Slashdot Mirror

Example list:
https://www.google.com/patents... (very current, and chinese)
https://www.google.com/patents...
https://www.google.com/patents... ("only" animals)
https://www.google.com/patents...

... and it's not like it's difficult to record your calls. Heck you can do it *automatically* and just keep the calls you care about!

I use the "Call Recorder" app (this one, not the others with the same or similar name). It isn't free, but it works (on my Note 3) and gets both sides. It also automatically compresses recordings and has a nice interface. They have a trial version. There are others as well. Lifehacker is butts.

I use https://play.google.com/store/...

Good audio quality, you can choose to record all conversations by default (and then decide which ones to keep), etc.

It doesn't have an automated notice, but you can always say it yourself :-)

If you do anything across state lines it falls to the Feds which are 1 party.

Courts have gone both ways about that. In Lane vs. CBS Broadcasting, the federal court held that in the absence of explicit stated intent to the contrary, complete federal preemption only applied in cases in which state law was less restrictive, and otherwise the state's law applied. In my state (an all-party state), I don't think your statement is something I'd want to bet a third-degree felony conviction on.

Decoding the bits
They come in a tranche
As though a blade on Williams's
Facial avalanche
Burma Shave


God rest your soul, Robin.

Yes, yes it is!

https://code.google.com/p/shel...

(and yes, this is used in production on mission critical systems)

https://plus.google.com/101541...

Try using apps that dont suck. For instance:
  * Facebook-- try "Fast for Facebook" which is simultaneously faster AND less permissions-grabby.
  * Yahoo Mail-- try the inbuilt support for IMAP / POP, or any of a million other clients (TouchDown, for instance)
  * Push To Talk-- 5 minutes of googling found This app which appears to only request the bare minimum that a PTT app would need (contacts, etc)

Not sure what you are using your phone for that you aren't running across apps ask for things that they probably shouldn't,

TeamViewer, Google Authenticator, Fing, Opera, Car DashDroid, Fast for Facebook, PushBullet, OpenVPN, Reddit is Fun... none are generally problematic permissions wise. At some point you're going to have to face the fact that theres a lot of grabby apps out there, and you apparently like some of them. Either use alternatives (they DO exist), or stop complaining.

Try using apps that dont suck. For instance:
  * Facebook-- try "Fast for Facebook" which is simultaneously faster AND less permissions-grabby.
  * Yahoo Mail-- try the inbuilt support for IMAP / POP, or any of a million other clients (TouchDown, for instance)
  * Push To Talk-- 5 minutes of googling found This app which appears to only request the bare minimum that a PTT app would need (contacts, etc)

Not sure what you are using your phone for that you aren't running across apps ask for things that they probably shouldn't,

TeamViewer, Google Authenticator, Fing, Opera, Car DashDroid, Fast for Facebook, PushBullet, OpenVPN, Reddit is Fun... none are generally problematic permissions wise. At some point you're going to have to face the fact that theres a lot of grabby apps out there, and you apparently like some of them. Either use alternatives (they DO exist), or stop complaining.

Pay no attention to the Google street view vehicle that captured your dong. Or at least, some dong. To be fair though, there are probably a lot of dongs on that street.

Die Intel, die!

One can dream

Why is it considered okay to do this until you get caught? Then you apologize? How about not stealing the information in the first place for starters. Fuckwads!

media spinning this. It wasn't an apology, it was an explanation of what's being used. I think it was just lazy programming honestly, read the blog post yourself. Seems reasonable.

Google "do not be evil" single handedly decided that OpenCL will never run on Android and instead is pushing for their crappy alternative, RenderScript:

https://code.google.com/p/andr...

No matter how valid the arguments of those who favor OpenCL are, Google just answers with FUD.

https://plus.google.com/101541...

Holy crap, are you kidding? Every single line of code, bit of data, and the entire methodology is all on their web site!

Bullshit. The app is closed source (https://twitter.com/NRELdev). Electric data comes from Ventex (private partner). Solar irradiance info comes from another private partner. There are no links on the PVWatts site (in fact, the site is overall crappy). There are no peer reviewed publications analyzing or checking any of this.

http://scholar.google.com/scho...

