One more argument to not trust whatever is pre-installed on your smartphone, but unlock the bootloader and flash a firmware that *YOU personally* trust.
Be it some opensource Android derivative, or some completely different full-blown GNU/Linux based solution. ( ^- just citing my personal favorite. You could also think about Ubuntu Touch from UBPorts, the system that Purism is building specifically for their Librem 5 phone, etc.)
You know, "Archangel Michael" never mentionned that his living room curtains needed to be closed. Nor that he won't invite people that you don't know. Nor that he'll shotgun the face out of anyone attempting to look through the windows.
And once that can take place, you could write software that captures each frame out of the video buffer along with the audio that's playing back to the speakers and saves them to a new file?
In theory, that not possible :
From a purley theoretical point of view, to obtain 4k content, you need a setup (hardware+software+OS) that follows certain precise rule. You need to run special hardware (like monitors that accepts encrypted content, so on the HDMI cable, you only see encrypted noise, you can't see the actual picture). You need to run a special OS that is designed to refuse you access to windows that contain protected content (e.g.: you don't have direct access to the frambuffer, and when you ask for a screen shot, the OS gives you back a picture where protected windows have their content grayed out). You need a special decryption module that will only accept to work if it detects such conditions (e.g.: Widevine L1 will only work in such conditions - usually done by a combination of onsite and remote checking. E.g.: Widevine signs and encrypt the serial number (IMEI) of your smartphone, the server will decrypt and sign-check the IMEI and lookup if it corresponds to a whitelist of certified devices. Attempting to unlock the bootloader of the smartphone will immediately destroy some of the keys involved in the process). Basically, the theory is you will not get any 4k content if you machine is able to take the aformentionned screen shots.
In practice:
Well, you're trying to apply cryptography, so Alice and Bob can have a private conversation without Eve eavesdropping. Except that in the case of DRM, Alice and Eve are the same girl. What the fuck did you expect ?!?
To take the above exemple, you could image a special hacked version of Widevine, that is patched to always believe the emulator it's running in is legit hardware, and that will submit some "known good" serial to the server signed with some stolen key. the sever will happily stream 4k to you, and you'll happily record the output of the virtual screen of the emulator.
... but modern computers should have the CPU power to do it.
If you want to throw modern CPU at it, you could even try to throw an extremely high resolution camera at it, that will film the 4k screen's output (in, say, 8k or even more. Same for the audio), and then run it into a software that can perfectly model the screen and guess what the actual image was to produce that image on the screen (and same with audio-speaker modeling) - i.e.: substract any artifact caused by the screen. (In layman terms: if the camera is fast enough and high resolution enough to film the individual R, G, B element going on and off, you can rebuild the actual signal that was sent to the screen without the kind of problem that you'll have with a camrip done in a movie theater). And no magical solution will ever be able to do anything against that, because at the end of the day, the content has to be viewable by human eyeballs and audible to human ears.
Even more so when the media industry is lagging a lot behind the recording tech capability. As of today, 4k 60fps is the max quality that you can get out of streamed media. As of today, simply by using an array of several ultra-high DSLR cameras, you can get insanely more resolution, to the point where you're seeing clearly the individual R, G and B pixels, with no artifacts. Media industry is just screwed.
But when passwords are stored in plaintext, tR0b4dOr&3 isn't any safer than PASSWORD123
Actually, when stored in most other way, a simple letter substitution of "trobadors" + number isn't that much safe neither (still a dictionary word, will simply pop up a tiny bit later in the brute force attack, once the brute forcers start to probe a couple of substitutions).
Currently, the only password that are a bit safer are stuff that comes out of your/dev/random ( <- notice absence of "u") optionally piped through something like base64 to convert them into symbols considered acceptable by the website. Things such as:
(an that's not safe anymore, now that I've posted it).
Even your cat walking accross the keyboard isn't safe anymore as computer modeling *is* able recognise cat-patterns, and thus in generative mode should be able to brute force some.
Microsoft's business was selling OS to desktop users (or computer manufacturer).
Google's business is not Android and is not Chrome. They don't make money by selling Android (AOSP is even free and opensource), they don't make money by selling browsers (Chrome is free and opensource, and provided on multiple platforms).
They make money by :
- Regarding browsers: having as many people as possible on the internet, when then Google can subsequently market the shit out of them. Remember, Google has a frighteningly large market share of the advertisement *and* analytics businesses (and of the searching business, which itself doesn't bring money, but is a place where they can display ads, gather user behaviour/analytics looking at their request, and leverage the same technology that gives the most perfect match between a user and the page they want to find to also find the most perfect match with the ads that marketeer are paying google to display).
Google doesn't make a cent on browsers. But browsers are the tool that bring users to the internet *where* Google makes "uncle-scoorg"-sized pools of money.
Notice how google isn't only developing their own in-house browser, they also pay money to Mozilla to make Firefox? It's not the browser, it's bringing people online.
- Regarding android: they make money from the users by taking a levy on any monetary transaction, be it buying paid-for apps, or the payment platform used by microtransactions in freemium apps. (Also, ads displayed in free apps. See preceding comment about browsers and ads, for similar conclusions) the also make money from the manufacturer by licensing their Google/Android experience, which includes blobs and services that are required to access Google's play store (where most of the apps are, which has the best of apps, and where they are better currated. I don't hate Aptoid, I actually use it, but you have to conceed that it sometime doesn't look as polished) and is also required by lot of apps (e.g.: lots of apps such as vehicle sharing apps, require the Google Maps Services for location and maps - to help you find your ride.)
Google doesn't make any cent from *Android*, but just like browser are the things that bring people to the *internet* where google makes money, android is the tool that brings people to the *play store* where google will be making gobs of money.
Notice how google hasn't shut down or even prevented any attempt to bring android app compatibility? andbox, alien-dalvik, etc. (Whereas Microsoft is constantly playing cat-and-mouse with Wine). Notice also how google is making easy for an end-user to obtain a license freely to get access to PlayStore? And isn't actually banning users that try to install aftermarket Google Play Services and Play Store (think opengapps)?
Metaphorically, you can thing of them as transportation services.
Microsoft make money by selling bus ticket and they want to be the monopoly to shut down any competitor to avoid losing money to other transportation services. Trying to get to sell you a bus ticket as soon as you leave the house and before you even reach a train is in their interest. Forcing them to sell train ticket at your door too is a way to break the monopoly.
Google are all for public free transportation, develop their own fleet of free buses, but also pay Mozilla to make free metros. Because that means more people using the transportation to get down town... and Google owns nearly all shopping centre where people will spend money once down town. If you ask Google to also hand out free train ticker in addition to free bus ticket, they'll happily oblige.
Most people don't think about their search engine (or browser).
On the other hand, Google doesn't think about what browser people use neither. They don't give a damn.
They only give a damn if people go online on the internet. Because *then* Google will make gobs of money by marketing the shit out of there (Google has an appallingly large market share in the advertisement and analytics businesses).
That's why Google Chrome is free and available on multiple platforms, and why Google is also financing Mozilla Foundation. It's not to appease anti-trust inquiries (though it helps and it's an added bonus). It's because they absolutely need as many people as possible online with standard-compliant browser to earn money (and investing into Firefox is giving Google additional ways to bring people online where Google will get money).
