* Posts by notamole

58 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jan 2019

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Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

notamole

It definitely will be, but it won't count toward your flight time, which was a thing often claimed about FSX.

notamole

Re: Things Left Unsaid

I highly doubt that. First off, Azure AI isn't a data storage or streaming service, it's a machine learning service. There's nothing in the trailer that suggests it will be streamed in any way. They would need to use something like Azure to procedurally generate the terrain and buildings from the satellite data into usable models.

notamole

They started marketing the old Flight Simulators a a tool for pilot training (with some iffy claims of counting toward your license by some less-than-reputable people). My joystick broke years ago but I think this might be worth a HOTAS investment.

JavaScript tells all, which turns out not to be so great for privacy: Side-channel leaks can be exploited to follow you around the interweb

notamole

Besides, I don't think they're actively spying on anyone, crawling into PCs and stealing everyone's stuff. I just don't want them logging my internet activity (outside of their own crap which I don't use accounts for anyway).

notamole

Never heard of sandboxie?

notamole

Re: JavaScript is only a threat when it runs

It depends how well or lazily the website is written. El Reg, for example, works perfectly fine without JS, the only thing you miss is the thumbnail images on the front page. You get good at recognising which sites will work and which won't (they usually have a Metro-esque layout).

notamole

Re: JavaScript is only a threat when it runs

It depends. Extensions can only work once they've been loaded themselves, they don't disable JS at the browser level then turn it back on for specific sites, it's left on by default and blocked when told to. If the browser tries loading the website first (you click a link from some other application) then the extension might not be available to block it.

notamole

You use the same browser? I have Chrome for all of Google's crap, and Firefox for actual crap.

NASA goes commercial, publishes price for trips to the ISS – and it'll be multi-millionaires only for this noAirBNB

notamole

I hear Deimos is nice this time of year.

notamole

I wish these politicians would stop dicking NASA around. He was the one who said Mars was a waste of time and they should be going to the Moon. Usually I would just chalk this up to his inability to hold a thought in his head for 7 consecutive seconds, but this has been going on since the 90s. Once congress approves funds for a mission it should be locked in, with no ability to change it unless it goes through a congressional review (e.g. in the case of going massively over budget).

How does anyone expect them to accomplish anything when they plans keep changing with every administration (and now changing with the president's bowel movements)? It was the Moon under HW Bush, then Mars under Clinton, then the Moon under Bush, then Mars under Obama, then the Moon then Mars under Trump.

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

notamole
Trollface

Sneaky

Cue Nancy Pelosi: "Apple doesn't really want anyone to buy their stuff. See?"

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

notamole

Re: Require Social Media?

I'm suddenly curious whether any terrorists have applied for work visas. Do they list occupation as terrorist, freedom fighter, militant? Does ISIS provide a Youtube course for filling in applications?

notamole

Hello darkness, my old friend

Yet another example of the Obama administration opening a door, and the Trump administration blowing out the wall next to it.

I have no idea how they'll enforce this though. The only social media account I've had in the last 5 years was Twitter, and I deleted it 3 years ago. Are they going to put me back on the plane because I don't like social cesspools?

Wow, talk about a Maine-wave: US state says ISPs need permission to flog netizens' personal data

notamole

Re: Effectiveness

Edited out too much, sorry.

" A provider may use, disclose, sell or permit access to information the provider collects pertaining to a customer that is not customer personal information, except upon written notice from the customer notifying the provider that the customer does not permit the provider to use, disclose, sell or permit access to that information"

notamole

Effectiveness

"...may use, disclose, sell or permit access to information... except upon written notice from the customer notifying the provider that the customer does not permit the provider to use..."

So this is opt-out rather than opt-in, the permission is assumed unless revoked. Do the ISPs even have to tell their (potential) customers that they have this right?

ProtonMail filters this into its junk folder: New claim it goes out of its way to help cops spy

notamole

Re: Snoops

That may have been true 3-4 years ago, but VPNs are incredibly common (arguably mainstream) now.

notamole

Re: But who is pulling the strings of the courts?

