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They're already using facial recognition software, though not to the extent of actually identifying individuals. Yet. (As far as we know.)

http://boingboing.net/2017/05/...

I learned a lot about DRM from this website when I was much younger. It has only gotten worse since then, with DRM infesting not just DVDs etc but now John Deere tractors, which are hostile architecture black boxes preventing farmers from optimizing their super expensive machines. So there is no free software or open secondary market for GPS data gathered (i.e. something that would sense micro conditions and efficiently apply another tech). This is hugely dangerous to the human race at large since we are dependent on the tractors for survival. I would argue it ought to be one of the biggest deals to face. If something goes wrong with John Deere we skid right back to sticks rather easily.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/...
https://www.extremetech.com/co...
http://boingboing.net/2017/03/...
"Now, farmers find themselves in desperate straits. Not only does Deere gouge them on repairs ("$230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize [a user-swapped] part"), but the repair shops can be far away or busy, and thus a half-million dollar tractor can sit immobilized while a farmer frets about getting his crops in."

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers...
http://www.npr.org/sections/al...
http://freeknowledge.eu/campai...
Totally unacceptable situation here.

I hear this machine doesn't file for child support, though those girls in bikinis might... http://boingboing.net/2017/04/...

Move away from Intel products? Move to AMD? News stories:

Researchers bypass Intel's Software Guard Extensions to access RSA keys (Mar 16, 2017)

Intel's Software Guard exploited to hide Malware (Mar 16, 2017)

Boffins exploit Intel CPU weakness to run rings around code defenses (Oct. 20, 2016) Quote: "Branch buffer shortcoming allows hackers to reliably install malware on systems."

Intel x86s hide another CPU that can take over your machine (you can't audit it) (Jun 15, 2016)

Slashdot comments about the above article:
Intel x86s Hide Another CPU That Can Take Over Your Machine -- You Can't Audit it (Jun 15, 2016)

Secret of Intel Management Engine (Mar 12, 2014)

New Intel Chips Contain Back-Door Processor, Hackable Even When Computer is Turned Off (Sept. 19, 2013)

Intel's answer to ARM: Customisable x86 chips with HIDDEN POWERS (May 20, 2013) Quote: "Intel ... is in some cases actually etching different features or instructions onto its silicon for specific customers."

Yep, that makes sense, if you didn't buy a house in the 90s "fuck you" response. Very typical and unsurprising whatsoever.

Also, not all of the Chinese investors come here, where did I claim that? Quite a few buy here and don't come, the unoccupied house is simply, effectively used as a "physical bank" to keep cash out of China.

http://boingboing.net/2017/03/...

You people are never ending. "Fuck the losers who don't have a house", who cares if they are only 18 or 23 or 25 or even 35. Nope fuck em "should've got one sooner, this boom is great!!!! "

Just stop.

I hate when people use the word "lose" to mean "not anymore have the opportunity to gain as additional income (under certain additional conditions)". See also: "the machine that will utterly bankrupt the music industry" by Peter Sunde: https://boingboing.net/2015/12...

The security community strongly objected to the W3C terms when they were proposed, but their concerns have explicitkly beeen discarded. Vendors can now criminalize bug reporting and whistle-blowing. See also http://boingboing.net/2017/03/...

What you write resonates with the summary I just read at How trolls like Milo Yiannopoulos monetize your hate, and what to do about it. I have not read the book or heard the podcast yet, but they are both on my pending list.

People have been cross breeding for thousands of years and we know what to expect.

Lies. Cross-breeding can result in poisonous plants, and the random nature of it makes it harder to control than GMO. Also, there is more stringent testing on GMO plants before they can go to market, even though 'natural' cross-breeding can result in dangerous plants.

You should think about the big(ger) picture. Copyright is supposed to be temporary. What is going to happen when that DRM'ed software ends up in the public domain? Are we supposed to rely on people (illegally now!) breaking DRM schemes to preserve our culture?
http://www.technologizer.com/2...
(And what is the online store's plan to preserve the different software versions?)

Also, each new DRM scheme and monopolistic store brings us closer to the end of general-purpose computing :
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...

Meanwhile, good luck finding stories about the DisruptJ20 people who were caught plotting to gas people with butyric acid

Here's why you don't see those stories:

https://boingboing.net/2017/01...

Because all of those "DisruptJ20" people turned out to be James O'Keefe.

Anyhow, I hope you're not planning to be one of the #DisruptJ20 people who are about to get busted for trying to use acid to attack the inauguration.

No, I have nothing to do with James O'Keefe.

https://boingboing.net/2017/01...

True, but Trump does that as well. He gives jobs to friends, people who helped him out and the owner of his favourite media organization.

