If HP cared about privacy, they would go to bat for their customers against Microsoft's forced telemetry, advertising, and data profiling in Windows 10.
If they really cared about privacy, they'd offer a barebones version of this model that you can put your own OS on, with downloadable modules for whatever hardware that the mainline RH/Debian distros don't already support. *shrug*
So, we have a (relatively) cheap webcam cover gimmick, a bunch of additional software that threatens to add more bloat than usefulness**, and one neat thing (the bright-enough-to-read-outdoors bit.)
** Lets face it - unless you're upper tech/R&D or upper management/CxO for a Fortune 50 corp or you work for a DoD contractor? Who really cares what someone else can sort-of-maybe see on your laptop screen? As long as you practice basic security hygiene, it's going to be pretty worthless to the casual shoulder-surfer, and most of us don't rate a dedicated super-spy eyeballing over our shoulder while trying to glean access to sensitive tech...
I get it, sometimes shoulder-surfing can get some pretty neat access to stuff, but people who open/display sensitive crap like that in public aren't going to have the presence of mind to make sure their electro-shutter-privacy-thingy is on.
I dunno - maybe it's just me, but the whole thing reeks of gimmicks that are either physical, or that add bloatware drivers to an OS ('doze) with more than enough stuff to disable/remove as it is (save for the screen brightness - that's kinda cool.)
THe trouble is right now we can't marshall the resources to track these folks down because they are always extranational criminals.
In this case, I would not be too surprised if the ultimate originator (or patron, if you will) of this particular rootkit is a fully-paid up member of the Business Software Alliance.
Yeah, tinfoil-y, I know, but the fear of being infected certainly does benefit them the most...
At the time of the incident, the suspect's name was Bradley. Not sure what the legal procedure is when a suspect changes their name in the middle of a case, but I can see how it would be confusing if half of the documents had one and and half the other.
In such cases, you often find "AKA" listed in the header (or at least near the top) of subsequent documents, and all previous names, aliases, and (popular-enough) nicknames listed after that.
...and this is why I still do the taxes myself (takes about 30 minutes or so), and file the thing viz. printed paper/envelope/stamp, then pay with a paper check when needed.
(fuck it - make the IRS earn their keep. That said, the IRS now requires an additional form to be filed when you pay by check... nice twist, you bastards.)
PS: I sincerely pray that someone in Congress has a sense of humor, and tacks on an amendment to that bill which requires the tax software companies to buy an expensive bulk-filing license (or better yet, to pay a larger per-seat filing license for each taxpayer who uses said software)...
I understand what a "white supremacist" is. I understand what a "French Nationalist", or a "Argentinian Nationalist" would be. However, the term "White Nationalist" is semantically and massively wrong (but then, so would "Black Nationalist" or "Asian Nationalist"...) After all, what nation is titled as "White"?
I get that stamping out racism is a good thing, but seriously, folks - at least don't mangle the language while you do it.
Iâ(TM)m a big privacy advocate but even so, I can't really get worked up by this. A teacher should have the ability to manage content and focus in the classroom setting.
As someone who taught CompSci, I agree.
That said, a transparent proxy with a whitelist on it was once more than sufficient (a somewhat modified squid box was pretty much all I needed - if a student wanted access to something outside the whitelist, he/she sent a short internal 'email' with the URL, but that was rarely needed).
Then again, such a solution was sufficient in 1999-2005, even if the student was given unfettered access to the computers within the classroom - after all, desktops were the norm, and nobody took anything home with them. Not really the case today.
I do agree with these further measures above however on two (and only two) conditions:
* That camera/microphone access not be granted under any reason (seriously, kids keep these things in their bedrooms, and there is no valid use case for audio/video access by a competent teacher and/or administrator). A keylogger, screen-share, remote-lock, remote-wipe, app history, and a streaming log of URLs/files accessed (ELK, Splunk, whatever) should be more than plenty, with alerting to any tampering of protected files. (IIRC there was a huge kerfuffle a long while back where some overreaching school district demanded the ability to capture webcam video remotely, even in the students' homes... that died real quick once lawyers got wind of it, and for some massively obvious reasons.)
* No corporate access to any of the data, for any reason. Get your revenue off the licenses, and from nothing else.
