We all ridicule people who rely on security-through-obscurity. Incidents like this should make us take another look at that sentence: While we shouldn't rely on obscurity for protection, we shouldn't forget that it does help. Major platforms like WordPress are lucrative targets for hackers, who will spend a lot of energy searching for weaknesses they can exploit.
Using some lesser-known platform, or even rolling your own, makes you a less interesting target. Sure, you may (will!) have other vulnerabilities, but far fewer people will be hunting for them. This is a not-inconsiderable advantage.
At a nuclear test site, volatiles boil off and condense farther away from the center of the explosion. Fine.
However, this has basically zilch to do with the formation of the moon. *That* impact literally knocked the earth into pieces. Likely there really was no more "center" of the impact. Also, note the quality of the science reporting: "volatile elements, most notably water". Who knew that water was an element?
The actual article is basically only about isotope separation of Zinc, and admits repeatedly during its text that other "studies of volatile compounds, such as water or OH in lunar glasses, suggest that the Moon may have volatile element abundances approaching Earth’s upper mantle composition".
tl;dr: This paper looked at what happens to Zinc isotopes at the center of a nuclear explosion. Everything else is conjecture, which they openly admit is contradicted by other studies. TFA in New Scientist omits the contradictory evidence and builds conjectures on top of those conjectures, until what they say has almost nothing to do with the actual article.
Airbnb would like you to think it is all about people renting out their spare bedroom occasionally. You can find offers like that, but they're probably the minority.
This is about property owners trying to run a hotel in property that is not suited to that purpose. If you want to run a hotel, you need a building in a commercial zone, so you don't annoy the neighbor. The building also has to meet requirements, like fire regulations, so that it is safe for such high occupancy. By never having any fixed residents, landlords can also skirt rent-control regulations; they may also claim that they have simply been unable to rent the property (even though they don't actually want to), which may give them undeserved tax breaks, etc..
tl;dr: It's not about your spare bedroom. it's about slimeballs.
"I don't let lousy programmers touch my code. Problem solved."
Nice thought, but that's not real life. As a cynical estimate, at least half of the people working as programmers are lousy. Companies hire them, because they're cheap, or because the company can't find anyone better, or because the company has no clue about programmer quality. There's more code to write than there are good programmers to write them, and that's not going to change any time soon.
Goto: A way to enable lousy programmers to write impenetrable code. Are there extremely unusual circumstances, where a superstar might use a Goto in a good way? Yes, but the price - encouraging use by the incompetent - is not worth it.
Multiple inheritance: Middle ground. In a few circumstances useful, but the conceptual complexity is too high for many programmers. On the other hand, those will not be the ones designing your architecture. Mixed feelings about this one.
Recursion: Many algorithms can be implemented more cleanly with recursion than with iteration. If recursion were better supported, it would be more widely used. Unfortunately, the most widely used languages have poor implementations (C# and Java, to name two), making recursion horribly inefficient. Optimizing for tail-recursion is not hard (Scala does it on the JVM), so it's weird that this isn't done in all modern languages.
I haven't run any virus checker other than the one built-in to Windows for years now. They all catch old or obvious viruses. None of them is going to catch a new, clever virus. There's not a whole lot in the middle. Add in the virus-like behavior of the AV itself, the performance-suck of most of them, and it just doesn't make any sense to use them.
As another poster pointed out: user error is the biggest cause of virus infection. Train your users, use Windows Defender as a sort of "sanity check", make regular backups, and call it a day.
- Some building codes make sense. Some are just braindead stupid. Most, frankly, are arbitrary: varying from town to town, as often as not put into place by local building companies through friendly local politicians, trying to secure some competitive advantage. There's nothing particular special about them, and they can and should be taken with a large grain of common sense.
- Government inspections are graft: a way for the local government to levy yet another useless fee. In too many cases, the inspection is passed when the inspector finds the envelope with the money. Or maybe the general contractor is his drinking buddy. No home buyer should trust a government inspection to mean anything.