Fair enough, but you do have to use a search engine to find it (would you have thought to search for it if I hadn't question its existence?). They don't promote it at all, it's just updated in a 5 year old article.

notamole

There have been a number of claims made against Protonmail over the last year, most of them pretty flimsy. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a disinformation campaign by the NSA/GCHQ. They've gone after Tails and Tor before, calling them both "extremist".

notamole

Re: But who is pulling the strings of the courts?

Tutanota puts out biannual reports of orders they've received and how many of those they've complied with. Protonmail, not so much.

RIP Hyper-Threading? ChromeOS axes key Intel CPU feature over data-leak flaws – Microsoft, Apple suggest snub

notamole

Re: What about AMD cpu's?

I didn't say they didn't test AMD cpus, I said they didn't design the tests for them. They were designed based on Intel architectures, so the same principles wouldn't necessarily apply (and didn't) to others.

notamole

Re: What about AMD cpu's?

To be clear, they're not affected because the attack is architecture-specific and the researchers didn't test with AMD or ARM architecture in mind. AMD has only had full SMT with Zen, so there likely are vulnerabilities but there are only two generations (one and a half really) to draw from.

San Francisco votes no to facial-recognition tech for cops, govt – while its denizens create it

notamole

Re: At the risk of being cynical...

Plenty to fear actually. Since when has the government not abused surveillance? The first place this will be used is at protests.

Blockchain is a lot like teen sex: Everybody talks about it, no one has a clue how to do it

notamole

Re: Blockchain is a ledger, first and foremost

I have a lovely invisible teapot you might be interested in.

notamole

Re: Blockchain is a ledger, first and foremost

Feel free to point to one that isn't a ledger. Maybe you're confusing the technology with the implementation. Ethereum for example is capable of more than Bitcoin not because it uses its blockchain in weird and wonderful ways but because it has a contracts platform (via a virtual machine) that uses its blockchain as a source of data. The blockchain itself is still a ledger.

notamole

They mostly invested in it because of the initial(-ish) success of Bitcoin. The likes of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, etc. mostly use it for encapsulating transactions. Their exuberance faded long ago, with the last gasp being a handful of forays into developing their own coins. At this point they're just trying to avoid admitting to investors that they wasted a lot of money on a glorified spreadsheet - that's how the stock market will interpret it.

notamole

Fairly simple

Blockchain is a ledger, first and foremost. If you don't need an immutable log of data, you don't need blockchain. There are more exotic uses for that but they are niche and too cumbersome for business use.

NordVPN rapped by ad watchdog over insecure public Wi-Fi claims

notamole

My comparison wasn't of VPNs and viruses, it was the advertising or VPNs and anti-virus. Anti-virus is sold as if the internet is inherently unsafe due to viruses, so why aren't their adverts being raked over the coals?

My position is that neither should be reprimanded. Neither public wi-fi nor viruses are an inherent threat, they're a threat caused by human behaviour, but the vast majority of the public don't know the proper behaviour to protect themselves, so the claim that those systems are a threat is true for them even if it's only because they don't know better.

In the case of viruses, don't click strange links or download things you didn't explicitly ask for. In the case of public wi-fi, check that it is properly secured before connecting to it.

notamole

Maybe I should clarify: an internet-connected computer is not inherently insecure (or secure).

notamole

The problem with this logic is that the internet isn't inherently insecure (it's not inherently secure either). If you're careful with your behaviour you'll never be infected with a virus, but anti-virus software is still advertised as if you're under constant attack. Sure, some wi-fi hotspots are set up properly, but you would only know that if you asked the operator and had the technical wherewithal to know what to ask, and they had the technical wherewithal to answer truthfully.

There's NordVPN odd about this, right? Infosec types concerned over strange app traffic

notamole

Re: If I wanted to conduct mass spying...

Protonmail (long before they had a VPN) indicated that they had proof one of the major VPN providers was working for the NSA. I don't know if they ever said who it was though.

notamole

TorrentFreak just lay out the stated policies of the companies, they don't do independent analysis.

