Some of the most popular extensions are those that help prevent JavaScript from being used maliciously, and these kinds of extensions were among the ones to suffer the worst breakage, due to being so intricately tied to the operation of the browser.
Regarding ads: uBlock Origin - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 (I use that one) uBlock - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 AdBlock Plus - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57
Regarding trackers: FSF's Prvacy Badger - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 (I use that one)
Regarding script blocking : uMatrix - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 NoScript - well Giogio Maone was a tiny bit in a hurry, but slill manage to make it compatible within a couple of days after the release of FF57. Still kudos to him for having managed it. (I use that one)
etc.
Well what was you point ?
Yup, maybe that weird specific no widely known extension that 3 other people beside you use, and whose authors have abandoned for the last 10 year, maybe that extension broke for you in FF57.
Meanwhile, all the major security extension were transitioned more or less on time. Partly on the grounds of Mozilla crew members closely collaborating with extension authors, to make sure that their WebExtensions interface provides all the necessary API to make the functionality possible.
So I would suggest that you stop bitching about the change of API by spitting the same copy-pasta whining on each remotely relevant/. news story, and instead spend your time and effort switching to extensions with a tiny bit more active developers and a little bit more active community than whatever rare precious gem you were using up until now.
While there have been efforts to port some of these extensions to Firefox's new WebExtensions model, in some cases it has proven to be impossible to replicate the existing functionality because WebExtensions is so, for a lack of a better word, crippled.
Which is why Mozilla devs have actively reached out to authors of popular XUL extensions to see how they could make them still work once transitioning to the WebExtensions API. All the major security extensions worth mentioning have more or less finished transitioning, despite some of them not working on the Google's Chrome spin of WebExtensions.
So I'm now wondering how many Firefox users are now browsing without any kind of protection from malicious JavaScript code. I'm thinking it could be a far higher number than we might expect
I'm thinking it's only the stupider ones among them like you, who can't even put some though into the selection of security tools they'll use.
Next time, pick an extension with an author that is still alive and a number of users which exceeds your direct family.
They sound like 1337 moron snowflakes to me. If you're walking on eggshells it is because you are a disgusting asshole, and you should have already been keeping to yourself whatever disgusting thing you really "think."
Yes, the above described group of 5 men a probably a bunch of nerds with absolutely zero social skill. (In fact, so few social awareness that they can't even understand what they are going wrong, and how they should handle the communication to avoid devolving into this kind of situations). Except that, despite being huge unbearable ass-holes, they can manage to get shit done if their all work as a thigh unit.
To me it seems that, although the characters of the guys in that group is problematic, the over all isn't as much a problem of "men vs. women", as problem of HR failing to understand which new team member with which character can be added to the team.
The extra new member would as likely to not fit in if it was also a guy, but one with a more "artist/sensitive/etc." character rather than the "throw shit at each other college bros" (I know that, despite being born with Y chromosome, don't like working on team constantly yelling at each other). The extra new member could very well fit in the team despite happening to be born with the other set of sex chromosome, if she had the same kind of bad character and throw abuse around as the rest of the team (have actually seen such teams). It's not the extra Y chromosome that make new member fit in, it's the "don't give a shit about anything" attitude that does. It just happens that for various socio-cultural reasons, these behavious are considered more appropriate for boys and society ends up producing a little bit less women fitting the
Now the fundamental question is : does keeping this kind of teams make sens for the company ? is it worth ? And it all depends on the kind of company setting. Small start-up ? Yeah, why not. After all, these guys/gals get shit done despite yelling at each other constantly and getting fucking drunk at the end of each other work day. Big corporation ? Hum... these team become problematic, because they don't scale up easily. It's hard to find new team members that can actually fit in. And there's only that many new member that you can add in before the constant squabling ecalates to really abusive setting.
Net neutrality being allowed to exist is no different than if I were to buy 10k acres of land and I built a system of private roads across that land and then the government came and told me who was allowed to drive on my private roads, on my private land and in what manner, causing damage, etc, to my business, to my property and told me that I wasn't allowed to prevent it from happening.
