Posts by doublelayer

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Re: Even Worse

The problem is that it really can't. Email clients can easily categorize by such things as sender, recipient(s), thread (subject line, in reply to, or checking for copies of previous messages), dates, and if they're willing to add even more storage, some keyword database for message contents. That's great, but it's also what I can quite easily do from the client's advanced search controls. I don't need the client to categorize my archives by sender because it's pretty easy for me to do that manually if it comes to that. The categorization that could be needed is more advanced processing of the message content to link related messages together. For example, if I am included on thread A about something, then start thread B about the same thing but with different people, and later am involved in thread C which reports a problem with the thing implemented by thread B, those things are related in my mind but will not be linked in the software. The intelligence to identify that link is usually absent, and if you try to build it in you end up with all the standard language processing problems and likely won't get useful results. If the messages were crucial and required frequent cross-referencing, I would perform that organization manually, thus having the certainty that I've done it correctly and in a way I can quickly navigate. When you consider that, at least in my example, all the effort spent on this autocategorization is for messages the user is keeping around because space is cheap and with the expectation that they will be unneeded, it is often not worth it.

"A non-trained person is unlikely to be reinstalling their laptop OS."

They don't have to. On literally every commonly-used consumer OS, the primary storage is treated as a single unit. If you are low on storage, you could delete some personal files or uninstall some software to free up storage, with the free storage being usable for either. You do not need to reinstall the OS to be in that situation. A user who does that on Windows, Mac OS, IOS, and Android is unlikely to accept Linux if they think they have to do it all separately.

"If someone trained does do a reinstall for the user they're not going to be happy finding it was on a single partition."

Not necessarily. In my opinion, a lot of systems for personal use should use a single partition. Programs are data, just like your documents. They're stored in different directories to keep them organized. That's good enough. There are many reasons to have separate partitions for servers, most of which don't apply at all to a personal machine. You can also have as many extra disks or partitions as you like with software on them if doing that has a benefit to you. Windows and Linux make it really easy to point to installed software that's on a different disk, even if it's not mounted at a typical path for binaries. Even if you know what you're doing, there's not a lot of benefit to having separate partitions for different parts of your root filesystem when they're all sharing a disk and all have to be present for your system to work.

A note, this doesn't necessarily extend to all parts of the system. Having /var on a separate partition to deal with something that doesn't handle it correctly makes sense. Having /home on a separate partition so it's easy to share between multiple booted OSes or persist after large changes does too. In both cases, it's a thing that is useful to a user who understands why they're doing it and can configure it themselves.

Take the placement of /home on a different partition. I've just explained two reasons you might want to do it. If you're going to make any big changes to your root filesystem, having /home partitioned insulates it from damage. You can install a new OS without having to move anything. However, you could always do what everyone else does: back up your home directory, reinstall the OS, and copy your files back. You should be backing up already, so it's not quite as bad as it seems if /home ends up sharing. Many of my systems do have /home on a different partition, but often because it's loading from a network FS or external disk. On the self-contained system that uses one internal disk with one OS on it, I have kept /home on the same filesystem so I can use the available space for whatever kind of data I want.

"You could just check programmically the folder was a sub of the desktop and not the desktop ."

It could have been in the documents folder, home directory, or somewhere else depending on how the user did it. You would have to just check it against a bunch of too general directories, and if you started down that path, the user could always find a new wrong one.

"or if it were me I'd have nominated a specific folder on the desktop for them to put stuff in ."

If you were doing that, just nominate the network folder the stuff is supposed to go in. The program is supposed to file things for the user because they were either slow or incorrect when doing so on their own.

Re: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

"As to where Windows puts files. Madness. Buried in the C: drive in a concealed folder within "Documents and settings" as if user data was in some way equivalent to OS function and needed the same kind of access."

You mean just like where Linux, Mac OS, and BSD programs store their files? Because the patterns are quite similar for most software. Each program decides on its own where configuration files should be, and you can find programs that still insist on storing configuration with their binaries but not so much after Vista blocked it (the emulation is still there but rarely used anymore). But for the typical setup, here's what they do:

On Linux: /home/user/.[program name]

On Windows: c:\Users\user\AppData\roaming\[program name]

In both cases, a hidden directory inside the user's home directory. If the user's home directory is put elsewhere, the configuration goes with it. What's so wrong about that?

Re: Even Worse

"Used to see that in Outlook. Important emails in the deleted items folder!"