It's an Easter Jesus miracle: MS Paint back from the dead (ish) and in Windows 10 'for now'

notamole

Re: Open source

They've said they're putting it on the Windows Store (presumably under a UWP wrapper so it loads 8x slower).

notamole

Re: It's good enough

Candy Crush Saga is essential to Windows 10 functionality.

notamole

Function over form

Paint is far more useful than Paint 3D. No-one actually uses Paint to paint anything, it's a simple program that loads very quickly (Paint 3D does NOT) for basic tasks like cropping an image or changing file format. If I want an actual art program I'll use something like Gimp or Krita, not Paint 3D.

Deprecating Paint in favour of Paint 3D only creates problems where none existed.

Hands off Brock! EFF pleads with Google not to kill its Privacy Badger with its Manifest destiny

notamole

Is Manifest v3 a change to Chrome or Chromium? The press has a tendency to equate the two, so everywhere I look just says Chrome.

Easter is approaching – and British pr0n watchers still don't know how long before age-gates come into force

notamole
FAIL

Tor-ing their hair out

Tor becomes more secure and private the more people use it, so the government is basically screwing GCHQ and the NSA in favour of imposing their morality on everyone else.

Kent bloke incurs the anchor of local council after fly-tipping boat

notamole

Re: Margate..

It's the only thing keeping the Dreamland rides upright.

Rust never sleeps: C++-alike language tops Stack Overflow survey for fourth year in a row

notamole

As a general purpose language of course it is, Julia isn't one. We were talking about machine learning.

notamole

Julia is starting to nip at its heels though, despite being very new. People I knew as staunch Python advocates barely use it anymore.

Prepare yourselves for Windows 10 May-hem. Or is it June, no, July?

notamole

This is Microsoft

They'll probably still manage to do something stupid like mandate the update for everyone on day 1.

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

notamole

Re: Don't travel to the US.

You do but the answer is quite easy. In case they get stolen.

Microsoft reckons the accursed Windows 10 October 2018 Update is finally fit for business

notamole

Are bookmakers putting out odds on the spring update yet?

UK pr0n viewers plan to circumvent smut-block measures – survey

notamole

Re: @notamole

You're arguing a completely different point to everyone else. The age check would only be applied to users who the website detects are coming from a UK IP address. If you use a browser proxy addon, the IP address the website sees will be the one the proxy gives it, not your real one (exactly like a VPN but you don't need to pay for it). The ISP doesn't factor into that equation at all.

notamole

Re: "Other concerns cited by users ... that it will drive prices up"

You don't even need a VPN, only a browser proxy. It's only the website you need to fool, not your ISP.

The completely rational take you need on Europe approving Article 13: An ill-defined copyright regime to tame US tech

notamole

Confusing language doesn't stop politicians enforcing a law, it just makes them enforce it wrong.

Brit broadband giants slammed as folk whinge about crap connections, underwhelming speeds

notamole

Re: Gmail?

I'm not sure about Protonmail but Tutanota encypts your entire mailbox and only decrypts it in your browser with a password that is never sent to them in its entirety, so they have no way to access it. Proper end-to-end mail encryption doesn't just cover it in transit (see my previous point on using Gmail with PGP), so it benefits even the most incompetent user.

notamole

Re: Gmail?

My point is that Gmail and Hotmail are not the defacto alternatives. Having an encrypted mailbox means your emails can only be read by you.

notamole

Re: Gmail?

Use an end-to-end encypted email provider then (no Google doesn't do this, allowing PGP to be used doesn't count). There are quite a few available now like Tutanota and Protonmail.

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

notamole

Re: The four great lies.

Sadly, the adblockers and firewalls don't let you whitelist individual cookies/scripts. So if you need to log into an account on Amazon for example, you need to let in all their other junk as well.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

notamole

Re: Nice

What do you mean "implements"? This was still during the campaign. He won the nomination saying one thing, then walked it back straight away. To put it another way, he lied to get picked.

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