Posts by Pez92

If MR ROBOT was realistic, he’d be in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and SMELL of WEE

Mr. Strawman

That anon was 100% accurate in saying it's the most accurate portrayal of hackers to ever come from Hollywood. The strawman you used to dismiss it about him being to attractive is an extremely childish and lazy way to argue your point and definitely damages your credibility as a supposed "journalist" (to remove the quotes would insult the profession).

Compared to 99% of shows where someone can just bang a keyboard for 30 seconds and "hack" their way into the FBI, this show is lightyears ahead. Like in real life, hacking is done via social engineering: dropping flash drives with malware, exploiting non-savvy employees with dictionary attackable passwords, or gaining physical access. He has a decent paying job which explains his apartment, and does not "go around telling everyone he's a hacker".

The only stereotype of "TV hackers" Mr. Robot falls victim to is that the actors are somewhat attractive, but even in that department they are below average for Hollywood hunks. Calling Rami Malek a "Brad Pitt Lookalike" is like calling Red Lobster a 5 star restaurant.

KFC takes legal axe to eight-legged mutant chicken claims

Re: Ah, I see the tactic

Apples and oranges. There is a clear line between an opinion, that their food is shit, and slander/libel, that they are using mutant animals, and they crossed it.

EU net neutrality could kneecap the Tories' opt-out pr0n filter plans

Missing the point

Talk about strawman, that's not at all the part people have a problem with. No one in the world is against the option for parents to opt IN to a program that blocks malicious content. Regardless of whether it's incomplete, imperfect, whatever: if a parent wants it, they should be able to have it, and it should be no more technically complicated than answering "Yes" when your ISP asks you.

The issue is that this program is opt OUT. That means, you have to deliberately contact your ISP to specifically put yourself on a list that says "I want porn". The fact that the list can extend beyond what you or I would consider porn, and the authority that makes the list is the government, this is a very slippery slope. This means the government has the power to censor things it doesn't like, and force people to expose themselves to petty attacks if they want to opt out and access the internet without a child-lock, whether or not they even have children.

Whether or not you believe the current government will abuse this power is 100% irrelevant to the issue. It's creating a loophole that someone, somewhere down the line will inevitably abuse, with nothing but the age old "Think of the children!" propaganda supporting it.

Backdoor bot brains snatched after cops, white hats raid servers

Re: Those responsible...

Harsh penalties for cyber crimes is risky because you never really know for sure who the real mastermind is. By definition, the hackers are always 1 step ahead, because if they weren't their attacks would fail. Considering they have these tools at their disposal, along with being lightyears ahead of law enforcement in terms of tech knowledge, cybercriminals are the most probable and capable of framing unknowing botnet slaves of their crimes by rerouting traffic and purposefully leading breadcrumbs leading back to their victim. The recent Ulbricht case has shown that you get absolutely no reasonable doubt from the argument of getting framed, so now more than ever hackers will see the merit of such a contingency.

This will crack you up: US drug squad's phone call megaslurp dates back to 1990s

The greatest trick

The greatest trick the main two political parties pulled is convincing America that they are the only two options. At the end of the day, they generally vote the same way, except in cases like these days where petty Republican senators vote the opposite of whatever the Democrats do to keep the pack mentality strong. The shocking thing that a lot of people don't realize is that because only half of adults vote, and these parties only command half of that vote a piece, the two major political parties only have the support of 1/4 of the country a piece. Now consider that, of the people who vote for a major political party, half have their foot in the door (moderates voting democrat, libertarians voting republican, etc). So, despite how hopeless we like to make "3rd party candidates" out to be, all it would take is for half of the people who don't vote to match their numbers and their grasp of the USA would quickly dismantle. Apathy, however, is hard to overcome.

You want disruption? Try this: Uber office raided again, staff cuffed

Re: illegal software...

So here's a parallel. In the United States (and most of the world), opiates are highly regulated. Many are completely illegal, many are controlled. If you have a license to produce and sell opiates, such as a pharmaceutical company, it is legal. Selling something like heroin, or pharmaceutical opiates unlicensed, is illegal. Making an app facilitating said sales would also be illegal. Apps like instagram where this occurs despite it not being the intention of the app are not illegal. This is why Uber is "illegal software" in places where cabs are highly regulated.

Give us a week to gut Superfish, begs Lenovo CTO

re: Another one to add to the Do Not Buy From list

I still find Lenovo to be the only company that makes laptops for under $1000 that are actually built to last and perform. Their bloatware is awful, like all bloatware, but I buy computers for the hardware, not the software.

My most recent computer purchase was a lenovo laptop, from best buy no less, so needless to say it was loaded up with bloatware, upwards of 20 icons on the desktop. The very first thing I did was plop in a windows 8.1 installer USB I downloaded painlessly from Microsoft, and due to the integrated product key and SSD install speed, I had a fresh install in 10 minutes. It's easier and faster than ever to do, and eliminates the bloatware issue.

