The problem with governments suggesting backdoors in encryption is the same problem that generates a whole ton of bad decisions, grief, and politics towards the 1% - they live in a bubble. Why the heck a whole ton of politicians keep suggesting stuff like that is because they are surrounded by staff that don't have a clue about security. It's self evident for even people who read a bit on the subject: as soon as you put backdoors into encryption used by popular chat apps and whatnot, terrorists and criminals will just migrate to another platform that is out of the state's law reach and leave a whole ton of people who don't know better still using the platform, turning them into potential targets as their personal data starts to leak. And this is only a single reason why backdoors would never work. Not even mentioning how in principle, encryption with backdoor is already not encryption. They don't understand that good encryption has to be open and publicly audited, and that backdoor access would obviously leak, they don't understand how bad security practices are when handled by public sectors, how much data was already leaked by government mishandling, how the entire government would be far more vulnerable to foreign spies and terrorism in general should they weaken encryption, how banks would not be able to function without strong encryption, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Here's a good thing about the suggestion though: it's a good sign of politicians you should never vote for. They are legislating and promoting ignorance for votes or fear mongering with little to no technical backing. They are risking to put the public in even more danger because they keep pressing for laws that they don't know the full effect of. They are wasting taxpayer time and money because of their own ignorance. Keep these people away from representative positions.
Look here, I'm all for equality and better representation, but listen, particularly for Hollywood, this isn't a problem of being out of step with some movement, this is a problem of consumption and culture.
I can understand when people talk about whitewashing, as testimonials given by minority actor and actresses communities really do indicate that directors, studios and people involved in the recruiting process really do not even consider hiring them for main roles... the pervasiveness of the whole thing goes so far as to give preference to white actors and actresses even to non-white roles because studios don't even consider it's possible for actors and actresses in minorities to become big stars. This is a point where they are particularly out of pace, because there are several actors and actresses in minorities that are as beloved if not even more than white actors and actresses.
But if we're talking about body types, then you are not going against a specific industry bias, you are going against deep rooted cultural ideals. This dates back as far as greek mythology and history of other cultures, and it's far from being a Hollywood, or even a western thing. Beauty standards goes into an entire other category that cannot be changed as if it was some sort of injustice. Furthermore, it's not exclusive to female actresses, though yes, there are differences of expectations between sexes. You can just see how fashion industry reacted so far. Magazines with token issues, a few brands and producers hiring a few models for token events, and a bunch of reaction going towards "see, we too love regular/ugly people". But in the end, those that fits the beauty standards are the ones that sells. The industry has enough money to sustain a few token diverse ideals of beauty as it should, but much like Hollywood is sustained by mainstream movies, it cannot survive treating everyone equally.
If we're talking about the mainstream, then it's obvious - it's thin and fit sexy women and roided up hunks, which btw, usually have to have extremely defined muscles which also indicate an unhealthy body fat percentage which also means they haven't been eating much.
Then again, we have progressed much in recent years. Mainstream is mostly an option these days, people have the alternative to watch movies that don't necessarily have actors and actresses looking like fashion models or beauty ideals.
Thing is, if movies were supposed to put stuff up front that is realistic, something you can see on your daily life, or that reflects people you see everyday... why bother? If you tie fiction to reality, then what purpose does fiction have? And quite frankly, I've been seeing too many people hitching a ride on stuff like body positive movement to take a dump on their own health, thinking that just because someone said "it's ok to be fat" that they should conform to their horribly unhealthy lifestyles.
And I understand that there are plenty of people who lead very healthy lifestyles but don't have a supermodel body, because that's mostly genetics. Also understand that girls from early ages suffer pressure for achieving an unrealistic beauty standard, as they and others probably also do regarding money, social status, romantic lifestyles, personality traits, and all sorts of other things. But if people think they will be able to convince Hollywood studios, particularly those that produce mainstream movies, to hire and produce content acording to some creed of the body positive movement when it goes directly against what actual sales data tells them.... you are up for an extreme uphill battle for sure. And it's also not a matter of changing society, culture and whatnot to make your kids feel less pressured or something. It's a matter of knowing how to teach kids to deal with those pressures. It's really unhealthy to think that everything can be solved by changing society in general.
I shudder at the thought of letting society be changed to attend the demands on some 3rd wave feminists that are alm
I fully expect the comment area in this post to be filled with comments from people who never even heard all the stuff the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did over the years. Because of course there is a predominant bias against Microsoft that will certainly contaminate and overlook all the work that the foundation has done.
If you'd rather have Gates keep his money and let it go to his own family so that we have another bunch of Trumps running around, I hope you rot in hell.
Things that are not relevant anymore are gonna be scrapped, things that might have some use will be preserved... that is, while the organizations behind preservation efforts still live.
On a brighter tone, I was plenty pleased to see most of the games I played as a kid and teen back in the 80s-90s were mostly preserved with DosBox and other emulators efforts.
I think I also have a bunch of Flash stuff stored somewhere just in case. Most of the animations got converted to video and are still on YouTube, but I'm not sure about the games and interactive stuff.
This is purely annedoctal and not to be taken as proof of anything, but all experiences I had with Microsoft devices would agree with Consumer Reports' standpoint and this piece.
