If you can't afford a real, signed certificate, you can't get your message out-- because no one will ever find it (Yes, letsencrypt exists, but it requires a certain level of expertise the average blogger just doesn't have).
If you can't handle managing a web server with a free let's encrypt certificate, you probably can't really handle hosting your own content period (with or without a certificate.) For these folks (there are a lot and it's no shame), there are hosting companies and services that host stuff for you. Search engines will index blog hosting services just fine. The message will get out.
One year ago it was about $2,400. For US tax purposes, long term investing starts at a year of holding an asset. So for the minimum definition of a long term investing, bitcoin has more then tripped. At this very moment it's up 262% over the last year. Now of course most sane people would say that bitcoin is gambling not not investing, but for those that insist it's investing, an over 250% return in a year is pretty damn good. Two years ago the price was about $650 or a 974% return. Three years ago it was about $250 or a 2533% return.
...when they have a solution designed in-house with documented requirements......Where timelines and price estimates and rates are well defined and enforced.
An issue is that for smaller gigs that would make use of such a service, the requirements are not known or at least not formally known enough to the point where an enforceable timeline could exist. In software development, the hard part is always figuring out what to do, the actual coding is usually easy. It is common to not really know what you need to do until you start doing it (figure it out as you go along). In fact the whole Agile methodology is based on merging requirements gathering with development in an iterative cycle, with an unknown number of cycles necessary to get to what is a "finished" product.
Because of this most companies that (competently) do solutions in house will have both the designers and the developers on staff, those that don't will hire consulting firms to manage the design and deliveyr processes. I doubt either would would want to grab random folks off a job board for temporary work.
Smaller businesses that don't have dedicated IT or consulting firms are unlikely to have the skills to write formal requirements.
It is high time to do the right things and first off strengthen our telecommunications network. We should be running vlan on equipment that is made ONLY in the west. Utilities should be on 1 vlan, and with absolutely NO CROSS-OVER. Likewise, MIlitary/Intelligence should be on one, Roads on another, banks on another (used only for transfers between banks), etc, etc.
You do understand that VLAN only offers security if you have complete control over the physical network? I suspect you may not because you mention using VLAN to isolate services that would typically be at significantly different physical locations and be administered by different people.
Using US made equipment would be a start, but the issue with VLAN is that if anyone has access to the configuration of anything touching a physical connection that is "protected" by VLAN, they can just change the configuration and you don't have isolation any more. All VLAN does is add a couple of bytes to the header of the packets and you *hope* that everyone listening honors those packets. It can really only be used within a physically trusted segment of your network *and* you have to trust everyone who can configure the related network gear. This means that if an attacker gets configuration access to any of your devices touching the VLAN trunk, they can alter the configuration and escalate their access. If you are using VLANs to isolate workstation access at the workstation NIC, well just don't.
In your example of using VLAN to isolate military, utilities, and banking, I would have to assume that you mean isolating them when they run across a common set of network links. This is an unlikely scenario because VLAN is a physical layer 2 (data link / Ethernet segment) thing and you typically would use a network layer 3 (routing / IP subnet) thing to deal with connecting disparate networks over distance. If you are actually talking about tying these entities together at the physical layer of the network, you would have to trust that the parties at both ends and everyone in the middle absolutely kept physical administrative control and that there were no bad actors in the mix. This is unlikely.
Other technologies, such as VPN would be more appropriate. This as well as regulations that require either air-gapping of sensitive systems or proven control of the encryption keys used to create VPN sessions running through shared networks.
should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place?
Is the server standing around doing nothing as a result of you having to swipe your own card? By not tipping in America due to the environment rather than the service you're only hurting the server.
No, I am talking about the case where the tablet (Ziosk) is sitting on the table (and has been during the whole meal), the server is nowhere in sight, and I am expected to use the tablet to figure out what my bill is, swipe my card, and print my receipt - all with no prompting or time taken by the server. I believe that these tablets have been put in place because with them servers can spend less time at the table and the restaurant's can get by with fewer servers and overall have lower labor costs. If the servers are spending less time at tables, they are providing a lower level of service. In my mind a lower level of service deserves a lower tip.