Though I'd rather not have to do that, the only companies that make workstation laptops of comparable build/keyboard quality are Dell and Apple, both of which charge twice as much for the same hardware. I'd love to boycott every computer company that I disagree with, but then I'd have no one left to buy from. Such is life.

Authy 2FA app popped by simple, secret, code

> This is also a great example how libraries or features that aim to add security actually introduce security vulnerabilities.

By nature of being 2FA, this is false. You don't use an authy token in place of a password, it's in addition to the password. So no matter how badly authy implements their software, it cannot possibly make your accounts less secure. It just is the equivalent of not having 2FA.

> So what's broke?

The phone app is generating a valid token and the snippet on the websites is sending the unsanitized auth token, and then authy's server is reading the unsanitized token and executing commands with it. So the app is fine, ideally the website snippet should be updated to sanitize inputs, but they could actually get by with a hotfix by simply patching their servers to sanitize received auth tokens before reading them. I just tried it out and the exploit no longer works so it appears they've already done so.

Should online pirates get the same sentences as offline ones?

“Since 2000 I have seen an estimated 75% drop in sales and income. I have no doubt whatsoever that the well-known practice of downloading from pirate sites is the cause."

Right, because let's not even fathom the possibility that a musician could lose popularity over the course of 15 years. Must be the pirates.

Swap your keyless key for keyless key-less key. You'll need: a Tesla S and Apple Watch

What problem is keyless entry even addressing

I could see it being helpful for a lady or man-purse enthusiast who has their keys buried at the bottom of their bag, but taking out my phone from my pocket, unlocking it, opening an app, unlocking that, and pressing a button seems far less convenient than reaching into my pocket and grabbing my keys.

Net neutrality: Someone WILL sue. So will the FCC's rules hold up?

Information Provider?

In the newspaper analogy, AT&T is not the newspaper company. They are the the company that makes news stand quarter boxes. They do not and should not have any say in what "information content" you access. Ironically the only thing that makes them the newspaper company in their own analogy is if they go against net neutrality and control the content you can access.

Yahoo!'s Firefox search hook-up pays off as it nicks Google's US clicks

Yahoo is the worst search engine

The part that annoys me is that it seems to feel the need to reset my default to Yahoo every time firefox updates. As a privacy advocate, I don't like being tracked by Google, but the plethora of extensions I have installed already take care of that. Plus, if privacy was my main concern, I'd go for DDG or Startpage over Yahoo. The fact of the matter is that Google is just indisputably a better search engine when it comes to getting results. I've tried giving Yahoo a chance numerous times but inevitably after a day or two I search for something that Yahoo just fails to find and I try google and it's right there as result #1. Though it gets its fair share of crap, even Bing seems to do a better job.

SURPRISE: Norks' Linux distro has security vulns

Docky!

Funny to see they use docky...apparently my XFCE Mint installation looks shockingly like Red Star.

You go fast, but we go 'further' and 'deeper' – Voda tells 'Speedy' EE

Bandwidth is overrated

I'll take consistency over bandwidth any day of the week, provided the bandwidth is over 10Mbit. In my old place I had 105Mbit internet but the grid was built on spotty infrastructure so I'd get momentary downtime a few times per day. Now I'm on 25Mbit that's up 24/7 and would go as far as to say that it's 10x better than my old situation. Even for a home network where bandwidth isn't capped, 1080p video streaming buffers seamlessly, games don't lagg, and everything else works just as well on 25Mbit as it did on 105 (actually better without the downtime). The only area where there's any difference is in big downloads that can actually upload fast enough to match my bandwidth, which are pretty much steam and torrents. Unless you download a fuckton or run a livestream, I don't see how an individual would need more than 20, and that's on a home network. On mobile I'd choose 20Mbit everywhere over 200 outside any day of the week.

YES YES YES! Apple patents mousy, pressure-sensing iVibrator

I see they're taking the "design first, justify later" approach to inventing. I guess brute force will yield a good idea if applied enough times.

What's in your toolbox? Why the browser wars are so last decade

Re: IE

Although it is good that they make it easier to support the older versions, that's a problem they created for themselves in the first place. The other browsers simply prompt and allow users to update their browser so that developers don't have to put in extra work to support an inferior and outdated product.

PC makers! You, between Microsoft and the tablet market! Get DOWN!

Re: Couldn't disagree more

For the record, the kickstand IS extremely easy to do. You can get a case for most major tablets for $15 that will give it protection equal to the surface and a kickstand. It's a piece of metal/plastic that folds out, not rocket science.

