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User: tinkerton

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  1. Re: Your Slashdot history betrays you on Facebook Reopens Probe Into Russian Involvement in Brexit (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    Communist it was not, but socialist certainly. Socialism for the rich.

  2. Re:First electric supercar? Not Ferrari, not Tesla on Challenging Tesla, Ferrari Will Build An Electric Sportscar -- and an SUV (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes I saw it. But in a way performance bursts are easy for electric cars. Sustained performance is harder because it requires serious cooling upgrades. Range and loading time are becoming acceptable for a range of users.

  3. True, and I'm also inclined to post such a comment. So I'll add a complementary note: Obama has approved 1 trillion for new nukes and there's increasing antimissile systems on Russia's border which as is well known have both defensive as offensive value (attacking with impunity)There's bound to be a response and it will be asymmetric.

  4. Re:First electric supercar? Not Ferrari, not Tesla on Challenging Tesla, Ferrari Will Build An Electric Sportscar -- and an SUV (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    Rimac eh? I can't keep track of the glut in new supercars. The Grand Tour just listed these upcoming models, and some of them are electric.

    Devel 16
    Ikeya Formula IF-02RDS
    Apollo – Intensa Emozione
    Dallara Stradale
    Asbark OWL
    Vencer Sarth
    Arrinera Hussarya
    Evantra Millecavalli
    Henessy Venom
    Glickenhaus SCG 003
    Zenvo TS1 GT

  5. The way this is going to end is
    'okay maybe the russians did not have any significant effect on the elections but they tried! '
    and
    'okay maybe Trump's gang wasn't bought by the Russians but they are corrupt and they lie'.

    meanwhile though it's well established that Clinton hacked the preelections by buying up the DNC and turning them into a partisan organisation (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774)
    that is why I'm not surprised people started leaking from inside.
    And Clinton pushed the russiagate story to deflect attention from Clinton's machinations and failure.
    I still don't get why there are so many Sanders supporters who buy the Russiagate story.

    At the same time Trump was really bought, only it was by Sheldon Adelson (who only has his own and Israel's interests in mind) and do hr singlehandedly legitimized Israel's claim on Jeruzalem.

  6. That is not much of a correction, though.

    It is and it isn't. The whole report masqueraded as an authoritative National Intelligence Assessment while it was not. In fact the claim that it was '4 agencies' was heavily overstated. It was a selection of people from 3 agencies and the people who should know and who should be able to come up with proof, the NSA, has less 'moderate' confidence in the conclusion than the CIA . That's like saying it's plausible. http://www.theamericanconserva...

  7. All these russia cyberwarfare stories work on a background assumption that everything was very clean until the russians came, while if you look at the numbers in context a lot of them are just 'a bit of noise'.
    If you take general spam it is also natural for the interpretation to shift from 'electing Trump' to 'fueling division' and to 'sometimes just doing innocious things to build trust and to make the whole propaganda effort more effective'. All that the latter is saying is 'I'm paranoid about the Russians so i interpret everything as a devious russian plot'. And that is the real campaign. Whatever the russians did or did not do is merely the pretext for an outrageous campaign.

    The paradox is that this campaign can only happen because too many people who matter don't take the danger from Russia seriously.
    Russia can annihilate the world. We are threatening them and surrounding them. They are very uptight and the margins for error and the reaction times are being massively reduced . Meanwhile our side is recklessly aggressive. This is criminal negligence, mildly put.

  8. Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds? on America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    You have to kind of uh, extrapolate from your experience at Mach 0.1 ..

  9. Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds? on America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Wait, wait, since this thing will be understeering like a pig you'll need trailbraking al the way to the apex. Not easy without an apex.

    Also you'd be surprised how hard your car will be braking if you just take your foot off the throttle at mach5.

  10. Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds? on America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    I would think though that it's faster to take your foot off the throttle when you initiate such a turn. To use a car metaphor.

  11. Let's face it on America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    SR-71 was cool. SR -72 is a flying blob.

  12. Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds? on America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    'Agile' means that it can turn!

  13. Re:Polish... on Why the World Only Has Two Words For Tea (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    But herbata refers to herbs, so it's not specifically tied to the tea plant. It's like saying infusion as short for infusion of tea leaves.

  14. Re:Who cares how fast it is on 'I Tried the First Phone With An In-Display Fingerprint Sensor' (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    I wonder if you understand how fingerprint matching can be made to work. It may be possible to make this mechanism safe but your argument won't be enough.
    On the smartphone you reconstruct the match with the hash and some specific data, then if you can upload this specific data together with the hash, how are you going to avoid that another fingerprint, maybe your own, is checked for a match with your hash?

    If you can reconstruct the match you have a functional database for looking up fingerprints.

  15. Re:Who cares how fast it is on 'I Tried the First Phone With An In-Display Fingerprint Sensor' (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm more interested in what happens to the biometric data. If the fingerprints of anyone touching your smartphone go somewhere in the cloud where they can be queried on demand, then metadata analysis just got itself a new tool.

