What the hell is Asynchronous Compute? How does it work? What does it do and why do I care? I’m glad you asked because it just so happens that [H] forum member Ieldra put together a great guide to demystifying Asynchronous Compute that we highly recommend reading.

Right off that bat it’s worth saying the term ‘asynchronous’ is abused and misused all the time; if two events are asynchronous they are time-independent of each other. Developers have made claims about their ‘async compute’ implementations in the past that have been rather confusing because it’s usually applied to rendering tasks; it ain’t asynchronous if there are data dependencies. To my knowledge, there is no title that actually makes use of ASYNCHRONOUS compute. Most use cases would fall under the third bullet point quoted above. Asynchronous execution arises when you do not have to wait for a routine to return before dispatching additional work, at least that’s how it’s conventionally defined, which is somewhat similar to how concurrency was defined earlier – which many people find confusing.

Source: [H]ardOCP – Demystifying Asynchronous Compute

I don’t care if astronomers don’t think that SETI signal is aliens, you and I both know it’s coming from aliens and they are more than likely hostile. Be that as it may, I’m not worried one bit. Why? Our planet is covered with water and, if movies have taught me anything, it’s that water kills aliens.

Paul Gilster at the website Centauri Dreams wrote about it as “an interesting SETI candidate”—meaning perhaps it came from an extraterrestrial civilization. That set off the media storm. But I have to tell you something: Astronomers don’t know much about that “SETI candidate” signal beyond that it’s made of radio waves. And while human beings should absolutely spend some time figuring out what this signal is, they have almost no reason to conclude it came from non-human beings.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Astronomers Don’t Think That So-Called SETI Signal Is Aliens

While I think this is a pretty janky move, you do have thirty days to opt out of data sharing. There is always the option of just not using Facebook or WhatApp as well, that seems to work pretty good too.

Some consumer privacy watchdog groups have filed a formal complaint with the FTC, asking them to look into it. The complaint (PDF) comes from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). The groups ask the FTC to investigate the new terms that Facebook and WhatsApp have set, saying it constitutes “an unfair and deceptive trade practice,” which is the legal term for all those misleading things the FTC’s responsible for quashing.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Privacy Groups File FTC Complaint Over Facebook, WhatsApp Data Sharing