I've definitely seen that, and I kind of understand the philosophy depending on how they do it. In many organizations, emails are kept around for longer than they're really needed for a paper trail or similar. The important ones should be filed separately, but there's a case for general archives of emails which aren't being used, might not be needed, but shouldn't be deleted. I think some of the aggressive deletion policies are due to the historical email systems when disk space was a lot more expensive. As things currently stand, if I want to waste five gigabytes of disk space storing a hundred thousand messages I probably won't read again, it's kind of small. I have a Windows XP virtual machine on a backup drive that I haven't used for a decade that's larger than that.

The problem with work emails especially is that there's somewhere between a lot and a complete flood of incoming email, so people can't always spend the time rigorously categorizing each piece of mail they're pretty sure they don't need. That makes it harder to find stuff later, but the time efficiency calculation can make that the faster choice anyway.

Which, if you're running a server with a trained admin, makes sense. If you're running a laptop with a nontrained person, it's a mess. If you reserve space for each of those things separately, but you still only have one disk, you're just creating new limits for how much data in each category the user can have. Users who don't know that happened will get confused about why they can't install some software when they have a hundred gigabytes free on their storage or why, when they were low and decided to uninstall unneeded software, it didn't get better. Even for a user who set all this up and knows what's going on, it can be annoying if there's limited disk space because reallocating between those partitions isn't a simple, risk-free process.

Cyberwarfare looms as Russia shells, invades Ukraine

Re: Shutdown their Cloud accounts

It would work. None of the big three have big datacenters in Russia. They do operate CDN endpoints and some edge stuff there, but not the big regions because nobody outside Russia wants their data there and most companies inside Russia don't either. Whether that would do much to weaken Putin is another question, but it can be achieved technologically.

Re: Just disconnect them

I'm afraid that it really wasn't. The original comment implied that you could cut off all the attacks by blocking Russian traffic. What you could do is dramatically decrease the bandwidth available to the Russian public, but since the Russian government has priority access to whatever links still exist, some of which they own, they would still be able to run all the criminal operations they want. So you can't, in fact, prevent them from hacking into stuff even if you could cut off their internet, and once again, it isn't feasible to cut off their internet because there are several countries that wouldn't be on board.

Re: Just disconnect them

I commented on that in the comment to which you replied. I pointed out that, if you could block literally every packet, you could cause them a temporary problem but that they would find an alternative (E.G. put some people in a different country and relay instructions through a different connection such as phone, satellite, etc. I also pointed out that you can't drop every packet because there are numerous countries you don't have on board. They have cables that go through central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan. They can quite easily pretend to be Kazakh traffic unless you can get Kazakhstan to join you (they won't, they're allied with Russia) or are willing to ban them as well. If you do ban Kazakhstan, they have many other countries to use.

Re: Just disconnect them

"Just block all traffic coming from Russia. This will also block 99% of cyberattacks originating from them."

No, it really won't. The Russian government has this ability to pay for servers in other countries and to take over equipment on residential networks in other countries. They have and they will. They launch attacks from those devices, which are controlled by non-Russian servers. If you could block all the network traffic coming from Russia, they'd have some disruption as they put some operators elsewhere and sent instructions internationally, but if even one cable remains, they can proxy around your blocks to control their zombies. Since they have lots of connections, including through countries that aren't part of NATO and that have taken their side if only unofficially, you can't get a 100% block implemented.

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is still pushing metaverse. Next step, language translation

Re: "Let's add some clouds,"

If my theory is correct, then you'll get some really weird blobs, some obviously pasted-in flat images, or a crash as soon as you give a command that wasn't expected in its exact form. AI systems that interpret textual data already have lots of problems understanding the main meaning of sentences. There's no way they have one that will correctly interpret "over there". It's the same story as when Google showed off its system for calling companies on your behalf using speech recognition to carry on a conversation. It sounded convincing (partially because they deliberately included unnecessary human sounds), but it turned out that they had run several tests on a person who knew about it and only included the successful one, thus making the product useless in practice and the demonstration a sham.

Re: "Let's add some clouds,"

That was my thought as well. Not only were the commands themselves completely scripted, but I'm willing to bet there was no AI scenemaker in there, even one that was trained only on those commands and thoroughly tested. I'm expecting some premade video slices were created and someone got the job of pushing the button to cycle in the next one as soon as he finished each command.

Linux kernel edges closer to dropping ReiserFS

Re: I wonder

You misinterpret the reason for dropping it. If they had a problem with the name or the developer, they'd have dropped it a decade ago. It's because it hasn't been updated in a long time, isn't much used, and may slow the development of other features that they're considering dropping it.

