Slashdot Mirror

Exactly; as an illustration, take those three "unreasonable CC homework" questions for his 3rd grade daughter comedian Louis C.K. posted on twitter, and got a storm of support for in the "finer" media. Ignoring the fact that the homework questions were not part of the CC as such, I disagreed on all 3 accounts:
- first question: you get 6 boxes (the picture showed only the top 3 of them) and are asked to write "A" in half of them, "B" in 1/3 of them, and "C" in 1/6. For crying out loud, what kind of number-dyslectic moron thinks this is a difficult assignment? He must be hoping his daughter aspires to also be a comedian (or a journalist apparently), because she sure as hell won't get into higher education if she's being led to think she shouldn't learn to solve that. The media storm that followed was eerily reminiscent of idiocracy...
- second question: sure, you and I, as a parent, may not know what a "pictograph" is. However, you and I hopefully know how to use Google. After a 30-second search, I discovered "pictograph" is just a scary term for an innocuously simple concept. I bet his daughter was drilled in class on what a pictograph is and how to construct one before being given that assignment; not the teacher's fault if she wasn't paying attention, and as a parent, you shouldn't balk at a word you don't know unless you never want your offspring to learn more than you know.
- third question: he apparently deleted that one after a few days because I don't see it on his profile anymore; probably he realized just how stupid it made him look. Anyhow, the question consists of a number of separate, very simple equations. He pretty much admits in his tweet that the equations are not really too hard as such, except for the last one, which doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Just stare at that last one for 20 seconds... right, it's a simple typesetting error ! Specifically, what you're seeing is two equally easy equations that are unfortunately concatenated on one line by lack of a line break. Was this guy drunk when he posted it? And even if not, is lashing out without thinking what he considers "being a good role model"?

@daveaitel All espionage is illegal in the country you do it against.

And since everyone in the world in any country, especially banks (under FACTA) and foreign officials are under US jurisdiction, why not indict?

that's ridiculous. it's free software. you could have disabled the heartbleed extension 4 years ago like fortress IT security did.

Here you go:

https://twitter.com/Revkin/sta...

Awful misuse of "Collapse" in headlines on centuries-long ice loss in W. Antarctica. See rates in papers. Same as '09

.@JunkScience Timothy Egan of NYT displays total ignorance of science; calls alarmist "science" "indisputable". [Lonny Eachus]

I'd already told Lonny Eachus that the National Academy of Sciences said "the need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable." So Lonny Eachus does seem to imply that the NAS displays total ignorance of science.

The rich live differently: Yard art at the DNC fundraiser home of tech entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki (photo). From the article: "While Wojcicki hosted an exclusive tech round table for 20 -- at $32,400 per head, a total haul of $648,000 for the Democratic National Committee -- reporters got a glimpse of how some of those 20 live. Even the occupant of the White House may have been dazzled by the beautiful groves of lemon and lime trees, surrounded by fantastical rolling grounds decorated with life-size florescent models of animals fashioned from wire -- elephants, zebras, bulls, kangaroos and a big pig."

"Secret" 3G Intel Chip Gives Snoops Backdoor PC Access

vPro processors allow remote access even when computer is turned off

Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.com | September 26, 2013

http://www.infowars.com/91497/

Intel Core vPro processors contain a "secret" 3G chip that allows remote disabling and backdoor access to any computer even when it is turned off.

Although the technology has actually been around for a while, the attendant privacy concerns are only just being aired. The "secret" 3G chip that Intel added to its processors in 2011 caused little consternation until the NSA spying issue exploded earlier this year as a result of Edward Snowden's revelations.

In a promotional video for the technology, Intel brags that the chips actually offer enhanced security because they don't require computers to be "powered on" and allow problems to be fixed remotely. The promo also highlights the ability for an administrator to shut down PCs remotely "even if the PC is not connected to the network," as well as the ability to bypass hard drive encryption.

"Intel actually embedded the 3G radio chip in order to enable its Anti Theft 3.0 technology. And since that technology is found on every Core i3/i5/i7 CPU after Sandy Bridge, that means a lot of CPUs, not just new vPro, might have a secret 3G connection nobody knew about until now,"reports Softpedia.

