Additionally, for the malware to spread to an iOS device, users must have mistakenly installed a corrupted program on their Windows-powered PC to help manage their iOS device. Instead of helping a user backup their iPhone, however, the program covertly installs “malicious apps on any iOS device that is connected to the PC,” the report said.
Not exactly the same thing as being powned by a malicious app. Plus, Apple have taken measures to prevent this rather quickly. That's not to say that iPhones are 100% secure, but malware on iPhones is relatively rare, and malware causing widespread damage is even rarer.
IoT security or the lack thereof is a real hot topic at the moment. That makes it more interesting for a lot of people... i.e. this research is a bit like click-bait (or grant-bait).
By the way: burglars (whether they are of the drive-by variety or the more clever ones who target high value marks specifically) in most cases do not have the smarts to employ such methods. They will have to pay someone to do it for them... and in that case there are far simpler (thus cheaper) methods to determine if you're gone for the day or went on holiday. A bored hacker might go for this, real burglars have better things to spend their time on.
Well, my last gig was one where I got to combine project management, business analysis, architecture with coding and tinkering. And my current gig is shaping up to be the same, so it's all good. At my current client there are actually a ton of older and very knowledgable techies around, which is great but it's also the exception in my experience. A lot of employers (and people in general) look at you funny if you're over 40 and still a techie. They don't see experience, they see a loser, because if you weren't a loser you'd be in management or enterprise architecture by now.
Exactly. Hiring older superstars who are well established and widely recognized in their field is hardly breaking a lance for the fight against age discrimination or the "cult of youth". Let us know when they start hiring coders in their 40s or 50s who are not superstars but regular joes who are nevertheless competent, with up to date skills, and who come with a lot of experience.
Thankfully the telcos are educating the public, at least they do in Europe.
1) Telco offers free music streaming on mobiles, knowing full well that this violates Net Neutrality
2) Customer is happy
3) Europe says "You can't do that"
4) Customer is pissed, blames Net Neutrality and/or Europe
5) Telco says "told you so" to the legislators.
If you're one of the unhappy customers by the way, remember that companies like these only give out freebies if they have to, i.e. if there is any real competition. But the real reason they don't want Net Neutrality is so that they can tax internet giants, refrain from expensive upgrades of their infrastructure by throttling certain services, or by throttling a certain class of services when they themselves offer a similar service. None of that is in the interest of the customer.
Putting stuff in space is still useful, and they are building modern rockets of their own design rather than copying 60 year old designs, so I wouldn't say they are 60 years late. IF BMW design a new car, you wouldn't call them "late" either. Also, designing and manufacturing rockets is still bloody hard, so yeah I'd say it's something to be proud of. As for how useful this is vs. buying launch slots elsewhere, I don't know. If they can do it cheaper, great. If they can find clients willing to pay for launches, great. If they learn something in the process that they can apply elsewhere, swell. If they come up with innovations that advances the field of spaceflight for everyone, even better.
Moderated "funny" but I kind of agree. At the very least it would be good if copyright were modified to bring it in line with the purpose for which it was created: to promote the proliferation of creative works. No to protect the "rights" of the artists: the granting of a temporary monopoly to them is a means, not an end.
So what would actually happen if we limited copyright to 15 or 20 years? If we set some hard limits on the restrictions you're allowed to attach to a distribution license? Or what if we do away with distribution rights altogether, and only allow per-play or per-sale fees? What if copyright would only be granted if you actually made your work available? I.e. if it isn't available to you legally under terms deemed reasonable, you are free to pirate it (that was actually the law's stance on piracy here until recently, but I guess we had to prepare to conform with TTIP and the like).
This would certainly boost the proliferation of creative works, but would it harm the creation of them? It might... if publishers fail to adapt. What publishers are only very slowly starting to grasp is that their role as distributor is finished; only our current copyright rules have allowed them to cling to that role, and it has perpetuated the old artificial scarcity instead of the cultural abundance we could have had... with the same or a better income going to the creators, if they play their cards right. But cracking down on piracy isn't it.
Those in the entertainment business who complain about pirates and claim that every illegal copy constitutes a lost sale would do well to remember: every illegal copy is a sale that you lost by your own fault. Stop prosecuting pirates and figure out how to sell to them.