Full disclosure: I'm a long time Windows user, I'm still on a Windows 10 machine, and most people I know uses Windows too. My gripes with Windows 10 lead me to install Ubuntu on secondary machines, keep learning more about them as I go, and keep a Windows 7 copy out there just in case Microsoft doesn't stop with the bullshit and I can't adapt to a purely Linux enviroment.
I did have a brush though with Microsoft fanatics. My first smartphone was a Lumia 1020, and while I was on it, I had to go to sources for stuff like app recommendations, communities for support and discussions and whatnot that were basically run by Microsoft fanatics... because no one else would.:P All of the major tech publications had little to nothing on Windows Phones.
It was a fine phone. Well built, great camera for the time, and the OS was plenty secure (Windows Mobile 7). Battery was shit, but I had no basis for comparison back then, so I just got used to it. But as most people know, apps were shit, dev support didn't exist, and even the brands that decided to put an app on the platform quickly abandoned it, left it in a state of disrepair, and/or were missing features, several versions behind Android or iOS. Most of the Windows Store is still like that to this day. I hear that there are still few exceptions, same story as back when I had the Lumia. And if you think discoverability is bad on the App Store or Play Store... Windows Store is saving a treat for ya! I have never seen anything with so much trash and so much stuff no one never heard of or can attest for.
Still, you have to see the level of indoctrination of people commenting in these communities. It was almost like they were citizens of North Korea or something. Android wasn't even worth discussion because of course, Google, the most vile corporation of the planet was behind it. There are no comparisons to be made around features and apps available on Android because you don't look at the entrails of the Devil. iOS didn't come up much because people were pretty conscious how Microsoft tried to copy several of the worst Apple practices... like turning the mobile OS into a walled garden closed off to dev access and extremely inflexible. Yes, most people don't know about this, but weird as it may sound, Windows Phone had more similarities in the way it was build to iOS than Android. For a good portion of my Lumia ownership apps were completely isolated... they cannot talk to each other, they have little resources to use from the smartphone, all in the name of some crippling security standard.
There was this mantra that got repeated 'till the time I switched to Android... which was around a couple of years after I bought the Lumia. It's going to get better. Devs are coming. The platform has all the best apps needed. It's great for business. It's not Microsoft's fault, it's app developers fault. blah blah blah. Every Lumia/Windows Phone source you went, the discourse was the same. It puts even extreme Apple fanboys to shame.
And I have to wonder if this alternate reality Microsoft lives in, with these extreme fanboys going around in circles to show support, isn't why moronic decisions like Windows 10S and Surface Laptop came to be. After so many years of clear evidence that no one likes or wants a Windows Store, it boggles the mind that Microsoft still keeps insisting on it. The failure of Surface RT, the failure of Windows Phones, and how little people actually uses Windows Store in their Windows 8/10 machines wasn't enough. It's... the shit that keeps shitting, I dunno. It's incredible that there are still people inside Microsoft that sustains a fantasy that one day the Windows Store will thrive, that devs will come, that the Surface Laptop will ever be able to replace Chromebooks in some capacity, that Windows 10S is the future and whatnot. I was actuall
For new players, sure? It's finally delivering most of what was advertised. For the fans who bought this early on and were probably the most enthused about the game? I imagine there's pretty much no redemption route for them. It's less redemption and more disaster mitigation at this point...
How exactly things happened? Elshinawy sold printers and someone from ISIS bought it, and that was it? Nothing eBay can possibly do in a case that is a legal transaction really... well, of course, hand out information, let police monitor accounts when it's known to be tied to terrorist operations and whatnot. But it's not like they are dealing in terrordollars or something.
People, for the love of God think a bit before you comment on this issue, don't jump to conclusions about things you don't properly understand just because you can't set aside your bias for or against Apple and whatnot.
At the very least, if you are gonna make accusations about it being a privacy liability, about the system being used for spying on people, and other ignorant crap like that at least know how the f*cking thing works before making baseless assumptions and accusations.
Why exactly Apple still didn't take a stance on this, we'll know when they decide to talk. But it's bad enough that they didn't say anything up to now. If there are security/privacy worries on their side, they have to say it themselves. The system is already in use on Android phones, there are no known vulnerabilities in the system, and it's only triggered when people call emergency numbers sending a coded SMS message with location information that is more accurate than what current systems can do for the parts of the world it's being targeted.
Forget short hand summaries and the articles you are gonna read about this subject that are often misguided and sensationalistic. Read the piece. It has some merit, but it might not be drawing the conclusions that people are writing about it.
Can you guys stop feeding the eco chamber for this guy already? The overreaction for and against this guy is plenty enough reason for firing him. Sorry if reality is too hard for some to take. Wake up and look around what's happening, you cannot be this blind.
Google isn't a governmental or public company, he didn't "whistleblow" anything (for it to be categorized as whistleblowing it needs to be revelations of illegal nature happening inside the company), Google interpreted his article/screed/document/whatever as being in violation with internal policies, he overstepped his position and send the message everywhere inside the company.
