While I don't disagree with you, that link is entirely garbage. It spends 90% of the article talking about how coal also takes energy to be useful (no duh) and finally in the last paragraph or so it gets around to stating that solar does indeed generate more (lifetime) energy than is used to manufacture it.
Basically, they could have left out about 90% of the article and have something short and relevant instead of a huge irrelevant rant about coal that you have to skim over to get to the important part. Writing it in that manner just makes the article feel more zealotry-based than fact-based, and that's just not going to appeal much to skeptics.
I definitely see your point (I was in a hurry; I could have found a more concise article), but the article also makes a very valid point. Claims that solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they produce, these days, are themselves zealotry-based, and the article tries to balance that out. People don't seem to understand that the energy required to produce a solar panel could itself be supplied entirely from existing solar panels.
"Not very safe"? You're not the only person in this discussion who has said that, and I'm completely puzzled as to who it is that made you believe cash is 'unsafe' to carry around, and/or where it is you live or walk that you're so damned afraid of getting mugged? Yet you say I'm being 'irrational' about using plastic everywhere?
Cash is unsafe because there's no paper trail. Once it falls into the wrong hands, it's gone and you're never getting it back. That isn't to imply that it will fall into the wrong hands, but thieves do prefer cash, don't they? The reason they do should be the reason you don't. OTOH, if a CC, or CC info falls into the wrong hands, you will lose little to no actual money, and there will be no issue identifying its true owner.
Let me tell you something: I've been on cash for day-to-day purchases for about THREE WEEKS now. Why? Because every week there's another report of some data breach somewhere. One of them recently was a bunch of Chipotle restaurants, two of which I visited several times during when their payment systems were compromised. I felt the need to get a new card and the old one invalidated.
It's not every week. And how difficult was it to get a new card dropped in the mail? It must have wasted ten minutes of your time, and cost you nothing, right?
And while that card was on its way to your door, I hope you were able to use one of your other cards to make purchases. After all, that's one of the reasons to have multiple credit accounts.
And BTW, the Chipotle breach revolved around skimming mag-stripe data. If you'd have used a chip card, it's likely that no such data would have been available. The modes where mag-stripe data are transferred via the reader are quickly being phased out for more secure modes which do not allow cloning.
How many more times do you need a bullet to just barely miss you before you decide to do something about it? I don't have time or money to worry about 'filing claims' or 'disputes' because someone hacked into somewhere and stole access to my money, turning my life upside down. Who does? Nobody I know has time or money for that. Why continue to take unnecessary risks when it's just as easy to not take the risks at all?
You're being very dramatic about this. You don't have ten minutes to make a phone call? You don't have the zero dollars it costs to make that call? Nobody does? A stolen CC gives someone access to your money? Losing a CC turns your life up side down? What are you ever talking about? It sounds like you're talking about cash. If you lose cash, the thief actually does have access to your money, and it actually does cost you money, and it actually could turn your life up side down..
RE: "Rewards": Someone else brought that up. There isn't enough they could PAY me for the very personally-identifiable data they get from scraping my use of plastic. Do you like your life being an open book to whoever has the money to purchase the data? I don't.
I'm really not that worried about it. I use credit cards for virtually all purchases, regardless of rewards. The rewards are just a bonus. A bonus you and I both pay for, but which only I receive.
The Internet is getting more and more unsafe.
No, it's not. It's getting more and more safe, and will continue to get more safe.
You're telling me I'm being 'irraitional'; I maintain that I'm responding in a proactive and reasonable manner to protect myself. I'm closing the barn door before the horse gets out. If and when more robust security measures are taken, that might change. But for the time being I see no reason why I should do nothing and take my chances of getting accounts drained and/or identity stolen.
I think you're being irrational because credit is clearly more safe than cash, in addition to being far more convenient. Everything you've said
Gee, that sure sounds an awful lot like balancing a checkbook to me! xD
It has a similar effect, sure, but it doesn't involve the hassle of writing things down, and more importantly writing things down wrong, or forgetting to write them down.