Make this known up-front, and require a signed (by the parents) receipt and understanding of a basic EULA stating as much. It is school property, so the legality should be fine in most places (The EU may require a lot of additional precautions, but North America and most of Asia should be no problem.)
Society interprets hateful edgelords as damage and routes around them.
...hence the need for speech codes in places like university campuses**, right?
** It should be noted that a university is precisely the place where ideas noble and stupid, concepts altruistic and hateful... all of this should be debated openly, in an environment that encourages clear logic, reason, and rhetoric. Alas, there seems to be a lack of that on most campuses these days. Probably because people go around calling every idea that makes them uncomfortable "hateful" and suchlike, without even trying to do anything beyond generalization and stereotype.
I think the thing is people don't start out wanting to see crazy conspiracy theory stuff. People start out watching one thing and 5 hours later they're doubting vaccines. That's the problem. Back in thr day we never had to worry about this, because you had to actively seek crazy stuff out.
So explain Christianity?
OK, I'm not actually anti-Christian, but I hope you get my point? 100 years ago we had seances all over the place as mediums made a killing. We had utopias and cults aplenty. YouTube isn't anything special here. Humans gonna human.
Small point of order: Christianity (As defined by any commonly-accepted version of the Bible, specifically the New Testament) doesn't promote, define, or encourage seances, mediums, etc. If I recall correctly, it actually prohibits such practices (that is, prohibits those who claim to speak with the dead.)
Otherwise, yeah, people are gonna do dumb stuff. Makes humanity really frustrating and really adorable all at once.
Real Linux requires writing shell scripts. If you aren't willing to write a shell script to startup an app at bootup, why are you even here? Systemd just makes shit too easy and well documented for everyone. Now newbs are going to be able to do all the shit we do writing shell scripts. Assholes...
Digging the sarcasm; should make it more obvious though, especially this early in the morning.;)
Seriously - what did they think was so broken with the old-school rc rigging in the first place? More precisely, what did they think was so broken that they decided a massive obfuscated spaghetti-coded wreck like systemd was somehow necessary?
I do recall that there were a few things that rc couldn't do, but honestly, there has got to be a better, more elegant way to accomplish such improvements. Build that, and you could change the course of many, many things.
...It's good to see that there's less stuff required on our end, but when will they finally get rid of the rest of the security theater?
I mean, okay, it's cool that we don't have to bang laptops around in bins anymore (and the rigamarole of answering dumb questions like "...why do you need two laptops, Sir?"), but the 4th Amendment violations in the name of reassurance continue apace - just that we're using electronics to do it. *shrug*
...how long will this one last? Until the first round of contract negotiations? Until the first quarter of declining growth and/or revenue?
Pessimistic, I know, but I bet the likes of GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc felt the same way in 1955 that Kickstarter does now. However, when the pressure came down in the 1970's-1980s, the automakers' tune(s) began to change radically. I suspect Kickstarter will do the same.
After all, there's a reason why the otherwise progressive leadership at Google, Apple, and the other longer-established tech companies reject any attempts at unionization - often ruthlessly.
Check with your local schools and churches, etc. Here in Oregon, the local schools often take your cans/bottles, then recycle it all in bulk, where the money becomes fundraising for student activities and extracurricular supplies.
Living rural, I take an even simpler approach... everything splits 4 ways: * compostable stuff that goes into a working compost pile for the garden. * flammable stuff that goes into the burn barrel. * soda cans/bottles for the local school, who uses the deposit refunds for fundraising. * Everything Else - which goes into the trash (mostly plastics and glass.)
Easy to sort, and much cheaper overall (the amount of trash that I personally haul to the dump is embarrassingly small, thus cheap as hell to dump.)
I don't see RAM being as big of a factor as CPU and/or GPU capacity. A full-on CG render (still-frame or animation sequence) is among the most taxing (depending on settings and resolution, natch), and can swallow your CPU (or GPU) whole for hours on end if you let it. Maxing cores and going 4-way(or higher) SLI/Crossfire on the CPU and GPU fronts (respectively) will give you more love for your buck in the CG world, so long as your software and OS (and modules/drivers) can keep up with the extra horsepower.
Now if this bad boy had two 18-core Intel CPUs and 4 of those 16GB Radeons rigged for Crossfire? You could still get by just fine with 64GB of RAM, and not even notice (I doubt that I'd turn down the rig in TFA or the extra RAM, though.)
