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User: Kelson

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  1. I wonder how this applies to Google Photos on Facebook, Shutterfly Face Lawsuits For Using Facial Recognition To ID Photos (computerworld.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It lets you search your own photos by person using facial recognition to group photos of the same person together, but it's pretty clear up-front that's what it's doing. Of course, that's up-front to the person *taking* the pictures, not to the person *in* the pictures, so it might run into the same issue with the Illinois law.

  2. Re:Bugs? on How to Quash Firefox's Silent Requests · · Score: 5, Informative

    And looking closer at the API description, speculative connect isn't supposed to actually make the HTTP request, just set up the TCP connection. No headers, no URL, just an IP address at the network layer.

    Still technically a connection, but hardly any information is sent, and it's not mistakable for an actual click.

  3. Re:Bugs? on How to Quash Firefox's Silent Requests · · Score: 1

    The prefetching is also currently disabled on stable builds, and is limited to DNS prefetching, as far as I can tell.

    I was wondering if it might be DNS prefetching. That's a whole other animal than actual HTTP requests, and I thought Firefox and Chrome already did it.

  4. Are they actually seeing HTTP requests or just DNS on How to Quash Firefox's Silent Requests · · Score: 1

    The OP mentions iftop & resource monitor. I wonder if they're seeing the results of DNS Prefetching? That's something Firefox and Chrome have been doing forever. It doesn't hit the webserver, just resolves the domain name to an IP address in case you hit a link.

    Or are they only looking at the new tab page? According to the docs they linked to, the speculative connect API is only used in a few spots in the Firefox UI, not on random webpages.

  5. Re:Bugs? on How to Quash Firefox's Silent Requests · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the docs, this doesn't fire on just any random website's links, only in specific parts of the Firefox UI:

    To improve the loading speed, Firefox will open predictive connections to sites when the user hovers their mouse over thumbnails on the New Tab Page or the user starts to search in the Search Bar, or in the search field on the Home or the New Tab Page. In case the user follows through with the action, the page can begin loading faster since some of the work was already started in advance.

    That's fortunate, because firing it on any website's hover link would reach that nightmare scenario pretty quickly.

    Link prefetcing on websites only happens if the site explicitly marks the link for prefetch. (Example use case: prefetch page 2 of an article from page 1.) Firefox & Chrome have done this for years.

  6. Who's to say the super-computer or robot can't be the good guy? Or the hero's ally? Conflict has two sides, and technology could just as easily be placed on either. If movies place it more often on the bad side, that says something about, if not culture in general, at least the culture of people making movies.

  7. Phone requirement on Ask Slashdot: What Smartwatch Apps Could You See Yourself Using? · · Score: 1

    "They want to be able to ignore the notifications every 5 seconds that someone posted a new tweet or your grandma sent you a hilarious forward. "

    IMO it's better to cut down on the notifications in the first place. I only get audio notifications on my phone for a few classes of messages, and the rest are silent. I can imagine using a later generation of smartwatch to filter those even further so that the ones that are most important - let's say a text from someone I'm trying to meet at a crowded event, or an appointment reminder -- notify me in a way that's harder to miss than a beep in a noisy room or a buzz while I'm walking.

  8. Re: Maybe driver vs passenger doesn't matter on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 2

    Ok, then how does the app know that you're on a bus and not driving?

  9. Left out a key piece of the original headline on F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...but only 0.1% of those were on Google Play"

    So that vast majority is practically all third-party installations (something which isn't even an option on iOS).

  10. Re:But the ONE thing I want... on Google Chrome 32 Is Out: Noisy Tabs Indicators, Supervised Users · · Score: 1

    Do you actually need that question *every* time, or do you just want to build a list of sites that are allowed to persist cookies and let the rest drop off at the end of your browsing session?

    Chrome doesn't have the ask-every-time option, but you can set it to only keep cookies until you close your browser, then add exceptions for the sites you want to persist. It's a bit clunkier to build up the list, but unless you're adding to it frequently, once you have the list it'll just stay out of your way and work.

  11. Re:lobbying is bullshit on Google Leads Among Consumer Tech Companies Lobbying Congress · · Score: 2

    Problem is, if Google doesn't spend the money, then the other companies that are spending the money are going to be heard, not Google.

    Exactly. One of the big things to come out of the fight against SOPA was the realization that Silicon Valley needed to step up the lobbying if they were going to avoid being stepped on by Hollywood's lobbying.

  12. Re:Can someone please explain ... on Oregon Extends Push To Track, Tax Drivers Per Mile · · Score: 3, Informative

    California has a bi-annual smog inspection. Smog inspections have been shown to be very effective at reducing smog.