Jeff Marek, director of business client engineering for Intel, acknowledged that the company's Sandy Bridge" microprocessor, which was released in 2011, had "the ability to remotely kill and restore a lost or stolen PC via 3G."

"Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it's own operating system embedded on the chip itself," writes Jim Stone. "As long as the power supply is available and and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system's phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them."

Although the technology is being promoted as a convenient way for IT experts to troubleshoot PC issues remotely, it also allows hackers or NSA snoops to view the entire contents of somebody's hard drive, even when the power is off and the computer is not connected to a wi-fi network.

It also allows third parties to remotely disable any computer via the "secret" 3G chip that is built into Intel's Sandy Bridge processors. Webcams could also be remotely accessed.

"This combination of hardware from Intel enables vPro access ports which operate independently of normal user operations," reports TG Daily. "These include out-of-band communications (communications that exist outside of the scope of anything the machine might be doing through an OS or hypervisor), monitoring and altering of incoming and outgoing network traffic. In short, it operates covertly and snoops and potentially manipulates data."

Not only does this represent a privacy nightmare, it also dramatically increases the risk of industrial espionage.

The ability for third parties to have remote 3G access to PCs would also allow unwanted content to be placed on somebody's hard drive, making it easier for intelligence agencies and corrupt law enforcement bodies to frame people.

"The bottom line? The Core vPro processor is the end of any pretend privacy," writes Stone. "If you think encryption, Norton, or anything else is going to ensure your privacy, including never hooking up to the web at all, think again. There is now more than just a ghost in the machine."

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul....
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlan...
--
http://www.intel.com/content/w...

As a sidenote, OSVDB's Twitter feed surely gives a "professional image".

I just tweeted him to ask if he'll be switching back to OpenBSD now. :-)

https://twitter.com/Mcnst/stat...

(DJB is known as @hashbreaker on Twitter.)

> This is probably worse for iOS than being insecure. > Their marketshare has fallen so far...

Ha. Apple won't care until this graph takes a sharp downward turn.

The '12 drop looks pretty sharp to me, and flat since then.

They could probably drop to 10% market share and still make the most money in the industry.

How, by selling products for ten times the going price? Seems like a recipe for 0% market share to me.

Nice theory - so why isn't their market share 0% yet? And frankly: making negative profit (as all Android makers but Samsung do) seems to be a much better recipe for 0% market share.

> This is probably worse for iOS than being insecure.
> Their marketshare has fallen so far...

Ha. Apple won't care until this graph takes a sharp downward turn.

The '12 drop looks pretty sharp to me, and flat since then.

They could probably drop to 10% market share and still make the most money in the industry.

How, by selling products for ten times the going price? Seems like a recipe for 0% market share to me.

> This is probably worse for iOS than being insecure.
> Their marketshare has fallen so far...

Ha. Apple won't care until this graph takes a sharp downward turn. They could probably drop to 10% market share and still make the most money in the industry.

https://twitter.com/asymco/status/460724885120380929/photo/1 - Apple has almost four times as many (iTunes) accounts as Amazon, most of them with a credit card connected.

What evidence do you have that most iTunes account have a non-expired credit card connected? The comparison is between "active" Amazon accounts, and any iTunes account. That doesn't really seem like apples-to-apples. I have an iTunes account and I don't think I've used it in years, and it certainly does have valid payment info, unlike my Amazon Prime account.

Apart from Apple saying so? None. But Amazon isn't even saying that.

https://twitter.com/asymco/status/460724885120380929/photo/1 - Apple has almost four times as many (iTunes) accounts as Amazon, most of them with a credit card connected.

What evidence do you have that most iTunes account have a non-expired credit card connected? The comparison is between "active" Amazon accounts, and any iTunes account. That doesn't really seem like apples-to-apples. I have an iTunes account and I don't think I've used it in years, and it certainly does have valid payment info, unlike my Amazon Prime account. I'd hardly consider that one data point evidence of anything, but you need to compare like things.

