* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Anyone else noticed that the top countries for broadband speeds are well-known tax havens? No? Just us then?

Charles 9
FAIL

Re: Wow, juat like home

They'll F you back, then. Their estates are probably large enough they can use Nightingale...which doesn't NEED roads...

Charles 9

Re: US broadband is still better than the UK ersatz

But London's also the biggest and densest part of England, full of potential customers. It's basically like one of those small countries.

Charles 9
WTF?

Been there. I guess it's a matter of perspective because if you say P3000 (about $60) for a decent Android phone (and this was two years ago) is too much, we must be looking at two different parts of the country. BTW, I got a relative a new feature phone for about P750 ($15). Access depends on the plan you pick, but I recall them offering some decent plans with Internet access for P1000 ($20).

PS. Facebook subsidizes a lot of the Internet access there. Buy some groceries, get some codes, etc.

Nintendo revives Game & Watch portable proto-console, adds color to 2.36-inch screen

Charles 9

Is it me, or did Nintendo miss a trick by not including, for novelty's sake, the Game & Watch version of Super Mario Bros. (Yes, it really existed)?

Hidden Linux kernel security fixes spotted before release – by using developer chatter as a side channel

Charles 9

Re: credabiliyt, reliability. It's like virginity.

Problem is that anything like that can be itself exploited (think a smear campaign).

Relying on plain-text email is a 'barrier to entry' for kernel development, says Linux Foundation board member

Charles 9

Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"

I'm pretty sure junk e-mail predated HTML e-mail. As for tracking, the header would provide plenty of room for that.

Personally, I think the only way to end the debate is to hear it from the man himself.

Charles 9

Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"

I was writing IN context. lingua fracas tend to be informal and discriminatory. Meaning implicit bias, which like I said can be dangerous.

Charles 9

IOW, this sounds a lot like "Get off my lawn" talk, with the newer generation quipping, "Like we give a screw, Gramps!" Recall there were operating systems before Linux and there will likely be ones after it as well. How long Linux remains relevant can depend on these kinds of choices.

Charles 9
Unhappy

Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"

You just did. Thing is, you didn't recognize you did it because it was implicit...SUBconscious. That's exactly what makes it so dangerous.

Charles 9
WTF?

Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"

"There is no such assumption, rather it is a fact."

So you can conclusively prove there are no people on the LKML who do not use a non-Latin language as their first written language. Sounds like a high-handed, potentially dangerous assumption if you ask me, smacking of certain things best left unsaid.

Charles 9

Re: "they don't know how to send a plain-text email"

She herself said it's hard to keep maintainers as it stands now due to barriers of entry. The risk is that if she leaves, others may follow and soon there aren't enough people to maintain the beast. You ever seen that bit where the one told the door whistles...and everyone else follows the former out the door? That's the risk they're facing right now. Be careful what you wish for.

Charles 9

Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"

"The thing about plain old ASCII email is that it is remarkably robust and (excuse shouty) IT LOOKS THE SAME ON EVERYBODY'S SCREEN"

That assumes you live in the West and communicate using Latin letters and so on. As a lot of coding is now being done in the East, with its cavalcade of non-Latin scripts, particularly RTL languages, a bit of unintentional bias starts to creep in.

You Musk be joking: A mind-reading Neuralink chip in a pig's brain? Downloadable memories? Telepathy? Watch and judge for yourself

Charles 9

Re: Elon-gated kit

The problem here is that mass runs smack into the Tsiolkovsky equation. In a nutshell, it's a necessity to optimize payload since fuel has to be part of that payload as well. Beyond a certain point, diminishing returns kick in, especially for a long-haul trip like to Mars. For it to be practical, you need a lightweight cosmic ray shield.

Charles 9

Re: OK, so we can extract thoughts or perceptions from an animal...

"You could ask "what if someone hacked my friend's cochlear implant (or a more common hearing aid, for that matter) to make her 'hear' things that I didn't say?""

It's a lot easier to just hack the existing Ear v1.0. Highly-focused sound was developed a couple decades back that enables a sound to only be heard in a very tight area, dispersing rapidly away from it.

Charles 9

Re: Optimistically...

I raise you the Tesla and the boom in other electric cars: the closest we've come to having them as a viable long-term means of transportation in...decades, as you've said. A lot of science is like this: much headbanging until there is that one little breakthrough.

Did you know that until the late 19th century, aluminum was so rare as to be considered a precious metal? Then one little breakthrough--electric smelting--made the metal abundant as bauxite and cheap as chips. Sometimes, one little thing is all it takes...but we still have to find, and no amount of smarts is going to help a literal groping in the unknown.

Charles 9
Boffin

Re: stream ads directly into your brain...

Or...could be Buy Bombs.

(Closest thing to a Spider Jerusalem icon this site offers.)

Charles 9

Re: Optimistically...

"Experimental implemented devices have had to be extensively trained by the wearer before they can do anything, and aren't always 100% correct."

And once upon a time, radio signals were just pulses of incoherent noise transmitted through the air. Nascent tech evolves, and what you see today may not even be close to what you may possibly see tomorrow, unless you can throw us some Turing-style disproof to support your claim.

