Posts by doublelayer

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Re: It it ain't broke, you're not trying

High sierra installs have become very unreliable. Some people have no problems at all. Others have some difficulty getting the install back into working order but once that's accomplished, everything works perfectly. That's my sister, whose mac I had to reinstall and restore from backup but there has been no problem since. Others have noted frequent application crashes and operating system instability. And then there's me, where something that happened at the update has put my machine into a seemingly endless loop of bricking itself for about two weeks before restarting fine for about a week before starting again. This issue did not happen before the high sierra update and it persists through clean installs of high sierra, sierra, and el capitan, so I'm presuming some kind of firmware problem. In addition, various security bugs have been found in High Sierra which has led to questioning of the quality control on this release. I assume some corporates are dealing with these problems and have become perhaps excessively irritated due to a small sample set of machines that failed. Then again, I'm the same--I'm not sure I could buy another mac, given the fact that apple has failed to make any change or diagnose the problem that my machine has.

Re: No issues so far

Are you running one of the affected GPUs? It seems the bug will not affect many users, as these GPUs are only some of the many intel make. If indeed you are running one of the mentioned chipsets, then maybe it requires more specific stress.

Re: Try Linux. - Or DON'T! (My love/hate Linux rant.)

If you want to change the language back, you should be able to do the following steps:

1. Open the new windows 10 settings thing. If typing "settings" in the search box won't access it for you because of the language change, try using the quick tools menu. Press windows+x, which should pull up a menu of some more useful tools. Settings should be sixth from the bottom. Second from the bottom is a submenu with shutdown options, so settings is four above that.

If that doesn't work, try to use the command prompt. The system settings executable is well-hidden. First, cd into

c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\SIH\bin\cbs

Then, try any subdirectory of there. Hopefully, you're like me and you just have one subdirectory. Once you've entered it, you need to enter another subdirectory. It starts with "amd64_microsoft-windows-i..ntrolpanel." and includes some numbers, so enter that much and press tab for the rest. Then, try to run the command "start systemsettings.exe". Hopefully, you'll never need to do that.

2. Select "Time and Language" from the settings screen. On build 1709, it's the third element of five on the second row. On 1607, it's the one in the middle (second row, second column).

3. Select "Region and Language". That is the second of three.

4. This screen should have a list of languages, all of which are written in their own script, so your desired one should be available.

5. After clicking it, if it is not set as ddefault, there should be three buttons. The first one is the one to set as default, so click that.

6. At that point, you may want to click the other language and remove it from the system.

If these instructions are not helpful enough, you can describe what has happened and I'll try to correct them. Otherwise, I believe I have a friend who speaks Slovak, so she may be able to help me provide exact translations of UI elements you will need on your way.

Yes, this has been derailed by discussions of Linux. Yes, the discussions aren't exactly covering new ground. Yes, said discussions are relevant. The article is discussing a windows problem that breaks components, and people are commenting with a suggested alternative, albeit one that is a tad unoriginal. Is your preference that more people just comment on all the other microsoft problems of the past? Many posts here are doing just that.

Whoa, Gartner drops a truth bomb: Blockchain is overhyped and top IT bods don't want it

Re: Your all missing the point.

If there comes a need for a relatively tamperproof system for auditing, my suggestion would be to buy a ton of blank CDs/DVDs. If you live near me, I'll give you some because somehow I ended up with like a hundred of them and I don't know where they came from. Then write the audit data, along with checksums for all preceding data stored on disks, and keep multiple copies. Label them well. If you're afraid that someone sneaky will overuse hashing power to find a way to hash incorrect data on a disk, store the original data plus encrypted versions of it with predefined keys so that you'll never get a hash collision while the universe is in existence.

Total network costs: 0.

Total data storage costs: Lots of blank CDs. Call my friends; they must be putting them in my house.

Total infrastructure costs: Four or five cardboard boxes on shelves in different buildings.

Total recovery costs: USB Optical drive ($10)

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Re: I disagree...

"It's only when you leave school and you're expected to move out, pay your own way and actually find yourself HAVING to do your own washing, cleaning and such, because there's nobody there do just do it for you, that you finally develop an appreciation for the need to do it."

The history of people going to far-off places, where either there weren't any people or they killed a lot of the people through enslavement, where technology was not advanced enough to connect these places, effectively making it similar to the planet scenario, is not on your side. Those places aren't doing dramatically different from other places. The problem you run into is that there are a lot of things that could cause you difficulty getting there in the first place. If, for example, some resources could be put into making life feasible for more people here on Earth, the likelihood of a major war with major weapons obliterating your launch sites before sufficiently advanced craft can launch you to a new planet will be decreased. Even if you consider travel to other planets being a major concern for right now, you might want to look at earth a bit before you go all in on the new tech.

AWS sends noise to Signal: You can't use our servers to beat censors

Re: Yet another reason

Good point. I can only hope that they come up with something else that'll work, as it seems that if domain fronting isn't shut down fully yet, it will be soon. I'm sure they have some tests ongoing.

Re: Yet another reason

I am skeptical about the cloud, too, but how would signal do something to circumvent censorship in this way without using it? The best I can come up with is that they start their own cloud and then allow this to function through their clients' sites, meaning that instead of signal being blocked, signal and all their cloud business clients that signal doesn't really want get blocked. You can't hide and be active if you aren't in a group with lots of other people, hence their cloud usage.

Scammers use Google Maps to skirt link-shortener crackdown

I use a different system

I know that short links are usually somewhat helpful, so I usually reserve a directory at root of the web server for such a system. For example, example.com/url/* is a shortened link, and I can make it clear what they'll see at that page and logical. People still know that it's my site they're contacting, and although the links may be longer than some of the shorteners out there, they can be quite short because there is no competition that drives up the key length and they will fit into tweets or short messages should someone want to send them.

Virtual desktops won’t save cash in clouds or on-prem. So why care?

Yeah...

I don't think that will work well. The benefits they cite seem to be mostly useful for locations where you want a lot of remote access, but RDP seems to serve that well. Otherwise, I don't see pretty much any of the benefits of the system. The sentence that most concerns me is the statement of less need for IT people to go to the desks and fix machines. What, pray tell, do they think the users are using to access their virtual desktops? Whatever it is, it looks a lot like a computer and it's on or under the desk. Users can mess that up just as well as they could a traditional machine. The main difference is that there is less access for the IT person if the user has managed some calamitous software problem. True, you can easily reboot it after you correctly plug in each cable, then reconnect to the virtual desktop, but if the issue is worse than that you will have to play around with whatever thin client it is to find it. Traditional desktops work fine most of the time, because they are straightforward to manage. If there is a location where repeatedly destroying or reimaging virtual desktops is a routine thing, there are probably problems that virtualization won't fix.

DIY device tinkerer iFixit weighs in on 15-month jail term for PC recycler

They are all wrong

I've read a bit too much about the case and I now think everyone and everything about it has several wrong elements.

