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https://arstechnica.co.uk/

is not right in Edge. Matter of fact, it's stale. Very, very stale. Even clearing cache doesn't change it.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/info...

Pinging 9.9.9.9
Reply from 9.9.9.9: time=62ms

Pinging 8.8.8.8
Reply from 8.8.8.8: time=19ms

My god, all the stars!

You have unrealistic expectations of what a business will do to protect free speech. On the individual level it's likely that someone high up in the organization will decide they don't want to host that stuff, like someone high up at Cloudflare decided they didn't want to provide services to Nazi sites. On a corporate level they can't exist on their own, they need ad revenue, they need sales revenue, they need hosting and peering.

And the real kicker (for you) is that Reddit's purges work. They move most of the asshats over to the Voat cesspit and the majority of Reddit users find that there is less trolling and abuse on the 99.99% of boards that are not affected.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/scie...

What you need is some billionaire to run a free speech site at a loss. But even then you won't be happy, because it will be like Gab or 8chan - small, few people pay any attention to it and it quickly becomes an echo chamber for extremists rather than a paradise of reasoned debate.

Attacks on popular add-ons: https://arstechnica.co.uk/info...

Paper discussing the problem: https://www.exploit-db.com/doc...

The keyboard + mouse blows the gamepad away for any sort of precision.

Including for racing games and fighting games? How do you play, for example, 2-player Street Fighter series on a keyboard?

I'll seriously doubt we'll ever see StarCraft (1 or 2) on a console anytime soon

Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Retaliation (how's that for colon cancer) was ported to the original PlayStation, and the original StarCraft was ported to the Nintendo 64.

Everyone gets excited over "exclusives"

Sometimes "exclusives" can include an entire genre. What PC games in the platform-fighting genre are recommended for fans of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale or Super Smash Bros. series who seek to abandon consoles?

You don't need some bullshit license to release your game on PC.

In what way?

I admit that I may have misunderstood what you meant by "bullshit license" when choosing these examples. If so, could you define it for me?

https://arstechnica.co.uk/secu...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

So says, The Who!

https://arstechnica.co.uk/scie...

Who! Are! You!
Who! The! Fuck! Are! You!

All valid points that should be absolutely be part of the legislation but, even if all that information was readily available, it doesn't help with some of the latest trends that are obstructing efficient and cost effective repairs. Firstly, the use of snap-fix connectors to assemble plastic components that are almost certainly break when you try and tease them back apart, requiring the replacement of another component - most often some form of chassis to which other components are fixed, increasing labour time and thus repair cost. Second, and even worse, is the use of glue to basically fix stuff together, as exemplified by the Surface 5 Pro which is "made of glue" according to Ars. Hyperbole aside (the glue is clearly just holding in components, not filling every void... yet) it's another worrying trend that pushes up the overall cost of repairs to the point at which it's probably going to exceed the cost of simply getting a new device.

One thing the EU is good at is enabling consumer choice, and during any transition period as this legislation gets phased in we'll have a chance to let the markets decide while both options are available to purchase. Given that choice, would customers want the current style of almost unrepairable device designs, or would they want to pay a bit extra and get something that might be slightly larger and heavier, but enables repairs, upgrades, and a longer useful life? It's a no brainer for most of us here, I suspect; we'd go for the latter option and probably start upgrading storage and memory almost from day #1, but some people really do like to know that their phone is a fraction of a mm thinner and a few grams lighter than the still perfectly functional one they bought last year, regardless of whether they actually notice that in practice.

Depending on the size of the latter group, passing the legislation is only the start, and probably actually the easiest part of the lifecycle problem to fix. The hard part is going to be convincing all those people who have been brainwashed by marketing departments into thinking that they *need* the latest version, no matter whether their current version is still up to the task or not, to change their point of view. Having a right to repair will absolutely help some consumers, but if you're not going to tackle the vast number of perfectly functional devices that are getting replaced in needless upgrade cycles then you're not going to really address the underlying problem that people have become not only accepting of the discard and replace approach, but have actually embraced it.

We already can have Internet capable vibrators, some are even equipped with cameras.

