Slashdot Mirror

You could improve the security by using different images (say pictures of different types of fruit) instead of just dots, and then changing the location of the images for every login. I know that my unlock pattern is grape > apple > cherry > grape > pear, but the pattern I happen to draw (or just tap on the shapes since there's no requirement to draw) changes every time.

It's still not fool proof as anyone with a clear view will be able to see the exact images that were used and reproduce it, but it makes it more difficult for an attacker to rely on capturing hand movement and extrapolating the information from there. One could probably even improve on it a little more, perhaps by including useless information to throw off hackers. For example I could enter red square > blue circle > yellow triangle > green rhombus > red triangle, but I know that it's only the colors that matter and the shapes are meaningless data, but even that has limits to how much added security it brings.

Even then, if someone really wants to get into your device that badly, there isn't any form of security that can't be broken with enough time or resources. I suppose you could implement a one time pad password system if you knew the hardware was completely safe, but woe be unto you should you forget the sequence or where you're at in it, and it still doesn't stop someone from getting the password with their $5 wrench.

That doesn't get you below freefall-from-the-edge-of-the-gravity-well speeds which, according to Randal Munroe, is 10 kilometers per second. (Remember, everything accelerates at the same rate in a gravity well regardless of mass.) Note the destructive effects he claims would happen, then notice how much smaller (and less dense) Denali is compared to the asteroid in question.

There might be a chance that it wouldn't be as bad if it penetrated the Earth's crust, thus allowing for a more gradual deceleration as it displaced lava (like a bullet decelerating under water), but that displaced lava would be dramatic and I'm not sure what the tectonic and volcanic implications would be.

(XKCD is such a bad influence. I'm sure the gravity equations are easy enough to find and use, but then I remembered this.)

Ten thousand quadrillion. By comparison, the total value of EVERYTHING WE EVER DID as a race amounts to about two quadrillion as per:

https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-... (link looks odd because it's one of his large-scale images, zoomed in on the appropriate area)

He also might throw one at China or Iran. While my geek nature drives me to be a bit of a disaster voyeur, I have a wife and two children that cause me to harbor profound concern for the consequences of this petulant demagogue's presidency.

The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.
{...}
And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/

And another ob. xkcd.

To quote the strip:

What used to feel normal now feels too cold

The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.
{...}
And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/

And another ob. xkcd.

To quote the strip:

What used to feel normal now feels too cold

Go talk to northern Canadians and Alaskans. The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.

In the US our winter is currently 20 degrees above normal.

And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/

I'm the father of Bobby Tables.

We're actually going to be 20C warmer in six months

No. The globe does not warm or cool by 20C as the seasons change. In fact, when the Earth was just 4.5C cooler, your house was under 1/2 a mile of ice. XKCD described this as an "Ice Age Unit"

I applaud Google's action and will appreciate it until more news sites address the abominable behavior that xkcd mocked them for.

https://xkcd.com/869/

https://xkcd.com/792/

That might be true, but it's still a very, very tiny amount of radiation exposure. I think that this claim came from a paper comparing nuclear and coal power plants under normal operation, and finding that the coal plant emitted 1000 times more.

I looked up some references quickly, and I found this XKCD; but admittedly, I did not try to find arguments in favor of the opposite view.

https://xkcd.com/893/

May need to be updated soon.

RIP, Gene.

This again? ;)

For example, Steven Chu - a Nobel Prize laureate tapped to lead department of Housing?

The Nobel Prize in physics was just one of his many accomplishments. Steven Chu also invented the ubiquitous scroll lock key.

This was my first thought.

Also: https://xkcd.com/1102/

Yesterday I sold 1 lemonade. Today I sold 3, that's a 200% increase in sales!
If we follow the slope of the line we'll be selling trillions of lemonades by the end of the month. (205,891,132,094,649 if I've calculated that right)

And this has already been covered elsewhere.

At least credit the source for your punchline:

https://xkcd.com/1367/

XKCD on the rate of change

"Not the hottest we have seen in the tiny span of time we have been keeping records compared to geologic and astronomical time frames."

At the start of the solar system the Earth was incansescent with heat and at some point the entire thing was very likely covered with ice. Pointing out conditions from billions of years ago does nothing except muddy the waters, intentionally, I feel.

