Posts by doublelayer

Apple: Mysterious iPhone 11 location pings were because of 'ultra-wideband compliance'

Re: In other news

Every large company will be sued by lots of people. Some with real concerns for which the company should (but probably won't) pay through the nose. Some with concerns that are valid but rather minor. Some with concerns that were valid but everybody's forgotten about them and they no longer exist. And some from people who want money, have identified a possible source, and are willing to try anything they can think of to get some because their time must be really cheap. I think you'll find that with many companies, and unless a specific case looks very damning or the company can't handle it, don't expect that to affect the stock price very much.

The regulation document linked seems to imply that most of these regulations occur at a per-country level. A database of country name and a set of parameters would take up fifty kilobytes if using a verbose XML format, and in a compressed format would fit nicely into this comments box. I only read a bit of the document, so it's possible there are other places, such as military bases or communications testing labs, near which UWB isn't allowed. Even given that possibility, a list of coordinates and distance ranges would be really small.

If the issue is only what country the device is located in, however, that information is likely available from the mobile network without requesting location data from the towers. While there is some possibility that someone is very close to the border with another country and their network thinks they're in another one, that strikes me as somewhat unlikely.

Windows 10 Insiders: Begone, foul Store version of Notepad!

Re: Ok, now

I'd like it to do neither. Just tell me that python isn't there, and I can either find it and put it in the path or go to download it myself. An OS doesn't need to try and guess what I want every time I enter something it doesn't understand, and if it does want to, a Ubuntu-style "You might have wanted one of these commands and if you did here are the packages you'll have to install" is better than deciding I meant one specific thing and taking me straight to the install process for that thing.

Notepad++ has made a few changes recently that I have to find and change back, but it's still the editor that best manages to act as a normal editor when you want that and have many extra features when those are useful. Many other editors I've used either lack the ability to do more advanced things with the text or try to show you every one of their options when all you want to do is type. There are other good editors, but notepad++ is one of my favorites.

Now does anyone know why my installation stopped keeping temp files around when. you closed it and no longer has keyboard shortcuts on any yes/no message box? I'm sure the first one is a setting I haven't found, and it's honestly not a big issue at the moment, but it's a little annoying.

Google ex-employees demand retribution for Thanksgiving massacre

Re: 'if you see something that you think isn’t right — speak up!’ And we did'

Good point. However, I think most types of unethical or illegal conduct would be difficult to explain without making it clear who you are. Fortunately, I have never had to report such conduct. I hope I don't find any in the future either.

That is true. We should go with what we know, and honestly state when we don't know something. In this case, we know the following:

1. The people concerned were definitely trying to organize other employees for collective action, and Google didn't like it.

2. The people concerned definitely put alerts on others' calendars. We know this because both sides admit it. The people doing that didn't claim they hadn't done it; they claimed that it was acceptable.

We don't know the following:

3. We don't know if the people concerned actually leaked information about the people whose calendars they accessed. Google says they did, they said they didn't. At most one of them can be right.

4. We don't know what Google's real reason for firing these people was. It's possible it had nothing to do with the spying and that's just the publicly-announced reason. It's also possible that Google did consider that the primary reason.

Given this, we can still express opinions and be justified in doing so about items one and two. These points are not contested. It's when we get further down the list that assumptions creep in. So far, I think most discussions are about those points we know to be true.

But frequently used in major corporate documents and cited as the corporate motto by executives of that corporate. Which is effectively what you need for something to be your corporate motto. It's clear, however, that the changing of that motto occurred years after any attempt to stick to it had been abandoned.

Mozilla locks nosy Avast, AVG extensions out of Firefox store amid row over web privacy

In that case, Avast is Czech, not American. Either way you go, it's a generalization on countries that doesn't work for the scenario.

Larry leaves, Sergey splits: Google lads hand over Alphabet reins to Sundar Pichai

I remember a science fiction short story I read in the early-to-mid 2000s where the world was set upon by a bunch of disasters and the main surviving connection was between bunches of datacenters with working backup comms and power. Google was one of the primary sources for information, connection, and community while the world got back on its feet, and I found that reasonable characterization for the scenario (at the time). I don't know if I've ever had my opinions of another company, person, or concept change so radically. Nostalgia's fun sometimes, isn't it?

Update: I found the story I was talking about.

Buy Amazon's tiny $99 keyboard so you can make terrible AI music for all your friends

The piano sound effect they used was surprisingly bad. The accompaniment didn't fully match the piano notes all the way through, and you know they picked the best example they could find. Let's see whether they release any more examples when people don't start buying these.