Seriously, are you trying to back up the statement that California gets FOUR TIMES more sunlight than Florida?!?

Are you illiterate? I said "The NREL data doesn't look right to me. Bakersfield has twice the number of sunny days as Tampa, and the difference should be greater, even accounting for the difference in latitude." I.e., I make no specific claims as to what the numbers should be, other than pointing out that the numbers you give based on NREL are implausible and not verifiable or even peer reviewed.

To Timothy,

The allegation of Xiaomi engaging in stealing secrets / spying on behalf of the Chinese government has been proven false

Would you kindly check for facts before you post an article ?

Hugo Barra has posted the clarification on this subject more than one week ago

See it here --- https://plus.google.com/+HugoB...

Q: Online articles recently referred to some privacy issues with the Redmi Note, claiming that photos and text messages are sent to China secretly. Are they true?

A: An article severely misinterpreted a discussion thread asking about the Redmi Note's communication with a server in China. The article also neglected to refer to a Chinese version of this Q&A already posted on the Xiaomi Hong Kong Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Xiaomihongkong/posts/799059896795602). MIUI does not secretly upload photos and text messages.

MIUI requests public data from Xiaomi servers from time to time. These include data such as preset greeting messages (thousands of jokes, holiday greetings and poems) in the Messaging app and MIUI OTA update notifications, i.e. all non-personal data that does not infringe on user privacy.

Q: Does Xiaomi upload any personal data without my knowledge?

A: No. Xiaomi offers a service called Mi Cloud that enables users to back up and manage personal information in the cloud, as well as sync to other devices. This includes contacts, notes, text messages and photos. Mi Cloud is turned off by default. Users must log in with their Mi accounts and manually turn on Mi Cloud. They also have the option to only turn on backup for certain types of data. The use and storage of data in Mi Cloud fully respects the local laws of each country and region. Strict encryption algorithms are implemented to protect user privacy.

Q: Can I turn Mi Cloud off?

A: Yes. Just go to Settings > Mi Cloud to turn it off. If you would like to use a cloud back up service from another provider, there are options from Google, Dropbox and many others.

Q: Why should I believe you?

A: Xiaomi is serious about user privacy and takes all possible steps to ensure our Internet services adhere to our privacy policy. We do not upload any personal information and data without the permission of users. In a globalized economy, Chinese manufacturers' handsets are selling well internationally, and many international brands are similarly successful in China â" any unlawful activity would be greatly detrimental to a company's global expansion efforts.

https://plus.google.com/101541...

Related suggestion: http://vitamincfoundation.org/...
More: https://www.google.com/search?...
And in connection with scurvy: https://www.google.com/search?...

Would be good to have better software tools to try to make sense of all this often-conflicting health information...

Related suggestion: http://vitamincfoundation.org/...
More: https://www.google.com/search?...
And in connection with scurvy: https://www.google.com/search?...

Would be good to have better software tools to try to make sense of all this often-conflicting health information...

the definition of a cat means small with pointy ears and a dog is larger with floppy ears.

Some breeds that are genetically Canis lupus familiaris are in fact "small with pointy ears". Kitty?

https://www.google.com/search?...

The goal of PrivateCore's product was to encrypt everything that's outside of the CPU core using software techniques. So once you've done an attested boot and gotten your crypto keys in order, from that point on anything outside the CPU socket is done in an encrypted manner (except I/O to the network I guess, but definitely hard disk and data going to the DRAM, etc.) Their important selling point here was that you could protect against cold boot attacks, DMA data dumps, data sniffers on the DRAM lines, etc. They also claim to have a secure hypervisor (preventing cross-VM thievery) because they've stripped it down to its bare bones, but I believe this ended up being a secondary concern.

