Posts by Charles 9

Worst of CES Awards: The least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable

Re: How grumpy am I?

IOW, if you don't fix Stupid, Stupid's going to end up taking you with them.

Re: Authorised dealers only...

Tried an aftermarket manual?

Re: Anyone got a credible link to the current math on bitcoin or ether block energy consumption?

Two words: Chinese Cannon.

Can be used with ANY unencrypted communication, regardless of subject. It's also why Telnet was replaced with Secure Shell.

Basically, unencrypted = impossible to trust, end of.

The year ahead in technology fail: You knew they were bad, now they're going to prove it

Re: Splitting up...

That may be true of certain classes of appliances, but media devices are the clear exception. Reason being those devices with their crud are typically being sponsored, enabling the manufacturers to sell them at a discount to undercut the competition. Put it this way. No TV manufacturer would put something like Roku in an ad or on the box unless Roku was paying them for the privilege.

AMD claims up to 24 hours of laptop battery life with its latest Ryzen 6000 silicon

Re: Batery Life Claims

"That's difficult. Laptop energy usage can vary wildly depending on workload."

That's why you run it flat out as a worst-case scenario. My philosophy is that it's a lot better to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than to be given good news and then be disappointed. Same here. Tell me the bare minimum I can expect out of this thing and then I can call all the extra time gravy.

"That would be honest, but not very useful, because all kinds of optimizations that can have a large impact in realistic conditions wouldn't be tested at all."

But as you yourself said, to each his own. Everyone's demands and expectations differ, so given such a scenario, I'd like to see a floor. Besides, it might convince people to demand better batteries (or more-efficient top-end tech) if they learn they can't run a laptop flat out for more than an hour.

"The benchmarks wouldn't need to represent a 100% workload; they ought to represent a realistic workload, or even better a small variety of realistic workloads (e.g. gaming, video streaming, office, browsing)."

A spectrum, then? That could be useful, but like I said, I'd still like the see a floor as part of those benchmarks.

Batery Life Claims

I'll believe battery life claims when they're made under worst-case scenarios: with the laptops running flat-out so that the battery life benchmarks are reasonable minimums and that expected life should be better, not worse.

Windows giant seeks Pluton-ic relationship with chipmaker: AMD first out of the gates with Microsoft's security processor

Different degree of pwnage. BIOS images often can't be updated through Windows and require booting to a single-user OS, plus obscurity means (1) there are a lot of different BIOS types to figure out, and (2) it's hard to figure out which one is appropriate for any given intrusion.

This Pluton looks to make it a SPOF.

Fisher Price's Bluetooth reboot of pre-school play phone has adult privacy flaw

Re: Dial-up

Actually, I think these are the original original sources, also apparently provided by the man himself. And I think this is the site where I first encountered them.

https://www.secretlifeofmachines.com

And the videos appear to be mirrored:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/

Re: Dial-up

There's also Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines series, which featured the Telephone in one programme. I recall the episodes were once on the web, but the last I checked was nearly 15 years ago.

I believe it covered why Strowger (who was actually an undertaker) invented an automatic switching system: he was losing business to a rival whose wife was a telephone operator.

Unless it comes WITHIN their lifetime, humans are conditioned not to care about it. They'll be dead anyway and many of them don't have kids.

Nah, it won't install: The return of the ad-blocker-blocker

Re: I'm seriously thinking about charging Coca Cola rent.

And where do you think they get their own litter to drop? If not McDonald's, then whatever takeout place is handy. It's less a problem with the venue than with the customer. Customers demand eating on the go and whoever accommodates will get their money. What else can you do?

Tesla disables in-car gaming feature that allowed play while MuskMobiles were in motion

Re: Removing distraction = good

"In any case, my observation was merely, to quote Chesley Sullenberger, "technology is no substitute for experience, skill and judgment" (or for courtesy)."

The problem is, sometimes, that's all you've got. We have to deal with Stupid all the time, and Stupid unfortunately, tends to take others with them. My #1 rebuttal for the spike in steering wheel is to ask if he's willing to let his/her significant other drive one knowing a ghost driver (stupid or suicidal) could do a head-on at any time, regardless of the driver's skill, spike be damned.

Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK

Re: Incredible

But that's countered when you learn the slowest person on the team is (for one reason or another) your linchpin, meaning taking him out takes out the team, period. More often than not, catering to the slowest one of the bunch may be the only way to get things done.

