Congress should repeal the Bayh-Dole Act and require that any innovations from federally funded research be placed in the public domain.
Only if they adjust university funding to compensate. Public universities generally license their patents liberally, so it's not like the public is stripped of access to the technology.
University funds ultimately come from the public regardless. The only impact of these patents is what that money flows through: a private company or the US treasury.
I would support a mandatory FRAND licensing model to prevent anyone from stepping out of line though. Public-funds patents should be available to any interested party.
Age verification doesn't mean that establishment should be allowed to know WHO you are
It kind of does though. Without establishing an identity with a known date of birth, it is impossible to know the age of a person.
The correlation between "body in front of you" and "current biological age" has to happen somewhere, and you will need a complicated authentication system if the establishment can't use a standard license/passport/chip. This is wildly unrealistic.
and even worse, record that fact somewhere.
This can be addressed by privacy laws. We could have a law that requires written consent for the retention of any verification-related data---we just need to make Congress pass one.
Such acts erode privacy, freedom, and could be used later to frame, manipulate, or harass people.
Strong identity services make it harder for people to get things they shouldn't have---weapons, money, chemicals, etc. It also makes it easier to guarantee people get things they are entitled to: prescriptions, money, tickets/passes, government services. There is an inherent utility in having comprehensive, reliable identity services.
The potential for misuse is present with any capability. People use everything unwisely or dangerously---pharmaceuticals, cars, solvents, and even whipped cream. This is where you have to bring in social pressure and laws---keep the good uses, and punish or prevent the bad uses.
If Equifax is proving identity verification services, it's not just about the data.
There is some complicated process by which the government requests identity verification. There are two things that make this process complicated:
1. It complies with absolutely every federal privacy rule---because no bureaucrat is going to risk his job on something that does not comply with the law. The rules may or may not actually protect us, but they will be followed regardless.
2. It interfaces with some arcane government IT system. So there is a painful accreditation process before it is allowed to communicate, and it is probably an enormous pain to support once it is working. It is entirely possible that their competitors saw the list of requirements and said, "Fuck it."
If TransUnion or Experian cannot claim compliance with every regulation and support whatever bizarre IT nightmare the IRS has, then it doesn't matter what data they have.
Usually, being "deemed capable" implies being able to deliver a specific product or service in the exact manner that the requesting agency wants it.
TransUnion and Experian may be better on any number of metrics, but if they cannot check off all the requirements then they are eliminated from consideration.
That said, now would be a great time for those competitors to force the IRS to review its requirements. Half of the time, those important "sole source" contracts have a few bullshit requirements just to guarantee that some fly-by-night company can't come in and win.
I am utterly shocked to hear there is a group of companies who are racing to the bottom on customer care while racing to the top on pricing and bundling.
And this SAME GROUP is having cheap, automated spam thrown at the FCC in an apparent attempt to kill off measures that would encourage fair competition and prevent vertical monopolies.
In all seriousness, I am surprised. I expected outright bribes---or campaign contributions, whatever they call it these days. Maybe they're trying to cheap out on that too.
Buried cables, done correctly, will cost society much less in the long run. Future generations will benefit, thank us, and honor us for investing in a long-term solution and a better society.
Buried cables are far more expensive to build and maintain. Things go wrong slightly less often, but you need heavy equipment to fix it.
In addition, you have to dig trenches everywhere, with the environment impact of that activity.
And on top of that, there is unfriendly terrain. In some places, the bedrock is very near to the surface. In other places the soil is either too dense or too loose. Sometimes the water table is near the surface. Sometimes the area is geologically unstable---and slack in aerial lines can provide a cushion that is impossible to achieve underground.
You are assuming that buried lines are more efficient in the long run, but there are a number of factors that make them unappealing or just plain unworkable. Without detailed knowledge of Puerto Rico's geography, it's extremely unwise to write a blanket policy.
They are totally separate markets, and this is a huge upgrade over the last generation (1.25 TFLOP vs 768 GFLOP)---in the same power envelope.