- Anyone buying a house *must* have it inspected by their own inspector. Even if the house is brand new (see the previous point). For an older home, you never know what has happened during the life of the building. On top of that, inspect the house yourself. Trust-but-verify.
- Finally, there's nothing particularly complicated about most construction work. Some of it is heavy work. some of it takes a bit of practice (plastering, gack). In most cases, the single most important point is using the right materials. Doing work yourself, you are likely to overspec. materials, whereas contractors often try to get away with the absolute minimum. The end result from a competent "amateur" may well be better than work by a professional. Then, if you have no choice, you can pay a licensed contractor to check your work and get the inspection done.
I have seen claptrap houses that passed inspection. The realtor didn't understand why I ran screaming. I have seen solid, well-built structures that failed, and failed, and failed until that magic envelope appeared.
Really, it ought to be simple: Force a company to hire someone already in the country, unless they can prove that no qualified person exists. For any sort of standard tech job, proving that should be basically impossible. For the people already in the country: When an existing work-visa (H1B or whatever) expires, renewing it requires the same proof.
Bringing wage-slaves into the country - people forced to work massive overtime for crap wages - must stop. It's a lousy situation for both the wage-slaves and for the displaced domestic workers.
This doesn't stop outsourcing to international companies - that's a separate issue.
- - - - -
So far, Trump is doing exactly what he promised in his campaign. Shocking, but true. More please.
"She fought the alt-right and won" - that is apparently her campaign slogan. That would also be news to the alt-right, that (a) didn't exist when GamerGate happened and (b) barely even knows she exists.
It's like saying: "she beat her fists against a brick wall - left blood flecks everywhere - she must've won".
This. I only use Windows for three things: gaming, the few times a year I have to use some Adobe product, and the few times a year LibreOffice cannot make sense of some xlsx or docx mess that I've been sent.
Sadly, Windows is still firmly entrenched in companies. This is unlikely to change any time soon.
"they are small, protestant, ethnically uniform countries"
Consider this for a moment, in two parts:
- Small: Less government power, closer to the citizens. You meet your government ministers on the train, in the local coffee shop, at the grocery store. Big countries could improve their situation by removing power from the central government and putting it in the hands of local government. Even better: break up big countries into smaller ones. The EU is an experiment in the wrong direction; Brexit is one country realizing that such a union is not in their national interest.
- Culturally uniform: This is one of the fundamental messages of the alt-right. People are inherently tribal. Let us finally recognize this and find the best ways to live with it, instead of trying to force multiculturalism to work. There is nothing inherently wrong with nationalism, cultural and ethnic uniformity. You have your culture in your country, and we will have our culture in ours. Friction happens when you mix two utterly incompatible cultures - refer to Sweden.
"why bother with hypotheticals, when you could easily have come up with all sorts of actual real-world examples?"
FATCA. Banks everywhere. 'nuff said...
The US can and does try to push its law into other countries, where is clearly has no jurisdiction. Sometimes it succeeds. The rest of the world is getting fed up with this. If the US does try to push this, European privacy laws could well be the hill that US influence dies on.
"5G is viewed as a technology that can support the developing Internet of Things (IOT) market, which refers to millions -- or potentially billions -- of internet-connected devices that are expected soon to come on to the market. "
This is not a feature. It's more likely a slow-moving, relentless catastrophe.
"What about if you have legal adult naked videos/pictures of yourself having sex with your wife? Do you want the teenage geek squad employee to look through those videos/pictures too? After all, he would need to look inside those videos/pictures if he wants to ascertain what they contain."
If your wife is cute, maybe he'll earn himself some extra money by uploading your private pics and videos to some porn sites. Won't that be fun!
Or, maybe you're young, and you have some racy pics of your wife or girlfriend from a couple of years ago. Was she underage when that pic was taken? No? Can you prove it? I'm sure you'll enjoy being investigated by the FBI, just because some Geek Squad member wanted to get his $500 bonus...
Greenpeace has lost all credibility. They are out for their own aggrandizement, and their primary goal is to perpetuate themselves. If they actually have any positive effect on environmental or conservation causes, it is entirely by accident.