Isn't that great? Very useful if it has a location sensor.... where can a vibrator go?

Electric nose hair trimmers. Electric toilets (Toto and such). Electric screwdrivers. Electric knives.

All of these need to be on the Internet, how have we ever lived before being able to twitt the length of your nose hair...

Make a list for SJW and they will ban it. Follow the investor funding and the suggestions of any monarchy, security organisation, theocracy, cult or brand.
Cartoons that confront a faith or cult. Blasphemy.
Comment China, Tiananmen Square and questioning any of the Communist leadership over the decades.
GCHQ in the UK might not like to see public comment on their documents once published.
"Master spy behind Snoopers’ Charter wants to gag leakers, journalists" (3/3/2017)
https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech...
Germany will want to ban any public comment on its illegal immigration policy.
In the USA Ag-gag the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or the Strategic lawsuit against public participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
SJW will be happy to enforce any and all such policies. Report and ban any mention of history or policy.

Right, which is why I won't buy anything from Oculus given Palmer Luckey (their illustrious founder) bankrolling a pro-Trump shitposting group during the election cycle. https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech...

Palmer is a libertarian who didn't even vote for Trump.

"The stream of racist, sexist, and economically illiterate memes appearing in support of Donald Trump during this years' interminable American presidential election is being bankrolled in part by the 24-year-old inventor of Oculus Rift."

Exactly I couldn't have said it better myself. Talking shit about Obummer makes you racist. Talking Shit about Shillary makes you sexist. Talking shit about Netinyahooooo makes you anti-Semitic and voting for Donald Drumpf means you heart Hitler.

The only one I'm confused about is Billy boy C... when people bring up his murders and rapes and shit. What are they? Billy is white, male and not Jewish. Totally stumped.

Oculus and Luckey can go fuck themselves.

Absolutely. Fuck Palmer for selling out and Fuck Oculus for being owned by Facebook.

Right, which is why I won't buy anything from Oculus given Palmer Luckey (their illustrious founder) bankrolling a pro-Trump shitposting group during the election cycle. https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech...

"The stream of racist, sexist, and economically illiterate memes appearing in support of Donald Trump during this years' interminable American presidential election is being bankrolled in part by the 24-year-old inventor of Oculus Rift."

Oculus and Luckey can go fuck themselves.

Forget about 'sounds':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/secu...

If this article is true I can't side with them at all. And I'm having a really hard time understanding the apologetics who think what they've done is legal or should be legal. You can provide awareness that a breach has occurred without actually storing the stolen data. If it's a database of user names and encrypted passwords for instance, trying to generate the plain-text passwords is plainly malicious, and why are you holding the encrypted passwords at all? Trash them.

To me a fair analogy would be a 'child porn prevention' site that actually held on to all the pictures it found (and sold them to interested parties, presumably just victims looking for evidence -right-), as a way to somehow help stop child porn. Seriously?

This "breach notification site" SOLD password caches to third parties - and even cracked the password hashes before selling them. Why doesn't the summary mention this? This site sold people's credentials passwords to spammers, fraudsters and other malicious actors: https://arstechnica.co.uk/secu...

Freesync 2 is all about adding HDR support for the existing Freesync standard. There is more information in the arstechnica article:

HDR on PC is a more complex beast than just panel brightness, though. First, a game performs colour tone mapping after an engine renders a scene. Then, when the frame is passed to a monitor, it's tone-mapped yet again to fit the display's supported colour range. That may or may not be the same colour space required by HDR10 or Dolby Vision. This two-stage process takes time and introduces latency. With FreeSync 2, AMD is removing the second step, connecting the game engine directly to the HDR display. When you plug in a FreeSync 2 display, the display announces its HDR capabilities, and the AMD graphics driver will shuttle that information over to the game engine. This ensures that gamers get the best possible image quality, because the game tone-maps to the screen's native colour space, while also reducing input lag. Unfortunately, it also means that in order for FreeSync 2 and HDR to work, AMD needs the specific colour and brightness capabilities of every FreeSync 2 monitor, while games and video players must be enabled via AMD's API. AMD is going to have to win over a lot of hardware partners to make FreeSync 2 a reality.