Call me when it is 5C hotter globally and I might actually care (

Unless you're part of the relatively small population that lives far from the coast, your house will be long under water by the time the globe has warmed by 5 degrees C. Either way, almost everyone else's house will be which will cause a colossal amount of worldwide disruption.

honestly warmer temperatures have been historically good

It's not really the steady state temperature that matters (within quite wide bounds), it's the rate of change that matters.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Let me refer you to an extremely relevant xkcd

Humans haven't been around for 4 billion years to make accurate measurements. But here's an obligatory xkcd that attempts to go back to 20,000BC.

Oblig: https://xkcd.com/224/

"I took a lickin' from a chicken".

Yeuchh! Oral service from an avian dinosaur. Between the idea of having my pecker pecked and Rule 34 of the Internet, I think I need my brain scrubbed with lye.

" very similar to the previous upward trends that were entirely natural.", but it's not. I know others have posted this, but this XKCD does show what the current trend is in comparison to the previous 20,000 years.

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1732/

1) Lamar Smith for one. He's the one who raised the issue, an issue also known about by everyone involved in the science. And they've now completed their work accounting for it, and presenting their finding back to him.

See, you (and Lamar Smith) are trying to do this:

Skeptic (Denier): What about X? Does X not disprove your entire conclusion?
Scientists: We are aware of X, and studying its impacts on the data so that it can be accounted for.
~~time passed~~
Scientists: We have finished studying X and have accounted for it. However it's effect is negligible, and our original conclusion still stands.
Skeptic (Denier): Well who gives a s*** ?! You're all liars and the climate is fine.

Also:
No, it's not a small amount of warming
No, more CO2 isn't necessarily the boon to the environment you think it is. Problems associated with increased heat and/or CO2 include reduced agricultural output, increased pest infestation of crops, and crops that turn toxic , and others.

2) No, they are not. The devices used to measure have accuracy in the range of 0.001 degree, or better. And even less accurate devices (say, +/-0.1) can still show a trend. The accuracy of the device relates more to each individual reading in a vacuum, not to a series of readings. That is to say, errors are typically linear or progressive in measurement equipment; non-linear or random inaccuracy does occur, but is uncommon (has a lot to do with the type of instrument too....geared instruments, like dial indicators, can more easily appear non-linear if the multiple errors are on a gear that only rotates a single time; note that if the gear rotated twice, you would see the error as cyclical). IE, say your thermometer is rated as +/-0.1 degree accuracy. So when measuring 20.1C, the "true" could be between 20.0 and 20.2. Then say you take a 2nd measurement, of 21.6. The true value is between 21.5 and 21.7. BUT, assuming the true value of measurement 1 was 20.2....it would be very unlikely that the true value of the 2nd measurement is below the indicated value. IE, the trend is still visible. (source: several years of metrology and instrumentation experience)

1) Lamar Smith for one. He's the one who raised the issue, an issue also known about by everyone involved in the science. And they've now completed their work accounting for it, and presenting their finding back to him.

See, you (and Lamar Smith) are trying to do this:

Skeptic (Denier): What about X? Does X not disprove your entire conclusion?
Scientists: We are aware of X, and studying its impacts on the data so that it can be accounted for.
~~time passed~~
Scientists: We have finished studying X and have accounted for it. However it's effect is negligible, and our original conclusion still stands.
Skeptic (Denier): Well who gives a s*** ?! You're all liars and the climate is fine.

Also:
No, it's not a small amount of warming
No, more CO2 isn't necessarily the boon to the environment you think it is. Problems associated with increased heat and/or CO2 include reduced agricultural output, increased pest infestation of crops, and crops that turn toxic , and others.

