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User: Epsillon

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  1. If anything deserves to massively backfire on the instigators, it's this. I really hope it does. It'll prove:

    1. People are not stupid;
    2. Net neutrality is a widely recognised issue;
    3. Automated spam calling is one of the most hated methods of contact in the world.
  2. This is confusing the issue. I'm not trying to imply that the SSN is a secret. I'm implying that it's UNIQUE. I, personally, don't want everything I purchase, every service I sign up for, every bill I pay (yes, I know, card issuers can track this which is why i prefer cash) or everywhere I go to be uniquely traceable on some database with an easily verifiable primary key.

    It's harder to avoid than it first appears. Every little unique fact about you is one more bitmap to pry into your life and you can only limit it one piece at a time. It's far better if you never accept the linkage in the first place because, once you've given a piece of information away, you've completely lost control of it.

  3. Why do they need an SSN in the first place? If I'm completely honest, we have to bear some of the responsibility for these breaches of security by idly allowing any and all personal information to be collected by any old munchkin. An ISP does not need your SSN, date of birth or anything else beyond your address and payment details.

    For web forms that will not enable the Next button without information they don't need, I usually fake it. That fake data goes into my password manager as a third level of security that only I know.

  4. Re:Disappointing aspects on Game Company Receives Complaints About Bad Example Set By '%FEMALENAME' (kotaku.com) · · Score: 1

    No, the answer is 0): STOP USING TWITTER

    Now, that may just be the most important bit of advice to come out of this whole affair. Facebook, too.

  5. Disappointing aspects on Game Company Receives Complaints About Bad Example Set By '%FEMALENAME' (kotaku.com) · · Score: 0

    1) We still have misogyny on the Internet when the 'net community should really be leading humanity's evolution away from such primitive thought patterns as "man lead, woman follow." If you wish to imagine the stone-age intonation there, feel free. It was intentional. Come on, people, we have the world's knowledge at our fingertips. Surely a little research into why these attitudes have no place in our society isn't that onerous. Livelihood taken away simply for reacting once to what was probably a recurring theme throughout her career? What does that say about us, really? We're barely down from the sodding trees.

    2) Exactly how much of your soul does your employer own these days? At what point does one legitimately say to one's manager "Go piss up a rope, I'm a sovereign individual. What I do in the café to which I manage to stagger in order to get the caffeine fix I need to make it the rest of the way home after 22 hours of crunch-time coding to meet your unreasonable expectations, inflexible release schedule and poor planning is my own affair."

  6. Re:Offer an alternative to piracy already on Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites In Search Results (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    Bugger it. I never have mod points when I need to up-vote so badly it hurts.

  7. Nice site you have there on Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites In Search Results (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 2

    This sounds, to me, like a protection racket in the making. "Give us money and show our ads or we'll mark you down as a pirate."

    As much as censorship is distasteful, this is infinitely worse. The power it gives Google boggles the mind.

  8. Re: Corrects its own headline in the third sente on Electric Cars Are Already Cheaper To Own and Run Than Petrol Or Diesel, Says Study (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Fine, let's wait until EVs have developed into a fully-arsed solution, then. Everyone seems to want us all to dump our old faithful ICE machines and jump on the electric bandwagon. Get some research done, present some reliable, independent data on running costs, lithium ion longevity and drivetrain reliability rather than the current cherry-pick the data to fit the desired result crap we're being fed and then get back to me. In the meantime, it's all starting to look like either a cynical ploy to stimulate The Economy or to restrict the general population's ability to travel at whim without being tracked and taxed.

    Oh, and can heavy industry and corporations share a bit of this pain? We road users, including the buses and trucks, are only a third of the problem. Let's see the other two thirds getting reamed a bit to make it all seem a bit fairer. Oh, wait, we can't do that because investors, by which I mean politicians with massive portfolios and hopes of comfortable consulting sinecures after their current term in office is up...

  9. Shipping to Mars on SpaceX Plans To Blast a Tesla Roadster Into Orbit Around Mars (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    So Marvin the Martian is wealthy and is well up the reserve list for a Roadster? What's the Muskrat getting in return, an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?