NOTE: for your metaphore to work and actually precisely describe the situation, the 10k acres of land need to be not continuous, but all the free space between the private houses of private home owner that where here before you came. (i.e.: you only own the land where you build your network of private roads. The people living here aren't living on your privately owned land, they own their own land).
Nice metaphor you have here, because when you look into the details it breaks in the exact same way that anti-net-neutrality-trolling breaks down to.
So you want to decide who can drive on your private roads and who can't ?
On the grounds that it causes you damage to accept any random vehicle to drive there ? Then why the hell did you pretend your private roads network is "18-wheeler truck ready" when all you build is small gravel bike paths ? (ISP: Why complaining that traffic from website XyZ that you want to throttle overloads your network ? Should you have provisioned the network well enough to be able to sustain the bandwidth that you sell to your customers. If you complain that youtube causes too much traffic on your network, you're the bloody idiot for having oversold your capacity to your customers. No you can't be an ISP selling "up to 100 mbits connection" to 20'000 customer while only having a 1Gbit upstream, even if you put the magical "up to") - That point by itself is already very close to false advertising. Something which can get you sued for in some jurisdictions (those with strong consumer protection)
Also, all the people who own houses which are enclosed in enclaves in your territory are already paying for said roads. They are paying all the costs. Then why do you also want to tax incoming delivery trucks into your private network ? The delivery company has paid tax to the government (or whatever entity) for the building and upkeep of public roads. The home owner are paying your for the building and upkeep of your private road network. There isn't a single meter of road that isn't being paid for. But you still want to get profits, just because you happens to be in control of the gates around the private land ? (ISP: companies such as Netflix are already paying to have a given bandwidth in their data center. Customers are already paying for a certain bandwidth on their data plan. All involved bandwith and interconnection is paid some way or another. Why the fuck to you suddenly want extra money from Netflix ?) - That point by itself is already very close to raketeering. You can get into real trouble with this in lots of jurisdiction.
Also how can we be sure that you have no vested interests in how you are taxing incoming delivery truck ? It's a bit fun when every milk delivery man needs to pay exorbitant fees to enter your network, except "Joe's Milk Jugs" which happens to be *your uncle joe* who own a dairy farm ? into whose company you're a shareholder ? and sit on its director's board ? (ISP: the whole point of taxing Youtube and Netflix is to favour ipTV services from a provider who is part of the same mega-corporation). - That point by itself could bring legal wrath on you because of violation of rule about competition, antitrust, etc.
And by extending further all the above to there most extreme conclusion: Actually you're in a very critical position : By applying insanely big fees, you can control who goes in, who goes out. You can completely wipe out competition. You can end up deciding which companies are allowed to deliver food. You can severely limits the acces to anygoods. You can bascially decide which news
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation
To be more precise, you do not want under the control of *ANY* bit entity. Be it governments, or be it huge corporation. And here liese the problem...
If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
...because it took some time for the big corporation to be big enough and vertically integrated to be able to pull off easily the kind of shit that forced the creation of net neutrality regulations.
There's a difference between what was once just a bunch of universities communicating with each other on equal grounds, and a huge corporation basically having a monopoly on internet over a whole region and deciding what every one will be able to see or not.
I remember some time back there was a NIC card which had some kind of cpu/ram/etc with it. I think it may have been able to offload torrents or something like that.
Microsoft Research also developed an USB variation of this.
Do we need that kind of things these days and maybe some BSD based guardian to live there to report on any strange stuff being sent or received? Basically you would have a computer spending full time making sure your computer is secure, or trying to.
That's exactly how Intel ME/AMT and how IPMI (the industry standard equivalent for servers) were sold back then. The only exception :
- they were sold to management, not to you the end-user. So ITs could remotely manage your workstation or company servers remotely, even if they are powered down, while keeping you, the user entirely out of the loop.
- nobody though about software freedoms (freedom to study/modify, etc.) thus you, the end user, end up now with a blob on which you have absolutely zero control, but which could be exploited to remotely hose your machine even if it's powered down.
(At least IPMI can be kept on an entirely separate network port, which will be kept on a separate private network and thus will never get into contact with the internet - thus limiting any potential remote exploit. IntelME is an entirely different can of worms.)