Re: Colour me impressed...

"QOI has an interesting feature, in that it also includes a couple of "lookback" mechanisms, in which you can describe a pixel relative to the last pixel, using either one or two bytes."

Amiga graphics aficionados would recognize that technique, which they knew as HAM (Hold-And-Modify. Mmm, ham...) It was their way of getting more colors on the screen than the standard Amiga color palette would otherwise allow.

Re: This is the future

That horse bolted when transformation-resistant steganography was introduced. The container becomes irrelevant when the actual content is your signature...

Re: JXL is the future of all image formats

zlib/libpng is open source and the patents on Deflate have expired. Why reinvent the wheel at this point when bandwidth is the most limited resource right now, not computing power?

For security and bandwidth reasons. Many people won't let video files play inline. They're also overkill for things like avatars and online graphics.

Re: Pronouncing...

Was the Q in QOI heart-shaped, too?

Well-known Japanese language pun if you're not aware.

Re: Colour me impressed...

RLE? So it's basically a take on PCX, then, which also used RLE. I recalled being able to whip up an adequate PCX decoder in 486 assembler in the 90s for a practice project, using just the specs. Wasn't that complicated either, I recall.

When the air gap is the space between the ears: A natural gas plant let ransomware spread from office IT to ops

Re: Consequences

The trouble becomes what happens when the people causing your problems are up top, potentially over your head. And jumping ship sounds nice until you realize there are no other ships nearby and the water's full of sharks...

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Re: Ha Ha Ha

"However, it's been scientifically proven that 95% of bank notes are contaminated by cocaine, a highly addictive and health damaging substance."

And they even forgot the "scientifically-accurate" claim that cocaine can be absorbed through the skin so can get you through touch alone (while this is true, the absorption rate is much lower, meaning you'd have to basically dip your hand in the hard stuff to be affected). Now, if you start getting to stronger stuff like fentanyl (or its stronger sibling, carfentanil, meant only for use on large animals), however, then you start talking about risk factors by touch alone.

Frankly, I wonder how much these fools can stretch things without becoming Darwin Award winners...especially with designs specifically tailored to create aforementioned...

Re: DO NOT DO THIS!

It was the very first pilot show, way back in 2003. Dang, nearly 20 years ago, has it already been that long?

Fans of original gangster editors, look away now: It's Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976

Re: Qudos for Qedit...and BASIC...

I may be wrong, but based on how it's termed now, you may be thinking about "Marking".

Re: Sledgehammer to crack a walnut

https://www.nutworks.com.au/blog/the-uses-of-the-macadamia-shell

Interesting thought. I know they've used ground nut shells as an abrasive in the past, usually for sandblasting and the like, but this article here notes it also makes for good compost, filtration, or even outdoor cooking fuel.

Malaysia tweaks copyright law to hit streamers of copyright-infringing content

Re: "Guilty until proven innocent"

Doubt it. That's what connections are for...

The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good

Re: signal to noise

But that only works if everyone else also encrypts everything, including their laundry lists, too. IOW, you need a whole bunch more noise. Otherwise, your use of encryption (regardless of content) will stick out like a sore thumb, and they'll just start hound-dogging you until you make a mistake.

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

Re: ...easier to digest.

I thought it couldn't be patented, given that's what happens essentially with beer...

Re: Performance subscription model?

I don't know about that. If they do it at the same time as a new CPU release that makes AMD look slow, in a world where raw performance still matters...

Oh? What about the DNS root signing keys?

For that matter, has ANY "golden key" actually ever been compromised within it's working life?

Re: Paranoia?

But when was the last time a key of THAT nature got compromised? It's only in one, maybe two places, so it's s lot easier to guard.

How a malicious Android app could covertly turn the DSP in your MediaTek-powered phone into an eavesdropping bug

Re: More Arguments for Memory Safe Languages

"however, it is practically impossible to use rust to write a realtime OS that runs at a latency low enough to maintain an audio encoded stream of the required standard to enable lossless compression and encoding. It is not impossible to do this with C"

What makes you so sure of that since Rust mostly enforces memory safety via semantics and enforced rules which tend to take place at compile time, where optimizations normally take place? Why can't you have an OS that's both fast and memory safe since memory isn't the obstacle it once was (meaning you don't have to be so tight, the third leg of the "safe/fast/tight" trade-off triangle in this case)?

