They do almost nothing to help those affected by natural disasters. All they do is setup shelters and feed people in those shelters. They do not help rebuild.
They do an exceptionally poor job at this. Everyone knows about Katrina. In Houston this year, food sat on loading docks downtown while people starved in local shelters. The American Red Cross ran the main shelter so poorly that the city had to build an entirely new shelter and move everyone there...in the middle of a hurricane.
They don’t need your donations. They have a deal with the federal government where they get reimbursed for whatever they spend during a national disaster. The local American Red Cross chapters do this. The national organization does not provide the resources for this.
If you donate to the American Red Cross, you’re throwing your money away. The money won’t go to the local chapters. It won’t go to rebuild. It won’t go to the victims of the natural disaster. Do not donate to the American Red Cross.
Maybe a better statement would be, "If you donate to the Red Cross then know what your donation is going to support..." Then maybe you can enumerate the complaints and, if wanted, provide citations.
As it is, I think some folks may take offense with you telling them how to spend their money. I, for one, read it as you trying to tell me what I can or cannot do.
Edited to add: I see your dead reply. The difference between my suggestions and your post is that you demand, as opposed to ask. You may notice that I'm making a point of not saying you should do something, but that pointing out that you can choose to do something.
It's received much more gracefully and people are much more open to the ideas when they are asked, instead of when they are instructed. But, it's entirely up to you how you take it and what you decide to do with it.
I've spent years learning to say could instead of should. It has helped me immensely.
To be clear, this article is about the American Red Cross (which is not to say that other branches and other NGOs aren't as bad), but if you want to know what your donation is going to support... good luck!
Oh, they are pretty horrible. I was more concerned with presentation than content. I support the idea of educating people about the horribleness of the American Red Cross. I also know it is more effective to do so by engaging then demanding.
People, as a general rule, don't like being told what to do. They respond much better when being asked politely. We didn't develop politeness for no reason, after all. We have all sorts of negative phrases for demanding people.
As I support the idea of making people aware of the problems with the American Red Cross, it stands to reason that I'd like to not sour them on the process of learning about the reasons for the complaints.
For better or worse, society respects a well dressed person with manners more than they do a spittle-flecked zealot. I suspect more people have been turned away from desktop Linux precisely because of this.
It has been very, very socially helpful to learn to not say should and to substitute could. Relatedly, I also try to say I can relate, and not to say I understand. Just a couple of small things completely change how people respond to me.
You could try it in your everyday speech and see if you notice a difference?
You are so wrong about the American Red Cross. The ARC is an non-profit organization supported by a movement of volunteers from all walks of life. It gives resources to volunteers willing to help those in need. Thank god it exists.
I'm not going to convince you by arguing on HN but would gladly talk, or at least chat online, about it with you.
I took a month leave of absence from a programmer position at Merrill Lynch when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S.. I signed up for a disaster response role in the American Red Cross, who dispatched me relatively quickly to a major shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana.
I can confidently tell you and anyone reading this that great good came of what was donated, at least to the population served within the jurisdiction I was stationed.
I don't think this is intrinsically true - a lot of people just don't personally know anyone who desperately needs help. Is it really overall better to be 100% efficient at getting a rich private school a new telescope instead of being 50% efficient at getting people with no safe drinking water a means of access/production of safe drinking water?
Disappointed that there's no mention of a discount. Cryptocurrency payments will save them a lot of money. Web/email hosting is an industry with a high risk if fraud.
It's related in that it's just another example of how restrictive we've become since 9/11. Not only was he rejected, but without any given reason. The secrecy itself is enough to question whether he would have been rejected if it were still the Obama administration.
Or use a Google Voice number to setup
2FA on the same account. That way you can only ever login if you have a device on your person already logged in. If somehow you're away from technology long enough that all your devices are locked, use a printed backup code to unlock one.
Use Google Authenticator or any other time-based token app. Print out the private key, store in a safe. Also print out extra codes and also put in a safe.
But, if you use Google Voice number on your other Gmail account, they say it's not recommended because you can get locked out of both.
