Aside from the advertising issue, blocking third party cookies could break behaviour that the user is expecting
Blocking third party cookies is the Safari default. If the site works for Mac and iOS users, it'll work for Firefox users too.
IIRC, fewer than 10% of Safari users have gone and turned on third-party cookies.
Good point, but Safari will still fetch web bugs and run any 3rd-party code.
Mozilla's "threat" is just tweaking the edges of the problem. Anti-tracking needs to be comprehensive and implemented fully on the client by an independent coder (the 'other' anti-tracking addon is in partnership with the ad industry).
"Ever seen a remote desktop tool that's fast/efficient enough to play back video?"
Yeah, NX. Been using it for awhile.
I'll second this. And the protocol IIRC is open source (FOSS implementation is freeNX). I think X should have integrated this years ago (replacing its clunky version of network abstraction) as it makes using a remote machine seem almost like its local.
Another thing X --or whatever replaces it-- needs is the ability to share app windows or desktops between more than one person, something the commercial version of NX implemented a while back (OS X and Windows laid the groundwork for efficient remote sharing back in the early 2000s). Note that VNC, a primitive bitmap-tosser, doesn't compare to these protocols in terms of performance.
Its not all about 'me' and personal preference... its about communities avoiding unethical business practices that undermine trust in a society. Commercial propaganda / subtle astroturfing permeating all our discussions would be just such a form of corruption, and I believe it already has helped undermine trust. People end up increasingly discouraged and cynical as all sorts of discourse become repurposed for somebody else's monetary gain (and possibly your's, too, sonny... if you ever get past the advancing front of economic disparity); We become increasingly burdened to un-follow and regroup until we just switch off, or resign ourselves to pastimes and relationships based on the inherently commercial or trivial.
All of those examples you gave are just extensions of branded promotions, at least from my perspective. There is little difference sharing info and feelings about Clydesdales in a Budweiser forum or quilt designs at a fabric manufacturer from any of the other modes of promoting consumerism... the emotional manipulation of (would be) consumers for money or power is the underlying cause for the exercise. I'll qualify this by saying there are businesses that operate at- or near the hobby level whose socializing doesn't fit into the above characterization because its sincere and less about their bottom line (if at all).
But I doubt those people need your advice in the first place--they are already "there". The salesmen and relentless self-promoters would do us a favor by keeping their "conversations" branded and obvious so we can better trust those with whom we would like to converse.
Its the intent that makes it spam. The attempt at "human conversations" just makes it more insidious, ensuring that I'll have to read 70% further into the exchange before I realize that important aspects are getting marginalized or stilted because a participant was determined to insinuate sales propaganda.
Perhaps you could write a book on how to more effectively filter this stuff out?
I also noticed some of their job postings stressed "open hardware".
In any case, your question is a good one and I would hope help prompt clarification from Fairphone. I'd expect that Fairphone has hardware that is more open than most, but that full openness would be a future goal not yet attained.
Don't bet on Linus et al going beyond their normal comfort zone. He didn't rise to the occasion in the years when the world (and even most of the MSCPs I knew) were pining for an alternative to Windows on the desktop. He won't rise now. If it doesn't feel like putting on an old pair of jeans, Linus will shy away after badmouthing the proposal.
Display architecture is still an oozing wound of exploitability, for example. The Linux kernel had to be relegated to a non-security role in Qubes OS in order to address such problems. So it seems that the hypervisor is the relevant security OS these days, especially since it greatly reduces the amount of trusted code that needs to be heavily audited.
RHEL cherry picks bug fixes and even features into their "stable" kernel. Last time I checked, they applied ~100MB of patches compared to vanilla for their version. I'd much rather have a vanilla upstream than the potential mess that they're introducing. You run into kernel issues that none of the other (non RHEL based) distros don't.
A valid point. However, the company that absolutely had to turn its nose up at APT and develop a creature that demands updates from the Internet for a simple repository Search operation (and boy is it painful to get out of if you're not connected...) has seen fit to conserve kernel version numbers for posterity.
