If the default passwords are so easily guessable, what other security weaknesses does SuperProf have? Can someone break into their servers, and get the SSN and bank account numbers of their tutors and students?
Hi, thanks for your reply. I have a couple of questions:
To avoid clogged mountain roads, can you use helicopters to take the firefighting agents, equipment, and firefighters to the fire?
Can you use helicopters or drones to deploy the firefighting agents? (A helicopter can move fast and carry a lot of weight, and using an unmanned drone instead of a person would help protect firefighters.)
Let's research how to make better fire-fighting foam. The foam would be cheap, easy to apply (ex: wouldn't get clogged up in hoses), and wouldn't mess up the environment.
And there should be two options of how to package the foam:
1) The standard, self-contained way to package it, which I guess uses an aerosol spray to shoot the foam out of the container. This way is simple, but when you transport the foam to the fire, you have to carry the water that's in the foam.
2) A dry foam powder, which mixes with water fast and easily. So you would carry the dry powder to the fire, and combine the powder with a local water supply, such as a river or a water pipe. Then you'd shoot the water/powder combination at the flammable bushes or whatever, and it would expand into foam when it hit the open air. Something like that. This way is more complicated, but you don't have to transport the water.
It goes both ways. I believe in national defense, and in protecting our borders. I'd be happy to work for a defense-related company, or for a company with neutral politics.
I wonder how many people would rather not work for companies whose management lobbies for liberal causes, and/or clearly prefers candidates who are not straight, white, conservative, and/or men.
Apple should add privacy switches to iPhones - physical sliders that physically disable the camera and microphone. If I slide the camera or mic slider to "OFF", then the camera or mic can't work. Regardless of the user preferences, software, or what I say, the camera or mic is physically unable to work again, until I move the slider back to "ON".
With privacy switches, Apple can remove fears that their phones are listening or taking pictures when they shouldn't. Apple can take the cover off of an iPhone, letting you see the iPhone's camera and mic. Then they can make a movie of someone sliding the privacy switches back and forth, and show the movie to Congress - "Look, when you move the mic (or camera) privacy switch to "OFF", see how the mic (or camera) is physically disabled."
Privacy switches might be a good idea on all phones and computers, not just Apple's.
1) In California, a firefighter was killed by a falling tree. I wish robots had been used; I'd rather see a robot killed than a man. Also a bulldozer driver was killed, when his vehicle overturned. Couldn't they drive the bulldozer remotely?
If current robots can't travel on rough ground, or if they can't carry and use firefighting tools, or if driving a bulldozer remotely doesn't give an accurate feel of how steep and slick the ground is, then let's improve our technology so that it will work.
There are remote-controlled robots that can climb stairs. Let's put a camera, mike and speaker on one of them, and send it into a burning building. The robot would search for people, and for a safe exit path for the people.
A firefighter would stay safely out of the building, controlling the robot. He would "see" the inside of the building via the camera that's on the robot. And he could talk to any people in the building via the mike and speaker that are on the robot.
If someone in the building could walk, then the firefighter (speaking thru the robot) could tell the person, "Follow the robot; it will lead you out of the building." If the person was injured, and if the robot could bear some weight, then the person could lean on the robot as they exited the building. If someone was trapped, and if the robot could extract him/her, then even better.
2) I'd love to see a team of chemists and experienced firefighters get together, and figure out a new, better way to put out fires. I don't mean to be sarcastic, but if it takes several days to put out a wildfire, then we need to figure out a better way to put it out.
The chemists would be the experts in removing heat, fuel and oxygen from the fire. The firefighters would share their experience of what the environment is, when fighting a fire. They would say that a solution sounds good, but it won't work because in a real fire, the environment is too crowded, too windy, whatever.
Suppose someone broke into a power company, and shut off all power to a city. Would water stop running into everyone's home in the city, because the water company's water pumps stopped working?
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned of an impending, potentially devastating cyberattack on U.S. systems, saying the country's digital infrastructure "is literally under attack" and warning that among state actors, Russia is the "worst offender."
