Posts by sisk

Facebook suspends account of Cambridge Analytica whistleblower

Re: Improper use of Facebook data

Personally I'm of the opinion that Facebook - and really social media in general - has distorted every election since its inception. Echo chambers tend to do that. I think that's pretty obvious in fact.

These days, thanks to social media, people get more exposure to coinciding views and less exposure to opposing views because they tend to make social media connections with people who have similar, or at least compatible, views to their own. Because of that their own views - right or wrong - get reinforced to the point that they are absolutely unshakable. This whole thing has an even worse side effect of making any sort of reasonable dialog basically impossible. If you truly believe that hasn't distorted our elections then you haven't put much thought into it.

Oldsters are uneasy with the notion that Facebook et al mines their data, he said. Young folk have no such qualms, understand the transactions they participate in and are more familiar with the privacy controls of the services they use.

In other words, youngsters know that Facebook uses their profile data to target ads and don't care. Oldsters know that Facebook uses their profile data to target ads and do care. Both groups understand the privacy controls, but one understands that those controls don't protect your privacy against Facebook and its advertising partners and the other just doesn't care because they grew up in a post-privacy world and never had any real privacy to begin with.

Fermi famously asked: 'Where is everybody?' Probably dead, says renewed Drake equation

Re: The drake equation is useless

*Intelligent level is questionable assumption in parts of the population.

You mean like the part that believes in alien cover-up conspiracy theories?

My problem with the Drake equation is that it is, at it's core, really not even an educated guess. Worse than that, it's a series of guesses, some of them not even educated. The first few values are probably pretty accurate - we do have a good idea of how often stars are born at this point, but any of the several values past that are pure guess. Honestly you're just as likely to arrive at the correct odds for us to contact other intelligent civilizations by putting a bunch of odds on a dart board and throwing darts blindfolded.

And it doesn't even begin to take into account the aliens who might have the misfortune of their first glimpse of us being Hitler or some random flat-earther and deciding we are best avoided.

Patch LOSE-day: Microsoft secures servers of the world. By disconnecting them

Re: Love it!

Cifs = Samba

If you've truly moved away from Windows then you should be using NFS for file sharing and CUPS for printer sharing rather than CIFS. You'd have much less headache that way. Samba's only place IMHO is in mixed networks.

Re: Oh dear

Very poor practice to rely on static IPs

You've clearly either never actually worked in IT or have only worked in one small and somewhat unusual shop.

Seriously, how many times does this have to happen? You'd think as slow as Microsoft's patch cycle is that they'd have time to test the dang things before they push them out.

It's Pi day: Care to stuff a brand new Raspberry one in your wallet?

Ok. I have just one question.

Which of the projects on my todo list is going to end up with a RasPi 3B+ at its core?

Air gapping PCs won't stop data sharing thanks to sneaky speakers

Meh

Can anyone think of any reason to have speakers plugged into a system that's airgapped? Because I can't. This isn't really a viable a means of defeating airgap because most airgapped systems are either not going to have speakers or are going to be in server rooms where any kind of audio communication is going to be drowned out by the noise from fans and ACs.

Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

A very sad day indeed. The world has lost a brilliant man. His contributions to science are impressive, but even more impressive is the number of people who credit him with their interest in science.

Elon Musk invents bus stop, waits for applause, internet LOLs

High tech for the sake of high tech

This concept introduces a much more expensive solution with many more potential failure points to a problem that was solved decades ago. It is the complex solution that doesn't work attempting to replace the simple solution that works just fine.

And, frankly, I gotta admit that I agree that the isolation Musk is seeking is a conceit that only the rich can afford. I mean seriously, how often do people get killed by random strangers on a bus?

In my opinion the only reason to pursue this particular design is to have a high tech solution for the sake of having a high tech solution, which, in my experience, usually results in disaster. You should not replace low tech solutions that work just fine with high tech solutions that may introduce new problems unless doing so offers some benefit great enough to offset the potential problems. And, frankly, not having to sit next to strangers is not that big a benefit.

