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User: RhettLivingston

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  1. Uhh. This is not exactly new. The foundation has been around a few years and designs have already been made. Their easily identified website is https://riscv.org/.

  2. Re:The problem... on Adobe Is Helping Some 60 Companies Track People Across Devices (neowin.net) · · Score: 1

    Exactly. This is also why whether or not you give anyone a clear indication of which devices are yours, they can still connect them up. Ditto with different profiles or email addresses that you browse with and past ones that you no longer have. If the data sample is big enough, your patterns are as good as fingerprints - even better because they tell far more about you.

  3. You can only opt out of having your devices linked as belonging to the same target.

    From Adobe's "About the Device Co-op" page:

    Disconnecting devices from one another doesn’t opt out of all behavioral data collection on that device — we make best efforts to opt out of collection where possible. Disconnecting a device guarantees it won’t be linked with any other devices, while individually it may still be tracking behavioral data. To opt out of behavioral data collection, visit the privacy policies of sites you visit and apps you use.

  4. Re: No one is close on Waymo Starts To Eclipse Uber in Race To Self-Driving Taxis (sfchronicle.com) · · Score: 2

    Virtually no cars go over 1/2 million miles. I just examined the parking lot outside and over half had signs of an accident of some sort. Several had obviously been in a few. The stats are way off.

    Most accidents by human drivers are unreported. As long as the damage is minor, there is no reason to raise insurance rates. EVERY accident whether or not there is any physical damage is reported for these vehicles.

  5. Re:Why else would anyone use these services? on Microsoft To Ban 'Offensive Language' From Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services (csoonline.com) · · Score: 1

    SJW?

    This is a direct result of the actions of our Republican-led Congress. They would be horrified to be called SJWs. SJWs, in general, would not approve of this kind of attack on free speech on the web.

    We've now seen Craigslist, Google, and Microsoft cave. These are all companies that make monies in other ways, so they have the least to lose by cracking down to avoid the new penalties and the most to lose if they don't cave in. They are the first wave. The companies that have everything to lose, such as dating sites will eventually start falling as the liability issues hit.

    And setting up your own servers to replace the services being lost just puts you in the legal situation these powerful companies have decided to avoid. If the new law is fully enforced, it will be the end of the internet as a social engine. Nobody will risk it.

  6. She was never dark on 'How I Went Dark In Australia's Surveillance State For 2 Years' (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    A rose is a rose is a rose. She was never dark. One of her many aliases was the number of the card. Its every move was tracked. Even the cash refills.

    If they've got distributed database search capabilities, I bet they could peg her name with a query alone - something like which individual used their card to get cash at the nearest ATM to this card's refills within 10 minutes of a refill the greatest number of times.

    I'd also bet they periodically run a query to list all cards that have never been linked to an identity and have been filled a bunch of times over a period of more than a few months. The list would be a short, rich target ground for people on the lam. If they have a regular travel pattern, it would be easy to check them out.

  7. Literally. By that I don't mean Facebook is indispensable. I mean we should replace it with nothing. If we can't manage that, perhaps about 20 million independent things with an average of 100 users each that can't be mined as one entity would suffice.

    We've had Facebook for less than a thousandth of human history. Obviously we can live without it. It's a very brief, failed experiment. Sure, a couple of billion people have had it. More than that have had the common cold but there's no reason to keep that either.

  8. sugar fix on Researchers Test Tooth-Mounted Sensor-Enabled Chips (go.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    It seems strangely appropriate that with this sensor in place you'd have to snort your sugar to get a fix without getting caught.

  9. (Actually, it's not, because their workers are treated like slaves and they shit all over the environment. We should be imposing higher tariffs on them than they are on us while those things are true.)

    I'll agree on that assuming you intend to send all of the proceeds to the workers whose plight you are using to justify them.

    In fact, it seems correct to use that approach for all tariffs. If the companies are able to undercut ours because they are underpaying employees or not following the same safety practices, the moral thing to do would be to demand they treat their employees the same as companies here. Level the playing field by leveling the playing field. Require that all companies selling here be licensed and submit to inspections to attain the license.

    Doesn't anyone else question whether this is being done to help American companies or helping American companies is the excuse to grab billions of dollars in tariffs? Which will all be charged to the American consumer? Is that not a new hidden tax on Americans that will take a higher percentage of the income from those in the lowest economic brackets (as do most sales taxes)?

