Posts by bombastic bob

Ad blocking made Google throw its toys out of the pram – and now even more control is being taken from us

Re: Server-side tagging is about hiding tracking, not advertising

lessee... if you're logging in with your Facebook or Twitter profile... with those F and T icons on that page, probably reading the cookies and identifying you anyway [whether you log in or not]. it's a fair bet they do, and phone home to momma that you went to that page.

Best thing to do, do NOT access any *BAD* *BEHAVIOR* web site (like Fa[e]ceB[ook,arph] or Tw[a,i]tter) from the context of the browser you use most often, and erase ALL of their tracking cookies and locally stored data, however you need to accomplish this. Reserve that for TRULY sandboxed browsers. see my earlier comment on how you can mitigate this using the DISPLAY environment variable in X11 environments, logging in as a special user where all history is FLUSHED when you exit the browser...

Re: Misses the point

Legislating internet advertising is no easy task either

I think you're missing the point here. It's not the ads as much as the tracking and targeting of them.

Re: Keep on AdBlocking

Anything that can be done to take google down a few million pegs then great. Bring it on.

a) use NoScript as often as possible

b) set up a browser context where you automatically purge ALL history, cookies, etc. when the browser closes for anything that you need script to actually view the content. Then "flush" when you're done.

c) if "they" track by IP address it's unavoidable, except when you use Tor...

d) make sure your Linux (or FreeBSD) machine announces itself as generic windows machine in the browser info thingy (this may require a re-compile, or a plugin, depending). In short pick something that's very common so you're not "pegged" by it.

in any case, on POSIX machines I always set up X11 so that I can use the DiSPLAY environment variable and log in as "a special user" when browsing ANYTHING (that I don't explicitly trust) that uses script.

It is also possible to erase Chrome history, by deleting files in ~/.cache/chromium and ~/.config/chromium, but you have to be careful which '.config' files you purge if you don't want to get a default config every time. YMMV and experiment, because a LOT of "local" stored data (that identifies you) ends up in ~/.config ...

in any case, assume you ARE being tracked, then do what you can to frustrate it.

Adios California, Oracle the latest tech firm to leave California for the wide open (low tax) Lone Star State

Re: improve our employees’ quality of life

The hope (for the people who already live there) is that moving people from a shitty place doesn't ALSO trend the place they move to into becoming "similarly shitty" because they brought their politics with them...

I've also considered a move to Texas. California's getting pretty bad these days.

Google Cloud (over)Run: How a free trial experiment ended with a $72,000 bill overnight

Re: VISA gift cards

And, also, what were they thinking not to check for recursion / duplicates in the first place?

weren't they testing at the time? I'll never see a programmer (with any significant experience, working on non-trivial projects) that hasn't had an occasional recursion problem or infinite loop in the testing phase. This is even MORE true when going from testing on a limited set of test data into the real world, where 'the unexpected' is the norm.

They can't collect from a corp with no assets.

They sorta tried using a credit card with a $100 limit. Didn't help.

If Google wanted to, they could set up budgeting PROPERLY so this would never happen. But they didn't. And if they hadn't "forgiven" the debt, chances are the courts would have decided NOT in Google's favor during subsequent legal actions to collect the $72k

in any case, corporate officers are registered for all corporations with appropriate gummint authorities. if they wanted to, they could sue the CEO directly (for example), or go after stockholders. So a shell corporation would help a little, but not a lot.

A lot of lawsuits have been won against manufacturers because product documentation/labeling didn't have an explicit enough warning. Not sure if in this case such a thing would apply, but who knows what can happen with high paid l[aw]yers in a court room with an advocate-type judge and/or jury pool.

[this also makes the case of having a private cloud server to test things like this on yourself, before submitting to a provider like Google]

Twitter, Mozilla, Vimeo slam Europe’s one-size-fits-all internet content policing plan

Re: Lead pencils

can you actually buy a pencil that has actual Pb in it? Does anyone even make such a thing?

According to THIS article (from the Washington {Bleep}), some time in the 1500's a large natural graphite source was discovered, and they made writing instruments from this material. And mistakenly people thought it was a type of lead.

So I guess pencils have always been made with graphite as the material that makes the marks on paper.

I guess that deflates the earlier comment about selling lead pencils to children...

Re: But then maybe it’s just the wrong algorithms

The problem is the techno-utopian belief that you can find an algorithmic solution to what are really human problems

I was just thinking (dangerous I know): if it were an option to have "content warnings" rather than content removal, or perhaps no content warnings at all for that matter, how many people would choose "wild west" or "anarchy" over "nanny mode" ?

