Posts by doublelayer

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: Yes, Daily, or even hourly!

I think I know why companies stopped writing manuals. At some point, they must have realized that, with their manuals online, I could download them before a purchase to do research on what their product could do and how complicated the process was. No, they want me to figure out those things only after the purchase, which led to the new idea of refusing to publish the manuals and only including a paper copy with their product. But then, people started scanning those and uploading them, so what more could they do? They just had to stop making the manuals. I'll still figure out how the feature works, won't I? Surely I'll keep buying things without any idea what they do or how.

Escape is sadly rarely an option.

ESC, however, is surprisingly often an effective option. I think that's why it's over in the corner of the keyboard, to make it easier to press by someone looking over the user's shoulder.

Re: ID10T error

Helping the user understand what went wrong and how to have it not go wrong next time is very useful. However, even if the tech was busy and just wanted to do a quick solution, let me show you how the workaround would have gone.

Tech: "Right. Now instead of using this email, I want to try loading the program the normal way."

User: "But I'm supposed to use the new version. It's coming out now."

Tech: "Let's just try it."

User: Opens old program.

Old program: Works.

User: "This one works, but it's the old version. I'm supposed to use the new one."

Tech: "No, use that one. The other one isn't ready yet."

User: "The email says it's ready. They sent it to me because it's ready."

Tech: "No, they want you to use this one. They're just showing you what it will be like."

User: "I don't think that's right. You don't write this program; you're tech support. Trust me on this one. I use this program all the time."

Tech: "Trust me. The program you can open normally is the right one."

User: "Maybe you should discuss that with my boss, but he's not here. I'll get his boss."

Tech: "No, I don't need to talk to"

Tech: "Wait. Come back. No, really, it's just a minor"

Door: Closes behind user.

Minutes: Pass slowly.

Customers in line: Look angrily at tech.

Door: Opens. User comes back.

User: "This is the manager of my boss. She will tell you about the program update."

Manager: "What's the problem?"

Tech: "There will be a program update but the user thinks it was released now. They're trying to run a screenshot."

Conversation: Forks here. If manager is clueless you can end up in a loop. We will proceed on the fork where the manager knows what a screenshot is.

Manager: "I see. Can I see the message, please?"

User: Shows message to manager.

Manager: "Ah. You see here where the update is said to be coming out soon, but not yet?"

User: Yes.

Manager: "And this attachment is a picture ..."

Manager: Continues to explain situation to user.

Manager: Now annoyed at tech for not doing this themselves.

Isn't it a lot easier just to solve the situation well with a useful explanation that will probably prevent it in the future as well? Workarounds only work if the user understands why they're doing the workaround. They can cut out several contingent explanations, but if you provide no reason for your alternate suggestion, people will think you're just winging it and you don't really know what you're doing.

Re: Yes, Daily, or even hourly!

In all fairness, they did read that screen and they did what it said. Apple didn't say anything about why the app didn't work and told them to go talk to you. They did that. There's little the user could do at that stage; either you would have to update your app, Apple would have to reverse their 64-bit only decision, or they would have to downgrade their OS. The latter option isn't really an option because that's a lot to ask, plus the error message didn't tell them to do so.

Home working is here to stay, says Lenovo boss, and will grow the total addressable PC market by up to 30%

Re: All this talk....

I think you just pointed out that many offices have people who produce useful things. Lots of work is done without manually building things and yet is useful. Design, programming, architecture, research, writing, and many other things can be done from a typical office environment. If you're just considering the location, much of small-scale engineering counts too--initial prototype creation and small-scale repair often occurs in offices that have big tables with equipment on, but they're still basically offices. Sure, lots of people there will be doing nothing, but you can find a way to be unproductive anywhere you go.

Home working leads to more laptops

They seem quite confident about home working leading to increased sales of machines. Ignoring for the moment how home working will catch on, I'm not certain about the other chunk of that. Sure, some companies will have to change out computers for home workers, because they did desktops and would have to switch to laptops. But if a worker already has a laptop from their employer, they don't need to replace it. Also, I'm guessing most businesses that will be switching to home work have already done so, meaning the first round of obligatory laptop purchases probably started two months ago and is ongoing. That implies that this quarter's sales may be somewhat high, but that it probably won't be a longterm trend because a lot of other companies won't be buying new machines or replacements until the ones they're using more actively are much older.

Maybe Lenovo was hoping for more personal purchases because children have been doing online schooling while their parents use existing machines, but those purchases have also likely been made and online schooling is not going to continue as long as home working. I think their optimism may be premature and they'd better make quite a bit of progress in this quarter if they hope to hit that growth target.

Re: Market +30% = wages -30%

All of that is going to have to balance itself against the profound distrust our employers have for us. I think the main reason that hasn't become much of a thing so far is that a lot of employers are afraid we won't be as productive or as conscientious when not in their office. Let's see whether this period at home is enough to kill that idea or if they are eager to get us back there. Either way, it will be a disappointing option for several. I would prefer the office, but I also prefer that people have the choice if feasible.