So now I can run my vulnerable apps on a vulnerable OS. If the emulation layer is enough to fool them. And this is better than just using Linux because? Oh right, you can jail apps now they can't access your video card or your files, that will show them.
Running apps under a hypervisor in Qubes is safer anyway, and it comes with Fedora. You get (safe) video, but not 3D unless you assign a whole video card to a VM.
Which BTW is just what Manning tried to do, but NYT did not want to touch it until Wikileaks (the buffer zone they actively endorsed as a partner in their press activities) made it a story... then 'Oh, gosh' they just had to cover it while WL incurred the wrath of the US government.
Hint: Just because the Nazi party had "Socialist" in its name, doesn't mean it actually was socialist in any way. Get your political compass right.
I'll second this-- It comes from the same vein of American far-right myths as the one about the Nazis being a conspiracy of homosexuals. Its quite backward.
The Nazi political philosophy was only "socialist" in the sense that they used redistribution to condemn anyone deemed weak/degenerate to die of overwork and deprivation. It was a reallocation of resources to groups who were considered to be "strong"... So you could say it was like an upside-down socialism in that one respect. (BTW, difference and diversity were classed as causes of weakness.)
Another aspect of Nazism and Fascism is that the masses are deprived of any education or sense of agency that would lead to analytical thinking. Real thinking was to be reserved for the elite, while the masses were to me manipulated by pure emotion if possible. OTOH, socialism placed emphasis on teaching analytical thinking (but not individual independence).
Yet another large difference is the position of women in society (another distinctly right-wing trait of Nazism-- the hierarchy emanating from the strict national father-figure or "Führer").
The GP (and +mods) inhabit a universe where everyone and their ideas are evaluated in terms of black and white, and so a lot of distortion is employed to shoehorn reality into their dualistic habit.
Separation between church and state is treated as one of those embarrassing issues that is open to interpretation. In practice, its virtually impossible to remove religious holiday displays from most jurisdictions in the US, and the holidays are just the thin edge of the wedge for "a thousand points" of religious observance strategies that now include publicly funding parochial schools.
IOW, the two schools that did not reduce the entire postmodern movement to a caricature of nihilism are the guilty pseudo-intellectuals. Hmmm.
Pragmatism pertains to the process of "takin' care of business". So... whose business are your American intellectuals catering to, and why is this considered a substitute for reflection?
What really matters is how and why the average person does not wake up and realize that the America they were taught to believe in does not exist, and how their own philosophical, intellectual, moral, and character flaws prevented them from seeing this at the very beginning. There is indeed something wrong with a person who argues passionately about minutia like sports and television shows while their nation is decaying. None of that could be an accident.
A religious bigwig recently came back from Europe and commented that it is a "spiritual desert".
The problem with the average American you describe is that s/he is the product of a philosophical desert. People here literally don't know how to think, instead worshipping spirits, technology, sports, sex, money, consumerism; The consummate 'mainstream' American leading the Good Life is a confluence of all of these. I personally know people who have recoiled with revulsion when I casually described pure scientific research as an occupation (e.g. "scientists" are thought of as ensconced within for-profit corporations trying to discover things that are either convenient and/or lethal); both times there was no larger political, religious or other context to the discussion apart from talking about some of the people we know. The first time I chalked it up as a fluke misunderstanding; the second person I knew had understood and it frightened me to my core.
This country now produces strident anti-intellectuals: People who worship technology and "science" for its pure power and ability to effect a result. In some ways they're as alienated as can be from The Enlightenment that ostensibly produced our Constitution. Polls show they--most Americans--love the surveillance state.
Philosophical discussion is regarded as unforgivably weird and threatening here, even among people holding four-year degrees. If you lose the ability to probe concepts in general, you lose the ability to effectively probe/question authority (though making an ineffective, self-immolating show of it never goes out of style).
Its not about me or any other individual. The utility can anticipate the overall impact of the cars based on average usage patterns... the same way demand for other electric usage is anticipated.