And yes, unreasonable restrictions are exactly why people turn to piracy. Piracy is pretty widespread here, and the perpetrators often have subscriptions to Amazon, Netflix and/or HBO as well as a cable package; they pirate because of convenience or lack of access, not because they want to save a buck. And nobody thinks it terribly unethical either. As some else on/. said a while back: pirates are just unserved customers.
First, if you bought that $100 worth of Bitcoin back in 2010 it's unlikely that you would even still have it today. It probably would have been stolen by now.
I suspect that there's a much simpler explanation: most of the people who bought in at $100 or mined a couple of BTC way back when, probably sold them when they hit $200 or $500 or whatever. Most of the stories about the guys who struck it rich are about people who mined a few or bought some on a lark early on, forgot they even had them, then thankfully remembered their wallet password when the hype struck and BTC was all over the news.
I'd say blocking core functionality (Netflix and local media) unless you enable data harvesting amounts to the same thing as not allowing customers to opt out.
That's one important aspect of voting systems. Another important aspect also involves your mum: can she personally verify that the ballots have been counted correctly? (together with a sufficiently large number of other mums). If not, then the voting system is not fit for purpose.
Also, if some desirable but naughty IoT device* sends my data to the mothership, I can block it at the firewall (i.e. in the router), in fact I make sure that's the default. But if the firewall itself decides to phone home, you're SOL.
How about a law: collecting data and sending it off-LAN works strictly opt-in only, unless transmitting that data is critical to the advertised functionality of the device or app.
*) please, no discussions or remarks about how no IoT device could ever be desirable.
Depends. There's a ton of crap on Netflix for which they've secured distribution rights in larger or English speaking countries, not bothering to get rights for other countries (the selection here in NL is pretty crap compared to the UK or the US). If Netflix is forced to serve these shows to people who move to a different country, effectively they will be forced to secure an EC-wide license. It kind of seems a roundabout way of saying: "Either you license your content for all of Europe or you don't get to sell your license here" (for streaming or downloadable content)
So you may be right: maybe Netflix won't bother. However they have a vested interest here, with a fair number of subscribers and a very healthy growth, Europe is seen as a strategic market for Netflix. And already customers in their fastest-growing markets are starting to complain about the shit selection they get. So perhaps Netflix will instead choose to fight to get those EC-wide rights at a reasonable price. That's a fight that needs to happen if this fragmentation crap is to end some day. Hopefully at some point content providers will see the light and switch to a pay-per-view model like the music industry has, at which point they will beg Netflix to offer the largest possible selection of their content in any and all countries.
IIRC methane is a seriously nasty greenhouse gas. What are the effects of mining, treating and burning this gas? Negative because of extra nasty emissions, or positive because harvesting it this way means the methane as such never makes it into the atmosphere (which was / is a big worry for instance when this ice melts and the methane is released)
Rights aren't all natural rights handed down to us by the unsmiling spectre of Ayn Rand, those would be the inalienable rights. Other rights can be granted to us by ordinary law, and they can be taken away again as well. The right to repair is such a law. Another example of what very much is an alienable right is copyright. Of course this is about rights: if our elected representatives think we ought to have the ability to repair our own stuff (for whatever reason), then they can force manufacturers to respect that right...
As you state, we've always had the right to do as we please with our own stuff, including repairing it. But that right mostly existed because manufacturers couldn't do much about it up till recently: the tools and knowledge to tinker were widely available. But in the age of electronics and software, that has changed. It isn't simply a case of the skills and tools becoming increasingly specialized and more expensive, it has to do with manufacturers actively working against you. DRM preventing you from borrowing an e-book, activation codes tied to accounts to prevent you from selling your games on the second hand market. Tractors (and soon phones, probably) that lock up when certain parts are removed, for no reason other than to make you go to an authorized repair center.
So the public and their representatives are finally saying: "enough of that". And they do so in the manner that puts the lightest possible burden on the manufacturers: the public is simply given access to repair tools and manuals that already exist
Depends on what they've patented, and when. Did they file this before Samsung made their wraparound display? And did Apple file for a broad patent on "any borderless screen", or did they patent a collection of specific methods to achieve a borderless appearance. If they applied for a novel, non-obvious and specific method that is different from Samsung's (or if they filed earlier), then the patent ought to be granted.