To test its security mid-pandemic, GitLab tried phishing its own work-from-home staff. 1 in 5 fell for it

Very much this. It's really important for us and basically everyone else to realize that, while a lot of phishing emails that have come in and will continue to come in are terrible and obvious, there can and will be more sophisticated ones. It takes longer to get the logos into the right place, make the login page work the same, get text checked for spelling, grammar, and naturalness, and do the work behind other links in the message that a user might check for authentication, but that work can be done. I've seen several not bad attempts. None of us is immune to a message crafted well enough.

The problems are email and people. Email can be modified to do some things. No impersonation is a good start. Wouldn't help in this case--they didn't impersonate, they used a valid misleading domain. Showing link contents before going somewhere would be nice. Probably wouldn't help in this case. Subsetting HTML so it's harder to do visual tricks would probably annoy a lot of people, but some of those people are the people who send multimegabyte messages overloaded with logos, so I'm fine with it. Probably wouldn't help in most cases because if everyone can't do it, and scammers can't do it, then they still look the same.

In the end, someone has to decide whether to click the link or not. The email system can try to point out potential problems, but automatic means can't block everything malicious. While email needs some updates, it can't and won't fix stupid user syndrome.

Re: Not bad? Users? Policy?

I disagree--HR is HR, and whether it's tech or something else, they're going to have knowledge of HR matters and probably not much else; HR doesn't really need to know anything about the product as long as they can understand when people are doing something wrong. What I don't know is who these people were who received the messages. If only fifty went out, it could be basically any subset, as wikipedia estimates they have about 1200 employees.

If it's fifty people in HR, sales, and finance, it's regrettable but not that surprising to me. If it's fifty developers, we have a major problem.

Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook

Re: Words will be said

Well, 2% of India's massive phone market can be quite a few devices. Not quite 55 million, but still a large chunk. Several countries whose languages are supported aren't that big. I don't see Danish (population of Denmark 5.81 million), Czech (population of Czechia 10.7 million), or Greek (population of Greece plus population of Cyprus 12.04 million) being removed from the supported lists, even though by most potential arguments those make more sense. Not all of those people use Outlook on IOS either, and in all four of those countries, a large section of the population is likely to speak another language, primarily German or English, which would remain supported.

Speakers of the removed languages may also speak English, Hindi, Spanish, or Russian but not necessarily. Certain other languages, such as Tagalog, are not associated with multilingualism with a supported language; while English and Spanish are spoken in the Philippines, the lingua franca in many areas is Tagalog, with people being bilingual in that and their native tongue.

I doubt that. If they did the translations for Windows usage, they would have all the data needed to keep up translations for IOS too. It doesn't take much effort. If they're dropping it here, they're likely dropping it everywhere where Outlook is run. Even if they split up the decision, I can't see them leaving IOS untranslated but all other platforms functional.

Re: Apple is going to write off all ...

It sounds like the interface will no longer be translated into those languages, but you can still type in them. Similar to how I can type any language I want even while my mail client continues to use its previous localization. While I can well sort of, no actually it doesn't make sense. I was going to give them some leeway on a few languages that aren't spoken by very many people who almost all speak another language anyway, but they've got some very large languages on that list. They were able to afford that before, they can continue to.

For the price tag, this iPad Pro keyboard better damn well be Magic: It isn't... but it's not completely useless either

Re: Because ... it’ll just work : Nope

I don't think that was agreement. What I heard there was that yes, Apple devices last quite a while, but so do other machines, so there's not much difference, so the higher prices aren't justified on that alone. The point of disagreement is that you claim that Apple devices will likely last longer, whereas the reply claims they will both last quite a long time, and probably a similarly long time.

Not that I necessarily agree, as there are many Apple devices that seem to get support for longer over some of the most well-known competitors, but I too have seen very functional devices from all sorts of manufacturers that continue to function for long after they were purchased. If hardware is treated well, including good management or at least replacement of its software from time to time, they usually keep working for longer than the average user expects. I do give Apple some credit for some of their devices, the easiest example being IOS devices getting several OS updates whereas Android is just getting to having some likelihood of security updates, but in other cases Apple has proven themselves to not be so interested in device longevity, including their battery fiasco and making everything less repairable as the years go on.

AT&T tracked its own sales bods using GPS, secretly charged them $135 a month to do so, lawsuit claims

Re: Telekom

Their salespeople are often happy to talk to you if you're a possible customer, but the conversation often goes like this:

Me: I'm considering your internet service for my house.

Them: Great.

Me: Can I get a static IP?

Them: We don't normally include that unless you want a business plan. I can transfer you to that team if you like.

Me: I've already got an IPV6 block. Can you route that traffic to me?

Them: What?

Me: Never mind. Do you have any statistics about latency?

Them: No.

