> Indeed. Also the reasons to use Linux in a lot of places is because > it is a well-designed, versatile, flexible, reliable and secure and open OS.
Linux *USED TO BE* a lean/mean OS with lots of apps that did one thing and did it well. Then along came Lennart. He's Embraced it and Extended it to ridiculous complexity. I remember running Redhat Linux on a 16 *MEGA*byte machine in 2000. Oh, and get off my lawn, Lennart
Even if you don't have an account, that effing "F" on your stock Android smartphone is scanning through your contact list etc, and sending info back to the mothership.
To re-purpose an old meme... only crAPPy crAPPy crAPPs crAPP on your privacy.
> The famous novel "Macroscope" features a benevolent > instruction that has been warped by a much later message, > such that it appears the sort of SETI message that contains > science, but in actuality destroys the brains of those who decipher it.
> I am only pointing out that many (most?) SWATing incidents actually do > have a fact pattern that sets them apart, even a priori, from legitimate > calls; that emergency dispatchers should have the tools to detect that > fact pattern; and that responders could use the presence of that fact > pattern to dial back their response rather than go in with guns blazing.
This will merely result in something similar to the spamblocking wars. As filters discovered spam patterns versus "real mail" patterns, the spammers upped their game and used more convincing "real mail" patterns. Sociopaths make the best (i.e. most convincing liars). And anybody who'd deliberately SWAT an innocent victim is a priori likely a sociopath. I'm sure there's a "how ro do a convincing fake SWAT call" FAQ floating around somewhere on the dark web.
The real solution is to remove the incentive for SWATting. I.e. change SWAT responses so that they're not a threat to the lives of innocent people.
> The most popular geoip service, Max mind, claims 90 percent accuracy when > nobody is trying to be tricky. That's their marketing claim for their own service; > the real number is probably closer to 80 percent when no proxies are involved.
You mean THIS MaxMind http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... that decided to geo-locate "unknown" US IP addresses somewhere near the geographical centre of the USA? Unfortunately for the inhabitants of a farm located at those co-ordinates, that meant a constant stream of visits from all levels of police, not to mention a few vigilantes who wanted to take the law into their own hands.
3) (Thick Indian accent) This is Facebook calling. We have detected that your Facebook is infected by virus. Please enable remote login to your machine and give us your credit card number.
Check download stats from your repo servers. And ask mirrors to give you their stats. Now you know how many downloads of specific packages happen. No need to spy on users.
> Canonical needs your data to keep the Ubuntu maintainers > from dropping a package from its archive on grounds that > fewer than a dozen people use it.
I call bullshit. Canonical has access to package download counts from its repository servers, and can probably arrange to have mirrors supply their download counts.
That blocks autoplaying... period... end of story. If I want a video to play on Youtube, I click on it, and it plays, sometimes with a pre-roll ad. But the pre-roll add only plays if I click to play a video.
The only downside is that I sometimes have to click 2 or 3 times on a video "Play button " to get Youtube/etc HTML5 videos to play. I've long since done away with Flash on my machine. As long as the ad isn't ridiculously long and/or allows me to skip after a few seconds, I have no problem.
> You can modernize SMTP , though. > For example, if the client is online during the delivery attempt > you can/should deliver straight to it. If not, to the mailbox.
The logistics for that are impossible for POP email. How would you query the client? And no, I do *NOT* want an "email client" constantly listening to the internet and telling advertisers everything about me. Besides, my desktop is behind a NATing router/modem. I think I know now why the corporate powers behind IPV6 are so vehemently opposed to NAT. An OS can ignore software firewalls. But an independant hardware NATting router/modem is a different matter.
That's what I said in a post on the previous AMP article https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... Definitely not legal in situations where companies are required to keep records.
OK, let's say you have a court order for discovery, or you're in a government agency that receives a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request for old emails. You may have the original "container" email but the content could easily have changed. How will courts handle this?
> Although it's tempting to advocate it be moved to a higher, > more stable orbit, that's a non-trivially-difficult proposition.
That's a non-starter. There's a reason ISS orbits at approx 400 km above earth. The inner Van Allen Radiation belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... usually has its bottom boundary at approximately 1000 km above the earth's surface, but dips lower during strong solar activity.