Ukraine's IT sector looks to business continuity plans as Russia invades

They have made significant moves to imply they're taking more than that. If they didn't, the land they said they were going to take contains more than the land controlled by separatists. If they did just take the land controlled by separatists, they are still committing an act of war with bombings elsewhere. And even if they did none of that, they have no right to take any land whatsoever.

Whether you are correct or not, it doesn't justify anything. While I am not an expert on Ukrainian military maneuvers, I also doubt that Russia's claims can be at all believed given the constant stream of lies we've seen so far.

AI really can't copyright the art it generates – US officials

And, when he's done with this failed copyright claim, he can move on to trying to let a program own shares in a company. That is also not going to work--in order to own things, you usually have to be able to file tax returns about your ownership.

"However, presumably his whole point is that the AI should now be considered as a legal entity."

This appears to be his goal. Why he's willing to spend so much time and money banging against a wall to prove this academic and for the moment unimportant point is less clear. My theory is that he read a lot of 1950s and 1960s science fiction short stories about the thoughts and rights of robots, and he has forgotten about how those robots had full consciousnesses and that the stories were written for entertainment.

If we ever create AGI which does simulate (or depending on your philosophy have) consciousness, and it is capable of deciding to create something and going on to do so, we may have to answer such questions. I think it's pretty obvious that we don't have that now. Some people think it's impossible. I think it is possible but won't be done because it's very hard and has little benefit. Either way, leave it until then.

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

Re: Two questions...

"Would Black-Holing their internet not achieve something?"

Annoyance, but probably not more than that. If we dropped all the packets coming from Russian cables to countries in Europe or North America, they'd have lots of outages. There would still be active cables going through Asia, and they could use those for the bandwidth they need. Important companies and people would have internet through those. Cybercriminals operating for the Russian government would have proxy access through them as well, and nongovernment actors would probably be able to buy that access. The public would have any remaining bandwidth they had and might suffer as they failed to access services operated internationally. Meanwhile, the government-approved services that have servers in Russia would continue to work just fine, driving more people to those.

We generally don't want to hurt the Russian public any more than necessary. Partially, that's because they didn't choose Putin so they're not at fault. Partially, it's because, if they replace him, we'd like them not to hate us. Mostly, it's because Putin doesn't care when they suffer, so it won't help make him stop.

Re: re. more blankets

"Even Afghanistan could become Russia's problem again at the Taliban look for sources of income and power."

No, that won't happen. When it was the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, it worked because they shared a border (and even then the Soviets had to start it). The Taliban may want to make trouble to the north and even earn the wrath of some countries, but the countries in the way aren't Russia. While some of them are friendly with Russia, they're not going to get automatic Russian protection. And that's if the Taliban is stupid enough to launch an all-out war against those countries, which they probably won't try because, though those countries are small, they have militaries and people who have faced the Taliban's ethnic policies and will be more open to their use.

Airtag clones can sidestep Apple anti-stalker tech

Re: "we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products."

Fine, I'll make a slight correction:

"These guys have found a way to use the Find My network with a device that isn't Apple-licensed, which is already not supposed to work."

As this goes, I'd have preferred an open network anyone could use over one that Apple controlled, but the fact remains that Apple didn't go that way and designed a restricted network for people who license access to it. They would consider an unlicensed device using the network as a bug. I'm certain that, for commercial reasons alone, they're going to try getting this bug fixed. I'm more interested in what if anything they will do about the other bug which bypasses their alerting system.

Re: "we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products."

I'm not on Apple's side here, but the person to whom you replied has a point. These guys have found a way to use the Find My network with a device that isn't Apple's, which is already not supposed to work, and to evade the announcement features in Apple's equipment. Those are both technical bugs, and Apple should be fixing them. I'm afraid that Apple will only care about the first one so they can make only their products work on their network, but even that would patch this. This is a case where Apple should have been quietly told about the problem rather than code for attacking the vulnerability being publicized.

I understand that, at some point, security researchers will release proof of concept attack code. This should, however, follow a procedure of getting that vulnerability fixed or at least trying to. Doing otherwise puts users at risk for little benefit.

Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent

Re: Ban software patents.

You were going so well. I was nodding in agreement. Then "Then the patent office should decide on a fair royalty amount; which might be nil if the invention is sufficiently important to need widespread adoption."

