Yes, I know. I have multiple accounts myself. However, in order to do this I have to give a fake name to some accounts -- which is a violation of the real names policy. I'm not sure how Google expects this to be done (unless they expect that each account will have the same name, which is impractical.)
Which is #1 in my top three reasons why I detest G+. I absolutely don't want Google services to be unified like that, nor do I want to have to have many Google accounts in order to keep the services separated (and I'm not sure how doing that is legally possible, given the stupid Real Names policy).
The real name requirement - along with deactivating the Google accounts of people who violated this policy - is what kept me off Google+.
Me too. When Google said that people who don't like the real name requirement should not use G+, I took them at their word. I no longer use G+ and never will.
I used GTalk on the desktop for a long time, unfortunately they canned it and Hangouts doesn't really work for me
Yes, Hangouts gave me nothing but technical problems. From my experience, it is nothing but broken (in many fascinating ways) and so is almost completely worthless.
Even though GPG has been around for almost 20 years, there are only ~50,000 keys in the "strong set," and less than 4 million keys have ever been published to the SKS keyserver pool ever.
I've been using GPG heavily for as long as it has existed, but I have never published my keys to the keyserver pool, and probably never will. I suspect I'm far from the only one. I think that his metric may not indicate what he thinks it does.
As near as I can tell, av-totals is just measuring how effective things are in terms of antivirus. They don't appear to be analyzing the AV software itself for security problems such as the bogus cert. That's not a fault with them -- that's expecting them to be doing something they aren't claiming to do.
Why? The ThinkPads are the business level laptops, which are what you should be buying if you are buying for a business. The ThinkPads did not have superfish installed.
Because Lenovo has demonstrated such an extreme amount of bad judgement with this Superfish thing that it demonstrates that the company cannot be trusted at all. Thinkpads may not have Superfish installed -- but they might have other things that are awful, or Lenovo might start putting awful things into their business products as well. In other words, if Lenovo can think that putting Superfish onto cheap consumer computers is just fine, they are capable of pretty much anything else as well.
If I were to use Apple products, I'd have to either use OSX, which I loathe, or replace the OS, which means that there is no point, since I can replace the OS on x86 machines too.
As bad as all that shovelware is -- and it is bad -- This Superfish thing is far worse. It is active spyware that opens your machine up to be easily hacked by anybody.
It doesn't matter. That they were willing to do this on low-cost consumer machines indicates a lack of judgement that reflects on all aspects of their company.
I might agree with you if their initial response hadn't been lying (they claimed that they thoroughly tested and there was no security risk) and designed to avoid taking real responsibility (we did this for you!)
Showing the user relevant ads is a useful service.
It can be, in the right context. Amazon showing me ads for other Amazon products I might like is acceptable -- I'm already shopping, after all. My computer injecting ads into random web sites is not acceptable, nor is it useful. It's malware. Showing ads in any context where I'm not actually shopping is never actually useful to me, but would be tolerable if there were no tracking going on.
However, as long as Lenovo talks about the benefits of the ad targeting and avoids hinting at possible downsides, they aren't really lying.
I honestly don't see any benefit to what Superfish does whatsoever. So, as I said, they might not be lying -- in which case they're delusional.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with why computers don't come with a DVD of Windows anymore. I'd always raged at the OEMs for that, but apparently I should have been raging at Microsoft.
Also, the "signature edition" stuff is just insulting. I'm not about to buy an OS twice just to get what I should have had in the first place.
Our reputation is everything and our products are ultimately how we have our reputation.
Well, they'll miss it then! Their reputation is now that they are a sleazebag company willing to compromise their customers security so they can make a few bucks injecting unwanted advertising, then lying about the security risk when they got caught.
That's a company I will never do business with again.
Yes, that response was insufficient on a number of points. But what struck me about their statement was this:
The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users.
Why in the world do companies keep insisting that datamining and delivering ads "enhances the experience for users"? They can't possibly believe that. If they do, then they're hopelessly delusional. If they don't, then they're scumbag liars. Either way, it does nothing but make them look terrible.
