Posts by JohnFen

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

That's probably true, but it represents no actual loss.

Re: Not half-way good enough.

"Just a FYI, that is probably script that has been run through a minimiser."

Yes, this is very likely true. It doesn't make the practice any more acceptable, though.

Re: Not half-way good enough.

Thank you, BongoJoe. You're one of the good ones!

Every time I see the argument that we should allow ad networks to run code on our machines because if we don't then we're hurting the websites, I can only think of two things:

1) Good job, there, advertisers, using web site owners as human shields like that.

2) Web sites who show so much contempt for their readers that they insist on exposing them to advertising networks like that are web sites that do not deserve consideration or respect. Best is not having such ads in the first place, but trying to convince people to lower their defenses against them crosses the line into being outright contemptuous.

Re: Dynamic stalemates seem to be a thing now ...

"The only way that we will see an ad-free internet is when there's a couple of widely available, trustworthy, low fee micro-payment services"

It still amazes me that this doesn't exist on the internet, when it exists in many places in the physical world. Even my laundromat uses a micropayment service.

Re: Not half-way good enough.

Nice job there, stating outright that you think anyone who answers "yes" is lying.

Some of us, like myself, already do that when it's an option, and if subscribing means that that the tracking stops.

Re: Why does Google get to lay down the law

"what gives Google the right to decide for me?"

The fact that you use Chrome does. If you don't like it, you could always use a more sensible browser.

Re: Adverts

"I realised a while back that adverts on TV annoy me."

Me too. I was about 10 years ago that my limit was reached on TV ads -- that TV advertising was so frequent and awful that it was no longer worth putting up with them to watch the shows. So I stopped watching TV.

"The thing that really surprises me is that ad agencies really do seem to think that they provide valuable service and can't understand why we can't see that."

This always gets me, too. They seem to have a baseline assumption that ads are of value to normal people, not just advertisers.

Conceptually, this could be true, but ads as they exist today (regardless of the medium they appear in) are light-years away from that.

Yes, but

They still allow ads that engage in tracking, rendering the blocking worthless to me.

Hua-no-wei! NSA, FBI, CIA bosses put Chinese mobe makers on blast

Trust

I don't trust Huawei any more or less than any other cell phone manufacturer. US spy agencies seem to asserting that somehow, US-friendly manufacturers are more trustworthy than the others. This is plainly false -- they are all deeply suspect.

However, as a US citizen, I also take note of the potential of harm. The Chinese government is not in a position to do me, personally, much harm whatsoever -- but the US government is, so if I have to choose which untrustworthy entity I'm to be exposed to, the likes of Huawei seems the better choice.

We already give up our privacy to use phones, why not with cars too?

"void your vehicle warranty,"

Personally, this is meaningless point to me. I've found warranties to border on worthless and no longer concern myself about them at all.

Re: best "to buy a really old car that isn't super-connected"

"And if they reply that it's being demanded by your insurance company.."

You tell them that's between you and your insurance company.

Well...

I already go to great lengths to retain privacy when using my phone. I can't do anything about my carrier, but I can certainly stop all the other spies.

I'll do the same thing with my car. If the day comes that I can't buy a car that is spy-free (unlikely -- there will probably be suitable used cars on the market for longer than I have life left), then I'll modify the car I get as needed,

Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

Re: Rinse, repeat

"What, based on AMP for Web, gives you any inclinatiom there's going to be an option to disable this heap o' shite?"

It requires Javascript, so you can always disable it by disabling Javascript.

Re: some people may find this appealing

" if you exclude style formatting you can't view tabular data nicely for one"

If you want to send actual documents where this sort of thing is important, then attach a such a document. It's more useful that way anyhow, as people can view and manipulate it in an appropriate application rather than half-assing it in HTML. Don't pollute email with this crap.

AMP pages from the browser require the use of the "AMP viewer" to see -- which is a bit of Javascrript. Disable Javascript or use something like NoScript and you won't get the AMP pages anymore -- at worst, you'll be immediately redirected to the canonical page.

Ends-Means

Good lord, AMP is such a blight.

