Posts by doublelayer

It's 2020, so let's just go ahead and let Amazon have everyone's handprints so it can process payments

Re: Amazon have become greedy and annoying

Not for mine. I did that once and now they still push Prime, but they want me to pay for it and would be happy to add it to my bill right now. I only really use Amazon when I want something unusual that can't be found at more normal locations, so I never need them to deliver it right away. They don't seem to like it when users select the free shipping in two weeks option and will do anything they can to suggest that I want it on Friday and it's just a little more.

Re: One-way hash?

Hashing doesn't do for biometrics what it does for passwords. In the case where a password is matched, there is only one question: does this stream of bytes match the stream of bytes we saw last time? You can't do that with a fingerprint because the readers are imperfect. If you only ask whether you've seen this exact fingerprint before, you'll get no nearly all of the time. Instead, you have to match certain parts and allow for inaccuracy, rotation, dirt on the finger or scanner, etc.

There are two ways to do this. Option 1 is to keep a detailed model of the fingerprint and have an algorithm which matches components. If enough parts match, access is granted. This doesn't work with hashes because you can't match loop A from image to loop B from model without being able to look at the original model. The second way does support hashing: you write an algorithm which restricts what kind of things you're reading for and turns that into a lossy compressed model. You might have to create a bunch of those, but by restricting the things you match on, you can increase your chances of a match high enough that you can afford to hash and delete your original model. Even if you do that, the model you've hashed can be used for tracking because it's relatively easy to create theoretical fingerprints and test them. It's quite similar to passwords, which can also be tested quickly. The difference is that a salted hash of a password is intended to delay someone trying to crack them so the breech can be detected and the passwords reset. You can't reset a fingerprint, so if there's ever a breech, the people with the database now have something they can crack at their leisure.

Flying camera drones, cuddly Echo gadgets... it's all a smoke screen for Amazon to lead you gently down the Sidewalk – and you'll probably like it

Re: It helps to have the world's wussiest burglar break into your house...

I think their theory is that, while you're trying to find something with which to knock it out of the air, it's sending your picture off to the cloud and nearby police. This picture will be used by the police to arrest someone who looks a little like you or maybe nothing like you and by Amazon to recommend new tools for breaking and entering when you sign into your Amazon account.

I do kind of want a small drone; it's in that category of things I don't really know what to do with but there must be something useful because they're cool. I wouldn't buy something like this for the life of me because the drone is only useful [fun] if I can program it to fly exactly how I direct, photograph what I tell it to, and deliver the video to the system I define and no others. I have no confidence that Amazon would let me do any of this. Worse, from their privacy record, I expect my data to be stored forever with dubious access control and that both my past footage and the drone itself will be instantly available to police without any justification whatsoever.

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

"seems like it's disabled someservice, but not actually disabling it. "

"At the very least systemctl should throw an error giving some clue as to WHY it is not disabling a service."

I believe the initial complaint is about what it does do when the service exists, namely it disables it. Disabling it means that it removes the service's links which determine whether that service will be started under conditions like a reboot or a change in level. It doesn't stop a service. The reason I think that's the complaint is the mention of high memory usage; I'm guessing the problem here is that the disabled service is still running because systemd hasn't had cause to restart services. The command to stop a service is "systemctl stop someservice" although you can combine them by specifying disable with --now. I have retrieved this information from systemctl's man page which includes a warning that disable doesn't mean stop.

Now it may be argued that a command called disable should both disable the service from being automatically started and stop it now, but the documentation is clear that it doesn't do that. I am not here to praise systemd; I don't much care whether you like it or hate it. There are real bugs in it which are annoying and I'd like to see patched. Still, if the problem you have is what commands look like, you can't really call that a bug. Disable disables and stop stops. Want to create a disablestop or modify disable? Fine with me, but file it under changes and not bug fixes.

"Assuming this is accurate... Is this how Windows goes ARM?"

No, Windows already went ARM. You can buy a computer with it on if you want. They did this by changing their compiler target to ARM and then fixing broken things until they got tired of that and it seemed to work fine. Linux was not the kernel at that time and it isn't at all proven that it will ever be.

Re: Okaaayyy

I think the strategy is clear and far from the prediction made. Windows is the way Microsoft stays relevant to its business clients and OEMs. They're not going to do a bunch of work to get Linux running old Windows code through an emulation layer; it's cheaper to keep supporting Windows, much less likely to break, and it keeps a revenue stream headed their way. Meanwhile, they can't just ignore that legacy code because that's a major reason businesses provide for staying with Windows.

The Edge on Linux part makes total sense to me too. Another major revenue generator for Microsoft is their Office subscriptions, which run through a browser. By porting Edge to Linux, which was probably pretty easy as Chromium already runs on Linux, they make sure that they'll always be able to run Office for Linux users; even if Firefox and normal Chromium make changes that break something MS needs, they can keep it running through Edge. This makes Office more of a cross-platform tool and ensures user satisfaction for not much work.