About that, no. The patent office isn't there to take inventions and push their adoption. They shouldn't be responsible for deciding how a patent that you've already acknowledged is valid by the point they're doing this can be used. If you do that, nobody will apply for patents anymore because you've given some examiner, the same people who already can't tell the stupid applications from real inventions, the power to declare your invention public property and negate any purpose. Why would anyone spend the time and money making a patent application if that was going to happen to them?

Patent protection exists for a reason, and if you have real patents, it works. The reason is that people will get the protections of the patent, allowing them to be rewarded for inventing things, but then it becomes public knowledge and people can copy it when the time runs out. If you don't have the reward part, then inventors won't bother applying or telling people how it works. Some inventions will be reverse-engineered sooner, but some others will never be disclosed.

Re: Why the hell isn't the existing code prior art?

It depends what the patent does differently. Since it's an extension, it probably has most of the original algorithm in it, just as you can patent an invention that contains within it someone else's invention as a component. The definitional question will be whether whatever Microsoft added to it is a new invention. The original author doesn't see much that's new in it, and I'm inclined to think they would recognize a change, but they too might be biased. Of course, the decision about whether there is something new is not left up to the original creator or even the people at Microsoft who think they made something new, it's left up to a patent examiner who probably doesn't understand either, which is why we have so many crap patents out there. I have rarely seen a software patent that seemed at all plausible, but occasionally something will near that bar. I would favor a significantly more stringent process for obtaining a patent, but don't expect that to happen any time soon.

Should we expect to keep communication private in the digital age?

Re: A fundamental issue with 'human rights'

"The trouble with "not voting" is that it doesn't send any coherent signal at all."

It isn't meant to. Some people may vote for each of the reasons you've mentioned. That is usually their choice, and if they do, I support them. Here's what I think of each option:

"didn't vote because hated all parties or candidates": This is a choice that makes sense to me. I would prefer people not be compelled to vote for someone they dislike and to refrain from voting to indicate this.

"didn't understand issues", "didn't care": In this case, I'm fully in favor. If you don't know or care about the election, then don't vote. If people who don't care have to vote anyway, you're likely to get random votes or votes on a weird basis. This doesn't mean that people need to do anything to earn the right to vote, but if they on their own decide they don't care, then I'd prefer they not vote.

"didn't get the chance because of work or life": This is not an issue with compulsory or voluntary voting. It's an issue with the way the election is run. The solution isn't to force people to vote, but to make it easy to vote. Check how many people wanted to vote and couldn't, and figure out what can be done to make that possible.

"didn't know how": Similar to the last one. Provide more information in more places.

Re: A fundamental issue with 'human rights'

You have rights mixed up with privileges and you also have some factual errors. Rights are things you get automatically and it usually has a high bar or is forbidden to remove them. Privileges are things you earn and can usually be taken more easily. Let's take each of your points in turn.

"The right to vote and the matching responsibility TO ACTUALLY VOTE"

In most countries, there is no such responsibility. Some countries make it compulsory, but such countries are in the minority. It is entirely possible that you have the right and no responsibility to exercise it. In my opinion, this is the correct approach.

"The rights associated with citizenship and the matching responsibility TO PAY REQUIRED TAXES"

These are disconnected. Citizenship rights and tax responsibilities are separate things. You can lack the rights and have the responsibilities if you live or earn in a country of which you're not a citizen. You can have the rights and lack the responsibilities if you live outside the country of citizenship and earn no income there. Each case depends on the laws of that country, but they are not matching as you state.

"The right to drive a vehicle and the matching responsibility TO OBEY THE RULES OF THE ROAD"

In most countries, you don't have a right to drive a vehicle. You earn the privilege to drive a vehicle by passing a safety test and getting a license to do so. Those who cannot drive safely don't get the privilege or have it taken off them.

Like all other rights, the right to privacy is restricted in a number of ways. However, in most countries, it is acknowledged as a right not a privilege and therefore is more protected. Government's frequently fail to follow their own laws requiring that protection, but such laws are often present.

Re: Still can't decide

The largest ambiguity I see is with the word "expect". Expect can mean one of two things in this context, and I voted based on my own decision as to which it should be as well as the annoyingly defeatist arguments put forth by those arguing for the motion.

One definition is basically "believe to be likely", as in "I expect the sun to emit light". On that basis, I expect some privacy but depending heavily on what data is stored where. I expect privacy on my local equipment with encryption applied. I don't expect privacy with Facebook. Given the actions I take to protect myself, it's fair to say that I don't expect privacy to be given to me so I must work to take it. However, the people arguing for the motion didn't just keep it there. They first claimed that privacy was basically impossible, which it is not. They then blamed the lack of privacy on me and others when we are not at fault. On that basis, I could not vote on their side.