Re: Oh well

I wouldn't recommend this. First, this is more expensive than a larger keyboard with relatively few features. The cheap ones with 49 keys (four full octaves) will undercut this price quite a bit. The main reason, however, is that every keyboard I've seen with fewer than 49 keys has also taken the liberty of shrinking the keys so they're no longer the size of piano keys. That is bad because smaller keys will wreck the muscle memory that can be key to advanced fingering techniques. Using keys that will be of the standard size as any other piano, keyboard, organ, or harpsichord means that it will be easier to play more complex pieces later on. If you'd like to introduce people to piano playing, check for the basic midi keyboards for as cheap as is available; they'll probably well outstrip this.

Internet Society CEO: Most people don't care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it

Re: I was under the assumption

I'm not a lawyer, so take this with the possibility that I could be incorrect, but I believe U.S. law mostly draws the line at end goals, but does not interfere very much with the means. Therefore, if a supposedly nonprofit organization decides to sell something they manage, but they use the proceeds for something allowed under nonprofit legislation and the organization's charter, then it's acceptable. If they just did it to increase salaries until the accounts are empty, that would put their position in check. Either way, by the time someone finds out if consequences can happen to these people, the damage will have been done to .org. If we are to prevent it, we will need to focus on legal challenges, and in my opinion ICANN is the most likely successful target for that at the moment.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

Sure, but someone will always accuse something of bias if it says something they disagree with. Even if no opinions are stated at all, which isn't really possible to obtain, bias can exist or be alleged to exist just in which facts are stated. I don't think you can find me a news outlet without many accusations of bias, unless nobody's reading it.

Given that, you have three logical approaches to try to deal with bias:

1. Read everything from everybody and work out the bias yourself. It's excellent if you have great mechanisms for dealing with incorrect statements or far too much opinion and have enough time to read everything.

2. Try to minimize the reports of bias per reader in the hopes that the thing people complain about least will be the most honest. However, I bet the ones you find are those things so ridiculously biased that nobody who doesn't already agree bothers reading it.

3. Try to balance the reports of bias so you can stick to outlets that are likely to be near the middle. Similar to the first option, you have to work out the bias yourself and decide where your filters lie, but you can do that in less time. Even with that, it's best to have at least a few media organizations rather than one.

For the record, I'm not in the U.K. and can't comment with much precision on the bias or lack thereof of the BBC. All my comments are meant generally.

We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer

Re: Beer...

I think you have a point, but it doesn't get to the point of your extreme or the one you responded to. The mistake wasn't really the manager's responsibility, unless the manager decided the person should admin without assistance despite knowing or being told that the person would not be capable. In this case as stated in the article, the manager put the senior admin in control and trusted them, and unless the manager had a reason to believe the senior admin would not be capable of preventing the junior admin from messing up, the manager acted correctly when setting up those roles. When it later broke, the manager didn't have any reason to think that was at all likely.

Simultaneously, it wasn't a selfish move by the manager to save the employees. True, it would have caused problems for him if the team lost one of its members, but most teams would have problems if they lose one of their members, even the most annoying or useless one, because now there's one fewer person to do the work and a replacement probably needs hiring*. The manager didn't give out the name because the problem was not worthy of firing someone who, seemingly, made an honest mistake and didn't get caught in time by the person who was in a position to do that. A manager is not automatically responsible for anything and everything that happens below them on the organizational chart, but neither are they free to let subordinates take consequences they don't deserve because someone said so.

A good manager makes the decision about what happens to their subordinates based on facts, not the demands or unsubstantiated statements of someone else. That means a manager will keep someone even if somebody doesn't like them, and may fire the person who doesn't do very much work even though some clients might like them.

*Unless the most annoying member of the team is someone who doesn't do any work, in which case everybody's happy when they go.

From July, you better be Putin these Kremlin-approved apps on gadgets sold in Russia

Re: I know this is article just part of the anti Russia propaganda

Clearly, my attempt at an example failed. I'll try again, attempting to be more concise this time.

Whataboutism is a cheap way of not answering a question by bringing up some other topic. It is likely that the other topic is worth discussing, but it's only brought up in order to throw discussion off the original question. As an arguing tactic, it's on par with an interviewee who simply refuses to listen to a question and starts talking about something irrelevant, but it's a more subtle version and thus is more often accepted.

In this case, the comment that got us into this was about western surveillance systems. That's worthy of discussion, and I think we all pretty much agree on our opinions towards it. But nothing specific was mentioned about the systems that connected to the topic under discussion. Instead of talking about the original topic of Russia's new law, or making an effort to compare it to a western system with which there are similarities, the issue of western surveillance was just dropped into the thread. I don't think it was done intentionally to distract us from Russia; I think it was just a comment that didn't include enough context on why it was important, but the effect is to send the discussion off course.