Personally I think the entire tipping thing is absurd but then I'm used to people actually being paid to work rather than going to work to beg for enough money to make going to work worthwhile.
I agree. I don't like tipping at all and I think it is stupid. I believe the cost of paying the servers (and the rest of the restaurant staff) should be included in the price of the food. However here in the US, servers are not paid fairly, in many states they are not even paid minimum wage. We have a strong tipping culture and it is rude not to tip. So because of this I tip and I usually do so generously. However I do tip based on the level of actual service I get. I define full service as someone (human) coming to my table to take my order, my drinks and food being brought to my table withing a reasonable time frame, checking on me occasionally during the meal, refilling drinks when needed, my bill being delivered to the table, being asked how my meal was and if I want anything else, and finally my credit card or cash payment being picked up at the table and my receipt or change being brought back to the table. If these basic pieces of service are not all present, I didn't get full service and I tip accordingly. In some places you pay at the cash register. I don't reduce tipping in this case since I still dealing with a human and am still getting service.
Who doesn't tip on the tax? That just seems cheap to me.
It doesn't seem cheap to me. Googling for it gives mixed answers, but most I found seem to say pre-tax. It may depend on where you live, and how old you are. In my case I live in Oregon where there is no sales tax. If I go to a restaurant and spend $20 on lunch, the bill will $20. Assuming decent service, I typically would tip 20% or $4. If I drive 15 minutes north into the state of Washington (where there is sales tax) and eat the same meal and get the same level of service, the meal with tax would cost $21.68 and 20% would be $4.34. Why would I tip more for the same level of service? Based on how I was raised, your tip represents a percentage on the value of the service received. It is assumed that the value of the service received is based on the value of the food delivered. Sales tax does not offset this. By this same logic, if you use a coupon at the restaurant you should not count the coupon in your tip math. If my $15 lunch would have been $20 without the discount, the service I received was on a $20 meal and my tip would be based on that (20% or $4)
As a Canadian if never trust anyone who wants to take my card... Up here the server just brings the pin pad to your table, sets up the transaction and you do everything else, your card never leaves your possession. Much better that way.
That process I don't mind so much. The server is bringing you the card reader and the the bill. I have had the opportunity to talk to the sever about the bill, thank the server for their service, comment on any issues, and in general interact in person with the server. In this model the server is providing me a service. With the Ziosk (and similar) model, once the food is delivered, the server need not come back to the table again. As a customer I am expected to go find the bill on the device, run my card, etc. No, these aren't hard things to do, but they are tasks that I have historically considered part of the "service" that I tip a human to do. I travel for work and eat out a lot. I need a receipt for my expense report. If the Ziosk thing is out of paper, it takes forever to find someone to go replace the paper or generate a receipt for me. Because of this I try and avoid places that have these.
If a server doesn't bring me my bill and run my credit card, or if they don't actually take my full order (I order some / all of my meal on the tablet), should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place? Personally I tip less when I have to run my own credit card. Also be aware that many of the tablets calculate the tip on the total bill (including the tax), where historically you don't tip on tax.
In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. "Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna
If the data it uses to "argue" comes from human sources, it has a human bias.
That being said, it is cool technology and it demonstrates how bad human debate can be. If you can win an argument without actually knowing what you are talking about (which you can), it demonstrates the (lack of) value debate can have; it also underscores the lack of real value in the level of political discourse that we have today. We spend a lot of time arguing over things we don't really know about.
Welcome to the cloud. This is a reminder that critical services in the cloud are a risk. As we all (should) know, the cloud is just someone else's computer that you are renting time on. With the cloud you are outsourcing the management of computing services to someone else. To be fair, your cloud provider may very well be able to run services more reliably that you can, and the accounting / cost models may make fiscal sense (expenses vs. assets, etc.), but it's important not to forget that there is nothing magic about the cloud. Failures can and do occur. Apple maps may or may not be a critical service for you, but the point is the same.