You're living in a different reality than I am is what's going on here. I don't live on credit cards like some of you seem to be doing, I pay MONEY for things one way or another. I'm just changing how I pay that money out. Your advice, like your lifestyle, doesn't apply to me. Thanks for playing anyway.
You think I don't pay MONEY for things? I "live" on credit cards because I like to have one way of doing things, for simplicity. Paying cash is simply not practical, simply not possible in some cases, and not very safe. Credit cards OTOH work almost everywhere now, and I prefer to take advantage of the rewards (even though I think the idea of rewards is bullshit), since I pay for them regardless of how I pay.
I think your concerns with credit cards are irrational, but thanks for asking, and thanks for the rewards:p
I'm fairly certain that what you're describing is fundamentally impossible. The card cannot get access to data that does not pass through the reader in some form, and if the data passes through the reader, it can be relayed to another reader and sent to a different card unmodified.
I'm not saying the card receives super secret data, I'm saying it contains super secret data (put there when the card was issued), such as account specific keys and account information that cannot be read from the card without destroying it. The card and issuer exchange cryptograms (digital signatures), via the reader, that are generated partly from data that is shared by the card and the issuer, which the reader never, ever sees. If the reader is online (usually the case), both the issuer and the card receive and verify cryptograms from the other. If the reader is not online, the card can simply refuse to generate a valid cryptogram, or generate a cryptogram from different data which signifies to the issuer (later) that the card declined the transaction.
Chip cards can also provide mag stripe data (to support old readers), which is about as [in]secure as a swipe card, but that's being phased out. I have a card in my wallet that refuses to operate in mag stripe mode.
Overdrawn? That's hilarious. I don't write checks, I rarely withdraw cash, I haven't paid with debit in years, and the only time I move anything out of my checking account is when I'm at my computer looking at all my balances. Further, I always follow up to make sure the ACH payments I authorized match the debit records that have since appeared on my account. Between the redundancy created among the different institutions I deal with, and the fraud protection they provide, I'm safer and have far better visibility of my finances than I've ever had before.
Good. That's why I always sign away a big tip when I get the receipt back from the waiter/waitress at those fancy restaurants. Since I have my card back I know they'll never be able to charge the tip.
Sorry, but the card/reader interaction results in an approval of the charged amount. The tip is added later, when the day's batch of transactions are submitted for actual payment. I hope you didn't tip too much:p
Actually paying cash isn't subsidizing your rewards. Your rewards are paid by the merchant transaction fees business pay, data mining your purchases, and any fees for your card if your card has an annual fee.
If someone pays a business in cash, that means the business don't have to pay a transaction fee for the purchase, so it's a tiny bit more profit in the business' pocket.
Where do you think the money to pay those transaction fees comes from?
To be more correct, we are all subsidizing those rewards through the higher prices required to cover the transaction fees. People who pay cash don't get the benefit of those higher prices. Thanks:)
Also the reason gas stations these days tend to have different prices for cash and credit. This all started a few years back when gas exceeded $4 a gallon. Gas stations operate on very thin margins especially for the sale of the gas itself, they generally make all their profit from the stuff they still in their convenience stores. With those high gas prices, the average transaction fee increased since it is usually based on a percent of the sale. Now this is why you have gas stations charging a couple cents more per gallon for credit, and the practice has now stuck even though gas prices are now at more normal levels.
That's not true everywhere. For example, here. I rarely see gas stations charging a premium for credit purchases.
Modern cards generate a cryptogram from several pieces of data, some of which the reader does not have access to, and some of which is unique to the transaction. It's cryptographically impossible for the reader to do another transaction that the issuer will approve, because it cannot generate a valid cryptogram.
Bank of America MasterCard. They have a feature called ShopSafe whereby you can create multiple virtual credit cards (linked to your real CC) for use online. You simple specify the amount and duration and new CC and CVV/CVC numbers are generated. As a bonus, only the first vendor to use a virtual card can use that card. You can bump the limit and/or expiration date and "delete" the virtual card at any time.
That's what I was describing above. Almost perfect, except, "Please note that ShopSafe requires you to have Adobe Flash installed on your computer. Download Adobe Flash":(
Many thefts used compromised readers during a regular in person transaction, though newer cards make this less likely.