Re: This will start another black market

Telecom providers can only go so far, namely Android phones that they sell. They can't do anything about iPhones because Apple doesn't allow them (now), and they can't do anything about phones bought through other mechanisms, while the law still cares. I'm also sure that computers will be included in the class of devices, and those don't get sold by providers. So manufacturers will have to get involved, and probably retailers as well. I would like for there to be some type of protest by the citizens or the companies, but I don't expect it to happen. But please, please prove me wrong.

Re: I know this is article just part of the anti Russia propaganda

Not really. Whataboutism is a cheap arguing tactic that makes one bad thing outweigh any other bad thing committed by the other side. Consider this example using a political campaign:

Side A: A member of the team, let's call him Bob, is caught taking bribes. That member is fired, but it raises an entirely logical question about why that person wasn't caught earlier and what they might have done.

Side B: Makes these logical arguments, making people turn against side A.

Side B: Someone's caught stealing money. They deflect questions with "What about Bob?".

Side B: Suggests very unpopular idea. Questions deflected with "What about Bob?".

Side B: Well, it's not technically bribery, but a lot of money went in one side and a preferential decision came out the other side. "What about Bob?".

Side A: Has completed investigation into Bob's crimes, proven that this was the first time, and Bob's actions had no chance to have an effect. They think their troubles are over.

Side B: Their candidate seems to have committed fraud a few years ago. "You know, our opposition just released a report on that guy they had taking bribes."

Side B: Their candidate proposes warrantless access to all communications information at all levels. "Sure, there are questions about how to implement this, but what there isn't a question about is that bribery is wrong. Now, this guy Bob..."

Bob, not connected to side A anymore: Is given a fine for committing illegal activity.

Side B: A major supporter of the campaign has been in a complex conflict of interest situation and has thereby gotten millions in dirty money. "They're being investigated, but innocent until proven guilty and all that. Now about this fine that was recently given to Bob..."

And so on. The reality is that Side B may be much worse than Side A, but the discussion is all about side A because their one incident keeps being brought up. The problem with whataboutism isn't that it's bringing up the original problem, as that deserves discussion. The problem is that all the other things deserve discussion as well, and the issue that may be old and unimportant at that point is preventing that from happening.

In this case, the new event is Russia's law, which is really bad. Nobody here fully supports the surveillance systems put in place by western governments. But two factors are at play right now. The first is that Russia's law is quite a bit stronger than anything the NSA or GCHQ have managed to get through. The second is that the discussion about the thing that actually happened is being derailed to talk about the things that are already well established or things that don't at the moment exist.

Re: will the user be able to uninstall Russian made software

"Keep your bridge (and your snark)."

In that case, I'll hold onto this bridge. Other people will eventually buy it. You'll get the snark anyway, though. Because your "what's the fuss" statement is bad. First, there are lots of phones out there that aren't rootable. And even if a phone is rootable, the user has to know:

1. What rooting is.

2. Why they want to root.

3. How to root.

4. How to deal with the bootloader which, in some cases, is English only (or in a rarer case, Chinese only).

5. How to find a trustworthy replacement ROM.

6. How to deal with the situation if their replacement ROM doesn't actually work, including how to obtain a manufacturer ROM and replace it.

Some people here know all these things. But that's in a community with a lot of technical people. The general public does not know these things, and it's not completely self-explanatory. But let's leave rooting aside for the moment. What would happen if Russia wanted this done, but everyone was able to uninstall or root at will? Simple answer. They would make another law requiring manufacturers to prevent that. Russia-specific models without rooting capability and/or mandatory malware that watches for use of ADB and inserts a compromised ROM in place of the real one (or just notifies the police).

I assume you or someone with similarly bad beliefs may look at my arguments and come to the conclusion that none of this matters for us, as we know how to evade this kind of interference. Why should I care if this happens; my phone will be malware-free? The reason I care is that many around me will have this surveillance on their devices. I care about other people, but that's not all of it. If they have surveillance on their devices, then they have surveillance on me every time we communicate. Every time their device is near me. And the malware can be updated, meaning I have to worry every time I receive something from them that could exploit a security flaw that their malware may have been developed to exploit that mechanism to spread itself. And we've seen that plenty of times before, so don't accuse me of extrapolating to extremes.

It is not at all acceptable to have a preinstalled application from a government. It is rarely acceptable to have a preinstalled application from someone who isn't the manufacturer, but at least I hope some of them check the payload and don't allow purely malicious software. It does not matter if the device has an "Uninstall this app" button because I cannot trust that button to do what it says. It does not matter if the device might in theory be rootable because most people won't go to that extent. It is not acceptable.