I wonder, though: how many people surf with their sound on? Most people I see (granted, not a representative sample) either have headphones or have the sound off, so as not to disturb everyone around them. If I were surfing something via Tor, i.e., sensitive, then I'd be double sure not to have publicly audible sound.
The thing is: These arguments apply equally well to any and all financial information that the IRS receives. Why should your employer be forced to tell the IRS what they pay you? Why should your bank be forced to supply the IRS with account information? All of this is only because the IRS doesn't trust you, the individual taxpayer, to properly file your taxes. It is *all* in violation of the 4th amendment, as far as I can see.
It's clear that no one has learned anything from the 2008 financial crisis. There was all this talk of "too big to fail". In the end, that hasn't even been applied to the banking sector, but frankly, it applies to any company. Beyond a certain size, the existence of a huge company becomes arguably detrimental to society as a whole. Too much power, too much influence, too many subsidiaries that appear independent, but actually aren't, and can work together to influence markets.
Any organization* above size "X" should be forced to split or divest. We can discuss what size "X" is, but it is certainly far, far below $1 Trillion. Note that the largest banks in the world (which are certainly "too big") are only a quarter of that size.
* As a small-"L" libertarian: I think this limit should apply to governments as well. No government should be allowed revenue above a certain level - this would limit the scope of national governments and force power down to the local level.
Since most commenters have not read the legal reference, here is what it says:
"...the following are not infringements of copyright: (11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household, for such making imperceptible, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology."
That's pretty clear. They are allowed to make temporary changes to audio or video content during transmission for private home viewing, provided only that they are modifying an authorized copy.
It sounds to me (IANAL) like they have a very strong case.
Of course, their record keeping needs to be spotless, guaranteeing that they never sell more copies than they have in stock, and that any specific streaming instance can be traced to a specific authorized copy.
Let's not have more people on the dole, please. We need a better answer than that.
I remember, years ago, some African ambassador was touring government housing in the UK. I suppose he was supposed to be impressed that unemployed people got houses for free from the oh-so-generous government. His comment at the end of the tour was something like "How soul deadening, these people have no purpose in life. I'd rather be poor.". Coming from an African who knew what poverty was, it was a powerful indictment of social safety nets.
People need a purpose in life. If we are going to be displaced from our jobs, then we need a different purpose. Being freed from repetitive, menial labor should allow us to do something more meaningful. Just putting ever more listless people into a lifelong holding pattern is not the right answer.
I have seen this. Some of it has to do with CIOs wanting to make their mark. At one company that shall remain nameless, the new CIO outsourced all of the IT first-level support. I'm sure he saved money on paper, and got a nice bonus. He then quickly moved on, before the flood of user complaints. I mean, it's kind of hard to fix a loose network cable, when you are thousands of kilometers away. So the next CIO comes in and earns his bonus by improving user support - cancelling the remote support contract and hiring local people again.
It's not about being sensible, or even saving money. It's about ticking checkboxes and advancing CxO careers.
Fixing the copyright term would eliminate many problems: "...a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive".
Currently, there is so little music in the public domain that it's laughable. Copyright was enacted to protect and incentivize the people who produce artistic works, not to enrich the publishers, heirs and other non-productive entities. This is true all the way back to the original statute in England from 1710.
Imagine if all of the music, books, films, etc. through 1988 were in the public domain, along with and many of the works through 2002. What a different world it would be!
Causes of death are often complex, especially in older people, who may be suffering from a variety of issues simultaneously. Nonetheless, one underlying cause should not be overlooked: increasing obesity in the US drives a lot of other health issues.
Ok, I just answered my own question. This guy's article is so ignorant that I looked up his qualifications as a "technology correspondent". Here they are:
- News assistant at CNBC for 2 years
- Reporter for CNBC for 1 year
- Has a BA in English Literature, and as MA in Journalism
Yep, he's qualified to write about technology issues. Well, as well qualified as most journalists who do so, anyway... He clearly has deep qualification to prognosticate about financial issues as well./sarc
Slashdot Mirror
We all ridicule people who rely on security-through-obscurity. Incidents like this should make us take another look at that sentence: While we shouldn't rely on obscurity for protection, we shouldn't forget that it does help. Major platforms like WordPress are lucrative targets for hackers, who will spend a lot of energy searching for weaknesses they can exploit.
