Until now the stories about the Investigatory Powers Bill have been hard to gauge as the bill was not published, but now it is.
The Slashdot title, "Internet Firms To Be Banned From Offering Unbreakable Encryption Under New UK Laws" looks to be wrong or at least misleading. The relevant part of the bill states:
62....
b. RIPA requires CSPs to provide communications data when served with a notice, to assist in giving effect to interception warrants, and to maintain permanent interception capabilities, including maintaining the ability to remove any encryption applied by the CSP to whom the notice relates.
63....The draft Bill will not impose any additional requirements in relation to encryption over and above the existing obligations in RIPA....
So Communications Service Providers can have strong encryption, as long as they keep the key and hand it over when required as they are required already by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The horse has already bolted.
Looking at some of the powers in the Investigatory powers bill reminds me strongly of the GCHQ's Tempora project and other capabilities. Snowden's whistle blowing has created a lot of debate and the main response by politicians seems to be to codify these once secret programs into law with barely a nod to oversight.
“I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'."
Oh for mod points. I've had a bucket load for the last few days and when I at last see a good post needing some mods points, they vanish.
I program all the time and do very little with numbers other than counting. However as others have already said computer languages are actually maths. The problem solving, logic puzzle, abstraction part of maths. Well explained mx+b!
What is not clear from the summary and the Climate Feedback tool website is that they are using the hypothes.is platform to allow the annotation of website. It sounds a good use of hypothesis, having experts in the field of the article to fact check. It goes both ways.
I found the "Elderwood Framework" document interesting. A number of different hacker groups, including Black Vine had access to a surprisingly high number of zero day exploits. Looking at the primary targets defence, aeronautics, engineering, energy in the US and NGOs in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, it makes sense that it is Chinese backed.
All the zero day exploits were IE, Flash and one Windows (XML core services).
Yeah the six people probably died from Vitamin D deficiency, in England we don't get enough sun light and street lamps were installed to combat rickets. Looks like night time will be as gloomy as the day in England now, sigh.
The debate has been ongoing for decades over how much street lamps reduce crime and vehicle accidents. My feelings are that they help a little in both these aspects of safety but not by much. When you consider the ongoing costs of electricity and other improvements that could have been made, street lights are not worth it.
After quickly reviewing the evidence I may have to change my opinion, slightly. This Swedish metanalysisfound that the 13 studies (8 American and 5 British), taken together,
showed that improved lighting led to a significant 21% decrease in crime in experimental areas compared with comparable control areas.
Dammit as a self described sceptic I will have to change my mind, but wait.
Since these studies did not find that nighttime crimes decreased more than daytime crimes
Yes the crime dropped, but for the studies which measured both day and night crime, both dropped by similar amounts. This suggests either the control areas are somehow different in some other way or more likely that street lamps give a perception of improvement and a more upmarket neighbourhood.
As a fan of the night sky and I find it unnatural to live in an orange glow, moon light is far more romantic I stand by my opinion that street lights should be concentrated in city centres, leave everywhere else dark.
Websites have disabled autocomplete on password fields to prevent browser bases password managers from working. In response to this many browsers ignore autocomplete=off on password fields. I ran into this behaviour on a user administration screen, the browser was trying to fill in my password into the other users password field. I could not stop the browser from autofilling in the wrong password.
Steve started critiquing the layout on a purely esthetic basis. "That part's really pretty", he proclaimed. "But look at the memory chips. That's ugly. The lines are too close together".
I don't know the government subsidy/tax credit, what is the law in Texas regarding wind power? Is there any real subsidy? The site being built is the Shannon Wind Project.
Yeah. it's a bit like one of those 'lazy' people who drive everywhere, and you think, "Hey it would have been easier walking to the end of the drive and back".
I like many other people are forced to work in JavaScript. It's not too bad a language if you are careful but it would be nice to have some choose when working with webpages.While at first it will be all JS they plan to expand WebAssembly to other languages which could be compiled to the bytecode. Hurrah!
I now use NiMH AA batteries for almost everything, with the low discharge varieties like Eneloop/Panasonic I see no reason to use alkaline batteries which are, in the long term, more expensive and less environmentally friendly. However every so often I find a device which does not like NiMH batteries, presumable because they expect a voltage higher than 1.2V. If so this device could boost the voltage to 1.5V meaning I could use rechargeable batteries for everything.
An interesting programme I watched was "Horizon: Is Your Brain Male or Female?". The title is a bit crap but some of the experiments were interesting, like the observation that Barbary macaques seemed to be drawn to toys along gender lines. The boys going for the cars while the female macaques preferring the dolls.
The most interesting experiment, I thought, was when they observed how adults treated babies. For instance they tended to treat the boys as more robust pushing them more in physical environments while being gentler with the girls. They dressed up the babies as boys or girls so the same child was treated differently when presented as a different gender.
I guess the general outcome was that it is a bit of both nurture and nature, as pretty much any complex thing is. My thought is that culture is the overriding factor, different cultures or times can choose whether a profession like nursing is "for" men or women.
