Yes. the current way is much better, have to remember 8,000 different passwords from many websites, each with their own requirements, oh also have to change them every X months.
I'll tell you a secret. For 7995 of the 8000 websites I visit I use the same password. So (OMG!) an admin from another website could start posting crap here under my ID. But would you notice the difference?
The 5 websites with different PWs are my bank etc. And I've never been asked to change a password except at work, monthly, but they pay for my time anyway.
How exactly does Cambridge Analytica fit into this? Cambridge Analytica had nothing to do with identification/authentication issues. It had to do with an aspect of Facebook, sharing....
With biometrics, Facebook and hence Cambridge Analytica would also get to know my fingerprint. With that, they (or people they sold it to) could then follow wherever else I went on the internet (including the IoT). My various identities (like "Nukenerd" here and "John Smith" on FB for example) could could then all be identified as one and the same by them for whatever nefarious purposes, to get a much fuller picture of what I do and who I am...
I fill in the security questions with random garbage.
Hard to remember if you need to come up with them again. And it's not solved by ensuring you never forget your ID or password because I have known sites that have lost mine but irritatingly insist that it is you who have forgotten them.
So I have at least four entirely false persona complete with birthdays, pets, city, fave colour etc (I add to them as needed) that I use in these situations. So even if I must give my real name eg for a bank account, I can still give various false "First car" or "Favourite colour" as security questions. Makes it harder for the admen/scammers to connect dots.
You can summarise all the negative news about Facebook with a quote by Shakespeare: it "struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
You can summarise the positive hype about Facebook with that too
I think you have got mixed up there with Bill Gates deposition in 1998 when Microsoft was on trial. He came over as either having the memory powers of a goldfish, or otherwise as not having a clue what was going on in his own company. His deposition was described by one of the newspapers as "a comic masterpiece of evasion and obfuscation". At one point, like a schoolboy trying to sound clever, he demanded from the examining lawyer a definition of the word "definition".
Zucherberg cannot do much worse than Gates did. Will we get to see his performance?
You are concerned about the safety of driverless cars which have killed few enough people to count on the fingers of one hand. Where is your concern for the moronic human drivers who kill dozens every single day?
Those moronic drivers are easily identifiable. I'd ban them.
There have been no "driverless" cars on public roads so far. They have all had humans present ready (in theory) to intervene when the SD software did not cope; I don't know what the statistics are for interventions but I suspect that many if not most go un-reported. The accidents that SD cars have had are the result of double failures (software and supervisor). An analogy is a twin-engined aircraft having both engines fail at the same time. Looked at that way, the statistics are pretty unimpressive considering the relatively low mileage these vehicles have covered.
You'd already realize this if you could actually interpret facts rather than being guided by media hysteria like the simple-minded sheep you are.
I must be another sheep except I can't say I have seen anything in particular in the media about it - but I am in the UK so perhaps it's different.
Once you factor in experience and development they [SD systems] become continuously improving systems....
You cannot factor in possible future improvements as an argument for implementation now. I'm inclined to wait for that further development and improvement you promise actually to take place, especially after recent fuck-ups including the very elementary one of a Tesla in SD mode (I don't care what else you call it) failing to decide which side of a fork it should take and opting for the concrete centre.
They note an enormous increase in safety when cars are autonomous
I'm unconvinced at the present state of development. The test cars behind their safety statistics have qualified drivers taking over when things are looking pear-shaped. These tests cars actually have two parallel safety systems (the software and the human supervisor) so it's hardly surprising if it scores better than one system alone. It's likely to be a different story when carrying people who are not ready or capable (non-drivers, drunks, sleepers) to over-ride the SD system. Moreover, as I expect that the test drivers are enthusiasts for SD tech, they might be under-reporting near-misses. Have the data logs of the SD test vehicles been fully examined by the licensing authorities or do we just take the SD companies' word for it?
[They] want to be on the forefront of a developing technology.... in other words, they take a measured, considered approach
Pedestrians are supposed to walk ginst traffic though. At least that's what I was taught.
So was I, and it's in the UK Highway Code. The idea is that if a car on your own side of the road does not see you then you can see what is happening and leap into the ditch or bushes out of the way. If the car is on the other side of the road it does not generally matter whether they see you or not.
I think you are mixing up two different crackpot schemes that Musk has dreamed up.
The cars on sleds scheme is the "Boring" scheme which resulted from Musk being stuck in traffic on his commute. He thought that if there were a tunnel with sleds that his car could be lifted down onto, and pop up further on, he could jump the queue - him and an other similarly rich people anyway. As you say, it could not cope with mass traffic because of the delay with the lifts [= elevators] and loading - anyone else ever been on those London Underground passneger lifts? They take ages. And if everyone jumps a queue they end up still in a queue.