Re: Running games is the simple part

"Games today and historically have always been the activity that taxes the hardware to the max. CPU, GPU and RAM are left choking and sometimes even the disk gets its share (e.g. badly programmed loading screens)."

That was not the point of the person you're talking about. They argued that games were easier to emulate than other software, but not because they're low on resource usage. Their argument is that games avoid using a lot of OS-provided libraries. Their examples were the GUI layers, which games often reimplement with their own graphics engines. I haven't ever developed games so I can't comment on whether what they say is true, but please argue against it if you are going to based on the argument made.

Too many staff have privileged work accounts for no good reason, reckon IT bods

Re: .. all the access they ask for ..

There is a very big risk in giving too much access, but there is also a risk in giving too little. The risk usually shows itself in people doing extra work to get around the restrictions. Here's a basic story of a situation that is all too common:

I once did a short job writing some code with a small team who all started at the same time. After figuring out the specs of the task and how development would work, we decided we needed a database server to store data needed for development. Local IT agreed and quickly provided us a box to run that on. It was set up the same day. Then we tried to set up a repo on the default code system. That took longer because our accounts didn't have permissions to do anything with it and it was run by a larger site of the company. We sent email there, waited several hours, were told that someone else handles this, sent email to them, waited until the next day, got an email saying we needed to prove our need for the permission, brought in our managers, waited a few hours, got an email right before we left that the permission was granted, discovered that we now had read but not write or create, sent another email, waited until the next day, asked again, finally got write permission and they created a repo for us, and finally we could exchange code. During this annoying process, we had frequently discussed using our database server to run a basic git server. We didn't, but we considered it because we would be more productive if we could use a version control system; our only other option would have been to email code around, which wouldn't have been very secure either. Later in this job, we wanted to send a very large file containing data to another team. They asked us to place this file (approximately 35 GB) in our git repo. Why? They didn't have anything else to which both teams had access and they didn't want to waste days to get one.

The same can happen with other types of jobs. If people need (or think they need) to have certain kinds of data or take certain kinds of actions, they'll do what they have to to do this. If security is slow to respond to this kind of access request, fails to consider whether people actually need things, or doesn't provide necessary tools, they run the risk that users will try to circumvent them. Based on the way security is run, some of the more dangerous ways this can show itself may be caught and more egregious offenses can be disciplined. Even if that's the case, the landscape of threats is probably worse and productivity will be impaired. These concerns are probably most relevant to small companies. Large ones have the resources to have a dedicated security team and lots of systems so people can quickly be given access to things they need. Smaller companies probably put all this on IT. If IT isn't sufficiently fast or organized about granting permissions, expect users to take the route of less effort which will cause us to have to take the route of damage control.

Bad boys bad boys, what you gonna do? Los Angeles Police Department found fibbing about facial recognition use

Re: Its coming

Computers checking spelling was never a general scandal. You could undoubtedly find people who thought that, if you needed it, you were stupid then. You can almost certainly find such people now as well. If I traveled back in time to 1990 and denounced you as a terrible user of a spell checker, nobody would care. Facial recognition isn't a spell checker. A spell checker might mean that people don't learn to spell as well. A facial recognition system means lots of false arrests and boundless opportunities for abuse.

All those ‘teleworking is the new normal’ predictions? Not so much, say bosses

Re: Working from will NOT last

You are correct there. If the half in, half out approach is ever implemented, it will probably be from an accountant's pen. I predict that it will be against the groans of most of the workers though. I don't agree about family friendly, as neither approach seems to be convenient from that perspective. Working from home when children are also at home seems to irritate those of my colleagues who have children, and it doesn't really help add flexibility if the parent needs to go help the children for a long period. This is especially true if the schedule for when to go to the office is firm, as in the parent doesn't have the choice to work from home on the day they will have the most obligations to help their children.

My objections may be rooted in my dislike for a large, disorganized open plan office, especially one with hotdesking. I think, however, that my dislike is not quite unique. I can easily organize my affairs if I'm to be working from home forever or for a long period; I have done so successfully this time. Having no children helps with this, but even if I did have to set up a better environment for working while being near children, I could do it with enough time. I can also easily structure routines around going to an office. Having to do both and frequently switch between them would annoy me a lot.

Re: Working from will NOT last

I'm not sure your idea will work. It sounds unpleasant to me, at least. In my opinion, the benefits of an office are for better coordination between team members, the benefits of working from home are convenience and extra time, and the benefits to trying to improvise one or both of those are few. Having a team in an office where people know where all the people are makes it easy to organically ask questions and meet in person, so if you have small hot-desking offices, you lose most of that. People won't necessarily know whether the people they want are there, it's not convenient to meet in a big open plan area, all that. Similarly, trying to create a team geographically by home address is a recipe for chaos (or a license to print money for someone who writes the software to do it for you).

