Posts by Google 61 posts • joined 10 Feb 2007
If you haven't already, you might like to pick up a copy of "the net delusion". It deals with soviet citizens living near the iron curtain watching western tv and subsequently being less susceptible to the spells of capitalism because they saw for themselves life in the west wasn't as celestial as it was made out to be in the innards of the soviet union.
Whenever Telegram is mentioned as a target for censure I'm left wondering why Whatsapp is no target for the ire of the state even though it (unlike Telegram) implements end to end encryption by default. What is facebook doing to appease Turkey, Russia, et al that Telegram isn't?
Or could it be Telegram's public group functionality?
It has been suggested on these forums to build a device with a screen and camera and that is capable of encryption and decrypting short messages after preloading it with the required keys. Once a message is encrypted and generated into a QR code (potentially holding 4296 alphanumeric characters) on this device the message can be photographed and send via Signal using a bog standard phone. On the other end the same QR code is photographed, transformed back into a character set and decrypted.
Et voila, the message can only be read on an air gapped device. Secure, until the guys in Cheltenham get their hands on one with the keys still on there and there is no way of revoking them.
For those unwitting of the existence of this great collection of stories about the development of the Macintosh and early days of Apple: https://www.folklore.org/
Careful, it might just eat your day!
"The cover story did include another profile of Steve Jobs, containing some comments that were less than complimentary. One unspecified friend was quoted saying "something is happening to Steve that's sad and not pretty", but the best quote was attributed to Jef Raskin: "He would have made an excellent King of France.""
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Little_Kingdom.txt
Perhapds their stance on user privacy?
"OnePlus is tracking users actions without anonymizing data" - https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/10/10/227207/oxygenos-telemetry-lets-oneplus-tie-phones-to-individual-users
"a new report says that there's still a OnePlus app that can grab data from the phone and send it to servers in China without a user's knowledge or express consent. " -
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/27/0013220/oneplus-is-again-sending-user-data-to-a-chinese-company-without-user-consent
I've just migrated a personal site with about a hundred daily users from Windows to the cheapest Ubuntu VPS my provider offers. This means half the processor power and memory compared to the Windows VPS and a third of the price. They even have special offer going on Ubuntu boxes saving me even more monthly costs.
The MS SQL database was replaced with MariaDB, simply because MS SQL doesn't support 18.04 (yet, or at least when I commenced migrating my core site). Though there were some minor niggles the EF Mysql provider works fine.
Performance is just as good if not better (page requests consistently below half a second) and it turns out administration of a Linux box is a lot easier if not more fun. Setting up Nginx with Letsencrypt was a breeze as was forwarding traffic to the dotnet process.
It's a funny world when I can wholeheartedly recommend .Net devs to migrate their sites to Ubuntu.
If only it were so..
Much as I'd like to join you in fantasizing about modern psions and n950's, I did have the foresight to attach a redundant bluetooth keyboard. Sure, reading and writing the odd email works fine despite the annoyance of seeing screen estate go to waste but don't think about a quick trip to tumblr or detour via other image heavy sites https://lostinmobile.com/2017/03/02/why-i-think-i-need-a-psion-style-device-but-wont-be-buying-the-gemini-pda/
My approach exactly.
It's hard not to fall in love with the concept when your inner geek is still alive. Then I realize the horrible screen estate efficiency of Android and the inner skeptic wins over. Is android ready to be used almost exclusively by keyboard and shortcuts or will users keep smudging and wiping their screens, ad nauseum.
In the mean time we're waiting on a n950, e7 form factor replacement.
Nokia should have released a remake of their n950 or communicator series instead of their 3310.
I too almost pre ordered one (a gemini) but then a number of things dawned on me
The ceo has a bad reputation among indigogo's public for failing to deliver https://mobile.twitter.com/thezxkingpin/status/837554886250135553
Their release date of november seems rather unrealistic - we've not seen a working keyboard or software and they're not answering technical questions on indigogo. For the form factor to work the software needs to match and vanilla android or a plain linux distro won't do without a stylus or mouse.
Android and apps are made for portait mode unless you're watching netflix, which negates the keyboard need. When is the last time you decided to use your 7" or less phablet in portrait mode? I tried using my nexus in landscape orientation last night and it was horrible.
Though the US is not too keen on it.
The Space Preservation Treaty was a proposed 2006 UN General Assembly resolution against all space weapons. Only the United States of America voted against the treaty, with Israel abstaining.
The resolution No first placement of weapons in outer space, which emphasizes the prevention of an arms race in space and that "other measures could contribute to ensuring that weapons were not placed in outer space." 126 countries voted in favor to 4 against (Georgia, Israel, Ukraine, United States),
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarisation_of_space#Outer_Space_Treaty
Any new language should skew results. People will start to experiment and stumble upon problems, flocking to stackoverflow.
Same goes for github, new languages need ports of libraries.*
You'd think this is all taken into account though.
*unless, as in the case of Swift, it's compatible with existing ones.
Hate to break it to you, but No. Not even a significant chunk of the population is looking into encrypting their communications.
What they are interested in though is Posh&Becks and Jordan. So maybe we should just rename the next cypher suite after them to rumble up some interest eh?
In the mean time I'm trying to message my contacts via encrypted channels in case the day comes and I need it so it won't set off alarm bells. That and I quite like the idea of my messages only being read by the intended recipient.