Using some lesser-known platform, or even rolling your own, makes you a less interesting target. Sure, you may (will!) have other vulnerabilities, but far fewer people will be hunting for them. This is a not-inconsiderable advantage.
At a nuclear test site, volatiles boil off and condense farther away from the center of the explosion. Fine.
However, this has basically zilch to do with the formation of the moon. *That* impact literally knocked the earth into pieces. Likely there really was no more "center" of the impact. Also, note the quality of the science reporting: "volatile elements, most notably water". Who knew that water was an element?
The actual article is basically only about isotope separation of Zinc, and admits repeatedly during its text that other "studies of volatile compounds, such as water or OH in lunar glasses, suggest that the Moon may have volatile element abundances approaching Earth’s upper mantle composition".
tl;dr: This paper looked at what happens to Zinc isotopes at the center of a nuclear explosion. Everything else is conjecture, which they openly admit is contradicted by other studies. TFA in New Scientist omits the contradictory evidence and builds conjectures on top of those conjectures, until what they say has almost nothing to do with the actual article.
Airbnb would like you to think it is all about people renting out their spare bedroom occasionally. You can find offers like that, but they're probably the minority.
This is about property owners trying to run a hotel in property that is not suited to that purpose. If you want to run a hotel, you need a building in a commercial zone, so you don't annoy the neighbor. The building also has to meet requirements, like fire regulations, so that it is safe for such high occupancy. By never having any fixed residents, landlords can also skirt rent-control regulations; they may also claim that they have simply been unable to rent the property (even though they don't actually want to), which may give them undeserved tax breaks, etc..
tl;dr: It's not about your spare bedroom. it's about slimeballs.
"I don't let lousy programmers touch my code. Problem solved."
Nice thought, but that's not real life. As a cynical estimate, at least half of the people working as programmers are lousy. Companies hire them, because they're cheap, or because the company can't find anyone better, or because the company has no clue about programmer quality. There's more code to write than there are good programmers to write them, and that's not going to change any time soon.
Goto: A way to enable lousy programmers to write impenetrable code. Are there extremely unusual circumstances, where a superstar might use a Goto in a good way? Yes, but the price - encouraging use by the incompetent - is not worth it.
Multiple inheritance: Middle ground. In a few circumstances useful, but the conceptual complexity is too high for many programmers. On the other hand, those will not be the ones designing your architecture. Mixed feelings about this one.
Recursion: Many algorithms can be implemented more cleanly with recursion than with iteration. If recursion were better supported, it would be more widely used. Unfortunately, the most widely used languages have poor implementations (C# and Java, to name two), making recursion horribly inefficient. Optimizing for tail-recursion is not hard (Scala does it on the JVM), so it's weird that this isn't done in all modern languages.
I haven't run any virus checker other than the one built-in to Windows for years now. They all catch old or obvious viruses. None of them is going to catch a new, clever virus. There's not a whole lot in the middle. Add in the virus-like behavior of the AV itself, the performance-suck of most of them, and it just doesn't make any sense to use them.
As another poster pointed out: user error is the biggest cause of virus infection. Train your users, use Windows Defender as a sort of "sanity check", make regular backups, and call it a day.
Call me a cynic, but...
- Some building codes make sense. Some are just braindead stupid. Most, frankly, are arbitrary: varying from town to town, as often as not put into place by local building companies through friendly local politicians, trying to secure some competitive advantage. There's nothing particular special about them, and they can and should be taken with a large grain of common sense.
- Government inspections are graft: a way for the local government to levy yet another useless fee. In too many cases, the inspection is passed when the inspector finds the envelope with the money. Or maybe the general contractor is his drinking buddy. No home buyer should trust a government inspection to mean anything.