Speaking at a scheduled event at the Hudson Institute, he adopted the language of former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet who, in the months ahead of the 9/11 attacks, warned that the "system was blinking red." Coats, citing daily attacks from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, said, "Here we are, nearly two decades later, and I'm here to say the warning lights are blinking red again."
It's a good idea to have an emergency supply of food and water.
A friend tried a few times to convince me to use Facebook. "You can find friends you haven't seen in a long time. It's a convenient way to communicate and share pictures."
Each time, I responded by pointing out the loss of privacy. She didn't care.
Finally I told her, "Ok, at least protect the privacy of your kids. When you talk about your kids in a Facebook message, don't write their full names. Refer to them by the first letter of their names. Your friends reading your Facebook message will know who you're referring to."
My friend adores her kids, and would do anything for them. So hopefully she'll take that last piece of advice, and do that small thing to help protect her kids' privacy. (Of course it's best not to talk about them, or post their pictures, at all.)
"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI," Cook said, adding that the same sentiment applied to environmental and health and safety issues.
Ok, when will Apple apply the "I don’t consider the bloody ROI" philosophy, when it comes to selling Apple devices in China?
Me: Hello. Him: Hi (then he struggles with my name), I'm John with company X. How are you today? Me: Fine. Him: Good, I'm glad to hear that. Well, the reason that I'm calling is...
I suppose his part could be automated some day. But it's not now - they wouldn't write the software to struggle over my name so awkwardly.
Phones and computers need a manual (not software) "data capture" on/off switch. This switch would physically disable the phone's microphone and cameras (and if possible, screen capture).
If I manually slide the data capture switch to OFF, then the mic and cameras are physically disabled. No matter what any data, software, or user preferences are, the mic and cameras are physically unable to capture sound or images. They can't capture sound or images again, until I manually slide the data capture switch back to ON.
We'll see in a few years how Tesla does. But California's rules should help Tesla's solar panel and battery business.
The New York Times says California will require that all new homes have solar power, starting in 2020.
Also, a rate change that takes effect in 2019
will charge California customers based on the time of day they use electricity. So homeowners with energy-efficiency features — a battery in particular, allowing energy to be stored for when it is most efficiently used — will avoid higher costs.
Outreachy is explicitly discriminating based on skin color and ethnic heritage, as well as gender identity, excluding white cis-men.
In the US, they're excluding men and women who are not black, Hispanic, native or Pacific Islander. So men and women are excluded, if they're white, or if they're non-Pacific Islander Asians.
I don't buy anything made in China unless I have to. And I'm willing to pay more (and have paid more) for things that were not made there.
It's good that some tech companies push protection of the environment. But I'd be a lot more impressed with the ethics of those companies if they didn't build manufacturing centers, or technology research centers, in China. (See this article: "Apple investing half a billion dollars in Chinese R&D centers as it announces two more".)
The FTC should have chosen a company that specialized in testing the security of other companies. The FTC should have told the security company, "Test Facebook, send your results to us and to Facebook, send the bill to Facebook, and tell us if they give you any problems."
The book has cardboard characters, but the movie doesn't have to. The movie should vividly show the different personalities.
Hari Seldon - while his health was failing, warned of Trantor's fall, manipulated Trantor's government into setting up the First Foundation, and secretly set up the Second Foundation.
The Committee of Public Safety - who foolishly thought that Seldon's warnings were treasonous.
Salvor Hardin - the first Foundation Mayor, whose style of governing is "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!".
The conniving Prince Regent Wienis, who underestimated Hardin.
King Lepold I - Wienis' selfish and weak nephew.
Those are just a few characters in the beginning, when the book's characters were the most "cardboard". With good acting and direction, the movie can show their ways of thinking and acting, and also show their reactions to what happened.
In the TV show "Columbo", it was fun to watch Columbo solve the crime, and to watch the bad guys gradually realize that they would be arrested. In the Foundation movie, it would be fun to watch events follow Seldon's plan (until the Mule came along), and to watch the expressions of bad guys when they gradually realize that their plans will fail.