I'm not sure if he's involved in leaking the whole thing externally, but he became a liability the moment the message left the building. Him staying as an employee became unsustainable. Furthermore, there's a metric ton of criticism in his piece that we really can't say for sure if it's justified or not, but it's a piece of vilification that exposes just one side of the equation from a very personal and particular viewpoint. It's a PR and HR disaster, and people were fired for way less than that. Do you guys not follow cases were CEOs were put out of their positions for one line Tweets and inept Facebook posts? Several of those weren't even criticizing the company they worked for, but it put the person in an unsustainable position inside the company.
Set your bias aside and think about it. There's a good reason Google does not discuss matters of policy and how it works on their diversity program in public. It's exactly because the company wants to avoid all sorts of overreactions that are happening right now because of what this guy wrote. The boycott that is being promoted by tons of people is a direct consequence of his actions, even if it has more to do with him being fired. On the other side, there were calls for firing him up before it happened. There's a whole ton of people taking what the guy wrote alone in faith, just because he build his article well, taking a single point of view as the truth of what happens inside the company, often exacerbating it, and throwing all sorts of unfounded accusations against the company as a whole because of it. His piece, by itself, brought political polarization around the company, something that I'm plenty sure Google was trying to avoid at all costs. It undermined a whole ton of money, work and effort that Google must've spent in recent years.
Do you really know if Google is, internally and for it's employees, an extreme leftist paradise? Do you really know if dissent is shut down there without discussion? Specially those that are being so extremely adamant against Google in the past few days, think about how much trust you are putting in the testimonial of a single person. Has anyone else inside the company come out in support for his words? Is it really because now you know everything that's happening inside Google or is it just your confirmation bias because you already didn't like the company anyways, or the ideas James is going against?
Google won't be in trouble for firing the guy exactly because of posts just like this one. Google can show the cause and effect as to why they needed to let the guy go. If you think you are helping his case with posts like this one, you are not. Private companies are not public forums. They have policies in place with what sort of discussions are allowed to be made of matters that happens inside the company, they have proper channels to voice your opinions, and they keep strict control going through PR not to let disasters like what's happening right now spiral out of control.
Stop trying to stretch this story. It's over. If Google gets in trouble for this, fine, come back with something useful to discuss. This is just clickbait and sensationalization.
Setting aside that they are depositing a whole lot of hope on building power plants in another continent, I guess that's just how things goes. If it's a fair deal with african countries, it could strenghten relationships. If it's not, that plant will end up seized and taken. Which, in the grand scheme of things, might not be all that bad too. Well, certainly bad for the EU, but perhaps they've also realized - like China - that it's just better to invest in Africa even fully expecting drawbacks. The continent has tons of potential, but it needs development, economic support and stability, and infrastructure in general before moving forward.
I'm not sure why people are trying to frame this in such a weird way, but agreed with the sentiment overall. It's not like ISPs should be against security, or that they shouldn't adopt secure practices... it's more like that they should not interfere with Internet traffic at all because it's not their right to do so. That's what the neutral argument stands for.
The minute you make ISPs responsible for all sorts of things regarding the Internet is the moment they appropriate it, and then you are gonna get nick and dimed for everything, have your access interefered in all sorts of way to profit from your access, and you'll end up paying one way or another for having ISPs responsible for things they shouldn't.
I don't care if most people here on Slashdot will hate me for this, but regardless of his personal views, he took a decision to share and spread an opinion that goes against company policy. It's worse than accidentaly sharing porn "to all" because it cements his ideological position in public perception directly against a stance that Google adopted as a whole. In fact, it undermines a whole ton of effort, money and time the company has spent over recent years.
When that message got leaked it directly affected the company's image, and action had to be taken. It'd be far worse for Google not to do anything about it because that would be interpreted as Google sharing the message, which had too many assumptions, some very few valid criticisms, and sugarcoating of quite frankly some very nasty prejudice and sexism.
The entire essay poses as a misappropriation of supposedly scientific reasoning, statistics and whatnot to support an anti-diversity position, and if you summarize the whole thing, there's content there that would be the equivalent of modern day Mengele and bogus science to justify the superiority of the Aryan race, only as a crusade against diversity efforts. It is entirely presumptuous, it assumes that just because some things are the way they are we should not try to change it, and that he feels violated in his rights because people are striving for more equal rights inside the company.
He basically sounds like a well mannered slaver trying to explain why he thinks slavery is right. It is by no coincidence that he uses some of the exact same lines of defense. We are biologically different. Such and such class of people seek different things. We're not getting any payoff for forward thinking actions. Lets not focus on this particular issue, but rather try to solve more generalistic things.
So yeah, while I really don't mind Google employing every sort of person there independent of political leaning, religion, gender, skin color and whatnot, when one person decides to share their personal views with the entire company and then the world, you are obviously going to be judged for it both inside and outside the company. This isn't new or anything, it's a problem people have with knowing what to share, when and how. And if it reaches a point where it's affecting parts of the company that they've no doubt spend a metric ton of money and time, you can expect to be fired for it, no matter what the subject is. If he's a reasonable enough person, he'll find another job, end of story.
Streissand effect. Grsecurity should hire another lawyer, if they survive this one. Not only what Perens wrote is always reason for precaution, even if it wasn't, he repeatedly states in his blog post that this is his opinion, and that furthermore, he's open to discussion and that he's not a lawyer. https://perens.com/blog/2017/0...
