Is Twitter an Absurd Company?

Why is the company Twitter or TWTR as its stock is called, a terrible and absurd company? No I don’t mean that the use of it as a media device is bad, even though my personal opinions are that it is a generally a waste of time with all the nonsense like people tweeting what they are doing all the time. The company as a whole is a bad idea because it is not successful at

all.

Yes the company does make a lot of money through ads, paying for followers, and donations. But the amount of loss this company faces each quarter is astounding, they have had 13 losses quarters in a row. They don’t any positive income, nor do they even do that much work for the a lot of money they have to spend. People are starting to ask questions and wondering if all the promises the company has made are true. They continue to say that they will start making money and see positive gains, but they have been saying that for a year. They have adding features desperately trying to make money but they just seem to spend even more. They have thousands of employers, but what do they do? Why is there so much spending in the under levels of the company if they are losing so much money?

The problems is obvious, the people who own the stock of twitter need to just sell it. It is worth nothing, the company will continue to lose money until people finally lose faith and just pull out. They have recently just had a major crash in stocks and a lot of people are starting to pull out. Twitter continues to tell investors to just hold on, they will start making positive income soon, but the huge problem is the Twitter’s growth has slowed greatly. Not that many people are joining and the ads are not making nearly enough money to support the huge company. Twitter will follow most media sites and will lose a lot of its popularity. Right now the growth is falling way under predictions from the company and unless twitter starts lower its costs they will eventually fail. A large reason is because when Twitter became public the stock shot up way higher then it should have because people had a lot of expectations for it because the success of facebook.  

OnePlus One

The new smartphone coming out of OnePlus is hyped to be groundbreaking and being called a “Flagship Killer” product. One of the reasons that the product is supposed to be groundbreaking is because of all the new hardware that is launching with it. Not only is it the most powerful phone that is coming on to the market, it is also set at one of the cheapest prices only being 300 dollars. It is launching with the newest processor from SnapDragon, leaders in the advancements of phone hardware.

Another advancement was the increase in screen size of the phone, but without increasing the size of the actually phone that much. It has a quad-core processor, each 2.5GHz which makes it extremely powerful compared to its rivals. It packs 3 gigabytes of RAM, which is equal to many of its competitors. But the fact that it is a more advanced type of RAM  that allows it to run multiple Apps effortlessly at once. Its powerful camera outclasses many other smartphones allowing it to take breathtaking shots.

The operating system it runs off of is a modded version the android system that was the highest rated among operating systems by users. It has a new type of sensor built into it that will allow you to use gestures and signs in order to use functions without touching the screen. It has a new type of battery that is designed to last as long as possible with special sensors that limit use and its backlight  allows so it does not allow extra use. The battery is allowed to run all day long, plus a new system in the battery that allows it to charge faster.

Another big selling point for the phone is its ergonomics, that are specially designed for use and being held by a person. It has light sensors built into it to change the lighting of the screen as to lower battery use. The Wifi device inside it is stronger than other devices in order to give it longer ranges so it is easier to stay connected.

This phone is not out yet, but if it follows through even most of the features it promises it will indeed be groundbreaking. The fact that it is priced so low is amazing considering it is hundreds of dollars cheaper than the flagship phones on release. This is definitely a phone to keep your eye on.

Are Smart guns the future?

There are new guns coming out on the market that are called smart guns. They have devices built into them that make you have to be verified as the owner of the gun to shot it. You have to register in order to activate the gun and it keeps track of you when you use it. The new ones use watches that you wear to activate the , so you have to be wearing the watch in order to shoot it. The hope is that because of all this safe constraints gun related violence will go down.

A lot of the crimes committed with guns are usually illegal guns that are not registered and used by people who have records that make it illegal for them to own firearms. The creators of smart guns are hoping that the increase in gun safety will help lower crime rates. But the main problem is that people have shown that they do not want the “personal” guns. Because of the rules you have to follow to activate them, people think they will lose all their use in important situations. Like if a burglar breaks into someones home, and that person does not have their watch with them the gun is useless.  

But the counterargument is that people will not be able to steal and trade in illegal guns, nor will guns be able to be used by criminals that should not have guns. That people will not be able to use them in any crimes because of how will it is documented. The biggest problems are that there are guns on the market that do not use smart technology. Because they are available completely undermines the use of smart guns. Why would a person handicap themselves against people who are the committing crimes like robbery and murder.

Another big problems is the reliability of the guns. If one little thing goes wrong the gun will not work. Many of the smart guns made in the past have not been reliable at all and there have been many problems with them.  One model of a handgun have a fingerprint scanner on the grip to prove that your were you to be able to fire it. But the problem was that it did not always work or sometimes it would for someone one who was not its owner. I think that technology needs to advance more before we see smart guns as a popular safety barrier.

Keyboard configurations

Keyboards have changed a lot over the course of time. One of the configurations is Dvorak.The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by Dr.August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Deeley. Over the years several slight variations were designed by the team led by Dvorak or by ANSI. It puts a lot of the most used keys in the home row and the most used combinations are easy to use as well. Dvorak proponents claim the Dvorak layout uses less finger motion, increases typing rate, and reduces errors compared to the standard QWERTY keyboard. This reduction in finger distance traveled is claimed to permit faster rates of typing while reducing repetitive strain injuries though this has been called into question.