It might not be too bad: a virtual button that requires a push rather than a touch, and feedback from the taptic engine to know when you've pressed it. The only disadvantage is that you won't be able to locate the virtual home button by touch.
Wanna help? Don't ditch your diesel vehicle just yet. Diesels are way cleaner than they used to be and continue to get cleaner, Dieselgate notwithstanding. Instead, stop using your fireplace. Not talking about your super-efficient pellet stove with 20 afterburners and particle scrubbers made from unicorn hair, I'm talking about that hole in the wall with the pipe coming out of the roof. Which many people use more for ambience than for heat. Emission of particulates (PM2.5) from fireplaces is close to or even exceeds that of vehicles in several European cities (not countries, which is significant. Local concentration rather than national averages is what matters for effects on our health)
When you say "should", the real question is whether we are talking about a moral or a legal obligation. One could make a case for a moral obligation: Microsoft charge plenty for their software, they have the resources and know-how to provide these patches, and it is such a widely used system that there are likely to be cases where clients have a good reason to stick to the old OS. Patching that stuff benefits everyone.
But I'd be very wary of making this a legal obligation. Especially since obligation implies liability when things go south. I know that some folks would love to see software manufacturers held responsible for screw-ups in their code, but if that is extended to ancient versions, software could become expensive since you're be on the hook for supporting each version in perpetuity. As a software developer, that's not a welcoming prospect.
Seems like it has. Bank robbery in the form of "hands up and fill up these bags" has become extremely rare here. The more sophisticated criminals break in at night and hit the safety deposit boxes instead, or they hit armored car companies. At the lower end you have the guys who hit ATMs, which have been protected to the point where the criminals use heavy explosives to get at the safe. Causing an awful lot of collateral damage, I might add.
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally, for the malware to spread to an iOS device, users must have mistakenly installed a corrupted program on their Windows-powered PC to help manage their iOS device. Instead of helping a user backup their iPhone, however, the program covertly installs “malicious apps on any iOS device that is connected to the PC,” the report said.
Not exactly the same thing as being powned by a malicious app. Plus, Apple have taken measures to prevent this rather quickly. That's not to say that iPhones are 100% secure, but malware on iPhones is relatively rare, and malware causing widespread damage is even rarer.
IoT security or the lack thereof is a real hot topic at the moment. That makes it more interesting for a lot of people... i.e. this research is a bit like click-bait (or grant-bait).
By the way: burglars (whether they are of the drive-by variety or the more clever ones who target high value marks specifically) in most cases do not have the smarts to employ such methods. They will have to pay someone to do it for them... and in that case there are far simpler (thus cheaper) methods to determine if you're gone for the day or went on holiday. A bored hacker might go for this, real burglars have better things to spend their time on.
It's not about who was paid, but about the actions being perpetrated. Did the protestors engage in anything illegal? What about TigerSwan?
Well, my last gig was one where I got to combine project management, business analysis, architecture with coding and tinkering. And my current gig is shaping up to be the same, so it's all good. At my current client there are actually a ton of older and very knowledgable techies around, which is great but it's also the exception in my experience. A lot of employers (and people in general) look at you funny if you're over 40 and still a techie. They don't see experience, they see a loser, because if you weren't a loser you'd be in management or enterprise architecture by now.
Exactly. Hiring older superstars who are well established and widely recognized in their field is hardly breaking a lance for the fight against age discrimination or the "cult of youth". Let us know when they start hiring coders in their 40s or 50s who are not superstars but regular joes who are nevertheless competent, with up to date skills, and who come with a lot of experience.
Thankfully the telcos are educating the public, at least they do in Europe.
1) Telco offers free music streaming on mobiles, knowing full well that this violates Net Neutrality
2) Customer is happy
3) Europe says "You can't do that"
4) Customer is pissed, blames Net Neutrality and/or Europe
5) Telco says "told you so" to the legislators.
If you're one of the unhappy customers by the way, remember that companies like these only give out freebies if they have to, i.e. if there is any real competition. But the real reason they don't want Net Neutrality is so that they can tax internet giants, refrain from expensive upgrades of their infrastructure by throttling certain services, or by throttling a certain class of services when they themselves offer a similar service. None of that is in the interest of the customer.
