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User: blueg3

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  1. Re:Decaf at Starbucks? on A Data Scientist Visits The Magic Kingdom, Sans Privacy · · Score: 1

    the US system where the insurance is just a tax on your genes, habits and lack

    Lack?

    AFAIK, it's illegal in the US to use genetic information in choosing health insurance rates. (Unless you mean "family history", which is different.) Insurance of all kinds is a tax on your habits: your behavior very directly influences your risk, and risk is really what insurance is about.

    Incidentally, "the US system" for health insurance is to get it through your employer, where no factors matter (except who your employer is). At least until ACA, the individual markets were secondary (and as a result, unreasonably expensive).

  2. Re:Work on your handwriting on NYT: NSA Put 100,000 Radio Pathway "Backdoors" In PCs · · Score: 0

    Because that's definitely hard to spy on.

  3. Re:VGA Ports are out now? on NYT: NSA Put 100,000 Radio Pathway "Backdoors" In PCs · · Score: 1

    The link you're looking for.

    Most people know of this from having read Cryptonomicon.

  4. Re:Condescend much? on Ampere Could Be Redefined After Experiments Track Single Electrons Crossing Chip · · Score: 2

    Such as using the American Imperial system of measurement?

    Nobody does science using U. S. customary units.

  5. Re:Now if they could only do something about... on India Frees Itself of Polio · · Score: 2

    We're able to eradicate diseases effectively when they have no non-human reservoir. That's because if we eliminate all existing cases and prevent new cases for a little while (through vaccination), the disease will die out. For diseases with non-human reservoirs, like rabies, we'd have to eliminate the disease in the entire reservoir population, too, which is infeasible.

  6. Re:Not so fast ! on India Frees Itself of Polio · · Score: 1

    Somehow people will manage to blame Americans, anyway. Except the Americans, they'll blame Muslims.

  7. Re:In which units? on Polar Vortex Sends Life-Threatening Freeze To US · · Score: 1

    That is, after all, "twice as cold" as -40 celsius when computed via Kelvin (the only way that makes sense).

    No, that's half the temperature, which isn't twice anything. You can't invert factors of two out of convenience.

    They didn't say "half the temperature", though. They didn't even say "temperature". They used the nebulous "cold": "twice as cold".

    Fortunately, I supplied you with a reasonable interpretation in the comment you replied to!

    the heat loss rate of a human is twice as high

    This would be a sort of stupid definition (though at least well-defined) if they were talking about temperature. But they're not, they're talking about wind chill, and wind chill is essentially measuring heat loss rates of humans. (It just happens to be stated in units of temperature.)

  8. Re:In which units? on Polar Vortex Sends Life-Threatening Freeze To US · · Score: 5, Informative

    While normally I'd agree with you, wind chill isn't actually a temperature. It's an imaginary reference temperature based on the heat loss rate of a human (comparing the rate with wind to the stagnant-air rate of a different temperature). So, "twice as cold" here has a logical definition: the heat loss rate of a human is twice as high.

  9. Re:Prius are in fact better in snow than the avg c on Polar Vortex Sends Life-Threatening Freeze To US · · Score: 1

    The normal tires that come with a Prius are absolutely terrible in the snow. Put a couple of winter tires on it, and it does just fine, though. I wouldn't say it does better than the Subaru (which you see all over the place here), but it's good enough.

    The only frustrating part is the traction control that can't be turned off combined with very high torque at low speeds. A little bit of ice under one wheel and it can be very hard to get the car to move at all.

  10. Re:Bollocks on Why a Cure For Cancer Is So Elusive · · Score: 1

    I didn't say it was. I said there was nothing Western about grain-based diets -- it's civilization in general.

  11. Re:Bollocks on Why a Cure For Cancer Is So Elusive · · Score: 2

    African populations before westernization of their diets (I.E. eating grain) etc.

    The civilization of their diets, you mean. Modern civilization is built on the agriculture of cereal plants. This is true of both Eastern and Western civilization (and, in fact, probably started in northern Africa).

  12. Re:From a comment there on Linux Distributions Storing Wi-Fi Passwords In Plain Text · · Score: 1

    Purging the encryption key from the system when it's in any state other than powered off completely (i.e., sleep and hibernate) is tough, and so it's often not done well. Laptops typically spend a lot of time both in one of these suspended states and also vulnerable to theft (or other unauthorized physical access).

    It's not actually any harder for laptops than for desktops, except that the typical usage and attack model are different.

  13. Re:Has been for years. on Linux Distributions Storing Wi-Fi Passwords In Plain Text · · Score: 1

    There are two alternative designs that are slightly more secure.

    First, usually the WiFi password file is globally-readable. It really only needs to be root-readable, though this makes the network management architecture a little more complicated.