What I find odd is that there's so many pro Trump folks on/. (which is ostensibly a site for pro-science nerds)
Many folks here on/. are indeed pro-science nerds. Many are also libertarian and don't like government regulation. Of the viable candidates, Trump was the most likely to reduce government regulation. Personally I am not a big fan of the president, but his election wasn't a surprise to me, nor is the support for him here on/.
If it cost 10 cents (or some small amount) to place a call, robocalls would greatly be reduced. Provide an option for the receiver of the call to press a key to cancel the charge so legitimate person to person calls don't have to cost the caller. Use the money to support universal service, E911, charity, or whatever.
The US border control was already pretty unfriendly before 9/11, I have no idea what it must be like now (and this as a white male who speaks English as a first language).
9/11 was almost 17 years ago. If you don't know how it is now, are you saying that you haven't crossed the US boarder in at least 17 years? I am not sure how someone that crosses the boarder that infrequently can add much to the conversation. Are you saying that because you had a bad experience 17+ years ago, that you assume it really sucks now? Personally I cross the US border about once a year. My inbound experience (where you deal with the US boarder control folks) has generally been good. I have had a few times where they have been snarky but I haven't observed that the the overall level of snarkyness has changed much after 9/11. You do need a passport now when before 9/11 you could just use your driver's license for land based crossing.
Why is modifying bootloader doesn't require root access on iOS?
The boot loader is what *starts* iOS. iOS isn't actually running yet when the boot loader loads it, so iOS can't protect itself at this point. Pretty much all computers work this way - they have a lightweight piece of code (the boot loader) that is in the firmware of the device, this code's sole job is to read the operating system from storage, and start the operating system. The hardware of the device loads and runs the firmware boot loader, which in turn loads and runs the software operating system.
I think the broader question is if you should be able to install the software you want on any computing device. I don't think the answer to this is clear. Think of a car (typical slashdot analogy) - Should you be able to change the software to bypass emissions systems? how about safety systems? Do we really want it easy for people to load [formally] untested software on the drive by wire breaking and steering systems we have now and in fully autonomous cars that we will have in the future? What about medical devices? Should people be able to load their own software on pacemakers and insulin pumps? In some ways these are strawman questions, in other ways they are not. Messing with the firmware on a phone can impact the ability to call 911 (or whatever the emergency number is where you live). Messing with the firmware on a phone can impact how the internal radio works, messing with how the phone uses radio frequencies and protocols that could interfere with other's ability to place calls and and transmit data. Messing with the firmware can change the behavior of battery charging systems creating fire risk. In an idea world, the functions of a phone that are network and human safety related would be regulated and locked down while the "application" related parts would be available to mess with. In the real world it is hard to find where this line is and it technically challenging (expensive) to implement software separation of critical safety vs non safety features.
Guess what a Solar + Battery installation is? It is a type 2) balancing power plant. You get payed for charging the battery and you get payed for discharging it.
If you get paid for storing and returning power to the grid AND that payment generates a profit even after accounting for the cost of battery installation, sure it's a good thing (I even said so much in my last paragraph). My point was that if you personally pay for this (the batteries) you are subsidizing the cost of a stable power grid (and subsequently if your neighbors are not also doing this, your aggregate cost for a stable energy source is higher than your neighbors.)
If you try to beat that by buying yourself during low prices and selling yourself during peak times: good luck! (You can only sell to the local grid you are attached, too... so you basically will never have a chance to make a profit if you handle all yourself)
I said purchase and store cheap power and consume the stored power when purchasing power would be expensive. I didn't say sell stored power. I am talking about avoiding purchasing power at peak rates.