Charles 9

Re: Optimistically...

"All he can do is pick up electrical signals, it can't read thoughts or even whole words out of your brain. You have to think about each individual letter."

Oh? If letters can be picked out of our brains, wouldn't picking out whole words be a difference of mere degree rather than kind, meaning it's simply a matter of being able to tell them apart through higher sensitivity and better training? After all, wouldn't the ability to discern words be a whole lot different than trying to use this technique with a far eastern language with its large symbol libraries?

Brave takes brave stand against Google's plan to turn websites into ad-blocker-thwarting Web Bundles

Charles 9

Re: Err...

What about Small Claims Courts, which don't need lawyers or juries?

Zuck says Facebook made an 'operational mistake' in not taking down US militia page mid-protests. TBH the whole social network is a mistake

Charles 9

Re: Humans are not ready for social media

Way too late for that. That genie left the bottle well before Facebook ever appeared, and now that we know about it, many will never go back. Even if you were to cut off the Internet itself, they'll just make a replacement. Same with Facebook. And since a lot of the participants are voting adults, I don't thnk even a Supreme Global Dictator could stop the crush without just going, "What boots it?" and blow up the planet.

Charles 9

Trouble is, it's like a mutant weed. Stomp it, and several more pop up in their place, able to regrow faster than you can stomp. Worse, they have Andromeda Strain characteristics, so nuking from orbit would be counterproductive. Frankly, the problem is the human condition, no less. You wanna keep the likes of Facebook from coming back? Evolve a better human first.

Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly via TCP, UDP. Obviously, nothing can go wrong

Charles 9

Whatever happened to a stump grinder and a little patience? And incidentally, you may not have realized that I was referencing ol' Monty Python.

Charles 9

Re: It was nice while it lasted

Interesting. Most of the vending machine vendors in my area lack the coinage, actually, as vending units in my area have been taking plastic for decades. The readers themselves are modular and upgradable. They went to chips a while back and many now take contactless. Upside: Less labor costs for collection runs more than makes up for the transaction fees.

Charles 9

Re: Fingerprinting

Unless you engage in a hostile takeover (aka a mutiny), odds are the ship from which you're jumping won't be your own, and it's a long way to shore (or another ship, whatever it may be). And sharks are NOT a figment of the imagination. Local news reported of an actual shark attack not too long ago, and that was on shore.

Put it this way. If OYOB was anywhere close to what you described, there would be a lot more entrepreneurs having a go at it.

Charles 9

Re: No, no no no .... not a chance ... or at least not before the 'Heat death of the universe'. !!!

What if Chrome turns out to be an Andromeda Strain, and the nukes only make it stronger?

Charles 9
Joke

What? No high explosives? Thought heavy artillery the only way to hunt a mosquito.

Charles 9

Re: Short sighted hate.

"The ability to open arbitrary sockets is likely to be tightly controlled, no browser is going to allow sites to open arbitrary sockets by default, and it's going to require users to explicitly accept the opening of sockets."

The mere ability to do so is enough for malware to exploit a security hole and ram whatever they want through that ability. As for relying on the users, does the word "clickbait" ring a bell?

"If users want to explicitly allow arbitrary sockets they can already do this, but they do so through things like java applets or even downloading and running an arbitrary binary. By doing this, not only can the code open arbitrary sockets - it can do A LOT WORSE TOO."

It's still diversification, especially when dealing with Joe Stupid who pretty much says if it requires a separate app The Internet Is Broken.

"For cases where there is a legitimate need to connect over an arbitrary socket connection, having the client software running in the browser sandbox is an improvement on the status quo."

I disagree. Java was supposed to be in a sandbox and look what happened there. VMs aren't supposed to see each other or the hypervisor; then someone developed the first Red Pill exploit. Browsers need to be jacks-of-all-trades; that makes them terrible for security purposes. The only reliable way to prevent something from happening is to not have the ability to do so, period. Thus the UNIX philosophy to do ONE thing at a time.

"It's also going to be possible to turn this functionality off entirely or restrict it by policy, if you're in an environment where such features are never required."

If someone can turn it OFF, someone else can turn it back ON. Or it could be ON and no one of note realizes this.

Charles 9

Re: Fingerprinting

"The fastest way to cure that is to become your own boss"

That STILL involves jumping ship into shark-infested waters And IN the water, you're at a disadvantage. There's a reason OYOB tends to have high Barriers of Entry.

Charles 9

Re: It was nice while it lasted

Question: Where do you go for coinage (as in, an actual physical product) during a nationwide coin shortage? And no, the e-banks aren't helping because they're rationing or outright cutting off coinage orders from their systems, too.

Charles 9

Re: Fingerprinting

You assume that's an option. If the guys up top say so, and the waters surrounding your ship are full of sharks...

Charles 9

Re: It was nice while it lasted

"Walk into a local branch and tell them why your are there. They will be happy to set you up."

You assume one exists. In many places, the last local branch of any bank within walking or even driving distance closed years ago, meaning it's online or bust, and no, the community is too small for anyone to give a soaring screw.