Re: Indeed

The problem with one size fits all, stay-or-delete approach is in the decision making

another way of putting it: many people will agree to censorship (aka 'moderation'), "for the children" or for any other reason, until it censors *THEM*.

(I'm amazed I agree with Tw[a,i]tter on anything, even if only slightly)

FCC mulls booting China Telecom from US networks over its ties with Beijing

Re: China Telecom has ties with Beijing?

Spectre vulnerabilities and 'management engine' and so on... hmmm.

Ad-scamming, login-stealing Windows malware is hitting Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Yandex browsers, says Microsoft

Re: OS?

So, does running 'NoScript' protect you? How about generic ad blockers? Or maybe just simple popup blocking?

It would be interesting to know of any of these "irritation blockers" are also preventing accidental download (and running) of executable installers...

icon, because, Linux not vulnerable (apparently)

China bans 105 apps, eight app stores, and says it’ll swing the hammer again

Re: Which appstores?

fortunately, it's possible to install APKs directly on 'droid phones, without an 'app store', unless the CCP has mandated this be taken away... [at which point jailbreaking and other such techniques are in order]

And there's still a Tor network. And there's still private web sites popping up all over the place.

"The Great Firewall" is like putting a lock on the liquor cabinet, to stop your teenage son from occasionally sipping. And it's probably a cheap lock, meaning that 10 seconds with a tweeker screwdriver and a bent paperclip will get you as much liquor as you could possibly want...

I understand that in the USSR of the 1980s, people could get pretty much anything they wanted through the black market, with chocolate and Levis jeans being two of the more popular items. Is _THIS_ what the CCP really wants? Or are they planning on getting "a piece of the action" ??

Re: "Video nasties"

I thought he was just being funny...

Japan pours millions into AI-powered dating to get its people making babies again

Re: Sexless

For grins, after posting I read the 'Salaryman' entry in Wikipedia. There are some interesting insights there, including (apparently) wage stagnation over the last couple of decades...

When expenses go up, but wages are stagnant, the public at large gets *DEPRESSED* and doesn't see a happy future. This could ALSO be a major factor in low birth rate. If it goes on for long enough, it is perceived as "the new normal" whether it really is or NOT [even if this is an artificially created situation]. Then the other consequences (like low birth rate, overworking to keep your job) happen.

realistically, it might be younger women at religious colleges where getting pregnant can get you expelled... so guess what happens?

Re: Sexless

The part about a Japanese woman as a 'living appendage of [her] husband' - I disagree with that completely.

But your comment about male office workers doing 12+ hours a day, coupled with VERY long commutes, is probably the BIGGEST part of the low birth rate problem. Men who are too busy working typically won't find wives. And, intelligently, women apparently aren't saying "I'll just be a single mom" and then have a kid anyway. After all, kids need TWO parents, not a single mom + [government] day care. Intelligent women know this, instinctively.

Also keep in mind that annual living expense increases in Japan may be increasing at a rate4 that exceeds wage increases With less money to spend, you can't afford a larger house to have a LOT of kids in, nor pay for their education, coupled with always being at work or near the office [sleeping in one of those ultra-compact bunk-bed "hotels" most of the week] because you NEED THE MONEY to live on, and so on, such that you're rarely home. "The Salaryman" in other words. It's all too common in Japan, as I understand it.

Facebook crushed rivals to maintain an illegal monopoly, the entire United States yells in Zuckerberg’s face

Re: Facebook is very useful

when I see that a job candidate has a Facebook account, I look for another one.

There was an attempt a few years ago to convince people that if you did NOT have "social media" presence, you would NOT get hired. That was pure B.S. of course. I've had personal web sites since 1995 and had NO need to use Fa[e]ceb[ook,arph]'s platform for ANY reason, and would PROUDLY announce that fact if asked about FB[arph] in any kind of interview. I said it back then, when this nonsense first started circulating, and I STILL say it now [only louder].

thankfully

Re: Unsurprising

Corporate USA got out of control at the end of the Victorian era.

That's a fact from history, "Robber Barons" vs Teddy Roosevelt, etc.. I think the reforms that came about have worked ok, but additional reforms would be welcomed. Over-regulation, though, certainly not.

Unfortunately, FTC and other regulators fell asleep at the wheel (or were maybe "influenced" to look elsewhere) when it comes to "Big Tech".

Re: How many US states?