Also, I doubt that many people who would actually buy something from Amazon don't already have Amazon accounts. The only reason Amazon isn't selling directly in their application is that Apple forbids it.

Sure, but I imagine they have virtually all the credit card numbers Apple has, which was the point...

Obviously they don't, as Apple has a much more worldwide presence. So I don't see how that is your "point."

Have any actual numbers on that? I suspect that the vast majority of Apple's customers are in the US. They're not nearly as popular in Asia/etc as they are in the US.

https://twitter.com/asymco/status/460724885120380929/photo/1 - Apple has almost four times as many (iTunes) accounts as Amazon, most of them with a credit card connected.

The best part is that he knows how close he is to the trope.

The GitHub statement is a blatant white wash and she has responded with a hard core rant on twitter.

Changes so far to OpenSSL 1.0.1g since the 11th include:

• Splitting up libcrypto and libssl build directories
• Fixing a use-after-free bug
• Removal of ancient MacOS, Netware, OS/2, VMS and Windows build junk
• Removal of “bugs” directory, benchmarks, INSTALL files, and shared library goo for lame platforms
• Removal of most (all?) backend engines, some of which didn’t even have appropriate licensing
• Ripping out some windows-specific cruft
• Removal of various wrappers for things like sockets, snprintf, opendir, etc. to actually expose real return values
• KNF of most C files
• Removal of weak entropy additions
• Removal of all heartbeat functionality which resulted in Heartbleed

See also:

Do not feed RSA private key information to the random subsystem as entropy. It might be fed to a pluggable random subsystem.... What were they thinking?!

So far as all the "won't this introduce more bugs than it fixes" comments go, this is a recurring argument I have at work. I am of the "clean as you go", "refactor now" school.
Everyone else says "If it works don't fix it"(IIWDFI), "don't rock the boat" etc.
Heartbleed is what happens when the IIWDFI attitude wins. Bugs lurk under layers of cruft, simple changes become nightmares of wading through a lava flow of wrappers around hacks around bodges.
Whenever anyone says IIWDFI, remind them that testing can only find a small proportion of possible bugs, so if you can't see whether it has bugs or not by reading the code, then no matter how many test cases it passes, it DOESN'T WORK.

apparently you can't parody in US... the the original account in question, @peoriamayor has been suspended. but a thousand flowers are blooming, including this guy, who's profile reads "Welcome to Peoria, bitches! My house, my rules. Check those civil liberties at the door and bow down to your leader. Humor and Parodies punishable by death."

The real scandal is how organisations are giving information to their users as to how they are affected and what users should do. Many big-name companies are using very specific phrasing such as "key services were not vulnerable", but no mention of secondary services...sounds like a liar's hiding place to me. There are also far too many who don't understand the problem such as Acronis, the Aus bank etc. Then the likes of Akamai who can't make their mind up. Some irresponsibly down-playing the whole thing and of course, the majority of the rest who haven't said sweet FA. In the middle are the poor people who can't be expected to make informed decisions on what they need to do or how exposed they are.

You thought rfc-ignorant, abuse@ ignoring fuckwits, running their company around the Internet with Flash-only sites was bad? This is what happens when their incompetence starts to actually harm people's online security.

It's quite cringe-worthy view if you look at all the stuff that is tweeted with the hashtag #HeartbleedVirus. :)

Which is worse? The ones who never post, or the ones who post once and never return?

Here's what a Chrome developer said about it back then, and here's his twitter where he keeps on explaining now

They definitely didn't exploit it. How do I know? Because they said so, so it must be true. Right? They wouldn't lie to us, would they?

All that USA vs Russia shit is just rhetoric for manufacturing consent to wind up the very expensive military industrial complexes yet again.