Much MUCH less likely. Modern chip/NFC cards with modern readers do not provide anything to the reader which could be used to perform a subsequent payment without the card being inserted again.
You have a check book? You pay for checks? And you balance it? Like, on the little paper balance sheet that comes with the checks, with a pen? Why why why?
I pay for virtually everything with credit cards. Like, everything but food from the local taco truck and private purchases, like used cars or used furniture, etc. I certainly don't use a debit card tied to a bank account for online purchases.
The only thing I do online with my actual bank accounts is pay off my credit cards and my mortgage (they won't accept a credit card, but it's a bank, so I feel reasonably safe - and the account I pay it out of is used almost exclusively for that, and nearly always has a zero balance), and transfer money between banks.
If I want to know what's in my bank account, I check it online. I don't ever need to read statements, because I check all my accounts multiple times per month. And paper statements via snail mail? Please.
Now, I'd prefer to have a tokenizing credit account for online purchases with not-so-major vendors, where each payment uses a single-use or limited-use token, but I don't know if that exists in a convenient form. That's how mobile payments work, but that wouldn't currently work for online payments. I'm also not that worried about it, since credit cards do a nice job of protecting customers from fraud, and I've never had a CC number stolen.
And one last thing. If you pay with cash, you are subsidizing the rewards I get by paying with a credit card. Thanks:)
I do not object, per se, to eating animals. Animals are yummy, and it's not my fault. However, the very instant a passable, affordable, non-animal meat product becomes available, I'm in. I would very happily do without the killing aspect of eating delicious animal protein.
However the page-fault interrupt doesn't reliably go off in the way the kernel programmers would like. It is possible to access memory that you were not supposed to be able to access with out the interrupt occurring. This unfortunate difference in expectation is what leads to this vulnerability and why it affects multiple OS on i86..
I was on the bus until I got to this paragraph. What do you mean, "page-fault interrupt doesn't reliably go off" in a way that "It is possible to access memory that you were not supposed to be able to access"?
If this were really true, this would exploited every day and no computer would be even a little bit secure.
As I understand it, the "problem", which the guard page tries to mitigate, is that the stack pointer can be made to point to heap space that the process absolutely is supposed to have access to.
If that's the case, then IMO the stack component of the problem is a great big red herring. If causing a process to wreck its own heap space (by any means) can lead to privilege elevation, then THAT is a huge problem, and it's the problem we should really be talking about.
Close, but I doubt it has much to do with Webkit. Tabs work great for projects with one developer. Tabs generally seem to turn into a cluster fuck when there's any kind of diversity in the team. Large tech companies means large teams. Tabs mean war in big teams.
Is this a long winded way of saying that drugs should remain illegal because every single person alive is at significant risk of becoming addicted to them, because there is no apparent consequence to abusing them?
Home storage is great, but it still makes sense to export your excess. I would rather import my neighbors' electricity when my dryer and water heater and A/C are all running, and then export some when the dryer and water heater shit off, for them to use. Then, we could also all have home storage, but it wouldn't need to be anywhere near as large as needed if going fully off the grid.
solar panels actually lower albedo because their backs are white, and most of the energy that strikes them which is not converted into electricity is reradiated as IR, and mostly in the skyward direction. Of course, then it tends to run into GHGs, but that would happen no matter what it was being reradiated from.
That's actually a problem if the panels absorb and re-radiate more energy in IR form than the surface they are covering, which is fairly likely given their color.
An analogy: If everyone in the world sat on the same chair as I am on, I'd be crushed to death. So should I not sit on it?
A better analogy: if everyone in the world sat on the same chair as I am on, I'd be crushed to death. I better invite everyone in the world to sit on my chair.
I think it will be very quick. As I posted elsewhere, it will be quick like flat panel displays and digital cameras, but not AS quick, due to the much higher price tags involved.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't disagree with you, that link is entirely garbage. It spends 90% of the article talking about how coal also takes energy to be useful (no duh) and finally in the last paragraph or so it gets around to stating that solar does indeed generate more (lifetime) energy than is used to manufacture it.