They don't live in the CPU have ring negative 9999 access, and you can turn them off!
AMD's PSP lives in the CPU.
Intel's ME is a ARC core on the motherboard's chipset. As in : in theory, you could remove the RAM and the CPU out of their socket, and as long as there's a PSU connected to the motherboard, this shit still runs. (In practice, the system running on it requires a bit of cooperation from the main CPU and expects a little bit of RAM handed to it. So without CPU and RAM in the socket, the OS will probably crash, but that's just an implementation details. The actual hardware is separate and autonomous, and you could imagine a specially crafted version of Minix that handles all its nefarious purpose (e.g.: flash a trojan-infected UEFI on the motherboard on NSA's orders) from within the confine of its limited resources without ever needing any request be server by the main CPU).
(Libreboot has detailled explanation of all the small details if you want)=
The situation is a bit worse with Qualcom chipsets.
The thing running with Intel ME on the motherboard's own embed computer, or with AMD PSP on the extra security core on the latest CPUs, is just basically a ROM. You're free to hack it. You might break your computer while doing it (e.g.: some require signed bit to get executed, most of these embed "ring -3" OSes have watchdogs that force the whole system to reboot or not even leave reset if they don't trigger, etc.) But you can still break your computer if you want and maybe in the process produce a fully functioning computer with the "ring -3" OS either completely disabled or defanged and reduced to the most innocuous minimum (only the part triggering the watchdog, no networking at all).
With mobile chipsets (mostly Qualcom, but applies to others too) the thing that is in the northbridge of your SoC and that is in charge of handling the RAM, etc... is the baseband modem. It's the piece of hardware that is also in charge of what goes out on the radio frequencies, and these frequencies happen to be heavily regulated (unlike the 2.4 Ghz used by everything else like Wifi, Bluetooth or your micro-oven). If you don't hold a special license (like telcos and soc manufacturer do), you're not even legally allowed to modify this piece firmware.
That's the whole reason while, for their smartphone Librem 5, Purism is using some older FreeScale chipset, and keeping the baseband modem in a separate chips that doesn't have access to any critical component but only speaks over a standard protocol.
in short : - researchers can freely try to find ways to completely remove or at least de-fang Intel ME and AMD PSP. And laptop manufacturer are free to then re-use this work to produce Intel-ME-less / AMD PSP-less laptops. - researchers cannot legally modify the baseband firmware, and if a phone manufacturer were to try to use their work to produce phone using special "firmware with the backdoor removed" they'll be in for a hefty fine and their product banned. The only way would be for the people holding the license to the radio frequency (basically telcos, and chipset/SoC/PCB manufacturer) to accept their mods upstream and release an official firmware.
If they still want X in a year, fine, otherwise there's a life lesson about marketing, peer pressure, and temporality to be taught, which is far more valuable than a Cabbage Patch doll or Pet Rock.
On the other hand, this lesson comes at the price of being the only single kid who received it, and being ostracized by the rest of the school's kid for being weird by not following the same trends as every body else "normal", by not having the same outfit, the same popular toys, etc.
Basically, by making the kid more aware and more immune of the above marketing/peer pressure/etc. problems, you're also pushing them into becoming social outcasts and being percieved as "that weird kid".
There's a sweet spot of weirdness were the kid actually doesn't even give a damn about not fitting in the group, is creative enough to find their own interests in life (without needing group approval) while still being a tiny bit social enough to have a very interesting clique of other non-conforming friends. (And, personal experience, it also helps a lot when the kid happens to be quite a bit taller then any potential bully...)
But that might not be the case of everyone. Some kids might be actively trying to resist your lessons about not needing to fit in because of sheer fear of rejection by the others. The part of the lesson about "peer pressure" actually goes much deeper than just "you'll see, in a couple of months you won't even want the toy anymore". It is a very valuable lesson, but it take quite some work to get there depending on the kid.
The subtle difference is that a few of the "precious" metal, have at least some value in them (due to their physico-chemical properties) making them remotely interesting.