Upvote for "hideous style of US documentaries". US broadcasters really seem to believe their audiences to be as stupid as they're made out to be around the web. Dramatic "Edge of your seat" music is added to interviewees' mundane one liners followed by lots of CGI with irrelevant beeps to illustrate a soldier taking a step towards the parapet.
Compare some of the ww2 History Channel documentaties with "Wings of the Luftwaffe" documentaries, calmy narrated by a British presenter. You'd think with every action the Japanase took the USA was on the brink of becoming destroyed. Like when the Imperial Navy was hypothesizing building submarines capable of transporting a couple of light aircraft.
Kudos to the Dutch MP's having the guts to ask the question on all our minds:
Why couldn't functionality be restored using a backup?*
</sarcasm>
*source: http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-news/ddos-attack-brings-down-dutch-national-government-websites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tripwire-state-of-security+%28The+State+of+Security+%7C+Tripwire%2C+Inc.%29
Better skip the post beer if putting traumatic events behind you is the objective:
"People often drink to 'drown sorrows'," according to Kalev. "Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/kiwi_boffins_prove_booze_makes_you_clever/
Another curry!
So, what about the effect of Facebooking making people unhappy?*
How will we factor that into our unicorn numbers?
Is Tim saying whatever I'm doing it adds $minimum_wage_rate to the GDP?
*http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583593-using-social-network-seems-make-people-more-miserable-get-life
this is what he said on intelligence and race:
“there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”'
Which seems more reasonable than saying "white people are superior" and reasoned from a scientific point of view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Provocative_comments
I think Xamarin starts offering value when you're developing for two or three platforms (iOS, Android and WinPhone).
In preparation of my Xamarin adventure I read Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms by Microsoft Press and it too recommends familiarizing yourself with the platform specific Xamarin API's. So if you're targeting a single platform there will be overhead. Familiarity with C# and .Net might balance things out again though.
Allow me to differ.
Using Xamarin Forms I attempted to write a sample app. To add something as plain as a checkbox I had to download a community developed controls nuget package which when deployed and their checkbox is added to a simple grid made the whole grid disappear without so much as an exception, never mind trace output. the labels they replaced worked fine before though.
When it's a struggle to get a simple checkbox to show up I quickly cut my losses and switch frameworks. There is no point in continuing if you know this is the struggle it's going to be. I'd rather spend my development hours developing than beating my head on the keyboard and save myself from a future of slow and frustrating debug cycles.
Adblocks are more than an eliminator of annoying ads, they're a security measure. It's not a rare occurrence for ad networks to serve up malware.
Imagine if they decided their network of Syrian fighters could use some extra funds and targeted flash instead for your banking credentials to be send right back the first time you login to your banking site.
Shame there's no mention of how the product works and if it's in any way related to the original Bittorent protocol.
Article: "The premium version it's announced – US$39.99 a month – claims unlimited-size file storage" yet according to wiki there is no cloud, only your devices:
"The user's data is stored on the user's local device instead of in a 'cloud', therefore requiring at least two user devices, or "nodes," to be online in order to synchronize files between them", and
"There is no limit on the amount of data that can be synced, other than the available free space on each device"
Either something has changed and they're now another cloud storage provider or they're charging you for storage on your own devices.
My guess is the former.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_Sync
Nokia got out in time. Phone hardware right now is a race to the bottom. Only Apple seem to be able to sell sexy and overprice.
Instead they should have lingered on fighting cut price one plus handsets? Their imaginate hardware design wouldn't have saved them when all people want is a large display in their hand.
Much as I like them, the world didn't want an E7 or N900, two of Nokia's top models.
They were either too visionary (their Debian based tablets) or lagging (N9).
Pirates of Silicon Valley Will do fine thank you, we don't need another movie. It captured the spirit of the times pretty well and even the actors resemble Woz, Steve, Steve and Bill.
In the mean time, if you need a good read about Apple history, one could do worse than start at folklore.org. It's a collection of stories written by members of the original Macintosh team. Inspiring.
Keen to find out what's it like I head over to the Microsoft Document DB site (named like there are no others, just like MS SQL) to download myself an installer.
Turns out, its a Document DB as a Service offering. Say what? Has this world gone stark raving mad? I can no longer develop locally but have to rely on an external party. When will this stop?
argh.
Russia Today has been waffling on quite a bit how it's likely the Ukraine, not rebels, fired the missile. Some of noteworthy pieces
http://rt.com/news/174868-ukraine-buk-falsification-continues/
http://rt.com/usa/174796-intelligence-malaysia-plane-mh17-us/
http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine/ - Ukrainian Su-25 fighter detected in close approach to MH17 before crash - Moscow
Over there, there are no good guys.
It's not a new idea, Mark Twain favored it a long time ago for people to become more creative, not consume more: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
I myself have arranged for 20% of my time to be saved as time leave, allowing me to travel more. An arrangement even sweeter than the one suggested in the article.
Started the updater after freeing the required gig or so (update itself is about 25MB, so I'd reason it backs up locally). Updater hung. Resorted to a reset after checking this article's comments. Rebooted just fine, palms a little sweaty rebooting mid-update. Heart rate subsided. Side effects not mentioned in release notes.
As recently adopted by the ECB http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27717594
Yes, you get to pay them to store your money. In return you get access to your money without any funny business - as a bank should work. Unlike Northern Rock where you turn up and they're free to go "we dont have it". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_mb1AfeOY
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