Me: I'm not asking for a guarantee or SLA. I'm just looking for a basic estimate.

Them: Sorry. I don't know what that means and I don't think we have that.

Me: Can I bring my own network equipment?

Them: Sure. Just plug anything into the router.

Me: I already have my own router. Do I need to go through yours?

Them: Er ... not sure.

Me: Well, I would like to sign up now. [Previous research has shown me that few of these questions are answered online either]

Them: Great. Would you also like home phone service? It's not much more per month...

This applies to any provider. After a couple of these, you just give up on asking others.

Re: Telekom

I've definitely found that with corporate versus personal sales. At a very basic level, the amount of information and control about the product or service is significantly higher when it's a company buying it. With corporate internet service, I get information about the type of line, the expected bandwidth, the expected latency, firewall rules and how I can turn them all off, IP addresses and what I need to do to get statics, full manual for the supplied or suggested modem if I use it, freedom not to use their equipment. With the exact same company, home service looks like "Up to 100 MB/s" [I'm not sure if "MB" as opposed to "Mb" 's a typo or a deliberate lie). I've had a home ISP who had unremovable firewall rules on outbound traffic, and they were one of the best. I think it happens with nearly every other product as well. Oligopoly power is fun, isn't it?

Hey Siri, are you still recording people's conversations despite promising not to do so nine months ago?

That wouldn't surprise me. Unfortunately, it's not just Apple doing this. Amazon and Google were both caught keeping databases of this stuff and they're almost certainly still doing it. Microsoft probably doesn't have a database because who uses Cortana, but it's probably worth checking anyway. Only Apple, to my knowledge, has any level of disclosure about capturing and sending out the data with an opt out switch that, well I don't know whether it does anything, but it's there. People are going to have to learn that data is stored and analyzed and monetized and published and leaked and they should probably care. So far, they don't seem to have figured that out.

FCC boss pleads with Congress: Please stop me from auctioning off this spectrum for billions of dollars

Re: No real danger

You're absolutely right. No, I don't want that. Unfortunately, they've already started to do that. It is, for example, the FCC's responsibility to identify the companies selling location information from mobile providers, which is illegal. It is their responsibility to investigate those places and fine them, and it is their responsibility to collect those fines. They have instead chosen to ... do nothing. If they are already placing themselves above that law, I don't see a reason they'd balk at placing themselves above another law.

Re: So it's actually more of the same

I'm not that knowledgeable about this band, but I've just done some searching about who currently uses it. Sure, there are emergency services on the list. It seems mostly to be extra capacity needed in urban areas, but not their main bands. However, I note one other user, American UHF channels 14-20. Maybe it's me being paranoid, but I'm wondering about that television company that has been so linked to this director before. I wonder how many stations they have using those channels and how expensive it would be to move them. That will probably require more research, but it might explain some of the vehemence.

With millions upon millions out of work in the US, here come the scammers claiming victims' unemployment money using stolen info

Re: Scammers are an infamia

I have had plans where, while you didn't pay for calls directly, you had a time limit after which you would have to start paying. Incoming calls would not count against that limit until you had been on them for at least a minute, but then the clock would start to count down. I think you can still get such a plan here, but I haven't had one like that in a decade. I think it's mostly still available for those who prefer lower bills, because mine is higher than it has a right to be.

Re: Scammers are an infamia

While I tend not to actively interact with their call by pressing a number to talk with one of their agents, I frequently leave the call connected and wait for their automatic system to hang up. Depending on how complex their setup is, it may have a limit to number of concurrent calls (or better yet, they may pay by the minute). Since incoming calls are free on my plan, I am happy to let them keep talking. Back when they had an Eliza program handling the first stages and would call me once a week to test it out, I used to have it play against a simple program I wrote to read out random sentences whenever the bot stopped talking. Sadly, they seem to have stopped and now the only calls I get ask me to press one and hang up after two or three repeats of their recording.

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

It's a classic trust balancing act. When we are worried about someone else, we value intelligence actions against them, and politicians who disrupt it are doing harm. When we aren't afraid of someone else, we become alert that the intelligence actions are being aimed at us and people we like, so we now want politicians to disrupt them. There is a perfect solution to this: only have politicians who are trustworthy and understand the point--if the actions are warranted, they don't say anything, whereas if the actions are harmful or unjust, the whistle is blown thoroughly. As with every other perfect solution to anything, this one too is completely impossible. Instead, we have politicians doing their best to ensure that we are afraid of someone in order to support intelligence requests which don't actually serve to benefit those politicians. Meanwhile, intelligence collection systems blatantly lie about obvious things even though they have a robust political bulwark, meaning that nobody trusts them. Why they go to such efforts is anyone's guess.

Broken your new Surface Go 2 already? Looks like it's a bit more repairable this time

Re: I suspect not

I agree that sentence is unclear. I looked at the source. The cameras seem to come out just fine. See approximately 51% through the video to see it. Not that that part is particularly important, but the sentence break should have been after the "along with the cameras" chunk. Probably the clearest phrasing would be "The Micro SDXC socket and cameras can be removed easily, but the other components cannot."

