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User: Curupira

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Comments · 106

  1. Re:Not going to happen on Many People Think AI Could Make Better Policy Decisions Than Politicians (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    Can't bribe or influence an AI the way you can humans; so it's a no-go for replacing any existing government.

    Yes, you can.
    Google "algorithm bias site:slashdot.org".
    There are literally a dozen articles here on Slashdot about bias on social-sensitive algorithims. If they can be biased (and they can), their developers can be lobbied or even bribed.

    Here, I'll give you not one, but five well-documented examples of AI showing prejudice in their algorithms.

  2. Just like the classic game of telephone, bribing a programmer to influence an AI has way too abstract and indirect a result to really matter the same way old fashioned direct human graft has - and even worse, it has a paper trail of actions by the programmer.

    You should google "International Obfuscated C Code Contest" and then resume participating in this discussion.

  3. Re:Most games you play online. on Streaming and Cloud Computing Endanger Modding and Game Preservation (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Many newer games have an online portion to them, where you play with or against other people. In what you call Modding is what we call cheating.

    Thanks for sharing your situation. I, on the other hand, have over 800 games in my Steam account. Guess how many of those I play online? Yeah, none of them. I like to game on PC because of mods. From my perspective, Google Stadia can get bent.

  4. Re:a reason I don't use Chrome on Firefox 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Blocked by Default, Smoother Scrolling, and Better Search (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dude, Firefox has a good password manager. If you have an Firefox account, you can access your password in your desktop and your mobile device, without having to install extensions. With a good random password generator (Lastpass has one at their website, you're good to go.

  5. Defender's Quest programmer Lars Doucet has an excellent series of articles on what is at stake when a customer, or would-be customer, decides to buy or to pirate a computer game. In sum, there are, not one, but four currencies: literal money, time, pain-in-the-butt and integrity.

    Pirate sites can make you feel dirty (it costs integrity) and make you fight viruses and false download links (paint-in-the-butt), but usually makes the game available in days or even instantly (low time cost) and cost zero dollars. Legit game stores have to compete with that.

    So, if the game's DRM is obnoxiously hard on legit customers (high pain-in-the-butt cost) and is more expensive than the pirate version, it will lose hard to piracy, because the only "currency" in which the legit version costs less is the integrity currency. It's no wonder Steam, GOG.com and other online stores for PC games nowadays try to make buying and playing the game as seamless as possible. (Of course, there are still AAA games that the publishers insist on having obnoxious DRM).

    Music streaming services got this really well. Spotify, iTunes, Deezer and Google Play Music are all easy to use, fast to listen and have each of them an exellent and comprehensive library of songs. You don't have to subscribe to multiple services to listen to the music you want.

    Now, video streaming services are doing the exact opposite: do you want to see a particular movie (not any movie, or a movie of a particular genre, a particular and specific movie)? Maybe it's on Netflix. Or on Hulu. Or is it on Amazon Prime Video? Perhaps it will be on Disney+. Or you have to "rent" or "buy" it on Google Play Video or something.If it is an anime, maybe it is on Crunchyroll or Funimation. The cash and pain-in-the-butt currencies skyrocket on that system. It's not feasible to subscribe to every video streaming service on the planet. It is no wonder many of us are returning to the torrent sites.

  6. EXACTLY.
    Guess I'll have to download Netscape Communicator 4.x to browse those bitrotting sites.

  7. No, its a severe case of GPL**3**, where Stallman decided the software being free and open source wasn't enough and instead he also wanted to dictate the hardware.

    What? The Linux kernel is licensed as GPL 2 *only*. Is is NOT licensed as GPL 3.

  8. Perhaps he just used the tried and true Slashdot method of investigation: instead of asking questions that no one answers ("meh, someone else will bother to answer this guy"), post an obviously wrong answer himself so people who actually knows the data he needs gets offended with his ignorance and write a rebuttal that has the data he actually needed..

    What? Me? No, I've never done this on Slashdot. Nothing to see here, please move along.

  9. No problem, I was glad to participate in this discussion. Vulnerabilities pop up and (sometimes) get fixed so fast it's hard to keep up.

  10. Has this vulnerability in Transmission been fixed? https://www.securityweek.com/c...

    Throwing away the mod points I've used in this thread so I can answer you:
    Yes, it was.

  11. Re:Still selling phones with Android 5 on Android Oreo Passes 1 Percent Adoption After 5 Months, Nougat Finally Takes First Place (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    They have (for tablets, at least). It's called ChromeOS and it does have timely updates.

    Unfortunatelly, ChromeOS would be awful on smartphones so all Google did is create a new partitioning scheme for Oreo devices that has a separated partition for hardware drivers (Project Treble), making Oreo+ updates easier on the manufacturers. Of course, they will probably still prefer selling new devices to updating existing ones, so I'm not really hopeful about that.

  12. I think the issue lies with Android not really having any one entity fully in charge or at least with enough power to dictate terms. Device manufacturers certainly don't mind killing updates, especially since it helps them sell new devices. The carriers also want you to buy a new device so that they can lock you into monthly contract for another two years.

    And this, my friends, is the reason why Android tablets flopped and Google is now putting all bets on Chrome OS for their netbooks (Chromebooks) and new tablets. I mean, technically porting a regular Chrome browser to Android (for tablets/netbooks) would probably be easier than implementing an Android VM on Chrome OS to run Android apps on those things, but at least Google can now deliver timely updates.

  13. Re:Rust: a programming lang with a toxic community on Rust Creator Graydon Hoare Says Current Software Development Practices Terrify Him (twitter.com) · · Score: 2

    Something that I find disturbing is that I actually saw this exact comment before. Why are you copy-pasting this over and over again?

