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User: ErikTheRed

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  1. Re:Windows Installer Cache on Ask Slashdot: How Will You Handle Microsoft's New 'Cumulative' Windows Updates? (slashdot.org) · · Score: 1

    You can run the disk cleanup wizard to get rid of a lot of that cruft.

  2. Nokia was going downhill well before that on Former CEO of Angry Birds-Maker Rovio Hired To Revive Nokia's Phone Business (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've friends that worked for Nokia and from what I've heard they were in a death spiral well before Microsoft bought them out. Nasty internal politics, software development drama, no real plan for the smartphone revolution, etc.

    I loved Nokia phones back in the day, but I'm not sure what they would bring to the table now. They can compete with all of the "Me-too!" Android vendors in East Asia, try to push out a new OS (good luck), or keep beating the Windows Mobile dead horse. Personally, I would *like* to see another mobile OS have some success, but that's a mind-blowingly difficult and expensive pursuit right now.

  3. Re:Hostname leaks and internal CA on The Dark Side of Certificate Transparency (sans.edu) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly. We use an internal CA (there are several good ones out there like EJBCA) for all of our private internal hosts.

  4. Re:Overkill for the vast majority of viewers on Japan Starts 8K TV Broadcasts In Time For Rio Olympics (pcworld.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We got a lot of this when 4K came out, but we were ready to upgrade our television (something we don't do very often), so I said screw it and went with 4K (65" at about 3 meters / 10'). It looks great with upscaling, but when I switched our streaming to true 4K with a Roku4 my wife said "Wow - this looks awesome! Did you change anything?" To me, that's the real test - when somebody with average visual acuity who doesn't give a crap about pixel count and whatnot notices that it looks a lot better.

    I don't think 8K will be worthwhile until 120" screens are the norm, and even then cinematography will have to change to accommodate the changed field of vision. Even at 4K I notice that I'm annoyed when my eyes can't wander to the corner of the screen because the depth of focus blurs everything out there.

  5. Hillary's cat's paw comes home to mommy on Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton (cnn.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    There were two points to Sander's campaign:

    1) He gets to keep the left-over money, and since he'll likely be retiring soon he won't even have to hide it in his wife's name like he does the rest of his assets.

    2) He energized the progressive base, and then flipped them into supporting a warmongering, corporatist, Wall Street shill.

    In other words, he joined the Democratic Party.

  6. Mislead in the headline much? on Man Who Teaches People How To Repair Their MacBooks Alludes To Apple Lawsuit (gamerevolution.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is *speculation* that takedowns are coming from Apple, but no actual evidence and generally speaking DMCA notices have names (at least of a law firm) attached. As news sources go, Reddit forums rank right up there with the National Enquirer. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to bash Apple: political censorship, slumping software quality, etc. No need to invent fake ones.

  7. It'll be interesting to see them try. on Facebook Is Using Your Phone's Location To Suggest New Friends (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    I only turn on location access for the Facebook app (and my web browser) when I travel, so right now it thinks I'm about 2,200 miles away from where I actually am...

  8. Oh joy - more clickthrough. on Google Is Finally Making Two-Step Verification Less Annoying (theguardian.com) · · Score: 0

    Let's face it: the IT industry has, intentionally or otherwise, pretty much trained users to just robotically click "Yes" and "I Accept" on eight trillion things they don't understand. And now we will have eight trillion and one, and security will be worse for it.

  9. Central planning failure on Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It's Giving It Away for Free (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And must people keep using the normally beautiful word "free" in such an Orwellian context? There is literally a whole world of unseen (a la Bastiat) opportunity costs behind this overbuilt boondoggle, especially in a country largely still mired in poverty.

  10. Otherwise CNN would go out of business on Why Are We Spending Billions and Tons of Fossil Fuel On Search of Lost Planes? · · Score: 1

    Just Another Government Subsidy. Shouldn't the airlines have to pay for the cost of finding the wreckage of their planes? I think that would have some interesting effects on aircraft maintenance. Or - heh - you could choose the cheaper airline that takes the "shit happens" approach.

  11. Criminals gonna crime. on The Source of All Major Android Banking Trojans Just Got Updated To V2 (softpedia.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't really get the outrage at this. Criminals are going to commit crimes. I think the outrage would be better directed at Google for promulgating a "security-last" OS to manufacturers who, for the most part, can't be bothered with updates after a few months. When you suck at security almost infinitely more than Microsoft, that's saying something...

  12. New and improved! on Surprise Nuclear Strike? Here's How We'll Figure Out Who Did It (sciencemag.org) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Now the US government can retaliate against the wrong country with more precision than ever before!!!

  13. They probably can't deliver on BMW To Compete With Google To Build Software For Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    I say this as somebody who owns and loves BMWs... they suck ass at software. They can't even get things like their console information / entertainment system to be reasonably bug-free, so how the hell do they think they can actually do difficult and important stuff?

  14. Re:And there was much rejoicing! on Carly Is Out · · Score: 0, Troll

    At least Sanders is honest (for a politician anyway)

    That's kind of like being celibate (for a cheap prostitute anyway).