If EVERYONE is doing it (using an electric for all their transportation needs, not just commuting), then the unreliability of solar/wind can become problematic unless we have a LARGE overcapacity.
Uh, no... The grid will let you rent a percentage of your car's charge capacity to the utility. Then the fleet of cars *is* a large chunk of the "overcapacity". The more charging devices there are on the grid, the more room utilities have for offsetting supply and demand-- even if those charging devices also consume energy periodically.
Nuclear reactors cannot modulate their level of output several times per day, yet as anyone reading this should know, demand changes greatly over the course of the day. On a minute-by-minute basis, demand is pretty chaotic. That's why the nuclear industry spurred the construction of a great deal of the hydropower capacity that we have today.... so it could actually stay in business.
The interesting thing is that today's deregulated energy markets don't have the stomach to stick with nuclear power projects: Once bureaucrats commit their ratepayers (you and me) to a project, the price invariably skyrockets. Geographic monopoly, business culture and the sheer size and complexity combine in an unfortunate way that sets nuclear up for failure.
Those renewable sources, however, are already making use of the hydropower capacity that the flagging nuclear industry in no longer using. They say: Thanks!!!
As for the dis-ingenuity of posting about "unreliable" renewables in a thread about BATTERY-based transportation.... LOL.
I'd also like to point out that Qubes isn't dedicated to the idea of anonymity... The Tor VM is a separate download image, and most VMs that run applications have fairly regular network access (filtered through the firewall and network VMs).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, use it in Safari, too... https://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php
Aside from the advertising issue, blocking third party cookies could break behaviour that the user is expecting
Blocking third party cookies is the Safari default. If the site works for Mac and iOS users, it'll work for Firefox users too.
IIRC, fewer than 10% of Safari users have gone and turned on third-party cookies.
Good point, but Safari will still fetch web bugs and run any 3rd-party code.
Mozilla's "threat" is just tweaking the edges of the problem. Anti-tracking needs to be comprehensive and implemented fully on the client by an independent coder (the 'other' anti-tracking addon is in partnership with the ad industry).
"Ever seen a remote desktop tool that's fast/efficient enough to play back video?"
Yeah, NX. Been using it for awhile.
I'll second this. And the protocol IIRC is open source (FOSS implementation is freeNX). I think X should have integrated this years ago (replacing its clunky version of network abstraction) as it makes using a remote machine seem almost like its local.
Another thing X --or whatever replaces it-- needs is the ability to share app windows or desktops between more than one person, something the commercial version of NX implemented a while back (OS X and Windows laid the groundwork for efficient remote sharing back in the early 2000s). Note that VNC, a primitive bitmap-tosser, doesn't compare to these protocols in terms of performance.
Its not all about 'me' and personal preference... its about communities avoiding unethical business practices that undermine trust in a society. Commercial propaganda / subtle astroturfing permeating all our discussions would be just such a form of corruption, and I believe it already has helped undermine trust. People end up increasingly discouraged and cynical as all sorts of discourse become repurposed for somebody else's monetary gain (and possibly your's, too, sonny... if you ever get past the advancing front of economic disparity); We become increasingly burdened to un-follow and regroup until we just switch off, or resign ourselves to pastimes and relationships based on the inherently commercial or trivial.
All of those examples you gave are just extensions of branded promotions, at least from my perspective. There is little difference sharing info and feelings about Clydesdales in a Budweiser forum or quilt designs at a fabric manufacturer from any of the other modes of promoting consumerism... the emotional manipulation of (would be) consumers for money or power is the underlying cause for the exercise. I'll qualify this by saying there are businesses that operate at- or near the hobby level whose socializing doesn't fit into the above characterization because its sincere and less about their bottom line (if at all).
But I doubt those people need your advice in the first place--they are already "there". The salesmen and relentless self-promoters would do us a favor by keeping their "conversations" branded and obvious so we can better trust those with whom we would like to converse.
Its the intent that makes it spam. The attempt at "human conversations" just makes it more insidious, ensuring that I'll have to read 70% further into the exchange before I realize that important aspects are getting marginalized or stilted because a participant was determined to insinuate sales propaganda.