Also, back then Microsoft made money by selling the OS and thus needed to keep users in the walled garden they were creating with incompatible IE. They needed users defaulting to IE, so the users get used to a world that runs on MS' ActiveX component and uses MS' specific HTML quircks and looks broken on any other browser, so the users will insist on having IE, and thus the users (or the companies they work in) will need to buy MS-Windows.
TL;DR: Microsoft's quasy-monopoly leveraged to give more money to Microsoft.
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Whereas today:
Google absolutely doesn't give a flying fuck about *what browser* you happen to be using. Remember, they pour money both into the development of their own in-house browser (Chrome - whose engine is nowadays behind nearly all browsers) *AND* pay money to the Mozilla foundation (to develop Firefox. Nowadays the only barely significant browser with a different engine).
As browser are more or less standard compliant, you're not locked into using one due to technology (everybody uses Javascript and webassembly instead of MS ActiveX) or incompatible HTML (everybody strives for HTML5 standard). The DRM plugins for EME (e.g.: Widevine CDM) are about the only proprietary shit on the internet and even that is following some form of standard and available on both engines (but only for a limited amound of CPU architecture. Too bad is you want to use some opensource RISC-V or SH-2/J2, instead of the provided ARM and x86/64)
As long as you use *a* browser to go to the internet Google is happy. Because then they can subject your eyeballs to a *deluge of Ads* and monetize the shit out of your online behaviour : They have a giant chunk of the advertising market (Adwords, etc.). And of the tracking infrastructure (Analytics, Tagmanager, etc.). And have a near-monopoly to see your search-requests. With only a few relevant competitor (Facebook, Amazon, etc.).
Noticed how at least their own mobile browser doesn't provide plug-in ? Thus making impossible to install uBlock on your smartphone (but need to fumble around with hosts or blocking VPN plugins) Or how they have a very limited form of web extension API preventing stuff like NoScript? (which relies on API extensions that only Firefox provides) No surprise here: they *need* the users as likely as possible to run into ads and trackers once on the net.
ie.: Google doesn't need Chrome, it only needs people on the Internet (where Google can make money out of them).
Requiring Google to support multiple browser would have been like requiring Microsoft to support multiple firmwares (BIOS, UEFI, OpenFirmware, coreboot) - wouldn't have mattered to Microsoft as long as the users ends up where Microsoft makes money.
The problem stems from stupid designers that require animated backgrounds (Why? Whyyy?!!!!?!?!?)
Using silent videos is still the most efficient way to do these. If you disable silent videos, the websites will usually try to fall-back to some *other* less-efficient animated format (e.g.:.GIF animated image) instead of stopping the animation.
If designer didn't insist on such backgrounds, Firefox could still block all videos. Instead, we have to rely on this conditional block to avoid even *more* damage to your monthly internet cap.
But at least, uBlock can take care of the advertisements (be it autoplaying videos or not) and at least on Firefox, that works even in the mobile version (unlike Chrome where only the desktop version gets uBlock)
But why don't the drivers keep both applications installed on their smartphones? In several countries (FR, CH), I've seen drivers using several parralel means to catch clients: Uber Driver, some other network popular locally, and even an actual *taxi* dispatcher.
local law about competition should prevent Uber from offering a different pay depending on if a driver works for another dispatcher or is exclusive to Uber. (And remember, Uber strongly wants to believe that the drivers are *contractros*, not *employee* - the drivers should legally be allowed to work with whom ever they want)
and local security features of android should be able to block the Uber Driver app trying to crash other apps / block phonecalls from taxi dispatcher. (On would be considered unacceptable practice if they somewhat managed anyway).
Aussie drivers could be install both Uber's and GoCatch (And whatever else is popular downunder) and serve rides as requests come.
real time ray tracing can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators
Let me rephrase that for you, {...} "transform and lighting can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators".
Actually only this last part is comparable to the discussion.
When T&L was introduced by Nvidia, it wasn't offering magnitudes more than what a beefy CPU with the latest SIMD extensions could offer. Transforming a larger collection of geometry was equally possible by adding separate specialised single puprose blocks to the GPU, or adding even larger faster SIMD with multithreading capabilities to the CPU.
It's only later, when the shader got unified (it's not anymore extra specialized single purpose blocks, it's blocks that can be used for pixel shaders too, depending on the load) and at a time where most of the data stays resident on the card. (In fact, if you squint at it - or just are used to CUDA - they ARE the apex evolution of xxx-large SIMD with epically wide multi-threading. Except they are "geographically" situated closer to the graphic card than the main x86 CPU)
Here we have again a somewhat similar situation. Nvidia is adding separate different units to their GPUs, specialized to handle deep-neural-nets (different data types and operations than the general purpose shaders used for graphics), because a sizeable chunk of their market (the data center market) asks them to. But how do you market the same GPUs to gamers ? Well, turns out you can run a specially trained denoising net to make graphics using fewer rays. And now you have a selling point in conferences.
But it turns out, it's also possible to run the de noising using other type of approaches (whatever AMD is using) and not rely on "exclusive for neural net" separate cores.
So now, they are stuck, and try to push the technology, but running the denoising on the normal graphic shader (the same way most AI research has been done with GPGPU before "dedicated tensore cores" were a thing). Turns out, on older hardware it's a bit taxing on the overall computing power available for graphics (for obvious reasons), and depending on how much raytracing is goin, it slows down.
TL;DR: So it's not a question of "before high speed dedicated hardware could do it, it was also possible with software on CPU (although slower, but nobody noticed it yet, because no game leveraged that many yet)" like rendering textured triangles. It's a question of "at the current level, there's more than a way to do it. There are different hardware solution to this problem, not all of them necessitating new single-purpose cores that can only do that (x)", like whether a new type of single-purpose shader taking precious silicon real-estate on the GPU, or new mass-computation extensions on the CPU should be the one handling T&L.(*)(^).
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(*): and in the end, it turned out to be "in between". A new class of "more general purpose mass-computation blocks" but "on the GPU" (shared shaders) that could also be repurposed for even different needs (the rise of the GPGPU... all the way to modern AI on GPUs and even Raytracing on standard shaders".
(x): it's single purpose from the point of view of gamers. That's why it's fast on RTX cards: it's using an otherwise left untouched part of the GPU and not taxing the normal graphical shaders.
Of course those cores can also run neural-net in data centers (so a different purpose) which was the whole reason for Nvidia adding them in the first palce.
(^): to take your Commodore 64 metaphor, the idea isn't *hardware* sprite (C64) vs. *software* on CPU (PC). it's hardware *sprites* vs. hardware *blitter* vs. hardware *affine-textured stripe*. with different advantage brought by each solution. (here: the second one is more complex, but gives you more flexibility. the last one is even more complex, but gives you a roto-zoomer for free, and could even be used to implement primitive polygons)
All jokes aside, in all seriousness, that's the whole advantage of torrents: the indexing website doesn't hold any actual content-data. the *users* are the one that store the actual content.