    Second, you can use user-specific WiFi connections, where the password is stored in a database encrypted using the user's login password and decrypted at login time.

  14. Re:Security - and a false sense of security on Linux Distributions Storing Wi-Fi Passwords In Plain Text · · Score: 1

    A casual observer might not know how to decrypt them, which increases security.

    This is just grasping at straws. Your attack model for security should never be, "well, hey, at least it protects against a casual observer".

  15. Re:From a comment there on Linux Distributions Storing Wi-Fi Passwords In Plain Text · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This.

    This comes up all the time, and people are always shocked and horrified that certain data are stored in plain text. They want instead for magic encryption dust to be sprinkled on things. But often it's the case that there is no reasonable alternative. Data like WiFi passwords have to be available in plain text at the time they are used. If your system is configured so that a WiFi connection should be available to any user (or if it should be connected at boot time, before user login), then it must be available in plain text. If you encrypt it, the same party that would have had access to the plain-text form instead needs access to the encryption key, which means that the encryption is doing nothing.

    There are some design failures that could be improved. User-specific WiFi connections can have their passwords encrypted, but they are often not as well-supported or well-designed as they should be. User-specific networking configuration in general under Linux is not very well supported (to be fair, it's tricky), but it's a good option for any really multi-user system.

    Encrypting the whole disk is certainly an option, as the article points out, but it's solving a different problem. There's tons of plaintext data that your system needs to have access to that's potentially sensitive. That's the nature of the system. You can't realistically encrypt it from the perspective of the "live" system -- the live system would just need the encryption key, too -- but you can encrypt the disk, which encrypts it from an attacker that has access to the powered-off hardware. However, a) this is a much broader protection than solving "WiFi passwords aren't encrypted", b) if an attacker has access to your hardware, realistically, WiFi passwords are the least of your concerns, and c) full-disk encryption can be tricky to do right on laptops, which are the main user of WiFi.

  16. Re:Derivative works on DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years · · Score: 1

    There can be no licensing control without a copyright,

    Not true at all.

  17. Re:illegal on DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years · · Score: 1

    They're not asserting or transferring copyright, and they won't be able to enforce copyright because they don't have it. That doesn't prevent them from making an exclusive-licensing deal, though since there's no copyright on the original works, the deal has less teeth than it normally would.

  18. Re:Derivative works on DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years · · Score: 4, Informative

    T3 isn't claiming copyright.

  19. That's what UPnP is for.

  20. Re:Come on on FDA Seeks Tougher Rules For Antibacterial Soaps · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, the first point is entirely true: widespread use on farms is where one of the major problems are.

    Home-use soaps are potentially a concern, but a much smaller factor.

    Your confusion is appropriate: the marketing of things as "antibacterial" is inconsistent and, mostly, stupid. There are soaps (and other consumer products, like plastics) that include a wide variety of different antibiotics, ones that include different kinds of bacteriacides altogether, and ones that include simple things like bleach and ethanol. Purell, which is ethanol, is certainly antibacterial, in that it's excellent at killing bacteria. But in this article, when they're talking about "antibacterial soaps", that's not what they mean. So consistent and helpful!

  21. Re:Come on on FDA Seeks Tougher Rules For Antibacterial Soaps · · Score: 2

    Purell is neither soap nor "antibacterial" in this sense.

  22. Re:valid for only a brief time window each day on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    It's probably one of the details that makes security experts doubt its veracity. Because that's an improbable and kind of stupid system.

  23. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    Do you have a justification for trying to spy on every person on the planet?

    Sure. It's their job and it's effective. For everyone who's not a US citizen, you're transmitting data right through our networks willingly and there's no law that says we can't. For US citizens, "we're not intentionally targeting you, we're using your data as a tool to target foreigners". It's an asshole justification, but it's pretty clear-cut.

    Do you have a justification for a system that's more about corporate espionage than stopping terrorism?

    Say what you will about the NSA, corporate espionage isn't their thing. That's other countries. Show some evidence to the contrary if you have it.

  24. Re:Let's see on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    A lot of S and TS information is protected by Suite A cryptography instead, rather than Suite B (like AES). Still, there's a lot of classified material protected by AES and, yes, knowing about serious vulnerabilities in AES would be directly counter to one of NSAs major goals, since they've certified AES as being appropriate for use in securing lots of sensitive material.

  25. Re:Mind Readers? Thought Crime? on Driver Arrested In Ohio For Secret Car Compartment Full of Nothing · · Score: 2

    Law enforcement doesn't know, they only suspect. Hopefully they have a reasonable suspicion (and hopefully a judge holds them to it).

    When you go to trial, the judge doesn't know your intent, either. He's there to decide on matters of law. Your intent is a matter of fact. The job of deciding it is up to the people in the jury box.