Lawsuit won't pass because it has no grounds. Courts can't define opinions as "false statements", he explicitly claimed several times that this is his opinion, and it's a huge stretch to call it "fearmongering". Issues with licensing have always been part of the Linux community worries, and there's nothing in his post that could be classified as fearmongering. It's advice pure and simple with strong basis to boot.
If stuff like this was enough for a company to sue an individual, we'd effectively have businesses dictating censorship as they pleased, and a whole ton of democratic instruments to go against big corporations wouldn't exist.
The whole thing will be dismissed and it'll only serve as more reason to suspect Grsecurity. Why don't they go ahead and also try suing Torwalds for calling their patches garbage? Go out with a bang.
...Android counterparts already do. Not sure if it's a good strategy though... problem with smartwatches using cellular networks is that you don't have enough space to put a big enough battery to allow that and last through the day. Power draw becomes an issue.
Apple watch will have some advantage in that the WatchOS probably has a plenty optimized power saving mode and whatnot, but I don't imagine it being too different since the major power draw comes from the cellular chip and there's not much you can do about it.
Forget big brands, chinese smartwatches have been coming out plenty cheap (around 100 bucks) with SIM card support, some old customized version of Android (the latest ones have 5.1), quadcore SoCs... the latest crop have 2Gb of RAM and 16Gb of storage - came out recently. You can install pretty much any app from Google Play Store, but most of them won't work well... just because of the aspect ratio difference.
I got one for myself because I wanted something I could make calls with while running, and I don't want to carry my smartphone with me at those times. They work plenty well, surprisingly well built (as long as you stick to the ones around the 100 bucks mark). But I don't think battery will last for over 5 hours or so.
It's called a compromise dumbfuck. You sit down with the likes of ecoterrorists, PETA, and a bunch of others, and keep waiting for that utopic world, die of old age and the world keeps turning.
So, there's where Nexus is going... I hope it's trully vanilla Android with updates directly from Google, not locking down the whole thing. Because you know, Lenovo has already borked several of their own laptops while trying to surreptiously install spyware and adware even in their own firmware, so I'm still suspicious of the company. But if it ends up being stock Android, it might be my next phone. Is it only Lenovo though, or they are doing this for Moto phones? Because that'd be great.
No, they aren't, and any idiot that has been following smartphone news for the past couple of years or so knows that not only they are all pretty much on par and using the exact same technology, currently Android phones are setting the trend for smartphone cameras and iPhone has just been following behind - which wasn't the case in the past.
And this isn't bad per se, it's just how things have been for sometime now. iPhone cameras are also far from being bad... there's just not much of a difference between them right now.
His argument is so bad that he even used a feature (Portrait mode) that showed up first on Android phones (the fake bokeh effect has been around longer on Android smartphones) to make his fanboy/troll/flamebait comment.
And by the way, it hasn't only been there in Android phones first, it actually came out first on alternative camera apps, which invalidates yet another part of his argument. The choice for alternative camera apps is also not exclusive to Android - iPhones have plenty of them.
It's just another guy who knows nothing about what he's talking about throwing his previous job around to make his comments even more shameful than they already are. The only thing that it proves is that there was a reason for him to get fired.
THIS is the sort of stuff privacy advocates should be doing everywhere.
You pick some key politicians, some judges, and some sensitive public services and show how damaging exposing information of them can be from readily available and already working services and we'll see how willingly government will start moving towards less privacy erosion and a renewed fight against personal data collection.
Security also goes that way. It's because these people live in a bubble that they don't care about anything of public interest.
Don't pull it off, specially if you don't know how it was installed... that is, unless you need more space to pass something else. Generally a good idea to just keep cables there even if you end up not using them to avoid unecessary stresses and damages to the structure.
I also cut the cord a long long time ago and since the apartment was new, I ended up pulling a coax out of one room to make room for ethernet. I expected to pass more than one cable, but then I didn't. And then I ended up having to pass a coax once again because the office room turned into a guest room and I decided to at least leave open channels available.
Other than that... perhaps a multi room sound system setup? If it's something simple, coax should do the job.
Avira and Malware Bytes currently. For the most part on anti-virus, Windows Defender will do, but for the average user these days it's more important to have a good anti-malware installed. Because the average user keeps going into porn websites and shady Google results which install a whole ton of ad-ware, spyware toolbars and whatnot. Those won't be detected by anti-virus.
But these softwares have been stagnant for quite a while... this is one area that could use AI to teach and prevent a whole ton of users from commiting the same exact mistakes that people have been telling not to do since early Internet days.
I'd be particularly keen on an anti-malware software that would write a warning in big red letters when people click on obvious fishing scam e-mails something like: "ARE YOU FUCKING DUMB? STOP USING THE PC RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO IT".
I always welcome more competition... Still wondering why Intel abandoned Atom though. I know it wasn't doing particularly well, but sounds weird for them to completely step out of a market.
Slashdot Mirror
...starts the downfall of Atari brand as a copyright troll... the end route of all brands agnonizing a slow and irrelevant death.
The problem with governments suggesting backdoors in encryption is the same problem that generates a whole ton of bad decisions, grief, and politics towards the 1% - they live in a bubble.
