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User: J'raxis

J'raxis's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 1,816

  1. Torrents on TPB on Google Ordered To Remove Anti-Islamic Film From YouTube · · Score: 1

    Time for a good ol' streisand effect. Lookee here:---

    Pirate Bay #1
    Pirate Bay #2 (720p)
    Pirate Bay #3 (640x360)

    Personally I always thought this movie was just racist/Islamophobic dreck, but now with the government finally finding a convenient excuse to censor it, I'm downloading all three of these copies and will be seeding them indefinitely once downloaded.

  2. Yes, the dollar is so much better on Mt. Gox Gone? Apparent Theft Shakes Bitcoin World · · Score: 2

    "Maybe the U.S. Dollar isn't so bad after all."

    Because the regulated financial institutions that deal in U.S. dollars are so much more trustworthy. Perhaps I should keep my money with these guys. Or this company. Or them perhaps? This guy looks trustworthy, doesn't he?

    Here is what government-backed currency banks, lenders, investment firms, and the like have been up to recently. And here is what they're up to now.

  3. Competition on 'Google Buses' Are Bad For Cities, Says New York MTA Official · · Score: 1

    The head of a government-run transit monopoly is upset someone else is providing a competing service.

  4. Car radios on Google Fighting Distracted Driver Laws · · Score: 1

    People get into accidents all the time because they were messing with their radio when they should have had their eyes on the road. So why don't we ban car radios?

    And if that seems absurd, why are we talking about banning things like texting, cell phone use, or Google Glass while driving?

  5. Re:Belkin Gear on Oops: Security Holes In Belkin Home Automation Gear · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe their hardware is crap because they're more about abusing their customers than providing quality products.

  6. Intentional backdoors? on Oops: Security Holes In Belkin Home Automation Gear · · Score: 1

    Remember when this company did this to their routers?

  7. Subrogation on Oil Companies Secretly Got Paid Twice For Cleaning Up Toxic Fuel Leaks · · Score: 1

    The insurance companies most likely put a subrogation clause in their contracts. Now that they know the oil companies received additional payouts from a third party, they can come in and claim that money.

  8. Re:The city in which you were born, your first pet on Developer Loses Single-Letter Twitter Handle Through Extortion · · Score: 1

    Of course. And using made-up answers is exactly what I do. But the vast majority of people don't think about this. They create a halfway-decent password then protect that password with "New York City" and "Fido."

  9. The city in which you were born, your first pet... on Developer Loses Single-Letter Twitter Handle Through Extortion · · Score: 1

    This is the kind of thing made possible by the absolutely stupid policy of protecting unobtainable information (one's login password) with easily obtainable information (those "secret questions" to reset one's password, such as the city in which one was born, one's first pet, or the last four digits of one's CC or SSN).

    If you choose a password that is strong enough, and you're careful enough not to leak it yourself somehow, your password is unobtainable and unguessable. It's as secure as possible. But it requires only a modicum of effort, perhaps a simple public records search, to figure out the answers to most "secret questions" that big companies like GoDaddy use to protect people's passwords. And yet this is how these companies protect your password. And now we see the results.

  10. Re:Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen on Developer Loses Single-Letter Twitter Handle Through Extortion · · Score: 1

    GoDaddy here is no more insane than any company that uses "secret questions" to guard users' passwords. I've pointed out to people for years that the idea of protecting a piece of information that is unobtainable (your password, if you're careful enough not to leak it yourself, and it's strong enough to not be guessable) with information that is easily obtainable with just a modicum of effort (e.g., your mother's maiden name, the city in which you were born, your first pet, ...), is an absolutely stupid idea. And it sounds like this guy's GoDaddy account fell victim to exactly that kind of attack.

    Maybe if word of this attack gets around other companies will switch to something more secure than easily-answerable "secret questions" to reset someone's password.

  11. Re:WTF Slashdot on Surrey Hit With Catnado · · Score: 3, Funny
  12. How many Libraries of Congress is that? on 23-Year-Old Chess Grandmaster Whips Bill Gates In 71 Seconds · · Score: 4, Funny

    Regardless, it took 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, a "grandmaster" Chess player since the age of 13 and new world Chess champion, just 71 seconds to defeat Gates in a friendly game of Chess on a Norwegian television show. It takes longer to heat up a cup of water in the microwave.

    Thanks for that helpful comparison---without it, I would have had no clue how long 71 seconds actually is.

  13. Three out of five? on Surveillance Watchdog Concludes Metadata Program Is Illegal, "Should End" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Three out of five PCLOB board members are in agreement: The NSA spy programs are illegal. ... Could this be the start of change to come?