Lundgren: What were you doing faking the disks to look like official microsoft or dell ones. I'm not saying leave them unlabeled, but it doesn't cost that much to change the label you put in the disk printer from "official dell/microsoft" to "windows restore disk for dell computers", and you could even get a free ad space for your business on it for people's support needs.

Microsoft: What were you thinking when you made up a number for lost money, when you know full well that the disks themselves were free and the license keys were already present meaning that you don't lose money.

Lundgren: If you're selling these at such a low price--essentially giving them away, why did you find it so necessary to have them have the labels on them? The recyclers are going to pay you the same amount, seeing as they're too lazy to burn their own copy. Surely you recognized that that would look sort of sketchy.

Microsoft: Why did you feel that saying the cliche malware line would work? You know full well that they were identical copies. I'd have a lot of sympathy if you found someone faking disks but including a set of preinstalled malware or for that matter any unnoted software of any kind, but that's not what these were. I'd have sympathy if these were windows disks with pirated license keys on them. None of that was the case.

Recyclers: Why did you buy these? Surely you know that they weren't official microsoft ones and also it doesn't cost much to write your own. I can't believe you didn't use the same suggestion I had earlier, to change the label to tell the users what was there and to refer them to you or someone who paid you, for support. Surely you could see that unofficial official install disks would be sort of sketchy?

Microsoft: Given you have announced an interest in getting recycled computers in use and having people on windows 10, don't you think that convincing customs that there wasn't a real case, owing to the basically zero value of the disks, and discussing with the recyclers to help them end their problem (especially if you could get them installing windows 10) could be useful for both of you? Why is the not-going-to-court solution so unpleasing to so many people?

IFixit: Can you see that this issue has nothing to do with the stuff you advocate? Microsoft and dell did not try to prevent people from using the machines, or even reinstalling windows on them. In fact, the data that they provided for free allowed people to erase and cleanly reinstall windows without buying anything or hopefully having to deal with any license management. Therefore, it was incredibly good of the companies given their usually terrible track record with repairs, as I would have expected such disks to be completely unavailable or to be well-hidden by the typical microsoft knowledge base web maze. No law or regulation or corporate policy prevented repairs in this case, and that's what we're going for. Go back to those laws that do exist and help us get rid of them.

Apple and The Notched One: It can't hide the X-sized iPhone let-down

Re: Commoditization is not going to be Apple's friend.

It's worth considering how many iPhones from old generations are still out there being used. The availability of updates results in some people keeping their iPhones longer than they did androids, and I know far more people using iPhones in the 6, 6s, and 7 ranges than I know people using the 8 or x. I can see that being a problem for apple if they keep it up with the expensive high-ends that don't really have a big selling point. Then again, I would expect the same to hold and even stronger with android phones that cost a similarly high amount, because there is now no lock-in reason to keep the people off the $200 phones with similar features. Yet, companies still make them and people must be buying, so what do I know anyway.

Firefox to feature sponsored content as of next week

Re: Kiss FF goodbye.

I'd gladly pay $2.50 a year for this purpose; I pay more for many other projects I use. However, the problems remain, and they are many:

There are those who would rather not identify themselves in order to make the payment at all, and even those who would not dislike this would probably not want to identify themselves to have the browser disable this for them, as they've just replaced one identifier with another. My payment in the year won't remove mozilla's problem, and they will keep going with this, so I have to ask whether they will actually care about my desire for privacy. If they are going to use my donation to create an ad tracking system, there are more deserving projects that respect me as a user, and the money would be better used paying them. Furthermore, there are users that should not be expected to pay for something that is, in fact, open source. I view the fact that firefox and related products can be used in less developed countries for free so that the people can use the internet to improve a situation I don't have to endure as a major advantage, and I would oppose any attempt to restrict that.

In short, I will donate to mozilla if they show they will respect me as a user and all other users by not inserting this advertisement crap, that they respect their open source roots and will keep the product free and open to alterations, and that this will continue and not be based on a short-term financial report. They haven't been doing that.

Let's be Frank: Bloke drags Google to the US Supreme Court over $8.5m privacy payout

Re: Wow

Uh...No.

"Yep, all those lawyers who work for the homeless or for absued children, or who help you make sure your scumbag neighbour isn't tossing dog doo into your garden -- all villains."

That's why we don't say "all". All stereotypes that claim to speak for all people are bad. But that doesn't change the point that it seems a bit bad that a settlement against google for messing up privacy for users results in $0 to users, a lot to lawyers, a lot to law schools that the users have little to do with, and a lot to things google was going to pay anyway. We might reasonably blame the lawyers for this.

"Or are lawyers not unlike 99.99% of IT people who are always skiving and taking bungs? Or so popular belief holds?"

Then popular belief is wrong. You'll see a lot of yelling about IT from everywhere, and a lot of it is true, but usually the administrator earns a lot less than the lawyer and doesn't break things because they hate the users. There are many jobs where things break and IT is blamed, but not all of those are because IT broke it. Also, it has almost nothing to do with the point being made, that one group of lawyers in this situation and perhaps too many lawyers in other positions are not serving the clients they claim to represent in favor of self-serving and adversary-serving decisions.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

Re: "Keep clicking, Windows-lovers! It's bound to come along soon."

"several million voluntary beta testers that have signed up for Windows Insider have already tested it."

Microsoft has 1.5 million insiders. That is not several million. Also, many of them are like me--I'm in the insiders group but it has been a long time since I last really tested something rather than just firing up the system once in a while to see if I notice something. The updates are a bit annoying, and I don't spend enough time in windows to make it worth my time. I'm mostly in the group because I was four years ago and why bother withdrawing? I just checked my VM with the insider build on it--seems I haven't used it since February.

Exposing 145m Equifax customer deets: $240m. Legal fees: $28.9m. Insurance: Priceless

Re: Let's not lose our perspective here

I'm thinking. I'm thinking three things:

1. 145 million people

2. data not provided by choice, collected by company

3. data very difficult to change if leaked

Please let me know what I'm missing that makes this minor. Thanks.

Quick math + I like privacy and consequences = anger

So, this company has spent $242.7m dealing with their security problems. And those security problems caused the leak of data for 145 million people.

$242700000/145000000 people = $1.674 per person.

OK. That's nice. I suggest legislation that makes these companies liable on a per-user basis for say, $200. A small system mixup leaks two hundred users: $40k, enough to give the company a notice that that's not OK and to get in line, but not enough to hurt them. A large system mismanagement leaks ten thousand users: $2m, enough to indicate that you've messed up and you have responsibilities to your users. A complete lack of regard causes the leak of a hundred million users: $20b, hopefully enough to know that the company will be in really bad financial status at the end. The company should think that through before they decide to not care. That's the law I'd suggest if I ever ran for office. Now if I could actually ensure its passage, that formula would be edited somewhat, with the multiplication sign removed and the exponent sign added.