Many FCA vehicles come with uConnect, the newer versions of which will actually read your incoming texts, and has speech-to-text to allow you to send texts as well. Most newer Jeeps, Ram Trucks, Dodge/Chrysler cars and minivans, etc can do this. Here's a quickie video on how that works.
So if someone gets in a wreck while using the hands-free texting but did not cause said wreck? That person would either end up eating a massive fine/ticket (and fault), or would have to pay someone a shit-ton of money (that is, the dealership) to go out to the wrecked vehicle, then pull records from his vehicle's computers proving that he was using the hands-free feature at that exact time... if it even keeps such records stored internally (I believe uConnect does, but not sure about other brands...)
You do realize they're not the first to do this... Adobe has been successfully doing the Software-as-rental for Photoshop (and related applications) for years now, and artists everywhere just continue to choke it down.
Now to be fair, most figure 'meh, the company is paying for it!', or rationalize it as a business expense if they're freelance. By contrast, I have no idea what the gaming crowd is going to do with an XBox that's not much more than a coin-op (card-op?) arcade game sitting in their living room.
If I were to guess? Well, let's just say that if Sony is sufficiently smart, they'll avoid this model and subsequently clean up in the console space - at least long enough for MSFT to panic and suddenly ship free DVD/BluRay readers (and include them with all subsequent XBox consoles sold...)
Slashdot Mirror
Apple said that Qualcomm... what? You can't even finish sentences now? You just left and went to lunch, is that it?
...would you like to know more?
(said in an ominous TV announcer voice.)
If HP cared about privacy, they would go to bat for their customers against Microsoft's forced telemetry, advertising, and data profiling in Windows 10.
If they really cared about privacy, they'd offer a barebones version of this model that you can put your own OS on, with downloadable modules for whatever hardware that the mainline RH/Debian distros don't already support. *shrug*
So, we have a (relatively) cheap webcam cover gimmick, a bunch of additional software that threatens to add more bloat than usefulness**, and one neat thing (the bright-enough-to-read-outdoors bit.)
** Lets face it - unless you're upper tech/R&D or upper management/CxO for a Fortune 50 corp or you work for a DoD contractor? Who really cares what someone else can sort-of-maybe see on your laptop screen? As long as you practice basic security hygiene, it's going to be pretty worthless to the casual shoulder-surfer, and most of us don't rate a dedicated super-spy eyeballing over our shoulder while trying to glean access to sensitive tech...
I get it, sometimes shoulder-surfing can get some pretty neat access to stuff, but people who open/display sensitive crap like that in public aren't going to have the presence of mind to make sure their electro-shutter-privacy-thingy is on.
I dunno - maybe it's just me, but the whole thing reeks of gimmicks that are either physical, or that add bloatware drivers to an OS ('doze) with more than enough stuff to disable/remove as it is (save for the screen brightness - that's kinda cool.)
Gotta agree with sibling. If I had mod points, I'd damned sure spend them here.
Well, once you're doing that you've pretty much left behind any hope you will have security.
If you're installing software from a source you don't know you can trust, this is what happens.
Quoting the best line for propagation.
THe trouble is right now we can't marshall the resources to track these folks down because they are always extranational criminals.
In this case, I would not be too surprised if the ultimate originator (or patron, if you will) of this particular rootkit is a fully-paid up member of the Business Software Alliance.
Yeah, tinfoil-y, I know, but the fear of being infected certainly does benefit them the most...
At the time of the incident, the suspect's name was Bradley. Not sure what the legal procedure is when a suspect changes their name in the middle of a case, but I can see how it would be confusing if half of the documents had one and and half the other.
In such cases, you often find "AKA" listed in the header (or at least near the top) of subsequent documents, and all previous names, aliases, and (popular-enough) nicknames listed after that.
... and get rid of your Apple products for life.
...and go straight to Android, where they -
Oh, wait.
Yeah, nevermind.
Perhaps going back to an old school flip-phone isn't such a bad idea anymore?
...and this is why I still do the taxes myself (takes about 30 minutes or so), and file the thing viz. printed paper/envelope/stamp, then pay with a paper check when needed.