Gold, doesn't oxidize and remains gold for most of its life (as opposed to iron which rust). Silver doesn't oxidize that much. Silver has interesting chemical properties making it useful to sterilize water. etc.
Make a long list of there and you find that as metals, they aren't completely useless. Now, add to that the fact they are rare and hard to obtain (this was also part of the reason why Aluminium used to be a precious metal before the industrial revolution : it's tremendously energy consuming to smelt bauxite ore into metallic aluminium, and was hard to obtain back then). They are thus desirable and you can understand a small part of the reason while they are valuated. (though they are completely over valuated, when you compare their market value with their actual usefulness).
Bitcoins are even worse, in that they are not physical objects and have no intrinsic use. The only minimal usefulness making the whole system a tiny bit desirable is that the bitcoin protocol is extremely useful (no central authority but distributed ledger instead). But you have some minute desirability, because of the usefulness of the protocol, and thus speculators jumping on the bandwagon and blowing the over-valuation through the moon.
It has the potential of one day maybe having some value (again, it's a desirable payment system, because of its distributed nature) so in some future potential timeline where its transaction volume is similar to paypal or credit cards, it would make market sense that BTCs got some value. But currently it's quite over-valuated.
Which is why the government should demand interoperability just like they did with instant messaging, email, etc....
Government did what ? Which government ? In which country ?
And let's look at interoperability :
Now that Google is blocking server-to-server XMPP fedaration (and not even using XMPP internally, only as an interface for client), is there a single interoperable instant messaging ? - Google's Talk/Hangou/whatever it is going to call next week, once it gets merged into the next beta experiment - Facebook's Messenger. - WhatsApp (also in facebook's possession, but not even interoperable with the other facebook instant messaging system). - Snapchat (strongly popular among a very young generation) - Microsoft's Skype etc. Every single instant messaging system is an isolated silo, with no way to send message accross. SMS are the only interoperable thing, and that's not as much due to government decree as it is due to it being a telecom standard that existed and was interoperable from the beginning with, and lots of companies (mostly in Europe and Asia) saw "inoperable" as a potential selling point ("You can now send SMS to your gand-ma, even if she's in a different country and thus very likely on a different network") rather than a drawback (as in the US. "Want to exchange messages ? Then you need to move all your friends on the same network as you").
Even the only systems that ARE currently operable - e.g.: Microsoft's Skype for Business and Cisco - are only so because they are business software designed to work on interoperable industry standards (SIP and XMPP, respectively) that predate them and onto which the company only have bolted they branding.
And regarding e-mails:
Yes, same situation : it's basically interoperable, not because of some recent government law, but because from the beginning they were industry standards a long time ago back in the age of "internet across universities", long before service providers even existed, long before companies such as Google suddenly became mastodons on the market.
Imagine if suddenly a small upcoming service provider arrived saying "yes, we do offer some mailing system, but it's a different one and not compatible with what everybody is currently using", or if Google began this way with their mail system (although currently some of their "spam filtering" borders on becoming so). They wouldn't have attracted any interest, just like a phone company giving you a phone line that only works with their system (although in several countries, there ARE actual law design to fight potential such abuse by a big telco refuse to interconnect with smaller ones).
If your friend list and your posts carried from service to service then people could use competing services without lock-in. At the very least they should allow some sort of aggregation service that sits on top of facebook and other social media services. Google doesn't really have the lockin, there is plenty of competition, it's easy enough to switch to bing, duckduckgo, etc... if people found them more useful. Amazon is probably the hardest to break up. It's lockin is economy of scale and convenience. It's really hard for someone to go head to head with amazon but I once thought that about ebay so anything's possible.
Even you, dear snowflake, don't have the level of understanding a language that a reknown writer and poet could have of its intricacies. Or, you only have a vague grasp of some concepts in a field of work outside of yours, whereas some body expert in the field has a much better understanding. Even the pets (cats, dogs) in your house can have some basic understanding of things around, even if they don't think in such abstract concepts as you.