""I have plenty of concerns about AMP, both technical and ethical," he wrote in a post on news aggregator Lobste.rs. "But when we joined the AMP trial, we immediately saw higher user engagement on our AMP pages."

In other words, he's making an "ends justify the means" argument. "Sure, AMP is fraught with technical and ethical problems, but it gets us more revenue, so everything's good!"

AMP in email? Whatever. Those emails will remain invisible to me -- I don't allow HTML rendering or any automatic accessing of any outside data (even from the same place as the email was sent from).

FCC commish gobbles Verizon's phone-locking BS, says it tastes great

Re: I thought all carriers shared a stolen handset list.

The only difference between Verizon and the other major telecoms is that Verizon pretends like they're different.

"Surpringly"?

"Surprisingly, however, that skepticism was not shared by one of the FCC's own commissioners"

There's nothing surprising about that whatsoever. The FCC has already made it very clear that they view the interests of major telecoms to be much more important than little things like the public good or what actual human beings want and need.

Nothing about this is surprising. Expect the sell-outs to continue.

Facial recognition software easily IDs white men, but error rates soar for black women

Makes me wish

This makes me wish I were a black woman.

Still not on Windows 10? Fine, sighs Microsoft, here are its antivirus tools for Windows 7, 8.1

Re: Marketing vs reality again

"Its consumer versions you have to opt out of it on."

Wait, Microsoft has changed its mind and is finally allowing people to opt of their spying? How is that not headline news?

Re: MS Give Windows 7 & 8 users a Virtual Machine with their previous Windows 7 & 8 O/S in it.

"I could have migrated my old operating system to a virtual machine on Windows 10, and would have adopted it early."

But then you'd have to put up with Windows 10.

Apple's top-secret iBoot firmware source code spills onto GitHub for some insane reason

Re: Own fault

"http://www.checkshorturl.com"

Hey, thanks! Good to know. It's still much easier to simply not click them, but I'll keep this in my back pocket in just in case.

Re: Cupertino's highly secretive idiot-tax operations

Hey, In addition to all that, I also face VMS and AIX. Come on aboard, guys!

Re: Own fault

How can you check the contents without clicking the link? Personally, I never click on shortened URLs, in part because there's no way of knowing where they'll take you.

Re: why

"Because having tried 3 generations of android phone and been sick of the lack of updates"

I consider that a feature, not a bug. But then, I run a third-party ROM in part to ensure that I can control when updates happen.

Re: why

What does any of that have to do with Joe's criticism about Apple locking users out of their own devices?

Re: why

"Seriously, why do people pay (what I consider to be) a ridiculous amount of money for a computing device when the manufacturer openly admits how hard they work to lock you out of it."

This is the primary reason why an iPhone is a nonstarter for me.

Re: Got my copy!

"If you want it, go get it while you can!"

There's no rush. Once it's out, it can't really be taken back.

Uh-oh! Someone hit the Kalanick button! Uber's fired CEO claims Waymo deal vindicates him

The Waymo thing

The Waymo thing was, of course, only one of a long laundry list of horrible things the company has done. And not even, in my opinion, the worst. Uber still needs to be put out of our misery.

Due to Oracle being Oracle, Eclipse holds poll to rename Java EE (No, it won't be Java McJava Face)

"Had anyone asked us, we'd have suggested !@#$ Larry EE"

That's far too kind to Larry.

From July, Chrome will name and shame insecure HTTP websites

Re: CA Roots

This is actually my only criticism of the effort. If the lack of SSL on a site is enough to have it labelled as insecure by the browser, then you could argue that certs that are only signed by the big CAs should be labelled as such, too.

I gave up on considering them "trusted" a few years back.

Re: yet more encouragement ...

Setting up a website to use HTTPS is simple, though. This shouldn't be much, if any, impediment even to the smallest of site operators.

Winter is coming for AI. Fortunately, non-sci-fi definitions are actually doing worthwhile stuff

We still haven't solved the very first problem

The first problem is defining what "intelligence" is. We have no solid technical definition of that. It's pretty hard to solve a problem that you haven't really defined. Or, it's easy, since you can do a "shoot and call what you hit the target" sort of "solution".