Putting stuff in space is still useful, and they are building modern rockets of their own design rather than copying 60 year old designs, so I wouldn't say they are 60 years late. IF BMW design a new car, you wouldn't call them "late" either. Also, designing and manufacturing rockets is still bloody hard, so yeah I'd say it's something to be proud of. As for how useful this is vs. buying launch slots elsewhere, I don't know. If they can do it cheaper, great. If they can find clients willing to pay for launches, great. If they learn something in the process that they can apply elsewhere, swell. If they come up with innovations that advances the field of spaceflight for everyone, even better.
Moderated "funny" but I kind of agree. At the very least it would be good if copyright were modified to bring it in line with the purpose for which it was created: to promote the proliferation of creative works. No to protect the "rights" of the artists: the granting of a temporary monopoly to them is a means, not an end.
So what would actually happen if we limited copyright to 15 or 20 years? If we set some hard limits on the restrictions you're allowed to attach to a distribution license? Or what if we do away with distribution rights altogether, and only allow per-play or per-sale fees? What if copyright would only be granted if you actually made your work available? I.e. if it isn't available to you legally under terms deemed reasonable, you are free to pirate it (that was actually the law's stance on piracy here until recently, but I guess we had to prepare to conform with TTIP and the like).
This would certainly boost the proliferation of creative works, but would it harm the creation of them? It might... if publishers fail to adapt. What publishers are only very slowly starting to grasp is that their role as distributor is finished; only our current copyright rules have allowed them to cling to that role, and it has perpetuated the old artificial scarcity instead of the cultural abundance we could have had... with the same or a better income going to the creators, if they play their cards right. But cracking down on piracy isn't it.
Those in the entertainment business who complain about pirates and claim that every illegal copy constitutes a lost sale would do well to remember: every illegal copy is a sale that you lost by your own fault. Stop prosecuting pirates and figure out how to sell to them.
Sucks if you can't even "pirate" C-SPAN...
/. said a while back: pirates are just unserved customers.
And yes, unreasonable restrictions are exactly why people turn to piracy. Piracy is pretty widespread here, and the perpetrators often have subscriptions to Amazon, Netflix and/or HBO as well as a cable package; they pirate because of convenience or lack of access, not because they want to save a buck. And nobody thinks it terribly unethical either. As some else on
First, if you bought that $100 worth of Bitcoin back in 2010 it's unlikely that you would even still have it today. It probably would have been stolen by now.
I suspect that there's a much simpler explanation: most of the people who bought in at $100 or mined a couple of BTC way back when, probably sold them when they hit $200 or $500 or whatever. Most of the stories about the guys who struck it rich are about people who mined a few or bought some on a lark early on, forgot they even had them, then thankfully remembered their wallet password when the hype struck and BTC was all over the news.
I'd say blocking core functionality (Netflix and local media) unless you enable data harvesting amounts to the same thing as not allowing customers to opt out.
LGBTQIA rights
Also, how many more letters are we going to tack on to this acronym?
That's one important aspect of voting systems. Another important aspect also involves your mum: can she personally verify that the ballots have been counted correctly? (together with a sufficiently large number of other mums). If not, then the voting system is not fit for purpose.
Also, if some desirable but naughty IoT device* sends my data to the mothership, I can block it at the firewall (i.e. in the router), in fact I make sure that's the default. But if the firewall itself decides to phone home, you're SOL.
How about a law: collecting data and sending it off-LAN works strictly opt-in only, unless transmitting that data is critical to the advertised functionality of the device or app.
*) please, no discussions or remarks about how no IoT device could ever be desirable.