In fact Musk's latest pronouncements for the Boring sled idea is that it would be "prioritised for pedestrians and cyclists" - in other words a conventional underground train. These pronouncements were in the context of Boring bidding to build a link between Chicago airport and centre.
The other scheme, the Hyperloop, is for foot passengers riding in sealed pods in a generally above-ground vacuum tube at 1000kph or something like that. It makes no sense for short distances and not much for long distances. It is effectively a railway inside a tube with vacuum plant and airlocks etc which its proponents claim it will be cheaper than a railway without the tube, vacuum plant and airlocks etc. In anything but flat deserts it will require spectacular civil engineering because at speeds like that you need extremely gentle curves and gradient changes. Musk also seems to think it can be built over land for free (or nearly free) because it stands on stilts, and people will welcome a 3 metre steel tube passing over their property because they would feel they are thereby rubbing shoulders with the Great Man himself. Fortunately that won't fly where I am.
A Hyperloop or two will be built, probably one in Arabia, bank-rolled by an Arab Sheikh, and one possibly from LA to Las Vegas as a tourist novelty. Then that will be all.
Being the inventor and first to implement has problems, much as you point out with UK railways. As soon as the first implementation goes into use, other countries get to learn from what the first one did and improve their copies.
Exactly. The first British railways were built for carrying coal short distances and made too small for the long term as a result, both in the gauge between rails and the overall loading gauge. George Stephenson has a lot to answer for. Even British engineers building railways elsewhere built bigger (usually except the track gauge as it was hard to source wider wheelsets).
the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff
What stuff, exactly, they claimed to have invented?
I knew an old guy, soldier in WW2 who spoke to Russians in Berlin in 1945. They were using a lot of Western equipment which had been sent to them, Jeeps for example. They had been told that Russia had made it all and refused to believe my friend otherwise..
The ad serves to let you know company A exists at all and is still a player. You absofuckinglutely are influenced. Way, wayyyyyy deeper than you think. In fact, the people who are denying this are easier to influence... Queue xfiles themes..
I don't need adverts to tell me that Ford and BMW cars exist, or Kellog's cornflakes, or Budweiser beer. I see them around anyway, and I do not buy them anyway (as it happens). I am one of your people denying, but as for my being influenced, I don't even see many adverts. I live in the sticks, never watch TV directly (record programmes and fast forward the ads), and I've got adblocker on. I have a Pentax camera, and Pentax are [in]famous for not advertising (one reason I chose them), and I've never seen my favourite beer (London Pride) advertised either even if you might have done.
I find that impossible to believe. Maybe you have never consciously bought anything due to an ad you saw on a web page.
I can balance that by there are things I consciously do not buy because I've seen their ad. A brand of chocolates had an advert some years ago that was so silly that I have never bought it since (no problem, the rival brand costs and tastes the same). Also, when choosing between two brands, if all other things are equal (AFAIK), I choose the one that is advertised less because with the other I feel that the money is going into advertising rather than quality.
You have never bought a ticket to an event or movie you saw advertised online?
We need to distinguish between functiona ads and psychological ads. Funtional ads are like when I need a plumber I search for plumbers in my area and find their websites and pick one. So that is me responding to an advert, but functionally because I do not know any plumbers otherwise. And BTW, I don't pick the one with the website with most bling. Similarly if I want to buy eg a camera I look at camera makers websites to see what they have on offer, factually, the specifications, combined with studying review websites and forums.
OTOH I don't react well to psychological adverts - the one pushed in my face, trying to make stuff look cool or trying to put a brand name in my head. They are more likely to deter me.
You didn't expect to buy that Cider or brand of Beer.....but you saw the ad and had awareness....and hey, why not?
It does not work like that with me. Over time I try all the beers I see on the shelf and settle with the one I like best. If a new one appears, I'll try it to see if it is better still. Ads have nothing to do with it. Of course when a new beer is launched it is often accompanied by an ad campagn, and I've no doubt the admen think I bought it, and congratulate themselves, becase they think it is because I saw the ads (like you seem to think too) but the ads have nothing to do with it.
Let them spy to their heart's content. If they're using me for marketing they're going to be very disappointed.
I have just taken a look at what Google has on me, following the Guardian article's advice, and it is miles out. Literally thousands of miles out as they think I'm in Australia (but I'm in Europe). According to my Ad profile, they think I'm interested in celebrities and mothercare - WTF ?? I've never serched for those things in my life
They actually invite you to add more topics, the cheeky bastards. I'm glad Im wasting their time.