Got some broken tech? Super Cali's trinket fix-it law brought into focus

Re: John Deere and Apple Make For Strange Bedfellows

Speaking as someone who spent my teen-aged summers working on my grandpa's farm, spent a couple summers during my college years on another farm, then grew up and married a farm girl, I can't imagine any farmer I know buying a tractor that they couldn't repair themselves. Maybe a corporate farm could manage to have the professionals do all their repairs, but they generally hire their own mechanics for that. All the farmers I personally know are still running family owned farms. They'd go bankrupt in under 5 years if they couldn't do the work on their tractors themselves. And as much as those things cost they've got to get decades worth of work out of them to break even.

Re: Sounds fine, but:

In practical terms, the only repair likely to be made, for nearly all owners, will be the battery

You're forgetting screens. These days batteries have gotten good enough that broken screens are more common than flat batteries.

Re: Sounds fine, but:

...repair and maintenance is more profitable and recurring

Which is why any time I buy a new car I go out and buy a $75-$100 book to go with it. One thing I love about the automotive industry: it's not all that hard to get the parts at the same price that the mechanics pay, and it's not terribly difficult to learn enough to do all the basic repairs yourself. Anything too big for me to fix by myself over a weekend is probably enough of a problem to justify replacing the whole car anyway.

Re: Knock Knock Knock

Which, by it's very nature implies that all your politicians are crooks - or at least corrupt.

If you ever find a non-crooked, non-corrupt politician who has attained any level of power make sure you take a picture. They won't stay that way for long. Either the power will corrupt them, as it is wont to do, or they'll get knocked down by other politicians who play dirty.

Re: Hoorah !

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: I'm a weirdo who doesn't value my own time nearly as highly as I should. I know, admit, and accept this.

Frankly, time-economical or not, I'd probably be inclined to repair my phone myself every single time it broke provided I could get replacement parts for less than the cost of replacing the whole thing. What has kept me from doing so thus far are the dual facts that I'm usually ready to upgrade by the time I need to do any repairs anyway and on the rare occasion that hasn't been the case I've not been able to get parts for a halfway decent price.

Suspected drug dealer who refused to poo for 46 DAYS released... on bail

I would imagine that after 46 days he probably felt pretty shitty.

Sysadmin left finger on power button for an hour to avert SAP outage

getting approval for emergency downtime.

Isn't emergency downtime something you normally ask forgiveness for rather than permission?

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired for opposing hiring caps on white, Asian male nerds

It's like I've been saying for years: discrimination is illegal and immoral even when it's aimed at the majority.

Besides, I still say that the hiring imbalances in Silicon Valley are more a product of the pool of candidates for those types of jobs than any sort of discriminatory hiring practices. It's hardly Google's fault if most folks with degrees in computer science and experience to go along with them have similar skintones and anatomies.

Google: Class search results as journalism so we can dodge Right To Be Forgotten

If search results get classified as journalism does that mean that laws regarding untrue news stories get applied to them? And if so, wouldn't that mean that any search result that comes up for "flat earth" would have to be an article about how insane flat earthers are and any search result for "climate change" would have to be scientifically accurate? Seems like a good idea to me.

Paul Allen's six-engined monster plane prepares for space deliveries

The Falcon Heavy could well end up being the platform of choice for large payloads, but I somehow doubt it'll beat the Stratolaunch for efficiency when it comes to smaller payloads. My guess is that we'll end up using different systems for different types of payloads. There is room for both.

Cryptocurrencies kill people and may kill again, says Bill Gates

From his comments here I think Gates has gotten all his knowledge of cyptocurrencies from mainstream media. The fact of the matter is that cryptocurrencies are far easier to track than cash transactions, or even transactions using foreign (to whatever nation in question) banks. And all his arguments against cryptocurrency can be much more directly applied to cash transactions.

NRA gives FCC boss Ajit Pai a gun as reward for killing net neutrality. Yeah, an actual gun

Re: This isn't tone deaf - it is purposefully intended to threaten death

Concerning the 2nd amendment and militias, let's separate it out to the two clauses it contains:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,

This is a justification clause. It states the reason that the amendment exists and carries no provisions.

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is the operative clause, the part of the amendment which actually guarantees a right. It is not dependent upon the justification clause and does not cease its function if the justification clause ceases to be true.

In other words, any argument about a militia not being necessary any more are irrelevant. Whether we actually still need a militia or not the operative clause of the 2nd amendment is still in full legal force and, as part of the Constitution, is the highest law in the land.

