Unlike URLs, it's easy to brute force phone numbers from their hashes. Phone numbers are short and often have low entropy, from what I have seen the arbitrarily assignable part is usually no more than 8 digits, the rest being related to geographic region etc. Even with say 10-11 digits it is trivial for a GPU.
You are right and it presents an interesting problem! I would love to hear a solution, other than downloading the entire database to every device.
...to weed out the burner phones from the high-quality ones.
What do you want to bet those "high quality" numbers quickly become a target for telemarketers to plunder?:p
I came to say this. How is this not obvious? Or is that the actual reasoning behind the list?
I think that this should be done in a fashion similar to how Google Chrome checks if addresses are malware. When your phone rings, md5 the phone number and send it off to be checked against a blacklist of known telemarketers. If it's not on the list and the call is marketing, then add it. Maybe I'll make an app for that.
Though an amazing bit of engineering, the Thing has nothing to do with this discussion. For one thing, the antenna would not fit in a modern cell phone. For another, the Thing has other limitations which make it impractical here, such as transmitting analogue-only information (essentially, sound only).
If you are suggesting that some 'magic' or clever engineering might come up with a way to increase the viable distance to a receiver, I would love to see it. But that argument is too general and could be made in any argument. Thus, invalid in all arguments until shown to be practical.
Libraries only provide new functions and types. Go look at mathlab or (shudder) labview for some examples of domain-specific datatypes (not simply classes built on the common primitives) and paradigms.
Surely you are not suggesting that the field of particle physics should be using the same tools as the field of psychiatry? That materials engineers should be using the same tools as palaeontologists?
Python is actually a good example of why adding new languages is not the answer. One of the big reasons that python has been so embraced in scientific computing are the libraries that were built on top of it that are well suited to those types of tasks.
That is very true, however they still require one to express his problem in terms of lists, sets, dicts, strings, ints, floats, and complex numbers. Not all scientific concepts can be massaged into one of those datatypes.
The python community did a reasonably good job of grafting domain specific functionality in via libraries that were fairly accessible to people who are not primarily programmers while still having the general purpose language behind it for people who are, allowing programmers and non-programmers to collaborate easily. Which is why I tend to get annoyed with the whole 'lets build a new language for this domain!' thing since all it really does is increase the barrier between fields and produces yet another custom language that needs to be learned and maintained.
The counter argument is that each individual domain needs its own programming language in the same sense that each individual domain needs its own jargon. Each domain has its own unique intricacies, problems, methods, and context. The tools used should reflect that.
Guido is also an extremely competent C programmer (see recent Slashdot article) and he did not design Python for scientists, but rather for programmers.
that you will have to pay a lot of money to use it?
If the work that needs to be done could be done quicker or simpler (i.e. cheaper) by paying a $1000 license rather than having a $300,000-per-year researcher to go learn Python or R, then it is worth it to pay, no? The current options aren't going away.
But this one is ostensibly designed by Stephen Wolfram, who knows what scientists and physicists need from a programing language.
Python, C, Java, et al were all designed by computer programmers for computer programmers. R and Mathlab were designed by computer programmers for mathematicians, thus works a lot better for expressing certain mathematical concepts and working with them (transformations, statistics). But there is much room for improvement, especially when looking at the problem from the scientist's point of view, not from the programmer's point of view.
Surely a well designed chip can use the power of the radiowaves already in the air, negating the need for a battery...
That is exactly how RFID works. However, RFID fields are much stronger and the receiver is much closer.
The phone could probably use the power of the radiowaves in the air to do very low power things like perhaps change an e-ink display slightly. There is no way that there is enough energy to actually transmit a signal hundreds of meters.
I also bought the Nook Simple Touch Glow with the explicit intention of rooting it. I consider it one of the best purchases that I've made in my life, I use it daily for studing with Anki or browsing with Opera. However, being stuck on Android 2.1 is exceptionally limiting. I'm looking for any E-ink device that is capable of being rooted and running Android 2.3 or 4.x. Backlight prefered, of course!
It doesn't really matter since there are only two videocard vendors now,...
There are only two operating systems in widespread use now, so I should go write my new software in.Net and Objective C/Cocoa? There is only one Office Producitivity software suite in widespread use now, so I should release documents in.docx format? There is only one web browser, so I should only test sites in IE and ignore the standards?
The more we entrench the already-entrenched mono/duopolies, the harder it will be to get out of that mess.
First they hide the feature. They they claim telemetry says nobody uses it. Then they take it away. (Never mind the fact that the sort of user who does use the feature either delays the upgrade, hacks around the limitation, and is likely to pre-emptively disable telemetry as a matter of course.)
What did you think that the telemetry was there for? Now you know. Stop disabling it if you want the features that you use to continue to be included.
GNOME has been doing it since the 2.0 release more than a decade ago. Microsoft has nothing on them.
I would like to take the chance to mention that I've moved almost an entire office from Windows to Kubuntu based on "little things" like an integrated system monitor that shows temp, the ability to set an arbitrary window as "always on top" and middle-click paste. I am so glad that I didn't move them to a Gnome-based distro now!
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike URLs, it's easy to brute force phone numbers from their hashes. Phone numbers are short and often have low entropy, from what I have seen the arbitrarily assignable part is usually no more than 8 digits, the rest being related to geographic region etc. Even with say 10-11 digits it is trivial for a GPU.
You are right and it presents an interesting problem! I would love to hear a solution, other than downloading the entire database to every device.
Thanks. It doesn't seem to play the SIT tones:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mrnumber.blocker
Can you make some suggestions? What are the names of the apps that you use?
Thanks.
European.
...to weed out the burner phones from the high-quality ones.