This House believes: A unified, agnostic software environment can be achieved

Re: There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution

So basically, physics gets in the way. But it may be handy for high-portability instances like highly-remote operations (for example, up a pole) where hands are already in use and there's no access to a toolbox. I've actually been fond of "Swiss army knife" multi-tools and actually found use for them when I only had one hand and one pocket.

In other words, there is no question where everyone can agree on the answer.

Re: There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution

What's to stop someone from making a tool that can be screwdriver one minute, a hammer the next, and can still be carried in one hand?

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

Re: Difference?

"Even letters or phone calls to your legal representative can be monitored should the prison have 'reasonable cause' to believe they are being used for illegal activity."

Attorney-Client Privilege in the US also has exceptions. One of them is what you describe and what we call the "Crime/Fraud Exception". Basically, if the client tries to commit a crime or fraud through the lawyer or the lawyer provides information of a criminal nature (such as advice on destroying evidence), and the prosecution has reasonable suspicion of this happening, the privilege can be waived for the purposes of surveillance and testimony.

Maybe not jamming per se, but if the prison itself hosted a cell mast and became the focal point of all cell calls in and just around the prison, it might be easier to control things within the prison.

Re: A prisoner named Sue

The problem is bad press. Prison brutality tends to be a hot-button issue and also raises Eighth Amendment concerns.

I was originally going to suggest signal jamming until I learned they can't get permission to do so without an Act of Congress, due to airwaves being a federally-regulated medium.

Yeah, good luck with that.

NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems

A. There may not BE a garage on the corner, or anywhere nearby.

B. The ONLY garage that can handle your car (due to know-how or parts) may very well BE the dealer in the next county. You see that already in phones.

Re: A more easily understandabe file tree? Yes, please!

"Says the guy on record as trying to fix stupid ..."

At least I have a good reason for doing so. If we don't stupid will take the rest of us down with us. We're already seeing it in the political arena.

"As a side note, a combination of find and grep, perhaps with the addition of a filter or two (to dig into archives), will easily do exactly what TOA wants."

But try telling that to the average Joe. That's my point. You're talking GeekSpeak, for all they care. Plus, Murphy can still strike. There can either be (a) more than one match or (b) a match that's actually not a match.

Re: A more easily understandabe file tree? Yes, please!

"The need here is for them to be findable, *without* a reboot, using only generic Unix tools such as `which` or `man -k` or `apropos`, or in the desktop's app launcher -- whatever desktop, whatever launcher. It _must_ be cross-desktop or it's NFG."

Then you're chasing unicorns because there will be setups out there that will be intentionally incompatible with another's standard. Any setup you find will not work somewhere. It's like trying to find the one question that will get you the same answer from everyone.

Re: The point is ...

What affliction? Anarchy?

Then ask yourself, "Who or what is a car driver?" Do we expect car drivers to possess the same degree of technical know-how we expect of Linux users? Some people's time is more precious than that.

Re: The point is ...

Which is kind of my point. You want to present immutable systems to the cogs so they don't accidentally become spanners. Said nothing about you making those immutable filesystems to your specifications. There's your Four Freedoms where it matters most.

As for Rule One, that wet signature can often (a) be in vanishing ink or (b) be overruled with some good lawyers behind the scenes.

As for me, I am both. The two are not mutually exclusive, and it's a necessary evil in today's society. That little government ID tends to drive the point home.

Re: Linux is about choice

"I would prefer to educate and encourage users to build apps from source, so that they can understand how the system works, fix bugs or add missing features themselves, and contribute to the community project that they are using."

And if they reply, "I ain't got time for this! JFDIOE!"?

Spaces, I'll give you, but why the hatred over capitals?

Re: @Charles 9 - rm -rf /*

No, I'm an advocate of trying to find a way to fix Stupid. Hopefully not by natural selection to avoid excessive widows and orphans, because as history has shown, Stupid can easily bring others down with them. You can try to stay out of the mire, but often the more comes to you, at which point your options are limited.

Re: The point is ...

Which "me" do you refer? The people who own the business and, yes, should have the freedom to tailor solutions appropriate to them? Or the cog on the keyboard who needs as much protection from pulling a Captain Peachfuzz as possible?

Re: The right to fix things oneself doesn't necessarily accord the ability

Not everyone. Think of hammers and broken fingers. Not a good idea if the one who can't work is supposed to be paying the bills...