And, yes, the embedded GPUs are more efficient. AMD always pushes their desktop parts to maximum frequency/voltage to compete with NVIDIA in that market. They don't do that for embedded products because power/cooling matters more than absolute performance.
With most Polaris GPUs, you can reduce power consumption by 20-30% with only a 5-10% performance hit. Not sure about Vega, but I assume it's the same.
No, it sounds like you need to read up on the details.
The US government bailed out both GM and Chrysler.
We gave over $60 billion to the car companies themselves, and that number goes over $80 billion if you include the assistance to their financial subsidiaries.
Now I'm interpreting this as an indication that devices with Android are targeting a six-year lifecycle!!! No way.
Software updates, which are primarily required for security, are only essential for network-connected devices. If your fridge is going to sit quietly in your kitchen and not talk to anybody else, it doesn't really matter if it's running decades-old code.
The ever falling device lifetimes are soaking up both the piddling economic growth of the middle class and our resources.
Smart devices (of any kind) put you on the network-connected upgrade treadmill. As long as compute capacity continues to grow, very few people and businesses will be interested in designing and maintaining long-lived smart devices; everything will become increasingly disposable.
There may be a way to modularize the smartness of the device, but that will involve a lot of work. There is no standard module, and any code running on a removable smart module would need to handle an enormous range of equipment. Both of those things take a tremendous amount of time effort to implement, and there is no financial incentive to do it.
Normally this would be a job for government regulation, but if the lobbyists are all paid by companies with no financial incentive to standardize and modularize... well, I'll just say my expectations are fairly low.
Because in the commercial world, there are a lot of "finished" products. (Talking about both software packages and embedded/firmware.)
Updating the original kernel with security patches is much more likely to succeed compared to upgrading to a newer kernel. Either way it will need testing, but a new kernel is more likely to require significant developer time.
Why the difference? Several reasons: The available documentation and expertise may be insufficient. The original devs are no longer available, so the work will have to be done by new guys. Upgrading kernels or frameworks can start a waterfall of changes due to other modules that must also be updated; diagnosing problems is much harder when half of the underlying platform has been modified.
To put it simply: if Linux is not your primary business, but you do build things on top of Linux---then you want minimal changes during the lifespan of your product. Having separate long-term branches is the best way to balance the need for progress and the need for a stable platform.
Four years is still too short for a lot of equipment, but it's better than two years. As more corporate money seeps into Linux, I would expect to see LTS support extend further. Almost every business would benefit from 5+ years, and a decent number would probably benefit from 10. Microsoft supports Windows for ~10 years from its GA date, and their embedded presence is miniscule in comparison to Linux.
Not sure Ubuntu was considering the wasted memory when they made this call.
I'm pretty sure they're aware of it. Your use case is not the end-all, be-all.
Either switch to a new distro or get more RAM. Since they will have a 32-bit build in the LTS branch for a few more years, you could easily upgrade or replace that machine in the meantime---it's not like your existing installation will evaporate overnight.
Educate people, allow everything out in the open and most people will reject dangerous ideologies anyway
Which is why anti-vax, flat earth, climate denial, and evolution denial are all born and bred in the USA. There are numerous, modern examples of this claim failing. Reject it now, if you are at all rational.
I support free speech, but the spread of dangerous ideologies is one of its costs, not one of its benefits.
Perhaps we should change things, to make it easier for most folks to do independent contracting...?
That may work; it depends on the specific changes. On the other hand, it may be possible to give regular employees more freedom. Most employers want an exclusive arrangement for business-essential roles, so there will be more hurdles than just finance and legal issues.
Essentially, I see it far more wide-reaching to split the difference between wage-slavery and contracting. I.e., establish a reasonable ability for workers to: set working hours, take breaks, schedule leave, be left alone outside of working hours, or self-direct.
I get most of those things from my job, but I know that many jobs are very restrictive---with no business need for it. Barely-competent managers are, in my opinion, the root of this, but in the end the stress falls on the employee regardless of the ultimate cause.
It's important to point out lights, TV, and computers so that adults know what they should do in their private lives to be healthier. Some people mistakenly believed that these things do no affect their health. This is more likely true of younger generations, as they have grown up with these things (possibly with bad role models the entire time).