If you're appy and you know it: The Huawei P40 Pro conclusively proves that top-notch specs aren't everything

Re: reviewer uses Google extensively

Unless they changed their mind yesterday, the bootloader is locked and I haven't seen anyone successfully break it. So if you get this, you have to accept the Huawei flavor of non-Googled AOSP. That's why I'm not that excited about this--I dislike Google too, but I don't see much benefit in running equally unwanted Huawei code.

Re: If you are desperate for Mountain Views spyware

I'm glad that works for you. I've used it as well, although not that often. My experience has been less reliable. Some apps work perfectly. Some are tagged as GSF-dependent but also seem to work fine, but I'm just waiting for a problem. Many others that have been tried work only to request their permissions, then keel over. For me, that's almost always fine. I rarely need an app urgently, and I can usually find an alternative. Also, I know what is happening. I don't think the general public is in a similar situation. If their experience of using a client such as this, assuming someone installs it for them, is that half the apps they want* crash immediately, they won't be that impressed. That would restrict the market for Huawei devices outside of China to two small subsets of the population: 1) Technical people who probably don't want Google anyway and know how to get around it and 2) people who just don't use many apps.

*The estimate of half is quite rough, but I think it's actually higher. Many in the public are big users of social media apps or games, and I think both are likely to make heavy use of Google's APIs. I haven't done a test because I use neither category.

Re: Flashy

Oh, it looked like that to me too. I prefer my phones ungoogled, which I mostly get via Lineage OS. So having a manufacturer that doesn't include the Google layer...it sounded like quite the helpful approach. I wouldn't have to wait for a device to become supported. I wouldn't have to build the image myself. I wouldn't get the choices I get with Lineage OS. Uh-oh.

There's the rub. I want Google off my phone because I like the certainty that I'm not being tracked by software I don't have control over. Huawei has removed the Google-specific layer. They have instead added their own layer, and I can't trust it, and I can't remove it. All I have now is two choices for whose untrusted and unverifiable software is preloaded. I will have to go to similar lengths to get rid of it, but unlike certain phones that ship with Google's apps preinstalled (Xiaomi's devices, for example), I have little hope that Huawei will ever let me reflash it. Why should I consider this a benefit? Code that I didn't want and can't trust, but would be generally useful if I had to use it has been removed and replaced with code I still don't want and can't trust but is by most reviews less useful.

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

Re: A solution occurs to me

Yes, for the record if anyone is unsure, my preceding comment was intended as humor. But if some piece of equipment has to be destroyed by idiots, I have a preference as to which type they go after.

A solution occurs to me

Hey you conspiracy theory people--sorry, I mean truth-knowers, you've made a mistake. 5G isn't causing the COVID outbreak. No, really. Look at the deployment maps. The masts you're burning are almost all 4G ones, and we've had 4G for quite a while, so that can't be doing it. You know what's new, having been set up right before this started happening and in London, where the U.K. has the most cases? That's right, a bunch of facial recognition cameras. Well, that's what they say they are. All you need is a few devices out there spreading contagion for it to spread from there. These are evil disease-causing equipment. Just look at the facts. You were burning the wrong things. Hint hint.

Note: Obviously, this is untrue. The facts don't support that at all. It'd be ridiculous to think of this. Even these people are intelligent enough to realize this fallacious argument. [Truth-knowers, don't trust the person who put this footnote in my comment.]

Better late than never... Google Chrome to kill off 'tiny' number of mobile web ads that gobble battery, CPU power

Re: How about no execution whatsoever?

No autoplaying videos, but if they want to embed a clip into the ad so I can choose to view it after reading their text, that's fine. I won't be doing it, but it's fine if they choose to. HTML5 has support for it already, so I have no problem killing their JS rights.

Re: Bugger AdBlock, it's Internet advertising that's theft.

That point is relevant, and I imagine you'll find many who won't accept it, but the analogy still applies. In the case of a collect call from a telemarketing system, they are undoubtedly paying for the line capacity, the phone, the person talking, and for any call where the other party doesn't accept the charges. That fact doesn't make the theoretical practice any less odious. In occasions where the data usage is very extreme, I think there's reasonable grounds for complaint. Not that it would do anything, but nonetheless reasonable.

Recently

"We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it," (Marshall Vale)

This is great news. It isn't that Google just doesn't care and will allow anything through as long as they stand to get some money out of it. They just have a six to eight-year latency period on realizing really obvious things. And here was I thinking that they were ignoring these things on purpose. Fantastic, really. If this pattern holds, we might see the following headlines in the future:

2020: Google recently discovered that Android updates are important, and they need to do something to ensure people get them where they punish noncompliant manufacturers.

2021: Google recently found out that malware embedded in ads is concerning.