Why the heck a whole ton of politicians keep suggesting stuff like that is because they are surrounded by staff that don't have a clue about security.
It's self evident for even people who read a bit on the subject: as soon as you put backdoors into encryption used by popular chat apps and whatnot, terrorists and criminals will just migrate to another platform that is out of the state's law reach and leave a whole ton of people who don't know better still using the platform, turning them into potential targets as their personal data starts to leak.
And this is only a single reason why backdoors would never work. Not even mentioning how in principle, encryption with backdoor is already not encryption.
They don't understand that good encryption has to be open and publicly audited, and that backdoor access would obviously leak, they don't understand how bad security practices are when handled by public sectors, how much data was already leaked by government mishandling, how the entire government would be far more vulnerable to foreign spies and terrorism in general should they weaken encryption, how banks would not be able to function without strong encryption, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Here's a good thing about the suggestion though: it's a good sign of politicians you should never vote for. They are legislating and promoting ignorance for votes or fear mongering with little to no technical backing. They are risking to put the public in even more danger because they keep pressing for laws that they don't know the full effect of. They are wasting taxpayer time and money because of their own ignorance. Keep these people away from representative positions.
Look here, I'm all for equality and better representation, but listen, particularly for Hollywood, this isn't a problem of being out of step with some movement, this is a problem of consumption and culture.
I can understand when people talk about whitewashing, as testimonials given by minority actor and actresses communities really do indicate that directors, studios and people involved in the recruiting process really do not even consider hiring them for main roles... the pervasiveness of the whole thing goes so far as to give preference to white actors and actresses even to non-white roles because studios don't even consider it's possible for actors and actresses in minorities to become big stars. This is a point where they are particularly out of pace, because there are several actors and actresses in minorities that are as beloved if not even more than white actors and actresses.
But if we're talking about body types, then you are not going against a specific industry bias, you are going against deep rooted cultural ideals. This dates back as far as greek mythology and history of other cultures, and it's far from being a Hollywood, or even a western thing. Beauty standards goes into an entire other category that cannot be changed as if it was some sort of injustice.
Furthermore, it's not exclusive to female actresses, though yes, there are differences of expectations between sexes.
You can just see how fashion industry reacted so far. Magazines with token issues, a few brands and producers hiring a few models for token events, and a bunch of reaction going towards "see, we too love regular/ugly people". But in the end, those that fits the beauty standards are the ones that sells. The industry has enough money to sustain a few token diverse ideals of beauty as it should, but much like Hollywood is sustained by mainstream movies, it cannot survive treating everyone equally.
If we're talking about the mainstream, then it's obvious - it's thin and fit sexy women and roided up hunks, which btw, usually have to have extremely defined muscles which also indicate an unhealthy body fat percentage which also means they haven't been eating much.
Then again, we have progressed much in recent years. Mainstream is mostly an option these days, people have the alternative to watch movies that don't necessarily have actors and actresses looking like fashion models or beauty ideals.
Thing is, if movies were supposed to put stuff up front that is realistic, something you can see on your daily life, or that reflects people you see everyday... why bother? If you tie fiction to reality, then what purpose does fiction have? And quite frankly, I've been seeing too many people hitching a ride on stuff like body positive movement to take a dump on their own health, thinking that just because someone said "it's ok to be fat" that they should conform to their horribly unhealthy lifestyles.
And I understand that there are plenty of people who lead very healthy lifestyles but don't have a supermodel body, because that's mostly genetics.
Also understand that girls from early ages suffer pressure for achieving an unrealistic beauty standard, as they and others probably also do regarding money, social status, romantic lifestyles, personality traits, and all sorts of other things.
But if people think they will be able to convince Hollywood studios, particularly those that produce mainstream movies, to hire and produce content acording to some creed of the body positive movement when it goes directly against what actual sales data tells them.... you are up for an extreme uphill battle for sure.
And it's also not a matter of changing society, culture and whatnot to make your kids feel less pressured or something. It's a matter of knowing how to teach kids to deal with those pressures.
It's really unhealthy to think that everything can be solved by changing society in general.
I shudder at the thought of letting society be changed to attend the demands on some 3rd wave feminists that are alm
I fully expect the comment area in this post to be filled with comments from people who never even heard all the stuff the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did over the years.
Because of course there is a predominant bias against Microsoft that will certainly contaminate and overlook all the work that the foundation has done.
Quick read here before you post your creed against it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you'd rather have Gates keep his money and let it go to his own family so that we have another bunch of Trumps running around, I hope you rot in hell.
This is how war starts Guam, get your shit together.
Things that are not relevant anymore are gonna be scrapped, things that might have some use will be preserved... that is, while the organizations behind preservation efforts still live.
On a brighter tone, I was plenty pleased to see most of the games I played as a kid and teen back in the 80s-90s were mostly preserved with DosBox and other emulators efforts.
I think I also have a bunch of Flash stuff stored somewhere just in case. Most of the animations got converted to video and are still on YouTube, but I'm not sure about the games and interactive stuff.
This is purely annedoctal and not to be taken as proof of anything, but all experiences I had with Microsoft devices would agree with Consumer Reports' standpoint and this piece.