Which means that using torrent for content distribution will by core design "automagically" scale with the populiarity of the data. Think about, e.g., Linux distributions (random example: RaspBian), every now and then they release a new version. All the interested users download a new image (in our exemple: to "burn/etch" onto a boot SD card for their Raspberry Pis). Then it's calm and only basal load until the next release. By using the torrent as a distribution mean, means that during the peak (all users rushing to fetch the upgrade) the rushing users provide the storage each other....well until something is so un-popular that there are no seed left.
"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it;)" Torvalds, Linus (1996-07-20).
"Autopilot", in the aviation world (and maritime) (and they way Tesla uses it): computers that are able to offload a part of the ginormous mental load required by flying/helming/driving a vehicle around, and simplify the life of the pilot/captain/driver. But the pilot/captain/driver still remains in-charge of the vehicle, there are just some minute tasks that require less attention and can handle themselves autonomously (optionally requiring less crew).
"Autopilot", the way the masses are seeing it and what they what from an autopilot car/flying taxi: just dial in the destination and go take a nap until you arrive.
Mind you, this *also* has existed (in the past): it was called "a horse" or "a donkey", but usage has fell out of fashion, and we haven't successfully replicated it with computers.:-D
Rules of the road and concerns with ground driving are well-understood, and it's simply a matter of coding all that in.
But the devil is in the details. Though more or less understood and not impossible for our evolved-from-chimps human brain to understand, it turns out rules of road have evolved in a definitely very human-oriented way (for obvious historical reasons). And it turns out that making sense of that isn't as straight forward as the marketing department of start-ups would like you to believe.
With flying cars, there are concerns that haven't been considered yet
On the other hand, as flying cars aren't common *yet*, we can progressively build an infrastructure that is better suited for automated flying and doesn't require reverse engineering the way the human mind see things by using complex neural nets.
See how fast autonomous cars are developing (slow, only currently in very limited testing, always with human supervisors "just in cas") vs. autonomous trains/metros/etc. (just build a purpose-specific track that has all the necessary tricks to make it easy) (see all the autonomous metros in big cities).
Depending on how it evolves, autonomous sky taxis could actually be a more plausible thing, simply because we could end up designing specially adapted "air corridors for autonomous vehicle" with all the necessary tricks. Whereas it might turn out that having autonomous vehicle and human drive on the same road simply doesn't work, and you'd need to build a separate network of robot-friendly roads.
and won't be until there's a tragedy that involves multiple deaths and a huge lawsuit that shuts down the entire program. For example, if one flies into a building because its building sensor doesn't work with all-glass exteriors. Ground cars only have to follow the road and they automatically avoid driving into buildings; flying cars have no such luxury.
Once we have self-driving ground cars, traffic will start to clear up and be more tolerable besides, which will eliminate the benefits of flying cars.
The on screen keyboards just suck (for anything useful)! Solve that problem!
It has beensolved litteraly decades ago using after-market accessories. (The first Palm devices were planned to have pluggable after-market keyboards). I'm still having the original one paired with my current smartphone.
Nowadays you can find either bluetooth or wired USB accessories. (Of various size, from the "fits in the flap of the phone's cover" all the way to "unfolds/unrolls into a full-blown desktop keyboard")
But, it turns out, the market for such devices is rather small. So you're stuck with either after market accessories (Bluetooth or wired USB) or small-scale manufacturer. But don't hope anything from Apple, Samsung, etc. - most users are happy with a "consume-only" device.
I was also hoping for some variation of GNU/Linux.
Either TizenOS as you mention. Or something Mer project based (descendant of Meamo/Meego, currently used as a base in Jolla's SailfishOS (*)). Or something else running on the libhybris (what Jolla developped to run *GNU*/Linux on Android Linux kernels and blob drivers) like UB Ports' Ubuntu Touch. Or writing GNU/Linux compatible drivers from the ground up and "licensing" (well it's GPL so it's free) Purism' OS of the Librem 5 smartphone. Or one of the lighter solution like Firefox OS / Boot-to-Gecko / KaiOS (or whatever it is called now) though I doubt it because currently KaiOS seems to be targeting feature phones. etc.
Granted, the actual product from Huawei is going to have an ugly interface customization (and probably filled to the brim with their own spywares instead of Google's), but that means more cheap platforms were it is easy to get a GNU/Linux os running (i.e.: that are less targetted toward pure Android-only)
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(*): A local customisation of Jolla's Sailfish OS is also an entirely realistic possibility. Jolla Oy. has courted a lot of B2B and B2G contracts (including in Russia where they are providing OS for some large scale enterprise solution) so Huawei might have licensed something from them.
They also since recently have their own in-house developped Android compatibility layer (they licensed and took over some of the necessary bits from Myriad's Alien-Dalvik) that now runs in containers and can host AOSP 8.0/8.1 Oreo, so at least an out-of-the-box solution for the apps that don't desperately rely on Google Play Service blobs. (And compatible with 3rd-party microG and after-market opengapps, so even possibilities to get Google-dependant app running if you're ready to muck with your phone)
This means that they won't be 100% cut of from the dominat app eco-system and can still remain relevant until whatever they have takes off as a viable app platform.
Purism was also reported to think about porting Andbox among their stretch goals for achieving similar goals.
The base OS itself, i.e. AOSP, is licensed under a permissive license (Apache 2.0)
Huawei (just like anybody else - e.g. Amazon's Fire and free/libre projects like LineageOS, also compatibility layers like Andbox) can freely copy Android all they like and nobody is every going to tell them anything.
The problem isn't the base OS. It's the giant blob for service that Google only provides to licensed partner: the Google Play Services. That one might be required by some apps: that includes some mapping apps relying on the Google Maps Service (e.g.: some car sharing applications) and that include Google Play Store it-self.
A chinese manufacturer can slap android on their phone, but the users won't have access to the usual Play Store and won't be able to install some application. That's why they usually provide teir own eco-system of apps. (Just like Amazon had their own application store). Even more so because Google is banned in China anyway.
If you WANT to install those apps, you'd need to: - Pirate the google service (lots of cheap chinese phone manufacturer to that). - Install google services legally (as an end user, you can ask for a free license under some circumstance) ( ^- You know, Google would be happy at the opportunity to siphon your data anyway, so they are not against the idea of end-users installing it after-market. They are only against manufacturer not providing the exact "Google Experience" that they want - i.e.: try to get users hooked on Google Apps). - Install an open-source re-implementation of these services such as MicroG ( ^- And these one are much more configurable and can leak a lot less personnal data than the real google deal. Your smartphone's battery will appreciate not needing to ping back the mother ship every 30 seconds).
Old encryption standard, be it the venerable Enigma or more recently DES, were considered "hard to crack" because the key-space couldn't realistically be searched with the hardware available at the time. But lo and behold:
- Computer technology emerged, making the enigma search-space manageable (well that, and a few short-coming of the Enigma algorithms, making it easier to crack thanks to clever tricks).
- As mentioned above, DES couldn't be realistically brute forced with the available hardware, but researcher estimated that hardware capable of covering the search-space could be built within budget available to some state-level adversaries. And with Moore's law helping, modest modern hardware can now beat these.