But it's also important to know about commutes and the blurring line between personal/professional time. Neither of things are wholly controlled by the person, and government policies can play a significant role---for better or worse.
Every bit of evidence is good to have, even if, in this case, it only reinforces your existing habits.
Sounds like you need to consider going into contracting!!!
Not everyone can go into contracting. The entire point behind legal reform is to address the problem across the board.
There are also financial risks associated with independent contracting, and people shouldn't need to take on those risks just to have a healthy sleep schedule.
If you're only going to get the job security of a contractor, you might as well get the independence and bill rate of a contractor.
Most companies have a very low number of contractors. Especially in roles related to their core competency.
And those that contract extensively... well, they usually contract with other businesses because they need staffing and availability guarantees.
E.g., janitorial services are often contracted, but it's one contract with another company because no facilities manager wants to negotiate with 20 independent janitors.
I would certainly encourage people to consider independent employment, but we can't consider it a viable solution to US employment woes.
When a large corporation has multiple products in one space, it usually means one of two things: either they are pursuing distinct niches, or they have no major strategy for that market.
It also means that the development talent is divided into separate groups.
If Microsoft is killing Skype for Business to focus on Teams, that means they have identified their business communication product as an important market. They are probably consolidating their dev talent, and they are probably going to integrate and promote the application more heavily.
With Slack being a relative newcomer, this could make it much harder to compete. I assume Microsoft will copy the most important features and court Slack customers immediately, which could kill the company if Microsoft does a good job.
I don't know why Slack is called out in particular. There are certainly other established apps like Webex and GoTo. Maybe Microsoft has a thing for Slack? I don't pay attention to corporate drama.
Apps cannot be granted permission to control DVFS, which is necessary to induce the faults, but they can manipulate it because Android responds to the application's load/behavior.
However, the application has no specific knowledge of the overall system load and therefore it cannot consistently induce faults. The scenario in a lab is probably far, far easier than real life---it eliminates the effect of other apps, network state changes, etc on the power state.
Very clever proof of concept, but it will take a Herculian effort to turn this into an effective attack in the wild.
Fixing the problems will require all parties. There are elements under the control of ARM directly as well as the SoC designers. Android may be able to mitigate the issues at the OS level---but I assume that would penalize battery life, system performance, or both.
This conveniently forgets the rounds of layoffs that numerous companies have done. Working Americans were dumped in favor of cheaper offshore programmers.
If the problem is strictly a lack of programmers, this would never have happened. Not once, let alone repeatedly.
The best part is when the company offers severance contingent upon training the replacements. They recognize the value of institutional knowledge while totally dismissing the value of their employees.
Because the drone operator was wrong, and the helicopter pilot was acting legally?
Seriously, the summary even says the drone was flying illegally. How is it even a question? You send the bill to whoever broke the law, just like every other accident.
Yeah - the article paints Nestle as evil but gives the city leaders a total pass for charging only a $200 extraction fee.
It's basically corporate welfare---a handout to a big corporation in exchange for jobs.
If they increase the fee to a significant level, Nestle will just move to another economically depressed area and offer them hundreds or thousands of jobs in exchange for free access to water.
When you have hundreds of communities willing to sell out, it's awfully nice to be the buyer.
The various corporations and governments have been warned for years that trade secrets and infrastructure are extremely vulnerable. This warning is more of the same.
Repeated breaches have not convinced them to make the fundamental changes that are necessary. It seems that nothing short of a catastrophe will.
Slashdot Mirror
Congress should repeal the Bayh-Dole Act and require that any innovations from federally funded research be placed in the public domain.
Only if they adjust university funding to compensate. Public universities generally license their patents liberally, so it's not like the public is stripped of access to the technology.
University funds ultimately come from the public regardless. The only impact of these patents is what that money flows through: a private company or the US treasury.
I would support a mandatory FRAND licensing model to prevent anyone from stepping out of line though. Public-funds patents should be available to any interested party.
At first glance, I thought this steaming shitheap was going to be added to phones---with a disastrous effect on battery life.