Basically, they could have left out about 90% of the article and have something short and relevant instead of a huge irrelevant rant about coal that you have to skim over to get to the important part. Writing it in that manner just makes the article feel more zealotry-based than fact-based, and that's just not going to appeal much to skeptics.
I definitely see your point (I was in a hurry; I could have found a more concise article), but the article also makes a very valid point. Claims that solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they produce, these days, are themselves zealotry-based, and the article tries to balance that out. People don't seem to understand that the energy required to produce a solar panel could itself be supplied entirely from existing solar panels.
Don't forget that solar panels take more energy to make (fab the silicon, build the frames) than they ever will recover in their useful life.
Patently false, as the quickest of Google searches would have told you..
https://understandsolar.com/so...
"Not very safe"? You're not the only person in this discussion who has said that, and I'm completely puzzled as to who it is that made you believe cash is 'unsafe' to carry around, and/or where it is you live or walk that you're so damned afraid of getting mugged? Yet you say I'm being 'irrational' about using plastic everywhere?
Cash is unsafe because there's no paper trail. Once it falls into the wrong hands, it's gone and you're never getting it back. That isn't to imply that it will fall into the wrong hands, but thieves do prefer cash, don't they? The reason they do should be the reason you don't. OTOH, if a CC, or CC info falls into the wrong hands, you will lose little to no actual money, and there will be no issue identifying its true owner.
Let me tell you something: I've been on cash for day-to-day purchases for about THREE WEEKS now. Why? Because every week there's another report of some data breach somewhere. One of them recently was a bunch of Chipotle restaurants, two of which I visited several times during when their payment systems were compromised. I felt the need to get a new card and the old one invalidated.
It's not every week. And how difficult was it to get a new card dropped in the mail? It must have wasted ten minutes of your time, and cost you nothing, right?
And while that card was on its way to your door, I hope you were able to use one of your other cards to make purchases. After all, that's one of the reasons to have multiple credit accounts.
And BTW, the Chipotle breach revolved around skimming mag-stripe data. If you'd have used a chip card, it's likely that no such data would have been available. The modes where mag-stripe data are transferred via the reader are quickly being phased out for more secure modes which do not allow cloning.
How many more times do you need a bullet to just barely miss you before you decide to do something about it? I don't have time or money to worry about 'filing claims' or 'disputes' because someone hacked into somewhere and stole access to my money, turning my life upside down. Who does? Nobody I know has time or money for that. Why continue to take unnecessary risks when it's just as easy to not take the risks at all?
You're being very dramatic about this. You don't have ten minutes to make a phone call? You don't have the zero dollars it costs to make that call? Nobody does? A stolen CC gives someone access to your money? Losing a CC turns your life up side down? What are you ever talking about? It sounds like you're talking about cash. If you lose cash, the thief actually does have access to your money, and it actually does cost you money, and it actually could turn your life up side down..
RE: "Rewards": Someone else brought that up. There isn't enough they could PAY me for the very personally-identifiable data they get from scraping my use of plastic. Do you like your life being an open book to whoever has the money to purchase the data? I don't.
I'm really not that worried about it. I use credit cards for virtually all purchases, regardless of rewards. The rewards are just a bonus. A bonus you and I both pay for, but which only I receive.
The Internet is getting more and more unsafe.
No, it's not. It's getting more and more safe, and will continue to get more safe.
You're telling me I'm being 'irraitional'; I maintain that I'm responding in a proactive and reasonable manner to protect myself. I'm closing the barn door before the horse gets out. If and when more robust security measures are taken, that might change. But for the time being I see no reason why I should do nothing and take my chances of getting accounts drained and/or identity stolen.
I think you're being irrational because credit is clearly more safe than cash, in addition to being far more convenient. Everything you've said
Gee, that sure sounds an awful lot like balancing a checkbook to me! xD
It has a similar effect, sure, but it doesn't involve the hassle of writing things down, and more importantly writing things down wrong, or forgetting to write them down.
You're living in a different reality than I am is what's going on here. I don't live on credit cards like some of you seem to be doing, I pay MONEY for things one way or another. I'm just changing how I pay that money out. Your advice, like your lifestyle, doesn't apply to me. Thanks for playing anyway.