They were never considered "impossible to crack" only "very hard to crack" but eventually over time/with ressources, it could be achieved.
More modern encryption standards such as RC4, AES, etc. are considered "impossible to crack within current laws of physics and/or math" because even if you converted the whole planet Earth into a giant computer, you couldn't cover the whole search-space before the death of the solar system. This time even Moore's law won't save you (in time). You'd need : - Cryptanalysis: problems found in a standard such as RC4. Meaning that you don't actually need to spend the heat-death of the universe searching the whole search-space. Instead there are way to find the few most likely candidate to focus on. - New physics/maths: finding new different ways to solve the problem that won't necessitate individually testing every single key in the search-space.
TL;DR: So in short, old algos weren't secure, because eventually somebody would built a bigger computer faster enough to brute-force the password. Modern algos are secure, because the "bigger computer" required is beyond what is physically possible. You either need new physics. Or discovering that actually the password is always "Swordfish".
There's really no way for a pilot to take direct control of an aircraft?
There are ways(*). According to TFA, the young one are more reluctant to use these ways and switch into manual. (Or even *realise* that they need to switch into manual).
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(*) e.g.: Airbus' Normal law vs. Alternate law - which basically dictate who has the last say regarding what controls what. But we'll need a/. pilot to pop-in for the details with their real-world experience. (in McCoy voice) "Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor not an aircraft pilot!"
Unlike Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome D - OES NOT support ORTC (Microsoft's NIH-syndrom variation upon webRTC) - well yet (the plan is for ORTC eventually to be reworked into WebRTC 1.1 at which point both Chrome AND Firefox will support it).
Which means that if the current Skype for Web works in Google Chrome :
- either Microsoft has released a special binary plug-in for Google to support their calling protocol. (It doesn't seem to be the case, at least with my quick testing Chrome doesn't seem to ask to install a plug-in)
- or Microsoft has partially rewritten Skype for Web to allow support for WebRTC-based browser (e.g.: written a ORTC-over-WebRTC wrapper to fill in the gap until ORTC gets approved into standard)...
If a site doesn't at least work on Firefox, it is BROKEN.
...and Firefox *ALSO* supports WebRTC (that's what all the sites like https://meet.jit.si use). Which means that by fumbling around with user-agent string and maybe a few bug fixes, Skype for Web should work in Firefox too.
I am sure Google is very pleased, indeed.
Google doesn't give a damn about Chrome, they do not sell it, it doesn *directly* earn them money.
Google does give a damn about people using *a* browser (no matter which) and going online, where they will get exposed to advertisements, subjected to tracking, convinced to store all their private things on google's mail and file servers, their data getting slurped, etc. And that is what Google sells (to ads agencies, to marketeers, to governments, etc...) and makes tons of money upon.
Them building Chrome, as well as them financing the development of Firefox is just a mean to achieve the goal of more people exposed to the web.
If Firefox gets eventually support for Skype for Web, Google will be happy too: means Firefox is a more viable browser, which means additional ways to go online, which means more people eventually showing up on the internet where Google can monetize the shit out of their asses.
The fact that currently Skype only supports Edge and Chrome has nothing to do with making Google happy, and everything to do with Microsoft currently offering a browser which is basically a reskinned-version of Chrome, so of course they had to pay attention to making it work.
Once all the middlemen (dustributor, rights holder, records majors, whatever...) are factored in and these extra 44% get distributed, the original song's artists themselves will get an extra 4 ct. Per month. In total.
If you really though that promises within next year or so for "Tesla comming autonomously to pick you up, and letting you sleep while delivering you to your destination" is anything but marketing department's bulcrap, then you're really gullible.
There's a hint: that bridge isn't for sale neither.
If you define 'dying' as 'it's not what most of the new hip project a born with', yes under that very strict and very precise definition, Java is dying.
A long time ago (e.g.: right about the time Java was migrated into a cross-platform thing for PDAs and feature-phone, and was still taught at the university), it was popular to use it when you wanted to build something cross-platform, an app that runs on both PC and Mac (and Linux) (think all the GUI that where written for server-mode clones of e-Donkey, etc), a portable game that runs on multiple pocket devices (<-that why Android was born among Java).
Nowadays, most new hip things tend to be started in Python (currently starting to overtake the previous JavaScript/node.js over popular thing)
But in General ? No. Java is headed the same direction as COBOL before it. It used to be popular a long time ago, now business have giant legacy codebases they are reliant on, and in the business world, those code bases are going to be maintained for at least the next couple of decade. ( ^- which is also why Oracle is thinking about modularity and long term maintainability)
Despite needing to advance the "soft foldable film as a screen" technology a bit further, there a few show stoppers for a penblet:
1. power consumption:
we're used to have smartphone packing "almost humorously"-oversized computing power (at the end of the day: just to run all the stupid trackers in the webpages, in the apps, and in the core service / OS) But there's a limit of how much you can miniaturize batteries to power these "micro-HPC-in-a-pocket". To pack into a "fat oversized pen"
- you're either back to the era of smartphone such as Palm Pre (One of the first smartphone with true multi-tasking (thanks to full blown GNU/Linux) - a significant bit under-powered with regards to what it tries to achieve, just to avoid killing the battery in a seconds)
- or back at the era of the first iPhones (what do you mean a phone should hold charge more than 3 hours?) and/or first generation portable gaming consoles with color LCD (I eat batteries like candy ).
2. heat disspiation
All this power has to go somewhere. Less surface = less heat disspiation. If one of the ad-tracker goes crazy, your penblet is going to cook you and burn a hole in your shirt pocket.
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These two blocker has a few possible evolution to get better :
- advancing fab tech (7nm chipsets in the phone for more power efficience / less heat generation)
- remote offloading of computation / generation of content (the way Siri/Cortana/Echo/OkGoogle all run on their respective companies' servers. Think also SteamLink,etc) so the heat generation/power consumption happens elsewhere.
- personnal area network : the computation is still remote, but the remote is big brick in you back pack/hand bag (think relationship between Google Glasses and smartphone, or VR headset and blet-clip puck computers). Could also double as a battery extender (think like current case of earphones charging them)
- dockable device: goes into high power mode only when docked to the charger. But that defeats the advantage and space saving that the fully-rollable screen of a penblet would bring.
They're basically saying that portions of the building structure were 3D printed or CNC'ed, then assembled on site.
Look at the photos. Here the portions where 3D printed on site.
They're just trying to claim that nobody's ever done it at this level before.
And, possibly, they're right.
Yup, their claim to novelty is to directly have the machine built the house on site, instead of merely assembling pre-fab. (Like the couple of other 3d printed house project that got mentionned on/. over the last year).
Slashdot Mirror
One more argument to not trust whatever is pre-installed on your smartphone, but unlock the bootloader and flash a firmware that *YOU personally* trust.
Be it some opensource Android derivative,
or some completely different full-blown GNU/Linux based solution.
( ^- just citing my personal favorite. You could also think about Ubuntu Touch from UBPorts, the system that Purism is building specifically for their Librem 5 phone, etc.)
public sex with a stranger?
