I've been using contactless payments for well over a decade now, and I love it. All buses, minibuses, trams, trains, ferries in Hong Kong take the contactless Octopus card for payment. No fuss with exact change (buses don't give change) or buying single ride tickets. Just swipe and move on, payment done in a fraction of a second. Use them for small payments in convenience stores and supermarkets, vending machines, etc. Many car parks are Octopus-only even.
I have also never heard about any (large scale) fraud with these cards. I really don't know the ins and outs on how fraud is prevented, but obviously it works well. These cards were introduced some 20 years ago and pretty much everyone has one. There have been several technology upgrades which all have been seamless from the user pov.
So I really can't say they're dumb. They're awesome. Wouldn't want it otherwise, it's just too big a big PITA to have to deal with all those small payments in cash.
FBI asking Apple to provide them with a signed OS image which allows unrestricted brute force guesses of the password/pin code on a single phone. This is very different from building a backdoor into encryption so that it can be reversed without knowing the password.
The reality of import is vast majority of users have device passwords unable to withstand brute force attack.
Correct - that will be 100% of them. Can't even call it "vast majority" as it's "all of them".
No password is able to withstand a brute force attack longer than the encryption key itself: even a 1024-bit key (considered rather weak I believe in modern day standards) would translate to 146 ASCII characters (7-bit - being generous here, as that'd require 128 different letters/digits/punctuations), or even 171 characters (6-bit, more realistic for letters+digits+punctuation). That's how long your password has to be to make it as strong and hard to brute force as the original key; and on top of that it should be totally random, not made out of existing words or with any pattern in it.
Most phones will have a 4-digit or 6-digit PIN, only digits. Some users may use a simple password (4-6 characters) but it's quickly getting tedious if you have to enter it 100 times a day. Yet others will use a swipe along 9 dots or so, I guess about as many options as a 4-digit PIN, made less secure due to possibly detectable traces on the screen.
That's why other measures have to be taken to stop brute force attacks on these passwords, like delays between attempts and completely wiping the key after a number of failed attempts. That's exactly what Apple has implemented. Otherwise a 4-digit PIN can be guessed in less than 10,000 tries; likely done in a fraction of a second if no countermeasures are taken. A 6-digit PIN a little longer. Your 4-6-digit PIN on your bank card is considered secure, because the bank will block your account after three failed attempts (a chance of about 3 in 1,110,000 to guess it right if you happen to find a card)
Instead of engaging them in a shoot-out (which is rather dangerous for the cops involved, too), how about a good old siege? Let's see who has enough patience, those two criminals or the police who is working shift duty. Let's see who gets hungry and thirsty first, those locked up in a house without any supplies (disconnected water, electricity, gas) or those who go home after an 8-hour shift and are provided meals on a regular basis. Won't take longer than a week I guess, unless they really prepared the place for such a siege.
They were religious enough to start killing a bunch of people; they're probably religious enough to not kill themselves and go to hell, but wanting to be killed and become martyrs and go to heaven or however it's called in Islam.
As it's including all repairs and fuel, it's pretty competitive to petrol based cars.
That's even before going into all the additional benefits like the rather cool and off-beat looks making it a talking piece, the zero-emission part (besides being an obvious environmental benefit it's an issue in certain cities that have pollution taxes or severe restrictions on emissions), and the fact that you can brag about having something very special that no-one else has.
I think that 0.9 liter is the petrol equivalent of the hydrogen, as normally those fuel efficiencies are given based on hydrocarbon fuels.
Part of the problem is that 0.9 liters of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure and room temperature has far, far less energy density than 0.9 liters of liquid (and cold) hydrogen, which still has far, far less energy density than conventional petrol or diesel fuels.
Specific density of hydrogen is 0.07 kg/l. So 1.5 kg of hydrogen is a 22-liter tank, excluding the very thick padding needed for isolation and to take the pressure.
In comparison, a typical petrol car has a 40-80 liter tank, with negligible padding (usually a rubber bladder inside a sheet metal tank). So that one hydrogen tank is about the size of the normal fuel tank of a compact car. Seeing the size of the vehicle on the images (RTFA if you're curious) there won't be space for a much bigger tank, let alone a second one, without adding a trailer or so to it.
As they have the hardware on hand, I'm quite sure there will be a way to take the memory chip out, maybe even go as far as disassembling it, copy the contents, and then you have as many times ten attempts as you need.
Sure it ain't easy, but that wasn't the question either. They just want access, and are obviously quite desperate to get it.
The alternative of course, as you said, is to have some system of citizen registration. "Show an ID where the ID is not copied or recorded"... even before computers were prevalent (making forgeries a far more trivial matter) documents and papers have been faked... with ease. You seem to actually want the government to regulate what is accessible online via a registered database of individuals?!