Boffins crack smartphone location tracking – even if you've turned off the GPS

Re: So...

"Google apps totally ignore my "give fake GPS results to apps" app, I'm sure they'll totally ignore firewall apps to."

If you're rooted and using something like (the excellent) AFWall+, then Google apps can't ignore the firewall. AFWall+ is just configuring the native Linux firewall all Androids have, and (barring a bug somewhere) can't be ignored. If an app wants to be malicious, it could rewrite the firewall rules, but that's detectable.

Re: So...

"the phone still needs to be transmitting some form of telemetry"

Yes. This is why I use a firewall to block all outgoing traffic by default. No app (or the OS itself) gets to talk to the outside world without me giving permission. This is my backup safety measure -- if an app gets all sneaky-sneaky and collects data without my knowledge, it does no harm if it can't send it anywhere.

Re: Great!

"Slightly more worrying is the way Amazon etc calculate your street address via your IP address."

I've never has Amazon even try to do this for me. They must know that my IP address will only get you to within a 100 mile radius of my location.

Re: Curious...

My phone is nearly five years old and contains a barometer. Those sensors are tiny and dirt cheap, and so I expect that they're pretty common these days.

"But if the app is trying not just to count steps but also estimate calories burned as a result, then knowing if those steps resulted in you gaining, losing or maintaining elevation means the resultant estimation will be somewhat less inaccurate than a simple "1 calorie = x steps" conversion."

Technically true, however it's also true that step counters are horribly inaccurate in actually counting steps. The error introduced by that has got to swamp out whatever error might be introduced by changes in air pressure.

Also, determining elevation by air pressure will only give a rough guess unless you have a way of comparing it to the air pressure at a known elevation in the same area.

Sensitive data

"because smartphone makers don't consider it sensitive."

Why in the world aren't smartphone makers aware that all data on a device is sensitive?

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

Re: Could be a positive thing

It strike me as a lot creepy.

"if a tool exists that allows me to get resumes past the Taleo filter and other content filterers, and into a real interviewer's hands...I'm going to use it."

Fair enough. Personally, I won't. Companies who use those sorts of filters in the first place are very likely to be companies that I won't enjoy working for (so I guess they're doing their job!)

Re: I knew there was a reason

I've been meaning to delete my account there for a long while. This is a good reminder to actually do it.

Newsflash! Faking it until you make it is illegal in Silicon Valley: Biz boss pleads guilty

Re: Genuinely surprised

Not all, but many -- and even more who aren't actively trying to screw people over, but couldn't really care less if that's the side-effect of their profit-seeking.

Saying that out loud isn't anti-US rhetoric. It's anti-abusive corporation rhetoric.

Of course a mystery website attacking city-run broadband was run by an ISP. Of course

" I suppose the new FCC doesn't really care"

I beg to differ. Clearly, the FCC cares a lot -- about maximizing profit for the major telecoms above all other considerations.

Of course

At least in the US, ISPs tend to be scum.

CLOUD Act hits Senate to lube up US access to data stored abroad

Re: Anything truly new here?

"It is fascinating to me that the big companies get railed on for using these shell companies for avoiding tax liability, but become heros when they use it for avoiding data production liability"

It makes sense to me -- companies avoiding "data production liability" are benefiting their users, where avoiding tax liability is not.

"The fact that a bill is finally being created that formalizes this observation should hardly be surprising to commenters here."

I haven't seen any expression of surprise, only disgust.

Uber: Ah yeah, we pay women drivers less than men. We can explain!

"I call bs on that. "

You're stating your personal opinion as if it were objective fact. It isn't -- it's just your opinion. My opinion is that both types of drivers are annoying, but the aggressive ones are far more so. And it's the aggressive ones who are more likely to endanger my physical well-being.

Conversely, my insurance premiums were lowered significantly when I moved closer to work and I updated my "daily commute miles" on my policy.

Independent analysis?

Has anyone not affiliated with Uber crunched these numbers? Because if the analysis is coming from anyone at Uber, it's automatically suspect.