Re: This will start another black market

I am concerned, however, that lots of people will still get devices with the surveillance software forced onto it and won't be technical enough to be concerned about it. If this experiment works in the sense that no major protest surfaces to block it and international manufacturers cheerfully comply, it might spread to other countries. I really want that not to happen.

Re: I was going to say that this was pure big brother surveillance.

Not at all. At the moment, they aren't restricting what else the devices can have on them. I'm sure that comes later, but it hasn't come yet. What they are demanding is surveillance and control, pure and simple. And I'm sure the "applications" that come out won't simply be mandated bloatware that doesn't do anything if you don't open it, but will instead grab any and all data they can. For Android, this will be little problem, as device manufacturers cheerfully grant extra permissions, frequently either difficult or impossible without completely wiping the device to revoke, to preinstalled apps. I don't expect Apple to simply leave the market out of concern for human rights, but they probably will consider it after they are demanded to ensure the preinstalled apps have permissions that they normally don't make available and allow users to disable.

T-Mobile US hacked, Monero wallet app infected, public info records on 1.2bn people leak from database...

Re: "All three strains of the spyware slipped into the [..] store before being spotted and removed"

I don't disagree with the original sentiment, but I bet it won't go over well because you're leaving out the other side of the coin. Every time a tech person does prevent a problem, nobody knows. Every time a user's action could lose them their files but something the IT department put in place prevents the loss, people continue on. But every time files are lost, whether the IT department could have done anything about it, they get the blame. Think of it this way: if a plumber does work well on your pipes, you won't need to call them in a while. But when your pipes break, you don't immediately blame the plumber; you just call them to come fix it. IT doesn't get that level of respect most of the time.

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

Re: We used to use paper for communication

There are many arguments, some good and some bad, about how much the social media companies are publishers and how much they're simply a place that permits communications. Having that debate is fun and interesting. That is, it's fun and interesting when the thing we're talking about publishing is user content. However, when we're talking about advertisements, the balance is tipped heavily in favor of "publisher". The companies have total control over what is said in an ad and who sees it. They get to approve or reject ads if they please. I seriously doubt that Facebook would allow an ad describing Facebook's ills and detailing ways to avoid it. While they're doing that, it's pretty hard to describe them as anything but a publisher.

Bad news: 'Unblockable' web trackers emerge. Good news: Firefox with uBlock Origin can stop it. Chrome, not so much

Re: I couldn't in good conscience do that kind of deep analysis work to assist an ad-slinger

That's one aspect, but there are also plenty of technical people who don't care about people, honesty, or really anything. Just look at all the people writing malware. If you find those people and offer them enough money, they'll do whatever you ask. The world is a very big place. It doesn't matter if fifty thousand of us decide we'll never work on advertiser tracking; the companies just have to increase the salary a little bit and they'll find people ready, willing, and able.

Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

Re: Alternate Internet

It works fine in the comments section because we want to read all the comments. And when we only want to read new comments, we often simply jump to the ones we wrote or remember and read replies to that. Top posting works well when we've already read the email they're replying to, and all we need is the new content. I'm sure we're all on an email train that goes back three months, four people added to the list of senders, and sixteen misunderstandings about something that is no longer important, and I do not need to read any of that again.

What would really be best is a button to switch from one method to the other method. Bottom posting when the history is read and top posting when I only care about the most recent thing. That would likely require more markup inside the email though.

Re: Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. federal government and most if not all state governments all have FOIA legislation. Your insult is factually incorrect on all grounds, which you could have found out with about ten seconds of research. Searching "U.S. freedom of information act" would have done it just fine.

The problem in this case is that FOIA requests only work on government documents. ICANN and the various companies are not government entities, and thus their documents can't be demanded in that way. The only documents the government would have at this point are ones about details of incorporation or any covered financial proceedings, which are already public, and information about taxes, which are not FOIAble as they aren't internal to the government. Finding out the details on these corrupt dealings will need some other method for data retrieval.

Re: Is it just me?

Not really. At the moment, a .org can be purchased from a number of registrars who all have to turn around and pay a fee to the administrator of .org. If we move that relationship one level down, and make multiple administrators for the registry, then a) they will have to pay a fee to whoever really runs the thing so that place can do the actual administration, b) nothing stops them deciding, either by active collusion or merely moving with the tide, to set the price as high as they'd like, c) there are more people who can be swayed to making anti-customer moves, and d) there are increased opportunities for one of the "administrators" to have a disconnect with the other administrators and do something like sell a domain name twice.

Domain names, unfortunately, are one of those things where a monopoly is needed at some level. It simply isn't feasible to do it otherwise. As always is the case when a monopoly is needed, it is absolutely critical that the monopoly be rigorously overseen by independent parties, independent of any conflicts of interest, and accountable to customers before business partners. If we could get that implemented, we'd be in good shape. Sadly, dreams often disintegrate when you wake up.