2022: Google has become aware following a bit of research that Android users would like extra security in their mobile operating system.

2023: Google recently discovered that, if you have a motto that tells you not to be evil, and you cancel that motto, it sounds really bad.

2024: Google realized not long ago that people seem to care a bit about their privacy.

2025: It has come to Google's attention that people are worried about their copying of certain information without compensating the people they copied it off, and maybe someone should come up with a method that uses neither the crazy suggestions of the original publishers or of Google.

2026: Google has come to the conclusion that becoming the market leader in product obsolescence might not be the nicest thing to do to their customers.

Xiaomi Mi 9 owners furious after dodgy Vodafone software patch bricked their mobes

Re: I'm curious

The updates released by carriers are just placed on the carrier's servers, with the phone locked in some way to only get updates from those servers. You can contact those servers however you want, though. If you have a carrier-locked device that you didn't connect to their network, it still gets updates*.

*It actually doesn't get any updates, but that's because the carrier never releases any. If they ever did release one, your phone could download it and install whatever bugs it contains with no difficulty.

Re: Worse than that

That's great. But that's because Xiaomi has decided to be nice. The point being that neither Google nor the carrier (I'm assuming this was not associated with a carrier) care at all about providing you updates. Any credit there is for maintaining the phone this far goes to Xiaomi. There is such credit to go out, but not because this is a very long time. Just because most of the competition is lamentably bad at it.

Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID

Corruption is a good consideration, but you don't fix corruption at high government levels with detailed data collection on the average citizen. In fact, that gives you extra methods to maintain corruption, because people might only get privacy if they have sufficient connections, and they now have a massive database which can be sold to lots of people with cash to spend.

You attribute totalitarianism to revolution, and you're often correct. However, it doesn't always work that way. There have been many countries where someone came to power in an election that was somewhat democratic (sometimes with a lot of voter intimidation, but not always), but then turned the country into a totalitarian nightmare. The European example that is most well-known is Italy. Examples can be found elsewhere though, from early 1900s Japan to modern-day Venezuela. The dictators who eventually became beyond democratic removal were able to do that by leveraging powers of previous governments. That's one reason we want lots of limits on governments, but it's not enough to relocate those powers to a business or military area, because then you've just moved the problem around. Tracking citizens would be very useful to a dictatorship, as you've pointed out and as countries like China prove every day.

In my opinion, what leads to totalitarianism is access to power. If a revolution creates a power vacuum, then it is now easier to take over, so people will try. If you destroy a country, there will be a lot of displeasure, meaning that power is easier to get with popular support, so people will try. And if you make the government or anything else all-powerful, then you have increased the potential rewards of controlling that thing, so people will try.

Re: In all honesty

"I would rather no one knew what i was browsing or buying and i definitely do NOT want targed ads. Infact i do not want ANY Adds."

I don't like ads either. You and I are perfectly within our rights to try to avoid ads. However, it's quite a hard argument to make that advertising itself violates our rights. If we get everybody to agree, we can try, but I am not going to put much effort into an anti-advertising push. I will put that energy into anti-tracking policy, though, because that causes a lot more harm to everybody and is already legally dubious. The result may be that there are still ads, but they are tailored only to the current environment or to small amounts of data you've knowingly decided to let the advertisers use. Should we get that, I would view it as a profound victory.

Re: In all honesty

I agree, and I think my previous restrictions implement that. Namely, the retailer can record the shopping history of people and associate it with the account, but they cannot release that information and they cannot further track. It would be nice for them to offer accountless purchases, but even if they choose not to, a person can get anonymous shopping by setting up multiple accounts. Well, they can get untracked shopping; buying online is almost intrinsically attached to some identifiers because you have to pay and cash doesn't work and you have to get delivery of anything physical.

Re: In all honesty

I'm well aware that phones do a lot of tracking. My point was that they don't need to, and we don't need the alternative to be a subscription price for the use of the phone. Most companies make plenty of profit on the phone purchases, and then they are willing to make extra profit off the user data. If one is made illegal, they'll be fine. Even those few who sell their phones at a loss will just have to increase their prices to deal with the fact that a predatory practice of theirs isn't allowed anymore. I am fine with that.

In all honesty

In all honesty, everything you said is wrong.

"governments need to decide if targeted advertising is legal or not [...] All of this grey area crap is just vacilliating around the real question. Should you be able to gather data for people for the purposes of monetising them."

There is a grey area, and it's important. Gathering information about what someone does on your platform so you can make recommendations to them on that platform usually doesn't draw much ire. For example, I don't care if Amazon records a history of things I buy and uses it to suggest products while I'm logged into the same account. The problems occur when that data is released or when collection isn't obvious. I'm not happy for Amazon to start selling that information to others, nor am I happy for Amazon to collect information about my browsing elsewhere or when I'm not logged into an account with them. It's a control thing. If Amazon only collects things I do on their platform and connects it to the logged-in account, then I can stop them doing that by not using their platform or anonymize it by using multiple accounts. If they do other things, I have no certainty about what is happening and certainly no control over any of it.