The US military budget is in a period of significant decline over the next 10 years. The military budgets of China and Russia have been increasing by significant amounts. That is especially meaningful given the major cost advantages in their labor and materials costs (which is why the US budget looks so high). You can see the result in Russia's stunning victory in seizing and annexing Crimea. Russia restarted the former Soviet practice of simulated bombing runs and probes by sea and air on NATO countries, Scandinavian countries, and the US several years ago. Chinese state run media recently published maps showing nuclear strikes against the US as part of a celebration of their growing nuclear submarine fleet.

Those things don't help anyone.

Putin appears to be very popular at the moment, and China has told the US it can't be contained. China's neighbors are fearful of its intentions and are arming with new weapons and alliances.

Talk to people from all around the world and you'll figure out that no one really wants to kill each other, we all just want to be safe and live our lives.

You don't seem to be acquainted with the cult of the holy war martyr in Islamic countries. They very much want to kill and be killed. They wish to reconquer lands formerly ruled by the Muslim empires, including Spain and Israel or die trying. Both China and Russia desire to expand their power, and even take lands from their neighbors.

The corporations that own the countries that use the laws of governments and religions against us are not the people of the world.

Corporations exist at the whim of governments, they don't "own" governments. If that wasn't the case then the various socialist and communist countries would never have been able to nationalize the property formerly owned by corporations.

"Government" is just a word for things we do together.
"Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily. - David Burge@iowahawkblog

Snowden is an ally to the people of the world.

The affect of Snowden's leaks is a weaker and disunited West. Snowden is strengthening the hand of Russia and China which will mean more military adventurism and diplomatic coups. Remember than when Iran builds nuclear weapons to put on their missiles that can already reach Europe.

You have that exactly backwards. He'd be a dunce not to see a US-supported junta setting up another future NATO base on his doorstep.

I'm voting for (a) with a helping of very-not-(c), given:

- the comments on https://issues.apache.org/jira...
- this story http://www.infoq.com/news/2014...
- and this twitter conversation https://twitter.com/gstein/sta...

And there are quite a few references to pi in the patch, not sure if it was intentional or not.

https://twitter.com/climagic/s...

I feel the watch is the ultimate form factor for wearable electronics.

Why though?

My feeling about the smart watch is pretty much summarized by this image of the ultimate smart watch.

I think of wearables in two senses - primarily sensor packages and quick but very limited information.

The watch is not in a great position for either of those things. For one thing it's often covered by sleeves, so the sensors to outside conditions get obscured and any visible notifications get booked too. Yes it can vibrate - but so can your phone. It's also moving pretty wildly compared to the rest of your body, so motion tracking on it is not going to be very good.

It can monitor a few physiological aspects of the wearer somewhat reliably, but that seems about it. I'm not even sure how well it would work for that - when I used to wear a watch many years ago, it always made my arm sweat under the watch which I'm pretty sure would throw some sensors off.

To me, a few things seem like better clothing items to make wearables:

1) Hats - in a great position to measure lots of stuff, and would be just as good as Glass at photo/video work, but could have a lot more battery capacity just because of the lager form factor that distributes weight better. Can also have fold-down display from brim and visual indicators just at the edge of eyesight.

2) Necklace - Pressing against the skin on your neck can measure some things that way, also more customizable in that battery packs could be the thing you attach to the end of the necklace and thus highly customizable.

3) Ring - very small but could have very subtle visual indicators as small LED's. Also positioned in a place that gets lots of data about what you are about to touch, or the environment in general (until covered by gloves)

4) Jackets - these are more specialized but have the form factor for larger batteries and interesting environmental sensors, or just way better antenna for things like GPS.

I think this looks fair: https://twitter.com/omgbounces...

I have two reactions to your post.

1. Poe's law

2. A quote from David Burge @iowahawkblog:

" "Government" is just a word for things we do together.
"Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily."

Perhaps you should read this: https://twitter.com/solardiz/s...

here.

For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.

Carmack (the fact you can't spell him name right ames me dubious you understand his intent) said this on Twitter:

I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.

If you want to understand what he means, read Ready Player One.

The solution to non-benevolent monopolies in the common-carrier industry:

https://twitter.com/fulldecent...

Tweets from Scott Henderson, who drew the diagram you cite, clarify what information we do and don't have: https://twitter.com/_AntiAlias...