Charles 9

"And I don't really care if the "popular" sites don't work in it, I'm too old to be "cool"."

Don't think "popular". Think "important". Like government websites for which alternatives aren't possible (or even available if the last local office within driving distance closed long ago).

Charles 9

Re: Yet

"Preferred by whom?"

The majority, and that means people with clues lose. So either bend over or give up the Internet.

Charles 9

What happens when the inevitable happens, then? Do you just throw up your hands and scream, "Stop the Internet! I wanna get off!"?

Charles 9

Re: Yet

But since most people don't want to learn, that kind of puts you in a bind...

Death Stranding: Essential worker simulator unites its players amid a lockdown far worse than the real-life one

Charles 9

Re: PC ports...

I suspect this was one of those Sony chipped in with the original developing, thus Guerilla may have been a bit hung out to dry when doing a PC port. Tales of this sort tend to be few and far between for this generation and likely going forward barring another architectural shift.

Charles 9

PC ports...

I suppose in the XB1/PS4 generation, both of which are themselves PC-based, porting is less of an issue than it was in previous generations, especially with modern development toolkits that tend to have portability in mind.

Apple hits back at Epic, says Fortnite crew wants a 'free ride' on fees: Let the app store death match commence

Charles 9

Re: Epic needs to follow the SEMA example

SEMA has a receptive audience that commanded good money for a product people could actually get their hands into; that's what forced the automakers to concede because they knew the first to cater to that audience would win.

That kind of audience doesn't exist in Apple's world. There aren't a lot of "tuners" out there for iDevices; tuning tends to happen in the wild world of Android instead; Apple lets Google have that market. Besides, given all the patents and trade secrets involved, I don't think it's possible to put things like an aftermarket CPU into an iPhone.

Charles 9

Apple's reply will be, "We can't verify the security of third parties, and security is a selling point for iDevice buyers." and point to their track record of malware apps versus Google's Play Store.

Charles 9

"Debit cards are charged as a flat fee. Credit cards charge a percentage of the transaction."

Must depend on the jurisdiction. As I work in American retail, I'm actually aware of those fees, and where I stand the fee for debit transactions is also a percentage, but generally lower (say 1.5% versus 3%) because they don't have to go through the major credit companies (Visa, MasterCard, etc.).

Charles 9

Re: Weasels

I believe the key element here is you can't pay through the app, at least not how I've read it. I'm an American, so I can't discern all the details. However, perhaps I can make a related comparison. What about, say, the Walmart app? This allows payment via QR Codes, and on the Android version at least, you linked Walmart Pay to cards one can add oneself. How does this work on the iOS version? Does it only take Apple accounts?

Thanks for the memories... now pay up or else: Maze ransomware crew claims to have hacked SK hynix, leaks '5% of stolen files'

Charles 9
Stop

Re: Make It Illegal to Pay

Anything that requires a lot of countries to change their laws is a non-starter. Especially if one or more of those necessary countries are currently hostile to the West; to them, it becomes a boon instead of a bane.

Mozilla doubles down on anti-tracking tech: It'll be tougher for wily ad-biz cookie monsters to track Firefox

Charles 9

Re: Time-based cookie clearing

I think there's a newer one called Forget Me Not, which has the added benefit of enabling cookie blacklisting (the "Instant" option).

Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

Charles 9

Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

Most Americans don't need any reminding. Two words: Texas City.

Charles 9

Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

"...but precursors to conventional explosive too."

Don't see how you can possibly do that without too high a false positive rate. Remember, Oklahoma City was done completely with materials available to any farmer.

Anti-5G-vaxx pressure group sues Zuckerberg, Facebook, fact checkers for daring to suggest it might be wrong

Charles 9

"We usually put the right to life first so freedom of speech has to take a lower precedence."

Which is why abortion is such a touchy subject. Unlike most other arguments, you're putting two rights to life against each other, AND there are arguments in both sides' favor (which is why I, personally, cannot take a side on the debate at present; I recognize both have points and am pretty much of the mind that you pretty much have to handle these on a case-by-case basis).

Charles 9

Re: Stupid

"Firstly you just can't fix stupid!"

I have a feeling we'll NEED to find a way to fix stupid...before stupid takes the rest of us with them.

Charles 9

What about those who don't want to learn...yet are in a high enough position to cause trouble...and have enough charisma to make them difficult to vote out?

We give up, Progressive Web Apps can track you, says W3C: After 5 years, it decides privacy is too much bother

Charles 9

Re: Optional

"We are rapidly heading back towards "best viewed in X/Y/Z because Y/Z/X is broken"

Such as it is. Are you gonna just throw up your hands and say, "Stop the Internet! I wanna get off!" Because it's not like we have any real say in the matter anymore.

Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: 'GPL condom' for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel

Charles 9

Re: @Charles 9 - @Charles 9 - The thing that they do

"If I'm not mistaking, land can still be sold/bought. It is not forbidden."

It is if the landowners aren't SELLING. If none are being offered at any price because the owners know what they have and are hoarding, the market's cornered, so to speak.