I think you can use Google Voice number on everything other than your main Gmail account.
So, to be extra safe, after you've set up your 2FA for gmail, make sure to change your recovery phone # to something other than your main telco or google voice number.
Same account. You can use the Google Voice number to 2FA its associated gmail account. A printed backup key will protect you from getting permanently locked out. But nobody will be able to login without physical access to your device or printed key.
This is how 2FA was meant to work. It should always require a physical device only you have access to. Otherwise it's just using 1FA two times.
Somewhere on YouTube somebody got locked from his google account while streaming live because of similar setup as your suggestion, Google 2fa codes to Google voice, and the look on the face when he realised it was hilarious. Not sure, but maybe he sorted it out somehow.
You are driving down the interstate, message pops up saying it needs to refuel, you don't hit the button fast enough, your cars shuts off, and you spend the next 15 minutes parked in the middle of the road with cars honking behind you.
Or you wake up, get dressed for an important meeting, unlock your door, and suddenly realize you're going to be late because your car decided this was the best time to finish refueling in spite of your instructions to refuel at another time of day.
How nice for you! Having active hours be ignored, and the machine update itself in the middle of a workday, has happened more than once to me. (Once would be enough.) It's happened more than once to a lot of other people, too. How far do you expect to get with this argument by implication that that's not the case, and we're all just full of it?
That only happens if you put the updates off of they've been there for a couple of days and you have something running that makes it assume that the machine is still active. People seeding torrents overnight seems to be the only place I see that not happen.
See update notifications? At the end of the day, restart and install the updates. It's not rocket science. It doesn't just hit patch Tuesday and then reboot immediately, shafting you. And it doesn't screw your workflow up.
Really this has to be done because even the best of us put it off eternally.
> That only happens if [case that isn't the only
one where this happens]
The whole point of active hours is that, when updates are pending, they install and the system reboots outside the hours in which I've expressed the desire to have my machine not reboot itself. Yet I've lost count of the number of times where this does not happen - I see an update notification, shrug and assume it'll be applied in the window I've set, and take no action - only to find the next day that the updates haven't been applied, the reboot hasn't been performed, and if I don't interrupt my work day by applying updates and rebooting immediately - which rarely takes less than 15 minutes, not counting getting all my tools up and going again - then I can rely on losing some work, and a lot of time, later on, when something important needs doing on a deadline. And that's insane! If for whatever reason the updates legitimately can't be applied in the window, the right action in response is to wait for the next window, and not to fuck-start my workday. That is always the wrong thing to do.
I mean, I get what you're saying, right? If active hours worked as claimed, you'd have a real point here. But they do not work reliably at all, and that's a whole 'nother issue.
I have a friend that booted her computer to windows 7, logged into gmail and facebook, had to leave her computer to care for her little kid and came back to her computer in the middle of windows 10 installation. She had seen no warning whatsoever.
A client had started a time consuming process before leaving the office, came back the following morning with the process having failed due to windows applying updates and rebooting killing the process and losing a day worth of work.
YMMV.
I don't know what you mean by "this has to be done", there is no obligation to apply updates. What if I want my computer to run a windows without updates ? Am I not entitled to use my own property as I so choose ?
I very much doubt she had no warning. You got two warnings and had to opt out. She probably just clicked through them. Check the event log and scheduler logs. It will have the event in there saying the user consented to it. I had to find this on a machine after a user complained it didn't tell him and it clearly did and he clicked through.
> I don't know what you mean by "this has to be done", there is no obligation to apply updates. What if I want my computer to run a windows without updates ? Am I not entitled to use my own property as I so choose ?
If your machine becomes a botnet node and causes problems for other people, which is a big problem, then you forfeit the right. The same thing if your apartment leaks water into another one. Be a good citizen.
Failed updates, now that's the only valid part of your point. I've had a few and they weren't disruptive but this is just my case.
You can doubt but maybe direct the doubt at the ability of window to deliver a consistent experience across every machine and configuration. She's computer literate and know when she gets nagged by windows, at best it could have been that the warning came and went while she was not in front of the screen.
