion dollars!, and if you dont pay it back they take ALL your stuff and bankruptcy isn't even an option, thats a pretty good incentive to do ANYTHING to pay it back, be it illegal, immoral, underhand whatever makes that loan payment at the end of the month, every month, for the next 25 years!
good luck with that
this is getting ridiculous (Score:0)
I usually do not post and just read here and took the advice posted to use nobeta=1. But it is not working on this page. I am beginning to wonder if this has more to do with boosting page refreshes for their Ads since how many others like I have refreshed this page using nobeta=1 and it did not work.
Not at all new (Score:3)
Techies have always been strange - for example, consider the average /. reader. Or Richard Stallman.
Another great example of an outlier is the so-called "Spam King", Dale Begg-Smith [wikipedia.org], who, when not making millions off spam and malware, won two Olympic medals and three World Cup championships in mogul skiing, starting in 2006. If that isn't a bizarre combination of pursuits, I don't know what is.
Ridiculous tech (Score:2)
Ah, the modern tech industry, creating solutions for problems that don't exist.
Such as Windows 8 or the Slashdot beta.
You're late. (Score:2)
You're only just now noticing this? I've been feeling like I've been living in a Bruce Sterling novel for the past seven years or so.
Business Carziness (Score:0)
How about the early 1900's when business leaders hired mercenary armies to combat labour unions (Pinkerton among them) by attacking rallies and shooting labour leaders. Having a private army have long been part of the big-business picture.
The perfect internet story happened last month (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, I'm not sure it gets any weirder than that.
Re:The perfect internet story happened last month (Score:0)
Cmon this one deserves some karma love
I think that you are looking at the wrong folks fo (Score:0)
I believe that the "Ridiculous" label should be placed on the journalists that attempt to put the most sensational title on their article... why do they do that... because shocking sells...
and thus Money is at the root of this.... did you ever read the Tabloid papers? I suggest you look at those headlines... so what is actually happening is that the morals and the professionalism of the journalists have gone in the toilet... because they get more money for crazy titles on the articles they write...
A realist.
You don't say? (Score:2)
So news stories today wouldn't have made sense ten years ago, when we had different technology and expectations. That's some crack journalism right there.
Far more interesting than IT magazines (Score:2)
weird? (Score:1)
Weird, Hey! I was just getting comfortable!
Did I miss something? (Score:2)
Rudy Rucker nailed it (Score:1)
Almost got excited (Score:2)