The standard that we use now is called QWERTY. The name comes from the first six keys appearing on the top left letter row of the keyboard and read from left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and a belief that alternatives fail to provide very significant advantages. The use and adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is often viewed as one of the most important case studies in open standards because of the widespread, collective adoption and use of the product. The actual reason the keyboard is used mainly popularity, many people say that there are better configurations of keyboards that are faster and better for your hands.

The Colemak keyboard layout is another alternative to the standard QWERTY layout, offering a more incremental change for users already accustomed to the standard layout. It builds upon the QWERTY layout as a base, changing the positions of 17 keys while retaining the QWERTY positions of most non-alphabetic characters and many popular keyboard shortcuts, supposedly making it easier to learn than Dvorak for people who already type in QWERTY. It shares several design sensibilities with DVORAK, such as minimizing finger path distance and making heavy use of the home row. An additional defining feature of the Colemak layout is the lack of a Caps Lock key, an additional Backspace key occupies the position typically occupied by Caps Lock on modern keyboards.

How protected are you?

Well last week the heartbleed bug was running rampant and everyone was watching out of it but how safe are you online? Well it turns out the heartbleed bug was going on for months and it just came out that it was a serious threat and affecting millions and was a major problem but no one know about it. It turns out that only a handful of people who work at this companies are the reason if you have the virus or not. The threats online are so  severe that you are warned not to use debit cards online and be wary of sites, watch what you download, your information is never safe online. Why is this such a big problem and why has it been a problem for so long?

One of the most downloaded things is antivirus security and business are run off of people needing their computer cleaned out of virus and Trojan horses. The biggest problem is the general populations knowledge of computers. Most people don't bother learning the basics of computers let alone the advanced stuff like reading and learning how to really work the in depths parts of computers. This is all understandable because it is a lot to learn can be very confusing and does not make a lot of sense. So companies try to make it very simple and easy to use, simplifying everything, generally just giving people yes or no questions, doing short titles and hiding all the complicated stuff behind cute little images of folders and icons. But the problems is hackers and virus are easily able to hide behind this very brief data given to you and get access though a yes or no question that you don't realize you are making. Because you using a computer is so easy you can accidentally download something wrong. Everyone does this and only a few people can really fix it. People don’t have the time or dedication to learn all this things and how to protect ourselves from them. The fault lies with the people you do trust, the people you hire to fix the problem. So make sure you know what exactly is wrong with your computer when you take it in and try to get the people who helped you to explain everything. Little things like this can go along way to protect yourself the next time.

Kill Switch is a good thing?

A new feature is hopefully being added to smartphones at the start of next year that will have a big impact of crime hopefully. The idea is that it is a device in your phone that you could have activated to completely brick your phone and just make it useless. The idea is that it will completely deter theft of smart phones. If your phone is lost or missing and this might not be the best idea but if your phone is stolen you can completely disable it, rendering it useless. Because there is no point in stealing it, officials are hoping that it will cause them to be stolen less. Now if you can recover your phone the companies say they can retrieve all your data, photos and contacts, so there really is no apparent downside.

But the main concern from companies is that hackers might be able to hack into their computers and just start disabling phones. This is not really really a large issue most officials who back this idea say, because the companies should be able to get you your information back. Lawmakers are some of the strongest supporters of this movement because they believe this will greatly lower the theft of smartphones which has been growing rapidly in the last few years. The companies have been mainly against this idea, saying it's counterproductive and they deemed it not possible a few months ago. But increase in pressure from the customers have lead them to change their mind and in Minnesota, there is currently a law trying to make it mandatory to have this feature in phones for a company to sell. The companies are resisting this change because it would cause a drop in the money they make for replacing phones. If the amount of phones stolen drops so does the amount of warrants that are taken out to help if your phone is stolen. Many customers are switching to phone providers that encourage the kill switch, like Apple, who included a similar feature in their new IOS they just rolled out. The main fear for the supporters is that not enough will use this feature and that it will be left unused so people continue on stealing smart phones.

The Heartbleed bug

The heartbleed bug is a huge bug that was just uncovered by some big security companies that was allowing access to people’s information. Just about every major site has been infected with this virus. It has been around for about 2 years but was just discovered but the outcry has been large. This bug has allowed for thousands of people’s information to be stolen from all sorts of sites.

The heartbleed bug is a bug that opens up a hole in services that allows peoples to gather information for the site with having to have a password or username. It is very deadly on a site that has the ability to remember your password and automatically logs you in because the bug allows that person to enter as you anytime its wants. It allows access to emails, passwords, credit card access and other information.

The heartbleed bug also affects other things than just computers, it has been found in other devices like phones and smartphones. Information tapes have been found on things like video conferences and was found in things like the switches for the internet, which are used everywhere. It has been found in cameras and in hard drives so just about very type of information has been compromised.

The effects of this bug while been felt for a long time. The big companies will be compromised for a long time but changing your password and not being auto logged in will be not be enough. Even when new patched that will stop this bug come around, it will never be safe because small business and medium size business will not be able to stop the bug. The companies that the large companies outsource to or go through or use the services of, will affect the  large companies all over again. Experts are saying that is the bug of the century and the aftershocks of this will be felt for a long time. Because this bug has been active for a long time, there really is not anything to do about it, expect to just sit and wait. Some suggest it would be better to continue as you always have but monitor your bank account and emails closely to see if you are being affected by the bug.