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User: Linsaran

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  1. Re:$30/hour low-skill jobs. People like consistenc on Why Hasn't The Gig Economy Killed Traditional Work? (npr.org) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Also, if you're doing everything above board, the guy doing gig work has to pay self employment taxes. As a W2 the employer would be responsible for half of your federal taxes; but as a gig worker you have to pay both halves. That 30/hr starts looking more like 10/hr very quickly once you factor all the typical expenses and taxes.

  2. This seems unlikely to replace batteries at the small scale. Even discounting the risks of puncture or leakage in mobile devices like cell phones or computers; the equipment necessary to compress air into containers can likely only be scaled down so far before it loses efficiency.

    Plus every air compressor I've ever seen or worked with is pretty loud. Maybe there are ways to reduce the noise; but this ultimately seems like more of a large scale way to store energy produced via solar or wind power than a replacement for traditional batteries.

  3. Re:Whoa. on Voice Phishing Scams Are Getting More Clever (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 0, Redundant

    What is the legitimate use case for 3rd party number spoofing?

    If you run a business/call center and have 100s of lines, you probably want to direct incoming callers to a single main phone line rather than to the desk of a specific call center rep. Especially if that rep takes a break or is off duty for a time.

    Another example; I use google voice as my business phone line. It will ring to my personal cell phone when I'm out of office on the road. When I call someone back I don't want them to see my personal number, so google voice spoofs the caller ID to match my google voice number even though I'm calling from my cell phone.

    So there are legitimate reasons to allow caller ID spoofing; but it should be more carefully restricted. Problem is there's no incentive from the telecom industry to do so; and the government hasn't forced it on them yet.

  4. Re:Will it help? on Bernie Sanders Introduces 'Stop BEZOS' Bill To Tax Amazon For Underpaying Workers (theverge.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I mean, ideally setting a living minimum wage would be ideal; but this particular bill might be more palatable to the right. The concern that people would get fired is probably overblown. For one thing it'd probably be a protected clause like how you can't fire someone because of their race or ethnicity. Second if people need benefits they're going to claim them regardless; people need to eat and have a home. Thirdly chances are the government isn't going to be so granular as to tell big corporations which employees are claiming benefits, they just get a tax bill for the totals.

  5. Re:Can't Google sue him on Google Debunks Trump's Claim It Censored His State of the Union Address (theverge.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would love to see that case get tried in court. Frankly Google has a better case against whoever created that video Trump tweeted than against Trump himself; since it's easy enough for Trump to throw them under the bus and claim he was misled by what he thought was a legitimate publication. I think Google would have a hard time proving significant damages and at most might get a public 'apology' out of Trump. It ultimately would probably waste a ton of money and go nowhere. I

  6. While on one hand I agree with your point that not being accepted and not being able to afford it are different things; I will contest that anyone can reasonably afford to support a household and send a kid to to college on 56k no matter how cheap an institution they attend.

  7. Eh, people should be backing things up regularly anyways; and even if it's encrypted you should be able to access it on a different machine if you have the encryption key/passphrase (which as a legitimate user you should, and if you don't then it's your own damn fault).

  8. Absolutely correct, although I'd like to add to this that many cases of abandon-ware are situations where it's unclear who owns it. Generally I'd say the risk of repercussions of sharing abandon-ware is low; and ethically I think it is a moral imperative to share such content for the sake of our shared digital heritage.

  9. Re:The people behind robocalls... on Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer (wsj.com) · · Score: 2

    Sounds like you could really use some time away from it all. Why not take a cruise!

  10. Re:Any version of 10 is a dead end for enterprise on Windows 10 Pro Is a Dead End For the Enterprise, Gartner Says (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Can confirm, but the volume license requirement is dumb. There really should be an LTSB equivalent that doesn't require 25 licenses.

  11. Re:We're closing a nuclear plant nearby on Massachusetts Gains Foothold in Offshore Wind Power, Long Ignored in US (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Not that we shouldn't also be investing in wind, but really we should be renovating and expanding our use of nuclear power instead of shuttering it. I get that a lot of reactors are old and we shouldn't keep using old reactors; but properly managed nuclear power is by a wide margin the most scale-able alternative to fossil fuels we have. If we invested more heavily into it it could probably be a cheaper option too.

  12. Re:Profit center on Jails Are Replacing Visits With Video Calls (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is, and continues to be ridiculous how expensive phone calls to prison are. For something that so clearly has a strong tie to improving prisoner behavior it should be encouraged and probably free.

  13. Time is not money, but there is a relationship between the two. Most people trade their time for money. If hypothetically these items can be obtained through the expenditure of time; it stands to reason that trading money for them instead is effectively trading money for time. Either way, I only have an issue with it if the loot boxes are really egregious or there's no alternative to the pay to win mechanic.

  14. Re:If it's on a public facing server... on Police Drop Charges Filed Against 19-Year-Old Archivist For Downloading FOIA Releases (techdirt.com) · · Score: 2

    Intent, specifically Mens rea is an important part of the legal system.