So they are getting more colours by mandating HDR and increasing performance by removing a stage from the rendering process by allowing the game to use to exact colour space of the monitor.

hmmm I am not convinced until I see some real analysis of this, TFA sounds like marketing BS with no real numbers or facts to backup. The HDR has less to do with the gamut and they don't even mention what they are comparing to, shittiest TN panel is my guess (there are some decent ones now). Gamut is more factor of the screens native bitrate and is oft extended with FRC (frame rate control). The HDR if genuine giving a lower black point with real shadow detail and higher white point WITHOUT just applying a harsh S curve would be welcome but sadly most screens even high end ones don't do wide luma well and are 7bit-ish raneg at best. What good screen DO do is not crush the f*** out of the blacks, calibrate very well even when brightness is turned way down (often the case on such a screen) and don't have washed out grey blacks when the white point is set just right.

I do a lot of 10bit end to end editing because of photo and design work where colour accuracy matters but most content will be fine in 8bit sRGB space (or the usual 6bit + frc) and consumers wouldn't see any difference between regular and true higher gamut content on those same screen (apples to apples) is my guess. True aRGB gamut monitors like Eizo and higher end NEC are nice for intended use but they don't jack of all trades because that is the price you pay for that as there is no free lunch despite what this article suggests, but they have the price tag drawback for most folks without a need for wide gamut such as making colour accurate work for subtractive reproduction (print) on additive device (screen). I care more for accuracy/how well it performs AFTER calibration than response times. Althoguh for general use I'd recommend people buy another screen than high gamut ones, I'm typing this on a cheaper LG ah-ips true 8bit panel which has alright response in film/game with overdrive working well enough. Slight smearing but hard to notice and it has decent enough photo viewing etc and nice contrast etc but I'd have to sacrifice that to get better response time by nature of tech and I doubt they have fixed the physical limitations as they'd be boasting about such a breakthrough if they had. I hope I'm wrong but doubt it.

Freesync 2 is all about adding HDR support for the existing Freesync standard. There is more information in the arstechnica article:

HDR on PC is a more complex beast than just panel brightness, though. First, a game performs colour tone mapping after an engine renders a scene. Then, when the frame is passed to a monitor, it's tone-mapped yet again to fit the display's supported colour range. That may or may not be the same colour space required by HDR10 or Dolby Vision. This two-stage process takes time and introduces latency.

With FreeSync 2, AMD is removing the second step, connecting the game engine directly to the HDR display. When you plug in a FreeSync 2 display, the display announces its HDR capabilities, and the AMD graphics driver will shuttle that information over to the game engine. This ensures that gamers get the best possible image quality, because the game tone-maps to the screen's native colour space, while also reducing input lag. Unfortunately, it also means that in order for FreeSync 2 and HDR to work, AMD needs the specific colour and brightness capabilities of every FreeSync 2 monitor, while games and video players must be enabled via AMD's API. AMD is going to have to win over a lot of hardware partners to make FreeSync 2 a reality.

So they are getting more colours by mandating HDR and increasing performance by removing a stage from the rendering process by allowing the game to use to exact colour space of the monitor.

and yet they sell millions of Wiis and DS handhelds.

Handhelds maybe, but this thing is outselling the Wii. When your flagship product is gathering dust on the shelves and you can't restock your retro item fast enough you've got problems. I'd hoped that Nintendo would have toned down the gimmicks for the latest Wii but the way things going I have my doubts about their long-term future. At least they have the DS to keep them going.

Pokémon Go wasn't actually made by Nintendo, by the way.

You're getting upset about the wrong thing because you apparently believe that software proprietors can be trusted. Ultimately who would tell you that a particular variant of Windows allows you switch some privacy-busting feature off? The proprietor — the very party you can't trust to tell you the truth.