"If the answer is yes, then accept that it means companies hold data on all individuals if they use devices or services offered by those companies"

So if the answer to a very generalized question is yes, we basically give up on all controls? Because a lot of the question isn't about something that clean cut. A lot of the concern is about what the companies do with the data, how they collect it, and how much information and control the consumer has. These are the important questions, but you fail to mention them at all.

"if not, then we've got to be prepared to pay monthly for phones, email, websites etc."

Wrong. We pay for phones. It's called the purchase price and it's quite high. The software comes on those phones, just like there's firmware on your microwave. You don't decide you have to pay a subscription for your microwave, nor would you accept it monetizing you. The same applies to phones. While removal of some of the profitable ways to monetize users might mean more sites have to switch to a subscription model, it isn't guaranteed. Advertising wouldn't be made illegal--advertising tailored to the content or of a general nature is fine. Collecting information in an open and transparent way about what is collected, how, and what is done with it likewise would work. What you're serving us is a false dichotomy, and a very popular one among people who violate our privacy. You're telling us that having our data strip-mined is necessary to an internet of free services. Well, that's not true for all free services, it may prove false for many others about which we have no information, and for those that are left, we might be willing to pay that price.

US piles yet more charges on Theranos CEO, COO. We could do with good blood testing now... and this wasn't it

Re: I know they were a bit fraudulent but.....

Let me see. Why might they not be there? Well, a few ideas come to mind:

1. They are very well-connected and used their power to stay away from justice.

2. They didn't know the company was fraudulent.

3. The company lied to them, so they believed the story the investors believed, so they didn't know the company was fraudulent.

4. The company got lucky in scoring so many well-known names to be on the board. They knew they would face major consequences if anyone on the board left it out of concerns, so they put in a lot of effort to lie about the progress so the directors wouldn't find out the truth and expose them, so the directors believed the story the investors believed, so they didn't know the company was fraudulent.

5. The company needed famous names behind them to dupe investors into trusting that they were so innovative, so they went after some people who had a lot of famous and well-regarded friends, so the company got lucky in scoring so many well-known names to be on the board. They knew they would face major consequences if anyone on the board left it out of concerns, so they put in a lot of effort to lie about the progress so the directors wouldn't find out the truth and expose them, so the directors believed the story the investors believed, so they didn't know the company was fraudulent.

One of these doesn't look as likely as the other ones.

The so-called piling on of charges is simple to deal with. Are the people being charged guilty or likely guilty of the things they're charged with? Then they can be charged with those things. If you find out that extra charges without any evidence are coming in, we can argue again. Until then, you're wrong.

Re: "[they] argue that the case needs to be moved back to 2021"

They've basically admitted that they lied. They're not pretending all that much anymore, and those minor things they still lie about aren't convincing anyone. I really don't know what their current mindset is, but they're smart enough to realize that crowing about their impending vindication won't help them with anything, and it's time for them to stay in the shadows and protect anything they still have.

Re: I know they were a bit fraudulent but.....

This is not an overhyped claim. It is a false claim. Consider the following two strategies for getting investments in a company that does a certain type of test. The example will be a brainwave scanner. In both cases, the company doesn't currently have the ability to do what they want to do, but they think it will be possible.

Claim 1: We have been investigating FMRI scanning and have plans to produce a portable model, approximately the size and weight of a helmet. We're confident that this is possible. We also have several interesting research programs that can take FMRI data, currently from the big lab-type machines, and produce interesting insights into neurological health and user focus. We think this will be a successful product when it's available at a similar price to a smartphone. Imagine all the people who could benefit from it. Our potential customer base could be massive.

Claim 2: We have created an FMRI machine the size of a helmet. We can show it to you but you can't buy one because we need to do some certifications first. Also, we have a program that can determine whether someone's at risk for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, as well as more consumer-oriented information like focus patterns. We've tested that program on lots of people, but we're also developing new programs as we speak. The device can be sold at the price of a smartphone with a 12% profit margin, but that can be increased with cheaper manufacturing. We already have preorders from a couple retail outlets for a hundred thousand units pending that test.

The first claim is an expression of hope. It may be overhyped. The execs may think that it is a lot more likely than the techs think, but they didn't lie about having something they don't have. An investor who hears that sales pitch understands what is intended, but also that the development isn't finished. They know enough to be aware that there is risk and to ask for more details before they invest. The second claim is a lie. An investor who hears it will think the company can do things that it can't do. It's not hype, because hype is a method of saying true things in a way to make them more exciting than the raw facts. An investor wouldn't know that, and might make decisions based on that lie. There's a really big difference.

Huawei gets misty-eyed for the good old days (of a year ago) with maudlin P30 Pro remaster

Re: One more reason...