This sounds like trying out outsource the cost of reliable power delivery to a subset of consumers. If you spend a lot of money to add batteries to a grid-tied solar system and you use those batteries to help balance the grid, you (the consumer) are paying to help the power company balance the grid. If it is just you (all of your neighbors don't also have battery systems), you end up paying more for the public power system then your neighbors do.
Most solar systems are grid-tied and don't have batteries. Grid-tied is popular (way less expensive) because with off-grid you need batteries to store power for cloudy days and dark nights and you need a much larger system to gather enough power when it is sunny to store in the batteries for when it is not.
Tesla, Enphase, and others are now offering battery systems that work in conjunction with grid-tied solar systems. These systems allow you to add some battery storage to your system. What is new with this model is that you can add just a portion of the battery storage you would otherwise need for a full off grid system.
There are three reasons to add batteries to a grid-tied system, only two of which are of value to the end consumer. 1) Store power for use during a power outage - a whole house UPS. 2) Store power for time of use and cost optimization - store solar or utility power when power rates are cheap (off peak times), use the stored power during expensive (peak) times. 3) Provide reserve grid power for grid balancing - what the article is talking about. Of these things the first two are things that it makes sense for a consumer to invest in - they provide a benefit to the consumer for their investment. The last thing is a cost to the consumer that is really benefiting the consumer's neighbors and power company. This cost is disproportionate to your neighbors if you neighbors are not also investing. In addition, if you do 3, you will potentially reduce the potential run time of 1 and the dollar savings of 2.
I suppose if the power companies offered significant discounts or other incentives to people who agreed to join their private batteries to the public grid it would be all good, but the cynical side of me thinks that it's an attempt to get a subset of customers to help pay for grid reliability that everyone should be paying for.
The locks in question pair over short distances - by design - and generally have to be taken off of the door and held need the controller to pair. Having an outsider cause a downgrade attack at that one critical time would be extremely unlikely. Once paired, there is no path to attack.
Sure, I would have locks reflashed if the manufacturer offered it inexpensively. But there's no reason to panic.
This assumes that the lock controller and the lock are the only things on your z-wave network. Sure that pairing process is secure for the lock, but is the paring process for everything else your controller pairs with secure? Because if it is not, those other devices that were insecurely paired may be able to talk to your lock through the controller (it's a network after all.)
Serious issue? Holy fuck. Phones have large ass batteries now. No need for panties to get in a bunch.
A large ass battery on this phone is even more reason to get my panties in a bunch. Not because I can't swap batteries for run time or replace them when they wear out (those issues just wrinkle my panties), what gets them into a bunch is that a phone with a non-removable battery AND that actually operates when powered off (assuming the parent poster is correct) is a privacy nightmare. With such a phone, you can't just pull the battery if you don't want to be tracked. Not being able to absolutely turn of the phone (by disconnecting the battery) is what gets my panties in a bunch. A larger battery that can't be removed means *more* time that it can track you when it is not really off. Yes, with this phone you could purchase one of those radio frequency shielding bags, but you would have make sure that the shield bag did in fact shield all of the relevant frequencies and you would still have to worry about the phone recording audio and who knows what else.
and was driving home with the phone still in the box it came in, and it did not even have a sim card in it yet and the damn thing kept making noise like those Emergency Broadcast System warning sounds you hear on TV & radio, so i get home, take the phone out of the box and turn it on (it was off and getting those warnings)
To confirm, are saying that the phone was actually powered off (and not just locked / screen blanked) and was still receiving alerts and making noise? By "actually off" I mean specifically choosing the "power off" function from a menu (and not just a brief press on the power button.)
If true, silly Amber alerts aside, this is a serious issue / accusation for a phone with a non-removable battery.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't afford a real, signed certificate, you can't get your message out-- because no one will ever find it (Yes, letsencrypt exists, but it requires a certain level of expertise the average blogger just doesn't have).