The guy is incredibly corrupt. His only criteria for assigning jobs seems to be who as bought their way in with favours.

And Hillary is, what, *credibly* corrupt?

OK. I'm hanging up now.

True, but Trump does that as well. He gives jobs to friends, people who helped him out and the owner of his favourite media organization.

The guy is incredibly corrupt. His only criteria for assigning jobs seems to be who as bought their way in with favours.

Scotland has a separate legal system to England and Wales. Not knowing that is pretty much proof that you aren't exactly an expert in the subject.

I did know that. I didn't make a big deal of it because it was irrelevant to the point at hand.

Why do people keep repeating this?

Because it's been repeated many times, and there have been some cases covered internationally where the application of law made it look like the truth wasn't a defense. http://boingboing.net/2011/03/... Sites covering the recent law change you linked to indicate the previous law wasn't as absolute as to regards to the truth.

When the law was "bad" for hundreds of years, a law change a few years ago won't modify everyone's perceptions overnight. Why are you so aggressive and angry about it?

Don't forget their demands for safe spaces on campus, free from people harassing them by disagreeing with their political views.

2010 called and it wanted to let you know that Bananas are radioactive—But they aren't a good way to explain radiation exposure.

And Trump's trying the old 'stir shit up redirect' because of the NYT coming out with comprehensive article describing Trump's world wide conflicts of interest.

http://boingboing.net/2016/11/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...

I have to admit that people on my side did tend to do that, and that was wrong.

Why?

Trump is, objectively (OK, I'd substitute "fascist" for "nazi/hitler") all of those things. Have we reached such a point of resignation to the apparently inevitable that we're now normalizing Trump, treating him as just another Republican president rather than the existential threat to Democracy he poses?

Normalizing fascism doesn't make it go away. It might make you, in the short term, seem like a "reasonable person" but does nothing for you three hours later. And in the meantime such normalization strengthens it.

I really do want the situation to improve, and I really am willing to give Trump the chance to prove himself

Trump has made it abundantly clear what he is and what he plans to do. To give him the "chance to prove himself" is a surrender to some pretty horrific policies and principles. You would have laughed at anyone who said that of Mussolini. Maybe you think he's only kidding, but there's no reason for you to do so other than, perhaps, a quaint sense of projection and wish everyone was as nice as you are, and that attitude in the past is why terrible people have gone on to get away with terrible things.

Really interesting quote from ZDNet article:

Speaking at the RSA Conference this year, [Moxie] Marlinspike said that while encryption may be a thorn in the side of law enforcement and has caused technology vendors and police to grapple with each other over the last few years, we need it.

"I actually think that law enforcement should be difficult," Marlinspike said. "And I think it should actually be possible to break the law."

+1

Maybe you don't remember stories like this. The USA has certainly "suppressed freedom of speech and exchange of ideas on the internet". Just not your speech and ideas.

Except you'd be wrong...

Headphone jack and its relation to the DMCA and other laws

"SJWs" do fight against stuff like this, and they do it all the time. This story was on BoingBoing two days ago, for instance. That site is about SJW-y as they get.

Hard to understand how we have not applied historical norms of Monopoly to Amazon

Because there are thousands of mail-order/online-shopping businesses in the country? Amazon isn't anything like a monopoly.

Except that the picture isn't quite that rosy; e.g. Monopoly power and the decline of small business.

From TFA: "In the 15 years between 1997 and 2012: 72,000 small US manufacturers shut down; as did 108,000 local retailers and 13,000 community banks (fully half of America's complement of small banks!). The number of US startups has dropped by 50% since 1970. These statistics are not the result of the changing times: they're due to massive, monopolistic corporations stacking the deck against small competitors".

Think about the number of things you'd use the word "huge" with in terms of searching. For most things, we'd probably denote some unit of measure or use the word "large". Google search returned mostly SFW stuff, but did include this rather hilarious porn image: http://media.boingboing.net/wp... (NSFW)

Cory Doctorow:
Lockdown
The coming war on general-purpose computing

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

An Oldie but still-relevant Goodie.

Irony: AC CAPTCHA "bitches"

ISPs have monopolies in areas simply because local governments have given them the monopolies. Your problem is still government.

And there you have one of the classic ironies of "free markets". The proponents of "free markets" publicly preach "small government", but in reality they need the collusion of "big government" to establish and maintain dominant positions in their industries. Some interesting background reading; Monopoly power and the decline of small business: big business vs democracy, growth & equality.

He's not ignoring anything. Read his original essay on Boing rather than the Fastcompany summary. From his piece:

In 2007, Steve Jobs published his Thoughts on Music, in which he said, basically, that the record industry had forced Apple to put DRM in its ecosystem and he didn't like it..