Full disclosure: I'm a long time Windows user, I'm still on a Windows 10 machine, and most people I know uses Windows too. My gripes with Windows 10 lead me to install Ubuntu on secondary machines, keep learning more about them as I go, and keep a Windows 7 copy out there just in case Microsoft doesn't stop with the bullshit and I can't adapt to a purely Linux enviroment.
I did have a brush though with Microsoft fanatics. My first smartphone was a Lumia 1020, and while I was on it, I had to go to sources for stuff like app recommendations, communities for support and discussions and whatnot that were basically run by Microsoft fanatics... because no one else would. :P All of the major tech publications had little to nothing on Windows Phones.
It was a fine phone. Well built, great camera for the time, and the OS was plenty secure (Windows Mobile 7). Battery was shit, but I had no basis for comparison back then, so I just got used to it. But as most people know, apps were shit, dev support didn't exist, and even the brands that decided to put an app on the platform quickly abandoned it, left it in a state of disrepair, and/or were missing features, several versions behind Android or iOS. Most of the Windows Store is still like that to this day. I hear that there are still few exceptions, same story as back when I had the Lumia. And if you think discoverability is bad on the App Store or Play Store... Windows Store is saving a treat for ya! I have never seen anything with so much trash and so much stuff no one never heard of or can attest for.
Still, you have to see the level of indoctrination of people commenting in these communities. It was almost like they were citizens of North Korea or something. Android wasn't even worth discussion because of course, Google, the most vile corporation of the planet was behind it. There are no comparisons to be made around features and apps available on Android because you don't look at the entrails of the Devil. iOS didn't come up much because people were pretty conscious how Microsoft tried to copy several of the worst Apple practices... like turning the mobile OS into a walled garden closed off to dev access and extremely inflexible. Yes, most people don't know about this, but weird as it may sound, Windows Phone had more similarities in the way it was build to iOS than Android. For a good portion of my Lumia ownership apps were completely isolated... they cannot talk to each other, they have little resources to use from the smartphone, all in the name of some crippling security standard.
There was this mantra that got repeated 'till the time I switched to Android... which was around a couple of years after I bought the Lumia. It's going to get better. Devs are coming. The platform has all the best apps needed. It's great for business. It's not Microsoft's fault, it's app developers fault. blah blah blah. Every Lumia/Windows Phone source you went, the discourse was the same. It puts even extreme Apple fanboys to shame.
And I have to wonder if this alternate reality Microsoft lives in, with these extreme fanboys going around in circles to show support, isn't why moronic decisions like Windows 10S and Surface Laptop came to be. After so many years of clear evidence that no one likes or wants a Windows Store, it boggles the mind that Microsoft still keeps insisting on it. The failure of Surface RT, the failure of Windows Phones, and how little people actually uses Windows Store in their Windows 8/10 machines wasn't enough. It's... the shit that keeps shitting, I dunno. It's incredible that there are still people inside Microsoft that sustains a fantasy that one day the Windows Store will thrive, that devs will come, that the Surface Laptop will ever be able to replace Chromebooks in some capacity, that Windows 10S is the future and whatnot. I was actuall
For new players, sure? It's finally delivering most of what was advertised.
For the fans who bought this early on and were probably the most enthused about the game? I imagine there's pretty much no redemption route for them.
It's less redemption and more disaster mitigation at this point...
How exactly things happened?
Elshinawy sold printers and someone from ISIS bought it, and that was it?
Nothing eBay can possibly do in a case that is a legal transaction really... well, of course, hand out information, let police monitor accounts when it's known to be tied to terrorist operations and whatnot. But it's not like they are dealing in terrordollars or something.
People, for the love of God think a bit before you comment on this issue, don't jump to conclusions about things you don't properly understand just because you can't set aside your bias for or against Apple and whatnot.
At the very least, if you are gonna make accusations about it being a privacy liability, about the system being used for spying on people, and other ignorant crap like that at least know how the f*cking thing works before making baseless assumptions and accusations.
http://www.eena.org/uploads/ga...
http://www.eena.org/download.a...
Why exactly Apple still didn't take a stance on this, we'll know when they decide to talk. But it's bad enough that they didn't say anything up to now. If there are security/privacy worries on their side, they have to say it themselves. The system is already in use on Android phones, there are no known vulnerabilities in the system, and it's only triggered when people call emergency numbers sending a coded SMS message with location information that is more accurate than what current systems can do for the parts of the world it's being targeted.
Let's just criminalize being bad in general, since it seems these politicians think it'll solve all the problems in the world.
A law is useless if there is no way to enforce it.
https://www.nature.com/mp/jour...
Forget short hand summaries and the articles you are gonna read about this subject that are often misguided and sensationalistic.
Read the piece. It has some merit, but it might not be drawing the conclusions that people are writing about it.
Can you guys stop feeding the eco chamber for this guy already?
The overreaction for and against this guy is plenty enough reason for firing him. Sorry if reality is too hard for some to take. Wake up and look around what's happening, you cannot be this blind.
Google isn't a governmental or public company, he didn't "whistleblow" anything (for it to be categorized as whistleblowing it needs to be revelations of illegal nature happening inside the company), Google interpreted his article/screed/document/whatever as being in violation with internal policies, he overstepped his position and send the message everywhere inside the company.