If you can't handle managing a web server with a free let's encrypt certificate, you probably can't really handle hosting your own content period (with or without a certificate.) For these folks (there are a lot and it's no shame), there are hosting companies and services that host stuff for you. Search engines will index blog hosting services just fine. The message will get out.
Windows 10 as a whole isn't ready for prime time. It's a huge leap backwards in usability with more eye candy than a strip club.
I think maybe we go to different strip clubs.
Should have read "and not investing", I didn't intend a double negative.
One year ago it was about $2,400. For US tax purposes, long term investing starts at a year of holding an asset. So for the minimum definition of a long term investing, bitcoin has more then tripped. At this very moment it's up 262% over the last year. Now of course most sane people would say that bitcoin is gambling not not investing, but for those that insist it's investing, an over 250% return in a year is pretty damn good. Two years ago the price was about $650 or a 974% return. Three years ago it was about $250 or a 2533% return.
...when they have a solution designed in-house with documented requirements... ...Where timelines and price estimates and rates are well defined and enforced.
An issue is that for smaller gigs that would make use of such a service, the requirements are not known or at least not formally known enough to the point where an enforceable timeline could exist. In software development, the hard part is always figuring out what to do, the actual coding is usually easy. It is common to not really know what you need to do until you start doing it (figure it out as you go along). In fact the whole Agile methodology is based on merging requirements gathering with development in an iterative cycle, with an unknown number of cycles necessary to get to what is a "finished" product.
Because of this most companies that (competently) do solutions in house will have both the designers and the developers on staff, those that don't will hire consulting firms to manage the design and deliveyr processes. I doubt either would would want to grab random folks off a job board for temporary work.
Smaller businesses that don't have dedicated IT or consulting firms are unlikely to have the skills to write formal requirements.
It is high time to do the right things and first off strengthen our telecommunications network. We should be running vlan on equipment that is made ONLY in the west. Utilities should be on 1 vlan, and with absolutely NO CROSS-OVER. Likewise, MIlitary/Intelligence should be on one, Roads on another, banks on another (used only for transfers between banks), etc, etc.
You do understand that VLAN only offers security if you have complete control over the physical network? I suspect you may not because you mention using VLAN to isolate services that would typically be at significantly different physical locations and be administered by different people.
Using US made equipment would be a start, but the issue with VLAN is that if anyone has access to the configuration of anything touching a physical connection that is "protected" by VLAN, they can just change the configuration and you don't have isolation any more. All VLAN does is add a couple of bytes to the header of the packets and you *hope* that everyone listening honors those packets. It can really only be used within a physically trusted segment of your network *and* you have to trust everyone who can configure the related network gear. This means that if an attacker gets configuration access to any of your devices touching the VLAN trunk, they can alter the configuration and escalate their access. If you are using VLANs to isolate workstation access at the workstation NIC, well just don't.
In your example of using VLAN to isolate military, utilities, and banking, I would have to assume that you mean isolating them when they run across a common set of network links. This is an unlikely scenario because VLAN is a physical layer 2 (data link / Ethernet segment) thing and you typically would use a network layer 3 (routing / IP subnet) thing to deal with connecting disparate networks over distance. If you are actually talking about tying these entities together at the physical layer of the network, you would have to trust that the parties at both ends and everyone in the middle absolutely kept physical administrative control and that there were no bad actors in the mix. This is unlikely.
Other technologies, such as VPN would be more appropriate. This as well as regulations that require either air-gapping of sensitive systems or proven control of the encryption keys used to create VPN sessions running through shared networks.
should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place?
Is the server standing around doing nothing as a result of you having to swipe your own card? By not tipping in America due to the environment rather than the service you're only hurting the server.
No, I am talking about the case where the tablet (Ziosk) is sitting on the table (and has been during the whole meal), the server is nowhere in sight, and I am expected to use the tablet to figure out what my bill is, swipe my card, and print my receipt - all with no prompting or time taken by the server. I believe that these tablets have been put in place because with them servers can spend less time at the table and the restaurant's can get by with fewer servers and overall have lower labor costs. If the servers are spending less time at tables, they are providing a lower level of service. In my mind a lower level of service deserves a lower tip.