Thank you for not only confirming my point, but also confirming your own terrible reading comprehension.
Indeed I can't think of a working way of online age confirmation that is as reliable yet as anonymous as looking at faces of people walking into your bar, as that's what would be needed before even starting to think of actually implementing such age requirements.
Part of parenting is letting go. Having some basic restrictions in place in society is part of that.
Or would you also argue to lift any age restrictions on things like driving, so parents can send their kids for driving lessons the moment they've grown tall enough to look over the dashboard?
I don't know where ever I said that I wanted the government do the checking. Read again. The government only comes in play where it comes to verifying information, the checking itself as I describe it is done by the various companies.
Disagree. A parent can't always hover over their children - heck, a parent shouldn't. I'm happy my 9-yo is finally able to get home from school by himself (one stop on the train and a 15-minute walk), very good for his self-confidence. What he's doing out there exactly, I can't tell, but I do trust him to not start smoking, drinking, etc, and to otherwise stay out of trouble.
There are plenty of other places where age checks are in place, such as bars, amusement centres (for playing computer games), casinos, liquor shops, etc. Those checks are done usually by someone sitting at the door and looking at your face, and asking for proof of age if you look too young. Sure, it's imperfect, but it does put a bit of a brake on under age drinking without parental knowledge and other stuff.
Internet should be similar, but the big problem is how those age checks could possibly be done without serious privacy invasion. The real-life checks are highly anonymous. You look too young, you're out. You look old enough, you're in. You think you're old enough but look too young, show an ID, and you're in - where the ID is not copied or recorded or so. It doesn't work like that online. Everyone can lie about their age (click the "I'm over 18 and it's legal to watch this crap in my neck of the woods" button) when it's totally anonymous. So probably a login of sorts is required, and even so there is no way to check one's age without extensive personal details and cross checking them with official government records - and even so, how can you see whether those personal details belong to the person providing them?
It still is, when it comes to a patent application. File patent > get it awarded > success. File patent > get it rejected > fail.
Now whether you can make a successful business around it, well, that's a next step. You can't always predict whether something patentable is also sellable.
Even if listening for voice commands, it is NOT supposed to send recordings to third parties (may or may not be reasonable for interpretation of the voice command), who then store it (I don't see any reason for this).
There are heaps of exceptions. Robots in factories putting all kinds of products together: a simple thing, done by robots much better than humans (who are far as accurate, and tend to get bored doing the same thing over and over again). The automated trucks moving containers around the port of Rotterdam, and doing this for decades already more reliably than people would. Pretty difficult tasks for humans, requiring high accuracy, and are highly data-driven.
That doesn't make them replace people altogether. I don't see many robots replacing people that have to interact with other people, such as sales clerks or even the order desks at drive-in restaurants. Simple tasks for humans, yet without well defined data inputs and requiring little accuracy other than just getting the order right. Placement of the food on the tray can be rather arbitrary.
I for one would not be happy being completely unemployed, with nothing on my hands. Sitting home all day? Boring. Hiking every day? Beautiful countryside but not for every day. I need a bit more of a challenge. Some problem to solve, goals to work towards, other people to interact with. There surely may be people happy to sit on the sofa all day watching TV until they die, but not me, and I believe most people wouldn't want that. Your house quickly becomes your prison.
From what I understand, the diary as published wasn't written by Anne but by her father largely/loosely based on her diary.
Your understanding is incorrect. There are two versions of the diary in Anne Frank's own handwriting - her original, and a more polished version she edited with a view to post-war publication.
That can never have happened, as Anne didn't even survive the war. She died in Feb or Mar '45 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That was her father doing the edits.
I remember the PGP part, not the Netscape part (while I'm from the Mosaic era).
Indeed getting your hands on full-on PGP was hard, only the shorter-key version of PGP was readily available for me in Europe. Netscape however I don't recall any issues getting the latest versions of.
You gave a bad example. Twitter is a service that is still trying to establish a real revenue stream.
After all those years it's operating, and a $28 bln IPO, it's still searching for a way to make money. And you say it's a BAD example of an overvalued company?
That's much more than my household is using now (about 350-400 kWh/month for the past two months; it's a cold winter). Yearly average is more like 300 kWh/month. That's like 100 kWh per person per month. Another 200 kWh/month left for use elsewhere: trains, restaurants used, office, school, etc.
Developed country; lights; TV; computers; washing machine; fridge; heating, water heater for shower; aircon - all electric.
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I've been using contactless payments for well over a decade now, and I love it. All buses, minibuses, trams, trains, ferries in Hong Kong take the contactless Octopus card for payment. No fuss with exact change (buses don't give change) or buying single ride tickets. Just swipe and move on, payment done in a fraction of a second. Use them for small payments in convenience stores and supermarkets, vending machines, etc. Many car parks are Octopus-only even.