How do I get that passed without running for office and getting a ton of friends to do that too?

Leave it to Beaver: Unity is long gone and you're on your GNOME

Re: New Linux poweruser here ...

"If you can't search for information, critically evaluate what you find and come to your own conclusions, you are lacking essential skills, not just for this industry, but for your life in general."

That's true, but missing the point and I feel dropping a bit much on the original question. The original question surrounded opinion. I'm sure they could have looked up what systemd is or how it works. They seemingly didn't have to ask that. They could have looked up the very many discussions about systemd and started to read all ten thousand pages about it, but that would lead to a morass of random junk that wouldn't answer the question "Why do some people dislike systemd so much?". Here's what they would find:

1. People discussing implementation details of systemd that have changed and are no longer problematic

2. people discussing the theory behind systemd and why they like or dislike it

3. people talking about the systemd/bsd interaction without easily understanding whether these people are fairly representing either side

4. people getting way too far into the weeds of how to write systemd scripts

5. people discussing parts of the systemd source code that dramatically impairs understanding without reading the whole source

6. people discussing the problems they had migrating to systemd, without making it clear whether the problem was on systemd, on previous developers of code, or on sysadmins who weren't familiar with how Linux administration should work

This is all the stuff I found when doing a quick search. So why is it so bad that the comment said "There are a lot of people here who dislike systemd rather intensely, and I don't know why they do so. Why don't I just ask them?".

If you can't accept finding knowledgeable people to give you information and opinion, critically evaluate what they say, and come to your own conclusions, you are also lacking essential skills.

Penguins in a sandbox: Google nudges Linux apps toward Chrome OS

If you want to have an unmodifiable OS image, you could take any Linux or other OS that can be booted as a live environment, set it up in the way you like, and make a live CD style image of it. Then drop that as the boot image to a read-only partition. If necessary, lock down the BIOS as well so I can't possibly change it without your code. You could technically execute malicious software on it, but the software cannot persist across boots. You could also restrict which binaries can run so nobody can download code or bring it on a USB disk and run it. Just make sure the home directories are stored on a separate read/write partition so you can keep documents, browser cookies, and the like across boots. That shouldn't take that long to assemble--I have a similar setup on my fix-a-system USB disk so I neither have to re-download tools from the repositories nor find an alternate place to store notes I want to remain available after shutdown.

Chromebooks seem to exist because Google wants to train users to use only google apps, as not many others will work at all, and google's are the only ones with support baked directly into the OS. I always get nervous when I see these used for schools, because I know google wants people to use systems for data storage and word processing that only google controls, so they can later count on a stream of users of the "free" products.

Re: "does this read more like an ad-icle"

Couldn't you buy some cheap laptops and put Linux on them? Some of the chromebooks have the ability to boot externally (I think by people finding BIOS access somewhere, but I try to avoid those), and there are a lot of windows laptops with similar components and prices. Although you might not want to buy them to run windows on given the problems shoving windows and running programs into 2gb or less of memory, most Linux distros should work OK for that. Then you could have them use firefox or chrome, whichever you or they prefer, and use any Linux applications you want. Administration would be basically the same, and if the network dies the machines can still be used for a few things.

We wanted a camera, they gave us the eye of Gemini – and an eSIM

Re: "Inspired" by PSION

I never used the original, and I also don't really want to buy this in its current form, but how exactly did you intend them to create a system like the one most of us want and have it run forever. I can build you a system like this that runs for a long time on convenient batteries. With some design help, it will be nice to look at, as my hardware design knowledge is flaky. The device will do next to nothing. A bit of typing, some calendar perhaps.

That's not what we want. We mostly want to run our applications on the Linux side, with all the requirements those have. The most important one is connectivity. Some people are fine with just WiFi, while others want the convenience of cellular, as they will be taking this with them most of the time. That takes a lot of power. From what I've seen online, the original psion devices had connectivity in physical ports that were almost certainly disconnected most of the time. Also, I assume it was a bit larger to account for the RS-232 port, but I've never seen one, so I could be wrong. We probably also want the screen to be better, as there is a lot more video and images about these days. Sometimes we do need that. The wikipedia article also states that it ran about 20 hours use on the batteries. I admit that's quite a lot, and that it probably had great performance when it was off for a while, but you could just turn it off if you don't want background tasks.

I would like to see a keyboard that doesn't get at best indifferent reviews, as I'd be using the thing for typing. Either the typing must be great or I must have my punctuation for coding and terminal use in semi-normal positions on physical keys. Having neither makes this a no-go for me. However, I have hope for the next addition, and I don't see why this is such a letdown for the many psion-owners here.

Eurocrats double down on .eu Brexit boot-out

Re: What's the difference?

I just want pretty much all of those annoying new TLDs to go away. We need neither .accountant nor .accountants, and ICANN was clearly intending a truly massive joke when they put both of those up. Do they really expect that to end well? And what do they expect us to put in the TLD .airforce. I hate to break it to them, but none of us citizens own an airforce, even for those who have private jets and enjoy the humor. I'm going to state now that I will consider any website under .associates to be so dodgy as to be immediately blacklisted without a visit. .attorney is similarly weird, and of course there's also .law, .lawyer, and .legal. Thanks mates. Then they do the same singular-plural thing with .auto and .autos, when of course they have .car *and* .cars. And that's just the As. I haven't even checked out the rest of the alphabet for my own sanity. Kill them now!

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, oi oi oi! Tech zillionaire Ray's backdoor crypto for the Feds is Clipper chip v2

No good answer

There is not a good way for this to occur, but I recently heard a suggestion from some researchers as to a way that is significantly less terrible than all these ill-considered alternatives. That's not to say it is good, just that it is better because people tried to think a bit before just shouting "I've got an idea so pay me some money and I'll solve all your problems right now and by the time you find out that it doesn't produce infinite security and access to data for only the people you want I'll have a nice big house and a squadron of lawyers for my defense". In short, the system involves the use of weaker encryption where the keys are not known by any group and where multiple keys are used. There is one master key that is long, so breaking that takes a lot of effort. Each message also has at least one short key that is unique. The process to break it requires a certain amount of brute forcing, but can be done at a cost. Governments would be able to get this, whereas small criminal organizations probably wouldn't. Mass surveillance would be made difficult because it costs the same amount of power to decrypt each separate communication, so you have to do a cost-benefit analysis on each one you want to see. So I quite like the math they use. The problem remains that, firstly, it won't solve the problem of good encryption inside government encryption, and secondly, that bad actors inside or outside government will break it because they don't want a good solution to the problem.

Now that I've heard an idea that actually has a modicum of merit, all the other solutions that are essentially the same terrible one make me wonder why their designers are so stupid.

