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  1. Re:Something is wrong here on Can Computerized Brain Training Prevent Dementia? (newyorker.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, they did. The 10 years was in 2014, this conference presentation appears to be after a couple years follow-up work to see the results of refresher training.

    https://www.nia.nih.gov/newsro...

  2. Re:Manifest destiny. on Can Computerized Brain Training Prevent Dementia? (newyorker.com) · · Score: 1

    Now it's IQ, which coincidentally is affected by class and race, but clearly society is/was IQ-based so better IQ must mean better person, right?

    Yeah I often wonder where they will run to next once there's a gene therapy to activate IQ related gene expression in the brain, for the tiny sliver of IQ for which it is worth. Next thing you know it'll be golf scores.

  3. Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse on Clinton Campaign: Russia Leaked Emails to Help Trump (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 2

    so it's probably a pretty good move to go to work for the government there.

    Well, unless you are the poor guy ordered by Putin to find the master crypto key to the Internet or get sent to Siberia.

  4. Re:It's one study... on Can Computerized Brain Training Prevent Dementia? (newyorker.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wait for independent duplication

    Well, the study took 10 years, so hopefully there are others going on in parallel. Because that's some pretty slow progress on a real bane of a problem.

  5. Re:Compiled languages on The Slashdot Interview With Larry Wall · · Score: 2

    Perl 6 aims to be a compiled language and in large part already is -- just, the compiler needs a lot of work to catch up to more established languages. There is still the ability to compile Perl 6 code from a Perl 6 program which could be interpreted as interpretation, but most people won't be doing that.

    The compiler already does a fair amount of compile-time bug detection. Best way to know more is to play with it.

  6. Re:Perl 6 is a thing? on The Slashdot Interview With Larry Wall · · Score: 2

    A "release" was made, by which it is meant that there is a contract between the
    developers and the users: the developers will not break things that are tested
    for and currently pass in the test suite until the next version, and for the most part
    any changes to the test suite (and thus, behavior) in that next version have to
    be well justified, documented in release notes, etc.

    Also, a lot of features work and as a whole the language is very usable.

    If you'd been playing with Perl 6 before this, there was a *lot* of very frequent
    and sometimes drastic churn which would require tweaks to scripts or modules
    you'd written. This required a lot of patience by those working in that environment,
    so it was not suitable to declare Perl 6 open for business at that time.

    Now, if you're really worried about not having to edit something after an
    upgrade, you can check to see if the behaviors used are bound by that
    contract by finding examples of their use in the test suite.

  7. Eventually. on Slashdot Asks: Would You Eat Lab-Grown Meat? (dmarge.com) · · Score: 1

    At fIrst I'd only eat a bit here and there and let other people pig out on it for a few years so they come down with any issues first.
    (I've already pulled by weight as guinea pig by over-consuming artificial sweeteners)

  8. Re:no end-to-end no streaming media on UK Gov Says New Home Sec Will Have Powers To Ban End-to-end Encryption (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 4, Informative

    YMMV. It depends on the application and the implementation.

    Modern Apple and Microsoft dot1x supplicants do pin on first use, but the only consequence of that is if someone spoofs a cert, the user gets a popup, and how they react to that depends on their training.

    Android dot1x supplicants won't, and won't even allow you to pin a particular CA to limit exposure when using a public CA, nor even check the DN, so you are vulnerable to any old stolen key/certificate pair signed by a CA in the base OS trusted list.

    If you set it up by hand, wpa-supplicant for Linux has the ability to pin either a particular cert or a CA/DN. Various GUI config tools may or may not support setting these options.

    For IPSEC VPN, Windows supplicants cannot pin a CA/DN unless you use EAP-PEAP-MSCHAPv2 either for L2TP/IKEv1 or as the auth protocol in IKEv2, and it must be pinned manually or through a setup/install script. If you use EAP-MSCHAPv2/IKEv2 there is a check that DNS matches the DN, but that's not much extra security if your OS store includes a compromised CA, and Windows also cannot support DH groups higher than modp2048 in a RAS dialer, only in the decidedly user-unfriendly firewall policy feature set. Some 3rd-party VPN clients improve things slightly but often still play it loose with the store/validation. If installed through a mobileconfig, OSX and IOS do support locking things down, I think... that's next on my list of things to kick the tires on. Strongswan on linux pretty much kicks ass, once you've patched it up past the oopsie they had with the EAP state machine, but again, not an end-user-friendly animal so you are at the mercy of GUI tools to not be setting things up wrong.

    The whole crypto landscape is a bit of a mess on the client side... the above doesn't really scratch the surface.

  9. Re:no end-to-end no streaming media on UK Gov Says New Home Sec Will Have Powers To Ban End-to-end Encryption (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    There's no reason to use a CA

    Er, Verisign and a lot of other big "private" certificate authorities have been hacked years ago.

    What part of "no reason to use a CA" was hard to understand?

    CAs are only there for convenience. Anyone willing to go through the proper steps do not need a CA to set up crypto, just either an offline way to exchange seed material, or some communication channel that they know cannot be interfered with by snoopers plus a secure key exchange protocol. Note, that is "interfered" as in you'd need write access to attack it. It does not matter if the channel can be eavesdropped.