The second definition, which is the one I used, is "believe that a convention, social or legal, exists". For example, "I expect not to be murdered on my walk to work". It is possible for me to be killed on my commute. I don't have an expectation in the first sense that it is impossible for that to happen, but I understand that, if it did, society would not support it. It would be seen as a morally wrong act and considered unusual. On that basis, I do expect privacy. It is a right that has been generally recognized to exist and is supported by legislation. The exactness of the legislation and the degree to which it is enforced varies dramatically between countries, but all democratic governments at least pay lip service to privacy being protected in law. Even many dictatorships lie about it. I have the right to privacy. I expect that right to be upheld. If someone tries to remove the stated protections, I will be angry with them, and when someone ignores those protections, I am angry and may seek to defend my right. That is the expectation I have in this matter, so I voted against the motion.

Re: Still can't decide

Yes, taxes do pay for things. Some governments do not have the ability to create money. For example, those countries that use someone else's currency because they probably failed when running their own. Many countries do have the ability to create money, but you can check whether they did to pay the bills. Usually, they didn't; when they didn't have enough tax revenue to pay for something, they borrowed money that already existed from someone else rather than creating new money for it. Governments that start printing money to pay their bills directly often find it hurts them, which is why many governments limit the use of monetary creation to a less political body.

Google's Chrome OS Flex could revive old PCs, Macs

Re: First, break XP and 2K and 98...

Of course you can. The root certificates aren't secret. You can install them. You just need something to render the pages. The latest browsers may use Windows features that are newer than that, but you can use older ones or minimalistic ones that have a TLS library in them. It's not a great idea to do it, but it is possible.

Re: Hot Garbage

Not all of your points are correct.

"This is by far the biggest and most widely-used Linux OS in the world;": No, that's Android. If we're letting something be declared Linux by having a Linux kernel under it. If we're requiring the ecosystem that the Linux label usually entails, neither count (virtualization that's only sort of supported and requires a technical user to take many steps doesn't count).

"Like macOS, up to now, it only officially ran on the maker's own hardware. Now that has changed and it is supported on multiple vendors' hardware. That is significant.": No, it ran on lots of vendors' hardware. Take any company that makes Windows laptops, and the chances are quite high they also make Chromebooks. When the OS started, Google didn't make any. They do now, but it's not only those that support it. In addition, it was possible to run it on general hardware before. A little trickier, since you would either run Chromium OS or a patched version, but I've done it when it was new to see how weird it was. It was far easier than hackintoshes.

As for home users, they're not going to use this if they wouldn't use Linux. Either way, they're going to have to remove one OS and install another, which most won't do by themselves. If they have a technical friend do it for them, then it doesn't matter how niche the replacement is as long as it works.

Again, I have no complaints about your coverage. I just don't think it's as significant as you say.

Re: Hot Garbage

The article isn't bad, but it is curious how many sites are reporting on this release when you consider how much meaning it really has. Effectively, this is the release of an OS that already exists that you could run already through an open source variant by a company that already had exactly this with a different name. It doesn't sound as newsworthy when I put it that way.

I don't think this was sponsored content or gave the software too kind a review, but I do wonder how it was decided that this product was newsworthy when so many others wouldn't be covered. That many sites are making the same decision implies that many people think this is important, but I'm not seeing it.

Re: quite useful

Would it have been very hard to install Linux and have it start a browser on boot? You wouldn't have to set up and more importantly maintain accounts for others, which is a nightmare given they can do anything under the account attached to your number.

Google expands Privacy Sandbox to Android

Re: "limit sharing of user data with third parties"

"Are they just doing the same as they're doing for Chrome, killing off competing advertisers' data streams and keeping it all to themselves?"

Absolutely not! Oh they're definitely doing that, but they're certainly not just doing that. They also get the benefits of a completely new blob of code that nobody knows about. That means that people who try to use Android with Google software on it won't be able to evade their tracking as well as they could and those that try to reimplement Google behavior will have to start over on some bits. That code also hasn't been reviewed by privacy organizations, meaning they can put a delay on privacy action by claiming that their new code respects the users and follows the law (we all know it doesn't). There are probably more evil plans with it as well.