  10. congress? treaty "framework"? on US Spending Bill Contains CLOUD Act, a Win For Tech and Law Enforcement (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    Is this meaningful? What force of law does a treaty framework coming from the legislative branch have? The executive branch is the one with the treaty power. The senate can either agree or disagree. Is this just advice to Trump that he can then follow at his discretion in negotiating new treaties?

  11. I've seen people driving like that in Florida with absolutely no autonomy. You cannot be pulled for texting while driving under Florida law. It is a secondary offense. You can be ticketed, but only if they pull you for something else like speeding.

  12. Currency exchange rates and trade relations on Twitter CEO Says Bitcoin Will Be the World's 'Single Currency' In 10 Years (theverge.com) · · Score: 2, Informative

    To have a single world currency, you'd have to find a replacement for the role that exchange rates play in international trade relations. Currency is portable. Economies are not. They are tied to regions. Inequities are created when vastly different economies use the same currency.

    You can see some of the issues within the US. You can buy a home on loan for say $800K in California, hold it for a few years, sell it for a $1M, take the $200K to Tennessee, and buy a nearly identical home for $200K.

    I once used that equation as a recruiting method to recruit experienced engineers from California. They went from struggling to make it to living on easy street despite a 30% cut in salary because their house payment completely disappeared and all other expenses went down at the same time.

    That is only possible because California and Tennessee use the same currency. If they didn't, the exchange rate would likely counter the difference so that $1M California dollars = $200K Tennessee dollars since money should have the same purchasing power everywhere. Granted, using houses as the comparison stretches this a bit over reality. But, even when you look at mundane things like gasoline, groceries, or getting your grass mowed, the dollar is worth less in California than Tennessee.

    Imagine the abuses that could occur if this was extended to California vs. a poor third world country. It doesn't seem dangerous when you just look at people taking their money to a place where it is worth 10 times more and living there, but if they purchase resources there and bring them here to where they are worth ten times more and then sell them, you could dangerously reduce the resources in the third world country.

  13. And every interaction including your edits is in google's records. It then becomes evidence of both your being there and your naive attempt to cover it up.

  14. The problem with this is that if a convicted arsonist happened to be in the area with their smartphone prior to the fire, police will come up with SOME story to "prove" the convicted arsonist did it. Juries are people and easy to fool especially when you've already fooled yourself. Looking for possible suspects prior to developing a strong theory with evidence you can use to verify the suspect afterhand is a recipe for convicting an innocent person. Once a suspect is found, there will be no effort to do anything but find a theory that fits them and can be sold to a jury.

    So if you want to commit arson, send word a few hours beforehand through all of the local shelters that there will be a fire at the address later on. At least one convicted or suspected arsonist will almost certainly be there with smartphone ready to video the scene.

  15. Seems like you'd be talking to Elon. That Australian battery farm has been accomplishing switches within cycles.

    Do you have any clue what about losing the power would damage 50K+ wafers?

  16. A critical system isn't redundant unless everything is redundant. Someone forgot the redundant transfer switches!

  17. You'd think that the potential of losing 50K+ wafers could justify some pretty magnificent UPSs - even Tesla Powerpacks throughout if the power requirements need something like that. Surely they at least have multiple redundant generators. Since multibillion dollar factories think of things like this - has anyone found details of what really happened? It has to be a comedy of errors of some type.

  18. Re:Use a cable-hider on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any USB-C Wireless Video Solutions? · · Score: 1

    I've been asking the same question as the OP for a couple of years. I have a nice desktop replacement laptop and would simply like to wirelessly use my TV as a second screen. I currently use HDMI but the cables are annoying and have to be replaced every few months.

    Your options are all things that I have noted, but none work for me because...

    1) Chromecast can't present itself as a secondary display on the laptop or even mirror the main display

    2) I don't have or want any Apple products because then I'd have to pay extra for everything I have and

    3) my laptop, like most, does not support Miracast which requires specific hardware. Also, I run linux and don't know that I could use Miracast even if it did.

    I understand the bandwidth problems, but hopefully we'll be getting there with the new bands above 50GHz in the future if they're not all sucked up by the 5G behemoth.

    In general, I have been disappointed in the evolution of wireless devices and protocols. For example, why can't I walk around the house with my bluetooth headphones and connect to multiple devices very dynamically with ease yet? In a shared way? It would be nice if two of us could listen to the same program on the TV while another listens to their music in the same room and when a call comes in on my smartphone it just nicely shares the headphones which should automatically put the TV to lower volume during the call. I thought we'd be there years ago. It would also be nice if room noise could be dynamically set to pass thru or be blocked. Wireless headphones should be enabling both personal and shared experiences across multiple simultaneous devices, not just personal on a single device at a time.