It seems strange to me that the pylon and its cables were not in place to provide support for the span...... You don't build the suspension part of a suspension bridge just for kicks...
From what I have heard, they did exactly that. The tower and "stays" were for decoration. Incredible. It was not just meant to be a bridge, it was meant to be a statement of... er... I'm not sure what it was meant to be a statement of (some have suggested of feminism or diversity), but anyway it was. It is certainly a statement of something now, but not the intended one.
The news media was making waves about some visible cracking in the concrete which would not necessarily be a concern here as the whole idea is concrete is quite strong in compression. A crack that was stable under compression, not allowing movement, would simply be compressed together and still retain structural integrity.
Except when you consider buckling. As far as I can make out from the accounts, videos and artist's impressions, what they were pretensioning was a concrete strut under compression. You need to keep the resultant compressive force in a concrete or masonery strut within the centre third in order to avoid tension at the outside edge and hence potential bucking, which would of course be preceeded by cracks there. The pre-tensioning may well have been meant to keep the resultant compressive force within the middle third, but if they over or under-tensioned one of the rods it may only have made matters worse by taking the resultant force outside of it.
OTOH, that strut is visible in some of the post-failure pictures and looks fairly intact and lying on top of the deck, athough it is hard to tell. So it might simply have punched its way out through the top deck due to lack of sufficient steel rebar in the area connecting it stress-wise it to the next downward sloping strut at that point (which would have been in tension). That rebar would have been local and cast into the concrete, not tensioned, but if it was insufficient, or if the concrete around it was not cured enough (or just crap), then fiddling with the post-tension rods near to it might have caused that area to disintegrate, allowing our strut to punch through.
These are all things the investigation will need to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
But if they get your 'biometrics', you um...Use a different finger?Use a different face?
Halloween mask? I can see a brisk trade in thimbles with false fingerprints - a different one for every occasion.
Yes. the current way is much better, have to remember 8,000 different passwords from many websites, each with their own requirements, oh also have to change them every X months.
I'll tell you a secret. For 7995 of the 8000 websites I visit I use the same password. So (OMG!) an admin from another website could start posting crap here under my ID. But would you notice the difference?
The 5 websites with different PWs are my bank etc. And I've never been asked to change a password except at work, monthly, but they pay for my time anyway.
How exactly does Cambridge Analytica fit into this? Cambridge Analytica had nothing to do with identification/authentication issues. It had to do with an aspect of Facebook, sharing. ...
With biometrics, Facebook and hence Cambridge Analytica would also get to know my fingerprint. With that, they (or people they sold it to) could then follow wherever else I went on the internet (including the IoT). My various identities (like "Nukenerd" here and "John Smith" on FB for example) could could then all be identified as one and the same by them for whatever nefarious purposes, to get a much fuller picture of what I do and who I am...
I fill in the security questions with random garbage.
Hard to remember if you need to come up with them again. And it's not solved by ensuring you never forget your ID or password because I have known sites that have lost mine but irritatingly insist that it is you who have forgotten them.
So I have at least four entirely false persona complete with birthdays, pets, city, fave colour etc (I add to them as needed) that I use in these situations. So even if I must give my real name eg for a bank account, I can still give various false "First car" or "Favourite colour" as security questions. Makes it harder for the admen/scammers to connect dots.
You realize that Woz has done basically nothing since the Apple ][ was released. Nearly 40 decades.
40 decades? I reckon that makes him a god. We had better listen to him.
You can summarise all the negative news about Facebook with a quote by Shakespeare: it "struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
You can summarise the positive hype about Facebook with that too
I think you have got mixed up there with Bill Gates deposition in 1998 when Microsoft was on trial. He came over as either having the memory powers of a goldfish, or otherwise as not having a clue what was going on in his own company. His deposition was described by one of the newspapers as "a comic masterpiece of evasion and obfuscation". At one point, like a schoolboy trying to sound clever, he demanded from the examining lawyer a definition of the word "definition".
Zucherberg cannot do much worse than Gates did. Will we get to see his performance?
Remains to be see how "hard hitting" the questioning is when the members of congress received substantial donations from Facebook and associates.
So the "charm" has already been working for a while.
You are concerned about the safety of driverless cars which have killed few enough people to count on the fingers of one hand. Where is your concern for the moronic human drivers who kill dozens every single day?
Those moronic drivers are easily identifiable. I'd ban them.