Personally I think the entire tipping thing is absurd but then I'm used to people actually being paid to work rather than going to work to beg for enough money to make going to work worthwhile.
I agree. I don't like tipping at all and I think it is stupid. I believe the cost of paying the servers (and the rest of the restaurant staff) should be included in the price of the food. However here in the US, servers are not paid fairly, in many states they are not even paid minimum wage. We have a strong tipping culture and it is rude not to tip. So because of this I tip and I usually do so generously. However I do tip based on the level of actual service I get. I define full service as someone (human) coming to my table to take my order, my drinks and food being brought to my table withing a reasonable time frame, checking on me occasionally during the meal, refilling drinks when needed, my bill being delivered to the table, being asked how my meal was and if I want anything else, and finally my credit card or cash payment being picked up at the table and my receipt or change being brought back to the table. If these basic pieces of service are not all present, I didn't get full service and I tip accordingly. In some places you pay at the cash register. I don't reduce tipping in this case since I still dealing with a human and am still getting service.
Who doesn't tip on the tax? That just seems cheap to me.
It doesn't seem cheap to me. Googling for it gives mixed answers, but most I found seem to say pre-tax. It may depend on where you live, and how old you are. In my case I live in Oregon where there is no sales tax. If I go to a restaurant and spend $20 on lunch, the bill will $20. Assuming decent service, I typically would tip 20% or $4. If I drive 15 minutes north into the state of Washington (where there is sales tax) and eat the same meal and get the same level of service, the meal with tax would cost $21.68 and 20% would be $4.34. Why would I tip more for the same level of service? Based on how I was raised, your tip represents a percentage on the value of the service received. It is assumed that the value of the service received is based on the value of the food delivered. Sales tax does not offset this. By this same logic, if you use a coupon at the restaurant you should not count the coupon in your tip math. If my $15 lunch would have been $20 without the discount, the service I received was on a $20 meal and my tip would be based on that (20% or $4)
As a Canadian if never trust anyone who wants to take my card... Up here the server just brings the pin pad to your table, sets up the transaction and you do everything else, your card never leaves your possession. Much better that way.
That process I don't mind so much. The server is bringing you the card reader and the the bill. I have had the opportunity to talk to the sever about the bill, thank the server for their service, comment on any issues, and in general interact in person with the server. In this model the server is providing me a service. With the Ziosk (and similar) model, once the food is delivered, the server need not come back to the table again. As a customer I am expected to go find the bill on the device, run my card, etc. No, these aren't hard things to do, but they are tasks that I have historically considered part of the "service" that I tip a human to do. I travel for work and eat out a lot. I need a receipt for my expense report. If the Ziosk thing is out of paper, it takes forever to find someone to go replace the paper or generate a receipt for me. Because of this I try and avoid places that have these.
If a server doesn't bring me my bill and run my credit card, or if they don't actually take my full order (I order some / all of my meal on the tablet), should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place? Personally I tip less when I have to run my own credit card. Also be aware that many of the tablets calculate the tip on the total bill (including the tax), where historically you don't tip on tax.
In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. "Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna
If the data it uses to "argue" comes from human sources, it has a human bias.
That being said, it is cool technology and it demonstrates how bad human debate can be. If you can win an argument without actually knowing what you are talking about (which you can), it demonstrates the (lack of) value debate can have; it also underscores the lack of real value in the level of political discourse that we have today. We spend a lot of time arguing over things we don't really know about.
And best wishes for a speedy recovery (or at least as speedy as it can be at this point.)