This solution also loses most of the benefits of working from home. If people work from home all the time, they don't have to be in a suburban area or near something specific, meaning it's easier to hire people from a greater distance and to allow existing employees to move without disrupting their careers. If people still have to work from home but they have to stay near to where the office used to be, that benefit is lost. In general, I think most companies should plan for each employee to primarily work from home or primarily work in an office rather than making them alternate between the two.

Re: Not surprising for Aus

It's not usually speed that's important, rather reliability and latency. Copper lines don't have to be unreliable or laggy, but since a lot of them are old, the stereotype is that they fail much more often than fiber. It's basically true, as most times when new cabling is installed it's more modern and more fibery. Depending on the quality of service, it may be that the internet has fine speed, but it goes down when needed and/or adds enough latency that attempting a call means long periods of silence.

Facebook is the internet's cigarette: Addictive and laced with nasty stuff – 'shocking images, graphic videos, headlines that incite outrage'

And the writers of the headline chose to quote some which summarized the points made in the statement. The statement was outraged, so the chunk that summarized it was outraged. That statement was the topic of the article, so... why was it so wrong to quote a summary in the headline?

Re: Last election

"Either Facebook is doing a better job at stopping it, people are becoming smarter about falling for conspiracy theories, or Facebook isn't the medium being leveraged this time around."

Or maybe one of these alternatives:

1. You are not getting the dodgy content sent to you because Facebook's targeting has identified you as not falling for it.

2. You don't connect as much with the people likely to believe it, so people you know aren't sharing it.

3. The content being pushed is of better quality so you aren't correctly identifying it for what it is.

4. People are pushing dodgy content that really comes from the attributed sources, so other dodgy content looks more normal because the overall quality is worse.

5. You read less on Facebook than you did before.

6. Foreign governments found the last attempt wasn't as successful as other ideas they've had, so they're not doing it as much.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that it isn't there, and since I don't know what you have read on Facebook or what you read before, I can't tell you exactly why it's different. Before jumping to the conclusion that Facebook's doing something or the scammers have moved elsewhere, consider the alternatives.

NHS COVID-19 launch: Risk-scoring algorithm criticised, the downloads, plus public told to 'upgrade their phones'

Re: Two questions

"1. Why does the Android version, at least, refuse to run without location services running?"

Android's Bluetooth permissions are a little strange. Fine control of Bluetooth can allow an app to perform some location tracking assuming known devices are nearby, so apps aren't allowed to do it unless they have fine location permission. Unfortunately, enabling this not only allows the app to perform the detailed scans over Bluetooth but also enables them to gather information from the phone's location chips and from WiFi scanning. Google evidently didn't think it was worth splitting this permission into parts. IOS does this differently and lumps that into the Bluetooth permission, so that app is not going to ask while Android's is; again a place where Apple could split up permissions but didn't. The source being available, it seems unlikely that the location is being collected or used in any way. However, the usual conditions apply to that statement, including that the data is now technically available and I have not verified that the source matches the app that is downloaded.

Re: Covid-19 side-effect

To attempt to be fair to phones, it's not three-year-old ones that can't run this. The latest Apple device not to support it is the iPhone 6, released in 2014. Android 5.1 came out in March and April of 2015. I have to give more credit to Apple here, as the iPhone which doesn't support it got four OS releases before getting dropped while most Android 5 devices probably didn't get an update at all, but in each case we're dealing with devices four years old. In my opinion, most of these could continue to run a more up-to-date OS and they should have gotten it, but that's an issue for another discussion.

Nokia rolls out midrange 5G mobile, but will struggle to fight off Motorola and pals. Plus: New platform for suits with bulk-ordered SIMs

Connect Personal? Maybe?

I wonder if this Connect Pro option will be available for small businesses with only a few devices, or in other words, just people. Having scanned their current site, it's low on specs about how the service works and what it costs, but I wonder if it will allow the use of devices without the typical charges for connection from mobile providers. I've previously considered trying to use mobile connectivity for systems that might need it occasionally, but each time I've been dissuaded because the pricing from providers makes the idea less tenable. I'm happy to pay for usage, but what I'd rather not do is pay a bill just to keep a line open even when it's not getting used at all for long periods. Here's hoping that they'll update the site with more details later and this really allows people to have multiple lines without paying extortionate charges for things that don't get used.

Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid mechanical keyboard: Weird, powerful, comfortable ... and did we mention weird?

Re: DIP switches for the win

It depends. If the article's statement is the way I read it, these switches only allow you to switch between preset modes, not arbitrary ones. I have a keyboard here which allowed programming the keys through a program that is almost exactly how you described them. Proprietary, opaque, weird layout, translation to English from Martian, Windows only. I haven't had to deal with that program for quite a while though because I set up all the modes I wanted, mapped them to start up with a certain keypress, and moved the keyboard back to my main machine. Now I can activate any layout, and they're the ones I specified rather than whatever the manufacturer came up with.