You know, "Archangel Michael" never mentionned that his living room curtains needed to be closed.
Nor that he won't invite people that you don't know.
Nor that he'll shotgun the face out of anyone attempting to look through the windows.
And once that can take place, you could write software that captures each frame out of the video buffer along with the audio that's playing back to the speakers and saves them to a new file?
In theory, that not possible :
From a purley theoretical point of view, to obtain 4k content, you need a setup (hardware+software+OS) that follows certain precise rule.
You need to run special hardware (like monitors that accepts encrypted content, so on the HDMI cable, you only see encrypted noise, you can't see the actual picture).
You need to run a special OS that is designed to refuse you access to windows that contain protected content (e.g.: you don't have direct access to the frambuffer, and when you ask for a screen shot, the OS gives you back a picture where protected windows have their content grayed out).
You need a special decryption module that will only accept to work if it detects such conditions (e.g.: Widevine L1 will only work in such conditions - usually done by a combination of onsite and remote checking. E.g.: Widevine signs and encrypt the serial number (IMEI) of your smartphone, the server will decrypt and sign-check the IMEI and lookup if it corresponds to a whitelist of certified devices. Attempting to unlock the bootloader of the smartphone will immediately destroy some of the keys involved in the process).
Basically, the theory is you will not get any 4k content if you machine is able to take the aformentionned screen shots.
In practice:
Well, you're trying to apply cryptography, so Alice and Bob can have a private conversation without Eve eavesdropping. Except that in the case of DRM, Alice and Eve are the same girl. What the fuck did you expect ?!?
To take the above exemple, you could image a special hacked version of Widevine, that is patched to always believe the emulator it's running in is legit hardware, and that will submit some "known good" serial to the server signed with some stolen key. the sever will happily stream 4k to you, and you'll happily record the output of the virtual screen of the emulator.
... but modern computers should have the CPU power to do it.
If you want to throw modern CPU at it, you could even try to throw an extremely high resolution camera at it, that will film the 4k screen's output (in, say, 8k or even more. Same for the audio), and then run it into a software that can perfectly model the screen and guess what the actual image was to produce that image on the screen (and same with audio-speaker modeling) - i.e.: substract any artifact caused by the screen. (In layman terms: if the camera is fast enough and high resolution enough to film the individual R, G, B element going on and off, you can rebuild the actual signal that was sent to the screen without the kind of problem that you'll have with a camrip done in a movie theater).
And no magical solution will ever be able to do anything against that, because at the end of the day, the content has to be viewable by human eyeballs and audible to human ears.
Even more so when the media industry is lagging a lot behind the recording tech capability.
As of today, 4k 60fps is the max quality that you can get out of streamed media.
As of today, simply by using an array of several ultra-high DSLR cameras, you can get insanely more resolution, to the point where you're seeing clearly the individual R, G and B pixels, with no artifacts.
Media industry is just screwed.
But when passwords are stored in plaintext, tR0b4dOr&3 isn't any safer than PASSWORD123
Actually, when stored in most other way, a simple letter substitution of "trobadors" + number isn't that much safe neither (still a dictionary word, will simply pop up a tiny bit later in the brute force attack, once the brute forcers start to probe a couple of substitutions).
Currently, the only password that are a bit safer are stuff that comes out of your /dev/random ( <- notice absence of "u") optionally piped through something like base64 to convert them into symbols considered acceptable by the website. Things such as :
(an that's not safe anymore, now that I've posted it).
Even your cat walking accross the keyboard isn't safe anymore as computer modeling *is* able recognise cat-patterns, and thus in generative mode should be able to brute force some.
Microsoft's business was selling OS to desktop users (or computer manufacturer).
Google's business is not Android and is not Chrome.
They don't make money by selling Android (AOSP is even free and opensource), they don't make money by selling browsers (Chrome is free and opensource, and provided on multiple platforms).
They make money by :
- Regarding browsers:
having as many people as possible on the internet, when then Google can subsequently market the shit out of them.
Remember, Google has a frighteningly large market share of the advertisement *and* analytics businesses (and of the searching business, which itself doesn't bring money, but is a place where they can display ads, gather user behaviour/analytics looking at their request, and leverage the same technology that gives the most perfect match between a user and the page they want to find to also find the most perfect match with the ads that marketeer are paying google to display).
Google doesn't make a cent on browsers. But browsers are the tool that bring users to the internet *where* Google makes "uncle-scoorg"-sized pools of money.
Notice how google isn't only developing their own in-house browser, they also pay money to Mozilla to make Firefox? It's not the browser, it's bringing people online.
- Regarding android:
they make money from the users by taking a levy on any monetary transaction, be it buying paid-for apps, or the payment platform used by microtransactions in freemium apps. (Also, ads displayed in free apps. See preceding comment about browsers and ads, for similar conclusions)
the also make money from the manufacturer by licensing their Google/Android experience, which includes blobs and services that are required to access Google's play store (where most of the apps are, which has the best of apps, and where they are better currated. I don't hate Aptoid, I actually use it, but you have to conceed that it sometime doesn't look as polished) and is also required by lot of apps (e.g.: lots of apps such as vehicle sharing apps, require the Google Maps Services for location and maps - to help you find your ride.)
Google doesn't make any cent from *Android*, but just like browser are the things that bring people to the *internet* where google makes money, android is the tool that brings people to the *play store* where google will be making gobs of money.
Notice how google hasn't shut down or even prevented any attempt to bring android app compatibility? andbox, alien-dalvik, etc.
(Whereas Microsoft is constantly playing cat-and-mouse with Wine).
Notice also how google is making easy for an end-user to obtain a license freely to get access to PlayStore? And isn't actually banning users that try to install aftermarket Google Play Services and Play Store (think opengapps)?
Metaphorically, you can thing of them as transportation services.
Microsoft make money by selling bus ticket and they want to be the monopoly to shut down any competitor to avoid losing money to other transportation services. Trying to get to sell you a bus ticket as soon as you leave the house and before you even reach a train is in their interest. Forcing them to sell train ticket at your door too is a way to break the monopoly.
Google are all for public free transportation, develop their own fleet of free buses, but also pay Mozilla to make free metros. Because that means more people using the transportation to get down town... and Google owns nearly all shopping centre where people will spend money once down town.
If you ask Google to also hand out free train ticker in addition to free bus ticket, they'll happily oblige.
Most people don't think about their search engine (or browser).
On the other hand, Google doesn't think about what browser people use neither.
They don't give a damn.
They only give a damn if people go online on the internet.
Because *then* Google will make gobs of money by marketing the shit out of there (Google has an appallingly large market share in the advertisement and analytics businesses).
That's why Google Chrome is free and available on multiple platforms, and why Google is also financing Mozilla Foundation.
It's not to appease anti-trust inquiries (though it helps and it's an added bonus). It's because they absolutely need as many people as possible online with standard-compliant browser to earn money (and investing into Firefox is giving Google additional ways to bring people online where Google will get money).
Also, back then Microsoft made money by selling the OS and thus needed to keep users in the walled garden they were creating with incompatible IE. They needed users defaulting to IE, so the users get used to a world that runs on MS' ActiveX component and uses MS' specific HTML quircks and looks broken on any other browser, so the users will insist on having IE, and thus the users (or the companies they work in) will need to buy MS-Windows.