Perhaps you could write a book on how to more effectively filter this stuff out?
"Open source" is still a techie term, but is referenced repeatedly on the site (just not in the most obvious places):
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afairphone.com+%22open+source%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I also noticed some of their job postings stressed "open hardware".
In any case, your question is a good one and I would hope help prompt clarification from Fairphone. I'd expect that Fairphone has hardware that is more open than most, but that full openness would be a future goal not yet attained.
Stop and Shop in the US is reportedly using a similar face recognition system. Nixon is more appropriate to that venue.
...who promotes the flooding of social venues like Twitter with spam.
Hmmm.
If it doesn't feel like putting on an old pair of jeans, Burz will shy away after badmouthing the proposal.
FTFY
And what proposal would that be? AC modding??
Fairphone might qualify as fully open source... they seem to be proud of their open source status. http://www.fairphone.com/
Don't bet on Linus et al going beyond their normal comfort zone. He didn't rise to the occasion in the years when the world (and even most of the MSCPs I knew) were pining for an alternative to Windows on the desktop. He won't rise now. If it doesn't feel like putting on an old pair of jeans, Linus will shy away after badmouthing the proposal.
Display architecture is still an oozing wound of exploitability, for example. The Linux kernel had to be relegated to a non-security role in Qubes OS in order to address such problems. So it seems that the hypervisor is the relevant security OS these days, especially since it greatly reduces the amount of trusted code that needs to be heavily audited.
RHEL cherry picks bug fixes and even features into their "stable" kernel. Last time I checked, they applied ~100MB of patches compared to vanilla for their version. I'd much rather have a vanilla upstream than the potential mess that they're introducing. You run into kernel issues that none of the other (non RHEL based) distros don't.
A valid point. However, the company that absolutely had to turn its nose up at APT and develop a creature that demands updates from the Internet for a simple repository Search operation (and boy is it painful to get out of if you're not connected...) has seen fit to conserve kernel version numbers for posterity.
Fairphone seems like a more capable candidate for an open smartphone.
http://www.fairphone.com/
I run a VPN, Web and redundant Firewall servers...
Great. Welcome to 1999!
OK. I'll set one up in a Qubes VM... that way the system will stay secure. :D
So now I can run my vulnerable apps on a vulnerable OS. If the emulation layer is enough to fool them. And this is better than just using Linux because? Oh right, you can jail apps now they can't access your video card or your files, that will show them.
Running apps under a hypervisor in Qubes is safer anyway, and it comes with Fedora. You get (safe) video, but not 3D unless you assign a whole video card to a VM.
No-- He's revealing info to the PRESS.
Which BTW is just what Manning tried to do, but NYT did not want to touch it until Wikileaks (the buffer zone they actively endorsed as a partner in their press activities) made it a story... then 'Oh, gosh' they just had to cover it while WL incurred the wrath of the US government.
Hint: Just because the Nazi party had "Socialist" in its name, doesn't mean it actually was socialist in any way. Get your political compass right.
I'll second this-- It comes from the same vein of American far-right myths as the one about the Nazis being a conspiracy of homosexuals. Its quite backward.
The Nazi political philosophy was only "socialist" in the sense that they used redistribution to condemn anyone deemed weak/degenerate to die of overwork and deprivation. It was a reallocation of resources to groups who were considered to be "strong"... So you could say it was like an upside-down socialism in that one respect. (BTW, difference and diversity were classed as causes of weakness.)
Another aspect of Nazism and Fascism is that the masses are deprived of any education or sense of agency that would lead to analytical thinking. Real thinking was to be reserved for the elite, while the masses were to me manipulated by pure emotion if possible. OTOH, socialism placed emphasis on teaching analytical thinking (but not individual independence).
Yet another large difference is the position of women in society (another distinctly right-wing trait of Nazism-- the hierarchy emanating from the strict national father-figure or "Führer").
The GP (and +mods) inhabit a universe where everyone and their ideas are evaluated in terms of black and white, and so a lot of distortion is employed to shoehorn reality into their dualistic habit.