Satellite operators' shares plummet as FCC plumps for public 5G spectrum auctions

Re: A side-effect

I took a look to have some specifics. As you were talking about American carriers, I looked up the bands in use. The one that most clearly makes my point is Verizon. Their main LTE band is band 13. Any device using their LTE network must support band 13 or it will stop working or drop to roaming inside the U.S. And not many other providers use band 13.

I did a search on handsets to see what ones were covered. Your flagships are there, of course, with Apple and Samsung highly represented. However, let's check a few less expensive varieties. I quite like Xiaomi devices. They run Lineage OS pretty well and are at a nice pricepoint. How many support that band? Answer: not many. A growing category of devices on the database I checked is the 4G feature phone. What if you want one of those? I found none. So I then checked Verizon's website to see what they offered for 4G feature phones. They have options. All of four of them. With prices ranging from $100 to $264. And the cheapest is a Verizon-specific variant of a device available elsewhere, but that variant only supports bands 4, 5, and 13. Those are all Verizon bands, and only band 5 is heavily used elsewhere. If you want to move to another country, you should hope that that country has a provider on band 5 and that you like that provider over all the competitors, because you have no other choice.

I then checked devices for the number of bands they covered. Apple's seem to be the best. The iPhone XS covers twenty one bands. But even that comes in four variants with a slightly different set of bands. For example, only one of the variants covers LTE band 11. If you're using your phone on the Japanese network Au, you'll need that one variant. Many other devices had four to eight bands. That may give you a few options, but not as many as you might hope.

A side-effect

This spectrum was clearly going to go to 5G at some point, and I don't care all that much how it got there, but with even more spectrum allocated to 5G, I confidently predict that mobiles will be even more fragmented than before. Even now, there are at least twenty LTE bands in common use. However, each operator usually only has one or two main bands that are available everywhere, and hence a device must support one of those in order to be any use on that provider. Manufacturers don't seem to be all that interested in covering those comprehensively, instead making their devices with an assortment of a few bands selected at random and, if necessary, making six different versions that are tailored to the frequencies used by one particular provider. The result of this is that it is hard to move devices on to or off of a provider whose band isn't one of the most typical in use. With 5G having spectrum that was previously not available to mobiles at all, that means a lot more bands, and even more effective constraint on which devices work with a provider.

Intel end-of-lifing BIOS and driver downloads for dusty hardware

"If you think back 50, 100 or more years, much of our understanding of news, technology etc comes from old printed articles, documentation etc. that historians can research. Go forwards 50-100 years from now and just think about how much information that was only ever "posted online" will have been lost forever."

I mostly agree with you, but let's also consider the amount of paper documentation that was lost for one reason or another during that time. Because paper took up so much space, lots of it was recycled, discarded, or burned. And not all of it had an archival copy somewhere. Digital records at least make it easy to copy them, such that something like the Internet Archive can exist without requiring thousands of employees to copy and file stuff. Paper records are great when they need to survive something massive that creates a gap in custody between whoever has them now and future historians, unless that gap is created by fire. Digital records, however, make it possible for a small group of people to retain a massive set of data. Of course, they also make it possible to create even larger amounts of data which only gets backed up if someone thinks to do so.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Re: Metal keys

"Plus it couldn't be pickpocketed or lost."

Yes, it could. Everything can be lost, and anything small enough to keep in a pocket can be pickpocketed. Worse still, if a metal key is lost or stolen, much more is lost than when a plastic card is lost. The hotel must choose either to replace the lock with one that doesn't respond to that key or take the risk that someone stole the key (or found the key and now intends) to wait a bit and start exploring the room for things of greater value to steal. There's a reason that pretty much every hotel has adopted temporary keycards. I definitely prefer those to a phone app, but I think I prefer them to metal keys as well for the temporary lifespan of a hotel.

What a pair of Massholes! New England duo cuffed over SIM-swapping cryptocoin charges

Re: As an interesting thought..

Most people only have one personal device, used for 2FA and every other type of communication. Only a relatively large business or one quite paranoid about external security threats would have a separate device for 2FA purposes instead of using a corporate phone issued to whoever needs access or kept in the office of the relevant team. For nearly everything else, the cost of a separate mobile connection and possibly a separate device for a few SMS messages is considered of little value.

Shock! US border cops need 'reasonable suspicion' of a crime before searching your phone, laptop

Re: A CITIZEN'S rights

We'll start with the fact that your comment is factually incorrect. The fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes all rights guaranteed by that constitution, including the rights under the fourth amendment, applicable to all "persons" in the United States. This is obviously everybody, citizen or noncitizen. However, someone did argue as you did that well, how about we don't. The Supreme Court decided that that idea was wrong. See the case Yick Wo v Hopkins. So your statements are wrong on all counts.