Run a server on your Gb/s Google Fiber? OK, fine, fine ... maybe a small one

To understand their decision, you must understand their business model. A good comparison would be to look at the average Gym, where <20% of the members actually show up in a given month. As an individual, there is nothing preventing you from going there every day for 10 hours, but the membership price is determined by the fact that most people will retain their membership simply because they are comforted by the idea that they have a gym membership, despite the fact that they rarely use it. Google is banking on the fact that ~80% of its users will be using their service for watching youtube videos, browsing the web, and checking emails, while <20% will actually be downloading enough to use more data than they would on a 50MBps plan. As a result, they have to roll out features in stages, to make sure they don't give out something they have to later take away, as taking away features and raising prices piss off the customer base much more than initially holding them off.

For the average consumer, this will have no impact. For a business consumer, other options exist that are tailored to accommodate your needs. The reason the price is so low is because they are not actually selling you a gigabit connection so that you can crank out full bandwidth 24/7, rather a home internet service that has the potential to use up to a gigabit at any given time so that you can download, stream, and browse faster. You get the same service you'd get at that price from the cable company, but with access to 20x the bandwidth. There is a reason that gigabit connections for businesses cost so much more: the ISPs are trying to run a profitable business model.

Best Buy: Bring us your cowering, unwanted Microsoft Surface masses

For clarification, though I've only personally used the Surface Pro, the tablet's touchscreen is actually quite accurate. It's just that desktop operating systems are designed for a much smaller, and much more precise click, and they did a very bad job scaling things to account for that. Even if you tap with precision all day on your smartphone, you'd be amazed how poorly thumbing something in your palm transitions to poking something a few feet away from you. They goofed up hard by slamming undesirable tablet features onto the desktop OS and undesirable desktop features on the tablet OS. It was supposed to be a cross between a tablet and a laptop, but it's too bulky in weight and design to be used comfortably as a tablet, and too awkward to use as a laptop anywhere but on a desk, and even then typing awful with that overpriced keyboard.

Thai kids find free tablets hard to swallow as govt scheme hits trouble

The fundamental issue with this generation of tablets for education is that the only thing that justifies their cost is that they "replace expensive textbooks", but textbooks are significantly more durable and take much longer to become outdated than a phone does to break in some way. The average iPhone user is on the upper end of the middle class and a young adult and even still, 25% have broken screens. Now you're giving devices that are bigger and more cheaply made to children with no means to fix them themselves. So you know at LEAST 25% will break, most likely many more. The only option at this point is to have free repairs, which promotes carelessness. Or leaving them broken, defeating the purpose of the program in the first place. This is before you even factor in devices getting stolen, which I'm sure happens quite a bit when thieves know that literally every student has a tablet in their bag. In a few years when you can get a $50 dual core tablet with a plastic screen, that's when this will become viable.

NSA admits slurping thousands of domestic emails with no terror connection

Re: George W. Bush is evil!

"This administration puts forth a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide...I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to take out the terrorists without undermining our constitution and our freedoms. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. That means no more national security letters to spy on Americans who are not suspected of committing a crime. No more tracking citizens who do no more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. That is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists"

- Barack Obama, 2007

Apple sucking triple the phone switchers as Samsung – report

These statistics are so overcooked I can smell them burning from the US.

1) Comparing ALL samsung phones with that of iPhones one high end device, and then comparing demographics of the buyers as if that was somehow fair, valid, or even interesting. That would be like pointing out that the average Porsche owner has more money than the average Toyota owner: No shit, sherlock. Take Samsung's $600 S4 and compare it to Apple's $600 fashion statement and you'll see a much different picture being painted.

2) Considering a majority of smartphone users are Android users, a majority of people who switch to Apple AND Samsung are previous Android users. If Samsung drew 30% of it's sales from previous iPhone users there wouldn't be any iPhone users left.

This article should be removed to be honest...it's extremely deceiving to people who don't understand statistics.

Chinese government to spend $277 BEEELION on air-quality improvements

Re: Optional

Humans are responsible for such a small percentage of carbon emissions. Everyone could leave their lights on all day and swap out their car for a 10MPG hummer and we'd still produce a spec per year compared to one volcano or forest fire. Too many people live under the illusion that the status quo of the universe can be maintained, that we don't live in an ever-changing climate that has historically adapted or killed off every species that's ever inhabited it. This is largely due to our egos, thinking we're both the problem and the solution, and also due to our shortsightedness. Man-made global warming is nothing but a selling point for Mr. Gore.'s film career...if you don't believe me just consult his annual energy consumption.

It is, however, true that energy pollution lowers air quality, lowering quality and quantity of life for those around us, and it is also true that the polar ice caps will raise the sea level. Thus, it is not an inconvenient truth, merely a convenient lie as although cutting back on emissions won't delay the inevitable, it will raise air quality. The unfortunate side effect, however, is people with THAT mentality. Tisk tisk.

Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

Re: What gives ANY company the right...

They can brick consoles, they can brick phones, they can brick glasses. It's unfortunate but not illegal.