TL;DR: Microsoft's quasy-monopoly leveraged to give more money to Microsoft.
-----
Whereas today:
Google absolutely doesn't give a flying fuck about *what browser* you happen to be using.
Remember, they pour money both into the development of their own in-house browser (Chrome - whose engine is nowadays behind nearly all browsers) *AND* pay money to the Mozilla foundation (to develop Firefox. Nowadays the only barely significant browser with a different engine).
As browser are more or less standard compliant, you're not locked into using one due to technology (everybody uses Javascript and webassembly instead of MS ActiveX) or incompatible HTML (everybody strives for HTML5 standard). The DRM plugins for EME (e.g.: Widevine CDM) are about the only proprietary shit on the internet and even that is following some form of standard and available on both engines (but only for a limited amound of CPU architecture. Too bad is you want to use some opensource RISC-V or SH-2/J2, instead of the provided ARM and x86/64)
As long as you use *a* browser to go to the internet Google is happy. Because then they can subject your eyeballs to a *deluge of Ads* and monetize the shit out of your online behaviour : They have a giant chunk of the advertising market (Adwords, etc.). And of the tracking infrastructure (Analytics, Tagmanager, etc.). And have a near-monopoly to see your search-requests. With only a few relevant competitor (Facebook, Amazon, etc.).
Noticed how at least their own mobile browser doesn't provide plug-in ? Thus making impossible to install uBlock on your smartphone (but need to fumble around with hosts or blocking VPN plugins) Or how they have a very limited form of web extension API preventing stuff like NoScript? (which relies on API extensions that only Firefox provides)
No surprise here: they *need* the users as likely as possible to run into ads and trackers once on the net.
ie.: Google doesn't need Chrome, it only needs people on the Internet (where Google can make money out of them).
Requiring Google to support multiple browser would have been like requiring Microsoft to support multiple firmwares (BIOS, UEFI, OpenFirmware, coreboot) - wouldn't have mattered to Microsoft as long as the users ends up where Microsoft makes money.
The problem stems from stupid designers that require animated backgrounds
(Why? Whyyy?!!!!?!?!?)
Using silent videos is still the most efficient way to do these. .GIF animated image) instead of stopping the animation.
If you disable silent videos, the websites will usually try to fall-back to some *other* less-efficient animated format (e.g.:
If designer didn't insist on such backgrounds, Firefox could still block all videos.
Instead, we have to rely on this conditional block to avoid even *more* damage to your monthly internet cap.
But at least, uBlock can take care of the advertisements (be it autoplaying videos or not) and at least on Firefox, that works even in the mobile version (unlike Chrome where only the desktop version gets uBlock)
But why don't the drivers keep both applications installed on their smartphones?
In several countries (FR, CH), I've seen drivers using several parralel means to catch clients: Uber Driver, some other network popular locally, and even an actual *taxi* dispatcher.
local law about competition should prevent Uber from offering a different pay depending on if a driver works for another dispatcher or is exclusive to Uber.
(And remember, Uber strongly wants to believe that the drivers are *contractros*, not *employee* - the drivers should legally be allowed to work with whom ever they want)
and local security features of android should be able to block the Uber Driver app trying to crash other apps / block phonecalls from taxi dispatcher. (On would be considered unacceptable practice if they somewhat managed anyway).
Aussie drivers could be install both Uber's and GoCatch (And whatever else is popular downunder) and serve rides as requests come.
real time ray tracing can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators
Let me rephrase that for you, {...} "transform and lighting can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators".
Actually only this last part is comparable to the discussion.
When T&L was introduced by Nvidia, it wasn't offering magnitudes more than what a beefy CPU with the latest SIMD extensions could offer.
Transforming a larger collection of geometry was equally possible by adding separate specialised single puprose blocks to the GPU, or adding even larger faster SIMD with multithreading capabilities to the CPU.
It's only later, when the shader got unified (it's not anymore extra specialized single purpose blocks, it's blocks that can be used for pixel shaders too, depending on the load) and at a time where most of the data stays resident on the card.
(In fact, if you squint at it - or just are used to CUDA - they ARE the apex evolution of xxx-large SIMD with epically wide multi-threading. Except they are "geographically" situated closer to the graphic card than the main x86 CPU)
Here we have again a somewhat similar situation.
Nvidia is adding separate different units to their GPUs, specialized to handle deep-neural-nets (different data types and operations than the general purpose shaders used for graphics), because a sizeable chunk of their market (the data center market) asks them to.
But how do you market the same GPUs to gamers ? Well, turns out you can run a specially trained denoising net to make graphics using fewer rays.
And now you have a selling point in conferences.
But it turns out, it's also possible to run the de noising using other type of approaches (whatever AMD is using) and not rely on "exclusive for neural net" separate cores.
So now, they are stuck, and try to push the technology, but running the denoising on the normal graphic shader (the same way most AI research has been done with GPGPU before "dedicated tensore cores" were a thing). Turns out, on older hardware it's a bit taxing on the overall computing power available for graphics (for obvious reasons), and depending on how much raytracing is goin, it slows down.
TL;DR: So it's not a question of "before high speed dedicated hardware could do it, it was also possible with software on CPU (although slower, but nobody noticed it yet, because no game leveraged that many yet)" like rendering textured triangles.
It's a question of "at the current level, there's more than a way to do it. There are different hardware solution to this problem, not all of them necessitating new single-purpose cores that can only do that (x)", like whether a new type of single-purpose shader taking precious silicon real-estate on the GPU, or new mass-computation extensions on the CPU should be the one handling T&L.(*)(^).
----
(*): and in the end, it turned out to be "in between". A new class of "more general purpose mass-computation blocks" but "on the GPU" (shared shaders) that could also be repurposed for even different needs (the rise of the GPGPU... all the way to modern AI on GPUs and even Raytracing on standard shaders".
(x): it's single purpose from the point of view of gamers.
That's why it's fast on RTX cards: it's using an otherwise left untouched part of the GPU and not taxing the normal graphical shaders.
Of course those cores can also run neural-net in data centers (so a different purpose) which was the whole reason for Nvidia adding them in the first palce.
(^): to take your Commodore 64 metaphor, the idea isn't *hardware* sprite (C64) vs. *software* on CPU (PC).
it's hardware *sprites* vs. hardware *blitter* vs. hardware *affine-textured stripe*.
with different advantage brought by each solution.
(here: the second one is more complex, but gives you more flexibility.
the last one is even more complex, but gives you a roto-zoomer for free, and could even be used to implement primitive polygons)
The Pirate Bay never stored any files...
All jokes aside, in all seriousness, that's the whole advantage of torrents:
the indexing website doesn't hold any actual content-data.
the *users* are the one that store the actual content.
Which means that using torrent for content distribution will by core design "automagically" scale with the populiarity of the data. ...well until something is so un-popular that there are no seed left.