Electrical equipment can be hardened. Having the Apollo moon missions pass through the belts in a partially shielded vehicle for a few minutes on their way to/from the moon was one thing. Their radiation dose was approx what you'd get during a CAT scan. But you do not want people in the Van Allen Belts for a 6-month mission.
Movie Theatre ======== Get dressed up Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get there Pay for parking if you take car Stand in line to get tickets Grossly overpay for popcorn and pop Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get home
Watch At Home ========= Go to local grocery store to get decently priced popcorn and pop Watch Netflix movie at home on largescreen TV
similarly...
Dine Out ===== Get dressed up Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get there Pay for parking if you take car (not recommended) Stand in line to get seated Grossly overpay for alcohol Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get home
Dine At Home ========= Go to local local liquor store to get decently priced wine Eat at home
It costs a lot less, doesn't take as long, and in the case of eating at home, you don't have to pay transit/taxi or risk being caught and charged with DUI for having some wine with your meal.
And just like movie theatres, restaurants require physical retail space, which costs a lot of money in areas that customers are likely to flock to.
If I had that much money backed by a phone number, I'd get a $10/month PAYG (Pay As You Go) phone under an assumed name. Say your name is "Joe Blow". Bad guys know it, and can find the number associated with that name. They know which phone number they have to socially engineer.
But if you have a burner phone, under the name "Jane Doe", that you use to receive SMS confirmations, that'll be more secure. Obviously, have the phone rooted, and Google/Facebook/etc "cr-apps" removed, and don't give out that phone number to anybody except the service you're securing with it.
And if the bad guys can find out your "Jane Doe" number from the digital coin company that you use it for, I'd say they've already been pwnd to the max.
> Who upgrades phones that often? I am still using an iPhone 4S.:P
And I'm still on my Nokia 6015i that I got in March 2006 http://nokiamuseum.info/wp-con... Still works fine... for now. But 2G is being phased out in Canada by April, so I'll have to get something newer... mumble, grumble.
The rock/pop music market was dominated into the late 1970's / early 1980's by kids buying "hit singles" on 45-rpm format, for approximately $1. Then the corporations got effing greedy and told you that you could only get the one popular track by paying $20 or $25 for a CD that had that track... plus a dozen other pieces of crap you didn't care about. "Music sales" cratered. Well... like... dohhhh. Let's blame piracy.
It wasn't until Apple came out with 99-cent single tracks that music-buying picked up again, beacuse kids with limited allowances could buy a song, rather than having to purchase "the bundle".
This is very similar to cable TV today. Try getting just your favourite channels, without paying for a bunch of crap that you don't want. That's the CD equivalant. Specialized streaming services are the equivalant of single tracks on Itunes or Google Play.
> I would love to see the base commanders go Full Metal Jacket > on the soldiers for being so dumb. Fucking meat heads.
No one will be punished... because it was the idiot higher-ups at the Pentagon who were handing out free FitBits to their soldiers. And no, Trump was not president in 2013.
> But the Pentagon has encouraged the use of Fitbits among > military personnel and in 2013 distributed 2,500 of them as > part of a pilot program to battle obesity.
> Too many people rent rather than own their property.
And how exactly do you buy even a "small 1 miilion dollar condo"? Let's look at a hypothetical purchase...
* 3% mortgage; so you're paying approx $30,000/year in interest alone, at the start of the mortgage
* pay down $500 per month of principal per month. Call it $6,000/year
* property taxes $9,000 per year
You're looking at $45,000 per year PIT (Principal, Interest, Taxes) *ON THE CONDO ALONE*. You also need to live, eat, buy clothes, etc. The bank rule-of-thumb is no more than 30% of gross annual income on PIT. $45,000/year is 30% of $150,000/year. Anybody making less should not get a morthahe for the million dollar home/condo. It can be done, but let's just say that the previous US experience with sub-prime loans ended badly.
Slashdot Mirror
> Indeed. Also the reasons to use Linux in a lot of places is because
> it is a well-designed, versatile, flexible, reliable and secure and open OS.
Linux *USED TO BE* a lean/mean OS with lots of apps that did one thing and did it well. Then along came Lennart. He's Embraced it and Extended it to ridiculous complexity. I remember running Redhat Linux on a 16 *MEGA*byte machine in 2000. Oh, and get off my lawn, Lennart
Even if you don't have an account, that effing "F" on your stock Android smartphone is scanning through your contact list etc, and sending info back to the mothership.