Welcome to the cloud. This is a reminder that critical services in the cloud are a risk. As we all (should) know, the cloud is just someone else's computer that you are renting time on. With the cloud you are outsourcing the management of computing services to someone else. To be fair, your cloud provider may very well be able to run services more reliably that you can, and the accounting / cost models may make fiscal sense (expenses vs. assets, etc.), but it's important not to forget that there is nothing magic about the cloud. Failures can and do occur. Apple maps may or may not be a critical service for you, but the point is the same.
What I find odd is that there's so many pro Trump folks on /. (which is ostensibly a site for pro-science nerds)
Many folks here on /. are indeed pro-science nerds. Many are also libertarian and don't like government regulation. Of the viable candidates, Trump was the most likely to reduce government regulation. Personally I am not a big fan of the president, but his election wasn't a surprise to me, nor is the support for him here on /.
If it cost 10 cents (or some small amount) to place a call, robocalls would greatly be reduced. Provide an option for the receiver of the call to press a key to cancel the charge so legitimate person to person calls don't have to cost the caller. Use the money to support universal service, E911, charity, or whatever.
The US border control was already pretty unfriendly before 9/11, I have no idea what it must be like now (and this as a white male who speaks English as a first language).
9/11 was almost 17 years ago. If you don't know how it is now, are you saying that you haven't crossed the US boarder in at least 17 years? I am not sure how someone that crosses the boarder that infrequently can add much to the conversation. Are you saying that because you had a bad experience 17+ years ago, that you assume it really sucks now? Personally I cross the US border about once a year. My inbound experience (where you deal with the US boarder control folks) has generally been good. I have had a few times where they have been snarky but I haven't observed that the the overall level of snarkyness has changed much after 9/11. You do need a passport now when before 9/11 you could just use your driver's license for land based crossing.
There's 7" or so fence in places you can see from the car when getting out of / returning to Mexico.
Is there also a model of Stonehenge?
Why is modifying bootloader doesn't require root access on iOS?
The boot loader is what *starts* iOS. iOS isn't actually running yet when the boot loader loads it, so iOS can't protect itself at this point. Pretty much all computers work this way - they have a lightweight piece of code (the boot loader) that is in the firmware of the device, this code's sole job is to read the operating system from storage, and start the operating system. The hardware of the device loads and runs the firmware boot loader, which in turn loads and runs the software operating system.
I think the broader question is if you should be able to install the software you want on any computing device. I don't think the answer to this is clear. Think of a car (typical slashdot analogy) - Should you be able to change the software to bypass emissions systems? how about safety systems? Do we really want it easy for people to load [formally] untested software on the drive by wire breaking and steering systems we have now and in fully autonomous cars that we will have in the future? What about medical devices? Should people be able to load their own software on pacemakers and insulin pumps? In some ways these are strawman questions, in other ways they are not. Messing with the firmware on a phone can impact the ability to call 911 (or whatever the emergency number is where you live). Messing with the firmware on a phone can impact how the internal radio works, messing with how the phone uses radio frequencies and protocols that could interfere with other's ability to place calls and and transmit data. Messing with the firmware can change the behavior of battery charging systems creating fire risk. In an idea world, the functions of a phone that are network and human safety related would be regulated and locked down while the "application" related parts would be available to mess with. In the real world it is hard to find where this line is and it technically challenging (expensive) to implement software separation of critical safety vs non safety features.
This guy sums it up pretty well with a video on how to create a summer hit in two minutes. Yeah, it's a Facebook video link. Sorry.
Guess what a Solar + Battery installation is? It is a type 2) balancing power plant. You get payed for charging the battery and you get payed for discharging it.
If you get paid for storing and returning power to the grid AND that payment generates a profit even after accounting for the cost of battery installation, sure it's a good thing (I even said so much in my last paragraph). My point was that if you personally pay for this (the batteries) you are subsidizing the cost of a stable power grid (and subsequently if your neighbors are not also doing this, your aggregate cost for a stable energy source is higher than your neighbors.)