You think I don't pay MONEY for things? I "live" on credit cards because I like to have one way of doing things, for simplicity. Paying cash is simply not practical, simply not possible in some cases, and not very safe. Credit cards OTOH work almost everywhere now, and I prefer to take advantage of the rewards (even though I think the idea of rewards is bullshit), since I pay for them regardless of how I pay.
I think your concerns with credit cards are irrational, but thanks for asking, and thanks for the rewards :p
I'm fairly certain that what you're describing is fundamentally impossible. The card cannot get access to data that does not pass through the reader in some form, and if the data passes through the reader, it can be relayed to another reader and sent to a different card unmodified.
I'm not saying the card receives super secret data, I'm saying it contains super secret data (put there when the card was issued), such as account specific keys and account information that cannot be read from the card without destroying it. The card and issuer exchange cryptograms (digital signatures), via the reader, that are generated partly from data that is shared by the card and the issuer, which the reader never, ever sees. If the reader is online (usually the case), both the issuer and the card receive and verify cryptograms from the other. If the reader is not online, the card can simply refuse to generate a valid cryptogram, or generate a cryptogram from different data which signifies to the issuer (later) that the card declined the transaction.
Chip cards can also provide mag stripe data (to support old readers), which is about as [in]secure as a swipe card, but that's being phased out. I have a card in my wallet that refuses to operate in mag stripe mode.
Overdrawn? That's hilarious. I don't write checks, I rarely withdraw cash, I haven't paid with debit in years, and the only time I move anything out of my checking account is when I'm at my computer looking at all my balances. Further, I always follow up to make sure the ACH payments I authorized match the debit records that have since appeared on my account. Between the redundancy created among the different institutions I deal with, and the fraud protection they provide, I'm safer and have far better visibility of my finances than I've ever had before.
Good. That's why I always sign away a big tip when I get the receipt back from the waiter/waitress at those fancy restaurants. Since I have my card back I know they'll never be able to charge the tip.
Sorry, but the card/reader interaction results in an approval of the charged amount. The tip is added later, when the day's batch of transactions are submitted for actual payment. I hope you didn't tip too much :p
Actually paying cash isn't subsidizing your rewards. Your rewards are paid by the merchant transaction fees business pay, data mining your purchases, and any fees for your card if your card has an annual fee.
If someone pays a business in cash, that means the business don't have to pay a transaction fee for the purchase, so it's a tiny bit more profit in the business' pocket.
Where do you think the money to pay those transaction fees comes from?
To be more correct, we are all subsidizing those rewards through the higher prices required to cover the transaction fees. People who pay cash don't get the benefit of those higher prices. Thanks :)
Also the reason gas stations these days tend to have different prices for cash and credit. This all started a few years back when gas exceeded $4 a gallon. Gas stations operate on very thin margins especially for the sale of the gas itself, they generally make all their profit from the stuff they still in their convenience stores. With those high gas prices, the average transaction fee increased since it is usually based on a percent of the sale. Now this is why you have gas stations charging a couple cents more per gallon for credit, and the practice has now stuck even though gas prices are now at more normal levels.
That's not true everywhere. For example, here. I rarely see gas stations charging a premium for credit purchases.
Modern cards generate a cryptogram from several pieces of data, some of which the reader does not have access to, and some of which is unique to the transaction. It's cryptographically impossible for the reader to do another transaction that the issuer will approve, because it cannot generate a valid cryptogram.
Bank of America MasterCard. They have a feature called ShopSafe whereby you can create multiple virtual credit cards (linked to your real CC) for use online. You simple specify the amount and duration and new CC and CVV/CVC numbers are generated. As a bonus, only the first vendor to use a virtual card can use that card. You can bump the limit and/or expiration date and "delete" the virtual card at any time.
That's what I was describing above. Almost perfect, except, "Please note that ShopSafe requires you to have Adobe Flash installed on your computer. Download Adobe Flash" :(
Many thefts used compromised readers during a regular in person transaction, though newer cards make this less likely.
Much MUCH less likely. Modern chip/NFC cards with modern readers do not provide anything to the reader which could be used to perform a subsequent payment without the card being inserted again.