India's Reserve Bank deputy governor calls for crypto ban

Re: I hate having to defend cryptocurrency, but this guy is going to make me do it

The difficulty implementing regulations does not justify his proposals. It's true that "[y]ou can't just develop a regulated market in financial services overnight", but just because it's hard doesn't mean you can do whatever you want in the meantime. We don't have a perfect regulatory framework for data security or privacy, but it wouldn't be acceptable to ban all computers until we get one. In addition, he didn't say to ban cryptocurrency until they get a regulatory framework. He's advocating a permanent ban, and he didn't say anything about even starting to work on a framework. That's the wrong way round at least.

"It's also about having consumers who have some idea of what they're doing and know to look to see if the companies they're using a registered with the regulators. [...] [E]ven with all this freely available information I know people who've signed financial contracts with companies that weren't even registered with a regulating body (but fortunately they were solvent so the threat of court action got that money back)."

You cannot put the economy on hold until everyone knows how to avoid scams with perfection. People fall for them all the time, and most often, it's not using cryptocurrency either in fact or as a buzzword. Regulate it to prevent it, certainly, but you appear to expect that you can make consumers know what they're doing automatically, and you can't as proven by your own anecdote. As I said in my original post, there are scams surrounding lots of other activities, for example the stock market. He's not calling for that to shut down.

"It really does take consistent and quite egregious bad policy to lose total faith in a currency,"

You are quite correct. Unfortunately, it takes much less to lose some faith in a currency. I'm not only including those cases where the currency becomes entirely worthless, but also those cases where people routinely buy things as soon as they have currency, are routinely converting it into gold or foreign currency, or are protesting the economic chaos caused by the problems with the currency. I've seen a definition of hyperinflation as 50% inflation per month for a year. That will cause complete chaos, but you can be a lot short of that and still have massive problems. Governments have been overturned for less than that. Wars have been started for less than that.

Re: I hate having to defend cryptocurrency, but this guy is going to make me do it

If you ban something and put penalties on it, of course most people will stop doing it. That doesn't make it a logical thing to do. If you make staplers illegal tomorrow, I'll stop using one and there will be many on their way to the paper clip store. That doesn't automatically mean it was a good idea to ban staplers.

The part that shows he is dismissing critics is the last sentence: "Such exceptions should reinforce the need for a ban, rather than invalidate it." He isn't saying that the people who engage in the trading anyway are taking on a known risk and so they don't need protection. He's saying that they would be committing a crime, and since they're willing to commit a crime (that's not a crime yet), their activities are deserving of being banned. It's circular logic and doesn't make any sense, but it can produce some negative results.

It's not quite as hard as you think to destroy a currency. If a country prints a bunch of it, it won't matter how many guns the army has. If they borrow so much that they have to sell their reserves, they won't be able to borrow so much anymore. If they allow it to degrade slowly, they will find that their economies are less large and their citizens are less eager to have it. This occurs all over the world, from complete disasters like Venezuela to slow pain like Russia. Both examples, I note, are quite large countries with lots of natural resources as well as all the things you mentioned.

Cryptocurrencies are not better, just different. They are affected by many different things, and they too can lose value in unexpected ways.

I hate having to defend cryptocurrency, but this guy is going to make me do it

First thing's first: I don't really like cryptocurrency. I don't have any, I don't want to have any, I don't think you should buy any unless you're into gambling. Some of the goals of cryptocurrency have appeal to me, and all popular cryptocurrencies have failed to obtain these or even to work meaningfully in that direction. They cause harm and environmental damage. And this guy has made a bunch of really terrible arguments against them, nearly all fallacious. Now that I've stated my views, I must address his arguments.

"While advanced economies may be able to endure cryptocurrency-driven disruptions to their economies, the deputy governor said India lacks the consumer protection and regulatory frameworks to do so."

Some cryptocurrency claims are complete scams, and countries should probably have a mechanism to protect people from that. If they don't, they should create it. This guy is arguing that, instead of adding those frameworks, they should just ban cryptocurrency and scams go away. They don't. You can also scam people with fake stock instruments, but he's not calling for India to close down the stock market, is he? If there isn't enough consumer protection, add more.

I turn now to his main point: "They threaten the financial sovereignty of a country". This is more an opinion, but countries earn their financial sovereignty and don't need to have it. If I think my country is not managing its currency correctly and choose to import pounds and use them, and the shops agree to accept them, that too would weaken my country's financial sovereignty. However, it is my right to do it. I still pay taxes to my country, I still follow the laws there, but I don't agree that whatever they do with the currency should affect me. The control he wants is not control he should have.

"If cryptocurrencies are banned, the vast majority of investors who are law abiding would desist from investing. Those few elements who would continue to invest will essentially be carrying out an illegal activity. Such exceptions should reinforce the need for a ban, rather than invalidate it."