There was no event log or logs of any kind, her system got entirely replaced by win10. For this specific case I would tend to not trust the log anyways. What I do find strange is that the windows 10 installation process should have asked to accept the EULA before installing, it did not and went on as if it was an unattended installation.
Good luck trying to explain people that they have to forfeit their freedom because they have to behave like good citizen. Anyways windows update is barely relevant here as the common vector used for botnet infection is almost always the user, not windows vulnerability.
Some people run complex simulations that take days or weeks to run, and a forced reboot in the middle ruins progress. If someone needs to skip an update on their own machine and their own network that is their right.
I have no idea why this scenario gets talked about so little. It is an edge case, but its a huge edge-case. There are entire ecosystems of Windows-only software where running batch operations overnight are a daily fact of life.
I'm nearly resigned to the fact that I may have to segregate engineering workstations to their own network and whitelist their traffic.
So what about the small majority ? Do they get a "sorry not sorry, f*ck you" card ?
You should assume that windows users doing batch stuff over night are people who have better things to do with their computers during their day or want their computer to work for them while they're not sitting in front of it.
Try considering the whole instead of splitting to only address the large majority.
> If you want to run batch operations, use the right product.
Sorry, but this does come across as a bit asinine.
What's the right product for running software written for Microsoft Windows, if not Microsoft Windows?
"Users running their applications" isn't just Grandma on Facebook, or your little sister playing Candy Crush Saga. Microsoft's unquestionable strength has been it's support for enterprise, small-business and professional desktop users. There is a lot of deserved anger thrown their way as a result of deliberate decisions to force flexibility and choice-limiting behavior down the throat of their core market.
My shop is small, but I can count COMSOL, SolidWorks, OrCAD, LabVIEW, various SPICE frontends, and a dozen other small odds and ends for instrument control and data capture without even leaving the engineering suite. All of which are going to be forever stuck on Win 7, at this rate.
Most of those are products that are not expected run over night in batching mode.
You may get the need to have things to run overnight using engineering, simulation, rendering products with some sort of long running process. But these normally have server component that you install onto Windows Server, which the client offloads to.
> Most of those are products that are not expected run over night in batching mode.
I'll be sure to let them know that long-running computations deskside are now only an experimental feature /s
In all seriousness though, we've managed over a decade without the need for dedicated compute nodes along with the costs that would entail. The only case I can make for that right now is that current Windows now ships with unpredictable uptime.
The good part of this is that I prefer using Linux for these things anyways and the instability of windows has forced both our government clients and our office to focus half our efforts into supporting Linux correctly.
Good luck if you're in a branch which has Windows-only software, such as 2D/3D graphics. Blender is definitely offering some good competition, but as I hear it from CG artists, it's still not quite there yet for most projects. If your pipeline is dependent on Adobe software such as Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects, then you are also stuck with Windows. Rendering (2D or 3D) jobs can often take days if not weeks to finish.
I agree with the person above your comment. For example some simulation loads are common to run on deskside systems.
However this IS definitely an edge case and it is possible to turn it off. I have run a physical host as a build agent that has uptime of months on Windows 10.
This is administrative competence, not a problem with the product or the use case.
WSUS + Windows server is definitely fine for most workloads though.
I have this dreadful feeling that Microsoft is A/B testing this stuff, making sure that there is just enough inconsistency between sites to sow doubt and confusion.
Our company has a dc but not that kind of control over child computers and it would be a large overhaul (and out of my control) to change the whole network setup.
What is your point ? That microsoft should be better at security in the first place ? That Sony should refrain from playing stupid games to prevent winning stupid prizes ? That computer vulnerabilities are a contagious disease ?
Man you're in for an amazing time when you will learn about that stupidity called the Internet of Things.
My point is that by connecting your machine to the internet it ceases to be solely a question of "your machine" and "your rights". There are other systems on the network too and you have a certain amount of responsibility to be a good citizen.