It might be given the pricepoint, but for most users, neither feature is of utmost importance. Few places have 5G, so unless you're so annoyed with the slow speed of 4G that you feel you need 5G as soon as it is available, you probably don't care. The more modern chipset is faster, but if you don't do a lot of CPU-intensive work on your phone, you likely don't notice that. I'm not sure how many people there out there who do rely on that, but all the people I know don't have a clue what chipset is in their phone and don't really care about a faster one.

For the general public, I've seen people caring about the following features, in descending order of number of people I've heard complain about each feature or plan to buy a different device based on said feature:

1. Physical appearance of device.

2. Screen size and shape (E.G. people who really hate notches).

3. Headphone jack availability.

4. Battery life.

5. Camera quality.

6. Price.

7. Modernity of OS.*

8. Likelihood of continued security updates.*

9. Expandability, including dedicated SD, dual SIM, and replaceable battery.*

10. Support by alternate OS images, E.G. Lineage OS.*

*At least somewhat technical people only.

Incredible how you can steal data via Thunderbolt once you've taken the PC apart, attached a flash programmer, rewritten the firmware...

Re: @Doublelayer

You're leaving out some steps:

Steal laptop from user: If they're in the airport, they likely still have the machine right next to them. Good luck with that. Stealing it with enough time to do the rest of the steps and return it unnoticed usually requires them to leave it somewhere from where it can be lifted.

Dismantle laptop: This step is fast. Well, it's fast for my computer as long as you have the correct screwdriver, because you just have to undo all the screws and lift off the backplate. For a computer which uses a lot more glue, it'll be much slower to get at the thunderbolt interface pads.

Attach reprogrammer: This needs to be a reprogrammer that already has the code for this specific Thunderbolt chipset and is wired properly for the interface in the computer. So it's not one-size-fits-all. A criminal can't just carry a simple box that lets them do it to every computer, but a prepared attacker with knowledge of the computer involved can use it.

Upload code: That's fast too.

Connect memory access device to port: This one can be the same device for all victim machines.

Copy memory: Yes, copy memory. A lot of memory. I'm currently using about three gigabytes, and I don't even have much running. Sometimes I'm using eleven gigabytes because I've got VMs running. If you're after sensitive stuff, you want to catch me then because the VMs contain the sensitive information. You aren't going to copy eleven gigabytes onto your portable system in five minutes. Thunderbolt is fast, but you need to also factor in the disk speed of the thing you're righting to, the bus speed of your attack box, any processing you need to do while reading, any delays in getting the memory accessed by the laptop's chipset, and on and on. That takes time. Once again, even if you did manage to steal it from someone in an airport, you need to return it to them quickly. This will add potentially long delays.

Reflash original firmware: This may be optional if your replacement firmware can still operate correctly, but if it doesn't, you have to put back the original code so they won't notice something's wrong as soon as they plug in a different peripheral.

Reassemble computer: Fast for mine. Good luck with some others. See IFixit for details.

Clean evidence of tampering from computer: Oh, and nobody had better have seen you disassembling a laptop in another airport area, because I'm guessing they'd get suspicious about what you're doing there. Having security called to verify you aren't turning a laptop battery into an explosive device wouldn't be great for you.

Return computer to the place where you left it: The user needs to not have noticed that it was ever missing. They also need to not see you put it back. Have fun.

Again, it's not useless. It's not so easy as the paper makes out, though, because they only timed how long it takes to attach an exploit device and prove the exploit successful, not how long it takes from theft to replacement with useful usage of exploit in between.

Re: more of a neat trick than infosec Armageddon

Well, sort of. However, it does involve quite a bit of work to access the data, which means that it won't get used all that often. If it's a government doing the accessing, you end up in XKCD 538 territory. Similarly, it won't work unless the person has put the computer to sleep while the attacker has access to it. If it has been shut down or the battery died, the exploit produces nothing. So this also limits the viability of using that attack after the user has run away. The attack is also only needed if the user has encrypted their disks but hasn't done anything else to protect the data--if they also encrypt the file, the attack cannot get the cleartext of that file or the password, and if the user didn't encrypt the disk, then there is no need to do this.

While it's not useless, it only works in a relatively small number of cases, and in many of those cases, there is a more direct method of getting access. It's a good reminder to those who are concerned about an attacker of that level of skill and determination to avoid suspending to memory, but that has been known for some time.

Wanna be a developer? Your coworkers want to learn Go and like to watch, er, Friends and Big Bang Theory

Re: Did I miss it, or C wasn't in that list?

I was quite surprised not to see C in the list. Sure, it's painful to write many types of programs in it. But surely people took courses in it at least? Maybe it's just that I took mostly systems courses, so nearly everything was at least partially taught in C, but someone's got to write operating systems, embedded code, drivers, programming language interpreters, ... Did the survey people just skip over all those people?