This is very bad. Here's what it means in normal words. "If we make it illegal, then everyone who doesn't agree is a criminal, so they're bad and don't count". Things should be banned for a reason, and that people disagree should be reason to consider removing a ban because it means some of the public doesn't support what the government is doing. That doesn't mean it automatically works that way. If only 5% of the public thinks something should be made legal, then it probably won't be. However, the reasons those 5% provide should be considered in making that decision, not to brand them as reinforcing the need for the law.

Three major browsers are about to hit version 100. Will websites cope?

Re: Meaninglessness

No, that's not the best approach. It works if you have one set of releases and everyone uses one of those and ideally the latest one. It works less well if you have different styles of releases. Here are a few examples.

You have a program that gets updated from time to time. Sometimes, you make a big change that breaks the workflow. Maybe you charge users for that big update. Maybe you just want to let them postpone making the shift until they're more comfortable that early adopters didn't find it broken. You might release updates for both versions. If the version numbers look like 2.2.391 and 3.0.5, it's clear which one they'll use. If they look like 2022.02.16.15.30.1 and 2022.02.16.17.38.1, how do you know which you want?

You can also run into string problems. How much precision do you need in the date version numbers? Leading zeros or not? Do you separate the date components or keep them together like in the ISO format? What do you do for beta versions? The major.minor.patch format is usually shorter and clearer, even if one of the numbers gets large.

AWS to build 32 more small clouds around the world

Re: Wot no London?

These are small centers for areas they don't already have big centers. They have already created big centers in London and one in Ireland which probably has low latency to the UK as well.

Re: Too big to fail

The solution to that is to remove their tax loopholes. That's unpopular with politicians, but it is the problem you've identified and it can be solved directly. However, it isn't related to where they choose to put servers. They also don't have a monopoly. They're big, but I can put servers in any of those cities and connect them to the internet without having AWS penalize me for doing it. There are many large players even if the big three are pervasive.

Internet 'spy system' delayed because nation can't get the equipment

Re: Tricky

I was speaking in general. Cambodia has been in the dictatorship bucket for decades, but even if you gave similar powers to a democratic country, they could quickly corrupt it into another dictatorship. I assume the person who started this thread is aware of Cambodia's status, but they seemed a little too eager for the powers a system like Cambodia's could provide. I wanted to indicate that it could make other countries a lot worse.

Re: Tricky

Mounting a successful information campaign can succeed even in the face of a surveillance state. It marginally increases the costs to implement it. Those who wish to destabilize a country have enough money and time to deal with that. What it does do more successfully is dramatically decrease the freedoms of the individuals who disapprove of the leaders. That is the intent and that will be the result.

Unbridled freedom of speech carries with it many risks, as do all freedoms. Society has naturally placed some restrictions on those freedoms. However, placing increasingly restrictive ones will not remove those risks or even significantly reduce them, but it will create several new problems in the short term. In the long term, if you didn't already have one, you are likely to get a dictatorship which makes everything worse.

IT technician jailed for wiping school's and pupils' devices

"Are you saying that if someone were to add their work email to their computer, their employer (or someone using their credentials) could wipe up the user's computer at any time???"

It's an option, so probably. Not everyone will turn it on. It's a safety measure since it is assumed that someone who reads work emails on a machine might also store work files, even if just downloaded attachments, on the same device which also need to be cleaned up. I don't really have a problem with the paranoia, but my response to it is to only use the devices that they provide. I don't particularly need my work email on my phone at all, and if you want all that, then I just won't. Either live with me just accessing it from a laptop or give me a company phone.

Canalys: Foldable shipments could 'exceed 30 million by 2024'

Re: Ah Richard

Neither of those things are inventions, nor are they things to be proud of. When Apple removed the headphone socket, they didn't say this was done to make an impressive new innovation. They said they could produce a slightly thinner device and they thought users wouldn't mind (whether you mind isn't the point here). So whether they were the first to do it (obviously not), it doesn't matter.

The end of free Google storage for education

Re: It's a well-trodden path

I don't think that's the case. Free works just as well as unlimited. If you offer free 100GB storage, a lot of users will take it and use it completely within the bounds you set. That will end the same way.

Take a more obvious example. I had a free Dropbox account a while ago. It gave me 2 GB of free storage. Not a lot. Certainly not very expensive to provide. Yet still, Dropbox eventually decided that it wasn't worth providing that level of service to someone who wasn't going to upgrade for more storage. That's not technically true; I still could access that account, but they limited the number of devices that can sync it in order to encourage me to upgrade to a paid plan. Companies don't like providing people free stuff, but for some reason, they continually offer free things until they figure that out again. As a customer, I expect that they're going to think better of it eventually, and I'll use the free stuff only if I have a plan for what I'll do if I lose it.