She was praised by the CEO and promoted. After her brother and mom died, she returned from compassionate leave. IBM laid her off

Re: Capitalism hasn't existed that much longer than 200 years

At this point, we get into the discussion of what capitalism really is. In the most basic sense, you give me that and I give you money and you take the money to whoever's got the thing you want, there's been a market economy for millennia. There has been very ancient money from 2000 B.C.E. and likely there was money before that. Other concepts that play into capitalism are much newer. Corporations which exist as a shared operation owned in part by many people, as opposed to the organized operations of some powerful people beholden to nobody, is maybe four to five centuries old. Organized stock exchanges are from the late 18th century C.E. Governmental regulations promoting competition are really new, having started around 1850 or so. Which of these four things are central to capitalism? Which ridiculously obvious things did I forget to mention? Everyone is going to have different ideas, so everyone will have different ages.

I think one thing we can point to that was necessary for what we call capitalism is the removal of a government-imposed monopoly or prohibition. This took several forms. In the middle ages, there were guilds who got their permission to restrict who could do what job from some government they viewed as worthy of dictating that. Later, there were laws about what people were allowed to spend money on and how much they could be paid, laws intentionally written to prevent people in lower castes from doing things. Then there were the colonial monopolies where someone got the rights to most of the economic activity in some chunk of the world in return for going there and claiming the rights to own that chunk for the monarch involved. Slavery and a ethnic caste system were similar in that people were born into a situation which the law did not permit them to leave. When this craze ended is a little tricky to estimate, as we still have some government-supported monopolies today, but I think that's a useful point to use when establishing when modern capitalism really became what we think about. At least that's my opinion on how we go about finding our answer.

Elecrow CrowPi2: Neat way to get your boffins-to-be hooked on Linux from an early age and tinkering in no time

Re: Repetition = practice

"And finally the whole programming thing: if people did not learn by practice and repetition then they would not need a computer: they could just read the description of the programming language and that would be enough. And they would also never get better: you'd teach them how to program (from a book) at which point they would be the best programmers they could ever be."

That's not really what I argued. In fact, it's close to the opposite of what I've argued. When you learn programming, there's relatively little repetition. Once you learn what a function is and how to make a recursive one, you don't need to learn it again. You do need to use it. The people who most espouse repetition will do that by making people write twenty recursive functions, but that's not really efficient. Instead, have them write a few recursive functions until they understand what recursion means. Then give them actual problems where recursion can solve the problem and see how they deal with it. It's sort of repetitive in the sense that they're using things they learned before, but it's new tasks which don't take the form of a litany of exercises. This is better than the exercise method because it makes the student think through the solution, whereas exercises already tell them what the solution will be and they just have to do implementation steps. Those teachers who use repetition in a way I dislike tend to focus on basic things and force a "really firm understanding" of those things. Unfortunately, in my experience, that translates as a "really good understanding of how to answer the test question". It results in people using similar code to things they've seen before without understanding why they're doing it; it worked before, so it will work here, and it probably does, but that's because the problem they're working on is limited and performance isn't critical.

Practice isn't repetition and repetition isn't practice. You can repeat an action and memorize results without getting better at it if you're repeating something which doesn't require enough lateral thinking. You can practice by doing a lot of different things, therefore understanding multiple options for completing a task, which involves doing a similar thing but relatively little repetition.

Re: Repetition = practice

Maybe we actually agree, but it doesn't really sound like it. It seems to me that very little time should be spent on memorization. This is perhaps because my memory is relatively good so I find it easy to memorize things, but I think it applies to others as well. In studying something, the very basic information on which everything else is based should be memorized for speed. This is usually completed in a month or so (depends on what exactly it is, but I think that's a good level for a course of study lasting a year or more and where the first information learned is really the basics). After that, repetition is not only unnecessary, it is harmful. If teachers think that repetition is going to help after the very basic concepts, they're at best generating boredom. At worst, they're generating students who don't know how to do anything which wasn't in the homework or exams. I've seen teachers do that. I have seen the students that result. When I have taught in the past, I have endeavored to avoid that risk as best I can.

Re: Repetition = practice

I have memorized the tables of multiplication. Kind of handy, too. I've only memorized them up so far though, and if I want to calculate 29*47 I have to do it manually. I can do so accurately, so there's no need to make me manually do a hundred more of those to make sure.

The problem with rote memorization is that you don't often need some of the things people want you to memorize, and there are people who will try to make you memorize even more things. Since this is about programming, think of all the things that someone could memorize. I could memorize every system call available under Linux. All the names, each parameter and its possible values, all stored in my brain and available for the unannounced quiz. Which is mostly useless. There are system calls there that don't matter, nor do I need to know every option. That's what man pages are for. By using those system calls in real programs, I'll get a better understanding of what they do and why people use them than I ever would memorizing them. More important, while that set of functions is likely to have lasting significance, a lot of potentially memorizable things aren't worth doing so. I could have memorized the standard libraries for any number of languages which no longer get used, and it would have wasted my time.