There have been no "driverless" cars on public roads so far. They have all had humans present ready (in theory) to intervene when the SD software did not cope; I don't know what the statistics are for interventions but I suspect that many if not most go un-reported. The accidents that SD cars have had are the result of double failures (software and supervisor). An analogy is a twin-engined aircraft having both engines fail at the same time. Looked at that way, the statistics are pretty unimpressive considering the relatively low mileage these vehicles have covered.
You'd already realize this if you could actually interpret facts rather than being guided by media hysteria like the simple-minded sheep you are.
I must be another sheep except I can't say I have seen anything in particular in the media about it - but I am in the UK so perhaps it's different.
Once you factor in experience and development they [SD systems] become continuously improving systems. ...
You cannot factor in possible future improvements as an argument for implementation now. I'm inclined to wait for that further development and improvement you promise actually to take place, especially after recent fuck-ups including the very elementary one of a Tesla in SD mode (I don't care what else you call it) failing to decide which side of a fork it should take and opting for the concrete centre.
They note an enormous increase in safety when cars are autonomous
I'm unconvinced at the present state of development. The test cars behind their safety statistics have qualified drivers taking over when things are looking pear-shaped. These tests cars actually have two parallel safety systems (the software and the human supervisor) so it's hardly surprising if it scores better than one system alone. It's likely to be a different story when carrying people who are not ready or capable (non-drivers, drunks, sleepers) to over-ride the SD system. Moreover, as I expect that the test drivers are enthusiasts for SD tech, they might be under-reporting near-misses. Have the data logs of the SD test vehicles been fully examined by the licensing authorities or do we just take the SD companies' word for it?
[They] want to be on the forefront of a developing technology .... in other words, they take a measured, considered approach
Those two sentiments are contradictory.
So what you are saying is that Elon is not an expert but you are so we should listen to your advice instead? Really?
I am enough of an expert on Elon Musk to give advice not to listen to him. You don't actually need to be very expert to see that.
Except for ones shown on TV, YouTube, and all over the rest of the internet, practically all documentaries are pay to watch.
FTFY
Pedestrians are supposed to walk ginst traffic though. At least that's what I was taught.
So was I, and it's in the UK Highway Code. The idea is that if a car on your own side of the road does not see you then you can see what is happening and leap into the ditch or bushes out of the way. If the car is on the other side of the road it does not generally matter whether they see you or not.
It's just stupid to be a blind rule-following robot and stop at every red light when you are moving 5-10 mph and can plainly see no cross traffic.
As a cyclist myself I am ashamed of you. Moreover you are handing a whole shipload of ammunition to the anti-cycling brigade.
I think you are mixing up two different crackpot schemes that Musk has dreamed up.
The cars on sleds scheme is the "Boring" scheme which resulted from Musk being stuck in traffic on his commute. He thought that if there were a tunnel with sleds that his car could be lifted down onto, and pop up further on, he could jump the queue - him and an other similarly rich people anyway. As you say, it could not cope with mass traffic because of the delay with the lifts [= elevators] and loading - anyone else ever been on those London Underground passneger lifts? They take ages. And if everyone jumps a queue they end up still in a queue.
In fact Musk's latest pronouncements for the Boring sled idea is that it would be "prioritised for pedestrians and cyclists" - in other words a conventional underground train. These pronouncements were in the context of Boring bidding to build a link between Chicago airport and centre.
The other scheme, the Hyperloop, is for foot passengers riding in sealed pods in a generally above-ground vacuum tube at 1000kph or something like that. It makes no sense for short distances and not much for long distances. It is effectively a railway inside a tube with vacuum plant and airlocks etc which its proponents claim it will be cheaper than a railway without the tube, vacuum plant and airlocks etc. In anything but flat deserts it will require spectacular civil engineering because at speeds like that you need extremely gentle curves and gradient changes. Musk also seems to think it can be built over land for free (or nearly free) because it stands on stilts, and people will welcome a 3 metre steel tube passing over their property because they would feel they are thereby rubbing shoulders with the Great Man himself. Fortunately that won't fly where I am.
A Hyperloop or two will be built, probably one in Arabia, bank-rolled by an Arab Sheikh, and one possibly from LA to Las Vegas as a tourist novelty. Then that will be all.
Being the inventor and first to implement has problems, much as you point out with UK railways. As soon as the first implementation goes into use, other countries get to learn from what the first one did and improve their copies.
Exactly. The first British railways were built for carrying coal short distances and made too small for the long term as a result, both in the gauge between rails and the overall loading gauge. George Stephenson has a lot to answer for. Even British engineers building railways elsewhere built bigger (usually except the track gauge as it was hard to source wider wheelsets).
Stop! Stop! Before you tell me that Bill Gates didn't invent computers.
the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff
What stuff, exactly, they claimed to have invented?