  10. Re:It is on the public on How Technology Disrupted the Truth (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Being able to mislead is a skill which is sometimes needed in some of the roles politicians play. Doing it all the time, for the wrong reasons, or to great detriment to the public is of course undesirable, but being either bad at it, or too honest, is something that will turn off voters that actually want you to trick the villainous, so some politicians will try to show off this talent. The more perfect world where the public does not want or need this in a politician is a while away (and if you've ever read any Man-Kzin Wars, might be wise to intentionally preserve even in a higher order of civilization.)

  11. Re:truth vs fact on How Technology Disrupted the Truth (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Two ways come to mind:

    First, when it is not actually a "fact", but is placed in a context where facts normally go. Example:

    "After Natalie Portman bathed in hot grits, netcraft confirmed my opponent has never built a Beowolf cluster"

    The "my opponent never built a beowolf cluster" is in the "claim" part of that sentence. The "Natlie Portman
    bathed in hot grits" is "presented as fact" in a way that less swift people will more often take it as a
    given. This is just a matter of the word "fact" having some shades of meaning.

    Second, when a true fact is misused to give credence to a lie or promote an idea that
    has no reason to be advanced among a group of similar ideas. Example:

    "It's possible 1337 is the combination to someone's luggage, you insensitive clod!"

    That it is possible that 1337 is the combination to someone's luggage is a fact, but there is no
    reason to have singled out 1337, but the brain remembers it was singled out, and that can
    sometimes rattle around unconsciously causing bias.

  12. Re:She makes money off of H1-B outsourcing on Clinton: It's 'Heartbreaking' When IT Workers Must Train H-1B Replacements (computerworld.com) · · Score: 2

    Sure would. But don't blame the PP. Anyone who tries to understand Trump's stance on H1-Bs is bound to end up wandering around in a fugue state for a few hours.

  13. Re:The vote is on November 8th on EFF Delivers 210,000 Signatures Opposing Trans-Pacific Partnership (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    Chalk it up to different expectations, then. While I'd prefer more honesty from her, I'll take competency and an record that is good on balance.

  14. Re:Easy solution. on PC Gaming Is Still Way Too Hard (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    If you care about either of those things... personally I don't consider a game who's online play fizzled in 4 years to have had a worthwhile online experience in the first place, and if the company shut it down and didn''t turn it over to the community, you should probably not weigh online play as a part of any game that company produces.

  15. Easy solution. on PC Gaming Is Still Way Too Hard (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Stop playing the latest video games. Only play 4 year old stuff. Then any crummy whitebox you buy will be able to run them just fine, and all the games and drivers will have reached their final patch levels by the time you bother with them.

  16. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    If you try to do something about it and fail, does that increase or decrease your liability as compared to throwing up your hands and claiming that you can't possibly solve such a problem?

    Yeah, from a pure "stockholder's interest" approach, the funds to do that might be better directed towards lobbying a legislator to sneak something into a farm bill that makes you immune from prosecution for it.

  17. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, so far this guy seems only to be amused by it. We'll see if that lasts over the course of months/years, or not.

  18. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Is this really what parenting has come to in this modern day?!?!

    I couldn't say if the experiences posted on that website are typical, but some are truly appalling.

  19. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    It was a cute name started by this anti-overprotection website:

    http://www.freerangekids.com/

  20. Re: Demise of location based games on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 0

    OK, that's cool. Just remember, once those kids grow up, they'll know you plot is a great place to drink a sixer of wine coolers at 2AM and take a leak.

  21. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    maybe you can sue the game maker for not connecting to the sex offender database

    If it happens, I'm sure someone will. This is the land of lawsuits, after all.

  22. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 2

    but it's unlikely unless he lives in a historic building.

    I just read about a poor sop that lives a few towns over who has a gaggle of people constantly in front of his used-to-be-a-church home.

    Curating the map data properly sounds to me like a pretty impossible task, and given the appalling lack of rigor these things are done with these days, I'd say we are in for quite an interesting news cycle.

  23. Re:This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 0

    Look, I was a free range kid so I'm just as astounded as many here with the kid overprotection these days. But that's the world we live in, and that's why I'm surprised a company would open itself up to potential legal liability.

  24. This is... safe? on Pokemon Game Adds $7.5 Billion To Nintendo Market Value In Two Days (reuters.com) · · Score: 1, Funny

    allows players to walk around real-life neighbourhoods

    I don't know what this app actually does, but isn't there a huge liability issue in maybe the pokemon leading a kid to step out in traffic, or into the yard of the local registered sex offender?

  25. Re: Environmental impacts? on A Medical Mystery of the Best Kind: Major Diseases Are In Decline (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    My family eats meat 7 nights a week but you seem to be confusing meat with beef.

    Last I looked all red meat, not just beef, qualified for the "don't eat this every day" precaution, and pork is included in this particular definition of "red meat."
    Something about hemoglobin and intestinal wall penetration by the microbiome.