Anyway, their goal was to have unencrypted data in the caches, but encrypt the data before it leaves the chips and goes out to DRAM. Their page is mostly high-level marketing fluff, so if they were claiming to do more than this, I missed it. The hardware for encrypted DRAM accesses exists in specialized platforms (e.g. the XBox 360) but doesn't currently exist in commodity x86 server parts. As such, a friend and I sat down for an evening a while ago and tried to work out how they would do this without a DRAM controller that did the encryption for you.

Again, their goal is to have decrypted data in the caches, encrypted data in the DRAM. The crypto routines would have to be contained in software. The major difficulty is that the cache does whatever the cache wants, so it's really rather difficult to say "when this data is leaving the cache, call the software crypto routines." There is no good way for the hardware to tell you it's kicking data out of the cache. (There are academic proposals for this kind of information, but nothing currently exists.)

We thought up of a number of solutions and were able to validate our guesses against their patent submission. I will gloss over some of the deeper details (such as methods for reverse engineering the cache's replacement policy).

The shortened version is:
1) Work on Intel cores that have >=30 MB of L3
2) Run a tiny hypervisor that fits into some small amount of memory (let's say 10MB)
3) Mark all data in the system that is not the hypervisor code pages are non-cacheable
4) The hypervisor also has the crypto routines, so all of these non-cacheable pages can now be software encrypted using the hypervisor's routines. The DRAM-resident data is now encrypted.
4a) Because these were marked as non-cacheable data, the hypervisor is still resident in the cache (it was never displaced).
5) Mark some remaining amount of space (let's say 20MB) of physical memory as cacheable. This physical memory currently contains no data at all.
6) When you want to run a program or an OS, have the hypervisor move that program's starting code into the 20-meg-range (decrypt it along the way) and set its virtual pages to point to that physical memory range
7) The program can now run because (at least some of its pages) are decrypted. They are also cacheable, so it will hit in the cache
8) When you try to access code or data that is still encrypted, it will cause a page fault
9) The hypervisor's page fault handler will get that encrypted data, decrypt it, and put it somewhere in the 20-meg-range
9a) If the 20 meg page is already full of decrypted data, you will have to re-encrypt some of it and spill it back to DRAM (like paging it out to disk).

Because you are only touching ~30 megs of physical memory that is marked as cacheable, you will "never" spill decrypted data to the DRAM. Essentially, they built a system that has 30 megs of main memory (that 30 megs is SRAM in the core), and DRAM is treated like disk/swap in a demand-paging system.

The reason I am convinced this is likely an acquisition-hire

"not really, until you can 3-d print it yourself and then verify with an xray will security be verified."

What if both your 3D printer and X-Ray data analysis software are compromised? See also:
"Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson
    http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ke...
"The final step is represented in Figure 7. This simply adds a second Trojan horse to the one that already exists. The second pattern is aimed at the C compiler. The replacement code is a Stage I self-reproducing program that inserts both Trojan horses into the compiler. This requires a learning phase as in the Stage II example. First we compile the modified source with the normal C compiler to produce a bugged binary. We install this binary as the official C. We can now remove the bugs from the source of the compiler and the new binary will reinsert the bugs whenever it is compiled. Of course, the login command will remain bugged with no trace in source anywhere ... The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect."

Still, the more angles you look at something from, the more likely you might detect some discrepancy... Like excess power usage, processing delays, slightly different electromagnetic signatures, etc...

In any case, the less you want, perhaps the easier it is to secure. Look into creating or using Forth chips for simplicity... The less gates you need, and the less cycles they need, the easier it would be to make your own hardware from scratch, even from discrete components if it is simple enough.
http://www.colorforth.com/
http://www.greenarraychips.com...

For software more complex than Forth that is still fairly understandable from the ground up, see also the FONC project by Alan Kay as well as Squeak on bare metal.
http://www.viewpointsresearch....
https://www.google.com/search?...

Not standardized from what I can see but work has been done to allow this:
https://encrypted.google.com/#...

Yes the Flying Saucer Java library. It is one of the best XHTML to PDF converstion tool.

An iconic American landmark, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York was almost completely fucked by the substitution of rotten wire by a corrupt contractor. There's not much about it on the Wikipedia page but there's some stuff here.