What do you want to bet those "high quality" numbers quickly become a target for telemarketers to plunder? :p
I came to say this. How is this not obvious? Or is that the actual reasoning behind the list?
I think that this should be done in a fashion similar to how Google Chrome checks if addresses are malware. When your phone rings, md5 the phone number and send it off to be checked against a blacklist of known telemarketers. If it's not on the list and the call is marketing, then add it. Maybe I'll make an app for that.
Though an amazing bit of engineering, the Thing has nothing to do with this discussion. For one thing, the antenna would not fit in a modern cell phone. For another, the Thing has other limitations which make it impractical here, such as transmitting analogue-only information (essentially, sound only).
If you are suggesting that some 'magic' or clever engineering might come up with a way to increase the viable distance to a receiver, I would love to see it. But that argument is too general and could be made in any argument. Thus, invalid in all arguments until shown to be practical.
Thanks for mentioning that. And thanks for fleshing out the bugs in Rekonq!
Those are cut-and-paste Fosstard arguments. Sorry, sometimes proprietary software is good.
Typed in Foss Firefox on Foss Kubuntu.
Libraries only provide new functions and types. Go look at mathlab or (shudder) labview for some examples of domain-specific datatypes (not simply classes built on the common primitives) and paradigms.
Surely you are not suggesting that the field of particle physics should be using the same tools as the field of psychiatry? That materials engineers should be using the same tools as palaeontologists?
Python is actually a good example of why adding new languages is not the answer. One of the big reasons that python has been so embraced in scientific computing are the libraries that were built on top of it that are well suited to those types of tasks.
That is very true, however they still require one to express his problem in terms of lists, sets, dicts, strings, ints, floats, and complex numbers. Not all scientific concepts can be massaged into one of those datatypes.
The python community did a reasonably good job of grafting domain specific functionality in via libraries that were fairly accessible to people who are not primarily programmers while still having the general purpose language behind it for people who are, allowing programmers and non-programmers to collaborate easily. Which is why I tend to get annoyed with the whole 'lets build a new language for this domain!' thing since all it really does is increase the barrier between fields and produces yet another custom language that needs to be learned and maintained.
The counter argument is that each individual domain needs its own programming language in the same sense that each individual domain needs its own jargon. Each domain has its own unique intricacies, problems, methods, and context. The tools used should reflect that.
That is a rather creative idea. I would love to see more practical examples of what you do with it, such as the Sigma example.
Guido is also an extremely competent C programmer (see recent Slashdot article) and he did not design Python for scientists, but rather for programmers.
that you will have to pay a lot of money to use it?
If the work that needs to be done could be done quicker or simpler (i.e. cheaper) by paying a $1000 license rather than having a $300,000-per-year researcher to go learn Python or R, then it is worth it to pay, no? The current options aren't going away.
But this one is ostensibly designed by Stephen Wolfram, who knows what scientists and physicists need from a programing language.
Python, C, Java, et al were all designed by computer programmers for computer programmers. R and Mathlab were designed by computer programmers for mathematicians, thus works a lot better for expressing certain mathematical concepts and working with them (transformations, statistics). But there is much room for improvement, especially when looking at the problem from the scientist's point of view, not from the programmer's point of view.
I have never heard of the joule-theif until now, I will definitely research this. Thanks for the tip.
Yes, possibly. I suppose that it could flip some bits in a non-volatile storage medium. Nice thinking.
How would you like to store it? In a capacitor you would need a voltage difference greater than the extant difference already in the capacitor.
Surely a well designed chip can use the power of the radiowaves already in the air, negating the need for a battery...
That is exactly how RFID works. However, RFID fields are much stronger and the receiver is much closer.
The phone could probably use the power of the radiowaves in the air to do very low power things like perhaps change an e-ink display slightly. There is no way that there is enough energy to actually transmit a signal hundreds of meters.
I also bought the Nook Simple Touch Glow with the explicit intention of rooting it. I consider it one of the best purchases that I've made in my life, I use it daily for studing with Anki or browsing with Opera. However, being stuck on Android 2.1 is exceptionally limiting. I'm looking for any E-ink device that is capable of being rooted and running Android 2.3 or 4.x. Backlight prefered, of course!
Just went through this nonsense. Switch to Insightly. It's easy and it works better than the open source alternatives, plus you don't have to host it.
You are recommending an American hosted solution for someone to trust his business secrets to? You haven't been paying attention lately.
It doesn't really matter since there are only two videocard vendors now,...
There are only two operating systems in widespread use now, so I should go write my new software in .Net and Objective C/Cocoa? There is only one Office Producitivity software suite in widespread use now, so I should release documents in .docx format? There is only one web browser, so I should only test sites in IE and ignore the standards?
The more we entrench the already-entrenched mono/duopolies, the harder it will be to get out of that mess.
First they hide the feature. They they claim telemetry says nobody uses it. Then they take it away. (Never mind the fact that the sort of user who does use the feature either delays the upgrade, hacks around the limitation, and is likely to pre-emptively disable telemetry as a matter of course.)
What did you think that the telemetry was there for? Now you know. Stop disabling it if you want the features that you use to continue to be included.
GNOME has been doing it since the 2.0 release more than a decade ago. Microsoft has nothing on them.
I would like to take the chance to mention that I've moved almost an entire office from Windows to Kubuntu based on "little things" like an integrated system monitor that shows temp, the ability to set an arbitrary window as "always on top" and middle-click paste. I am so glad that I didn't move them to a Gnome-based distro now!
Microsoft grabs the top of the vending machine, and pulls.
That above is the last sentence before the "Expand this comment" text. I was so curious...
Here is a direct link to the map if you are wondering where you'll be the lightest :)
Where is the lowest spot?
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/22613/lowest-gravity-on-earths-surface