Posts by jackofalltrades

Gasp! Google Chrome kills uBlock, Adblock ad filters – grab the pitchfo- no wait, it's OK: They were evil fraud clones

Re: as soon as the browser's developer console gets opened

Same reason that onmouseblahblah, onrightblahblah handlers are allowed to disable features of the browser, and thus people have to install stuff like RightToClick? Seriously though, I saw early on in Android browsers (especially Chrome!) that you had some site load up a prompt that you thing couldn't get out of. The scummy people would often make the prompt ask you to call some tech support scam number to 'get back your phone'.

In the old days, you had replacement of status bar messages, blink tag, popups and blockers, window resizing/moving, removing address bar, loading ActiveX plugins by default, drive-by-installing, and so on. All invented by the same kind of thinking that you're talking about. "Should I?" doesn't even occur to people with that thinking.

Google security crew sheds light on long-running super-stealthy iOS spyware operation

Re: When under state surveillance...

LOL I wonder who downvoted even though there's a trollface.

US government sues ex-IT guy for breaking his NDA (Yes, we mean Edward Snowden)

CIA sues NSA when? :D

Re: Not Surprised

What if it's deliberate, and the person involved WANTs it widely read?

Pax Imperium

Re: Public interest defence

It's not a coincidence that the number of prosecutions for 'leaks' has grown exponentially since 9/11, and especially after Obama got into office and has continued since Trump. It's become a running 'joke', if you can call something so awful a form of even dark humor. It's a gross color-of-law violation? But done by protected class? Oh, it's illegal to turn them in.

There's a reason that immunity (and especially punishment for having gall to question it) should itself be questionable, even by those that benefit from it. Absolute immunity eventually leads to really bad places for those involved. It invites an infection: First, some bad actor joins and abuses it. Second, everyone else sees that nothing happens after many times abused. Third, soon, it's so common that it leads to strife. Forth, some people get told to eat cake and history happens. ;)

Malwarebytes back to square one as appeals court rules blocking rival antivirus maker isn't on

Re: Free and Ad Free

Heck, as RMS said, nowadays even paid software is malware. It's a snake eating it's tail.

Re: How To Be Topp

IE was what people used because they hated themselves, or had evil IT staff/executives, hehe.

Re: How To Be Topp

Not just Android but the fact Firefox imitates Chrome so much that you might as well use one or the other, and since Chrome is supported on more tablets, better... Network effect snowballed it. Android was the foot in the door. And yeah, we're stuck with some pretty lousy choices now. Also, why does a browser need to basically be as complex as an OS? Seriously, I've seen sites that almost entirely ran on JS queries, glued together with CSS and HTML that were just placeholders to load and format the output of the scripts. Might as well go with a thin client and run everything serverside, at that point. XD

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

Re: Trustworthy?

THIS is what RMS meant about modern software being malware! They've normalized evil.

LOL, other replies to this comment. Yeah, THIS should be Stallman's next big crusade. Oh who am I kidding, he'd get stuck on the bootloader being OS-err 'free' software with that Pi, I bet.

First they came for 'face' and I did not speak out because I... have no face? Then they came for 'book'

Re: Facebook cretins.

Sadly, there's always more narcissists that'll happily take up the a-hole mantel and manipulate people like we're used to. I mean, 10000+ years of human history can't be wrong, empirically, can they?!

Apple tells European Commission it's nutty for slapping €13bn tax bill on Irish subsidiary

Re: 'defies reality and common sense'

Well, ruining the Irish is practically a tradition, so maybe they're just trying to join in on the centuries-old pasttime. (Note: Sarcasm)

Re: Ireland's taxes are within it's [sic] remit

I guess they can increase the VAT you pay in EU if not from Ireland, when buying an iPhone. :P

Google's reCAPTCHA favors – you guessed it – Google: Duh, only a bot would refuse to sign into the Chocolate Factory

Re: attempting the impossible?

ReCaptcha v4 will include a frustration index. If user gets emotional, then must be human! Then it can like in Bladerunner, haha.

Re: Wait a minute

Wait until someone finds a keylogger in that junk. Poof, WW3 on it. XD

If you're not using A) Chrome, or B) native Android browser, you basically can't even log into many sites. They specifically blocked the others on the Android platform. This has nothing to do with JS support, etc. They don't get to do their special snowflake methods or just don't want to bother using a less proprietary code. It's getting to where if you're not using Chrome and allowing their heavy JS mess(i.e. Pixiv!), many sites will not work even in a non-interactive fallback. It's Microsoft's old EEE method.

"Unfortunately, because Google is so tight-lipped about reCAPTCHA's privacy implications, we're left to guess which data sources it uses to determine your humanity (or 'risk score' in reCAPTCHA v3)" Yeah, reverse-engineering that should be a priority. I mean it's not OK that people are just taking their "trust me" attitude. The fact that web of trust concept is entirely being ignored tells you they want a centralized solution with one API to rule them all - they're basically 1990's Microsoft all over again!

"Google maintains that reCAPTCHA is only used to fight spam and abuse." Until it's not. Or until they define abuse in a way that includes "tracking evasion". Or start using it as their own personal Carnivore to out TOR/I2P users, leakers, etc.

It's time for an addon (or filters for uBlock Origin) that just puts ReCaptcha in the timeout corner until you actually need to login. If they start blocking people for that, going to be some huge lawsuits for the levels of coercion involved, even if 'insulating' themselves by getting a third party to help them do it. Realize: There's government websites that require it.

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

Re: Stallman should retink his "one way pager" plan

There's no technical reason not to have broadcast-only SMS, that only an authorized phone can decode, other than they basically intended it to be 2-way.