Good news: AI could solve the pension crisis – by triggering a nuclear apocalypse by 2040

Re: I'm really not that worried about this

One minor detail: South Africa got rid of their nukes, so they don't have a need for that anymore. In some cases, I could see a country like North Korea setting up an AI for autolaunch because nobody could blow things up like their supreme leader, so if he gets killed by a strike, they need to launch now. Also, they'd like to put that on their propaganda, with the usual lack of any clue of what it means or how to talk about it without sounding like someone randomized all their words "a system for the intelligent use of the nuclear weapons of the supreme leader, president of the DPRK and chairman of the Korean Workers' Party, an artificial control" Other than that, all the current nuclear powers are smart enough to realize that that doesn't make any sense.

Re: If I am to judge by existing "learning algos"...

President: Do we have confirmation? The nukes have been launched?

General: Yes. The satelites verified it; they will land in minutes. If we launch our response now, the inevitable land war will have some chance.

President: *pauses to think about it* All right. I regret that I have to do this. *to nuclear control system* Launch at targets 3, 5, 13, and 18.

Nuclear Control System: ...

President: What's it doing?

General: I don't know. The developer got vaporized just now, so...

Nuclear Control System: Thinking a moment, please wait...

President: What now?

Nuclear Control System: Here's what I found on the web for "launch on targets". Target Corporation is the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States. In 1995, the first SuperTarget hypermarket opened in Omaha, Nebraska and the Target Guest Card, the discount retail industry's first store credit card, was launched. Would you like to hear more about this topic?

Incoming missiles: Boom.

Other general: Well, that happened.

Prime Minister: I don't remember launching this! I just tried to order lunch on the intercom! Who set this up to listen on that?

General: I'll find out.

Technical director: Unfortunately, it seems the logs for this were kept on an AWS bucket in the U.S. so...

Microsoft Lean's in: Slimmed-down Windows 10 OS option spotted

I can see your point, but I disagree. It makes sense that a system needs a browser on it at the beginning, so you can use it to download another browser. If Microsoft likes edge over IE, I'm fine if that's the browser that they put on. Likewise, I think most OS should have a basic text file editor, so basically notepad. That's a bit more subjective, but it becomes useful when you're working on something that isn't your setup. However, there isn't a good case for the random applications that most people don't use and many of us, myself included, don't know what they are. There was a great list posted earlier about the bloat on the current windows 10. I'm sure that Groove Music does stuff that Windows Media Player doesn't do, but I haven't a clue what that stuff is, I'm not using either of them, and it's kind of irritating that Microsoft puts them both on. If you need a media player at all, take the better one, combine any code from the other that you need for some reason, and give me one. Or, you could just not put one on because I doubt it will take me long to find one if I need it. But fine, that's Microsoft's decision to write their own applications and put them on. There is even less of a case for them to put tiles up for applications that they didn't write, essentially as advertisements. I know that, if I want them, I can go get them. So does everyone else. Apple doesn't decide you'd like some games so they'll just put them onto your phone. If some android phone manufacturer does that, they are known for the peddlers of bloatware that they are, and their phones don't sell as well--I'm pretty sure candy crush isn't installed on any of the flagships by default.

New and inventive code is transforming your business – and bringing with it new and inventive ways for things to fail

What?

"Businesses are becoming increasingly digitalised, with operations and customer experiences relying on data and devices being online all the time."

As opposed to...what? Last year, when everything was the same? Five years ago when the viruses were a bit different but they still existed so everything was the same? Ten years ago where the viruses were different and the windows wasn't wobbly but basically everything was the same? Fifteen years ago where the computers were slow and noisy, but viruses still happened and things would break from user error or security problems, so everything was the same?

"If you’re starting to think: “Hang about, that sounds like DevOps” – a philosophy that’s making inroads in software development - then you should be, because that’s where we are."

Oh. That's what this is. Carry on then.

I'd like to see the DevOps people define it. But not like they have been doing, with the weird words, the seeming lack of knowing how the IT department works and/or interacts with the company, or the part where they tell you that you have a problem but the solution is essentially "think some more about it". I'd like to here the one-sentence, maximum-twenty-words, maximum-length-of-words-ten-letters, definition of DevOps. And don't try the recursive definition, either.

Twenty years ago today: Windows 98 crashed live on stage with Bill Gates. Let's watch it again...

Re: Bill Gates

To clarify on the autobiography comments, the book was not an autobiography--it was a standard biography, not written by a ghost writer helping Jobs, but by a writer who wrote about him. The writer in question is Walter Isaacson. He got approval to interview people, including long interviews with Jobs and his family, as well as many people who worked with, lived with, knew in some capacity, or talked about Jobs at some point. The number of times the word "jerk" and less complementary synonyms appeared should at least assuage the comments that the book will tell only the story from Jobs's perspective.

Facebook privacy audit by auditors finds everything is awesome!

A leaked message between PWC staff

Please note: part of this message has been redacted by ________ in the interest of protecting confidential ________.

We have completed our 2015-2017 audit of facebook, and things have gone remarkably well. We found facebook employees to be incredibly helpful; every time we arrived to audit their data center without announcing it first, some nice staffer would take us to lunch for two hours or so. Once we got back, they were very accommodating and allowed us to investigate all the parts of their data center, which is remarkably small for a company that big. It seems facebook has been storing next-to-nothing. Really, you can go to your facebook page and download their archive and that's all they have. Honest.

Meanwhile, we'd like to inform the independence unit division about the answers to their many questions about the integrity of this audit. Facebook has taken no actions to try to sway us at all ________, and they would like to meet all the members of the independence unit at a time of your choosing so they can ________. They told us that if you don't have time, they could ________. However, if you would rather not, you should probably know that ________ information that you probably don't ________. For example, in the case of independence unit researcher ________, it turns out that they ________, ________, ________, and ________. I'm sure you will be available for facebook to inform you of any relevant information, which I'm sure you would like to read before you sign off on our document. We remain extremely interested in the integrity of our reporting. ________. Please let us know if you have any questions.

With the warmest regards,

Committee for the Analysis of Facebook's Privacy Endeavor

Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC)

1 Hacker Way,

Menlo Park, CA, 94025

Facebook previews GDPR privacy tools and, yep, it's the same old BS

Re: Wow

>I would have thought that moving data dominion from Ireland (GDPR) to the USA (using some diluted GDPR analogue like Privacy Shield) would not make a significant difference to our rights as EU-located individuals.

Sorry. I might have been unclear. You are correct--no matter where the data lies, facebook is obliged to adhere to GDPR for its European users. However, it is moving data that it might previously have been stored in Europe out of it so that that data is not affected. For example, a user in Algeria whose data might previously have been stored in Europe for the locality now has their data stored outside the area so that it won't be covered by GDPR.

Here's the description of who has to comply with GDPR:

The regulation applies if the data controller (an organisation that collects data from EU residents), or processor (an organisation that processes data on behalf of a data controller like cloud service providers), or the data subject (person) is based in the EU. The regulation also applies to organisations based outside the EU if they collect or process personal data of individuals located inside the EU.