Two links that are ten times more informative:
http://boingboing.net/2016/08/...
https://www.defcon.org/html/de...

Because food labels aren't meant to be for things that are perfectly safe, they are fear mongering and you know it.

Why haven't you been pushing for labeling of hybrids too? There is as much danger in the hybridization process as with GMO after all, and some hybrids have actually been deadly!

http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...

You aren't interested in sensible labeling of dangerous products, you are interested in labeling products to induce fear in people. There is no reason to label GMO products, they are perfectly safe. This isn't "may contain nuts", this is "may contain water".

I don't know. If you "break" into a walled garden, as in try to create compatible software?

http://boingboing.net/2014/02/...

Autocomplete blacklist?

So, he's complaining that if you want to search for "Crooked Hillary," you have to type the whole phrase, it won't complete it for you?

Oh, your aching fingers, evil google making you have to type another seven whole characters. I am so sorry you have to do all that extra work.

By the way, it's not really news. Here's Boing-boing in 2010: http://boingboing.net/2010/09/... (pointing to a list at 2600.com: http://www.2600.com/googleblac... )

If they're so concerned with biased 'reporting', I'm sure they went batshit crazy when the CEO of the largest supplier of voting machines promised to Deliver Ohio to a presidential candidate

Oh wait, that was a Republican for Bush so that wasn't a problem...

We've actually produced a potato that poisoned people. But it was due to conventional breeding. Here's the story.

Most of those organizations are pro business growth at any cost, that's why they like GMO and fund research to sell it.

That, dear sir, is one of the most amazing accusations I've heard in a long time. There are some who would say the opposite.

The farmers of the world that GMO claims to help are so sick of top down reorganization they will not buy it , its that simple.

You seem to think that GMO=Monsanto, and throw all GMO under the bus with Roundup ready seeds. That's really unfortunate, and wrong minded.

GMO farming is buying into a system you don't control that will ultimately control you. Notice the careful wording about the situations where pests become resistant, that's because its not magic. If you offer a choice to indiginous farmers (without destroying their land first) they reject it.

And more of the same. GMO foods, even if you don't buy into my idea that given the inherent nature of sexual reproduction, everything is genetic modification, and we've been doing it manually for a long time. But since a lot of people don't understand genetics, we can narrow it to just modern laboratory based manipulation.

So since anti-GMO kooks are all pissed off at Monsanto - which in itself is not a bad idea, given that they are inadvertently breeding some kickass Roundup resistant weeds - they allow their outrage to extend to fruits and vegetables that have been engineered for better nutrition, longer shelf life, and other very positive aspects that make the produced food actually better in all measurable ways than the base food source.

And even when we don't do it in the lab, we've been doing it since we harvested wheat and corn, selecting for the seeds that stayed on the shafts first by accident, and later by cross breeding for desired characteristics.

And just to be certain, we sometimes created things that were bad for us using this method - enter the Lenape potato: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...

So in your hatred for Monsanto, and your apparent wish to throw all GM under the bus because of that, do you now want to freeze all genetics in their present form, so that everything stays exactly the same? REduction to absurdit isn't difficult when the basic premise is absurd to begin with.

As a neuroscientist, I always feel a bit bad when I see headlines like "neuroscience explains X". It usually doesn't and here also it doesn't really (although that's not say the work is without merit, the blurb in the summary seems reasonable). However, neuroscience obviously doesn't tell us why people are getting so fat in the first place. This matters because it affects how to handle weight loss. I accept that different people may have different "natural weights", but this doesn't explain the steadily increasing obesity levels. Something is clearly changing with our relationship to food. Maybe it's increasing sugar levels. Maybe it's that fewer people cook and that encourages over-eating. Maybe it's increasing portion sizes. Perhaps all of those. The point is that there is a driving force to increasing obesity in the population at large, and as an overweight individual you are fighting against it (whatever it is). So if you want people to start losing weight then I reckon you need to understand very well why they're gaining it at such unprecedented levels. The food industry is, in general, not helping to clarify the issue.

Somewhat ironic since Nibbler the Ferret helped get it running to begin with: http://www.best-top10-list.com... Ferrets have a pretty good history for helping out this way in scientific institutions, going back at least to 1971 in Fermilab: http://boingboing.net/2013/06/...

You can't legally lock up resources owned by the company. You have to divulge passwords when asked by someone in authority. Otherwise, you could end up in jail.

I agree... so when they ask, you simply post those user/password combos for them on Pastebin, as well as a complete list of servers/VPNs/etc. Problem solved...

(Why yes that would torpedo your career, but damn it would be a bright blaze of glory on your way out...)

Depends on the scope... and all it takes is for one key group of people (*nix sysadmins, say) to refuse and stand firm on that refusal.