    Indeed. Expect the government to replace one PCLOB member.

  14. News to me on CmdrTaco Launches Trove, a Curated News Startup · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot combines editor quality control and insight

    Well that's news to me. We have quality control here?

  15. The Titanic ended what exactly? on Regulations Could Delay or Prevent Space Tourism · · Score: 0

    "They don't want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can't let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public."

    Right, because after the Titanic, there's never been another cruise ship. The very idea of sea travel came to an end in the eyes of the public!

  16. Re:Belkin, ugh. on Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router · · Score: 1

    Ten years now. Slashdot covered that story, too. Belkin has been on my boycott list ever since.

  17. Article has no numbers on Researchers: Global Risk of Supervolcano Eruption Greater Than Previously Though · · Score: 1

    One-in-a-billion is a thousand times more likely than one-in-a-trillion odds, right? I'm still not anywhere likely to win that bet, though.

    The article doesn't even have any odds/numbers. Yet the headline contains "far greater." And then ends with this:

    Dr Perrillat said there are no known supervolcanoes that are in danger of erupting in the foreseeable future, and it would take at least a decade or so for the magma pressure within a caldera to build up to a point where an eruption is likely.

    In other words, there's no story here. Researchers figured out that the volcanoes can go off on their own rather than being precipitated by an earthquake, and this somehow translated to "far greater" by the hack writers who wrote this story.

  18. Re:Belkin, eh? on Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router · · Score: 2

    My main point was "vote with your dollars" against sleazeball behavior from companies like this. Some of their products may work fine, without incident, but that doesn't mean I want them to have a single dollar from me.

  19. Re:Belkin, eh? on Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I always blast the software the router came with. Even router software from a company with an otherwise untarnished reputation I don't trust; if it's closed source, you may as well assume it has a backdoor in it.

    But I will never give this company another dime for what they did back in 2003, and I will take every opportunity to inform people about that incident, so they may make the same decisions.

  20. Surely it's true this time on Researchers Develop "Narrative Authentication" System · · Score: 1

    Wow, I've seen so many inventions claiming to "end the need for complex passwords" over the past twenty years that we've certainly ended the need for complex passwords by now, haven't we? Wait, we haven't?

    On another topic, has the Voyager probe left the solar system again yet?

  21. Belkin, eh? on Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router · · Score: 5, Informative

    Never trust a product made by this company. "Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad", reported by Slashdot:

    The Register has a story today about Belkin routers redirecting their users' network traffic. To me, this seems like the logical next step after top-level domain name servers piping ads to your browser. Now the routers themselves hijack the traffic they are supposed to, uh, route -- and you'll love where they send you instead. But it's OK because you can opt out. Incidentally, the Crystal Ball Award goes to Seth Finkelstein, who in 2001 quoted John Gilmore's famous aphorism about the internet, and asked "What if censorship is in the router?"

    This company has been on my shitlist for ten years and always will be.

  22. Just remember now... on Chinese Icebreaker Is Stuck In Ice After Antarctic Research Vessel Rescue · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    ...global warming is supposed to be melting all this ice.

  23. Can't wait for this one on Antarctic Climate Research Expedition Trapped In Sea Ice · · Score: 0

    I can't wait to see how they fit this into the "climate change" theory. The ice is melting, it's climate change; the ice is not melting, it's climate change; more ice is forming, it'll be climate change.

    And of course the irony of a "climate change" research expedition getting stuck in sea ice will be entirely lost on them.

  24. Predictions on Healthcare IT's Achilles' Heel: Sensors · · Score: 1

    Eventually insurance companies will make use of these sensors required in order for you to purchase their policies (or at least not pay exorbitant rates), and of course they'll penalize you if the sensors detect you living an unhealthy lifestyle, not following your doctor's instructions, and so on. And now that we have compulsory insurance in this "free country," there'll be no escaping being surveilled and coerced like this.

    Aren't you glad you supported Obamacare? Say goodbye to yet more of your freedom.

  25. Self-servingly misleading summary on Multivitamin Researchers Say 'Case Is Closed' As Studies Find No Health Benefits · · Score: 1

    'We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit ...

    So, if most have no clear benefit, that means some do, and considering most Americans are not well-nourished, but eat quite unhealthy diets, the results of this study don't apply to them. Perhaps multivitamins provide a benefit to people who don't get the 100% daily allowance of all those vitamins from their diet.

    Of course, multivitamins are a form of (self-)medication outside the control and regulation of the medical establishment, so the self-serving results of this study (or rather, the weasely way it's been summarized) are no surprise to me.