Until and unless an amendment is passed limiting or repealing the second then it, and the protection of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is in full effect, as has been backed up by multiple SCOTUS decisions, the most recent of which was a mere decade ago.

Now if anyone wants to talk about such an amendment, by all means lets discuss it. But let's not waste our time trying to pass gun laws which A) won't get enforced very well if existing gun laws are any example, and B) are going to get overturned in SCOTUS on the first challenge because they violate the 2nd amendment.

Re: We have the clueless leading the blind...

it now appeared 4 trained law enforcement officers did not feel able to rake on a shooter with an AR15 rifle.

I don't believe that's what happened at all. I think it much, much more likely that the law enforcement officers let it happen to use it as fuel for their anti-gun rhetoric. I base that on the fact that they were warned about this guy multiple times and did nothing. They knew he was unstable and had guns and did nothing. They knew he'd threatened this and did nothing. They watched him enter the building and heard the gunshots and did nothing. And then they started kept talking about how we need more gun control.

That, to me, does not sound like people who were afraid to do their job. It sounds to me like men with an agenda.

Re: This isn't tone deaf - it is purposefully intended to threaten death

There is nothing about the NRA anymore that has to do with hunters.

Given that 90+% of its members are hunters, I would have to disagree with you here.

The NRA has been shown to be a conduit between the russians and the US congress/lobbyists.

Sources please.

Let's ban all firearms until we have a rational policy. Let's take a lesson from other countries that are far more intelligent and civilized than mine.

In the UK the murder rates went up when they implemented gun bans (source). In Australia the gun ban had very little effect on the murder rate (source) and the armed robbery rate actually increased (source).That being the case a blanket firearms ban would be one of the dumbest things we could possibly do based on existing examples. Not to mention the fact that it would require a Constitutional amendment that, frankly, wouldn't have a prayer of passing even in the current anti-gun frenzy.

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

I would be very impressed indeed if you could design an Alexa-like device that could tell the difference between someone screaming in fear and someone screaming in pleasure. Humans have been known to fail that particular test, to the great embarrassment of many. Or, even more difficult, tell the difference between a child screaming because they're hurt and a child screaming because an older sibling is tickling them. Oh, and while you're at it, you'd better be able to tell the difference between an actual human and a TV.

The technical challenges with this entire idea are probably insurmountable without some serious AI. And, frankly, if they tried to implement this anyway the number of false alarms coming into the local police department would ultimately end up costing more lives, not saving lives.

Kentucky gov: Violent video games, not guns, to blame for Florida school massacre

Re: They're not morons.

@Hardrada You make a good point, but at the same time we've got mentally ill people going on rampages and killing people by the dozen every month or so in this country. And that, in my opinion, is all down to the rather insane way we approach mental health in this country. Yes, we need a way to assure that only the legitimately mentally ill end up in psychiatric hospitals, but we also can't keep ignoring mental health problems.

I don't pretend to know what the answer is, but in my opinion it's painfully obvious that mental health is the direction we need to be looking.

Re: "Yes. BECAUSE of the police, which can be turned against the population"

I would like to see what would happen if someone should start to buy second hand tanks and cannons.

Fun fact, you can if you've got enough money. A lot of organizations will buy them as decorations. About 45 miles from where I'm at someone set up one of the Davy Crockett nuclear cannons that they'd bought second hand as part of a military memorial. Mind you they're disabled, but I'd imagine a semi-competent gunsmith could probably fix them (maybe not THAT one....there's a bit more to it than most guns).

Re: The 2nd Ammendment was probably right for its time

The 2nd Amendment isn't about defending yourself against crime. It's about defending yourself against the government. The police are EXACTLY the people we'd be up against in the kind of situation the 2nd Amendment was meant for.

Basically, the founding fathers didn't trust themselves or their successors to stay honest. And, based on some of the crap the US government has pulled in the last hundred years or so, that was probably wise on their part.

Re: The Guns are Not the Cause You're Looking For ... Move Along

Eh, it wasn't such a great success in either of those countries. Look at the murder rates instead of the gun murder rates. Sure, the gun murder rates dropped off, but....

In Australia the murder rate stayed mostly steady for a decade, even spiking way higher one year (I've no idea what happened with that statistical blip) after they banned guns. After a decade the murder rate finally started to drop off, but I have trouble believing that had anything to do with a law that went into affect 10 years earlier.