Structurally no proprietor is any different in this regard: they're all untrustworthy by default no matter what they tell you a feature is for, how to disable that feature, or whether you can trust them with your data. The free software movement has been saying this for decades. More recently, Windows Telemetry had a preference setting which meant nothing (any updates to which falls into the trap described above), and the underlying structural problem with proprietary software remained as-is including software you don't even know is running on a proprietary OS. Snowden also clued us all into how Apple, Microsoft, Google, and so many other businesses are "partners" with spy agencies. There's really no good reason for tech-literate people not to know better than to trust proprietary software and argue from the perspective that the proprietor should mistreat you a little less.

Also, Putin is getting his email laundry aired. I'm rather shocked /. hasn't had a post regarding the Cyber Hunta email leak (http://http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/payback-russia-gets-hacked-revealing-putin-aide-s-secrets-n673956)

Ars also has a writeup on this: http://arstechnica.co.uk/secur...

It's just the dust from my old copy of Trump: The Game that I got out over the weekend. Sorry!

I don't know why I bother to reply to an AC but here is your citation:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadge...
Scroll down to the graphic where the pin out is shown.

The USB-C alt modes define how the 4 high speed lanes on the port are used. In USB 3.1 mode they are used for 2 pair of RX/TX lanes. In a 2-lane DP mode there is one RX/TX pair of lanes for USB 3.1 and 2 lanes for DP. In 4-lane DP mode all 4 lanes are used for DP data. In Thunderbolt mode all the USB-C high speed lanes are dedicated to PCIe and DP packets, USB 3.1 packets will not share these lanes. I have not seen the spec on how MHL or HDMI use these lanes, I can only assume it is similar to DP mode. In whatever mode the USB-C connector is in there will always be a bidirectional pair of data wires for USB 2.0.

The mode of the port will be defined by the first cable or device connected to it. Once in a certain mode it will stay there until every device is disconnected. Daisy chaining USB 3 and TB 3 devices will not be allowed. DP and TB devices can be daisy chained only if the DP devices are on the end of the chain. I assume daisy chaining USB and DP devices is allowed but then the USB devices would have to be at the end.

I imagine it possible to make a cable that converts one USB-C mode to another but it would have to be insanely expensive, convert only one mode to another (and only in one direction), and still be confusing for many users. Even if someone makes one of these magic cables that USB-C port will go to whatever mode that the peripheral, cable, and host all support. This might be DP, MHL, HDMI, USB3, or TB3. It may even be just USB2.0 since that is where they all have a common denominator. The exception is that DP can share the cable with either USB3 or TB3 but again every piece in the chain has to support it, and there are other limits that go with that.

I was torn with ignoring an AC that may just be trolling to helping to inform someone that was mistaken but was willing to learn. I hope I didn't choose poorly.

CEO Larry Page defends Google on the stand: “Declaring code is not code”

Ironically, Oracle has done far more to harm Java over the last few years than Google, their behaviour towards the Java development community has been actively driving developers to other platforms.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/07/oracle-killing-java-ee/

A recent Ars Technica article covers some of the details of this:

Keep your hands off the wheel for too long (about 90 seconds) and the car will sound an alert tone and display a dialog on the centre console asking you to please grasp the wheel. If you ignore the warning, the car sounds another. If you ignore that one, the car will disengage the auto-cruise and auto-steer and slow to a stop (apparently on the assumption that you’re incapacitated, dead, or otherwise unable to grab the wheel).

So the system does actively nag the driver to put their hands on the wheel.

torrent sites aren't illegal...unless you live in some totalitarian shit hole.

Which, as USians, many /. readers do. And even if they don't, the LEOs from said totalitarian shit hole are forcing their corporate masters' will on other countries, so the rest of us get to "benefit" from said shit hole's demands. (See what was done to TPB and what they're attempting to do to much of the world with TPP, TTIP and TISA.)

"Keys .. denies the actions that he was accused of and has vowed to appeal the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that likely will last a year or more .. He continues to maintain that the FBI is punishing him for his journalistic work of investigating the Anonymous collective and for not cooperating with the FBI when they contacted him in April 2011." ref

But the cards can be skimmed, and they have been! Getting the PIN is extremely simple, so don't even count on that as security. So it's just a matter of intercepting the data going to the bank as a man-in-the-middle, replicating even temporarily a card, predicting the upcoming "random" number, and so forth.