Rote memorization is only relevant for the most basic of things. How to do basic mathematics is a good example, but even that is limited. Those who prioritize memorization over understanding of how to use it in real life are doing students a disservice. Which would you rather a programming instructor do in a limited amount of time: have the students implement twelve sorting algorithms and memorize the time and space complexity values for each, or have the students implement three sorting algorithms and understand why each has the time and space complexity it does. For memorization, twelve is better; if they were stuck with access to nothing they could quickly implement sorting on any system. In real life, it's better to know what causes complexity; they're already going to have sorting available, there are only a few sorts they really have to know well, but they're going to have to worry about the same kind of performance on other algorithms which don't have memorizable answers.

Re: Repetition = practice

"Is there any other way to practice something to acquire mastery beyond 'boring' repetition?"

Absolutely. The thing most people are learning here is computing and programming. Boring repetition doesn't help there. At all. Consider this lesson plan:

Learn what a linked list is. Done. Write a linked list. Done. Write another linked list. Write a double-connected linked list. Write an indexed linked list. Write a restricted linked list with the annoying scheme access method. Write a circular linked list. Write a thing that treats a linked list like an array or a heap. All the students of that learn is that linked lists are not very fun.

Instead, we don't repeat things over and over. We teach linked lists, then we teach trees. Then we teach the performance benefits of a linked list and of an array. Then we let the students build something new using those things. If they find something they didn't understand when we taught the original topic, writing something more advanced which uses that will let them learn the bit they missed. By creating something that actually works, they learn not only the concepts, but they also learn why they need to know those things and feel that there's a purpose to it.

The same logic applies to math. If you have successfully learned how to divide large numbers, it doesn't help much to be given a hundred more division problems to do. You're going to get them correct. If it's really critical that you can machine gun your long division, then the practicing for speed makes sense, but otherwise you're making people do something painful and pointless. They get how to do it, so move them to something new. You might give them problems where they have to figure out which of the operations they know solves the problem (I.E. algebra), or you want to teach them a new operation before you go that direction, but in any case you teach them something new. Boring repetition is needed in moderation to make sure that people understand what they're doing. In the case that someone doesn't understand what they're doing, the remedial work will also involve repetition (for them, but not for the teacher as the previous teaching method probably wasn't working). But making people go through a lot of repetition even though they understand what they're doing is a perfect way to tell them that you're a bad teacher. The students will try to look for someone teaching something else where they actually get to learn. If you want to help people learn, the students interest is important.

Online fraud prevention biz fails to prevent CEO's alleged offline fraud

What's with the other fraud charges at the bottom

"'The remaining NS8 leadership and Board of Directors is working to determine financial options for the company and its stakeholders going forward.' ® Six people were today charged after allegedly bribing Amazon employees and contractors more than $100,000 [...]"

Did this get pasted on by mistake? Was there going to be another article about these people but writer's block happened? This doesn't appear to be a roundup or in brief, so why is this story in a smallish paragraph at the bottom?

Alibaba wants to get you off the PC upgrade treadmill and into its cloud

Re: Another attempt to kill the "Personal" in PC...

It can be run at the hypervisor layer if the customer doesn't mind having their disks scanned at all times, because the detection needs to run on any file before the user clicks on it, including when that file has just been downloaded. And it needs to scan memory and basically do all the things a local antimalware program does but on a disk which is in use by another operating system without messing with the OS (E.G. both malware scanner on hypervisor and user-level application on VM trying to access the same file), or causing performance delays (waiting for file locks to release), or not allowing the user to correct a false positive since they don't run the hypervisor, or having vulnerabilities letting someone crash the hypervisor's protection system with a zip bomb or the like. Otherwise, it'll be exactly like normal Windows and protection will hinge on things running under the VM. Either way, there will still be malware, there will still be misconfigurations, and where in the world the real computer is will make little difference.

Re: A ''cloud" computer!

"Sure, and personal computers never have problems either."

Here's the difference. I'll be the IT person at a small business with three locations which communicate among one another.

Option 1: Personal computer has a problem:

Phone: Ring ring.

Me: Hello.

Them: We have a machine that's not turning on. It says there's a disk failure.

Me: I see. Where is it?

Them: That site far away from where you are.

Me: Great. Well, this sounds like I'll have to come over to fix it. I can be there this afternoon.

Them: This is important. One of our employees can't work with their computer down.

Me: There's a backup in the closet. If you replace that employee's machine and they log into the backup, things should work. Hopefully they've remembered not to save things to the internal drive.

Option 2: Cloud has a problem:

Phone: Ring ring.

Me: Hello.

Them: Every computer in our office isn't working. Each time we try to turn one on, it says "Network connectivity error: NT929018. The connection to nl83.localarea.cloud.resource.alibabadumbterminals.com could not be completed. Please contact your network administrator to resolve this problem."

Me: Uh-oh. I'm the network admin, so I should be handling this. Which site are you?

Them: That site far away from where you are.

Me: I'll rush over.

Me: Hi. I'm here to test your network.

Me: Your network appears to be working.

Them: None of the computers start. None of us can do any work involving a computer.

Me: I see that. I just mean that the error they're talking about is probably outside this office.

Me: Wait a minute, I need to check something.