Actually, I'm shocked by how little there is to find about this online. Revisionist history anyone?

How are the per captia statistics for being executed?

China leads in the number of executions per capita, ahead of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the USA, however they do execute less children than the US.

Nineteen of the 50 American states currently have laws allowing the execution of 16- and 17-year-old offenders. According to Amnesty International, five countries; China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Pakistan, and the U.S.A are known to have executed juvenile offenders since the year 2000. There are also currently juvenile offenders on death row in the Philippines and Sudan. Of the 18 executions of juveniles known to have taken place since 2000, nine were in the U.S., five were in Iran, and two were in China. Pakistan and the Congo executed one juvenile offender each.

https://spreadsheets.google.co...

And as soon as you work for Facebook or Amazon, you will never have any use for 'bit bashing' again.

It's funny that you mention that. I've recently had to perform some interviews (as an interviewer), so I was looking around the 'net for some tips on how to be a good interviewer. Lo and behold I came across this piece by Steve Yegge, about the kind of questions he asks as an Amazon interviewer.

He lists "The Five Essential Questions" for phone interviews , one of which is, as you would say, 'bit bashing'. The full list is:

1. 1. Coding. The candidate has to write some simple code, with correct syntax, in C, C++, or Java.
2. 2. OO design. The candidate has to define basic OO concepts, and come up with classes to model a simple problem.
3. 3. Scripting and regexes. The candidate has to describe how to find the phone numbers in 50,000 HTML pages.
4. 4. Data structures. The candidate has to demonstrate basic knowledge of the most common data structures.
5. 5. Bits and bytes.

So while you might not use bit bashing after you start working for those companies, you'll never get the chance to if you don't know how.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Even better, the name is pronounced like the English "show me". (Click the listen button on Google Translate.) Which should be easy to spin into a very visual English ad campaign.

Google

Yandex

ixquick Gerry Hutch

Google is working on a font family which supports every Unicode character, it's a big job though.

http://www.google.com/get/noto...

Google also recently axed its very useful Discussion search function: Where has the discussion search filter gone? - Google Product Forums No reason given - ostensibly to combat piracy in bootlegging forums? And to kill grandmothers who are trying to figure out why they have these shooting pains racing up their left arm. Oh yeah, etc. Nice one, Google. Just another instance of them being useless pains in the ass for whatever reason.

They better be filtering out the non-printing characters that do fun stuff like reverse the text direction, overstrike, etc. How long until people start registering gmail addresses with Zalgo text?

And how long until someone registers pile of poo @gmail.com?

They better be filtering out the non-printing characters that do fun stuff like reverse the text direction, overstrike, etc. How long until people start registering gmail addresses with Zalgo text?

And how long until someone registers pile of poo @gmail.com?

The Google cache was taken down. The original author seems to have agreed to take down the information on his site as well, even without having been contacted him-self:
https://sites.google.com/site/...

However, they were too late. The web archive has already archived their pages. Here are the relevant links:

http://web.archive.org/web/201...

http://web.archive.org/web/201...

(not modified)
https://oshpark.com/profiles/m...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...

Maybe now my e-mails to Tutankhamun will quit bouncing.

By comparison, solar power is still the clear winner, according to ecology.com

That sites like "ecology.com" declare solar to be a winner is not surprising. That they even ask a question, however, is a sign, that things aren't as obvious and clear-cut, as some would like the rest of us to believe.

Just twenty years ago we were lead to believe, growing more corn for conversion to ethanol would save the Earth and otherwise make the world a better place. That turned out to be a lie, but you wouldn't find a mention of it on ecology.com. Or, maybe, you would nowadays, but it is hardly trumpeted the way "progressive" politicians were praised for pushing ethanol and the "kkkonservative" ones — lambasted for opposing it.

Perhaps there is a way to find ideas for this on the interwebs?
Ah yes! https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=information+technology+conference

Given that you just lied to us, we certainly wouldn't trust anything else you have to say on the matter.