Re: Wow

Some good points. However, some more bad ones. I think you may be forgetting some of the collection that facebook does, as well as misinterpreting concern for others as an authoritarian wish to impose my will on them. Neither of these is correct.

@ doublelayer

"A good portion of your post refers to [those of us who don't give facebook data] but I discount these people from my comment- "If you dont then it doesnt matter to you anyway."

You can see, however, why we think it does matter to us, as you express below.

"Are they? How do you know and what are they collecting?"

If you're going to claim that facebook isn't creating shadow profiles, my discussion isn't going to help. There are many sources for this concern. True, we don't know what data has been stored, but the fact that there have been reports of that activity, as well as the refusal by facebook to discuss it, makes some of us quite concerned. Unless you are claiming that you can ensure that no shadow data is stored, and you have a specific reason for us to believe so, then it remains logical for us to assume that the data we didn't authorize (data collected from acquaintances who use facebook) is not all that facebook has.

"Or another way of applying your first sentence is people choose to do something perfectly legal and without bothering anyone else, I dont like it make them stop! This can be anything. Your example was physical abuse and yes that is a concern you can get the law involved. Not liking their private hobby that doesnt affect you is not. In interest of protecting your health I am sure some militant vegans would love to step into your personal space."

I'll be the first to admit that my abuse analogy may have been extreme. However, my statement remains the same. I'm not advocating that I get to choose what people are allowed to do, but it's still OK for me to be concerned for others. Just as those who know that someone consumes a lot of salt could be concerned that that might be dangerous to their blood pressure. In addition, the unhealthy diets that seem to be your analogy of choice do not affect me, while people's use of facebook can, as facebook gets data that they put there.

"Facebook is breaking into your house? Call the police. Your taking pictures, giving them to facebook, telling them your age, place of work, what you had for breakfast and then crying that they use that information as is the companies function. All so you can post the mundane aspects of your life for friends and sometimes all to see (I know plenty people who do this)."

Yes. An average facebook user puts all that information up. They may be unaware that facebook collects their browsing histories using single-pixel tracking widgets. They may be unaware that some facebook apps had (we think it ended, but nobody will confirm it) access to record from the microphone of their phone at all times. This is data that they probably didn't intend to become facebook's property. Furthermore, data about their acquaintances, including those of us without facebook accounts, is downloaded. This, at least, has been proven. Therefore, facebook has data on me that I never gave any type of approval for.

"The mundane factor is mostly my experience with the platform. But is facebook stealing data? If you give it data, you want a new feature so give it more data, you provide it data then it is not stealing. And it also isnt technically stealing as it is a copy of your information (which you gave it to have!) and not depriving you of your information."

Fine. Ditch "stealing". How about "copying after tactics designed to ensure user ignorance about the policy"? If you read the article, you'll see that facebook gets people to consent by burying text in other text. You can say that this is technically consent, as the lawyers do, but that doesn't mean that people are fully cognizant of what will happen. Also, I'm getting a bit annoyed with you, so I suggest that you go to a copyright attorney and inform them of your definition of "stealing". They won't be happy.

"Me too! I am one of those. Part of a social group so we can organise meeting up and checking in on parts of the family/friends I dont want to talk to. I got an account because my job demanded it. And I put on there what little I really cared to put there over years. I didnt want to use the platform but it was required. And so what?"

"So what" was covered. So the point you made, that there are alternatives available, is not what we were complaining about. We did not say that "it's so bad that facebook is the only thing around, so people have no choice but to let it take data." We said that "It's so bad that facebook takes data, and it has such a large user base that it can be hard to avoid." So what? So your point was irrelevant to our discussion.

"Then you do it? If it is such a money spinner some capitalist will do it surely! FB without the data just £x a month. I wonder why nobody is doing it if it is such a sure winner? The innovation aspect has been done, FB has tried to make a usable platform that people worldwide actually use! Saying one doesnt exist so we cant tell is to assume such efforts would succeed (or maybe it had been tried and failed?)."

It hasn't been tried. I'm saying that you can't argue that "you wouldn't pay for facebook so it's OK" because it is jumping to conclusions. Just like if I said "if [x-company] ran facebook it would be better" would be jumping to conclusions because x-company doesn't run facebook.

"I never suggested it would apply to EU citizens, that is why I explicitly stated outside the 3 countries. And this again comes back to the private life. You may not consider it good news. I might take issue with how much salt is in your diet. Is that any of my business? Should I start poking my nose into your private business or do we have a right to our own choices?"

Are you obese? I'm not, and I hope it stays that way. Go read some news. See how often the phrase "obesity crisis" appears. People who are not obese are concerned for the health of others. They're not instituting the do-not-eat-too-much police. Just because I consider something "not good news" does not mean that I feel it should be prevented with extreme prejudice. It means I oppose and disapprove. Either you must never disagree with me on anything, or you must agree that both of us have the right to oppose and disapprove.

Re: Wow

OK. We need to talk. I tend to sympathize with the blame-the-users mentality here; I'm quite cynical. However, the fact remains that pretty much everything you said here is wrong. Most of the wrong things were already covered in posts before yours, which I assume you've read. I'm going to cover your points:

"I have an innovative idea! If you dont want to give Facebook your data (or any of the others) then dont."

If you read the posts here, you'll find out that:

1. Many of us don't give facebook any data.

2. Many of us that don't give facebook data are rather certain that facebook has collected data on us anyway, without our consent, and without informing us or giving us any option to have it removed.

3. Some people have specific reasons that not using facebook is harmful to them. You may contest that, or say that they shouldn't care, but it's reasonable for them to complain about data collection they didn't authorize as it's reasonable for you to complain that they haven't given it enough thought.

"Feel free to keep reading once you pick yourselves up off your chair (for the few who wont have thought such a thing possible)."

That isn't helpful. You're attacking people who don't give facebook data. It doesn't take much time to figure that is the case, as most of them state this outright.

"Does anyone really care?"

Yes, they do. That's why we're talking here. If you mean "does anyone outside this community care", you'll see that both the optimists and pessimists have discussed this specific question in these comments.

"Or lets make this easier- how many of you have a facebook account? If you dont then it doesnt matter to you anyway."

I previously said "Many of us that don't give facebook data are rather certain that facebook has collected data on us anyway, without our consent, and without informing us or giving us any option to have it removed." Therefore, it would matter to us. Also, things that don't affect us directly still matter to us. If I knew that people living next to me were periodically beating each other up, even if it never affected me, I'd still report it in the interest of protecting their health. It's called altruism, and it is important.

"If you do then who put a gun to your head and forced you to sign up?"

A reasonable question. However, people have explained why they need facebook accounts. You could question their need for the accounts, but the fact remains that facebook collects data that they did not intend to give. Maybe they assumed less data was disclosed, and were willing to give that data. For example, if you agreed to let me photograph your house every day in exchange for providing you a service, you'd be pretty angry if you found that instead I broke into your house and started photographing all your posessions.