Microsoft veteran demystifies Abort, Retry, Fail? DOS error

Re: On Error Resume Next

Which is why every language has some method of detecting a specific error and ignoring it. You can check the error code you want to ignore and do nothing with it. You can catch an exception and drop it. If there is a possible error condition for which you really do nothing, you have lots of ways to deal with that. The key word here is "specific". If you don't want an error to trip up your program because it's not relevant, then look for that one. Don't just assume that any error that comes along will be that one.

Error handling is boring, but critical. I can't count the number of poorly written programs or scripts that can't handle the most basic of unusual cases. Scripts that don't get as many command line arguments as they wanted, but instead of printing an error and exiting, they try to run hundreds of lines printing no such variable errors while trashing the environment they're in. Or libraries that throw exceptions because they frequently mess up and programs that catch and ignore all of them because they don't want to clean up but can't be bothered to find a library that works properly.

Cambodia cans critics of its snoopy Internet Gateway, says every nation has one

Re: Funny

They didn't say it would work tomorrow when they turn it on. However, would you know if there was infrastructure for it? Most likely, it will be a bunch of networking equipment provided by a company that has contracted the dictatorship as a service (DaS) business. That equipment would go into the ISPs' networking facilities and/or on the international communication lines inside Cambodia. Neither location keeps a public log of everything done inside and why. They could take many required steps without it becoming obvious that they have.

Apple tweaks AirTags to be less useful for stalkers, thieves

Re: I'm still trying to understand how Apple failed even to consider this use case

"I fought quite a major battle to stop their app from running without my permission - as I stated elsewhere, they really use every trick in the book to restart their app if you quit it such as notifications and permanent location access)."

Which, although unpleasant, makes a lot of sense for their users. They want the app running so you can use the features of the product, like the send a signal to find your phone feature. You have said this before, and it doesn't make sense any of the times, as if you don't want the app to have the access necessary to use the product, you should probably uninstall the app. AirTags are exactly the same except the tricks to keep it running are baked into IOS. That doesn't make Apple worse, just also doing it. At least Tile can argue that their customers opted into the app as it only does any of that after you install the app, log in, and accept the permission requests. Apple's system has all of the permissions and requires you to opt out in the settings.

Re: One would almost call this planned…

"Kind of surprised Samsung hasn't copied the airtag stuff yet, maybe they will soon."

They have. It only works with Samsung phones, but it exists. It likely has similar issues; there's basically no way to implement reporting through other participant's devices without leaving the tracking option open. At best, you can get a warning about it if your device can recognize this.

Reality check: We should not expect our communications to remain private

Cynicism may be our default, but it's wrong here

This argument effectively boils down to a cynical surrender. Since it's very easy for privacy to be broken, both by deliberate attack and accidental mismanagement, and it's very hard to make those possibilities go away, we shouldn't expect it. I'm a cynical person too, and I frequently make pronouncements of this kind. However, when dealing with problems, even cynics have ideals toward which they work even if they consider success unlikely.

Lots of things are very hard. Some things we do seem impossible when first attempted or may actually be so. However, we don't let that force us into apathy, which is how we have solved lots of hard problems throughout history. We don't have to assume that the next advance will solve everything for it to still be worth making that advance. So the real question is whether privacy should, ideally, be present or not. On this, I and the article writer agree that it definitely should. Since that's the goal, we should expect it. Where we don't get it, we should work to advance that goal, whether that be by making stronger cryptography, making it easier for nontechnical users to properly employ it, putting penalties on those who infringe our privacy, or new methods yet to be considered. If we try but fail to do this in the next decade, we can hope that the one after will improve it. If we give up and do nothing this decade, then the next will be worse and it will be our fault.

Raspberry Pis gain power to flash their own OSes with new network install function

Re: Damned useful!

I don't think any typical OS did a 32-bit to 64-bit switch with an OTA update. Usually, that kind of thing was done with a new edition that you installed manually. The chances of messing something up with your config would be quite high otherwise. Since they are compatible, you can load in the package repositories for the 64-bit version, update the bootloader and kernel from the packages or by extracting them from the image, and perform a no-reimage upgrade. If you break something, that's why they didn't do it that way when it's already pretty easy to write a fresh OS image to a card and transfer your config over instead.