Slashdot Mirror
With current technology, there's no way any cars can be totally automatically operated on any of the roads in all situations.
The same is true for manually operated vehicles as well.
Until now the stories about the Investigatory Powers Bill have been hard to gauge as the bill was not published, but now it is.
The Slashdot title, "Internet Firms To Be Banned From Offering Unbreakable Encryption Under New UK Laws" looks to be wrong or at least misleading. The relevant part of the bill states:
So Communications Service Providers can have strong encryption, as long as they keep the key and hand it over when required as they are required already by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The horse has already bolted.
Looking at some of the powers in the Investigatory powers bill reminds me strongly of the GCHQ's Tempora project and other capabilities. Snowden's whistle blowing has created a lot of debate and the main response by politicians seems to be to codify these once secret programs into law with barely a nod to oversight.
Don't be silly. Of course GCHQ etc won't officially hack British MP's but I'm sure the NSA and friends can lend a helping hand, and vice versa.
What are crippling speeds? Do Apple services run so fast that users can't manage and Australian Telcos cannot cope?
“I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'."
[Lobachevsky]”
Tom Lehrer
Oh for mod points. I've had a bucket load for the last few days and when I at last see a good post needing some mods points, they vanish.
I program all the time and do very little with numbers other than counting. However as others have already said computer languages are actually maths. The problem solving, logic puzzle, abstraction part of maths.
Well explained mx+b!
What is not clear from the summary and the Climate Feedback tool website is that they are using the hypothes.is platform to allow the annotation of website. It sounds a good use of hypothesis, having experts in the field of the article to fact check. It goes both ways.
I found the "Elderwood Framework" document interesting. A number of different hacker groups, including Black Vine had access to a surprisingly high number of zero day exploits. Looking at the primary targets defence, aeronautics, engineering, energy in the US and NGOs in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, it makes sense that it is Chinese backed.
All the zero day exploits were IE, Flash and one Windows (XML core services).
Yeah the six people probably died from Vitamin D deficiency, in England we don't get enough sun light and street lamps were installed to combat rickets. Looks like night time will be as gloomy as the day in England now, sigh.
After quickly reviewing the evidence I may have to change my opinion, slightly. This Swedish metanalysisfound that the 13 studies (8 American and 5 British), taken together,
Dammit as a self described sceptic I will have to change my mind, but wait.
Yes the crime dropped, but for the studies which measured both day and night crime, both dropped by similar amounts. This suggests either the control areas are somehow different in some other way or more likely that street lamps give a perception of improvement and a more upmarket neighbourhood.
As a fan of the night sky and I find it unnatural to live in an orange glow, moon light is far more romantic I stand by my opinion that street lights should be concentrated in city centres, leave everywhere else dark.
Websites have disabled autocomplete on password fields to prevent browser bases password managers from working. In response to this many browsers ignore autocomplete=off on password fields. I ran into this behaviour on a user administration screen, the browser was trying to fill in my password into the other users password field. I could not stop the browser from autofilling in the wrong password.
It is a shame it isn't 60% of solar output, I was looking forward to "room temperature" superconductors.
I don't know the government subsidy/tax credit, what is the law in Texas regarding wind power? Is there any real subsidy? The site being built is the Shannon Wind Project.
Easy, wait till Windows 10. It's free!
Did you say NSA appliance? Well there is your problem.
Yeah. it's a bit like one of those 'lazy' people who drive everywhere, and you think, "Hey it would have been easier walking to the end of the drive and back".
I guess it is important to the results. We need the experiment repeated on a range of hardware to see if it effects the results.
The night is worse, have you seen how many radio sources are in the night sky?
One of the defining feature of a non-beginner programmers is that they don't read Dice articles to find out anything about computer languages.
Of course Bruce would say that. He's obviously been hacked and is trying to deflect the blame onto the NSA.
I like many other people are forced to work in JavaScript. It's not too bad a language if you are careful but it would be nice to have some choose when working with webpages.While at first it will be all JS they plan to expand WebAssembly to other languages which could be compiled to the bytecode. Hurrah!
I now use NiMH AA batteries for almost everything, with the low discharge varieties like Eneloop/Panasonic I see no reason to use alkaline batteries which are, in the long term, more expensive and less environmentally friendly. However every so often I find a device which does not like NiMH batteries, presumable because they expect a voltage higher than 1.2V. If so this device could boost the voltage to 1.5V meaning I could use rechargeable batteries for everything.
An interesting programme I watched was "Horizon: Is Your Brain Male or Female?". The title is a bit crap but some of the experiments were interesting, like the observation that Barbary macaques seemed to be drawn to toys along gender lines. The boys going for the cars while the female macaques preferring the dolls.
The most interesting experiment, I thought, was when they observed how adults treated babies. For instance they tended to treat the boys as more robust pushing them more in physical environments while being gentler with the girls. They dressed up the babies as boys or girls so the same child was treated differently when presented as a different gender.
I guess the general outcome was that it is a bit of both nurture and nature, as pretty much any complex thing is. My thought is that culture is the overriding factor, different cultures or times can choose whether a profession like nursing is "for" men or women.