"More importantly who forced you to put up all those status updates of your mundane lives, pictures of your pets/holidays/cartoonified faces?"

You're attacking again. Whether one's life is mundane or not is not related to whether facebook steals data. It's irrelevant.

"I have an amazing shock for you- there are many forms of communication. You can email, phone, sms, mmsms and god knows how many other methods of talking to people but they will likely end the conversation if you stick 1 line of cryptic text about how you have had enough or an invite to some garbage you have no interest in."

Yes, we have become aware of this fact. I have an amazing shock for you: people use facebook as a communication mechanism. Some people face disadvantages if they insist on using another. Some, including me, either have a lower level of such pressure or are more willing to be irritating, thus allowing us to stay off facebook. Others are not so lucky. Either way, the reason people are worried about facebook's data collection is not because they believed there to be no alternative.

"You do this by choice. Which means you are happy to put your information up there because you are willing to trade limited information to access facebook and then willing to post up more information to get people to look at you."

No. That's not it. If I agree to one thing and find that there is another one going on that I didn't realize, then things have changed. Please reread my analogy to the photographing and decide where your boundaries lie.

"Put in another context how many of you with FB accounts are willing to cough up money? Probably a lot less, which leads to less people being interested as your cheap friends wont be willing to pay to access the platform (I am one of those cheap people who would not pay money for FB). So if you use FB you are happy with FB collecting the data you freely give them to use to generate the money you are not willing to give them for the product you are using."

I've covered the "happy to give all info" argument. In summary, it's crap. However, they are not offering a no-collection paid version. I'll state my typical opinion on such issues. Once they offer such a feature, in good faith, and without trying to break it in any way, they can use that as an argument, assuming it fails. Until then I will assume (correctly) that they have no intention of treating my data with honor and I will reject the argument as the fallacy it is.

"Good news- facebook has moved users outside the US, Canada and the EU to US servers which puts them under US law not GDPR."

True. However, the discussion about GDPR applies to EU citizens, and still does. In addition, moving the data for EU citizens to U.S. servers would not prevent GDPR from applying, if that were to be attempted. So the fact you've referenced does not change the validity of the discussion. Also, many of us do not consider this good news.

Apple's magical quality engineering strikes again: You may want to hold off that macOS High Sierra update...

This is getting really annoying

I have had no successful updates since high sierra came out, which has introduced a bug that is seemingly impossible to fix--namely that one of my machines has entered a loop of bricking and unbricking itself. This persisted even after I rolled back to 10.12 and 10.11 so I presume a firmware problem is causing this distressingly-named "SleepWakeFailure". Even when the updates worked, I've seen machines wobbling their way through basic workloads that were formerly fine, as one of the major benefits of OSX is that it operates in a stable way without much user input, which is why some people in my personal IT orbit choose to use it. Add all the security failures that 10.13 has been party to and maybe it's time we just stopped development on OSX for a bit, rolled the codebase back to 10.11 or so, and make the release cycle longer to account for thorough testing first.

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

Re: Compatibility

To those who say this is impossible, not quite. Any IPV8-capable system would consider missing sections being high-order octets and their value to be 0. Thus, a request by an IPV4 system for 1.2.3.4 would be resolved by the IPV8 network to the same address 0...1.2.3.4. Certain networks that work only on version 4 would have problems. Any change does that. However, you could get one system functioning on IPV8 without breaking the others, as an IPV8 router would not break an IPV4 client. More specifically, all the original IPV4 tactics would hold--0...127.0.0.1 is still localhost, 0...10.0.0.0 is still private address space, etc. IPV6 does not do this, either on the theory that the features aren't needed or simply because they changed all the numbers. That results in the IPV6 system functioning independently from IPV4, but not functioning at all for backward compatibility. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but perhaps if systems could be upgraded in place using a model as described, it would have been easier to transition.

I'm sure there are corner cases in code that would not allow any of this automatic code to function, although I'm not sure which parts of the code would break, but that is the case for any change, and people make plenty. People upgrade operating systems with the knowledge that code may need updating afterwards, but that most of it will still work. People have found ways to upgrade hardware without bringing down the systems running on it. By designing a system that provides the new functionality with a layer designed to allow most, if not all, legacy code to work, the barriers to construction of the new system are significantly lowered.

Re: Compatibility

Alternatively, put the IPV4 block as part of the IPV8 [I'm making up a fictional logical profile]. For example, the address 100.101.102.103 in IPV4 could just be 0.0.0.0.100.101.102.103 in a new, expanded 64-bit address space. So you want the 128-bit address space? How about 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.100.101.102.103. IPV8 could be a drop-in replacement for IPV4, because anything that worked on IPV8 would coexist perfectly with IPV4 addresses. Anything that didn't work with IPV8 would still have all of the IPV4 address space while it gets updated.

New Galaxy un-smartphone can’t go online because Samsung's thought of the children

Do you want one

If you would like to buy one of these, I have two suggestions. The first is that you come to your senses. However, assuming that failed, you should go to the next suggestion:

1. Find an android device that costs very little. Most of these are crap, but you're going to use it for nothing, so that's fine.

2. Turn off mobile data and WiFi.

3. Don't turn them back on.

If step 3 is causing trouble for you, consider the following options:

3a. Make code that blocks turning on WiFi and cell data as soon as it is enabled. Include those hooks that malware and facebook use to make it virtually impossible to uninstall. Grant this code every privilege.

3b. Take the phone apart and damage the WiFi antenna. Also damage the LTE antenna (disable voice over LTE first).

3c. Buy any feature phone that doesn't include a browser, which is most of them.

3d. Go to your closet and take down the ancient feature phones you left there when you started using smartphones. Consult ebay for the replacement of the battery involved, which should cost on the order of $3.

3e. Just get professional help. If you're addicted enough to phones that you can't resist using them for two hours, you have a problem that won't be fixed by a stupid phone, no matter how much cash you spend in the effort. Realize that most people who use phones all the time have a serious reason to and would not have a problem using them less in the event that they didn't need them.

Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse

Re: Phone book

>Domains should be exactly the same. You want a public advertisement of how to reach you, you permit your contact details to be known. You want a private IP address, that's your problem : you don't need a domain.

Not so. In many cases, I do need a domain, even if I don't choose to publicize it to everyone. Not all systems support directly accessing IP addresses, although most do. Many systems see that as a security problem, as many scammers use the same strategy, so I'm now facing my users seeing warnings or blocks on the way. There's also the obvious fact that susansmith.com is easier for people to remember than 109.251.39.28. I don't see any reason that my information needs to be known for those benefits to accrue to me. I put my info in the phone book for my and others' benefit. I put my information in the whois database for exactly the same reason. Except I get no benefit because it opens me to spam, my nontechnical users get no benefit because nobody checks it, and my technical users get no benefit because I already put the contact information that they should be using on the site. So what if the site is basically useless to those who aren't planning on using it? Maybe those people don't need to contact me.