I'm not sure if he's involved in leaking the whole thing externally, but he became a liability the moment the message left the building.
Him staying as an employee became unsustainable. Furthermore, there's a metric ton of criticism in his piece that we really can't say for sure if it's justified or not, but it's a piece of vilification that exposes just one side of the equation from a very personal and particular viewpoint. It's a PR and HR disaster, and people were fired for way less than that. Do you guys not follow cases were CEOs were put out of their positions for one line Tweets and inept Facebook posts? Several of those weren't even criticizing the company they worked for, but it put the person in an unsustainable position inside the company.
Set your bias aside and think about it. There's a good reason Google does not discuss matters of policy and how it works on their diversity program in public. It's exactly because the company wants to avoid all sorts of overreactions that are happening right now because of what this guy wrote. The boycott that is being promoted by tons of people is a direct consequence of his actions, even if it has more to do with him being fired. On the other side, there were calls for firing him up before it happened. There's a whole ton of people taking what the guy wrote alone in faith, just because he build his article well, taking a single point of view as the truth of what happens inside the company, often exacerbating it, and throwing all sorts of unfounded accusations against the company as a whole because of it.
His piece, by itself, brought political polarization around the company, something that I'm plenty sure Google was trying to avoid at all costs. It undermined a whole ton of money, work and effort that Google must've spent in recent years.
Do you really know if Google is, internally and for it's employees, an extreme leftist paradise? Do you really know if dissent is shut down there without discussion? Specially those that are being so extremely adamant against Google in the past few days, think about how much trust you are putting in the testimonial of a single person. Has anyone else inside the company come out in support for his words? Is it really because now you know everything that's happening inside Google or is it just your confirmation bias because you already didn't like the company anyways, or the ideas James is going against?
Google won't be in trouble for firing the guy exactly because of posts just like this one. Google can show the cause and effect as to why they needed to let the guy go. If you think you are helping his case with posts like this one, you are not. Private companies are not public forums. They have policies in place with what sort of discussions are allowed to be made of matters that happens inside the company, they have proper channels to voice your opinions, and they keep strict control going through PR not to let disasters like what's happening right now spiral out of control.
Stop trying to stretch this story. It's over. If Google gets in trouble for this, fine, come back with something useful to discuss. This is just clickbait and sensationalization.
Setting aside that they are depositing a whole lot of hope on building power plants in another continent, I guess that's just how things goes.
If it's a fair deal with african countries, it could strenghten relationships. If it's not, that plant will end up seized and taken.
Which, in the grand scheme of things, might not be all that bad too. Well, certainly bad for the EU, but perhaps they've also realized - like China - that it's just better to invest in Africa even fully expecting drawbacks. The continent has tons of potential, but it needs development, economic support and stability, and infrastructure in general before moving forward.
I'm not sure why people are trying to frame this in such a weird way, but agreed with the sentiment overall.
It's not like ISPs should be against security, or that they shouldn't adopt secure practices... it's more like that they should not interfere with Internet traffic at all because it's not their right to do so.
That's what the neutral argument stands for.
The minute you make ISPs responsible for all sorts of things regarding the Internet is the moment they appropriate it, and then you are gonna get nick and dimed for everything, have your access interefered in all sorts of way to profit from your access, and you'll end up paying one way or another for having ISPs responsible for things they shouldn't.
I don't care if most people here on Slashdot will hate me for this, but regardless of his personal views, he took a decision to share and spread an opinion that goes against company policy. It's worse than accidentaly sharing porn "to all" because it cements his ideological position in public perception directly against a stance that Google adopted as a whole. In fact, it undermines a whole ton of effort, money and time the company has spent over recent years.
When that message got leaked it directly affected the company's image, and action had to be taken.
It'd be far worse for Google not to do anything about it because that would be interpreted as Google sharing the message, which had too many assumptions, some very few valid criticisms, and sugarcoating of quite frankly some very nasty prejudice and sexism.
The entire essay poses as a misappropriation of supposedly scientific reasoning, statistics and whatnot to support an anti-diversity position, and if you summarize the whole thing, there's content there that would be the equivalent of modern day Mengele and bogus science to justify the superiority of the Aryan race, only as a crusade against diversity efforts. It is entirely presumptuous, it assumes that just because some things are the way they are we should not try to change it, and that he feels violated in his rights because people are striving for more equal rights inside the company.
He basically sounds like a well mannered slaver trying to explain why he thinks slavery is right. It is by no coincidence that he uses some of the exact same lines of defense. We are biologically different. Such and such class of people seek different things. We're not getting any payoff for forward thinking actions. Lets not focus on this particular issue, but rather try to solve more generalistic things.
So yeah, while I really don't mind Google employing every sort of person there independent of political leaning, religion, gender, skin color and whatnot, when one person decides to share their personal views with the entire company and then the world, you are obviously going to be judged for it both inside and outside the company. This isn't new or anything, it's a problem people have with knowing what to share, when and how.
And if it reaches a point where it's affecting parts of the company that they've no doubt spend a metric ton of money and time, you can expect to be fired for it, no matter what the subject is.
If he's a reasonable enough person, he'll find another job, end of story.