Thankfully, it's being sold as a standalone product which everyone can safely ignore.
A handful of idiotic Youtubers will probably buy one, but we're fine as long as their fans don't follow suit.
Age verification doesn't mean that establishment should be allowed to know WHO you are
It kind of does though. Without establishing an identity with a known date of birth, it is impossible to know the age of a person.
The correlation between "body in front of you" and "current biological age" has to happen somewhere, and you will need a complicated authentication system if the establishment can't use a standard license/passport/chip. This is wildly unrealistic.
and even worse, record that fact somewhere.
This can be addressed by privacy laws. We could have a law that requires written consent for the retention of any verification-related data---we just need to make Congress pass one.
Such acts erode privacy, freedom, and could be used later to frame, manipulate, or harass people.
Strong identity services make it harder for people to get things they shouldn't have---weapons, money, chemicals, etc. It also makes it easier to guarantee people get things they are entitled to: prescriptions, money, tickets/passes, government services. There is an inherent utility in having comprehensive, reliable identity services.
The potential for misuse is present with any capability. People use everything unwisely or dangerously---pharmaceuticals, cars, solvents, and even whipped cream. This is where you have to bring in social pressure and laws---keep the good uses, and punish or prevent the bad uses.
If Equifax is proving identity verification services, it's not just about the data.
There is some complicated process by which the government requests identity verification. There are two things that make this process complicated:
1. It complies with absolutely every federal privacy rule---because no bureaucrat is going to risk his job on something that does not comply with the law. The rules may or may not actually protect us, but they will be followed regardless.
2. It interfaces with some arcane government IT system. So there is a painful accreditation process before it is allowed to communicate, and it is probably an enormous pain to support once it is working. It is entirely possible that their competitors saw the list of requirements and said, "Fuck it."
If TransUnion or Experian cannot claim compliance with every regulation and support whatever bizarre IT nightmare the IRS has, then it doesn't matter what data they have.
Usually, being "deemed capable" implies being able to deliver a specific product or service in the exact manner that the requesting agency wants it.
TransUnion and Experian may be better on any number of metrics, but if they cannot check off all the requirements then they are eliminated from consideration.
That said, now would be a great time for those competitors to force the IRS to review its requirements. Half of the time, those important "sole source" contracts have a few bullshit requirements just to guarantee that some fly-by-night company can't come in and win.
I am utterly shocked to hear there is a group of companies who are racing to the bottom on customer care while racing to the top on pricing and bundling.
And this SAME GROUP is having cheap, automated spam thrown at the FCC in an apparent attempt to kill off measures that would encourage fair competition and prevent vertical monopolies.
In all seriousness, I am surprised. I expected outright bribes---or campaign contributions, whatever they call it these days. Maybe they're trying to cheap out on that too.
Buried cables, done correctly, will cost society much less in the long run. Future generations will benefit, thank us, and honor us for investing in a long-term solution and a better society.
Buried cables are far more expensive to build and maintain. Things go wrong slightly less often, but you need heavy equipment to fix it.
In addition, you have to dig trenches everywhere, with the environment impact of that activity.
And on top of that, there is unfriendly terrain. In some places, the bedrock is very near to the surface. In other places the soil is either too dense or too loose. Sometimes the water table is near the surface. Sometimes the area is geologically unstable---and slack in aerial lines can provide a cushion that is impossible to achieve underground.
You are assuming that buried lines are more efficient in the long run, but there are a number of factors that make them unappealing or just plain unworkable. Without detailed knowledge of Puerto Rico's geography, it's extremely unwise to write a blanket policy.
They are totally separate markets, and this is a huge upgrade over the last generation (1.25 TFLOP vs 768 GFLOP)---in the same power envelope.
And, yes, the embedded GPUs are more efficient. AMD always pushes their desktop parts to maximum frequency/voltage to compete with NVIDIA in that market. They don't do that for embedded products because power/cooling matters more than absolute performance.
With most Polaris GPUs, you can reduce power consumption by 20-30% with only a 5-10% performance hit. Not sure about Vega, but I assume it's the same.