To re-purpose an old meme... only crAPPy crAPPy crAPPs crAPP on your privacy.
> The famous novel "Macroscope" features a benevolent
> instruction that has been warped by a much later message,
> such that it appears the sort of SETI message that contains
> science, but in actuality destroys the brains of those who decipher it.
Even earthlings can create lethal messages https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
> I am only pointing out that many (most?) SWATing incidents actually do
> have a fact pattern that sets them apart, even a priori, from legitimate
> calls; that emergency dispatchers should have the tools to detect that
> fact pattern; and that responders could use the presence of that fact
> pattern to dial back their response rather than go in with guns blazing.
This will merely result in something similar to the spamblocking wars. As filters discovered spam patterns versus "real mail" patterns, the spammers upped their game and used more convincing "real mail" patterns. Sociopaths make the best (i.e. most convincing liars). And anybody who'd deliberately SWAT an innocent victim is a priori likely a sociopath. I'm sure there's a "how ro do a convincing fake SWAT call" FAQ floating around somewhere on the dark web.
The real solution is to remove the incentive for SWATting. I.e. change SWAT responses so that they're not a threat to the lives of innocent people.
> The most popular geoip service, Max mind, claims 90 percent accuracy when
> nobody is trying to be tricky. That's their marketing claim for their own service;
> the real number is probably closer to 80 percent when no proxies are involved.
You mean THIS MaxMind http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... that decided to geo-locate "unknown" US IP addresses somewhere near the geographical centre of the USA? Unfortunately for the inhabitants of a farm located at those co-ordinates, that meant a constant stream of visits from all levels of police, not to mention a few vigilantes who wanted to take the law into their own hands.
1) Rinnnngggg
2) Hello?
3) (Thick Indian accent) This is Facebook calling. We have detected that your Facebook is infected by virus. Please enable remote login to your machine and give us your credit card number.
4) Profit
> Is there some kind of dedicated site that archives incidents like these?
Youtube for starters. Go to Google and enter
newsman in canoe
in the search field. You get stuff like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Check download stats from your repo servers. And ask mirrors to give you their stats. Now you know how many downloads of specific packages happen. No need to spy on users.
> Canonical needs your data to keep the Ubuntu maintainers
> from dropping a package from its archive on grounds that
> fewer than a dozen people use it.
I call bullshit. Canonical has access to package download counts from its repository servers, and can probably arrange to have mirrors supply their download counts.
> But preroll ads on sites like Dailymotion and YouTube are also "self-playing video ads".
I run Pale Moon with 2 changes in about:config. I've set
media.autoplay.allowscripted;false
media.autoplay.enabled;false
That blocks autoplaying... period... end of story. If I want a video to play on Youtube, I click on it, and it plays, sometimes with a pre-roll ad. But the pre-roll add only plays if I click to play a video.
The only downside is that I sometimes have to click 2 or 3 times on a video "Play button " to get Youtube/etc HTML5 videos to play. I've long since done away with Flash on my machine. As long as the ad isn't ridiculously long and/or allows me to skip after a few seconds, I have no problem.
> You can modernize SMTP , though.
> For example, if the client is online during the delivery attempt
> you can/should deliver straight to it. If not, to the mailbox.
The logistics for that are impossible for POP email. How would you query the client? And no, I do *NOT* want an "email client" constantly listening to the internet and telling advertisers everything about me. Besides, my desktop is behind a NATing router/modem. I think I know now why the corporate powers behind IPV6 are so vehemently opposed to NAT. An OS can ignore software firewalls. But an independant hardware NATting router/modem is a different matter.
That's what I said in a post on the previous AMP article https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... Definitely not legal in situations where companies are required to keep records.
OK, let's say you have a court order for discovery, or you're in a government agency that receives a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request for old emails. You may have the original "container" email but the content could easily have changed. How will courts handle this?
> Although it's tempting to advocate it be moved to a higher,
> more stable orbit, that's a non-trivially-difficult proposition.
That's a non-starter. There's a reason ISS orbits at approx 400 km above earth. The inner Van Allen Radiation belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... usually has its bottom boundary at approximately 1000 km above the earth's surface, but dips lower during strong solar activity.
Electrical equipment can be hardened. Having the Apollo moon missions pass through the belts in a partially shielded vehicle for a few minutes on their way to/from the moon was one thing. Their radiation dose was approx what you'd get during a CAT scan. But you do not want people in the Van Allen Belts for a 6-month mission.