    Although what he ultimately did was illegal (obtained unredacted state secrets). He was not originally trying to obtain state secrets, nor could he have reasonably thought that what he was doing would lead to him obtaining state secrets. He had no reason to believe that the information he was able to access via that website, whether he did it via hyperlink or via a script as described in the original article would be anything other than the publicly available information released via the FOIA. Thus even if he ultimately performed an actus reus he did it without mens rea. I don't know what lead you to believe he broke the law, but everything about this case implies to me that this guy didn't do anything I (and fortunately the courts agree) think is wrong.

  15. Re:This is what I don't get... on Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    These days most calls are just VoIP data, phone companies don't really have the infrastructure to track incoming calls; I mean sure they know that a call came in and how long it was. But they only know it came from IP x.x.x.x.x they don't know where it came from before that, not really. If the packets are properly formatted they just connect them to their destination. Similar to how an email server has to rely on self-reporting of e-mail headers to verify authenticity, phone companies are trusting that information being sent to them from an outside carrier is accurate.

    There's also a lot of reasons that a caller ID wouldn't match a phone number being dialed, a prime example is for a call center to have a central call in number; but each phone has it's own extension if you need to directly reach a particular person.

    Now with some regulation it would be possible to require a company verify they own the number they're self reporting on caller ID, and that would help cut down on/block a lot of robocalls.

  16. Canadian online Pharmacy on Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    I get calls at least twice a day from some variation of 'Canadian Online Pharmacy' or 'US Online Pharmacy' trying to sell me viagra or cialis. It's continued for close to 8 years. They pull every trick you can think of, ignore requests to "Do not call", spoof caller IDs, etc.

    Unfortunately my phone number is used for business so I can't easily change it or ignore calls from numbers I don't recognize as that could mean potentially lost business. But I really don't need their dick pills. Occasionally if I have time I'll mess with them, I remember once telling the guy on the phone I lost my penis in a boating accident. I gotta give credit to his persistence he still tried to sell me Viagra anyways. . .

  17. Re:PR is a third world country. on Puerto Rico is Experiencing an Island-Wide Blackout (engadget.com) · · Score: 2

    It's an extreme example of what happens when you allow the rich to dictate financial policy against all bounds of sanity.

  18. Re:More or fewer pedestrian deaths per mile? on Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman in First Fatal Crash Involving Pedestrian (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    The analogy of driving with eyes closed is not quite accurate, it's much more accurate to suggest that inadequate sensors is the equivalent of having large blind spots in the car where a driver cannot see a pedestrian. Mirrors and other technology have certainly improved this, but even the most modern car has some areas that cannot be monitored by a driver without looking away from others. A computer with 360 sensors should arguably be better equipped than a human with their two eyes and a bunch of mirrors.

  19. Sounds good for scumy employers on China To Bar People With Bad 'Social Credit' From Planes, Trains (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Dunno how I feel about the law over all, like a lot of things in China it seems pretty oppressive and overly broad. But it sounds good to punish employers that try to skirt stuff like social insurance. Employers should take care of their employees, might make labor conditions a little less crappy.

  20. Wouldn't stop bitching about uTorrent.

    uTorrent is pretty garbage these days anyways, ever since the original creator sold it. I switched to Deluge long ago

  21. Cortana already has my heart. Might as well make it official.

  22. pacemakers? You really want to replace the battery in that? Yourself?

    They say that it needs to be replaceable by an 'independent repair provider'. So not by yourself, but by someone presumably trained and familiar with the device, but not necessarily associated with the original manufacturer.

  23. Re:Needed it to protect my Bitcoin on Less Than 1 in 10 Gmail Users Enable Two-Factor Authentication (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    The lion's share of my coins were in my own personal wallet. I don't exactly remember why I had those ones in Coinbase, but it wasn't like I was storing them there, I think I had plans for them, I just don't remember what they were now.

  24. Re:Needed it to protect my Bitcoin on Less Than 1 in 10 Gmail Users Enable Two-Factor Authentication (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    I over simplified my above explanation, what I said was technically accurate, but I should mention that they used the hijacked phone account to create an Authy account 'in my name' that Coinbase implicitly trusted even though I had never used Authy with them in the past. I'm not exactly sure why the Authy account was necessary for whatever scheme those assholes were pulling to get into accounts; but the fact that they used it soured me to the service. Not terribly worried about the google auth since I have a lockscreen set up. And if I hand my phone to a friend unlocked and they start trying to steal my account info then I think I have bigger problems.

    Thanks for the suggestion though.

  25. Needed it to protect my Bitcoin on Less Than 1 in 10 Gmail Users Enable Two-Factor Authentication (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 5, Informative

    About 3 years ago someone stole roughly 2.45 BTC from me.

    The event was a real wake up call for me security wise. They hacked e-mail address to access a password reset form on coinbase and they used social engineering on my cell phone carrier to forward SMS messages (which I used as 2FA on coinbase) to steal that money from me. Ever since then I've had all my 2FA set up through google authenticator instead and 2FA set up on literally everything I can.

    It was only worth about $700 at the time, but now . . .