Posts by Door Handle

Apple heading for Supreme Court showdown over iOS App Store 'monopoly' gripe

30%?

"But the point is that this closed loop with Apple as its spoke, they are the first purchaser of that 30 percent markup."

If Apple takes a 30% cut then the markup is surely 43%. Or do I misunderstand?

A web where the user has complete control of their data? Sounds Solid, Tim Berners-Lee

Re: Would have been helpful...

Thanks for the summary. As I understand it this is something like a more private version of Facebook, an alternative solution (like Diaspora or Friendica?). But Facebook (or Google+) is not "the web", it's not the only place where the user needs "complete control of their data". What about ads tracking you, Google analysing your search terms, your emails, tracking your location history, Microsoft slurping your data via Windows, Amazon keeping your purchase history, Youtube tracking your comments and viewing history? What about banks, utility companies, online shops, news portals all tracking you, sending you DM via third parties etc. etc.?

Open-source alt-droid wants to know if it's still leaking data to Google

Why?

Why fork LineageOS? Why fork K9? Maintaining a full ecosystem of a mobile OS and related apps is a huge task. I don't see why he is not spending his time on improving the existing projects/packages instead, I mean the goals seem to be the same. As others have asked, what's wrong with using LineageOS and F-Droid, with no google apps?

Signal has been criticized on privacy grounds, so does not seem like an obvious choice to me. And as for the name of the project: try searching for /e/ on the internet...

Meet the open sorcerers who have vowed to make Facebook history

Re: Any kind of central "real world identity" system is RIPE for abuse. Period.

You don't necessarily need any new infrstructure or any other form of co-operation from ISPs. Check out Delta Chat: https://delta.chat/en/

This is an open source Android chat app built on top of the existing SMTP and IMAP protocols. Pretty compatible with E-mail clients and has end-to-end encryption, it can use your existing mail accounts / servers. Of course gmail works as well. You don't need anything apart from the Android app to start using it.

Net boffins plot password alternatives

Use public keys?

Why not use public key cryptography instead of passwords? When signing on to a new website, the browser could detect that a new key is required (e.g. in an <input type="publickey"> element), and could generate a key pair and submit the public key. On logging in, the browser would automatically use the private key corresponding to the site or provide a list of possible identities for the user to select the one he needs.

This way the server only stores your public key and even if the server gets compromised hackers cannot use your key to log in to the same site or to anywhere else.

Apple MacBook mid-2010

Numbers?

The numbers don't seem to add up. The battery is rated at 63.5 Wh. With an average power consumption of 23W, it should run out of juice in less than 3 hours. Also, if recharging consumes merely 7 Watts then you'd expect the battery to recharge in more than 9 hours, which doesn't seem realistic.

One fifth of humans say aliens walk among us

One in Five (20%) Global Citizens??

A big FAIL in statistics. Individual ratios should be weighted according to the population of the countries. Calculated this way, the actual ratio is around 0.35.