This software, due to the way it's build (basically word2vec and deep neural net), has some very basic form of understanding the language. It's a very simple artificial brain, that is entirely optimised for one specific subdomain (language) and thus completely lacks other forms of thinking (cannot dissert about a scientific article written in said language).
But the way this system works, is that is able to implicitly and autonomously build relationships between things. The kind of knowledge built into some ontology databases, except that here, the knowledge isn't manually constructed by the scientist filling the database, the knowledge is discovered on the go, not unlike how very young babies would discover the world around them. Okay, it's a very stupid and limited baby in this case, but still. It's good enough to catch and understand links between concepts.
I just don't know why that's why. But it's universally agreed that if a computer fits in your hand, all prevously-acquired common sense is inapplicable, but can't be re-acquired fresh.
Actually, it stems from the fact that it fits in your pocket. Because of the small form factor, manufacturer try to integrate as many things as possible in the smallest place possible. You end up with chipsets and SoC that contain modem directly integrated into them. And for licensing and legal reasons, you can't modify that software your self (unless you hold you own very license to use emit on licensed frequencies like those used by cell-phones). Which could be understandable, but now becomes extremely problematic if now, because of integration, this same modem core also doubles as the SoC's northbridge. There might be some tiny advantage (in term of low power, wake on network activity, high speed transmission, etc..) but it's absolutely frightening that the RAM of the pocket computer which holds all your personal data is now under the charge of a binary firmware that you're not even legally allowed to modify anymore.
You can add to that other integrations of core (though less invasive ones) like GPU being part of the same SoC but only having blob drivers.
And once you have never-legally-user-controllable firmwares running, you get the rest of the bandwagon jumping in : All the various MAFIAA actors seeing this as an excuse to inflict even more invasive Digital Restriction Management (all this abuse just because some schmuch want to whatch netflix and want it right now on his pocket-computer, instead of waiting to get to a computer with a more media-viewing appropriate screen). Then phone manufacturer using the presence of low-level locked stuff to make signed code execution mandatory - "In the name of safety" (which might make a tiny bit of sense in the rare edge case where the user of the device is not the owner of the device like corporate settings. But basically screws over the entire rest of the universe) and in the name of enforcing DRM. But in practice giving them unstoppable ways to inflict ad-wares and other revenue generating crap.
And you end up with the current situation, where the most common everyday computer (the one that fit in your pocket), you can in theory "own it" (i.e.: buy it - i.e.: abandon a sizeable chunk of your fortune for the privilege of hosting it in your pocket) but in practice you can't decide what running on it (you can pick your poison but selecting a few apps, but all the key software remain in firm control of companies who have higher interest into profits than into end-users).
Maybe that's still working today. But if the progresses of Facebook's face recognition is used as a benchmark, very soon, the only way to escape google's detection would be to wear dazzle make-up.
Or like the "hand of cards" metaphore that Palm/HP's WebOS 2.x on top of the existing "deck of cards".
(individual windows - "cards" in webos but basically tabs - could freely be grouped together in small groups. Not necessarily by apps. You could put a e-mail writing tab and a webpage that you need to reference next to each other in the same hand.)
In my opinion, that used to be the best ever handling of two-level multi-tasking (i.e: different apps with each different tabs within), much better to what is currently done on smartphone (most of which have taken up the apps-as-cards approach (see apps switching and specially closing-by-flinging on Android ans iOS). But then each app has its own personal way to handle tabs (see tabs in Safari - its a completely different mechanism).
The closest would be how you could mix tabs in browser, if all you apps were webapps (e.g.: using Office 365 to edit online, and Gmail to compose a mail. And putting both in tabs next to each other in the same windows). Windows seems aiming to recreate this.
Because reading text projected at 854x480 at 14 ppi with a max brightness of a paltry 50 lumens is pleasant to do?
Yeah, it's a bit disappointing that they went for a DLP technology and not a laser beamscanning technology as their past partnership with microvision (gives better apparent brightness and crazy high contrast ratios even at lower lumen ratings).
But on the other hand, that's already plenty enough good specs for netflix and chill~
And good frameworks help with that. When I build a house, I don't want a craftsman who takes time to learn how to use an adze so he can plane down lumber to the correct size for the job; I want a builder who knows he can get lumber of the correct dimensions right at the store.