Think about, e.g., Linux distributions (random example: RaspBian), every now and then they release a new version. All the interested users download a new image (in our exemple: to "burn/etch" onto a boot SD card for their Raspberry Pis). Then it's calm and only basal load until the next release. By using the torrent as a distribution mean, means that during the peak (all users rushing to fetch the upgrade) the rushing users provide the storage each other.
"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"
Torvalds, Linus (1996-07-20).
Guess where 'autopilot' comes from.
"Autopilot", in the aviation world (and maritime) (and they way Tesla uses it):
computers that are able to offload a part of the ginormous mental load required by flying/helming/driving a vehicle around, and simplify the life of the pilot/captain/driver. But the pilot/captain/driver still remains in-charge of the vehicle, there are just some minute tasks that require less attention and can handle themselves autonomously (optionally requiring less crew).
"Autopilot", the way the masses are seeing it and what they what from an autopilot car/flying taxi:
just dial in the destination and go take a nap until you arrive.
Mind you, this *also* has existed (in the past): it was called "a horse" or "a donkey", but usage has fell out of fashion, and we haven't successfully replicated it with computers. :-D
Rules of the road and concerns with ground driving are well-understood, and it's simply a matter of coding all that in.
But the devil is in the details.
Though more or less understood and not impossible for our evolved-from-chimps human brain to understand, it turns out rules of road have evolved in a definitely very human-oriented way (for obvious historical reasons).
And it turns out that making sense of that isn't as straight forward as the marketing department of start-ups would like you to believe.
With flying cars, there are concerns that haven't been considered yet
On the other hand, as flying cars aren't common *yet*, we can progressively build an infrastructure that is better suited for automated flying and doesn't require reverse engineering the way the human mind see things by using complex neural nets.
See how fast autonomous cars are developing (slow, only currently in very limited testing, always with human supervisors "just in cas") vs. autonomous trains/metros/etc. (just build a purpose-specific track that has all the necessary tricks to make it easy) (see all the autonomous metros in big cities).
Depending on how it evolves, autonomous sky taxis could actually be a more plausible thing, simply because we could end up designing specially adapted "air corridors for autonomous vehicle" with all the necessary tricks.
Whereas it might turn out that having autonomous vehicle and human drive on the same road simply doesn't work, and you'd need to build a separate network of robot-friendly roads.
and won't be until there's a tragedy that involves multiple deaths and a huge lawsuit that shuts down the entire program. For example, if one flies into a building because its building sensor doesn't work with all-glass exteriors. Ground cars only have to follow the road and they automatically avoid driving into buildings; flying cars have no such luxury.
Once we have self-driving ground cars, traffic will start to clear up and be more tolerable besides, which will eliminate the benefits of flying cars.
The on screen keyboards just suck (for anything useful)! Solve that problem!
It has been solved litteraly decades ago using after-market accessories. (The first Palm devices were planned to have pluggable after-market keyboards).
I'm still having the original one paired with my current smartphone.
Nowadays you can find either bluetooth or wired USB accessories. (Of various size, from the "fits in the flap of the phone's cover" all the way to "unfolds/unrolls into a full-blown desktop keyboard")
Manufacturer such as BlackBerry, F(x) Tec, Planet Computers, etc. also produce smartphone/PDAs with integrated keyboards.
But, it turns out, the market for such devices is rather small.
So you're stuck with either after market accessories (Bluetooth or wired USB) or small-scale manufacturer. But don't hope anything from Apple, Samsung, etc. - most users are happy with a "consume-only" device.
I was also hoping for some variation of GNU/Linux.
Either TizenOS as you mention.
Or something Mer project based (descendant of Meamo/Meego, currently used as a base in Jolla's SailfishOS (*)).
Or something else running on the libhybris (what Jolla developped to run *GNU*/Linux on Android Linux kernels and blob drivers) like UB Ports' Ubuntu Touch.
Or writing GNU/Linux compatible drivers from the ground up and "licensing" (well it's GPL so it's free) Purism' OS of the Librem 5 smartphone.
Or one of the lighter solution like Firefox OS / Boot-to-Gecko / KaiOS (or whatever it is called now) though I doubt it because currently KaiOS seems to be targeting feature phones.
etc.
Granted, the actual product from Huawei is going to have an ugly interface customization (and probably filled to the brim with their own spywares instead of Google's), but that means more cheap platforms were it is easy to get a GNU/Linux os running (i.e.: that are less targetted toward pure Android-only)
---
(*): A local customisation of Jolla's Sailfish OS is also an entirely realistic possibility. Jolla Oy. has courted a lot of B2B and B2G contracts (including in Russia where they are providing OS for some large scale enterprise solution) so Huawei might have licensed something from them.
They also since recently have their own in-house developped Android compatibility layer (they licensed and took over some of the necessary bits from Myriad's Alien-Dalvik) that now runs in containers and can host AOSP 8.0/8.1 Oreo, so at least an out-of-the-box solution for the apps that don't desperately rely on Google Play Service blobs.
(And compatible with 3rd-party microG and after-market opengapps, so even possibilities to get Google-dependant app running if you're ready to muck with your phone)
This means that they won't be 100% cut of from the dominat app eco-system and can still remain relevant until whatever they have takes off as a viable app platform.
Purism was also reported to think about porting Andbox among their stretch goals for achieving similar goals.
The base OS itself, i.e. AOSP, is licensed under a permissive license (Apache 2.0)
Huawei (just like anybody else - e.g. Amazon's Fire and free/libre projects like LineageOS, also compatibility layers like Andbox) can freely copy Android all they like and nobody is every going to tell them anything.
The problem isn't the base OS. It's the giant blob for service that Google only provides to licensed partner: the Google Play Services.
That one might be required by some apps: that includes some mapping apps relying on the Google Maps Service (e.g.: some car sharing applications) and that include Google Play Store it-self.
A chinese manufacturer can slap android on their phone, but the users won't have access to the usual Play Store and won't be able to install some application. That's why they usually provide teir own eco-system of apps. (Just like Amazon had their own application store).
Even more so because Google is banned in China anyway.
If you WANT to install those apps, you'd need to:
- Pirate the google service (lots of cheap chinese phone manufacturer to that).
- Install google services legally (as an end user, you can ask for a free license under some circumstance)
( ^- You know, Google would be happy at the opportunity to siphon your data anyway, so they are not against the idea of end-users installing it after-market. They are only against manufacturer not providing the exact "Google Experience" that they want - i.e.: try to get users hooked on Google Apps).
- Install an open-source re-implementation of these services such as MicroG
( ^- And these one are much more configurable and can leak a lot less personnal data than the real google deal. Your smartphone's battery will appreciate not needing to ping back the mother ship every 30 seconds).
No there are fundamentally different level.
Old encryption standard, be it the venerable Enigma or more recently DES, were considered "hard to crack" because the key-space couldn't realistically be searched with the hardware available at the time.
But lo and behold:
- Computer technology emerged, making the enigma search-space manageable (well that, and a few short-coming of the Enigma algorithms, making it easier to crack thanks to clever tricks).
- As mentioned above, DES couldn't be realistically brute forced with the available hardware, but researcher estimated that hardware capable of covering the search-space could be built within budget available to some state-level adversaries. And with Moore's law helping, modest modern hardware can now beat these.