Streissand effect. Grsecurity should hire another lawyer, if they survive this one.
Not only what Perens wrote is always reason for precaution, even if it wasn't, he repeatedly states in his blog post that this is his opinion, and that furthermore, he's open to discussion and that he's not a lawyer.
https://perens.com/blog/2017/0...
Lawsuit won't pass because it has no grounds. Courts can't define opinions as "false statements", he explicitly claimed several times that this is his opinion, and it's a huge stretch to call it "fearmongering".
Issues with licensing have always been part of the Linux community worries, and there's nothing in his post that could be classified as fearmongering. It's advice pure and simple with strong basis to boot.
If stuff like this was enough for a company to sue an individual, we'd effectively have businesses dictating censorship as they pleased, and a whole ton of democratic instruments to go against big corporations wouldn't exist.
The whole thing will be dismissed and it'll only serve as more reason to suspect Grsecurity. Why don't they go ahead and also try suing Torwalds for calling their patches garbage? Go out with a bang.
...Android counterparts already do.
Not sure if it's a good strategy though... problem with smartwatches using cellular networks is that you don't have enough space to put a big enough battery to allow that and last through the day. Power draw becomes an issue.
Apple watch will have some advantage in that the WatchOS probably has a plenty optimized power saving mode and whatnot, but I don't imagine it being too different since the major power draw comes from the cellular chip and there's not much you can do about it.
Forget big brands, chinese smartwatches have been coming out plenty cheap (around 100 bucks) with SIM card support, some old customized version of Android (the latest ones have 5.1), quadcore SoCs... the latest crop have 2Gb of RAM and 16Gb of storage - came out recently.
You can install pretty much any app from Google Play Store, but most of them won't work well... just because of the aspect ratio difference.
I got one for myself because I wanted something I could make calls with while running, and I don't want to carry my smartphone with me at those times. They work plenty well, surprisingly well built (as long as you stick to the ones around the 100 bucks mark). But I don't think battery will last for over 5 hours or so.
It's called a compromise dumbfuck.
You sit down with the likes of ecoterrorists, PETA, and a bunch of others, and keep waiting for that utopic world, die of old age and the world keeps turning.
So, there's where Nexus is going... I hope it's trully vanilla Android with updates directly from Google, not locking down the whole thing.
Because you know, Lenovo has already borked several of their own laptops while trying to surreptiously install spyware and adware even in their own firmware, so I'm still suspicious of the company.
But if it ends up being stock Android, it might be my next phone. Is it only Lenovo though, or they are doing this for Moto phones? Because that'd be great.
No, they aren't, and any idiot that has been following smartphone news for the past couple of years or so knows that not only they are all pretty much on par and using the exact same technology, currently Android phones are setting the trend for smartphone cameras and iPhone has just been following behind - which wasn't the case in the past.
And this isn't bad per se, it's just how things have been for sometime now. iPhone cameras are also far from being bad... there's just not much of a difference between them right now.
His argument is so bad that he even used a feature (Portrait mode) that showed up first on Android phones (the fake bokeh effect has been around longer on Android smartphones) to make his fanboy/troll/flamebait comment.
And by the way, it hasn't only been there in Android phones first, it actually came out first on alternative camera apps, which invalidates yet another part of his argument. The choice for alternative camera apps is also not exclusive to Android - iPhones have plenty of them.
It's just another guy who knows nothing about what he's talking about throwing his previous job around to make his comments even more shameful than they already are. The only thing that it proves is that there was a reason for him to get fired.
THIS is the sort of stuff privacy advocates should be doing everywhere.
You pick some key politicians, some judges, and some sensitive public services and show how damaging exposing information of them can be from readily available and already working services and we'll see how willingly government will start moving towards less privacy erosion and a renewed fight against personal data collection.
Security also goes that way. It's because these people live in a bubble that they don't care about anything of public interest.
Don't pull it off, specially if you don't know how it was installed... that is, unless you need more space to pass something else.
Generally a good idea to just keep cables there even if you end up not using them to avoid unecessary stresses and damages to the structure.
I also cut the cord a long long time ago and since the apartment was new, I ended up pulling a coax out of one room to make room for ethernet. I expected to pass more than one cable, but then I didn't. And then I ended up having to pass a coax once again because the office room turned into a guest room and I decided to at least leave open channels available.
Other than that... perhaps a multi room sound system setup? If it's something simple, coax should do the job.
Avira and Malware Bytes currently.
For the most part on anti-virus, Windows Defender will do, but for the average user these days it's more important to have a good anti-malware installed.
Because the average user keeps going into porn websites and shady Google results which install a whole ton of ad-ware, spyware toolbars and whatnot. Those won't be detected by anti-virus.
But these softwares have been stagnant for quite a while... this is one area that could use AI to teach and prevent a whole ton of users from commiting the same exact mistakes that people have been telling not to do since early Internet days.
I'd be particularly keen on an anti-malware software that would write a warning in big red letters when people click on obvious fishing scam e-mails something like: "ARE YOU FUCKING DUMB? STOP USING THE PC RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO IT".
I always welcome more competition...
Still wondering why Intel abandoned Atom though.
I know it wasn't doing particularly well, but sounds weird for them to completely step out of a market.