  16. Re:Is this about Snowden? on Snowden Joins Outcry Against World's Biggest Biometric Database (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Then I think you consider your experience more relevant to the situation than it really is. I don't accept your claim to authoritativeness.

  17. Re:Is this about Snowden? on Snowden Joins Outcry Against World's Biggest Biometric Database (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Indeed, we take an almost entirely opposite view. I consider Snowden a traditional responsible whistleblower: he took his information to the press and let them decide what to publish - and what not to publish, and accepted the heavy repercussions, meaning his life was over.
    I suppose the press is not who you call the real enemy. The Russians? They're hardly relevant in the story. They provided a sanctuary afterwards by accident because it suited them.

    His personality doesn't really matter but what kind of personality do you expect from a whistleblower. Vain, intelligent, principled, likes to hear himself talk? Look at Daniel Ellsberg, it fits him too. You need individualism for the job. If you're too sociable you don't do whistleblowing. You need the other's approval too much, constitutional or not. I find the idea that he's in it for personal gain ludricrous.

    But then it's about Snowden again. Always the same, it should be about the information he exposed.

  18. Is this about Snowden? on Snowden Joins Outcry Against World's Biggest Biometric Database (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A biometric database of 1 billion people can be accessed easily, that is newsworthy. The fact that Snowden 'joins the outcry' is more a human interest angle. Like the human interest article I read about the latest Nobel prize for peace( for ICAN, who campaign against nuclear weapons). The campaign is important, and all we got was a human interest article.

    To be fair, if Snowden says a protest action is worthy, I do agree it makes it more interesting for me.

    The problem with this database is the same as with so much data collection: the main objection given is the security of the database 'only qualified people should access it'. In practice that is nonsense and you should assume it can be accessed by anyone, maybe not now but later. Therefore a more radical prohibition is needed for a lot of data: make it forbidden to collect some data.

    One step further would be to block certain technological developments. Because controversial technology is often introduced under pretext of tackling some consensus 'bad people': russian child molesting terrorists. Then once the technology is in place it's only a small step to use it for other purposes.

    With this latest scandal the line of defense is too easy. first try to shut up the messenger. If that fails claim you'll make the system safer. Job done.

  19. Re:Should Planned Obsolescence for Tech be a crime on Apple Investigated By France For 'Planned Obsolescence' (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I think the first rule should be that there is a clear 'map of obsolescence', that the communication should be clear, and that there are decent warranties. You can't rely on the PR for that. There are a lot of factors involved, some avoidable, some deliberate, some unavoidable. Making it hard to replace a battery is a form of intentional obsolescence so it should be made very clear.
    Durability is another area. It is 'optimized' everywhere now and it is hard to measure but it can be covered by warranties.

    Obsolescence is becoming a major design issue, and it can even be pushed from above, through laws arranged with lobbyists. Environmental norms for cars for instance generally have built in obsolescence and they raise the bar for newcomers and small players.

  20. Re:I was on the ... on John Young, Legendary Astronaut, Dies at Age 87 (cbsnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, thanks for the details. It was an innocent question.

  21. Re:I was on the ... on John Young, Legendary Astronaut, Dies at Age 87 (cbsnews.com) · · Score: 1

    So you registered on /. when you retired?
    I just noticed I tend to assume recent /. account ID means young person.

  22. That's more like it. The stickers are acting like noise which makes the network useless.

    That reminds me of a not really learning network situation but there's a relation. I saw a post very recently of a guy who had posted white noise movies on youtube and he got inundated by copyright notices, because the automated copyright detection found all kinds of patterns in it.

  23. Re:Google is a Search Engine Not The Police on Google Blocks Pirate Search Results Prophylactically (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    Google stores it but it can allow others to query it.

  24. Your example fits the original core meaning, the claim that is pulled out of thin air. But it's not that it can be expanded(beyond debatable cases) , it already happened. If you look at what subjects are discussed and the people affected when you google fake news, you get the list I gave.

    There's another rule I can invoke here, and that is that propaganda thrives on loaded words that are underdefined. Underdefined words are filled in according to circumstances to fit the purpose. Fake News has become 'disinformation', 'propaganda' or just anything you consider wrong

  25. You can't have it both ways.
    I agree that the meaning of fake news should be very limited, and my definition would be more limited than yours, but that is not how it's used. In reality it's like a slogan which sweeps up a whole category of things. As soon as you interact with people you have to take in account how they use the words. At the same time as soon as someone comes with measures that sound very specific, like suppressing fake news, that may sound good and you end up supporting them because of the narrow interpretation. You have to be very well aware what it's real life interpretation will be.
    Such as 'suppress anything which can be linked to Russia becomes Fake NewsRussiaRussia Todayguests on Russia Today.
    For instance http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/t...

    There is no indication at all that RT's reporting drops as low as the narrow interpretation of fake news even if it had been total propaganda. I would not qualify propaganda as fake news. Parent post is valid in the practical interpretation of fake news.