On the other hand, when all you want to build is a garden shed, you can do it yourself in a quick week-end afternoon project by quickly nailing a few planks together. You definitely don't want a several month-long adventure involving half a dozen sub-contractors (and each further down, their own individual group of a dozen of sub-contractors), plus hiring a few special planification manager (because sub-contracors D and Y each out-source their screw to a different sub-sub-contractor. Incompatiubles) which will all require two hectars of work space around your shed. And somehow the garden shed need to be connected to an industrial triphase 380V power connector in order to be able to function.
Some time, over reliance on frameworks and helpers means that some very simple projects that would be handled by a few dozens of C or C++ lines of code (perhaps a couple of hundreds top), suddenly need to pull more than 20 MiBs of libraries in the package and are dependent on 200 different github repositories (hoping that they'll not blocked on the dev's whim - see Node.js and string alignement). And you need to use special command line settings to tell the VM to allocate 2 GiB of memory for the process.
Absolutely. The math has been done and the apprximate amount of money one has to spend if you wish to unlock all of the content (in the game you've already paid good money for) is 2100 $ [vg247.com]! Or, alternatively, without money, it takes over 4500 hours of gameplay to unlock everything!
...but is (saddly) not how things are considered.
In most jurisdictions "gambling" is clearly defined, and thus companies have found way around it, some ways even predating video games.
Basically, for something to be considered "gambling", you need : - to put money in in order to participate (you need to bet cash, or buy chips, or whatever). - the RNG being the sole determinant of the outcome (the actions of the player don't have any influence on outcome of game : no matter which numbers one bets on at the roulette or which team a sport gambler bets on, these bets won't change which number the ball of the roulette lands on, or which team will be victorious - well unless underhanded mafia influence was involved).
This has been circumvented by marketeers making "contests" to win prizes : - the contest has a very small tiny note explaining that there's no mandatory buying to take part into the "contest" (e.g.: if bottle caps need to be collected, you can send a post card to ask for free) - the randomness is usually only a second step to discriminate among contestant. Usually, there's some trivial stupid quizz to answer (whose answer sometime is literally a few lines above the paragraph with the contest). Thus winners are actually winning by playing a game (of skill), randomness only comes into play to select among the winners because it "happens" that there a lot fewer prices than "winners" (than anyone with 2 brain cells) but those who couldn't answer the quizz because they lacked the necessary skills (a pulse ?) aren't taking part in the second random round.
And lootboxes, as despicable as they could be as a practice, have already a built-in circumvention around being considered "gambling". - Most of the online games, specially those relying on lootboxes for income, are following the "freemium" model. (even the game that cost an initial price for the game purchase, one could argue that you don't need an aditionnal purchase *per lootbox* the money you put buying the game doesn't correlate to the number of time you're pulling the "lootbox slot machine lever"). As the study mention, you could instead be spending time instead. Playing the "lootbox slot machine" can be considered free - You are playing a game (or could be playing one, in games where paying cash for a loot crate is an alternative to going on quests to get them). The RNG only comes into play as a way to handle (artificially) scarce prizes.
In other words :
- you put money in -> some steps happen, the only influence is external (apparent randomness) -> you might get something of value (e.g.: money) out. That is gambling, legally.
- you do NOT need to put money in -> lot of steps happen, some might be under random influence, but other are under the influence of player's actions -> you might get something of value (e.g.: an object with commercial value that could be sold for money) That is what "contests", "quizzes" and online games go for.
No matter what Perl looks to you (even if it is valid code written by your cat walking across the keyboard), not every random jumble of noise is valid code.
Yes, it is entirely possible that two files of size > sizeof(SHA1) (= 128 bits) will have the same hash. But on the other hand, it's very likely that none of them is valid code, but gibberish.
Once you intersect both requirements (must share a hash and must be legit code) suddenly the probability drops a lot (because "must be code" is a very stringent criteria that drastically reduce the search space of possible files to a infinitesimal fraction). At that point you're in "Shakespear-typing monkeys" territory. Yes, the probability is non-null. But at that point you're better off playing lottery until the collapse of the civilisation, you'd have better odds of winning.