- Anyone buying a house *must* have it inspected by their own inspector. Even if the house is brand new (see the previous point). For an older home, you never know what has happened during the life of the building. On top of that, inspect the house yourself. Trust-but-verify.
- Finally, there's nothing particularly complicated about most construction work. Some of it is heavy work. some of it takes a bit of practice (plastering, gack). In most cases, the single most important point is using the right materials. Doing work yourself, you are likely to overspec. materials, whereas contractors often try to get away with the absolute minimum. The end result from a competent "amateur" may well be better than work by a professional. Then, if you have no choice, you can pay a licensed contractor to check your work and get the inspection done.
I have seen claptrap houses that passed inspection. The realtor didn't understand why I ran screaming. I have seen solid, well-built structures that failed, and failed, and failed until that magic envelope appeared.
Really, it ought to be simple: Force a company to hire someone already in the country, unless they can prove that no qualified person exists. For any sort of standard tech job, proving that should be basically impossible. For the people already in the country: When an existing work-visa (H1B or whatever) expires, renewing it requires the same proof.
Bringing wage-slaves into the country - people forced to work massive overtime for crap wages - must stop. It's a lousy situation for both the wage-slaves and for the displaced domestic workers.
This doesn't stop outsourcing to international companies - that's a separate issue.
- - - - -
So far, Trump is doing exactly what he promised in his campaign. Shocking, but true. More please.
"She fought the alt-right and won" - that is apparently her campaign slogan. That would also be news to the alt-right, that (a) didn't exist when GamerGate happened and (b) barely even knows she exists.
It's like saying: "she beat her fists against a brick wall - left blood flecks everywhere - she must've won".
Following me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Three times? Really?
This. I only use Windows for three things: gaming, the few times a year I have to use some Adobe product, and the few times a year LibreOffice cannot make sense of some xlsx or docx mess that I've been sent.
Sadly, Windows is still firmly entrenched in companies. This is unlikely to change any time soon.
"they are small, protestant, ethnically uniform countries"
Consider this for a moment, in two parts:
- Small: Less government power, closer to the citizens. You meet your government ministers on the train, in the local coffee shop, at the grocery store. Big countries could improve their situation by removing power from the central government and putting it in the hands of local government. Even better: break up big countries into smaller ones. The EU is an experiment in the wrong direction; Brexit is one country realizing that such a union is not in their national interest.
- Culturally uniform: This is one of the fundamental messages of the alt-right. People are inherently tribal. Let us finally recognize this and find the best ways to live with it, instead of trying to force multiculturalism to work. There is nothing inherently wrong with nationalism, cultural and ethnic uniformity. You have your culture in your country, and we will have our culture in ours. Friction happens when you mix two utterly incompatible cultures - refer to Sweden.
"why bother with hypotheticals, when you could easily have come up with all sorts of actual real-world examples?"
FATCA. Banks everywhere. 'nuff said...
The US can and does try to push its law into other countries, where is clearly has no jurisdiction. Sometimes it succeeds. The rest of the world is getting fed up with this. If the US does try to push this, European privacy laws could well be the hill that US influence dies on.
"5G is viewed as a technology that can support the developing Internet of Things (IOT) market, which refers to millions -- or potentially billions -- of internet-connected devices that are expected soon to come on to the market. "
This is not a feature. It's more likely a slow-moving, relentless catastrophe.
"What about if you have legal adult naked videos/pictures of yourself having sex with your wife? Do you want the teenage geek squad employee to look through those videos/pictures too? After all, he would need to look inside those videos/pictures if he wants to ascertain what they contain."
If your wife is cute, maybe he'll earn himself some extra money by uploading your private pics and videos to some porn sites. Won't that be fun!
Or, maybe you're young, and you have some racy pics of your wife or girlfriend from a couple of years ago. Was she underage when that pic was taken? No? Can you prove it? I'm sure you'll enjoy being investigated by the FBI, just because some Geek Squad member wanted to get his $500 bonus...
Greenpeace has lost all credibility. They are out for their own aggrandizement, and their primary goal is to perpetuate themselves. If they actually have any positive effect on environmental or conservation causes, it is entirely by accident.