My point is that a multiple-choice question is a way to avoid the problem of not being able to read the student's handwriting, and not knowing if s/he wrote brackets or parentheses in the test.
I agree with the above advantages of paper over typing. However we have to consider clear handwriting, to know if the test-taker wrote the correct operator. The operators less than, open curly brace, open parenthesis, and open square bracket look similar to each other. And a period and comma look similar. So do ! and | .
If a test is on paper, one way to get around clear handwriting problems is to have a multiple-choice question:
How do you express the ith element of myArray? a) myArray[i] b) myArray(i)
1) There should have been a warning: "Do you want to block all calls?" If not, then require the employee to enter a phone number.
2) Or for a better solution, that form should not interpret a blank field as a wildcard. If all phone calls are to be blocked, then someone must sign on with a manager's user id, and fill out a special form that lets you block all phone calls.
My main concern is that the Chinese government might use this as low-level punishment (lower than imprisonment) for political crimes. For example, punishment for talking about the heroic "tank man" in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989.
By the end of the day, Liang Xiangyi's name had been censored on China's largest search engines, the video deleted from Chinese websites and millions of Chinese netizens were suddenly worried about what would become of their newfound hero.
Slashdot Mirror
If the default passwords are so easily guessable, what other security weaknesses does SuperProf have? Can someone break into their servers, and get the SSN and bank account numbers of their tutors and students?
James Damore got in trouble, because his memo said that women don't think the same way that men do.
But Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson says, "Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas."
So do women think differently from men, only when this difference should make you want to hire women?
Ouch. Yes, we need to develop firefighting agents that are safe and that don't hurt the environment.
Hi, thanks for your reply. I have a couple of questions:
To avoid clogged mountain roads, can you use helicopters to take the firefighting agents, equipment, and firefighters to the fire?
Can you use helicopters or drones to deploy the firefighting agents? (A helicopter can move fast and carry a lot of weight, and using an unmanned drone instead of a person would help protect firefighters.)
Let's research how to make better fire-fighting foam. The foam would be cheap, easy to apply (ex: wouldn't get clogged up in hoses), and wouldn't mess up the environment.
And there should be two options of how to package the foam:
1) The standard, self-contained way to package it, which I guess uses an aerosol spray to shoot the foam out of the container. This way is simple, but when you transport the foam to the fire, you have to carry the water that's in the foam.
2) A dry foam powder, which mixes with water fast and easily. So you would carry the dry powder to the fire, and combine the powder with a local water supply, such as a river or a water pipe. Then you'd shoot the water/powder combination at the flammable bushes or whatever, and it would expand into foam when it hit the open air. Something like that. This way is more complicated, but you don't have to transport the water.
It goes both ways. I believe in national defense, and in protecting our borders. I'd be happy to work for a defense-related company, or for a company with neutral politics.
I wonder how many people would rather not work for companies whose management lobbies for liberal causes, and/or clearly prefers candidates who are not straight, white, conservative, and/or men.
Apple should add privacy switches to iPhones - physical sliders that physically disable the camera and microphone. If I slide the camera or mic slider to "OFF", then the camera or mic can't work. Regardless of the user preferences, software, or what I say, the camera or mic is physically unable to work again, until I move the slider back to "ON".
With privacy switches, Apple can remove fears that their phones are listening or taking pictures when they shouldn't. Apple can take the cover off of an iPhone, letting you see the iPhone's camera and mic. Then they can make a movie of someone sliding the privacy switches back and forth, and show the movie to Congress - "Look, when you move the mic (or camera) privacy switch to "OFF", see how the mic (or camera) is physically disabled."
Privacy switches might be a good idea on all phones and computers, not just Apple's.
Why aren't they using more tech to fight fires?
1) In California, a firefighter was killed by a falling tree. I wish robots had been used; I'd rather see a robot killed than a man. Also a bulldozer driver was killed, when his vehicle overturned. Couldn't they drive the bulldozer remotely?
If current robots can't travel on rough ground, or if they can't carry and use firefighting tools, or if driving a bulldozer remotely doesn't give an accurate feel of how steep and slick the ground is, then let's improve our technology so that it will work.