Carmack confirms PS4 is capable of VR resolution and framerate...

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carm...

I still think the PC will make a better platform but to each there own.

Open! Right?

As always, Glenn Greenwald has thought provoking narrative.

https://twitter.com/shanley/st...

Seems a lot of people are upset that the leaks weren't done by a black lesbian with headmates too. :(

No real way to verify it, but there is a surefire way to discredit it!

https://twitter.com/mikko/stat...

What is the surefire way to discredit it? Surely you don't mean it would be impossible for Dorian to log in to this account and write the denial if he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto?

No real way to verify it, but there is a surefire way to discredit it!

https://twitter.com/mikko/stat...

How is that surefire in *any* way? The guy already denied it. Now, an account denied it as well.

Russia denies their troops are occupying Crimea.

Denials are easy to make.

No real way to verify it, but there is a surefire way to discredit it!

https://twitter.com/mikko/stat...

And what is the evidence in favor of him being "the guy"?

His name is the same as a notoriously anonymous programmers online handle and thats about it. On the other hand one of the real Satoshi's known accounts posted that he is not this guy. And has been verified as a the legit account by the forums admin.

http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/...

https://twitter.com/jdaviescoa...

OK, I wasn't going after "data science" specifically, but ad algos and how my twitter feed has become a cesspool of mental masturbation for ad algorithm people, which is the "killer app" for "big data":

1. PhD invents fantastic ad algo. 2. Guy sees ad on iPhone, takes EBT card there. 1. PhD applies for EBT card. #OneTwoPunch

Wow, I can't believe I just typed that many buzzwords in a Slashdot post; but at least I had a reason and put most of them in quotes... dammit. "algos". Anyway, I wonder if everybody's twitter feed is as bad as mine lately. I think it might have to do with a former co-worker who now works in that field. Thus, I get a lot of improperly targeted ads for people who are in the data-mining/ad biz. Of course I'll never buy their product--I'm not a CxO who's looking to proactively synergize my paradigms.... but it's an interesting "fly on the wall" view of how that world works, so I'm not entirely sure if I should find a way to stop it.

I can describe that insanity in 140 characters or less.

Ben Kuchera is a fucking tool who has no business writing about anything. The same goes for Polygon.
Kuchera was one of the assmunches on the front lines defending MS's initial DRM and always-online schemes for the XBOX One.

His opinions were so bad and so obviously paid-for that he got kicked out of Penny Arcade for shit like this http://penny-arcade.com/report... (I think they pulled it down because it was so bad) and this https://twitter.com/BenKuchera... .
Penny fucking Arcade realized how shitty he was, Yes, that Penny Arcade. The one run by the no-standards shills that did an instant 180 from gamers to tools once MS started paying them. The PA that bullies its own fans and offers a kickstarter to remove ads from their massively-profitable website, with stretch goals to remove more ads, but still not all the ads.

Ben Kuchera's internet fame was spawned from PA, and he became such an insufferable goon that even PA realized he needed to be cut loose. He shat around Arse Technica for a while and now he's shitting it up at Polygon.

We all know games "journalism" is about one of the most laughable things ever, but Kuchera and Polygon represent the fucking highest echelon of shilling, shit-flinging, and all around douchebaggery. There is zero integrity involved with Polygon as a whole and with Kuchera as a person. You shouldn't simply distrust their reviews, news, opinions, etc., you should actively trust it to be complete and utter paid-for horseshit.

Why does the game community not understand the benefits of Free and Open Source software [0], even though they've probably read the source code to various titles from id Software [1]?
[0] https://twitter.com/therealcli...
[1] https://github.com/id-Software

But then maybe I'm a shill. Or maybe I'm a victim of shills. Or maybe I'm just biased and easily led because I think that GG is thoroughly intellectually dishonest in at least some of the statements that he does put his own name on.

BTW: If you care to read that one through, it culminates with the best smackdown I remember seeing.

The only news about this is that they've just started attaching the legs, as you can see here. Looking forward to seeing how well they work.