Phone: Brrrr brrrr.

Someone else: Hello.

Me: Hi, this is IT calling. I wanted to check if--

Someone: Are you calling about the computers? Can you fix them?

Me: I think I already know the answer, but they're saying to contact the network administrator, right?

Someone: Yes. Nobody here can work. When can you fix it?

Me: I'm at the far away site. They have the same thing. Let me call you back.

Phone: Brrrr brrrr.

IVR: Thank you for calling the network terminal support line. All our representatives are busy. Please stay on the line.

Re: Another attempt to kill the "Personal" in PC...

They said their remote system runs Windows or Linux. Those who are choosing Windows can run exactly the same malware as their local Windows machines could. Those choosing Linux can also be hit with malware, and it's probably a custom version of Linux, and how many among the general public are going to click that anyway. This isn't a locked-down OS with extra security features, it's locked-down hardware giving access to the same OS for which you're charged every month.

Re: 1996 called...

"Maybe today's global network infrastructure is better and faster than it was in 1996?"

It is. So let's put ten thousand staff in front of those at home and see how many of them have internet issues ever. Even the tiniest downtime makes this freeze. A longer outage probably causes this to crash. At least with local computing, people can continue to write, read content they've already retrieved, and do a lot of work. This is especially relevant because, despite their protestations, there isn't much of a harsh computer upgrade cycle anymore. A computer from 2015 usually handles everything the average worker wants to do (even one from 2010 handles most of that), and most businesses have been holding on to devices for longer. The recent buying spree was for places that needed portable machines for work from home, but that's already happened. If someone really needs a lot of remote resources, they will use the cloud, but most people don't need that and most who do still want some local computing available to them while their expensive cloud box does the heavy lifting.

iOS 14 suffers app preference amnesia: Rebooting an iThing resets browser, email client defaults back to Safari, Mail

Re: Hanlon's Razor

But also don't rule out accidentally deleted a line:

function set_default_browser(browser):

system.default_apps.browser = browser

settings = configfile.open("wherever_that_is_stored")

settings.defaults.browser = browser

settings.save() //oops, deleted this

Apple makes bugs. This sounds like one of them. If they didn't want to do it because they want to keep their customers on their apps, they could equally easily have left out the option; their customers have taken that for 13 OS releases so far.

Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday

Re: Tok for Tik (sorry, I mean Tit for Tat)

All of those are entirely blocked in China, either for having too many people who like democracy on them or allowing encrypted communication. So the U.S. is the copycat here. It's always a great sign when China is your role model, isn't it?

Not content with distorting actual reality, Facebook now wants to build a digital layer for the world

Re: Meh

You do not understand your own metaphors. Let's limit ourselves to two examples. The worst, email, and the best, megaphones. Best still means bad.

Email: It's not a public platform. I can spam, but only if I have your email address, and you can block me, and the email spec doesn't provide me any resources which amplify my message. If I want to send out lots of emails, I need to provide my own resources. Facebook provides resources and a method to push a message to many people, most of which are not specifically targeted by it.

Megaphones: These let me shout a message out. That's distribution, so it's a better metaphor than email. However, a megaphone is only useful if I can shout through it where people will hear. If I use a megaphone in a deserted forest, nobody will pay attention. I have to use a public place, a venue, in order for my message to get out. So, the people who run that venue have the choice to let me do that or to make me stop. Facebook is such a venue, and they provide tools that have similar power to a megaphone there. They have the ability to stop someone there and the ability to let them continue.

Opinions differ about whether Facebook should be responsible for this kind of thing. That might be fun to debate. I'm not doing that yet. Instead, I'm focusing on these hideously inaccurate comparisons. That's not how Facebook works, so if you intend on arguing your point by comparing two things that are not similar, we couldn't actually debate the point in question.

Re: Meh

Email accounts allow person-to-person communication, not publishing. Paper manufacturers make printing possible, not distribution. Megaphone and banner manufacturers may make distribution easier, but they do not provide the venue for it to happen. Facebook is a venue for distribution to happen. Find better comparisons.

Google bans stalkerware apps from Android store. Which is cool but... why were they allowed in the first place?

Re: Great they are doing this...

Me: "tracking one's children is a normal and healthy thing to do"

Reply: "Erm... No? You trust your children or you don't."

Forgive me. I was not clear enough. I intended my original phrase to be very sarcastic. I think those apps should be thrown out at the same time and for the same reasons. That Google thinks it is normal to do that makes me glad I don't interact with them.

Re: Great they are doing this...

Nothing at all, which is why several companies are writing those apps right now, because tracking one's children is a normal and healthy thing to do. They will ensure that no child can detect or disable these, no matter how technically skilled, or motivated, or terrified of the [stalker] [user] [client] parent.

Re: Stalking app?

Well, they are starting a program where people can report stalking apps*. Any app reported there will be reviewed by a team they're creating*. Any app deemed to be targeting nonconsenting adults will be removed immediately and added to Play Protect*, and the people whose devices were affected will receive information about what was happening to them and helpful resources to be assembled by a partnership between Google and organizations who help victims of domestic abuse*.

