fliptop writes:
"Promising that orders will start shipping in June, Silent Circle has announced the Blackphone is ready for pre-orders. (Domain registered in Switzerland)
Touted as 'The high-end smartphone which puts privacy and security ahead of everything else' the Blackphone has a 4.7" screen, 2GHz quad-core CPU and 16GB storage. It also includes several Silent Circle apps.
The Blackphone makes use of a customized version of Android called PrivatOS, is fully unlocked, and the encryption can be used on any compatible network. Purchase includes a 1-year subscription to the apps; after that it's $10 a month (in addition to your carrier's charges).
In order to take advantage of the encryption, the other person you're communicating with has to have their own Blackphone or use Silent Circle apps on their Android or iOS phone."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday February 24 2014, @04:03PM
What I didn't like about "soylvertisements" on the legacy site was the posting schedule. So you signed an advertising contract, fine, but do you have to post a weekly story every single week on Monday afternoons at 2:30pm eastern? Every week? Always at 2:30pm? Even if you had nothing to say about the topic that week because absolutely nothing happened in the last week? Oh, don't worry, we'll find something to comment on in that situation, I assure you the marketing dept won't find our comments amusing at all.
Another thing is I can appreciate honesty. On HN you'll have the CTO participate in a discussion on HN under his name about how he stole someone else's tired marketing idea, wrapped a CRUD app in bootstrap, and now wants one billlllion dollars for his effort, because he's, you know, entitled to it. So if someone offered you blackjack and hookers to post this, just admit it and I think most people would be totally OK with it. Just be honest about it.
(Score: 1) by hankwang on Monday February 24 2014, @04:32PM
Huh? I never noticed such a pattern. Which subjects were following such a pattern? Only Bitcoin I recall coming back way too often, but that doesn't sound like an organization that would have an advertisement budget.
Would you mind explaining what "HN" is? The usual forum sites that are referred to from here are digg, reddit, and The Other Site AKA Slashdot. "HN" doesn't match any of them.
Avantslash: Slashdot+SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by MechaStreisand on Monday February 24 2014, @05:04PM
HN is Hacker News, at http://news.ycombinator.com/ [ycombinator.com]. There are some good discussions there, but a lot of startup idiocy as well.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 24 2014, @05:27PM
One historical example was you could set your clock by the e-ink stories, including adjustment for daylight savings time.
Going back a long time, second life is/was another offender. If I recall correctly it was every Tuesday afternoon for them, although I may not recall correctly. May have been Wednesday.
I suppose its nearly impossible to prove there was or was not an advertising contract, vs perhaps one of the editors just had a huge mancrush on a specific technological story such that he just had to get it out of his system every single week right after the staff meeting or whatever.
Original point still stands. One ad? OK you gotta pay the bills, I can respect that. One ad at X o'clock on Y day of the week, every week, for six months? Um, a little annoying.
(Score: 1) by hankwang on Monday February 24 2014, @05:36PM
hmm, if I search for e-ink, I see a lot of stories between 2003 and present, but no period in which stories appeared weekly.
Avantslash: Slashdot+SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org].