Movie Theatre
========
Get dressed up
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get there
Pay for parking if you take car
Stand in line to get tickets
Grossly overpay for popcorn and pop
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get home
Watch At Home
=========
Go to local grocery store to get decently priced popcorn and pop
Watch Netflix movie at home on largescreen TV
similarly...
Dine Out
=====
Get dressed up
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get there
Pay for parking if you take car (not recommended)
Stand in line to get seated
Grossly overpay for alcohol
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get home
Dine At Home
=========
Go to local local liquor store to get decently priced wine
Eat at home
It costs a lot less, doesn't take as long, and in the case of eating at home, you don't have to pay transit/taxi or risk being caught and charged with DUI for having some wine with your meal.
And just like movie theatres, restaurants require physical retail space, which costs a lot of money in areas that customers are likely to flock to.
People have been killed http://www.businessinsider.com... or had their house set on fire https://www.aol.com/2011/11/03... for unfriending somebody. Dislike at your own risk.
If I had that much money backed by a phone number, I'd get a $10/month PAYG (Pay As You Go) phone under an assumed name. Say your name is "Joe Blow". Bad guys know it, and can find the number associated with that name. They know which phone number they have to socially engineer.
But if you have a burner phone, under the name "Jane Doe", that you use to receive SMS confirmations, that'll be more secure. Obviously, have the phone rooted, and Google/Facebook/etc "cr-apps" removed, and don't give out that phone number to anybody except the service you're securing with it.
And if the bad guys can find out your "Jane Doe" number from the digital coin company that you use it for, I'd say they've already been pwnd to the max.
> Who upgrades phones that often? I am still using an iPhone 4S. :P
And I'm still on my Nokia 6015i that I got in March 2006 http://nokiamuseum.info/wp-con... Still works fine... for now. But 2G is being phased out in Canada by April, so I'll have to get something newer... mumble, grumble.
Congratulations; you've just re-invented the VT100.
The rock/pop music market was dominated into the late 1970's / early 1980's by kids buying "hit singles" on 45-rpm format, for approximately $1. Then the corporations got effing greedy and told you that you could only get the one popular track by paying $20 or $25 for a CD that had that track... plus a dozen other pieces of crap you didn't care about. "Music sales" cratered. Well... like... dohhhh. Let's blame piracy.
It wasn't until Apple came out with 99-cent single tracks that music-buying picked up again, beacuse kids with limited allowances could buy a song, rather than having to purchase "the bundle".
This is very similar to cable TV today. Try getting just your favourite channels, without paying for a bunch of crap that you don't want. That's the CD equivalant. Specialized streaming services are the equivalant of single tracks on Itunes or Google Play.
> I would love to see the base commanders go Full Metal Jacket
> on the soldiers for being so dumb. Fucking meat heads.
No one will be punished... because it was the idiot higher-ups at the Pentagon who were handing out free FitBits to their soldiers. And no, Trump was not president in 2013.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
> But the Pentagon has encouraged the use of Fitbits among
> military personnel and in 2013 distributed 2,500 of them as
> part of a pilot program to battle obesity.
To quote B-grade sci-fi... that does not compute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
> Hell, let's just extrapolate this to the greater internet, sure
> would make things nice again, more like the early days.
This idea "was extrapolated to the voting booth" in the 1960s. http://www.openculture.com/201...
> Too many people rent rather than own their property.
And how exactly do you buy even a "small 1 miilion dollar condo"? Let's look at a hypothetical purchase...
* 3% mortgage; so you're paying approx $30,000/year in interest alone, at the start of the mortgage
* pay down $500 per month of principal per month. Call it $6,000/year
* property taxes $9,000 per year
You're looking at $45,000 per year PIT (Principal, Interest, Taxes) *ON THE CONDO ALONE*. You also need to live, eat, buy clothes, etc. The bank rule-of-thumb is no more than 30% of gross annual income on PIT. $45,000/year is 30% of $150,000/year. Anybody making less should not get a morthahe for the million dollar home/condo. It can be done, but let's just say that the previous US experience with sub-prime loans ended badly.
Question: How does a Torontonian screw in a light bulb?
Answer: They simply hold the bulb up to the socket, and Canada revolves around them.