I knew an old guy, soldier in WW2 who spoke to Russians in Berlin in 1945. They were using a lot of Western equipment which had been sent to them, Jeeps for example. They had been told that Russia had made it all and refused to believe my friend otherwise..
The ad serves to let you know company A exists at all and is still a player. You absofuckinglutely are influenced. Way, wayyyyyy deeper than you think. In fact, the people who are denying this are easier to influence... Queue xfiles themes..
I don't need adverts to tell me that Ford and BMW cars exist, or Kellog's cornflakes, or Budweiser beer. I see them around anyway, and I do not buy them anyway (as it happens). I am one of your people denying, but as for my being influenced, I don't even see many adverts. I live in the sticks, never watch TV directly (record programmes and fast forward the ads), and I've got adblocker on. I have a Pentax camera, and Pentax are [in]famous for not advertising (one reason I chose them), and I've never seen my favourite beer (London Pride) advertised either even if you might have done.
I find that impossible to believe. Maybe you have never consciously bought anything due to an ad you saw on a web page.
I can balance that by there are things I consciously do not buy because I've seen their ad. A brand of chocolates had an advert some years ago that was so silly that I have never bought it since (no problem, the rival brand costs and tastes the same). Also, when choosing between two brands, if all other things are equal (AFAIK), I choose the one that is advertised less because with the other I feel that the money is going into advertising rather than quality.
You have never bought a ticket to an event or movie you saw advertised online?
We need to distinguish between functiona ads and psychological ads. Funtional ads are like when I need a plumber I search for plumbers in my area and find their websites and pick one. So that is me responding to an advert, but functionally because I do not know any plumbers otherwise. And BTW, I don't pick the one with the website with most bling. Similarly if I want to buy eg a camera I look at camera makers websites to see what they have on offer, factually, the specifications, combined with studying review websites and forums.
OTOH I don't react well to psychological adverts - the one pushed in my face, trying to make stuff look cool or trying to put a brand name in my head. They are more likely to deter me.
You didn't expect to buy that Cider or brand of Beer.....but you saw the ad and had awareness....and hey, why not?
It does not work like that with me. Over time I try all the beers I see on the shelf and settle with the one I like best. If a new one appears, I'll try it to see if it is better still. Ads have nothing to do with it. Of course when a new beer is launched it is often accompanied by an ad campagn, and I've no doubt the admen think I bought it, and congratulate themselves, becase they think it is because I saw the ads (like you seem to think too) but the ads have nothing to do with it.
Let them spy to their heart's content. If they're using me for marketing they're going to be very disappointed.
I have just taken a look at what Google has on me, following the Guardian article's advice, and it is miles out. Literally thousands of miles out as they think I'm in Australia (but I'm in Europe). According to my Ad profile, they think I'm interested in celebrities and mothercare - WTF ?? I've never serched for those things in my life
They actually invite you to add more topics, the cheeky bastards. I'm glad Im wasting their time.
It seems strange to me that the pylon and its cables were not in place to provide support for the span. ..... You don't build the suspension part of a suspension bridge just for kicks...
From what I have heard, they did exactly that. The tower and "stays" were for decoration. Incredible. It was not just meant to be a bridge, it was meant to be a statement of ... er ... I'm not sure what it was meant to be a statement of (some have suggested of feminism or diversity), but anyway it was. It is certainly a statement of something now, but not the intended one.
The news media was making waves about some visible cracking in the concrete which would not necessarily be a concern here as the whole idea is concrete is quite strong in compression. A crack that was stable under compression, not allowing movement, would simply be compressed together and still retain structural integrity.
Except when you consider buckling. As far as I can make out from the accounts, videos and artist's impressions, what they were pretensioning was a concrete strut under compression. You need to keep the resultant compressive force in a concrete or masonery strut within the centre third in order to avoid tension at the outside edge and hence potential bucking, which would of course be preceeded by cracks there. The pre-tensioning may well have been meant to keep the resultant compressive force within the middle third, but if they over or under-tensioned one of the rods it may only have made matters worse by taking the resultant force outside of it.
OTOH, that strut is visible in some of the post-failure pictures and looks fairly intact and lying on top of the deck, athough it is hard to tell. So it might simply have punched its way out through the top deck due to lack of sufficient steel rebar in the area connecting it stress-wise it to the next downward sloping strut at that point (which would have been in tension). That rebar would have been local and cast into the concrete, not tensioned, but if it was insufficient, or if the concrete around it was not cured enough (or just crap), then fiddling with the post-tension rods near to it might have caused that area to disintegrate, allowing our strut to punch through.
These are all things the investigation will need to consider.