They were never considered "impossible to crack" only "very hard to crack" but eventually over time/with ressources, it could be achieved.
More modern encryption standards such as RC4, AES, etc. are considered "impossible to crack within current laws of physics and/or math" because even if you converted the whole planet Earth into a giant computer, you couldn't cover the whole search-space before the death of the solar system. This time even Moore's law won't save you (in time).
You'd need :
- Cryptanalysis: problems found in a standard such as RC4. Meaning that you don't actually need to spend the heat-death of the universe searching the whole search-space. Instead there are way to find the few most likely candidate to focus on.
- New physics/maths: finding new different ways to solve the problem that won't necessitate individually testing every single key in the search-space.
TL;DR: So in short, old algos weren't secure, because eventually somebody would built a bigger computer faster enough to brute-force the password.
Modern algos are secure, because the "bigger computer" required is beyond what is physically possible.
You either need new physics.
Or discovering that actually the password is always "Swordfish".
There's really no way for a pilot to take direct control of an aircraft?
There are ways(*).
According to TFA, the young one are more reluctant to use these ways and switch into manual.
(Or even *realise* that they need to switch into manual).
---
(*) /. pilot to pop-in for the details with their real-world experience.
e.g.: Airbus' Normal law vs. Alternate law - which basically dictate who has the last say regarding what controls what. But we'll need a
(in McCoy voice) "Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor not an aircraft pilot!"
So much for open web standards,
Unlike Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome D - OES NOT support ORTC (Microsoft's NIH-syndrom variation upon webRTC) - well yet (the plan is for ORTC eventually to be reworked into WebRTC 1.1 at which point both Chrome AND Firefox will support it).
Which means that if the current Skype for Web works in Google Chrome :
- either Microsoft has released a special binary plug-in for Google to support their calling protocol.
(It doesn't seem to be the case, at least with my quick testing Chrome doesn't seem to ask to install a plug-in)
- or Microsoft has partially rewritten Skype for Web to allow support for WebRTC-based browser (e.g.: written a ORTC-over-WebRTC wrapper to fill in the gap until ORTC gets approved into standard)...
If a site doesn't at least work on Firefox, it is BROKEN.
...and Firefox *ALSO* supports WebRTC (that's what all the sites like https://meet.jit.si use).
Which means that by fumbling around with user-agent string and maybe a few bug fixes, Skype for Web should work in Firefox too.
I am sure Google is very pleased, indeed.
Google doesn't give a damn about Chrome, they do not sell it, it doesn *directly* earn them money.
Google does give a damn about people using *a* browser (no matter which) and going online, where they will get exposed to advertisements, subjected to tracking, convinced to store all their private things on google's mail and file servers, their data getting slurped, etc.
And that is what Google sells (to ads agencies, to marketeers, to governments, etc...) and makes tons of money upon.
Them building Chrome, as well as them financing the development of Firefox is just a mean to achieve the goal of more people exposed to the web.
If Firefox gets eventually support for Skype for Web, Google will be happy too: means Firefox is a more viable browser, which means additional ways to go online, which means more people eventually showing up on the internet where Google can monetize the shit out of their asses.
The fact that currently Skype only supports Edge and Chrome has nothing to do with making Google happy, and everything to do with Microsoft currently offering a browser which is basically a reskinned-version of Chrome, so of course they had to pay attention to making it work.
Once all the middlemen (dustributor, rights holder, records majors, whatever...) are factored in and these extra 44% get distributed, the original song's artists themselves will get an extra 4 ct.
Per month.
In total.
If you really though that promises within next year or so for "Tesla comming autonomously to pick you up, and letting you sleep while delivering you to your destination" is anything but marketing department's bulcrap, then you're really gullible.
There's a hint: that bridge isn't for sale neither.
You're probably also firmly believing that the cold gas thrusters on the upcoming new Roadster will enable Tesla to make an actually flying / hovering car, instead of simply being Tesla's spin and slight evolution of an anti-skid/stabilisation tech that has already been researched by BWM and Bosch for motorcycles.
https://jaxenter.com/java-slippery-slope-downward-trend-133843.html
( ^- FTFY )
If you define 'dying' as 'it's not what most of the new hip project a born with',
yes under that very strict and very precise definition, Java is dying.
A long time ago (e.g.: right about the time Java was migrated into a cross-platform thing for PDAs and feature-phone, and was still taught at the university), it was popular to use it when you wanted to build something cross-platform, an app that runs on both PC and Mac (and Linux) (think all the GUI that where written for server-mode clones of e-Donkey, etc), a portable game that runs on multiple pocket devices (<-that why Android was born among Java).
Nowadays, most new hip things tend to be started in Python (currently starting to overtake the previous JavaScript/node.js over popular thing)
But in General ?
No.
Java is headed the same direction as COBOL before it.
It used to be popular a long time ago, now business have giant legacy codebases they are reliant on, and in the business world, those code bases are going to be maintained for at least the next couple of decade.
( ^- which is also why Oracle is thinking about modularity and long term maintainability)
Despite needing to advance the "soft foldable film as a screen" technology a bit further, there a few show stoppers for a penblet:
1. power consumption:
we're used to have smartphone packing "almost humorously"-oversized computing power (at the end of the day: just to run all the stupid trackers in the webpages, in the apps, and in the core service / OS)
But there's a limit of how much you can miniaturize batteries to power these "micro-HPC-in-a-pocket".
To pack into a "fat oversized pen"
- you're either back to the era of smartphone such as Palm Pre (One of the first smartphone with true multi-tasking (thanks to full blown GNU/Linux) - a significant bit under-powered with regards to what it tries to achieve, just to avoid killing the battery in a seconds)
- or back at the era of the first iPhones (what do you mean a phone should hold charge more than 3 hours?) and/or first generation portable gaming consoles with color LCD (I eat batteries like candy ).
2. heat disspiation
All this power has to go somewhere. Less surface = less heat disspiation. If one of the ad-tracker goes crazy, your penblet is going to cook you and burn a hole in your shirt pocket.
---
These two blocker has a few possible evolution to get better :
- advancing fab tech (7nm chipsets in the phone for more power efficience / less heat generation)
- remote offloading of computation / generation of content (the way Siri/Cortana/Echo/OkGoogle all run on their respective companies' servers. Think also SteamLink,etc) so the heat generation/power consumption happens elsewhere.
- personnal area network : the computation is still remote, but the remote is big brick in you back pack/hand bag (think relationship between Google Glasses and smartphone, or VR headset and blet-clip puck computers). Could also double as a battery extender (think like current case of earphones charging them)
- dockable device: goes into high power mode only when docked to the charger. But that defeats the advantage and space saving that the fully-rollable screen of a penblet would bring.
They're basically saying that portions of the building structure were 3D printed or CNC'ed, then assembled on site.
Look at the photos. Here the portions where 3D printed on site.
They're just trying to claim that nobody's ever done it at this level before.
And, possibly, they're right.
Yup, their claim to novelty is to directly have the machine built the house on site, instead of merely assembling pre-fab. /. over the last year).
(Like the couple of other 3d printed house project that got mentionned on