Depends. There's a ton of crap on Netflix for which they've secured distribution rights in larger or English speaking countries, not bothering to get rights for other countries (the selection here in NL is pretty crap compared to the UK or the US). If Netflix is forced to serve these shows to people who move to a different country, effectively they will be forced to secure an EC-wide license. It kind of seems a roundabout way of saying: "Either you license your content for all of Europe or you don't get to sell your license here" (for streaming or downloadable content)
So you may be right: maybe Netflix won't bother. However they have a vested interest here, with a fair number of subscribers and a very healthy growth, Europe is seen as a strategic market for Netflix. And already customers in their fastest-growing markets are starting to complain about the shit selection they get. So perhaps Netflix will instead choose to fight to get those EC-wide rights at a reasonable price. That's a fight that needs to happen if this fragmentation crap is to end some day. Hopefully at some point content providers will see the light and switch to a pay-per-view model like the music industry has, at which point they will beg Netflix to offer the largest possible selection of their content in any and all countries.
Everyone thought I was daft to build a seed vault in the permafrost... but I built it all the same!
IBM says "thank you!" That's probably what they are after.
IIRC methane is a seriously nasty greenhouse gas. What are the effects of mining, treating and burning this gas? Negative because of extra nasty emissions, or positive because harvesting it this way means the methane as such never makes it into the atmosphere (which was / is a big worry for instance when this ice melts and the methane is released)
Rights aren't all natural rights handed down to us by the unsmiling spectre of Ayn Rand, those would be the inalienable rights. Other rights can be granted to us by ordinary law, and they can be taken away again as well. The right to repair is such a law. Another example of what very much is an alienable right is copyright. Of course this is about rights: if our elected representatives think we ought to have the ability to repair our own stuff (for whatever reason), then they can force manufacturers to respect that right...
As you state, we've always had the right to do as we please with our own stuff, including repairing it. But that right mostly existed because manufacturers couldn't do much about it up till recently: the tools and knowledge to tinker were widely available. But in the age of electronics and software, that has changed. It isn't simply a case of the skills and tools becoming increasingly specialized and more expensive, it has to do with manufacturers actively working against you. DRM preventing you from borrowing an e-book, activation codes tied to accounts to prevent you from selling your games on the second hand market. Tractors (and soon phones, probably) that lock up when certain parts are removed, for no reason other than to make you go to an authorized repair center.
So the public and their representatives are finally saying: "enough of that". And they do so in the manner that puts the lightest possible burden on the manufacturers: the public is simply given access to repair tools and manuals that already exist
Depends on what they've patented, and when. Did they file this before Samsung made their wraparound display? And did Apple file for a broad patent on "any borderless screen", or did they patent a collection of specific methods to achieve a borderless appearance. If they applied for a novel, non-obvious and specific method that is different from Samsung's (or if they filed earlier), then the patent ought to be granted.
It might not be too bad: a virtual button that requires a push rather than a touch, and feedback from the taptic engine to know when you've pressed it. The only disadvantage is that you won't be able to locate the virtual home button by touch.
I thought punishment will be by remote detonation like the previous model.
Wanna help? Don't ditch your diesel vehicle just yet. Diesels are way cleaner than they used to be and continue to get cleaner, Dieselgate notwithstanding. Instead, stop using your fireplace. Not talking about your super-efficient pellet stove with 20 afterburners and particle scrubbers made from unicorn hair, I'm talking about that hole in the wall with the pipe coming out of the roof. Which many people use more for ambience than for heat. Emission of particulates (PM2.5) from fireplaces is close to or even exceeds that of vehicles in several European cities (not countries, which is significant. Local concentration rather than national averages is what matters for effects on our health)
When you say "should", the real question is whether we are talking about a moral or a legal obligation. One could make a case for a moral obligation: Microsoft charge plenty for their software, they have the resources and know-how to provide these patches, and it is such a widely used system that there are likely to be cases where clients have a good reason to stick to the old OS. Patching that stuff benefits everyone.
But I'd be very wary of making this a legal obligation. Especially since obligation implies liability when things go south. I know that some folks would love to see software manufacturers held responsible for screw-ups in their code, but if that is extended to ancient versions, software could become expensive since you're be on the hook for supporting each version in perpetuity. As a software developer, that's not a welcoming prospect.
Seems like it has. Bank robbery in the form of "hands up and fill up these bags" has become extremely rare here. The more sophisticated criminals break in at night and hit the safety deposit boxes instead, or they hit armored car companies. At the lower end you have the guys who hit ATMs, which have been protected to the point where the criminals use heavy explosives to get at the safe. Causing an awful lot of collateral damage, I might add.