Liberals and conservatives have their fantasies, on both sides of the pond.
The point you try to make is mooted by the fact that atheists are barred from holding public office in some states.
Separation between church and state is treated as one of those embarrassing issues that is open to interpretation. In practice, its virtually impossible to remove religious holiday displays from most jurisdictions in the US, and the holidays are just the thin edge of the wedge for "a thousand points" of religious observance strategies that now include publicly funding parochial schools.
...bullshit.
You sound like a second-order disciple of Werner Erhard (EST), without realizing it.
IOW, the two schools that did not reduce the entire postmodern movement to a caricature of nihilism are the guilty pseudo-intellectuals. Hmmm.
Pragmatism pertains to the process of "takin' care of business". So... whose business are your American intellectuals catering to, and why is this considered a substitute for reflection?
What really matters is how and why the average person does not wake up and realize that the America they were taught to believe in does not exist, and how their own philosophical, intellectual, moral, and character flaws prevented them from seeing this at the very beginning. There is indeed something wrong with a person who argues passionately about minutia like sports and television shows while their nation is decaying. None of that could be an accident.
A religious bigwig recently came back from Europe and commented that it is a "spiritual desert".
The problem with the average American you describe is that s/he is the product of a philosophical desert. People here literally don't know how to think, instead worshipping spirits, technology, sports, sex, money, consumerism; The consummate 'mainstream' American leading the Good Life is a confluence of all of these. I personally know people who have recoiled with revulsion when I casually described pure scientific research as an occupation (e.g. "scientists" are thought of as ensconced within for-profit corporations trying to discover things that are either convenient and/or lethal); both times there was no larger political, religious or other context to the discussion apart from talking about some of the people we know. The first time I chalked it up as a fluke misunderstanding; the second person I knew had understood and it frightened me to my core.
This country now produces strident anti-intellectuals: People who worship technology and "science" for its pure power and ability to effect a result. In some ways they're as alienated as can be from The Enlightenment that ostensibly produced our Constitution. Polls show they--most Americans--love the surveillance state.
Philosophical discussion is regarded as unforgivably weird and threatening here, even among people holding four-year degrees. If you lose the ability to probe concepts in general, you lose the ability to effectively probe/question authority (though making an ineffective, self-immolating show of it never goes out of style).
Its not about me or any other individual. The utility can anticipate the overall impact of the cars based on average usage patterns... the same way demand for other electric usage is anticipated.
If EVERYONE is doing it (using an electric for all their transportation needs, not just commuting), then the unreliability of solar/wind can become problematic unless we have a LARGE overcapacity.
Uh, no... The grid will let you rent a percentage of your car's charge capacity to the utility. Then the fleet of cars *is* a large chunk of the "overcapacity". The more charging devices there are on the grid, the more room utilities have for offsetting supply and demand-- even if those charging devices also consume energy periodically.
Nuclear reactors cannot modulate their level of output several times per day, yet as anyone reading this should know, demand changes greatly over the course of the day. On a minute-by-minute basis, demand is pretty chaotic. That's why the nuclear industry spurred the construction of a great deal of the hydropower capacity that we have today.... so it could actually stay in business.
The interesting thing is that today's deregulated energy markets don't have the stomach to stick with nuclear power projects: Once bureaucrats commit their ratepayers (you and me) to a project, the price invariably skyrockets. Geographic monopoly, business culture and the sheer size and complexity combine in an unfortunate way that sets nuclear up for failure.
Those renewable sources, however, are already making use of the hydropower capacity that the flagging nuclear industry in no longer using. They say: Thanks!!!
As for the dis-ingenuity of posting about "unreliable" renewables in a thread about BATTERY-based transportation.... LOL.
Overall demand has been flagging with no reversal in sight. If anything, this would help generators stay in business.
I'd also like to point out that Qubes isn't dedicated to the idea of anonymity... The Tor VM is a separate download image, and most VMs that run applications have fairly regular network access (filtered through the firewall and network VMs).