No, it sounds like you need to read up on the details.
The US government bailed out both GM and Chrysler.
We gave over $60 billion to the car companies themselves, and that number goes over $80 billion if you include the assistance to their financial subsidiaries.
If you doubt me, go straight to the source at: https://www.treasury.gov/initi...
If you doubt the Treasury, you can send them a FOIA request.
Now I'm interpreting this as an indication that devices with Android are targeting a six-year lifecycle!!! No way.
Software updates, which are primarily required for security, are only essential for network-connected devices. If your fridge is going to sit quietly in your kitchen and not talk to anybody else, it doesn't really matter if it's running decades-old code.
The ever falling device lifetimes are soaking up both the piddling economic growth of the middle class and our resources.
Smart devices (of any kind) put you on the network-connected upgrade treadmill. As long as compute capacity continues to grow, very few people and businesses will be interested in designing and maintaining long-lived smart devices; everything will become increasingly disposable.
There may be a way to modularize the smartness of the device, but that will involve a lot of work. There is no standard module, and any code running on a removable smart module would need to handle an enormous range of equipment. Both of those things take a tremendous amount of time effort to implement, and there is no financial incentive to do it.
Normally this would be a job for government regulation, but if the lobbyists are all paid by companies with no financial incentive to standardize and modularize... well, I'll just say my expectations are fairly low.
Because in the commercial world, there are a lot of "finished" products. (Talking about both software packages and embedded/firmware.)
Updating the original kernel with security patches is much more likely to succeed compared to upgrading to a newer kernel. Either way it will need testing, but a new kernel is more likely to require significant developer time.
Why the difference? Several reasons: The available documentation and expertise may be insufficient. The original devs are no longer available, so the work will have to be done by new guys. Upgrading kernels or frameworks can start a waterfall of changes due to other modules that must also be updated; diagnosing problems is much harder when half of the underlying platform has been modified.
To put it simply: if Linux is not your primary business, but you do build things on top of Linux---then you want minimal changes during the lifespan of your product. Having separate long-term branches is the best way to balance the need for progress and the need for a stable platform.
Four years is still too short for a lot of equipment, but it's better than two years. As more corporate money seeps into Linux, I would expect to see LTS support extend further. Almost every business would benefit from 5+ years, and a decent number would probably benefit from 10. Microsoft supports Windows for ~10 years from its GA date, and their embedded presence is miniscule in comparison to Linux.
Not sure Ubuntu was considering the wasted memory when they made this call.
I'm pretty sure they're aware of it. Your use case is not the end-all, be-all.
Either switch to a new distro or get more RAM. Since they will have a 32-bit build in the LTS branch for a few more years, you could easily upgrade or replace that machine in the meantime---it's not like your existing installation will evaporate overnight.
32-bit distros are useful to me, and I am sure there are many others like me
If that "many" is a sufficiently small part of the population, it is no longer worth serving.
No corporate product manager is going to think about someone that runs an 8-year-old netbook.
The influx of corporate money into Linux was bound to make things like this more commonplace.
Educate people, allow everything out in the open and most people will reject dangerous ideologies anyway
Which is why anti-vax, flat earth, climate denial, and evolution denial are all born and bred in the USA. There are numerous, modern examples of this claim failing. Reject it now, if you are at all rational.
I support free speech, but the spread of dangerous ideologies is one of its costs, not one of its benefits.
It should read, "Idiot Bureaucrat Demands the Impossible."
It's almost like FCC Chairman Pai barely know what's going on in one of the industries he regulates.
Perhaps we should change things, to make it easier for most folks to do independent contracting...?
That may work; it depends on the specific changes. On the other hand, it may be possible to give regular employees more freedom. Most employers want an exclusive arrangement for business-essential roles, so there will be more hurdles than just finance and legal issues.
Essentially, I see it far more wide-reaching to split the difference between wage-slavery and contracting. I.e., establish a reasonable ability for workers to: set working hours, take breaks, schedule leave, be left alone outside of working hours, or self-direct.