Re: Correlation and causation

Well, at least those happy workers working forever. However, I generally prefer a job that is not paid by the hour over one that is assuming that I know how much time I'll be putting into both. The reason is that those jobs I've had that are paid by the hour have always involved an annoying filling in of timesheets with pointless levels of detail about when I came in, when I went out, what I did for every five minute section of the day, etc. Filling those out involved a healthy amount of trying to remember what I was doing several hours and ten intensive debuggings ago, then putting in some generalities and going home. Meanwhile, non-hourly jobs frequently just care whether the job got done, and if I work weirder hours or do one long and one short day instead of two normal-length days, they don't care and I don't even have to tell them.

Users of Will.i.am's Wink IoT hub ask 'Where is the love?' as they're asked to pay for a new subscription service

Re: Tossed mine today

If you mean that literally, it would be preferable for you to bring the device to a place that recycles electronics. Many retailers will accept such equipment, though the list will vary depending on which country you're in. Some components may not just be wasteful to put into landfill, but may also be dangerous.

Re: Cue the lawsuits in 3, 2, 1...

That may be the case, but there are still resources they can use to pay the judgement, or rather there are resources that could be given to the lawyers after bankruptcy is declared. All of their code and systems would be a pretty good haul, assuming you could find a way to profit from them. For example, you could release the code to the devices as open source so someone else could build an open services stack around them. Fine, that was wishful thinking. But you could sell the same subscription to the users, and it would be legal for someone else to do it as they never sold the products in the first place.

Alternatively, there is probably more money to be gained by a successful lawsuit than there is in the company at the moment. I'm guessing this subscription system wasn't a spur of the moment decision. It would almost certainly be found illegal. Therefore, it could be expected that doing this would lead to bankruptcy. If these facts are agreed to, then payments made to executives after consideration of the subscription idea could be seen as attempts to syphon remaining resources from a sinking ship, and could be clawed back. Getting those points accepted in court does involve quite a bit of effort, but given that one of the executives in this company is somewhat wealthy, the lawyers may consider it worth it to try.

Fancy some post-weekend reading? How's this for a potboiler: The source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps

Re: Why?

You are misunderstanding several concepts. We'll start with decentralized data storage. This works, and the government doesn't need access. It works like this:

Your phone knows some random identifiers it's been screaming into the void. It also knows a bunch of identifiers it has heard from others' phones it has been near. So all you need to do to warn people you were near is to send a list of your identifiers to a public system. If they get that list, they can check the identifiers against their own list of the ones they heard, and if there's a match, they get an alert. Your name doesn't need to be attached when you send out the identifiers, and you certainly don't need their names.

Ah, but I see you are concerned that people will report unreliably, causing a bunch of false positives. A reasonable concern. So the solution is to give all the information to the government and have them do all the reporting? No, it isn't. A better solution is to give health providers signing keys. If someone tests positive and reports identifiers, their report is signed with a health provider key. You can't report without a key, or at least a report may not be trusted without a key. Keys only go to health providers.

You also are completely misunderstanding the utility of this app, if it actually has any. You seem to think that it's useful only by sending a bunch of data to the NHS. No, not really. They have information from tests, which they can use. The utility of this app is supposed to be that people know when they have to stay in quarantine. A warning from an app like this is not a positive test. Treating it as one would destroy any dataset. Nor is it a good reason to use limited testing capacity on that person. It would be great if we could get that many tests, but we don't have the capacity now.

For that reason, the app idea is very limited and may possibly cause more harm than good. However, you seem to only acknowledge the extremes--either the app is worthless or the app provides crucial data to health authorities. It is instead intended to provide information of tentative reliability to the public. Given that, there is little or no benefit in centralized data storage. Simultaneously, there is significant risk in centralized data storage. If we are going to have such an app, it is very important that it be decentralized in order to get sufficient uptake.

Re: Best option, cheapest option

Warning. Potentially incorrect causal relationship detected.

"In Russia for example, everyone is encouraged at the first sign of symptoms or suspicion of them to get a test, that brings both early isolation and treatment helping to reduce the impact." leading to "So far the percentage of deaths compared to infected seems to be lower than the majority of other countries."

This could be caused by several things. The easiest one is that more people are getting tested, meaning the number of people who we know to be infected in Russia is closer to the total than the number we know to be infected elsewhere. If we acknowledge that there is a significant chunk of the population that is now or has contracted the disease but didn't get tested and either showed no symptoms or thought it was a standard cold, we could also have a higher denominator leading to similar death rates.

There are other methods for arriving at similar statistics. It could be that our lockdowns are being more effective at blocking transmission, meaning fewer people get infected, but those who do are more at risk of dying from it because they are more often elderly people in close proximity. Or that Russia has a test that produces reliable results faster, meaning people are caught earlier in the progression of the disease. Or that Russia has a worse test that produces a lot of false positives, but they are willing to live with that because overactive isolation can't really hurt. Or the thing you said. All are possible. None have been proven.