In addition to being factually wrong, they are also morally wrong. Nobody is arguing here that all rights of a citizen should be given to noncitizens, but basic human rights should be. That is also in various legal documents, including the U.N. Convention on Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a signatory. In fact, many of the rights in that document are very similar to the ones specified in the U.S. Constitution.

Section 230 supporters turn on it, its critics rely on it. Up is down, black is white in the crazy world of US law

Re: The law of Unintended Consequences applies....

The section is simply far too broad. There are cases where the protection is not only the most logical option, but helps prevent lots of problems. And then there are others where it allows clear abuse with a get out of consequences free card. Some examples:

Without this section, every provider is responsible for anything and everything on their platforms. This makes sense for a blog with a few readers, but it doesn't make so much sense for, say, a cloud services provider. Without protections like this, someone could find illegal content on a site and charge the provider of compute or network for that site with a crime despite the fact that the provider didn't know anything about the site. Initially, this doesn't sound like a problem; we make it illegal for people to provide services to criminals and the companies have to check their customers for criminal activity. The problem with this is that checking a customer for criminal activity is pretty hard to do without also completely ruining that customer's right to privacy. For instance, I have a virtual server online that could theoretically be used to commit crimes (it isn't). In order to verify that I'm not committing crimes, my server provider would probably have to scan every file on my machine and analyze all network traffic coming through. And even if they do that, they could be charged if it turns out their automatic system doesn't detect whatever crime I have managed to come up with. A good faith effort is not sufficient.

However, this is also frequently used to allow any type of content, no matter how obviously illegal, to be sent. The article already has some good examples of this, which I'm sure we agree should be stopped. Under the current law, our only method to try to stop it is to argue about the definition of "publisher", leaving lots of advantages for companies with many lawyers. That's not very useful. As obvious as it is to people that running ads means the advertiser is publishing at least that content, it hasn't yet been accepted in court because the law isn't clear enough.

I think we're likely to see lots of people clustered around the "protect it at all costs" and "scrap it entirely" ends of this spectrum. As usual when that happens, we really need to be somewhere in the middle.

Microsoft has made a Surface slab that mere mortals can dismantle

Re: 8GB ram????

In fact, I've worked on Windows 10 machines with even less. I currently have a machine here with only four gigabytes of memory, and that one works fine. It's probably not the best machine to use when running memory-hungry software like some IDEs, but it does just fine running more standard software under both Windows and Linux, and I rarely notice the difference.

At one point, I had the pleasure of using a cheap Windows tablet with a whole one gigabyte of memory. I did notice that, but the Intel atom it was paired with was the more annoying of the specs. Even with that, however, the device ran. I could write code and read email with ease until I gave it back to its owner and started using my machines again.

Ex-Twitter staff charged with spying for Saudi royals: Duo accused of leaking account records, including those of critics

Re: Four years?

It sounds like their job included looking at specific user accounts and they made some attempt to limit their targets. Logically, Twitter should have had controls on even small numbers of accounts accessed, but I don't know the details of what these people were doing. If it involved something like trying to identify if users were bots or not, it's possible that the criminals hid their account sweeps in something like that, and removed the data they were interested in from that data stream rather than deliberately accessing the profiles. Given the article's figures of six thousand accounts accessed for a target count of thirty three, that approach might have been the one taken.

Chrome OS: Yo dawg, I heard you like desktops so we put a workspace in your workspace

Re: More slurping

That's not much change. If your using one of these, you're almost certainly signed into a Google account (I'm not sure whether they have made it mandatory or whether there's some pretense that you have the choice not to). They'll already collect anything and everything you see on that. I have a feeling that to sync laptop Chrome to Android Chrome, they expect both devices to be signed into the same accounts. If you've done that, you probably don't need Chrome sync on for Google to have collected anything and everything they can find on both devices. The Chromebook concept does not make much sense to me, but Google's intrinsic data collection inside everything they create made it definite that I will not be buying or even using one.

Huawei. It's the patriotic choice: Mobe behemoth predicts 20% sales spike despite US sanctions

Re: Is there a silver lining here?

No, it almost certainly isn't. That would be great, though. Huawei did have a third OS, which they talked about installing on these phones, but that wouldn't necessarily have been open (they never said anything about that). They have chosen, however, not to use it at the moment. My theory is that they expect these restrictions to go away soon enough that they can go back to Android, and they don't want to have two competing operating systems they have to manage. Whether or not they use AOSP or their own OS, they have decided not to have unlocked bootloaders for replacement. So I'm afraid our dreams of a stable and generally available third mobile OS will have to wait for another company to decide to escape the current monoculture or something really weird to happen to Huawei so they change their minds on a lot of things.