If you try to beat that by buying yourself during low prices and selling yourself during peak times: good luck! (You can only sell to the local grid you are attached, too ... so you basically will never have a chance to make a profit if you handle all yourself)
I said purchase and store cheap power and consume the stored power when purchasing power would be expensive. I didn't say sell stored power. I am talking about avoiding purchasing power at peak rates.
This sounds like trying out outsource the cost of reliable power delivery to a subset of consumers. If you spend a lot of money to add batteries to a grid-tied solar system and you use those batteries to help balance the grid, you (the consumer) are paying to help the power company balance the grid. If it is just you (all of your neighbors don't also have battery systems), you end up paying more for the public power system then your neighbors do.
Most solar systems are grid-tied and don't have batteries. Grid-tied is popular (way less expensive) because with off-grid you need batteries to store power for cloudy days and dark nights and you need a much larger system to gather enough power when it is sunny to store in the batteries for when it is not.
Tesla, Enphase, and others are now offering battery systems that work in conjunction with grid-tied solar systems. These systems allow you to add some battery storage to your system. What is new with this model is that you can add just a portion of the battery storage you would otherwise need for a full off grid system.
There are three reasons to add batteries to a grid-tied system, only two of which are of value to the end consumer. 1) Store power for use during a power outage - a whole house UPS. 2) Store power for time of use and cost optimization - store solar or utility power when power rates are cheap (off peak times), use the stored power during expensive (peak) times. 3) Provide reserve grid power for grid balancing - what the article is talking about. Of these things the first two are things that it makes sense for a consumer to invest in - they provide a benefit to the consumer for their investment. The last thing is a cost to the consumer that is really benefiting the consumer's neighbors and power company. This cost is disproportionate to your neighbors if you neighbors are not also investing. In addition, if you do 3, you will potentially reduce the potential run time of 1 and the dollar savings of 2.
I suppose if the power companies offered significant discounts or other incentives to people who agreed to join their private batteries to the public grid it would be all good, but the cynical side of me thinks that it's an attempt to get a subset of customers to help pay for grid reliability that everyone should be paying for.
The locks in question pair over short distances - by design - and generally have to be taken off of the door and held need the controller to pair. Having an outsider cause a downgrade attack at that one critical time would be extremely unlikely. Once paired, there is no path to attack.
Sure, I would have locks reflashed if the manufacturer offered it inexpensively. But there's no reason to panic.
This assumes that the lock controller and the lock are the only things on your z-wave network. Sure that pairing process is secure for the lock, but is the paring process for everything else your controller pairs with secure? Because if it is not, those other devices that were insecurely paired may be able to talk to your lock through the controller (it's a network after all.)
Serious issue? Holy fuck. Phones have large ass batteries now. No need for panties to get in a bunch.
A large ass battery on this phone is even more reason to get my panties in a bunch. Not because I can't swap batteries for run time or replace them when they wear out (those issues just wrinkle my panties), what gets them into a bunch is that a phone with a non-removable battery AND that actually operates when powered off (assuming the parent poster is correct) is a privacy nightmare. With such a phone, you can't just pull the battery if you don't want to be tracked. Not being able to absolutely turn of the phone (by disconnecting the battery) is what gets my panties in a bunch. A larger battery that can't be removed means *more* time that it can track you when it is not really off. Yes, with this phone you could purchase one of those radio frequency shielding bags, but you would have make sure that the shield bag did in fact shield all of the relevant frequencies and you would still have to worry about the phone recording audio and who knows what else.
and was driving home with the phone still in the box it came in, and it did not even have a sim card in it yet and the damn thing kept making noise like those Emergency Broadcast System warning sounds you hear on TV & radio, so i get home, take the phone out of the box and turn it on (it was off and getting those warnings)
To confirm, are saying that the phone was actually powered off (and not just locked / screen blanked) and was still receiving alerts and making noise? By "actually off" I mean specifically choosing the "power off" function from a menu (and not just a brief press on the power button.) If true, silly Amber alerts aside, this is a serious issue / accusation for a phone with a non-removable battery.