As a matter of facts, "Shattered" the current known computed collision of SHA-1 is a pair random nonsensical blocks of gibberish. It can only be exploited in systems that can embed arbitrary blobs (attachments) and feature a turing-complete language (post-script) that can react upon the blob - PDF files.
Industrial kitchens have some kind of sprinkle system (not unlike completely the fire suppressant system) that can clean/shower the whole kitchen automatically at the flip of a switch at the end of the work day when the cook leaves the room.
A) might not fit in the dishwasher along with the dishes, and B) the dishwasher doesn't work on anyway so you have to do them by hand, with a lot of scrubbing.
Then please replace your museum-worthy old appliance with something that was built in the current century.
(In addition to being able to successfully handle encrusted pots and actually having room for them, modern dish-washers tend to use a lot less water and a lot less energy than their older predecessors. And also use a lot less water than humans.)
Unless you're lucky enough to have a left-handed coach, or a disproportionate number of lefties in your club to practice with. Or you simply stick with the sport long enough that the 15% of lefties you meet eventually adds up to a lot of experience.
Or switch to another sport where handedness doesn't have an impact (e.g.: archery, because you don't to adapt to the handedness of your opponent. or skiing, riding, (or chess), etc. because they are all symmetrical sports where the handedness of the participant doesn't change a single thing)
I think that relates to "native performance" and "no emulation".
It happens that games usually rely on an API (Direct X up to 11) that doesn't exit on Linux and has no close equivalent. For games you need a whole emulation layer that will emulate a Direct X API by using the closest API Linux has (usually OpenGL).
Lots of games DO work, but they still get some performance hit and require an emulation of sort (even if a high-level one).
Though currently, the things are changing : - Most games are slowly switching to the low-level Vulkan API, which does exist as-is on Linux, so wine can function as the usual translation layer. (e.g.: Doom (2016) ) - DirectX 12 has nothing to do with past iterations of DirectX and is a similar low-level API to Vulkan. Meaning that simple DirectX 12 to Vulkan thin translation layer could be possible. (currently being worked on) - There are attempts of building DirectX 9 and 10/11 drivers running on low-level APIs existing on linux (either on top of Vulkan, or on top of Mesa' Gallium3D - the low-level back-ends used traditionally on Linux by high-level API state trackers - except by Nvidia's). This could also potentially avoid the overhead of DirectX over OpenGL emulations.
It will cost even more than a Tesla and be even more stylish and minimalist (probably looking like a giant round bubble of brushed aluminium and gorilla glass). But apple fan will flock to it and buy it anyway because the iCar has an apple logo on it.
All the while the press will praise Apple for revolutionizing the transport industry completely, by being the inventors of self-driving pilotless cars. And of electric drive cars. And of cars all together.
(Though they would still manage to get the thing simplified to the point that even your grand-ma can understand that "autopilot" mode doesn't mean "pilot-less" like some folk believe, but means exactly what it has always meant in naval and aeronautical context)
After a while the fad passes, several bankrupted competitor of Apple will get bought by Huawei and a few other asian companies, who will flood the market with cheap cars (running the free but not quite open system by google - that google gives away to constructor as long as they include the closed binary "google car services" that earn a shit ton of advertising money to Google : "Okay, Google Car ! Let's drive to the cineplex. - Okay, Jack, driving to the cineplex. Do you know that the pizza restaurant there is having a rebate ?")
Apple will sue the now Samsung-owned VW over "curves on automobile" pretending that they own an universal design patent due to their aluminium+gorilla glass bubble car. Then a few years later, they'll release the revolutionnary Apple iCar X which will look like the sedans that every single other company has been producing.
Slashdot Mirror
Random users :
"OOH MY GOD !!! NO !!!! ALL MY PRECIOUS PASSWORDS!!!!"
Users of password managers :
"Phew !... at least they didn't log these".
Users of NoScript (and other such popular script blocking extensions) :
"...yeah... whatever...."
