I would posit that a person who plugs the USB key in leans more towards thief than "person who just wants to get the keys back to you." I'd further bet that there have been a not-insignificant number of CFAA prosecutions for actions of curiosity. (Not to say that plugging in a found USB key constitutes a CFAA violation)
This is a bizarre review that goes from "fire and brimstone smartphones are causing genocides" to complaining that the back scratches easily. Not really sure what it adds. It also doesn't touch on the new wellness and privacy features that are being added to a lot of modern phones.
I would say it is not what it adds, but what it expresses without attempting anything else than having those words read. It echoes the disconnect a lot of us feel between the power of a world-changing-device with what is being used for, embodied I think in what I often read here on HN comments: "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."
The smartphone has reached maturity and very little more can be said that hasn't been said about the technology inside of it so maybe it's time we take a step back and rethink the place of it in our society, or maybe not or not yet. The value of at least asking that question is what I took from the article.
In other words, it is more a "review" not of the phone but of the people using it.
> "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."
At first I nodded my head in agreement. Then I paused, pondered a bit, and reworded it a bit:
We are living in a system designed for viewing ads and clicking ads; the scale of this system is creating an unprecedented amount of wealth; the system best rewards those who disregard guilt in order to service it; profits are the new progress; shamelessness the new barometer of success; exploitation the new innovation.
I was hoping you'd contrast the world-changing device as seen in ads and how it changed the world in reality, which is what the author did but you put in a nice tag line. Maybe the Internet (from its invention up to a certain point) made thr world a better place, but "Web 2.0" certainly made it a worse planet: like the author wrote; genocide, mass surveillance, the constant expression of rage made worse by anonimity and mob-building (140 characters at a time, excuse me, 280 characters at a time...).
Now I want to do a mock phone ad with all the images of these atrocities and end it with a shot of a shiny phone and the tag line "We make world-changing devices. - Silicon Valley".
There is always a real reason for the rage and immediate communication just exposed it.
Building mobs worked before too, it just got cheaper and harder to control by silencing or bribibg mob leaders. Buying out a newspaper or TV or radio station.
Most people never had an outlet for it before not knew about the atrocities done on the world. Or had a comparison to people living in other countries.
Ignorance is bliss, literally. Even when you live in a nasty and deadly neighborhood.
The only thing to avoid is fake outrage and manipulation.
This article assumes there is no such thing as Computer Science, which is the development of algos and the like which the author assumes is done by mathematicians.
I feel like I am stuck at the basics. As a student with no large project to work on, I have no need to really master a single language and learn its intricacies. In the end, I jump from language to language learning and using cool new tools and ideas without ever gaining mastery over one.
The same argument could be used for any photographs of far off galactic masses which are made by taking light not visible to the human eye and converting it into an image, which are usually accepted as accurate representations.
Github has the useful trending section, https://github.com/trending, which shows which repositories are getting starred frequently and gives a good sense of which repositories are gaining traction
Yes, i've seen those projects but those are almost new frameworks, libraries, etc. not startup projects per se, i would love to see for example a really good stackoverflow clone, or trello clone or some really exiting webapp for example basecamp etc.
If you actually watch the video, it isn't exactly encouraging you to smash your phone, it is just using it as a metaphor to move on to new technology. I'm sure they would love you to donate your old phone to one of these charitable organizations.
And if you look at the form, it has a field "Destruction method", for which the example text is "Hammer / Baseball bat / Screwdriver / Fire / Blender / etc."