I get most of those things from my job, but I know that many jobs are very restrictive---with no business need for it. Barely-competent managers are, in my opinion, the root of this, but in the end the stress falls on the employee regardless of the ultimate cause.
I would gladly donate CPU time to support a site instead of viewing ads.
I might even idle my browser there---if it doesn't affect anything else I do. They really need to have a light touch though.
And, it should go without saying, but no mining on mobile. If I have to choose between bandwidth for ads and battery life, I'll take the ads.
It's important to point out lights, TV, and computers so that adults know what they should do in their private lives to be healthier. Some people mistakenly believed that these things do no affect their health. This is more likely true of younger generations, as they have grown up with these things (possibly with bad role models the entire time).
But it's also important to know about commutes and the blurring line between personal/professional time. Neither of things are wholly controlled by the person, and government policies can play a significant role---for better or worse.
Every bit of evidence is good to have, even if, in this case, it only reinforces your existing habits.
Sounds like you need to consider going into contracting!!!
Not everyone can go into contracting. The entire point behind legal reform is to address the problem across the board.
There are also financial risks associated with independent contracting, and people shouldn't need to take on those risks just to have a healthy sleep schedule.
If you're only going to get the job security of a contractor, you might as well get the independence and bill rate of a contractor.
Most companies have a very low number of contractors. Especially in roles related to their core competency.
And those that contract extensively... well, they usually contract with other businesses because they need staffing and availability guarantees.
E.g., janitorial services are often contracted, but it's one contract with another company because no facilities manager wants to negotiate with 20 independent janitors.
I would certainly encourage people to consider independent employment, but we can't consider it a viable solution to US employment woes.
When a large corporation has multiple products in one space, it usually means one of two things: either they are pursuing distinct niches, or they have no major strategy for that market.
It also means that the development talent is divided into separate groups.
If Microsoft is killing Skype for Business to focus on Teams, that means they have identified their business communication product as an important market. They are probably consolidating their dev talent, and they are probably going to integrate and promote the application more heavily.
With Slack being a relative newcomer, this could make it much harder to compete. I assume Microsoft will copy the most important features and court Slack customers immediately, which could kill the company if Microsoft does a good job.
I don't know why Slack is called out in particular. There are certainly other established apps like Webex and GoTo. Maybe Microsoft has a thing for Slack? I don't pay attention to corporate drama.
Apps cannot be granted permission to control DVFS, which is necessary to induce the faults, but they can manipulate it because Android responds to the application's load/behavior.
However, the application has no specific knowledge of the overall system load and therefore it cannot consistently induce faults. The scenario in a lab is probably far, far easier than real life---it eliminates the effect of other apps, network state changes, etc on the power state.
Very clever proof of concept, but it will take a Herculian effort to turn this into an effective attack in the wild.
Fixing the problems will require all parties. There are elements under the control of ARM directly as well as the SoC designers. Android may be able to mitigate the issues at the OS level---but I assume that would penalize battery life, system performance, or both.
This conveniently forgets the rounds of layoffs that numerous companies have done. Working Americans were dumped in favor of cheaper offshore programmers.
If the problem is strictly a lack of programmers, this would never have happened. Not once, let alone repeatedly.
The best part is when the company offers severance contingent upon training the replacements. They recognize the value of institutional knowledge while totally dismissing the value of their employees.
Because the drone operator was wrong, and the helicopter pilot was acting legally?
Seriously, the summary even says the drone was flying illegally. How is it even a question? You send the bill to whoever broke the law, just like every other accident.
Yeah - the article paints Nestle as evil but gives the city leaders a total pass for charging only a $200 extraction fee.
It's basically corporate welfare---a handout to a big corporation in exchange for jobs.
If they increase the fee to a significant level, Nestle will just move to another economically depressed area and offer them hundreds or thousands of jobs in exchange for free access to water.
When you have hundreds of communities willing to sell out, it's awfully nice to be the buyer.
The various corporations and governments have been warned for years that trade secrets and infrastructure are extremely vulnerable. This warning is more of the same.
Repeated breaches have not convinced them to make the fundamental changes that are necessary. It seems that nothing short of a catastrophe will.