    Hybrids and electric cars are exempt though, along with several other alternative fuels, really old cars (older than 1975 and still running), and new cars less than six years old. So CA only gets the data on older cars that are using the "usual" amount of gas.

    If California were to implement the plan that Oregon is looking at, they wouldn't be able to use the smog inspections, because the segment they want to add is the same segment that's exempt from inspections.

  13. Funny you should mention Groklaw on Info Leak Wars To Get Messier · · Score: 5, Informative

    Considering this news...

  14. Re:Knows and Presumes are not the same thing on Facebook Knows If You're Gay, Use Drugs, Or Are a Republican · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I figure over-reliance on this sort of analysis explains why Facebook will show me ads for dating services even though it knows I'm married. I like all this geeky stuff, so obviously the advertisers assume I'm single.

  15. Re:A Kindle? on Apple Now the Top PC Vendor, For Some Values of PC · · Score: 1
  16. Re:A Kindle? on Apple Now the Top PC Vendor, For Some Values of PC · · Score: 1

    The Kindle Fire line is an Android tablet with a custom UI and comes with Amazon's app store pre-installed instead of Google's. It's in the same class as the Nexus tablets and iPads.

  17. Re:USB OTG on Ubuntu Now Available On the Nexus 7 · · Score: 1

    There's at least one app out there that give you read access to USB drives without rooting. It's called Nexus Media Importer and runs $3. Obviously it doesn't apply to anyone installing Ubuntu, but for those who want to stick with Android & don't want to root their device, it can take care of simple use cases like loading photos from a camera, pulling audio files from a thumb drive, etc.

  18. Re:Crime it's not in Houston on Space Shuttle Endeavour's Final Journey · · Score: 1

    Yes, actually, Los Angeles and its suburbs do have a long history with aerospace. Look up JPL on a map sometime. Or type "Downey Rockwell Apollo" into Google.

  19. Incredible sight on Space Shuttle Endeavour's Final Journey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work near LAX, so I was able to watch the landing last month and walk out to see it on the ground today. They let the crowd get a lot closer to the shuttle than I was expecting: just one parking lot aisle away.

    My own photos from both events: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/sets/72157631590634138/detail/

  20. Re:WHERE?!? on Perseids Meteor Shower Maximum Is This Weekend · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anywhere with clear skies, though as I understand it you can see more in the Northern hemisphere.

    This is an event that takes place over several days and is based on the Earth's path through the solar system, so it doesn't matter what time zone you're in. Wherever you are, your patch of land will rotate into the right position at the same local time.

  21. Good idea for mobile devs too... on Chaos Monkey Released Into the Wild · · Score: 1

    Except they need to randomly turn off the network connection in their test envronment. It's amazing how many mobile apps assume you'll always have a solid connection and never be in an elevator, or walking between tall buildings, or the basement of a convention center, or any other place with a spotty or overloaded signal.

  22. Gee, thanks SOPA. Sort of. on Web Giants Form US Internet Lobby Group · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember this being something that came up during the fight over SOPA: Namely, that while the entertainment industry is used to lobbying the government, the tech industry was fractured and didn't see lobbying as a high priority, so the success Hollywood had at railroading some of those crazy ideas just blindsided them. (Stacked hearings, deliberately ignoring experts, etc.) It became clear that something would have to level the field, and since we know the RIAA, MPAA and friends aren't going to back off on their lobbying (and we know the government isn't going to stop listening to lobbyists), the solution is a tech lobby.

  23. Re:Downloading Ubuntu on Wil Wheaton: BitTorrent Isn't Only For Piracy · · Score: 1

    OK, perhaps someone here can provide some suitable legitmate and mainstream examples that we can cite then

    Blizzard still uses torrents to distribute software updates in their games, right?

  24. Update: No recent hack, just repackaged old data on 55,000 Twitter Accounts Hacked, Passwords Leaked · · Score: 5, Informative

    From CNet's article:

    After Lamo and others found that at least some of the alleged account data had been posted on the Web last year and speculated that the list appeared to be compiled from various sources, including spam accounts, Twitter provided CNET this statement when asked for comment: "We've looked into this and can confirm that Twitter was not compromised. For extra precaution, yesterday, we pushed out password resets to accounts that may have been affected."

  25. Establishing a pattern here on Congress Capitulates To TSA; Refuses To Let Bruce Schneier Testify · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the same committee that wouldn't let any women testify in a hearing on contraception last month.

    Apparently, if you know something about the topic at hand, they don't want your input.