(fuck it - make the IRS earn their keep. That said, the IRS now requires an additional form to be filed when you pay by check... nice twist, you bastards.)
PS: I sincerely pray that someone in Congress has a sense of humor, and tacks on an amendment to that bill which requires the tax software companies to buy an expensive bulk-filing license (or better yet, to pay a larger per-seat filing license for each taxpayer who uses said software)...
I understand what a "white supremacist" is. I understand what a "French Nationalist", or a "Argentinian Nationalist" would be. However, the term "White Nationalist" is semantically and massively wrong (but then, so would "Black Nationalist" or "Asian Nationalist"...) After all, what nation is titled as "White"?
I get that stamping out racism is a good thing, but seriously, folks - at least don't mangle the language while you do it.
Iâ(TM)m a big privacy advocate but even so, I can't really get worked up by this. A teacher should have the ability to manage content and focus in the classroom setting.
As someone who taught CompSci, I agree.
That said, a transparent proxy with a whitelist on it was once more than sufficient (a somewhat modified squid box was pretty much all I needed - if a student wanted access to something outside the whitelist, he/she sent a short internal 'email' with the URL, but that was rarely needed).
Then again, such a solution was sufficient in 1999-2005, even if the student was given unfettered access to the computers within the classroom - after all, desktops were the norm, and nobody took anything home with them. Not really the case today.
I do agree with these further measures above however on two (and only two) conditions:
* That camera/microphone access not be granted under any reason (seriously, kids keep these things in their bedrooms, and there is no valid use case for audio/video access by a competent teacher and/or administrator). A keylogger, screen-share, remote-lock, remote-wipe, app history, and a streaming log of URLs/files accessed (ELK, Splunk, whatever) should be more than plenty, with alerting to any tampering of protected files. (IIRC there was a huge kerfuffle a long while back where some overreaching school district demanded the ability to capture webcam video remotely, even in the students' homes... that died real quick once lawyers got wind of it, and for some massively obvious reasons.)
* No corporate access to any of the data, for any reason. Get your revenue off the licenses, and from nothing else.
Make this known up-front, and require a signed (by the parents) receipt and understanding of a basic EULA stating as much. It is school property, so the legality should be fine in most places (The EU may require a lot of additional precautions, but North America and most of Asia should be no problem.)
If you're not writing machine code, you're a loser.
Binary is taking it too far.
EMACS already has a key-combo for that mode, proles.
So what makes a victim of any other similar crime less valued and less harmed than the victim of a "hate crime"?
In a world where equal rule of law is supreme, motive should only determine guilt or innocence, and not severity.
Society interprets hateful edgelords as damage and routes around them.
...hence the need for speech codes in places like university campuses**, right?
** It should be noted that a university is precisely the place where ideas noble and stupid, concepts altruistic and hateful... all of this should be debated openly, in an environment that encourages clear logic, reason, and rhetoric. Alas, there seems to be a lack of that on most campuses these days. Probably because people go around calling every idea that makes them uncomfortable "hateful" and suchlike, without even trying to do anything beyond generalization and stereotype.
I think the thing is people don't start out wanting to see crazy conspiracy theory stuff. People start out watching one thing and 5 hours later they're doubting vaccines. That's the problem. Back in thr day we never had to worry about this, because you had to actively seek crazy stuff out.
So explain Christianity?
OK, I'm not actually anti-Christian, but I hope you get my point? 100 years ago we had seances all over the place as mediums made a killing. We had utopias and cults aplenty. YouTube isn't anything special here. Humans gonna human.
Small point of order: Christianity (As defined by any commonly-accepted version of the Bible, specifically the New Testament) doesn't promote, define, or encourage seances, mediums, etc. If I recall correctly, it actually prohibits such practices (that is, prohibits those who claim to speak with the dead.)
Otherwise, yeah, people are gonna do dumb stuff. Makes humanity really frustrating and really adorable all at once.
wtf is an "actual marxist" ... is this like people who claim to be Libertarian?
.
No... an Actual Marxist, or rather, a True Marxist, apparently lives in Scotland.
.
*shrug*.
It's generally not good for business when you refer to your customers as "stupid people".
You assume that the people who log onto YouTube and watch videos are Google/Alphabet's actual customers? That's naïve and cute, but grossly incorrect.