I have also never heard about any (large scale) fraud with these cards. I really don't know the ins and outs on how fraud is prevented, but obviously it works well. These cards were introduced some 20 years ago and pretty much everyone has one. There have been several technology upgrades which all have been seamless from the user pov.
So I really can't say they're dumb. They're awesome. Wouldn't want it otherwise, it's just too big a big PITA to have to deal with all those small payments in cash.
FBI asking Apple to provide them with a signed OS image which allows unrestricted brute force guesses of the password/pin code on a single phone. This is very different from building a backdoor into encryption so that it can be reversed without knowing the password.
The reality of import is vast majority of users have device passwords unable to withstand brute force attack.
Correct - that will be 100% of them. Can't even call it "vast majority" as it's "all of them".
No password is able to withstand a brute force attack longer than the encryption key itself: even a 1024-bit key (considered rather weak I believe in modern day standards) would translate to 146 ASCII characters (7-bit - being generous here, as that'd require 128 different letters/digits/punctuations), or even 171 characters (6-bit, more realistic for letters+digits+punctuation). That's how long your password has to be to make it as strong and hard to brute force as the original key; and on top of that it should be totally random, not made out of existing words or with any pattern in it.
Most phones will have a 4-digit or 6-digit PIN, only digits. Some users may use a simple password (4-6 characters) but it's quickly getting tedious if you have to enter it 100 times a day. Yet others will use a swipe along 9 dots or so, I guess about as many options as a 4-digit PIN, made less secure due to possibly detectable traces on the screen.
That's why other measures have to be taken to stop brute force attacks on these passwords, like delays between attempts and completely wiping the key after a number of failed attempts. That's exactly what Apple has implemented. Otherwise a 4-digit PIN can be guessed in less than 10,000 tries; likely done in a fraction of a second if no countermeasures are taken. A 6-digit PIN a little longer. Your 4-6-digit PIN on your bank card is considered secure, because the bank will block your account after three failed attempts (a chance of about 3 in 1,110,000 to guess it right if you happen to find a card)
Instead of engaging them in a shoot-out (which is rather dangerous for the cops involved, too), how about a good old siege? Let's see who has enough patience, those two criminals or the police who is working shift duty. Let's see who gets hungry and thirsty first, those locked up in a house without any supplies (disconnected water, electricity, gas) or those who go home after an 8-hour shift and are provided meals on a regular basis. Won't take longer than a week I guess, unless they really prepared the place for such a siege.
They were religious enough to start killing a bunch of people; they're probably religious enough to not kill themselves and go to hell, but wanting to be killed and become martyrs and go to heaven or however it's called in Islam.
As it's including all repairs and fuel, it's pretty competitive to petrol based cars.
That's even before going into all the additional benefits like the rather cool and off-beat looks making it a talking piece, the zero-emission part (besides being an obvious environmental benefit it's an issue in certain cities that have pollution taxes or severe restrictions on emissions), and the fact that you can brag about having something very special that no-one else has.
I think that 0.9 liter is the petrol equivalent of the hydrogen, as normally those fuel efficiencies are given based on hydrocarbon fuels.
Part of the problem is that 0.9 liters of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure and room temperature has far, far less energy density than 0.9 liters of liquid (and cold) hydrogen, which still has far, far less energy density than conventional petrol or diesel fuels.
Specific density of hydrogen is 0.07 kg/l. So 1.5 kg of hydrogen is a 22-liter tank, excluding the very thick padding needed for isolation and to take the pressure.
In comparison, a typical petrol car has a 40-80 liter tank, with negligible padding (usually a rubber bladder inside a sheet metal tank). So that one hydrogen tank is about the size of the normal fuel tank of a compact car. Seeing the size of the vehicle on the images (RTFA if you're curious) there won't be space for a much bigger tank, let alone a second one, without adding a trailer or so to it.
This allows the keychain to be restored only to the same device from which it originated
Sucks if you lose your device. Or it physically breaks.
Two of the main reasons you'd want to keep a backup in the first place.
As they have the hardware on hand, I'm quite sure there will be a way to take the memory chip out, maybe even go as far as disassembling it, copy the contents, and then you have as many times ten attempts as you need.
Sure it ain't easy, but that wasn't the question either. They just want access, and are obviously quite desperate to get it.
The alternative of course, as you said, is to have some system of citizen registration. "Show an ID where the ID is not copied or recorded"... even before computers were prevalent (making forgeries a far more trivial matter) documents and papers have been faked... with ease. You seem to actually want the government to regulate what is accessible online via a registered database of individuals?!
Thank you for not only confirming my point, but also confirming your own terrible reading comprehension.
Indeed I can't think of a working way of online age confirmation that is as reliable yet as anonymous as looking at faces of people walking into your bar, as that's what would be needed before even starting to think of actually implementing such age requirements.