In the UK after the gun ban went in the murder rate rose for 10 years straight before leveling off. After that it start dropping and is, now, about the same as it was before the gun ban went in.

So, basically, those gun bans were only successful if you think being stabbed to death is somehow better than being shot.

To be fair we DO have a cultural problem in America. There are nations out there with proportionally just as many gun owners and nowhere near our crime levels. There are also nations with many fewer guns with much, much higher murder rates. We do indeed have a cultural problem in America that gun control can never solve. We will continue to see violence until we deal with the real issues, and to my mind that violence is no less palatable if it's done with a knife than with a gun.

That said, the problem is NOT video games, and in my opinion the shooter in Florida shouldn't have been able to legally buy a gun. First, if he's not old enough to handle alcohol (drinking age is 21 in the US) then he's not old enough to handle a gun unsupervised. Second, he was known to be mentally ill. I don't know what kind of morons have been arguing against the restrictions that would keep legitimately mentally ill people from buying guns, but they should be on the receiving end of a clue-by-four. And I say that as someone who grew up with guns - even though I don't own any right now - and firmly believe that the US government is far too untrustworthy for the US population to be unarmed.

Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course

Re: Does this course incur a fee?

I need to find a sanctuary from these puns.

If my memory on the matter is correct, they wouldn't be dealing with ghosts. I think that any spirits of the deceased in Catholic belief are all in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, leaving only demonic and angelic entities roaming around in the world. Though given that I am not and have never been a Catholic I could be mistaken. Not that angels and demons would be any more possible to prove scientifically than ghosts mind you.

Also I think that the belief is that mistakes would either result in a failed exorcism or the exorcist would risk becoming possessed themselves.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Re: Hmmm :(

She can use a PC and her smart phone - but it is interesting that she will always avoid anything technical with "I don't understand technology". In a house where meal times are often discussions of technology and science.

My sister does something similar. I've never quite figured out why, but I've got a theory. She is a phenomenally intelligent woman who learns almost by osmosis with zero effort, but she plays dumb constantly.

My theory on the matter is that it's a reaction to the bullying and isolation she experienced fairly early on as her intelligence started to become obvious to those around her. It also probably doesn't help that her best (and, for a significant portion of her late childhood and most of her teen years, only) friend is a bit of an airhead who can't keep up in intellectual conversations.

Re: Hmmm :(

I think the type of woman who would remove the battery from her phone and then wonder why its not working has a much higher chance than normal of also being the type of woman who would use a phrase like "cute little door", so I find that entirely plausible. I also see no reason why it should be excluded as a part of the story if it did happen.

And I most especially don't agree a story about one woman - especially one in which the tone suggests this incident is outside the norm - is sexist. To my mind sexism here would require the implication that this sort of thing is the norm for women, which is not the case.

I forget the exact issue, but I once received an email asking for help with a computer. Specifically the problem was with, and I quote: "The actual computer, not the thing next to it that I put CDs in and plug flash drives and my keyboard and stuff into."

It took me a few minutes of alternating between face palming and laughing before I could answer that one.

Perusing pr0nz at work? Here's a protip: Save it in a file marked 'private'

It doesn't surprise me at all. You're talking about a psychological phenomenon that's about as close to a droud as you can (currently) get in the real world. Is it really any surprise that some guys who overindulge show some serious lapses in judgement?

New Google bias lawsuit claims company fired chap who opposed discrimination

Perhaps this guy is one of those SJWs who don't know the difference between advocating for equality and spewing hate speech and advocating discrimination against whatever group they perceive as the oppressive majority. If so then Google would absolutely have had strong grounds for terminating him. I mean it's pretty hard to imagine an entire corporate culture went from "you're advocating equality, here's a bonus" to "You're advocating equality, GTFO" with one management change.

It is, however, entirely possible that what happened is exactly what he says happened. Without seeing the actual memos and posts we can't be sure.

Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?!

Re: This can't end well

How long until this mysteriously starts happening to enemies of the US?

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it started happening years ago. Just like I'm fairly certain that at least a few intelligence organizations knew about Meltdown and were using it long before it came to public light.

IBM Java CTO: Devs shouldn't have to learn Docker, K8s, 30 other things to deploy an app

Re: Why!!!