  10. For pity's sake! on Is Sharp's Robot Vacuum Cleaner Vulnerable To Remote Take-over? (jvn.jp) · · Score: 0

    First world problems abound. What's it going to do, give you a nasty suck?

    In actual fact,what the fsck do you want a robotic Hoover for anyway? Like most of these autonomous things, they never work properly and, once the "Ah, lookit going across the floor traumatising the poor dog again" novelty wears off, you're left however much money you paid and several IQ points the poorer.

    Tish, pshaw and, indeed, codswallop. Also, your dog now hates you and anyone who looks like you. Aren't you proud?

  11. Depends on which features you want on Ask Slashdot: Should I Allow A 'Smart TV' To Connect To The Internet? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My LG is hardwired. I use its DLNA features but I also block it by MAC from sending any traffic out of the local RFC1918. This obviously isn't going to work if you use the TV's streaming features but for locally hosted content it's ideal.

    As for firmware updates, Samsung's recent brick debacle where it took a technician physically opening the case to get them back pretty much answers that question. The general rule for stuff held in programmable ROM is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I understand many will want KRACK fixes for WiFi as soon as they're available, yet I also wouldn't be holding my breath thinking this is a priority for vendors; they have your money, you're on your own. However, if there's a flaw in the monetisation of your viewing habits they'll be jamming those bytes down your digital throat before you can blink.

  12. ...how quickly one can fall into the trap of saying "Good. I don't agree with this so it must be banished," which is pretty much how I felt. That's not really a useful stance to take, though. Far better to let them make nutsacks of themselves in the open as an object lesson for others whose xenophobia and bigotry override common sense. This is what free speech means: The freedom to prove to everyone that you're a petty little waste of oxygen.

  13. Fuchs ache! on Linux Is Not As Safe As You Think (betanews.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't a "Linux problem," it's a "proprietary vendors using Linux and not passing on patches in a timely manner because money problem."
    Linux is exactly as safe as I think it is, though. That's why I'm careful to lock it down just as I would any other system.

  14. ...of Ice and Fire. It'll go like this: They'll release it to rave reviews but as they mature they'll kill off all your favourite features. They'll also never finish them.

  15. Did anyone proof-read this story? on Electric Car Battery Prices Fell By 80% In the Last 7 Years, Says Study (electrek.co) · · Score: 1

    Besides, fuel cells are the future. Batteries are a slow to recharge, fragile, volatile, resource-hungry, ridiculously expensive stop-gap, no matter how much you mix units and confuse the summary.

  16. The long goodbye on CNET Editor Rails Against Non-Consensual Windows Updates (cnet.com) · · Score: 2

    And when I poked around Microsoft, the overarching message I received was that Microsoft has no interest in fixing it.

    I am beginning to wonder is MSFT is actively trying to kill off the Windows platform. Certainly, none of their recent actions make me in any way doubt my choice to go nowhere near it for serious computing. They're either betting on something being a bigger revenue stream, such as a cloudy OS, or they're (by "they're" I mean the SatNad) incredibly stupid. Either way, their statement that Windows 10 will be the last Windows you will ever buy was probably very true for a significant number of people, organisations and public sector bodies.

  17. Re:Of course on Online Ad Czar Berates Adblockers As Freedom-Hating 'Mafia' (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    Of course, nobody gives the anus of a genus rattus about your anti-semitic rant. It would be just as risible had it been any one of us getting up in public and spouting that tripe after excluding the target from the event and their right to reply.

  18. What a petty, puerile little scrotum on Online Ad Czar Berates Adblockers As Freedom-Hating 'Mafia' (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    Someone has ignored his sky-fairy bestowed right to make money by filling up our screens with flashy bullshit so he's going to scream, or possibly hold his breath until he turns blue.

    Diddums.

  19. Re:EU Privacy on Google Lets Advertisers Target By (Anonymized) Customer Data · · Score: 1

    The real issue here is identity. You are not your name. Your name is just a convenient pointer others hang on the person that is you. You are the sum of many things; who you associate with, what you do, how you think, et cetera.