(and yes, I am well aware of, and utterly terrified/upset/bamboozled by, the Internet of Things)
I'm not saying never update, I'm saying let me update (manually) when I am not in the middle of using my computer for work (which may be a week or two at a time). The OS should get out of the way, not ruin what I'm working on.
Still, I see the software you're using as much a part of the problem as Windows here. Needing weeks of solid up-time to complete something is a challenge and doesn't seem like a realistic assumption by a developer for software running on Windows.
Why can't it remember progress and resume after a restart? That would not only make the impact of Windows Updates much smaller, but also power outages and the like.
No they can't. It Has been illegal for nearly a century and it id still is illegal to sell telecommunication customers' data. Congress just reversed the FCC rules from October. It has to do with an government agency overstepping their authority and nothing to do with privacy.
Anybody who says otherwise is lying or ignorant of the law regarding CPNI.
How many bold faced lies can you fit into 3 sentences?
> It has to do with an government agency overstepping their authority
I've seen this horseshit repeated ad naseum.The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 granted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authority to regulate how customer proprietary network information (CPNI) can be used and to enforce related consumer information privacy provisions. In 2015, Broadband Internet Service Providers were reclassified as telecommunications companies, meaning that these rules will apply to them. They are not an information service. Google is an information service. They provide me with an internet connection, they do not provide me with any content at all and no consumer expects that from them.
Do you understand that an Act has to be passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president? I don't know how much more legitimate authority can get when you are granted authority by our elected representatives.
> and nothing to do with privacy.
From the very first sentence of the FCC's 2007 REPORT AND ORDER AND FURTHER NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING [0]
"In this Order, the Commission responds to the practice of “pretexting” by strengthening our rules to protect the privacy of customer proprietary network information (CPNI)"
>It Has been illegal for nearly a century and it id still is illegal to sell telecommunication customers' data.
FALSE
AGAIN, from the FCC's 2007 REPORT AND ORDER AND
FURTHER NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING [0]
"We modify our rules to require telecommunications carriers to obtain opt-in consent from a
customer before disclosing that customer’s CPNI to a carrier’s joint venture partner or independent
contractor for the purpose of marketing communications-related services to that customer.117 While we
realize that this is a change in Commission policy, we find that new circumstances force us to reassess our
existing regulations. As we have found previously, the Commission has a substantial interest in
protecting customer privacy."
"Based on this and in light of new privacy concerns, we now find that an
opt-in framework for the sharing of CPNI with joint venture partners and independent contractors for the
purposes of marketing communications-related services to a customer both directly advances our interest
in protecting customer privacy and is narrowly tailored to achieve our goal of privacy protection"
"Joint Venture and Independent Contractor Use of CPNI. We modify our rules to require
carriers to obtain opt-in consent from a customer before disclosing a customer’s CPNI to a carrier’s
joint venture partners or independent contractors for the purposes of marketing communicationsrelated
services to that customer."
So do you think you can link to an obtuse document written in legalese, hoping that no one will read it? These are the rules from 2015...8 years after the FCC changed how telcos may use your CPNI
Just reading the rest of your comment history, do you do this for profit or for pleasure?
Isn't it more likely Harvard threatens to reject applicants with wealthy parents if they don't make a contribution. It's the way the rest of the world works.
They do almost nothing to help those affected by natural disasters. All they do is setup shelters and feed people in those shelters. They do not help rebuild.
They do an exceptionally poor job at this. Everyone knows about Katrina. In Houston this year, food sat on loading docks downtown while people starved in local shelters. The American Red Cross ran the main shelter so poorly that the city had to build an entirely new shelter and move everyone there...in the middle of a hurricane.
They don’t need your donations. They have a deal with the federal government where they get reimbursed for whatever they spend during a national disaster. The local American Red Cross chapters do this. The national organization does not provide the resources for this.
If you donate to the American Red Cross, you’re throwing your money away. The money won’t go to the local chapters. It won’t go to rebuild. It won’t go to the victims of the natural disaster. Do not donate to the American Red Cross.