Re: Not so sure

At the moment, Huawei is not well placed to take over the Indian market. Several other Chinese manufacturers have pushed for that market, making relatively inexpensive but not laughable products. Huawei has pushed their flagship prices to be similar with those from other well-known manufacturers. Although they make phones at a lower price, the availability of devices at what would be considered low-cost in western countries* does not compare well with their competitors like Xiaomi and Realme, both of which are much more popular in India than is Huawei.

*Low-cost phones does not mean that readers here would consider the prices low. It means that the prices are lower than the majority of phones being sold by the better-known companies. Many of the more popular Xiaomi and Realme devices sell from £120-£250 or $150-250 U.S., while the devices from Samsung, Google, Huawei, etc. are much higher even considering their cheaper models.

NSA to Congress: Our spy programs don’t work, aren’t used, or have gone wrong – now can you permanently reauthorize them?

Should they decide that it is a real problem and they want it stopped, they have quite a few powers that would make it easy to do. First, they refuse to reauthorize. Then, they demand monthly if not more frequent meetings about how the programs have been shut down and any privacy risks they might pose in the future. If the programs aren't shut down fast enough, budgets get slashed. If the people running the programs lie, they're tried in court for perjury and put in prison. That's what could happen.

That's what could have already happened for a lot of years and to many people. They absolutely have the ability to get this situation fixed. Sadly, I have seen little indication that we are making progress on getting them to want to. Since these programs have started, they have been vehemently supported by presidents and legislators of both parties no matter how much obviously illegal and technically legal but clearly wrong activities were publicly known. Perhaps I need more optimism, but I don't think much will happen any time soon.

AT&T: We did nothing wrong in promising unlimited data that wasn't. We're just giving the FTC $60m for fun

Re: Why are you still an AT&T customer?

You assume here that the people are still customers. I'm guessing quite a few left after their contracts ended, tired of being lied to. But you also have to realize that people still need phone service. If only one provider provides useful service wherever you may be, then you are effectively locked into them. And even if you're in an area of good coverage from everyone, you still have to shop for the best plan. It might end up being that the plan from AT&T was a better value for money than the available plans from the competition, just without honesty.

One can't always keep placing companies on the never-buy-from-them-again list; sometimes their services are needed as much as people dislike them for previous decisions. Your approach works fine in a market of perfect competition, but mobile service is not in a state of perfect competition anywhere in the world, let alone the U.S.

DoHn't believe the hype! You are being lied to by data-hungry ISPs, Mozilla warns lawmakers

Re: Google complains about data hungry ISP's??? Those are some swinging balls

It's Mozilla making the argument here. And I completely agree with you about Google's willingness to collect and sell data. The solution to this, however, isn't to choose anyone and everyone who isn't Google and keep data flowing to them. Instead, technology promoting privacy should be supported, investigated, and adopted when feasible, no matter whose data collection is disrupted. If a certain endeavor doesn't do much to cut off the data pipe to Google but does to Facebook, it's still a good thing.

DoH, unfortunately, is somewhere in the middle. It really does promote privacy; it's not difficult to change the provider in a browser and it's quite easy for a DNS provider to set it up. However, it can be used by programs and devices to evade DNS blockers and user controls, including the use of hard-coded servers. Even admitting this, I believe the balance is tilted toward the positive. Programs ranging from actively malicious to locked down by vendor will probably use DoH to hide their tracks, but that can't be helped. If DoH didn't exist, they could and would use something similar. Meanwhile, DoH does really help ensure the privacy of DNS lookups until the DNS server, which can be very useful at keeping data away from ISPs, malicious network devices, etc.

Baffled by bogus charges on your Amazon account? It may be the work of a crook's phantom gadget

Re: How is the device added...?

Logically, it probably starts with account access. This could be from password reuse, poor passwords, access to an email account, theft of credentials via malware, or the like. However, as we don't have many details, it is theoretically possible that there is another vulnerability somewhere that people have found. We don't need to assume that exists at the moment, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Everyone will have some type of security incident, and quite a few of those will be account accesses. However, the real problem is recovery from an event like this. Most accounts can be recovered by taking them over again, changing access methods, and enabling multi-factor. When this course of action is not sufficient, we have a problem.