I wonder, though: how many people surf with their sound on? Most people I see (granted, not a representative sample) either have headphones or have the sound off, so as not to disturb everyone around them. If I were surfing something via Tor, i.e., sensitive, then I'd be double sure not to have publicly audible sound.
The thing is: These arguments apply equally well to any and all financial information that the IRS receives. Why should your employer be forced to tell the IRS what they pay you? Why should your bank be forced to supply the IRS with account information? All of this is only because the IRS doesn't trust you, the individual taxpayer, to properly file your taxes. It is *all* in violation of the 4th amendment, as far as I can see.
It's clear that no one has learned anything from the 2008 financial crisis. There was all this talk of "too big to fail". In the end, that hasn't even been applied to the banking sector, but frankly, it applies to any company. Beyond a certain size, the existence of a huge company becomes arguably detrimental to society as a whole. Too much power, too much influence, too many subsidiaries that appear independent, but actually aren't, and can work together to influence markets.
Any organization* above size "X" should be forced to split or divest. We can discuss what size "X" is, but it is certainly far, far below $1 Trillion. Note that the largest banks in the world (which are certainly "too big") are only a quarter of that size.
* As a small-"L" libertarian: I think this limit should apply to governments as well. No government should be allowed revenue above a certain level - this would limit the scope of national governments and force power down to the local level.
Since most commenters have not read the legal reference, here is what it says:
"...the following are not infringements of copyright: (11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household, for such making imperceptible, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology."
That's pretty clear. They are allowed to make temporary changes to audio or video content during transmission for private home viewing, provided only that they are modifying an authorized copy.
It sounds to me (IANAL) like they have a very strong case.
Of course, their record keeping needs to be spotless, guaranteeing that they never sell more copies than they have in stock, and that any specific streaming instance can be traced to a specific authorized copy.
Let's not have more people on the dole, please. We need a better answer than that.
I remember, years ago, some African ambassador was touring government housing in the UK. I suppose he was supposed to be impressed that unemployed people got houses for free from the oh-so-generous government. His comment at the end of the tour was something like "How soul deadening, these people have no purpose in life. I'd rather be poor.". Coming from an African who knew what poverty was, it was a powerful indictment of social safety nets.
People need a purpose in life. If we are going to be displaced from our jobs, then we need a different purpose. Being freed from repetitive, menial labor should allow us to do something more meaningful. Just putting ever more listless people into a lifelong holding pattern is not the right answer.
I have seen this. Some of it has to do with CIOs wanting to make their mark. At one company that shall remain nameless, the new CIO outsourced all of the IT first-level support. I'm sure he saved money on paper, and got a nice bonus. He then quickly moved on, before the flood of user complaints. I mean, it's kind of hard to fix a loose network cable, when you are thousands of kilometers away. So the next CIO comes in and earns his bonus by improving user support - cancelling the remote support contract and hiring local people again.
It's not about being sensible, or even saving money. It's about ticking checkboxes and advancing CxO careers.
Fixing the copyright term would eliminate many problems: "...a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive".
Currently, there is so little music in the public domain that it's laughable. Copyright was enacted to protect and incentivize the people who produce artistic works, not to enrich the publishers, heirs and other non-productive entities. This is true all the way back to the original statute in England from 1710.
Imagine if all of the music, books, films, etc. through 1988 were in the public domain, along with and many of the works through 2002. What a different world it would be!
Causes of death are often complex, especially in older people, who may be suffering from a variety of issues simultaneously. Nonetheless, one underlying cause should not be overlooked: increasing obesity in the US drives a lot of other health issues.
Ok, I just answered my own question. This guy's article is so ignorant that I looked up his qualifications as a "technology correspondent". Here they are:
- News assistant at CNBC for 2 years
- Reporter for CNBC for 1 year
- Has a BA in English Literature, and as MA in Journalism
Yep, he's qualified to write about technology issues. Well, as well qualified as most journalists who do so, anyway... He clearly has deep qualification to prognosticate about financial issues as well. /sarc