I'm not saying chip and pin is worse than mag stripe, but they are not so completely secure as the marketing would have you believe. Don't trust the banks or others when they say the cards "cannot be read". They have the same sorts of vulnerabilities as ATM in many cases; relying on cheap manufacturers who don't follow best practices on security, over confidence of the security, assuming a PIN is private, or willingness to accept a certain level of loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://people.csail.mit.edu/r...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-...
http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-b...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/m...

You are not alone
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadge...

Cyanogen's branding of this feature is rather confusing......If you're keeping track, Cyanogen Inc., Cyanogen OS, CyanogenMod, and Cyanogen's Mod platform are now all separate entities.

I agree with and support the popular slashdot opinion on this issue: civilians should have access to strong encryption with no back doors.

I just....don't care enough to do anything about it. I plead guilty to charges of complacency. So long as my money is safe (not from the economy of course; no money is safe from that, and not from taxation either, but from overt thieves) I don't care if Big Brother knows which video games I spend my free time playing, which books genres interest me, where my office and home are, etc. It just doesn't impact me.

I don't want to be victimized by crime...I want to be able to earn and invest my money and pursue my simple pleasures in peace. And I have that. And the government monitoring doesn't interfere with that.

So sue me.

Ah, but what if the NSA's AI data sifter SKYNETsays that, based on the video games you play, the books you read, and the areas where you travel, that you are likely to be a terrorist and they send a drone or a death squad to take you out? Sure, right now they're only doing that in Pakistan, but what's to stop them from doing it everywhere, to anybody, even if they're white? The U.S. Constitution? The fifth amendment due process clause can't even stop local yokel police departments from taking your stuff without ever charging you with a crime, so how's that olde piece of parchment gonna stop the feds from snuffing you 'cause their algorithm flagged you?

Now its all out in the courts, the press, whistleblowers, campaigners, NGO's, protesters now know what they will face as far as signals collection goes.
Re "If they are allowed to break laws to find civillians who are breaking laws then why are civillians not allowed to break laws to find officials who are breaking laws?"
Previously tame UK parliament watchdog rips into new Snooper’s Charter (Feb 9, 2016)
Committee says IPB's metadata collection is "inconsistent and largely incomprehensible."
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-...
The other aspect is "Mastering the Internet" and vendors:
Exclusive: Snowden intelligence docs reveal UK spooks' malware checklist (2016/02/02)
https://boingboing.net/2016/02...

The situation in the UK is much worse than you describe. ANPR cameras also do facial recognition of drivers.

ANPR is used to harass people that the police don't like, like elderly couples who once went on an anti-war protest and a year later made the mistake of driving towards London. The database is vast, and stored as long as the police like. No oversight.

Don't use the UK as a model of good behaviour with ANPR, we abuse it far more than anyone else.

have a read of this: http://arstechnica.co.uk/infor...

I'm not really sure anymore what your point even is?

I'll paraphrase the posts:

1) You state that having a smart phone is a bad idea and that this article seems to make it even more so.
2) I laughed at your comment.
3) You justify yourself.
4) I bring up the similarities and dis-similaries of the exploitability to other devices through MitM, such as a PC and imply that if that would be your main motivator, that probably should avoid using any other device with similar circumstances.
5) You side-tracked on 'wi-fi' being the cause.
6) I point out MitM again.
7) You don't really see my point.

If you're implying that the CIA/NSA/FBI/whoever has sneaked into my house and is watching the whole three ethernet devices I have on my private network

CIA/NSA/FBI and other three letter agencies don't need to go on that level to my knowledge. With the advent of home routers being compromised through automated worms, Linux routers and even ISP routers getting compromised while operating in secure BAU setups. It would be silly to make assumptions like your Internet access is never going to have some sort of MitM. Based on this, how is this different to a smart phone being compromied by a MitM? I don't really see much of a difference.

In the next responses, I am just going to take the comments as if they were targetted to my use; because I have no idea what your use it or why you would end up compromised, but I have a good idea what would compromise me.