If your refusal to do knowledge transfer prevents someone from operating a system you maintain, then you are very bad at your job. If a bus hit me tomorrow, any of my coworkers could pick up the systems I maintain using the documentation. Worse case, if a bus took out the entire operations team, someone from outside of the company would be able to use the docs to come up to speed.

If you've left such sparse documentation that no one can figure out how to maintain your systems, the company is better off without you.

And who controls the documentation? If the entire IT department simply locked away the documentation, they'd be SOL.

You can't legally lock up resources owned by the company. You have to divulge passwords when asked by someone in authority. Otherwise, you could end up in jail.

And in 7 years, Google will activate the Kill Switch. And find that robots have a different opinion on what that means than home automation products do.

1) the drone range is 100m, roughly 330 feet.

2) the spec sheet linked in the summary touts the ability to stream video live

3) the 100m range assumes no hanky/panky with the wireless controller and bluetooth ( http://boingboing.net/2005/07/... ) which might make the battery time (listed at 8m) more of the limiting factor. No idea what its airspeed is to help calculate a "true range", and no idea how antenna hacks for range might affect battery/flight time.

Defcon Wifi Shootout http://boingboing.net/2005/07/... 125 mile Wifi range. I'm guessing this will be hard to jam since it's so highly directional. Of course, with a flying object, you'll need to use a slightly wider angle, but still hard to jam.

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...

LulzSec frontman Sabu was FBI informant:

This kills me. Slashdot taken over by ???.
BS Propaganda will probably be the the main theme now.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...!

http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...!

http://boingboing.net/2012/03/...

What I want evidence of is how all GMO can be blanket assumed to be safe

That isn't remotely possible. For the same reason that genetic manipulation the old fashioned way cannot be blanket assumed to be safe

Witness the Lenape Potato http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...

Anything we eat should be tested, especially new food sources never touched by the hand of man. Never contaminated by any other than the natural gene pool the plant was born with.

Which of course leads us back to the topic at hand, that when the piece of evidence that has been cited so often by the Anti-GMO people is shown to be fabricated, to be fraudulent, Are you going to accept that as legitimate? Do you believe that in pursuit of what you believe, that the outcome justifies fraud?

I don't know if you looked at the investigation work, but it is damning. Pretty amateurish as well. Anti-GMO advocates might try the conspiracy defense. 8^)

You might be amused to know I eat almost all organic. I think it tastes better. I'd not be upset if I had an ear of Roundup Ready corn though. My family and I were foodies long before it was fashionable. Do my own charcuterie, sausage and bacon from properly raised - you know, no antibiotics, field roaming - animals and can my fresh organic veggies. You haven't lived until you've tasted my Hungarian sausage, or if vegan, my assortment of picked and canned in a morning veggies and pickled stuff as well. I can afford it, much of the rest of the world cannot. For good or evil we're on an experiment to determine the loading capacity of the planet. So its GMO or 6 feet below for most of the world.

I'm neither pro nor anti-GMO. I am interested in truth, not wishful thinking. But I cannot abide fraud.

Firstly - no one knows what the performance cost of compliance will be yet, no fix has yet been approved. If they retro-fit an AdBlue SCR it may be negligible.

Secondly, it isn't clear that any other car or mfr would be better, you could have bought an Opel instead - they are currently silently updating cars during services to reduce emissions (and allegedly performance according to some reports I've seen) - http://boingboing.net/2016/01/...

Thirdly, once the dust settles on this the VW engines might even be among the best, they are certainly not amongst the worst in recent independent testing (e.g. http://www.which.co.uk/cars/dr... ). Even the petrols are busting limits (majority exceed CO limits, 10% exceed NOx), and the hybrids.

Or you could have bought a Tesla, which is probably the only unaffected option...

GMOs are actually evaluated for safety with animal and human studies. Yet any Joe Shmuck can go and create a genuinely toxic potato cultivar using purely classic selective breeding and then sell it as "100% organic.

And that actually HAS HAPPENED in the past: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/... !

The same thing is true of hybrids as well, though. You never know when you're going to get something unexpected. But for some reason we treat "traditional" breeding like hybridization and the intentional creation of mutants as doing God's work and direct genetic modification as the thing that will kill us all. The wisdom of creating a novel organism depends entirely on the properties of that organism, not on how you created it.

Somewhat related: also the diary of Anne Frank is now in the public domain under the same rules, since she died about 2 months before Hitler. This is disputed by the Anne Frank Foundation, who claims that her father was co-author and that the work should thus remain under copyright for at least another 15 years. As a protest, the Dutch original text is now put online by several French politicians.

http://boingboing.net/2015/07/...

btw, I hate rich assholes who think too much of themselves. hopefully our country does not go full retard (any more than they already have) and elect this chump.