Re: They shall regret GDPR

No, they probably won't. The reason is that I can go and reserve a site and type whatever I like in there. For my personal sites, I entered true information, which I don't really mind being available (neither my phone number nor my email are there, although my postal address is because there doesn't seem to be a good way to avoid it. This hasn't resulted in any spam yet). The registrar checked none of it. No physical mail to the address. No calls or SMS to the phone number. True, they used the email address, so they could see that was true, but those are pretty easy to set up. If I had made a site for scams, I could just put in "Microsoft Support, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, 98502, 1-425-882-8080, support[at]microsoft[dot]com". The system wouldn't check, so initial victims would be able to check and see the supposedly correct information. In order to catch me, you'd need to have the authorities contact the registrar and find out the real information.

Now if I'm running one of those borderline legal scams with real companies, I can still provide accurate but misleading data.

Finally, I consider the issue unimportant because I don't think people are using whois to determine scams or not. Most people don't know what it is. Whois services are available only through registrars or the whois terminal command. People who fall for that type of scam are usually nontechnical enough not to use whois, while those like us who might check already know we won't get useful data from a scammer. I see no reason the data must be public; just make it a hidden database and let me publish. After all, any company worth anything will have all that information on the contact us page anyway. For personal sites, you don't need the owner's address as they will have provided you the methods you will use to initiate contact if they want to hear from you. I don't see any problem.

Exposed: Lazy Android mobe makers couldn't care less about security

Longer if they were buying my product

Do you use windows? Windows 7? That's getting support and security patches for 11 years. Windows 10? Although you may hate it, it has been getting security patches for four years now and they're still doing it. MacOS? All OS updates are free. True, they may break your device, but that wasn't intentional. Your mac from 2010 onward runs the latest MacOS update, albeit slowly. How about Linux? They don't even sell you the OS and yet Ubuntu LTS versions have support for five years. IOS? I have an iPhone 5S that runs IOS11, even though it shipped with IOS7. People update products when they take ownership of them. It is perfectly reasonable, especially when devices cost as much as phones do, to use them for a while. You shouldn't have to give up on a device that is still capable of the processing required for your use case, and for those who use their phones for phone calls, SMS, email, light browsing, and multimedia consumption, the processors from four years ago are fine. If the phones were properly secured, many people would use them like that.

Android update statistics

I wonder what the statistics are on these measurements of android update problems:

1. How many phones were originally released running some android version V and are still on version V despite the new version, or in some cases several new versions, having been out for a long time (at least six months)?

2. How many phones are being actively manufactured and sold running android versions that aren't the latest or second-to-latest.

It seems many manufacturers do one or both of those. Sure, new security patches need to come out for phones on a regular basis, but the article is sort of right in that the security problems dealt with in last month's patches probably aren't well-known exploits in use by a lot of malware writers. Instead, they'll focus on the bugs that can affect lots of older versions of the OS, knowing that a lot of phones on those versions are in use. I am not a primary android user, but none of the android devices I or my family members have purchased got a single OS update. I'm sure the flagship $800 devices at least get one, but it doesn't seem good practice that standard or cheap phones would get no attention at all. By the way, we're not talking $30 budget nobody's-heard-of-them manufacturers here. In addition, I took a quick look at a list of standard affordable price ($100-$400) phones. Some of them are running 7.0, but I see many on lollipop or marshmallow. Not a single one runs oreo, even though the main release was seven months ago. I'm prepared to guess that those devices have security holes that are much larger and better known, and that, as they won't be updated to any new OS, they're probably not getting security patches either. If I was writing malware, that's what I would target.

What a time to be alive: LG and Italian furniture-maker build smart sofa

A note to IOT manufacturers

Here's a simple calculation of whether your device is definitely crap or just possibly so. If it falls into definitely, you should not build it.

First, calculate how much time it takes to do the action this device would prevent me from doing. Call this number T. For example, picking up the remote control and pressing "on" takes about two seconds.

Calculate how often I do that thing every week and call that number W.

Calculate how long it takes using your product to do the same and call that number P. For this couch, that would involve sitting down and waiting for the couch to turn on the microphone, then enough time for me to say "Turn on the TV", so maybe four seconds.

Now here are the rules. If P>T, your product is useless. We don't need it. If P is basically equal to T, consider whether your system is easier mechanically, which it isn't. If P is less than T, consider just how much time you save me per week (T-P)*W. If that works out to five seconds, we don't need it. However, try to make products where (T-P)*W is ten minutes or more. Consider these, do some work on it, and come back in October. Off you go.

Super Cali's frickin' whiz kids no longer oppose us: Even though Facebook thought info law was quite atrocious

Re: Yeah right

I don't use many of them. If they collected data on me regardless, as many of them are known to do, then they should face consequences. Even if it isn't illegal for them to buy data or steal it, I don't see why we shouldn't make it illegal if we oppose it. I oppose it, so such laws get my support. By the way, I am perfectly willing to pay for some things if it prevents me from having my data stolen. Maybe such companies could test it in good faith before deciding that I shouldn't get that option.

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

And I doubt many will get it

Given how windows update works these days, there will be many people who never get this update and will be languishing on old versions of windows 10 forever.

For example, I was trying to help a friend who owns a surface that is running windows 10 1607. Because of a firmware problem, the battery in this surface can't store its correct charge, so it will die if disconnected from power. Microsoft realized this and released a fix, but it can only be installed if the device is connected to power and has 40% or more battery. Because of the firmware problem, the battery never gets to 40%, so the problem can't be fixed. Because of the firmware not being up to date, large updates won't install. Because of security updates that are probably big deals, microsoft wants to install new big updates. The result being that the machine still won't function if not plugged in, and the update procedure would download the 3gb windows 10 image every day and fail to install it, only to repeat the next day. I was unable to get the firmware fixed so the updates and battery would work, so the only solution I had was to tape the power adapter into the socket and kill windows update so that it at least wouldn't waste bandwidth downloading the same image. This using microsoft's hardware and software. Maybe they could use these extra days to fix that

A developer always pays their technical debts – oh, every penny... but never a groat more

You need good programmers, and you need to let them work

In many cases, this debt can come from decisions that require code to be out immediately. Sometimes, that's actually required for the situation, but in other situations the two days now will save two weeks later. However, in my experience this can result in a cycle of project managers messing things up, as they assume that, since working code was shipped successfully, the new features can be pushed along the same way. For an example, consider the recent MacOS releases. I think many of us can agree that 10.13 High Sierra has problems. Some of it works fine, but there have been a lot of bugs, including one that in my case cyclically bricks my laptop for a few days. That seems to be a firmware problem with their new disk format and my old machine. Even if that's just a me thing, we all remember the root password bug. These problems seem to happen rather frequently now that apple is making their developers push out a new big version every year or so, and I think the debt of this is the cause. Remember how nice 10.11 was? That was the version in which they didn't try to add as many features as they could think of, and instead focused on reliability and performance. In other words, paying down debt. A solution that does 90% of the job and crashes 0.1% of the time is better than one that does 95% of the job and crashes 10% of the time. If companies could realize that, we would have better code.