Real Linux requires writing shell scripts. If you aren't willing to write a shell script to startup an app at bootup, why are you even here? Systemd just makes shit too easy and well documented for everyone. Now newbs are going to be able to do all the shit we do writing shell scripts. Assholes...
Digging the sarcasm; should make it more obvious though, especially this early in the morning. ;)
Fourthed!
Seriously - what did they think was so broken with the old-school rc rigging in the first place? More precisely, what did they think was so broken that they decided a massive obfuscated spaghetti-coded wreck like systemd was somehow necessary?
I do recall that there were a few things that rc couldn't do, but honestly, there has got to be a better, more elegant way to accomplish such improvements. Build that, and you could change the course of many, many things.
...It's good to see that there's less stuff required on our end, but when will they finally get rid of the rest of the security theater?
I mean, okay, it's cool that we don't have to bang laptops around in bins anymore (and the rigamarole of answering dumb questions like "...why do you need two laptops, Sir?"), but the 4th Amendment violations in the name of reassurance continue apace - just that we're using electronics to do it. *shrug*
...how long will this one last? Until the first round of contract negotiations? Until the first quarter of declining growth and/or revenue?
Pessimistic, I know, but I bet the likes of GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc felt the same way in 1955 that Kickstarter does now. However, when the pressure came down in the 1970's-1980s, the automakers' tune(s) began to change radically. I suspect Kickstarter will do the same.
After all, there's a reason why the otherwise progressive leadership at Google, Apple, and the other longer-established tech companies reject any attempts at unionization - often ruthlessly.
Check with your local schools and churches, etc. Here in Oregon, the local schools often take your cans/bottles, then recycle it all in bulk, where the money becomes fundraising for student activities and extracurricular supplies.
Living rural, I take an even simpler approach... everything splits 4 ways:
* compostable stuff that goes into a working compost pile for the garden.
* flammable stuff that goes into the burn barrel.
* soda cans/bottles for the local school, who uses the deposit refunds for fundraising.
* Everything Else - which goes into the trash (mostly plastics and glass.)
Easy to sort, and much cheaper overall (the amount of trash that I personally haul to the dump is embarrassingly small, thus cheap as hell to dump.)
I don't see RAM being as big of a factor as CPU and/or GPU capacity. A full-on CG render (still-frame or animation sequence) is among the most taxing (depending on settings and resolution, natch), and can swallow your CPU (or GPU) whole for hours on end if you let it. Maxing cores and going 4-way(or higher) SLI/Crossfire on the CPU and GPU fronts (respectively) will give you more love for your buck in the CG world, so long as your software and OS (and modules/drivers) can keep up with the extra horsepower.
Now if this bad boy had two 18-core Intel CPUs and 4 of those 16GB Radeons rigged for Crossfire? You could still get by just fine with 64GB of RAM, and not even notice (I doubt that I'd turn down the rig in TFA or the extra RAM, though.)
Many FCA vehicles come with uConnect, the newer versions of which will actually read your incoming texts, and has speech-to-text to allow you to send texts as well. Most newer Jeeps, Ram Trucks, Dodge/Chrysler cars and minivans, etc can do this. Here's a quickie video on how that works.
So if someone gets in a wreck while using the hands-free texting but did not cause said wreck? That person would either end up eating a massive fine/ticket (and fault), or would have to pay someone a shit-ton of money (that is, the dealership) to go out to the wrecked vehicle, then pull records from his vehicle's computers proving that he was using the hands-free feature at that exact time... if it even keeps such records stored internally (I believe uConnect does, but not sure about other brands...)
You do realize they're not the first to do this... Adobe has been successfully doing the Software-as-rental for Photoshop (and related applications) for years now, and artists everywhere just continue to choke it down.
Now to be fair, most figure 'meh, the company is paying for it!', or rationalize it as a business expense if they're freelance. By contrast, I have no idea what the gaming crowd is going to do with an XBox that's not much more than a coin-op (card-op?) arcade game sitting in their living room.
If I were to guess? Well, let's just say that if Sony is sufficiently smart, they'll avoid this model and subsequently clean up in the console space - at least long enough for MSFT to panic and suddenly ship free DVD/BluRay readers (and include them with all subsequent XBox consoles sold...)