There are remote-controlled robots that can climb stairs. Let's put a camera, mike and speaker on one of them, and send it into a burning building. The robot would search for people, and for a safe exit path for the people.
A firefighter would stay safely out of the building, controlling the robot. He would "see" the inside of the building via the camera that's on the robot. And he could talk to any people in the building via the mike and speaker that are on the robot.
If someone in the building could walk, then the firefighter (speaking thru the robot) could tell the person, "Follow the robot; it will lead you out of the building." If the person was injured, and if the robot could bear some weight, then the person could lean on the robot as they exited the building. If someone was trapped, and if the robot could extract him/her, then even better.
2) I'd love to see a team of chemists and experienced firefighters get together, and figure out a new, better way to put out fires. I don't mean to be sarcastic, but if it takes several days to put out a wildfire, then we need to figure out a better way to put it out.
The chemists would be the experts in removing heat, fuel and oxygen from the fire. The firefighters would share their experience of what the environment is, when fighting a fire. They would say that a solution sounds good, but it won't work because in a real fire, the environment is too crowded, too windy, whatever.
Suppose someone broke into a power company, and shut off all power to a city. Would water stop running into everyone's home in the city, because the water company's water pumps stopped working?
A July 13 CBS news article says
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned of an impending, potentially devastating cyberattack on U.S. systems, saying the country's digital infrastructure "is literally under attack" and warning that among state actors, Russia is the "worst offender."
Speaking at a scheduled event at the Hudson Institute, he adopted the language of former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet who, in the months ahead of the 9/11 attacks, warned that the "system was blinking red." Coats, citing daily attacks from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, said, "Here we are, nearly two decades later, and I'm here to say the warning lights are blinking red again."
It's a good idea to have an emergency supply of food and water.
A friend tried a few times to convince me to use Facebook. "You can find friends you haven't seen in a long time. It's a convenient way to communicate and share pictures."
Each time, I responded by pointing out the loss of privacy. She didn't care.
Finally I told her, "Ok, at least protect the privacy of your kids. When you talk about your kids in a Facebook message, don't write their full names. Refer to them by the first letter of their names. Your friends reading your Facebook message will know who you're referring to."
My friend adores her kids, and would do anything for them. So hopefully she'll take that last piece of advice, and do that small thing to help protect her kids' privacy. (Of course it's best not to talk about them, or post their pictures, at all.)
Apple works to protect the environment and gay rights, and tries not to use raw materials supplied by child labor. That's good.
I hope some day Apple will also care some day about human rights, like free speech.
At an Apple shareholder's meeting:
"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI," Cook said, adding that the same sentiment applied to environmental and health and safety issues.
Ok, when will Apple apply the "I don’t consider the bloody ROI" philosophy, when it comes to selling Apple devices in China?
a physical switch that disables GPS, the MIC and Cameras
If possible, I'd also like the physical "privacy switch" to disable screen capture and keyboard capture - especially when I'm banking online.
"purple cauliflower" - Hah!
Sales calls to me sometimes start out similarly:
Me: Hello. ...
Him: Hi (then he struggles with my name), I'm John with company X. How are you today?
Me: Fine.
Him: Good, I'm glad to hear that. Well, the reason that I'm calling is
I suppose his part could be automated some day. But it's not now - they wouldn't write the software to struggle over my name so awkwardly.
Phones and computers need a manual (not software) "data capture" on/off switch. This switch would physically disable the phone's microphone and cameras (and if possible, screen capture).
If I manually slide the data capture switch to OFF, then the mic and cameras are physically disabled. No matter what any data, software, or user preferences are, the mic and cameras are physically unable to capture sound or images. They can't capture sound or images again, until I manually slide the data capture switch back to ON.
We'll see in a few years how Tesla does. But California's rules should help Tesla's solar panel and battery business.
The New York Times says California will require that all new homes have solar power, starting in 2020.