Node.js has yet to be my first choice of languages for any project, but it's not that bad. Then again, I still usually use PHP when I'm just messing around with quick little stuff for my own personal use, so maybe I'm just getting to be an old fart.

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

Re: What could possibly...?

But credit card numbers? I long ago stopped freaking out about those. If my number gets stolen I flag the transaction, the bank refunds it, and they send me a new card with a different number. It's a minor hassle.

It's a much bigger problem for folks who live paycheck to paycheck. I know a guy who's absolutely horrible at managing his money and is generally broke a few days after his payday despite having a decent paying job. Someone got his debit card details and cleaned out his account. As you said, not a big deal because the bank refunded it, but in the meantime he went 2 weeks without money to buy fuel and food. He lost more than a few pounds those couple weeks.

Also, the last time my credit card details were stolen it was through the Target hack. I always check for skimmers on the gas pumps - in case you haven't figured it out already, I'm a bit on the paranoid side - and I've turned a couple of them over to the police. To my knowledge I've never fallen victim to one, though they've gotten good enough lately that they're net easy to spot even if you know what to look for.

Re: What could possibly...?

don't you think your going a little to far with the precautions especially when millions of others are happily doing online transactions without your precautions and aren'y getting done over?

Given the number of people who are victims of identity theft or have their payment details stolen I'd say Pen-y-gors has a pretty reasonable level of paranoia there. I'm pretty close to the same level myself. I've got one debit card which only has money on it for a few hours after I get paid (and that only because my paycheck gets direct deposited onto it) and just before I buy anything online. And I'm seriously considering getting a different one for online transactions. I use cash for everything I can use cash for and any extra money is sitting in a savings account where I have to walk into a bank and show ID to access it.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I still don't trust Google Pay. Or any other pay by tap system for that matter. I realize the transactions are encrypted, but I don't think you could make encryption strong enough for me to be comfortable with the idea of my payment details being transmitted via NFC.

If at first you don't succeed, you're likely Intel: Second Spectre microcode fix emitted

I would imagine that the damages are going to be pretty hefty even by Intel's standards given the fact that pretty much every organization in the world and everyone except for Luddites and a few older AMD fanboys fit into at least some of the classes in the class action lawsuits levied at Intel. This is not going to be a week's worth of profit. If the courts do their job properly then Intel is in for a rough few years.

I don't think the damages will be enough to drag them under. Nor would I want that. If nothing else the sudden dissolution of Intel would leave the type of power vacuum that can destabilize entire industries. But you can bet that the damages will be enough to actually hurt.

Farts away! Plane makes unscheduled stop after man won't stop guffing

Re: Remedies For Excess Gas

8. Plug it

They make plugs specifically for that orifice.

What? Those aren't for keeping stuff in? Oh, never mind then.

Re: Ah that might explain it

I once had to spend 9 hours on a flight to Jamaica sitting behind a family that were all dumping the most foul smelling toxic waste into the atmosphere, it was like being trapped in beelzebub’s buttocks.

They could’ve all had the same meal and all shared the same intolerance to one of the ingredients ...

Don't be ridiculous. Of course they could. They're a family, which means they most likely share meals and definitely share genetics. If they had some meal that was not usually part of their diet I would not find the idea of a whole family developing a case of digestive distress at the same time at all unusual.

So....he was asked to stop a bodily function. Utterly ridiculous. If he was farting that much then most likely he was having digestive issues and it was very likely beyond his control. What exactly what this guy supposed to do about it? I get that it's unpleasant, but I will never understand how doing something that you HAVE to do and have little choice about can possibly be rude.

BOFH: Turn your server rack hotspot to a server rack notspot

Were the original uni based stories really that far back? Damn, I feel old now....

BOFH junior in the PFY

I'm pretty sure Stephan's pushing 30 by now. Maybe 35. I'm pretty sure he's neither a youth nor a junior at this point. Honestly he should really be contemplating his own unbreakable contract as a senior systems engineer at this point. And he probably would be if he weren't still paying penance for trying and failing to off Simon a while back.

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

Honestly neither WoW nor Overwatch - MMO and arena FPS both being genres I dislike - hold much interest for me so I've not paid attention. That strikes me as odd though. Why in the world would they ban WINE users?