    Obviously these customers are hashing with the same hash and seed Google are using; they have to be or the whole exercise would be pointless. These organisations may not have the nous to prevent Google from reassembling the original data, so there are no guarantees. Also, they're not anonymising when they're matching two separate data sources. That's not anonymisation in anyone's book. That's pure sophistry, bollocks and misleading bullshit to cover insidious mining and profiling of people's PII.

    All of this becomes irrelevant, however, when you realise that, to Google, your identity is that pesky hash. Talking about anonymity at that point becomes pointless.

  20. Re:EU Privacy on Google Lets Advertisers Target By (Anonymized) Customer Data · · Score: 2

    The issue here is that a third party has access to the unhashed identities and are hashing it with the same hash and seed Google use - they have to be or there would be no point in giving the results to Google. That party may not have the nous to stop Google from reassembling their massive hoard of privately identifying information if they really wanted to. They can also gain insight into which hashes have relationships with their customers (the advertisers, we're product not customer) in order to poke even deeper into people's online activities.

    If you're anonymising, it means just that: The data cannot be traced back to a real identity. If you're data mining on an ongoing basis, don't use the word "anonymised" and say what you really mean, otherwise it's just meaningless, misleading bollocks.

    Also to remember is that your identity isn't just your name. In fact, the name is just a convenient pointer others hang on the person that is you. You are the sum of what you do, how you think and who you associate with. Given that, the name/e-mail address/UID is irrelevant, at which point the hash itself becomes your identity, even more so than your name or SSN.

  21. Re:EU Privacy on Google Lets Advertisers Target By (Anonymized) Customer Data · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shops giving a HASH of the email address knowing Google can match it to a hash of the list of email addresses it collected by Android, is linkage. It's no anonymized, its simply passed as a hash.

    This. Anonymised would be one-way, non reversible obfuscation of the source's identity. This is just pure sophistry foisted upon us simply because the vast majority of people this affects can't tell the bloody difference.

  22. Re: illegal autonomous cars? on Elon Musk Predicts 1,000km EV Range In Two Years, Autonomous Cars In Three · · Score: 2

    Flow battery - the latest one with non-toxic electrolytes and long lasting membrane. Minor detail is you'd need four tanks (one for each electrolyte charged and spent) but the recharge process would be much faster - filling station removes spent electrolyte pair and replenishes with charged, recycling the spent electrolyte with its own bulk charger - and it would remove the elephant in the room that nobody mentions when talking about electrical vehicles: The cost of replacing the hideously expensive, highly reactive and toxic LiFePO cells every 500 or so recharge cycles. It also removes the fuel cell issue of storing hydrogen. Filling stations may be able to make a profit from "fuel" instead of relying on cans of coke and sausage rolls, too.

    A bigger elephant is that it just moves emissions from the exhaust to the power station but I suppose it may be easier to sequester the output if it's in one place or, at least, manage the release. Filling stations could supplement their income with microgeneration on site feeding the bulk charger, which would help bring the ecobollox down to a dull roar.

  23. Re:WSUSOffline on Ask Slashdot: Make Windows Update Install Only Security Updates Automatically? · · Score: 1

    Yes, yes there is. September's happened just when it should have. I don't particularly care what they say about WinX, 7 still gets updates on patch Tuesday, which is what we're discussing here to stop the GetWinX crapware getting in.

    WSUSoffline is *NOT* WSUS. It's a custom set of scripts that automates download and installation of critical Windows patches that are deemed to be security essential by the WSUSoffline community. It even runs the collector on Linux - I have it set up as a cron job. You can blacklist patches by kb reference number if they make a mistake.

    The whole point was updating fresh installs before letting them go online. It accidentally created the ideal update method for dealing with this crap as a side-effect.

  24. Have a look at WSUS Offline. It does more or less what you're asking for, although you do have to run the collector and client manually every post patch Tuesday.

  25. Beautiful Red on Throwable 36-Camera Ball Takes Spherical Panoramas · · Score: 1

    And Wehm's micro-recorders. I thought I'd heard of these from some contemporary cyberpunk, just pinning down which story.