    At least he's only a part-time warmonger: Kosovo, Afghanistan, playing Merchant of Death to the whole Middle East, supporting the boondoggle F35 - but hey, he voted against invading Iraq before he voted to fund it.

    That, and he still has absolutely no sense of math when it comes to his political promises.

  15. And there was much rejoicing! on Carly Is Out · · Score: 4, Funny

    (Peasants half-heartedly shout "yay!")

  16. For the foreseeable future, right where it's at. on What Is the Future of the Television? (ben-evans.com) · · Score: 2

    The problem is that the screen itself is a large, beautiful, and relatively expensive piece compared to everything that puts content on it. The price point makes it impractical to upgrade and replace on the same cycle as an XBox, Playstation, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Personally, I replace the screen every 7-10 years, and the connected devices every 3-5 years. Until the screens drop sufficiently in price to be replaceable in sync with the content devices, it makes exactly zero sense to cram more stuff into them. Especially when you consider the security issues.

  17. Can't be taken seriously. on Tech Unemployment Rising In Some Categories (dice.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whenever somebody uses the U3 unemployment numbers for any purpose that doesn't involve sarcasm or irony, their thoughts are not to be taken seriously. Literally the only purpose of mentioning U3 is political propaganda - the calculation methods divorce it completely and irrevocably from any potential honest use in discussing employment rates.

  18. Re:It's all relative on Consumer Reports Withdraws Its Tesla Model S Recommendation (consumerreports.org) · · Score: 1

    You can't ride a BMW after the warranty period is up because they just stop from a half dozen fatal ailments.

    Funny. My 15-year-old BMW runs pretty much like new. Amazing what regularly scheduled maintenance will do.

  19. More like "Politically Correct Reports." on Consumer Reports Withdraws Its Tesla Model S Recommendation (consumerreports.org) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Consumer Reports does some good work tracking reliability ratings and some of their reviews are decent, but over the past several years they have weighted things so heavily towards environmentally "friendly" products (scare quotes because items that don't work well aren't really that friendly when they wind up in a landfill when you replace them with something that actually fucking works right) that their overall recommendations are pretty close to worthless.

  20. Possible interest... on Ask Slashdot: Is There Space For Open Hardware In Networking? · · Score: 1

    Our company provides networking services and we generally use Cisco gear, but we've been dipping our toes into some lower-end markets that can't afford $1,500 Internet routers. In order to consider something likes this, the main thing we would be interested in is build quality. It seems that most SOHO routers are designed right at the edge of their thermal safety envelopes, which leads to crashes and failures. Even if we don't want to spend $1,500 on a router we would still want something that is robust enough to be shoved into a poorly-ventilated cabinet and run happily on its own for five years, except for the occasional software upgrade. I'd happily pay $100 or even $200 for that level of stability.

  21. "the only presidential candidate" on Bernie Sanders Comes Out Against CISA · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean besides John McAfee. Who is also certifiably insane, but at least manages to be interesting while being so.

  22. It's happened to me several times... on When Fraud Detection Shuts Down Credit Cards Inappropriately · · Score: 1

    and with different banks, occasionally to the point where they forced me to get a new card (and change a zillion automated payments). I wouldn't mind so much if this actually worked, but none of these cases involved a specific fraudulent charge - it was just done because they thought there might be one later. The irony is that I keep seeing the occasional fraudulent charge that they miss. So as far as I can tell they're pretty close to 100% false positives, and probably not many legitimate blocks.

  23. More like inability to prioritize or be efficient on EPA Gave Volkswagen a Free Pass On Emissions Ten Years Ago Due To Lack of Budget · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every time I've been exposed to the operational aspects of a government agency (and, unfortunately, most large non-profits and even some large corporations) I see things being done in a way that costs around five times as much as we would do it in small- to mid-scale private industry, and even at that expense level the quality of work is outright appalling. When you start working with the management of these organizations, they simply don't care about setting appropriate standards for what they can achieve on a certain budget and then squeezing things to make do with what they have. Quite the contrary, their incentives are structured around having as much budget as possible. So bloat is everywhere, and the response to any additional "needs" is to demand more money. This is an endless cycle - giving them more money will never achieve their goals, because that would harm management's careers.

    Privatizing these functions is its own can of worms - it's often far cheaper (see: SpaceX vs. NASA), but still a long way away from excellent, and rife with corruption and politics (see: Military-Industrial Complex, Prison-Industrail Complex, etc).

    If I really wanted to have the EPA catch these things the best method I can think of would be to offer bounties paid on caught cheaters. This creates incentives to check everything everywhere, and retains the incentives to maximize efficiency.

  24. Amazon Fire? No, thanks. on Amazon To Cease Sale of Apple TV and Chromecast · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their terms of service and privacy policy make Google look downright disinterested in collecting its users data by comparison.

  25. Why is this even an issue? on The Global Struggle To Prevent Cyberwar · · Score: 1

    There is a breathtaking amount of critical infrastructure that is very lightly protected on intranets if not outright exposed to the public Internet. There is simply no excuse for this. Even if things require, say, cellular monitoring it's very straightforward to use highly restricted VPNs or even MPLS over cellular (especially for an organization the size of most public utilities). The fact that this is even such a major issue is flat-out sad and stupid.