That was because of Microsoft? I hate, hate, hate that practice, but I assumed that it was just because the computer manufacturers wanted to save a dime.
Well, I'll just add Lenovo onto my list of companies whose products I will never again purchase. That they could think this was an acceptable thing to do tells me that they cannot ever be trusted.
I've always believed algorithms and neural networks to be essentially opposites to each other.
I think you're mixing up two different levels of abstraction.
Algorithms are blocks of code that handles a predefined task.
Indeed, and the NN algorithms describe a predefined task that can be summarized as "train and operate a neural network". That's one level of abstraction. Once trained and operating according to the algorithm, then the NN proceeds to do the tasks it is meant for. There is no algorithm that the NN follows at this level of abstraction -- there is only the algorithm for how the NN itself operates, not for the specific task that NN is being used for.
The authors don't compare the network too much with the human brain though, ie, are they saying that the human brain is using a generative model?
I don't think so, because saying something like that is not supported by evidence. The human brain doesn't actually work like neural networks do. Neural networks are only loosely inspired by one very, very narrow and specific aspect of the mechanics of the brain.
Is that why the human brain doesn't see a white noise picture, and claim it's a horse?
The human brain does this sort of thing all the time. You can see shapes in static, of course, but white noise doesn't elicit the strongest rate of this sort of error. People are constantly misidentifying things that are seen in a natural noisy environments (such as in bushes, for instance) when it's dark. Including seeing large animals that simply aren't there.
I long for a simpler time when we didn't need to worry about such BS.
One of the main reasons we have so many problems with privacy and security these days is precisely because of those simpler times when nobody really worried about the implications of various technologies. We're much better off being cynical.
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook doesn't really enforce their real names policy. G+ does.
Yes, I know. I have multiple accounts myself. However, in order to do this I have to give a fake name to some accounts -- which is a violation of the real names policy. I'm not sure how Google expects this to be done (unless they expect that each account will have the same name, which is impractical.)
G+ is a framework to unify Google services.
Which is #1 in my top three reasons why I detest G+. I absolutely don't want Google services to be unified like that, nor do I want to have to have many Google accounts in order to keep the services separated (and I'm not sure how doing that is legally possible, given the stupid Real Names policy).
The real name requirement - along with deactivating the Google accounts of people who violated this policy - is what kept me off Google+.
Me too. When Google said that people who don't like the real name requirement should not use G+, I took them at their word. I no longer use G+ and never will.
I used GTalk on the desktop for a long time, unfortunately they canned it and Hangouts doesn't really work for me
Yes, Hangouts gave me nothing but technical problems. From my experience, it is nothing but broken (in many fascinating ways) and so is almost completely worthless.
Even though GPG has been around for almost 20 years, there are only ~50,000 keys in the "strong set," and less than 4 million keys have ever been published to the SKS keyserver pool ever.
I've been using GPG heavily for as long as it has existed, but I have never published my keys to the keyserver pool, and probably never will. I suspect I'm far from the only one. I think that his metric may not indicate what he thinks it does.
As near as I can tell, av-totals is just measuring how effective things are in terms of antivirus. They don't appear to be analyzing the AV software itself for security problems such as the bogus cert. That's not a fault with them -- that's expecting them to be doing something they aren't claiming to do.
based on good ratings
There's your problem. People rating apps generally haven't performed security audits.
Because knowing and caring are two different things.
Why? The ThinkPads are the business level laptops, which are what you should be buying if you are buying for a business. The ThinkPads did not have superfish installed.
Because Lenovo has demonstrated such an extreme amount of bad judgement with this Superfish thing that it demonstrates that the company cannot be trusted at all. Thinkpads may not have Superfish installed -- but they might have other things that are awful, or Lenovo might start putting awful things into their business products as well. In other words, if Lenovo can think that putting Superfish onto cheap consumer computers is just fine, they are capable of pretty much anything else as well.