You have a check book? You pay for checks? And you balance it? Like, on the little paper balance sheet that comes with the checks, with a pen? Why why why?
I pay for virtually everything with credit cards. Like, everything but food from the local taco truck and private purchases, like used cars or used furniture, etc. I certainly don't use a debit card tied to a bank account for online purchases.
The only thing I do online with my actual bank accounts is pay off my credit cards and my mortgage (they won't accept a credit card, but it's a bank, so I feel reasonably safe - and the account I pay it out of is used almost exclusively for that, and nearly always has a zero balance), and transfer money between banks.
If I want to know what's in my bank account, I check it online. I don't ever need to read statements, because I check all my accounts multiple times per month. And paper statements via snail mail? Please.
Now, I'd prefer to have a tokenizing credit account for online purchases with not-so-major vendors, where each payment uses a single-use or limited-use token, but I don't know if that exists in a convenient form. That's how mobile payments work, but that wouldn't currently work for online payments. I'm also not that worried about it, since credit cards do a nice job of protecting customers from fraud, and I've never had a CC number stolen.
And one last thing. If you pay with cash, you are subsidizing the rewards I get by paying with a credit card. Thanks :)
This never happened.
Mind like a steel trap, I tell ya.
I do not object, per se, to eating animals. Animals are yummy, and it's not my fault. However, the very instant a passable, affordable, non-animal meat product becomes available, I'm in. I would very happily do without the killing aspect of eating delicious animal protein.
However the page-fault interrupt doesn't reliably go off in the way the kernel programmers would like. It is possible to access memory that you were not supposed to be able to access with out the interrupt occurring. This unfortunate difference in expectation is what leads to this vulnerability and why it affects multiple OS on i86..
I was on the bus until I got to this paragraph. What do you mean, "page-fault interrupt doesn't reliably go off" in a way that "It is possible to access memory that you were not supposed to be able to access"?
If this were really true, this would exploited every day and no computer would be even a little bit secure.
As I understand it, the "problem", which the guard page tries to mitigate, is that the stack pointer can be made to point to heap space that the process absolutely is supposed to have access to.
If that's the case, then IMO the stack component of the problem is a great big red herring. If causing a process to wreck its own heap space (by any means) can lead to privilege elevation, then THAT is a huge problem, and it's the problem we should really be talking about.
Close, but I doubt it has much to do with Webkit. Tabs work great for projects with one developer. Tabs generally seem to turn into a cluster fuck when there's any kind of diversity in the team. Large tech companies means large teams. Tabs mean war in big teams.
Ever work with code that uses 4 spaces for column one, 1 tab for column two, 1 tab and 4 spaces for column three, etc.?
*shudder*
Is this a long winded way of saying that drugs should remain illegal because every single person alive is at significant risk of becoming addicted to them, because there is no apparent consequence to abusing them?
Home storage is great, but it still makes sense to export your excess. I would rather import my neighbors' electricity when my dryer and water heater and A/C are all running, and then export some when the dryer and water heater shit off, for them to use. Then, we could also all have home storage, but it wouldn't need to be anywhere near as large as needed if going fully off the grid.
solar panels actually lower albedo because their backs are white, and most of the energy that strikes them which is not converted into electricity is reradiated as IR, and mostly in the skyward direction. Of course, then it tends to run into GHGs, but that would happen no matter what it was being reradiated from.
That's actually a problem if the panels absorb and re-radiate more energy in IR form than the surface they are covering, which is fairly likely given their color.
Remove snow from roads, duh!
Remove snow from solar panels, impossible!
Ha!
Why can't you either shut some of them down entirely, or pitch the blades to regulate RPM?
An analogy: If everyone in the world sat on the same chair as I am on, I'd be crushed to death. So should I not sit on it?
A better analogy: if everyone in the world sat on the same chair as I am on, I'd be crushed to death. I better invite everyone in the world to sit on my chair.
I think it will be very quick. As I posted elsewhere, it will be quick like flat panel displays and digital cameras, but not AS quick, due to the much higher price tags involved.
In many places, electricity IS cheaper (than gasoline/diesel). Even solar electricity is cheaper, and it's getting cheaper every month.