    In similar fashion, I should be able to use any screen with any video-capable device without wiring it up and choose to have devices appear in PIP fashion. It would be awesome to have full access to any device screen in an appropriately sized window on any computer screen or TV screen. This would also make VR headsets much more useful. For example, you wouldn't have to take the headset off to deal with phone calls. At some point, as AR headsets become more reasonable, it could make the screen on the phone optional.

  19. Re: Seriously? Peddling the fake propaganda a seco on Can AMD Vulnerabilities Be Used To Game the Stock Market? (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    AMD investors are down a few 100 million dollars right now. The lab is an "insider" in this case. If any portion of that ended up in pockets of people who were given information ahead of time that enabled them to make money on shorts, they committed insider trading. There is no reason why this form of stealing should get different time than any other. It would certainly have involved enough money to qualify as grand larceny.

  20. More than that... look for a job when you're 55 and have no desire to do management or lead a team but just like to create. A lot of people will claim to not have trouble when they've either been with the same employer for 20 years or they've established themselves as contractors. But when you find yourself looking for the first time after many years with an employer as many did in 2009, the story is different. There are still many out there that we lost in 2009 that are now settled into jobs that don't use their skills or pay what they made. We haven't recovered until they are reincorporated.

  21. The extreme costs are because a system has grown to snag every possible dollar going into these public pocket projects. If we don't learn how to take control of that, the same will happen to the underground projects in time. Since too many powerful people get their wealth from this system, we won't take control of it.

    Therefore, this is what is going to happen. When technology for underground tunneling reaches a critical mass that allows tunneling projects to so far outperform above-ground alternatives that the money behind the above-ground projects can't continue to suppress the competition, we will have a window of time during which we can cost-effectively build underground systems as we had a window of time with highways. It will be shorter than the one we had with highways because many of the means to milk money from the government developed for highway systems will transfer and the established powerful people in the above-ground projects will move their focus. But, it will be long enough to develop an irreplaceable system and a very strong argument to keep building more because that is to the long-term advantage of those milking the money from the system.

    Inevitably, we'll do things like take all of the underground rights to the land and sell them at ridiculously low prices to people who can afford to buy vast regions who will then hold them for a while and sell them back to the government for ridiculously high prices or we'll create crazy regulations that support an infrastructure of paper pushers doing nothing of value to the project while the companies employing them siphon vast profits.

    It is a fiction that the regulations of the US are anti-business. They are anti-small business. They are the protective wall carefully built by big business to wall out the competition of small-business and entrepreneurs with good intentions. They are intentionally designed to drive up the cost of entry into the business, decreasing competition, and allowing profits to rise. Corrupt regulations and licensing are the most important tools of the system that siphons the money from these public projects. That is not to say that regulations and licensing are bad, just that ours have been largely hijacked.

  22. Re:This is stupid... on Florida Lawmakers Approve Year-Round Daylight Saving Time (tampabay.com) · · Score: 1

    They did it this way because it has no effect. It's making a statement while doing nothing.

    If they had gone to permanent standard time, it could have taken effect without the approval of the US Congress. But actually changing time zones requires the approval of Congress.

    It would be hilarious if Congress approved it and everybody else just switched to standard so they could be the oddballs with primetime showing from 9 to 12 instead of 8 to 11. Kind of appropriate in Floriduh.

  23. Re:What about Summer? on Qarnot Unveils a Cryptocurrency Heater For Your Home (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Propane is used to power refrigerators and A/Cs in RVs using absorption refrigeration techniques (the old ammonia cycle concept but with safer fluids today). Since any heat source would work, I would think these systems could be adapted to utilize heat from GPUs. The fluid could be circulated straight through the heat sink.

  24. Re:Twitter is not journalism on Scientists Prove That Truth is No Match For Fiction on Twitter (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    True, though there is occasionally journalism on it. But, neither do I believe that Twitter is completely new.

    It used to be that if you really wanted to know what people believe, you could go hang out at the local barbershop for awhile. That was where opinions were hashed out and consensus was reached. Now that is happening on Twitter. Twitter and services like it are the new barbershops.

    The problem is that it is easier to find a "barbershop" that doesn't disagree with anything that you'd like to believe. Nothing is ever actually hashed out. You can have your every view rubberstamped by someone of like mind.

  25. Re:Who expected anything else? on Why Humans Learn Faster Than AI (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    No. It is more like handing them an electronic chess game that enforces the rules of the game without telling them what they are up front. They could not make up their own game in this case, and the learning of proper game play would be possible.