*None of those things are actually happening. Google, these suggestions are released in the public domain. Please pick them up.

Cisco’s 'intuitive security' tool can’t handle MAC address randomization out-of-the-box

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

The problem with pre-IOS-14 behavior is that it's easy to convince a device to get handshakes if a phone's ever connected to a network by listening for pings and pretending to be every network. This approach has been verified to work on lots of devices, so if you place a device which will respond to any SSID request, you'll get authentication requests from most passing devices. These don't always work; if it's a secure network, some of the authentication might fail because you don't know the correct key. If it's an open network that you're responding to, those devices just handed you their MACs. If it wasn't, you add that SSID to a list you won't respond to and try again; the phone will send you another ping in a second and you can hope that that one was open.

The software to do this is easy to obtain and configure, mostly used for MITM attacks. Those are tricky because you need to hold your victim near your attack point. If all you want to do is track people, you don't need to worry about the time element (or even the connectivity element) so it's even easier.

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

Whether to assign a temporary address is broadly up to the network; a device can request one and be assigned the traditional type with the exact MAC address included. Some networking equipment may not respect user preferences in this way and there's little that can be done. It's easy to identify if this has happened and get the data only under that condition. There isn't any easy way to prevent this from occurring without manually checking the address and leaving the network if it hasn't assigned a temporary address. There are also devices that don't have that privacy setting enabled or don't even allow that privacy setting to be enabled, and those can also be tracked. I am uncertain how much choice phone manufacturers have here, but still it could be an important factor.

Even if we eliminate this particular option by deprecating the original suggestion to embed, we still have the other methods for companies to collect addresses as listed in my original post. Not to mention that the easiest way to get that data en masse is to have ISPs collect it from anyone using their equipment without another device in front of it and sell the database, which could be legal depending on which country you're in and could happen anyway even if it isn't legal.

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

"Okay, can you explain how Google, Facebook and Amazon can track via a MAC address?"

Several tiers of detection are possible, including these:

Very invasive: Google: WiFi data collection from StreetView or other hardware, access to phones via Play Services. Amazon: Access to their own tablets via their proprietary components which frequently contact Amazon servers.

Somewhat invasive: All: Collection of IPV6 addresses to collect those which have a MAC embedded in them (default for SLAAC deployments). Facebook and Amazon: Collection of MACs from device from installed applications.

Not proven to happen but possible: Google and Amazon: IoT equipment placed on users' home networks which could collect all MACs in WiFi handshakes. All: Potential to have apps on phones with sufficient permissions to cause them to listen for such handshakes also.

That was what I came up with in the first thirty seconds. Let's see if others can find more. I bet they can.

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

"However, the lack of MacOS VMs is 100% Apple patent trolling."

No, it's 100% Apple not wanting to make it available, which is mostly them wanting money and thinking that, by not doing this, they'll make more.

"MacOS is a flavor of Linux"

Wrong. Macs are based around a kernel which is neither Linux nor based on Linux code or behavior. Its userland comes from BSD, not Linux. It has more compatibility with Linux than does Windows or some other things, but it is not a flavor of Linux by any means.

"there is absolutely nothing preventing virtualization besides Apple's lawyers."

Well, some driver work would need to be done, but you're broadly correct. Apple doesn't make it easy because they don't want you to.

Patent trolling is abusing patents which are overly broad, granted even though the holder didn't invent the thing, or in some other way invalid but nonetheless legally granted. Apple might do that sometimes, but that's not what they're doing here. People want a thing. I would like that thing. Apple doesn't want to give or sell me the thing, so I don't get the thing. That's their choice. Patents haven't come into it.

Re: Why is the article writer surprised

"The iPhone 4s can only have music added by iTunes and nothing else. The previous owner hadn't added any apps, so it's useless compared to much older Android phones or tablets or PCs."

Not sure about this. I have an iPod Touch here that's even older than a 4S (this caps at IOS6, 4S stuck on IOS 9), and it allows me to sign in and download apps. Not a lot of those are compatible, but if the app existed long enough, I can get an old version that works. You could probably do the same and better because IOS 9 is more likely to be supported than IOS 6. You could also get an old version of XCode and compile code to it. Whether there's a point is another question, but it should be doable.

Safety driver at the wheel of self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian is charged with negligent homicide

Re: Easy issue to resolve

If we had a fully autonomous vehicle we trusted, we'd probably have a switch that puts it into autonomous mode and disables the controls to prevent controls in the hands of people not really trying to drive from messing that up. We should also include a button to make the system autonomously pull over and stop as soon as feasible and another one to put the car into manual control (these have to be hard to press by accident). Not every driver control still has to be there, but enough to handle emergencies which are going to happen.

Re: You had one job...