All I'm saying is why the hell should I make it easier for criminals or tragically anal-retentive government types to be going through my informational underwear drawer

I feel the risk to me in this area is very minimal because I simply do not store that data directly on the device. There is the exception that it has GPS tracking and I guess some special malware could get into my phone and trace where my phone is; but there isn't really much use to criminals having that information.

or directly monitoring me in realtime by having a smartphone when week after week I have it demonstrated to me that you're a chump if you own one

Considering that my alternative would be doing phone conferencing a lot over a laptop, I view the exploitability about the same with real time monitoring. If I had to use ae laptop, it too would know of the movies/documentaries I watch in bed, what slashdot comments I am reading (big deal) and the secure text messages (these aren't SMSes) I get regarding people accessing datacenters/servers

especially when nobody even uses their phone as a phone, for most it's like some crazy twisted lifestyle?

I use my landline for Internet and my mobile for voice calls, secure texts, tethering and discussing with people on Slashdot when I am travelling (last year I averaged 5 days a week in hotels and 0.7 days travelling per week).

..and before you say it: No, I'm not a luddite.

I never said that you're a luddite, your initial comment still does not really justify smart phones being that much worse than any other Internet connected device and I really don't care about any other reasons you have for not owning a smart phone.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/scien... - twice in the last thousand years or so, there has been an event around ten to twenty times larger, with a _much_ more energetic and destructive (to orbital things) spectrum.

Not using Windows 10 is how you keep Microsoft out of your business.

NO, you miss the point....

"On Monday, researchers from anti-malware firm Malwarebytes said a new malicious installer is exploiting the vulnerability to surreptitiously infect Macs with several types of adware including VSearch, a variant of the Genieo package, and the MacKeeper junkware. Malwarebytes researcher Adam Thomas stumbled on the exploit after finding the installer modified the sudoers configuration file."

The installer itself has been granted privileges by the operator to install the application to all users. It cannot install itself directly from the browser. It has to be downloaded (and potentially auto-opened) for installation. It either has to be installed maliciously into an application (which is unlikely to be a signed developer).

Subsequent to that installation of the malicious malware, that user that installed the application has been given effective root access WITHOUT requiring passwords on subsequent actions. But until that file is modified, that user does not have sufficient rights, nor do any 3rd party applications have sufficient rights to make changes to that file without user intervention.

The vulnerability is that the installer can make changes to the /etc/sudoers file during installation by use of the DYND_PRINT_TO_FILE.

It is highly unlikely an application that is from a certified/signed developer is going to contain malware in the installer -- possible but not likely. This means social engineering to get the user to download unsigned applications - then go into security settings and allow that installer an exception to start the installation.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/secur...
Read the code that is being executed by the installer

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-...

Cameron reaffirms there will be no âoesafe spacesâ from UK government snooping

Except I'm not American. I am British by descent, and have lived and worked on three continents. But your point is irrelevant anyway: The term is commonly used outside the USA as well. For example:

UK:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gamin...
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news...
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/...

CA:
http://circanews.com/news/cord...
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/n...
http://www.chathamdailynews.ca...
http://www.canadiancordcutting...
http://shayne.tablotvweb.nomad...

AU:
http://www.computerworld.com.a...
http://www.theaustralian.com.a...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/co...
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/...

Just because you're ignorant of its usage, that doesn't mean the term isn't broadly used around the world in countries with large English-speaking populations.

Musical floppy drives are made by manipulating the internal motor that moves the read/write heads over the floppy disk. Each floppy disk is divided into 80 tracks radially from the centre, which the notoriously noisy floppy drive motor can send the read/write head to. By pulsing the motor at any of those 80 positions, representing different frequencies, you can create a particular musical note. And, because floppy drives don't contain their own controller, they're far easier to manipulate with third-party boards and tools like the Arduino.

Therefore I think each drive has to be chosen individually because with only 80 total positions the chances of any given drive playing consecutive semitone-spaced correct pitches would be small. So it would seem they've gone through a bunch of drives selecting the ones that have a track position that's nearest to each desired pitch to make up 49 semitone-spaced notes.