Also, a rate change that takes effect in 2019
will charge California customers based on the time of day they use electricity. So homeowners with energy-efficiency features — a battery in particular, allowing energy to be stored for when it is most efficiently used — will avoid higher costs.
Outreachy is explicitly discriminating based on skin color and ethnic heritage, as well as gender identity, excluding white cis-men.
In the US, they're excluding men and women who are not black, Hispanic, native or Pacific Islander. So men and women are excluded, if they're white, or if they're non-Pacific Islander Asians.
I don't buy anything made in China unless I have to. And I'm willing to pay more (and have paid more) for things that were not made there.
It's good that some tech companies push protection of the environment. But I'd be a lot more impressed with the ethics of those companies if they didn't build manufacturing centers, or technology research centers, in China. (See this article: "Apple investing half a billion dollars in Chinese R&D centers as it announces two more".)
A iPad that runs desktop MacOS, not a Mac that runs iOS. Call it the iPad for actual pros.
Yes. I don't like to use iOS, because I don't like its restrictions.
Sometimes I need a touch screen, but Apple doesn't currently make a Mac with a touch screen.
I wish Apple would make a transparent pane or something, that I can put in front of my iMac, that can be used as a touch screen.
Or create a Mac (running macOS) with a touch screen built-in.
Last choice - an iPad Pro that runs macOS. (But I prefer the size of my 27" iMac to the size of an iPad Pro.)
I really hope Apple doesn't replace macOS with iOS (with iOS's restrictions). That would force me away from the Mac.
who paid for it, Facebook or the FTC?
I care more about who chose the auditing company.
The FTC should have chosen a company that specialized in testing the security of other companies. The FTC should have told the security company, "Test Facebook, send your results to us and to Facebook, send the bill to Facebook, and tell us if they give you any problems."
The book has cardboard characters, but the movie doesn't have to. The movie should vividly show the different personalities.
Hari Seldon - while his health was failing, warned of Trantor's fall, manipulated Trantor's government into setting up the First Foundation, and secretly set up the Second Foundation.
The Committee of Public Safety - who foolishly thought that Seldon's warnings were treasonous.
Salvor Hardin - the first Foundation Mayor, whose style of governing is "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!".
The conniving Prince Regent Wienis, who underestimated Hardin.
King Lepold I - Wienis' selfish and weak nephew.
Those are just a few characters in the beginning, when the book's characters were the most "cardboard". With good acting and direction, the movie can show their ways of thinking and acting, and also show their reactions to what happened.
In the TV show "Columbo", it was fun to watch Columbo solve the crime, and to watch the bad guys gradually realize that they would be arrested. In the Foundation movie, it would be fun to watch events follow Seldon's plan (until the Mule came along), and to watch the expressions of bad guys when they gradually realize that their plans will fail.
They can make a movie on just the first part of the Foundation series. If that works out well, make another movie on the second part, etc.
So what is your point?
My point is that a multiple-choice question is a way to avoid the problem of not being able to read the student's handwriting, and not knowing if s/he wrote brackets or parentheses in the test.
I agree with the above advantages of paper over typing. However we have to consider clear handwriting, to know if the test-taker wrote the correct operator. The operators less than, open curly brace, open parenthesis, and open square bracket look similar to each other. And a period and comma look similar. So do ! and | .
If a test is on paper, one way to get around clear handwriting problems is to have a multiple-choice question:
How do you express the ith element of myArray?
a) myArray[i]
b) myArray(i)
1) There should have been a warning: "Do you want to block all calls?" If not, then require the employee to enter a phone number.
2) Or for a better solution, that form should not interpret a blank field as a wildcard. If all phone calls are to be blocked, then someone must sign on with a manager's user id, and fill out a special form that lets you block all phone calls.
My main concern is that the Chinese government might use this as low-level punishment (lower than imprisonment) for political crimes. For example, punishment for talking about the heroic "tank man" in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989.
Or rolling your eyes at easy questions asked by a reporter.
By the end of the day, Liang Xiangyi's name had been censored on China's largest search engines, the video deleted from Chinese websites and millions of Chinese netizens were suddenly worried about what would become of their newfound hero.