I did not vote on your comment, but I think your suggested dual input system is unlikely to work and likely to be dangerous. Having the driver steering and braking means the driver is going to disagree with the car some of the time. Either the test isn't going to work because the car keeps deferring to the driver, or the car is going to ignore a lot of the driver's input. That would mean that a driver which is really in better control might have a harder time getting the car to stop because the car knows that the driver doesn't always brake with similar frequency or strength. You could have an emergency takeover button which immediately forces the car to be controlled by the driver, and that might help, but only if the drivers are trained well enough to instinctively press it at short notice.

Never mind that you can run Meet on any old computer, Google unveils specialised hardware for vid-chat plat

Re: Obsolescence?

"Same as if MS shut down their services like Skype for business... you go elsewhere."

I believe the question is asking what happens to the hardware. Can you take it elsewhere with you with existing software support? Could you at least flash another OS and try to build your own? Or does it turn into an expensive brick that can only be used as a fake security camera? Based on some of Google's hardware attempts, option 3 seems likely and option 2 may be possible, but I wouldn't count on option 2 and option 1 will never happen.

.UK overlord Nominet tells everyone not to worry about 'distorted' vote allocations in its board elections

Something finally explained

There have been many stories about the roll-out of second-level .uk domains in the past few years, mostly about how registrars kept adding them then attempting to charge for them. That made some sense if that was the registrar's plan, but it always struck me as a little shortsighted because there was obviously going to be a user backlash which would cost the registrars in settlement and reversing the payments. Until now, I was willing to accept that registrars just aren't very smart and took the risk anyway. Now, things are a little clearer:

"But things get even more complicated than that: the number of members varies from year to year; many members fail to vote; the votes are calculated according to Nominet’s financial records based on paid-for domains – except for when Nominet made an exception for millions of domains it gave away for free as part of the controversial launch of second-level .uk domains."

Any registrar who handed out free .uk domains without asking did that to get extra votes. If anyone's still using a registrar that did this, I suggest you immediately cancel your business with them.

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

"From what others have said on here Epic were allowed to accept payments from outside the Fornite app using a browser etc?"

Yes, but keep in mind that they're not allowed to mention that possibility in the app let alone actually send people there. If their users find it on their own, it works. They're also not allowed to make it cheaper on their site. If they did any of those things, that would also be a breech of their contract and they'd end up in the same situation they are in now. Apple jealously guards that revenue stream and they're pretty clear about how much they're not willing to take from devs.

Re: "to slide a change into the app that blatantly evaded App Review."

Any system has holes, and anywhere code can run, someone will try to get malicious code to run. Apple doesn't have a malware-proof review system, but their record is pretty good. For this reason, they're probably very irritated about people sneaking code through. On that particular argument, Apple's complaints are understandable. Of course, they're also annoyed about the code that was snuck through and it's not security that has them worried. You can make up your own mind how you feel about that bit.

Oracle hosting TikTok US data. '25,000' moderators hired. Code reviews. Trump getting his cut... It's the season finale

Re: My head hurts

"If you wrote a fictional book with these sorts of goings on 10 years ago you'd be told it was unbelievable."

I think that people would get confused and return the books. The current system makes no sense, but not because it's unbelievable, just because I have no clue what is happening. The premise I understand: the current American administration likes having bargaining chips and is making up pretenses to get them. The rest is totally unclear. What exactly Oracle is doing: I don't know. What ByteDance is doing: I don't know either. What the president thinks: don't know. What the executive departments are doing when they don't know what the president thinks, what the president is going to use to make his final decision when we know he won't be reading the bureaucratic report, who is fighting ByteDance's lawsuit and how, what happened to the deadline of Tuesday which didn't get met, what members of the president's party are willing to put up with, what the members of that party actually think, whether anyone else is going to interfere, I don't know any of this. At least when other political events are happening I can understand enough of what people think and plan to do that I can marvel at the audacity or hypocrisy. With this, I can only sit there and puzzle through how anyone can make plans when there's little or no information from anybody.

Singapore to pay its citizens to wear Apple Watches

How much did Apple pay for this?

I want to know how much Apple has provided to Singapore's funds or to the funds of its legislators to get this to happen. It sounds as if they now have Singaporean taxpayers covering the purchase of their products while their competitors whose devices could do the same thing get nothing. I want to know how expensive buying a flood of Singaporean money is just in case I ever start a company and want to get more customers.

Surprise! Apple launches iOS 14 today, and developers were given just 24 hours' notice

Re: Nonsense

Please read the section of the article that discusses the issue. The problem isn't about testing. Some developers may do that wrong, but that's not what's being discussed. What is being discussed is that developers can't push apps using IOS 14 behavior to the store until the GM goes out. That was last night. Now it's available to users. Those apps haven't been approved yet. The devs are complaining about the speed with which Apple pushed out the release which caused the OS to be there before their reviews completed, not about difficulty testing. I don't care much; I wouldn't install an operating system on day one anyway so I could easily afford to wait for the apps and the OS, but at least understand the complaints before attacking developers about something not connected to what they're talking about.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

Re: Something isn't making sense

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the clarification.