I doubt political party affiliation had anything to do with this. Personal opinion, maybe, but doing a "me too" response isn't necessary for EVERYTHING coming down the pike. Sometimes that kind of pile-on simply demonstrates a lot of gutless knee-jerk reactions...

Still, if I were them, I'd have joined in, if for no other reason than to represent the interests of the people in that state, as long as doing so would in some way improve the chance of the case being successful at putting a stop to "big tech". (and last I checked I registered 'Republican')

But if a "pile on" effect in some way EMPOWERS THE DEFENSE, and becomes a "hoist by one's own petard" situation, it's best to just stay out of it, or do your OWN lawsuit.

FCC wasn't the right venue. FTC would be, but for some reason they didn't act... they actually ALLOWED the acquisitions in the FIRST place!!!

Useful quantum computers will be impossible without error correction. Good thing these folks are working on it

Re: photonic cat qubit

this trick works with analog measurements. I've done it. Sample noisy thing 100 times, and do a median and standard deviation to determine how accurate your measurement is. Moving averages also help when the value is expected to change. In theory, once you have a really good data set, and you throw out anything that is outside of 'n' standard deviations, you should have good results. Maybe.

Also have been reading up on QM lately, out of curiosity. Found THIS:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2017/02/28/how-do-you-create-quantum-entanglement/

I guess you could say that the main problem is creating entangled particles reliably, and THEN keeping them around long enough to actually be useful.

also this one: https://erc.europa.eu/projects-figures/stories/how-entangle-two-electrons-%E2%80%93-and-do-it-again-and-again

South Korea kills ActiveX-based government digital certificate service

FINALLY!

massive security crater, finally eliminated.

(government mandated ActiveX to do online banking. what could POSSIBLY go wrong?)

CentOS project changes focus, no more rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux – you'll have to flow with the Stream

Re: Looks like Debian ...

apt is a lot easier, in my opinion. 'aptitude' is a curses-based GUI of sorts, convenient but sometimes kludgy. Just remember 'apt-get' and use the man pages "see also" section, should get to you the info you need.

Re: To the surprise of no one

"Linux" refers to the kernel, not the things that run on it (including the startup application)

Distros basically handle everything but the kernel itself. But you knew that, right?

RH may have gotten too big for their britches. Poettering things are not the only problems, as evidenced by this article.

FreeBSD uses things like 'hald' to compensate [in part, anyway] for not having systemd. I can't recall what Devuan does, maybe alternate builds or patches or a combination of all of that. In any case "a mechanism exists" and there's enough demand for it that packages SHOULD be buildable and runnable without systemd being there. If not, time to submit a patch with some '#ifdef' blocks for when the configure script doesn't find systemd.

Re: To the surprise of no one

not complete enough to build a work-alike.

standard practice when you have proprietary things and other stuff you want to protect.

If these things are _CURRENTLY_ open source, time to fork them and remove anything that RH might object to being distributed outside of CentOS or RHEL

Software contractor accused of favoring foreigners on work visas over Americans agrees to cough up $42,000

Re: However in the UK

uh, with a LOT of that you pretty much described the typical contracting gig...

I actually prefer contracting to 'wage slaving', because the extra pay generally means that I don't _HAVE_ to take my payment in the form of vacation, etc. [vacations are what the 'between gig' times are]

Reading El Reg while working from home? Here's a pleasant thought: Kaspersky says 1 in 10 of you are naked right now

coffee

The nightmare is real: 'Excel formulas are the world's most widely used programming language,' says Microsoft

Re: It's In The Genes

in general, it has been my observation that if you open an e-mailed spreadsheet by a) using Libre Office Calc, and b) starting Calc first with an empty doc and THEN using "File Open", that the likelihood of a macro virus affecting you is very very small. So if you need a spreadsheet via e-mail, that might work.

(better still, the sender should put it in an online doc share, like maybe google docs or something similar, and THEN have the recipient download it with a URL to it, assuming you can't attach the data as CSV or tab-delimited to an e-mail)

i have a nice Buck knife (a Buck 110, ~4 inch blade) I used to wear on my belt when i was in the Navy. But your 7" knife beats my 4" one. I bow to your superiority. heh.

Re: It's In The Genes

you can set a column type if you use the import 'gizzard' as I recall...

(takes a few more steps though)

Re: Makes sense

or - when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a rock that needs busting up...