    I also had this felling and, just in case anyone doubts you: here is other instance of that exact comment.

  14. Commenting here just to undo a misclicked moderation to your comment (i HATE those instant combo-boxes). (Nothing to see here people, move along.)

  15. Re:Ahh, First World countries... on First 'Jackpotting' Attacks Hit US ATMs (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    You should never link to NY Daily News. They're lying bastards. They aren't even good liars, either. They try to blame my ad-blocker for preventing the loading of their articles when I see the whole article load and then get covered up by this page suggesting that there is some software bug in the ad-blocker.

    Sorry about that. It was the first article in English that I've found (most Slashdot users don't speak Portuguese, I suppose) about a well-known problem in Brazil.

  16. Ahh, First World countries... on First 'Jackpotting' Attacks Hit US ATMs (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    ...at least in Europe and in the US thieves are sofisticated enough to hack the ATMs. In my country, they explode them. It's a security nightmare in smaller towns with insufficient police forces.

  17. Re:Still just using jQuery/UI on Stack Overflow Stats Reveal 'the Brutal Lifecycle of JavaScript Frameworks' (stackoverflow.blog) · · Score: 1

    I much prefer the combination of using JavaScript/TypeScript with Mithril/HyperScript, Tachyons, and a Flux-like one-way-data-flow architecture.

    I had to read your post twice to be sure it wasn't parody. Man, the names of those frameworks sound exactly like science fiction movies technobabble.

  18. Re:Barely exists anymore on Ask Slashdot: How Should I Replace My Netbook? · · Score: 2

    The closes in terms of what they set out to do are either Chromebooks or Windows tablets.

    Lenovo also makes "Winbooks", i.e., Windows versions of their most popular Chromebooks models. I've bought a 11.6-inch "Lenovo N22 Winbook" that has pretty much the same hardware as the "Chromebook N22": a modern Celeron that can run 1080p/h264 videos, 32GB SSD (replaceable), 2GB RAM.

    It is not a perfect device, but was a good replacement for my old Atom netbook for classroom purpose.

  19. Re:Theatres committed suicide on Movie Ticket Sales Hit A 22-Year Low in 2017 (msn.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why would I spend twenty dollars to sit next to an asshole teenager who is texting the whole time. Or some jackass who brought a three year old to an r rated film.

    Perhaps you should go to better cinemas, like Alamo Drafthouse:

    Etiquette
    Alamo Drafthouse is famous for enforcing a strict policy on behavior while in the theater. Children under the age of two are not allowed except for showings on specific days which are designated "Alamo For All" showings where parents are encouraged to bring young children and rules around talking are relaxed.[35] Unaccompanied minors are not allowed in showings, except for members of the Alamo Drafthouse's Victory Vanguard rewards program, which allows 15-17 year olds to attend showings unattended after their application to the rewards program has been submitted and reviewed. The application involves demonstrating an understanding of the theater's policies around talking, texting, arriving to the theater late, and basic tipping etiquette.[36] The cinema also prohibits talking and texting during the film. Anyone who violates this policy is subject to warning and potential removal from the premises.[37] Alamo made national headlines in 2011 when the rantings of one angry customer who was ejected for texting were included in its "Don't Talk or Text" PSA shown before films. "When we adopted our strict no talking policy back in 1997 we knew we were going to alienate some of our patrons," Tim League posted on the cinema's website. "That was the plan. If you can't change your behavior and be quiet (or unilluminated) during a movie, then we don't want you at our venue."[38]

    If you live in a major city in America or elsewhere, I'm sure there is a local cinema with the same philosophy.

  20. Obligatory Futurama joke on To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet (vice.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    FCC: Enjoy your corporate owned internet!

    Bender: Yeah, well... I'm gonna go build my own internet infrastructure, with blackjack and hookers.

    In fact, forget the internet thing!

  21. Re:No mention of AMD? on MINIX: Intel's Hidden In-chip Operating System (zdnet.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, it does. It's called "AMD Secure Processor" nowadays, but it's better known as PSP (as in "Platform Security Processor", its original name).

  22. Re:How Hard Is It To Curate Youtube KIDS Properly? on 'Something Is Wrong On the Internet' (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    Or, come on, at least offer an whitelist option on the Youtube Kids app?

  23. Re:It's a shame on Why Did Ubuntu Drop Unity? Mark Shuttleworth Explains (omgubuntu.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    A shame, but what about KDE Plasma 5.x? Does it scale well?

  24. Re:Review and thoughts on Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Performance: *Vastly* improved, across the board. This is both in chrome and on web pages. These are all the speed improvements that should have been done 5 years ago, but they were too busy pretending desktop didn't matter (Firefox OS is the future!) or pretending user complaints weren't valid, and not putting in any effort to really measure the problem.

    True, but it's not easy to compete with Google (Chrome UI) and Apple (Webkit*)-backed developers. What Mozilla is doing is a major overhaul of Firefox's architecture, and it took ages also because it is a difficult task.

    I agree that they screwed-up when they decided to waste time and development workforce on Firefox OS, though. Faster and more secure code should've been their priority since webkit-based browsers arrived. If you have to catch-up with corporate behemots, better not to make major mistakes.

    *Yeah, now Google have forked Webkit, but when Chrome arrived, it was the result of both Google and Apple (also, KDE with KHTML, which kickstarted it all).

  25. Re:Lack of EME had been keeping sites honest on Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Do they? Youtube and Vimeo use html5 without any DRM. I can easily use third-party software or extensions to download videos from them.

    Perhaps doing that will be harder once every browser adopts EME.