The .amazon argy-bargy is STILL going on – and Uncle Sam has had enough with ICANN

That's not a good idea. For one thing, the organization never asked for the domain. They just complained about Amazon getting the domain because they're annoyed. As pointless as it is for Amazon to want the domain so much and as warranted as Brazil's complaints against the U.S. are, this fight is producing no useful outcome for anybody, which the complainants know well. I have little sympathy for them. I don't really care whether Amazon gets their domain or not, but I can't see that people deliberately trying to be obstructionists have any legitimacy.

Top American watchdog refuses to release infamous 2012 dossier into Google’s anti-competitive behavior

Re: Meh

But a auto dealership and a hardware company aren't search engines. They are making recommendations when asked, but it is not their job to provide information. In addition, no manufacturer of cars or phones currently has an effective monopoly on that market. Google, as a search engine, does have providing information as a primary purpose, and at the time (and now), their market share does place them very close to a monopoly in many countries. If they choose to bias their search results to promote other products, it could be considered abusing their market position, which violates antitrust and pro-competition legislation. Your analogy is inadequate.

Not just adhesive, but alcohol-resistant adhesive: Well done, Apple. Airpods Pro repairability is a zero

Re: Hearing aid?

I don't want these, and they're ridiculously priced as well, but there is a simple answer to why people want earphones that block out a lot of the noise from their environment: open plan office. I'm in a mixed plan office and I still choose to use headphones because if I decide to work to music, I won't be irritating the person closest to me. In addition, having devices that have the capacity to serve as impromptu earplugs can be nice if I'm being subjected to far too much ambient noise. An airplane cabin or construction zone next to where I'm working come to mind. Another that comes to mind is if I have to work inside the server room at some point. The shriek of lots of servers is annoying and can damage my hearing, while there's very little likelihood I have to listen out for dangers (unless it's the BOFH's server room) or would be able to hear them anyway.

Re: Double the reason

I'm guessing that you treat your high-priced wired headphones rather well. That's quite a logical thing to do given how much you spent on them. My problem, however, is that I want not to treat them well. I want to use them out and about, finish up, and coil them into a pocket or bag. I don't necessarily want to spend a ton of time neatly keeping the wire in perfect condition because it's quite likely I will stop using them when I need to be doing something else. In my experience, cables don't last very long when you do that to them, especially the pretty thin ones attached to most sets of headphones. I've killed far too many sets to spend very much money on them.

That said, I do have a good set of wired headphones which are quite high quality. I keep those at home, neatly organized, and only use them when doing audio work. I don't need that kind of quality when I'm using headphones elsewhere, and I don't want to lose the money spent on them by damaging a cable which isn't always as straightforward to replace as it looks.

Re: That vendor's track record for reparability is miserable

To be fair, and I don't necessarily want to be, their record isn't all that bad when compared to many of their rivals. Nothing they make is very repairable, but many of their phones and laptops are at least more repairable than ones from other leading manufacturers. Recent reviews of Samsung and Google phones, Microsoft laptops and tablets, and the like seem to show similar levels of disregard for self-repair. I wouldn't focus on how Apple ranks compared to others. I'd focus on what the raw numbers are, and they range from not great to well it's the bottom of the scale.

The Feds are building an America-wide face surveillance system – and we're going to court to prove it, says ACLU

Re: Hypocrites

They have. At least some of the new companies placed on the American entity list were placed there because they create surveillance systems used in the Chinese province of Xinjiang for tracking and in many cases imprisoning people on ethnic grounds. Which is why they got suggested on the list, but they'll certainly be removed if the trade war goes the way the American administration wants because human rights won't matter in that case. Various other countries have been calling this massive human rights abuse by China out too. It's so obviously happening and so obviously really bad that nearly everyone at least says they're concerned about it.

Radio nerd who sipped NHS pager messages then streamed them via webcam may have committed a crime

Just give the pager a very basic microprocessor capable of performing encryption and decryption. They have them all over the place, and they're quite cheap and run with little power requirements. You can still use the same frequency. Given the privacy requirements of some of this data, that would seem to be a sane precaution.

A stranger's TV went on spending spree with my Amazon account – and web giant did nothing about it for months

Re: There seems to be something wrong here

Well, let's round up a few suspects:

1. Reused password.

2. Poor password.

3. Keylogger.

4. Phishing email.

5. Someone with a passwords file (especially children).

6. Insecure IoT device (E.G. television watching Amazon's video service).

7. Malicious attack by someone who knew the person.

8. The poster was not the person whose account was accessed; they are the technical person who helped a family member or friend whose account was accessed using one of the above mechanisms.

9. Amazon's had their system accessed and Amazon doesn't know or hasn't told us.

10. Dumb luck.

So maybe one of those was used to access the account. It's still a massive problem if you can't lock them out by changing the password and deleting connected devices and changing how 2FA is working and talking to normal customer support. I fail to see your objection to this quite likely possibility.