(shout-out for Sam Cooke - "Chain Gang")

Re: Makes sense

how long before this feature ends up in Libre Office Calc?

even implemented like a macro substitution, it would be useful

(Also, the concept of Ex-hell macro viruses just got a whole lot *WORSE*)

China’s digital currency finds its first cross-border payments buddy: Hong Kong

Re: What a surprise

"Jurismydicktion" - I think that was the original "Men in Black" movie, near the beginning.

(OK the answer to all of your questions can be seen right here, in this device... *flash*)

It wouldn't surprise me if China's digital currency had a way of tracking people and their purchases secretly built into it... (basically the opposite of BitCoin in that regard)

For why ELSE would they need "their own"? Or is future currency manipulation also part of it, too? Or something even *WORSE*

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

I've never understood what that is supposed to mean

Here's an example: you sell a product that consists of hardware and "value add" software that's necessarily open source, or has open source libraries or "helper" applications that it needs to function.

You still sell the software, or bundle it as an added value for customers. It's not free of cost to the consumer, like "free beer" would be. But it's open source, so it can be 'freely shared', because it's the nature of open source. Sure a competitor COULD take your software and modify it for his own gear, and he's "free" to do that. But of course the modified/derived version would need to be open source also if you GPL'd it. And so on.

It's a revenue model that works.

And that's my take on it

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

learn to counter the bullshit the marketing department in Redmond tries to baffle people with.

A well known brand-name car dealer mechanic once tried to tell me that using aftermarket spark plugs (particularly the high performance kind made by Bosch) would cause a "check engine" light. Obvious B.S. as I've exclusively used those aftermarket spark plugs in more than one car for DECADES. Never had a problem.

Same idea, yeah.

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

Don't ask me how they did it

Micros~1 could sell ice cubes in the Klondike. That's how they did it.

Once you have a revenue stream, everything else is a LOT easier!

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

How many businesses have actually seriously considered LibreOffice?

Probably not enough. However, if your office has Linux users, chances are it's there already.

Re: Whilst I agree that cloud collaboration is important these days...

Do people really try and use things like this on mobile (excluding tablets)

I think most people would say "no", but someoe out there WILL push for an unnecessarily large development effort for mobile, anyway...

It would *GREATLY* irritate me if the UI were "tweeked" (read: ruined) to support "mobile things". Better to stick with what it's already good at, I say. Let someone else fork it for mobile if they want that.

(office things on "mobile" are *HIGHLY* overrated!)

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

Re: Technically ......

I'm reliably informed that it will quite happily continue to burn underwater, once started.

several metals will do that, by essentially burning hot enough to react with the water itself.

Pure Al metal instantly forms a protective oxide layer when exposed to air. This is why you need inert gas to weld it. You can't solder to it either. Titanium is similar. A lot of metals are actually like this.

Everyone remembers Jr. High science teachers lighting magnesium and putting sodium into water, right?

Re: Not aluminium?

fake vs "real" monoliths

like fake vs "real" crop circles

(just because SOME people fake them...)

icon, because, well YOU know!

Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"

garden gnome photos would actually be pretty awesome!

the vacation places I really have no simultaneous time+money to visit...

Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"

where's "Waldo" (the stainless steel monolith)

Trumpian politics continue as senators advance controversial Republican FCC commissioner nominee

Re: The DNC need to win at least 1 seat in georgia

4 years of deadlock

Not a BAD thing, as a consolation prize.

Re: Georgia Dominion voting machines

More TLDR.

Regarding those voting machines, have you seen THIS? (it's Texas' assessment)

https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/laws/dominion.shtml

That's the Texas page that has the PDFs for the various evaluation reports. (now where's the 'Sauce' icon...)

Re: Like trashing a rental home

So go look.

TLDR _AND_ telling me to "go look" ?

No.

This is a real tHreat for any democratic system.

I think you meant it to say 'threat' and not 'treat', right?

Re: what's going on?

basically take what YOU said, invert it, and that's close to what I would like to say.

Additionally:

Editing, banning, or "fact checking" what a politician says during an election, showing bias against one candidate and towards another, COULD be considered an "in kind" contribution, and as such, would fall under the umbrella of campaign finance laws and regulations. An "in kind" contribution could violate existing laws, in other words.

foxes and henhouses.

So ask this question: who's the "fox", and where's the "henhouse"? And just HOW deep does this rabbit hole go?

icon, because, black helicopters

Re: Other opinions are available

from the article:

the destructive partisan politics it has persistently fanned

in reference to the CURRENT President, naturally.

Other opinions ARE available.

Re: Trumpian appointments

YES