The difference is that I'm not charging you. My lies come for free. Comcast makes you pay for them.

And I'm not the one pointing out why Comcast sucks. Blame the internet:

https://www.google.com/search?...

Not a liberal here.

Maybe you didn't read this part:

and that further requirements should be implemented if Comcast is allowed to buy Time Warner Cable.

Do you understand what this is about? It's a cheap way to try to get past anti-trust laws and head off municipal broadband.

And I notice that this "article" you speak of doesn't really say anything about the user agreement. It wouldn't be the first time that Comcast posted one set of rates in the press and in advertisement and another on customer bills.

Give me one reason why anyone would trust Comcast? Why should anyone approve of their getting larger by buying Time Warner?

a) tell people why Comcast sucks

I have an idea, let's ask the Internet!

https://www.google.com/search?...

And this is exactly why I wish Google Fiber was deployed in more areas. They have a simple solution: a FREE tier for life.

https://fiber.google.com/citie...

And as far as the $300 setup fee, I'm not sure about other cities, but Portland is working on subsidies to cover this cost as well, so it is $0 for low income families to have basic 5mbps internet service.

Because at the end of the day it is "business as usual" -- no one really gives a fuck about Microsoft's new CEO.

Microsoft still doesn't a fucking clue about UI, it still shits on PC gamers with its crappy GWFL (Games For Windows Live), the Xbone has the stupidest marketing name ever, XP is still holding on because business can't be bought off with the latest untested shiny, DX12 will be only available on Windows 9 as MS tries to force gamers to upgrade, etc.

If newspaper companies continued to do actual research ...

Like the Washington Post and New York Times?

....and then require the same subscription for delivering a pdf to your inbox every day I think people wouldn't mind.

Apparently, people do mind because those papers are hanging by a thread - well, the Washington Post got rescued by Jeff Bezos.

People do not want real news. They want infotainment. And as far as news reporting, every web page has "free" ad serviced AP news - news.amazon.com, news.google.com, even the Economist.com gives you a couple of freebies.

Investigative journalism is pretty much left to documentaries and books; which may be for the best, actually. You really cannot understand an issue from a 30 second video segment or from a 500 word post.

From Top Secret America: the rise of the surveilance state

As important to a man's self image as the power of his car's engine or his motorcycle's rumble, SCIF size had become a symbol of status. "In DC, everyone talks SCIF, SCIF, SCIF," said Bruce Paquin, owner of a construction company that builds SCIFs for the government and private corporations. "They've got the penis envy thing going. You can't be a big boy unless you're a three letter agency and you have a big SCIF.

(A SCIF is a room that has been certified to be impenetrable to various types of surveillance techniques.)

Tablets and wireless communication aren't exactly the pinnacle of human achievement right now

You're tellin' me - I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

Gmail allows for dot address matching. This is a *huge* problem that has never been addressed.

Apparently my first letter, last name gmail address happens to be pretty popular. So popular, I receive emails from at least 5 other people in my inbox. One from PA, another one in Florida, still another in New Zealand... I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Apparently, this seems to happen a bit to people.

Sadly, Google has no fix for it, no way to get it to stop. Their support address and site are useless, imho.

I have since moved all of my email off to my own domain and mail services not controlled by Google. I still keep the account open and forwarding to my new email address, so I still get their email, too. I do what I can to minimize problems by auto-deleting everything that hits my inbox that's obviously not for me.

Stories like this scare the shit out of me because, at any time, if one of those people I happen to receive email for suddenly decides to go into full-creep mode, I could be put in prison for a very, very long time. Not for anything that I have done, but for how gmail has been setup to allow for this.

Not even a week ago: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline

Hamas can't even power their social media campaign (i.e. their lifeblood) continuously, but we're supposed to believe they can coordinate rocket fire over the same internet while also deploying Aperture science into their tunnels?

And this from an unnamed IDF contractor talking to a media outlet that has quite literally called for the genocide of Palestinians?

Good job, guys.

This site also makes torrents available. You can get the Expendables torrent here