Facebook admits: Apps were given users' permission to go into their inboxes

Re: But Trump!

>The outrage only exists because the story originally went along the lines of: CamAn "stole" your personal data and used it to trick folks into voting for that nasty Trump over that lovely Hillary.

No. I'll admit that many people do have that opinion, and they may be less happy about it given that Trump was the beneficiary, but my opinion on the justice of facebook's actions is not dependent on which politician used the methods I consider unfair to get into office. Had the roles been reversed, I would have disliked facebook equally as much. You may doubt this statement from me, but you need look no further than the countries whose elections were purportedly unaffected. Many users of facebook and governments are worried there as well, and it's not because of history. It is because of future possibilities and concerns about user privacy, both of which are important issues regardless of the occupant of the oval office.

Re: RE: Are there really so many people so stupid...

There are many people that are so stupid. Those people may never be won back. However, there are people who are less stupid--they still used facebook and gave it information with the knowledge that facebook would be reading it to give them ads. They assumed this data would be stored, perhaps against their will, in order to allow facebook to tailor ads and other data to them. Those people were operating under the assumption, now known to be incorrect, that their data wasn't on offer to just about anybody. The news is not that facebook reads a ton of information about people; that's been known for years. The news is how they have chosen to give that data to anyone who asks, without having any controls giving their users any privacy from third parties or making sure said third parties are not evil. I choose to avoid this by never having anything to do with facebook, but it is relatively reasonable of their users to assume that facebook wasn't willingly leaking data to people just so long as those people said "please may I have all that data".

Skype for Business has nasty habit of closing down… for business

Why are people still on 32-bit windows

I agree that this is really sloppy programming. I do have to wonder, however, why people aren't on 64-bit windows, given that I can't find any computer sold nowadays or even in the recent past that had a non-64--------bit capable processor. Those that have an excuse are those crap cheap machines with two or less gigs of memory, but of course they would have the same problem. I'm surprised that people are still running 32-bit windows on machines connected to expensive high-res displays. Do a lot of people just have a backlog of 32-bit only windows 7 licenses or something?

No password? No worries! Two new standards aim to make logins an API experience

Theoretically fine, practically crap

I have no problem with the theory of using private keys to encrypt stuff that you use to authenticate. I have no problem using external devices to store them. I do have a problem with people theorizing that this will solve the problem of credential stealing, as most stealing operations don't use network traffic, instead going for the data on client or server. A properly salted hashed password may be slightly less secure, in the sense of taking a million years instead of a billion years to crack, but we have seen that a lot of systems don't go to the proper extent to properly salt and hash their passwords. Those people probably won't be implementing a more complex and entirely new system, so they will be as much at risk as they were before.

So the question remains: is it easier to get a password or a private key if you have access to the client machine, and is it easier to repair such a breach if you use passwords or private keys. In both cases, I contest that passwords are better. While some systems will store passwords on the system, leaving them a sitting duck for attackers, it is possible and frequently the case that users must type them in. Of course, a keylogger can collect them, but it requires more complexity on the part of a malware writer to determine what is the username, what the password, and where those are effective. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but at least it reduces the likelihood. I don't think the same complexity exists with private keys. Some systems will properly store them on external devices, but there are too many lazy users to make that the only option, leaving the other option (storing them on a disk) the more likely. An attacker can learn their location and just copy them over. So now we turn to after the attack, when the intrusion has been detected. In order to reset a password, one simply goes to the reset password function and authenticates oneself with email, and the password has been changed. The old one is revoked and the attacker has lost access. The same can be done with private keys, of course, but the system will result in a lot of inconvenience. For example, I have different SSH keys for each device I use for SSH. I would either have to revoke all of them, or have a system for finding which keys have been captured so I can just revoke those. Furthermore, any system for storing keys that keeps using the old ones will stop working until I can update it. For those of us who are technically aware, this process is quite straightforward, but my family members are going to deal with this crisis by calling me and asking for help. For those who don't have a helpful acquaintance, they will get frustrated. The results of this will not be pleasant.

Gemini: Vulture gives PDA some Linux lovin'

I want one...that works

I want this to get somewhere. However, everything I've heard so far is making me not want to buy this one. I'm hearing bad things about the keyboard; that worries me because that's the reason I want it. The wobble is something of a problem, but I'm also concerned about the nonstandard layout. Given that I'd be writing code and issuing terminal commands, I will need some punctuation that I can get to easily. If the keyboard can't do that, then I should just go back to portable keyboards (I have a cheap minikeyboard that at least has all the keys on it, even if they put "-" and "=" on the bottom left). It also doesn't make a lot of sense to have no output mechanism on the outside of the case. My suggestion would be one of those tiny non-touch screens like the flip phones used to do. Use an efficient LED display, and use it for caller ID, clock, and some notifications. That can't be all that expensive.

I too want this device for linux usage, although I'd probably still be somewhat interested if android was the only choice, but the review so far indicates to me that none of the necessary features are there. Maybe the Gemini 2 will work better.

2018's Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop is a lovely lappie

Re: No dvd drive; no keypad; and Windows 10

Why do people still want DVD drives on laptops these days? I exclude anyone who works with DVDs every day for some reason, but other than that... I have a USB DVD drive that I can connect to my laptop when the need arises and I don't spend much time with optical media. When I need it to install something, write a read-only media for something else, or watch a video on DVD, I can just plug it in. Otherwise, it contributes rather a lot to weight and thickness. It's not like the RJ45 connector, which doesn't take much space and could actually be needed in certain scenarios. I want that space in the case for a bigger battery or an extra drive bay (I know, wishful thinking).

On the keypad, it's essentially a 13-inch laptop, albeit with a screen that's been extended. I don't know how well you can put a keypad on such a keyboard without cramping the other keys. Maybe you just have to work with a keypad a lot, in which case this won't work for you, but if this were reasonably priced I wouldn't really miss it much.

As for windows 10, you have my sympathies as I don't want to deal with that either. However, I don't know what you expected. Windows 8.1 is worse, windows 7 will EOL soon enough that it'd probably be considered negligent of them to install it given the possible zero-days, and you can put linux on if you'd like.

So I'm going to provide my own list of why this is ridiculous:

1. The price is laughable--when your machine costs more than the comparable one from apple (macbook pro 13-inch, i5 7th gen, 16gb memory for $1999), you may be missing something. Actually, you can get the macbook pro 15-inch, i7 (hq with 4 actual cores), 16gb memory, discrete AMD graphics, high-speed SSD for $2399. Something's definitely wrong.

2. Actually, that's all. No other points need be made.