2) No, they are not. The devices used to measure have accuracy in the range of 0.001 degree, or better. And even less accurate devices (say, +/-0.1) can still show a trend. The accuracy of the device relates more to each individual reading in a vacuum, not to a series of readings. That is to say, errors are typically linear or progressive in measurement equipment; non-linear or random inaccuracy does occur, but is uncommon (has a lot to do with the type of instrument too....geared instruments, like dial indicators, can more easily appear non-linear if the multiple errors are on a gear that only rotates a single time; note that if the gear rotated twice, you would see the error as cyclical). IE, say your thermometer is rated as +/-0.1 degree accuracy. So when measuring 20.1C, the "true" could be between 20.0 and 20.2. Then say you take a 2nd measurement, of 21.6. The true value is between 21.5 and 21.7. BUT, assuming the true value of measurement 1 was 20.2....it would be very unlikely that the true value of the 2nd measurement is below the indicated value. IE, the trend is still visible. (source: several years of metrology and instrumentation experience)

Maybe the chicken was an avid XKCD reader?

"The only winning move is to play, perfectly, waiting for your opponent to make a mistake." -Randall Munroe

obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/505/

Do you think Hentai is something that children should be exposed to?
But it's not even real people, it's ink on paper or some flickering LEDs on a computer monitor! Have you ever heard about old National Geographics?
But it's just some ink on paper!

Relevant XKCD panels.
I hope that you understand how your reductionist scoffing is defeated. You are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring the actual objections of those "uptight pricks in the suburbs".

Do you think Hentai is something that children should be exposed to?
But it's not even real people, it's ink on paper or some flickering LEDs on a computer monitor! Have you ever heard about old National Geographics?
But it's just some ink on paper!

Relevant XKCD panels.
I hope that you understand how your reductionist scoffing is defeated. You are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring the actual objections of those "uptight pricks in the suburbs".

people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system

We calls thems electrical engineers where I'm from.

You fancy higher-level people.

--Physicist

Hey, how's it look way up there?

-Mathematician

So your theory is that the few scientists who have sold out their names and reputations to work for oil companies issuing "skeptical" reports are the poor impoverished underfunded ones ...and the 99.9% of scientists who recognize climate change are rolling in cash?

What?!

Also, relevant xkcd

ahem, and if i were to say that i believe the core part of me, my consiousness, is a persistent and established physics reaction on a framework laid about by chemical reactions?

electrons are arguably more important to "who" you are, and chemicals to "what".

obligatory xkcd.

https://xkcd.com/435/

Fair enough, just seems that everyone seems to forget that plausible denialability in encryption exists at all, especially for duress. Couldn't the same principle be applied to fixed-bitrate traffic though? Still need a way to generate plausible 'outer' traffic though (depends on application) and a good enough PRNG source for when 'inner'/hidden traffic can't fill the rest of the bandwidth.

"adapted to this scenario"

No, that would be this one:
https://xkcd.com/224/

To honor Carrie Fisher, you should have posted this.

xkcd kind of predicted via actuarial math that one of the main cast of Star Wars would likely be dead by 2017.

Oblig XKCD

https://xkcd.com/1321/

https://xkcd.com/386/

informing him (and potentially others) that the guys who made TextSecure make Signal

I think we all understood that is what you meant, but that isn't what you said. Please re-read what you wrote.

Obligatory XKCD.

http://xkcd.com/169/

So you'll sooner consider the hypothesis that conservation of momentum is broken than consider the hypothesis that there's radiation leaking in a place they haven't looked yet.

Physics, it works, bitches.

https://xkcd.com/54/

You know we can calculate the maximum possible thrust from leaked radiation and it's 3uN/kW, vastly smaller than the amount reported. Therefore it isn't that.

No wonder you believe in unicorns. :blink:

Ya know, sure why not. If you can believe we'll fly around the solar system on a perprtual motion machine (if the device works as reported, then it is functionally equivalent to a perpetual motion machine---if you're prepated to listen I will happily explain how a working EM drive could be used to construct a perpetual motion machiene) then I can believe in unicorns. Why not.

They can't win. If they don't do it, Firefox's performance and security will continue to fall behind and the vast majority of users will complain. If they do it, a small number of users with unusual use-cases will complain that it breaks their system. If they try to accommodate both it will create much more work and delay the feature.

Oblig. XKCD.

For most people, beer is an acquired taste. They have to drink it a number of times before they like it enough to be committed consumers. Would you consider that a compelling argument to ban the sale of beer?

Oh, and here's the obligatory xkcd.

You forgot oblig XKCD: https://xkcd.com/552/

Similar tech support interaction: Houston