If I were to use Apple products, I'd have to either use OSX, which I loathe, or replace the OS, which means that there is no point, since I can replace the OS on x86 machines too.
As bad as all that shovelware is -- and it is bad -- This Superfish thing is far worse. It is active spyware that opens your machine up to be easily hacked by anybody.
It doesn't matter. That they were willing to do this on low-cost consumer machines indicates a lack of judgement that reflects on all aspects of their company.
Lenovo is Chinese. How do executives in the Chinese executive class fail?
I might agree with you if their initial response hadn't been lying (they claimed that they thoroughly tested and there was no security risk) and designed to avoid taking real responsibility (we did this for you!)
Showing the user relevant ads is a useful service.
It can be, in the right context. Amazon showing me ads for other Amazon products I might like is acceptable -- I'm already shopping, after all. My computer injecting ads into random web sites is not acceptable, nor is it useful. It's malware. Showing ads in any context where I'm not actually shopping is never actually useful to me, but would be tolerable if there were no tracking going on.
However, as long as Lenovo talks about the benefits of the ad targeting and avoids hinting at possible downsides, they aren't really lying.
I honestly don't see any benefit to what Superfish does whatsoever. So, as I said, they might not be lying -- in which case they're delusional.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with why computers don't come with a DVD of Windows anymore. I'd always raged at the OEMs for that, but apparently I should have been raging at Microsoft.
Also, the "signature edition" stuff is just insulting. I'm not about to buy an OS twice just to get what I should have had in the first place.
Our reputation is everything and our products are ultimately how we have our reputation.
Well, they'll miss it then! Their reputation is now that they are a sleazebag company willing to compromise their customers security so they can make a few bucks injecting unwanted advertising, then lying about the security risk when they got caught.
That's a company I will never do business with again.
Yes, that response was insufficient on a number of points. But what struck me about their statement was this:
The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users.
Why in the world do companies keep insisting that datamining and delivering ads "enhances the experience for users"? They can't possibly believe that. If they do, then they're hopelessly delusional. If they don't, then they're scumbag liars. Either way, it does nothing but make them look terrible.
I was going to say something like this. Linux has been as easy (or easier, with some distros) to install as Windows for years now.
That was because of Microsoft? I hate, hate, hate that practice, but I assumed that it was just because the computer manufacturers wanted to save a dime.
Well, I'll just add Lenovo onto my list of companies whose products I will never again purchase. That they could think this was an acceptable thing to do tells me that they cannot ever be trusted.
I've always believed algorithms and neural networks to be essentially opposites to each other.
I think you're mixing up two different levels of abstraction.
Algorithms are blocks of code that handles a predefined task.
Indeed, and the NN algorithms describe a predefined task that can be summarized as "train and operate a neural network". That's one level of abstraction. Once trained and operating according to the algorithm, then the NN proceeds to do the tasks it is meant for. There is no algorithm that the NN follows at this level of abstraction -- there is only the algorithm for how the NN itself operates, not for the specific task that NN is being used for.
The authors don't compare the network too much with the human brain though, ie, are they saying that the human brain is using a generative model?
I don't think so, because saying something like that is not supported by evidence. The human brain doesn't actually work like neural networks do. Neural networks are only loosely inspired by one very, very narrow and specific aspect of the mechanics of the brain.
Is that why the human brain doesn't see a white noise picture, and claim it's a horse?
The human brain does this sort of thing all the time. You can see shapes in static, of course, but white noise doesn't elicit the strongest rate of this sort of error. People are constantly misidentifying things that are seen in a natural noisy environments (such as in bushes, for instance) when it's dark. Including seeing large animals that simply aren't there.
I long for a simpler time when we didn't need to worry about such BS.
One of the main reasons we have so many problems with privacy and security these days is precisely because of those simpler times when nobody really worried about the implications of various technologies. We're much better off being cynical.
This is one of the big reasons why I don't use G+ (or Facebook, etc.)