Part of parenting is letting go. Having some basic restrictions in place in society is part of that.
Or would you also argue to lift any age restrictions on things like driving, so parents can send their kids for driving lessons the moment they've grown tall enough to look over the dashboard?
So, instead, you suggest me to become a helicopter parent and never leave the kid out of sight until they turn 18 or so?
I don't know where ever I said that I wanted the government do the checking. Read again. The government only comes in play where it comes to verifying information, the checking itself as I describe it is done by the various companies.
Disagree. A parent can't always hover over their children - heck, a parent shouldn't. I'm happy my 9-yo is finally able to get home from school by himself (one stop on the train and a 15-minute walk), very good for his self-confidence. What he's doing out there exactly, I can't tell, but I do trust him to not start smoking, drinking, etc, and to otherwise stay out of trouble.
There are plenty of other places where age checks are in place, such as bars, amusement centres (for playing computer games), casinos, liquor shops, etc. Those checks are done usually by someone sitting at the door and looking at your face, and asking for proof of age if you look too young. Sure, it's imperfect, but it does put a bit of a brake on under age drinking without parental knowledge and other stuff.
Internet should be similar, but the big problem is how those age checks could possibly be done without serious privacy invasion. The real-life checks are highly anonymous. You look too young, you're out. You look old enough, you're in. You think you're old enough but look too young, show an ID, and you're in - where the ID is not copied or recorded or so. It doesn't work like that online. Everyone can lie about their age (click the "I'm over 18 and it's legal to watch this crap in my neck of the woods" button) when it's totally anonymous. So probably a login of sorts is required, and even so there is no way to check one's age without extensive personal details and cross checking them with official government records - and even so, how can you see whether those personal details belong to the person providing them?
It still is, when it comes to a patent application. File patent > get it awarded > success. File patent > get it rejected > fail.
Now whether you can make a successful business around it, well, that's a next step. You can't always predict whether something patentable is also sellable.
If the patent has been awarded, that's a success, not a failure.
Now whether any future product line based on this patent may be economically viable is a whole different issue, and not the one at stake here.
Which is why, without even looking at the patent, I'm sure it's not about stacking blocks.
Even if listening for voice commands, it is NOT supposed to send recordings to third parties (may or may not be reasonable for interpretation of the voice command), who then store it (I don't see any reason for this).
There are heaps of exceptions. Robots in factories putting all kinds of products together: a simple thing, done by robots much better than humans (who are far as accurate, and tend to get bored doing the same thing over and over again). The automated trucks moving containers around the port of Rotterdam, and doing this for decades already more reliably than people would. Pretty difficult tasks for humans, requiring high accuracy, and are highly data-driven.
That doesn't make them replace people altogether. I don't see many robots replacing people that have to interact with other people, such as sales clerks or even the order desks at drive-in restaurants. Simple tasks for humans, yet without well defined data inputs and requiring little accuracy other than just getting the order right. Placement of the food on the tray can be rather arbitrary.
I for one would not be happy being completely unemployed, with nothing on my hands. Sitting home all day? Boring. Hiking every day? Beautiful countryside but not for every day. I need a bit more of a challenge. Some problem to solve, goals to work towards, other people to interact with. There surely may be people happy to sit on the sofa all day watching TV until they die, but not me, and I believe most people wouldn't want that. Your house quickly becomes your prison.
She most likely doesn't have a coffin... it's not known when exactly she died, or where she's buried, which is probably in a mass grave.
I hope you do realise that neither of those versions is original. They are translations.
From what I understand, the diary as published wasn't written by Anne but by her father largely/loosely based on her diary.
Your understanding is incorrect. There are two versions of the diary in Anne Frank's own handwriting - her original, and a more polished version she edited with a view to post-war publication.
That can never have happened, as Anne didn't even survive the war. She died in Feb or Mar '45 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That was her father doing the edits.
I remember the PGP part, not the Netscape part (while I'm from the Mosaic era).
Indeed getting your hands on full-on PGP was hard, only the shorter-key version of PGP was readily available for me in Europe. Netscape however I don't recall any issues getting the latest versions of.
OK that's cheaper indeed. But it's for sure not ad free!
You gave a bad example. Twitter is a service that is still trying to establish a real revenue stream.
After all those years it's operating, and a $28 bln IPO, it's still searching for a way to make money. And you say it's a BAD example of an overvalued company?
Translates to about 330 kWh/month per person.
That's much more than my household is using now (about 350-400 kWh/month for the past two months; it's a cold winter). Yearly average is more like 300 kWh/month. That's like 100 kWh per person per month. Another 200 kWh/month left for use elsewhere: trains, restaurants used, office, school, etc.
Developed country; lights; TV; computers; washing machine; fridge; heating, water heater for shower; aircon - all electric.