---
Bonus:
Users of links/elinks/lynx, curl/wget and straight telnet :
"Bwaaah.... we're left out of the fun once again!..."
Some of the most popular extensions are those that help prevent JavaScript from being used maliciously, and these kinds of extensions were among the ones to suffer the worst breakage, due to being so intricately tied to the operation of the browser.
Regarding ads:
uBlock Origin - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 (I use that one)
uBlock - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57
AdBlock Plus - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57
Regarding trackers:
FSF's Prvacy Badger - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57 (I use that one)
Regarding script blocking :
uMatrix - was WebExtension compatible in advance, well before the release of FF57
NoScript - well Giogio Maone was a tiny bit in a hurry, but slill manage to make it compatible within a couple of days after the release of FF57. Still kudos to him for having managed it. (I use that one)
etc.
Well what was you point ?
Yup, maybe that weird specific no widely known extension that 3 other people beside you use, and whose authors have abandoned for the last 10 year, maybe that extension broke for you in FF57.
Meanwhile, all the major security extension were transitioned more or less on time. Partly on the grounds of Mozilla crew members closely collaborating with extension authors, to make sure that their WebExtensions interface provides all the necessary API to make the functionality possible.
So I would suggest that you stop bitching about the change of API by spitting the same copy-pasta whining on each remotely relevant /. news story, and instead spend your time and effort switching to extensions with a tiny bit more active developers and a little bit more active community than whatever rare precious gem you were using up until now.
While there have been efforts to port some of these extensions to Firefox's new WebExtensions model, in some cases it has proven to be impossible to replicate the existing functionality because WebExtensions is so, for a lack of a better word, crippled.
Which is why Mozilla devs have actively reached out to authors of popular XUL extensions to see how they could make them still work once transitioning to the WebExtensions API.
All the major security extensions worth mentioning have more or less finished transitioning, despite some of them not working on the Google's Chrome spin of WebExtensions.
So I'm now wondering how many Firefox users are now browsing without any kind of protection from malicious JavaScript code. I'm thinking it could be a far higher number than we might expect
I'm thinking it's only the stupider ones among them like you, who can't even put some though into the selection of security tools they'll use.
Next time, pick an extension with an author that is still alive and a number of users which exceeds your direct family.
They sound like 1337 moron snowflakes to me.
If you're walking on eggshells it is because you are a disgusting asshole, and you should have already been keeping to yourself whatever disgusting thing you really "think."
Yes, the above described group of 5 men a probably a bunch of nerds with absolutely zero social skill. (In fact, so few social awareness that they can't even understand what they are going wrong, and how they should handle the communication to avoid devolving into this kind of situations).
Except that, despite being huge unbearable ass-holes, they can manage to get shit done if their all work as a thigh unit.
To me it seems that, although the characters of the guys in that group is problematic, the over all isn't as much a problem of "men vs. women", as problem of HR failing to understand which new team member with which character can be added to the team.
The extra new member would as likely to not fit in if it was also a guy, but one with a more "artist/sensitive/etc." character rather than the "throw shit at each other college bros" (I know that, despite being born with Y chromosome, don't like working on team constantly yelling at each other).
The extra new member could very well fit in the team despite happening to be born with the other set of sex chromosome, if she had the same kind of bad character and throw abuse around as the rest of the team (have actually seen such teams). It's not the extra Y chromosome that make new member fit in, it's the "don't give a shit about anything" attitude that does.
It just happens that for various socio-cultural reasons, these behavious are considered more appropriate for boys and society ends up producing a little bit less women fitting the
Now the fundamental question is : does keeping this kind of teams make sens for the company ? is it worth ?
And it all depends on the kind of company setting.
Small start-up ? Yeah, why not. After all, these guys/gals get shit done despite yelling at each other constantly and getting fucking drunk at the end of each other work day.
Big corporation ? Hum... these team become problematic, because they don't scale up easily. It's hard to find new team members that can actually fit in. And there's only that many new member that you can add in before the constant squabling ecalates to really abusive setting.
Net neutrality being allowed to exist is no different than if I were to buy 10k acres of land and I built a system of private roads across that land
and then the government came and told me who was allowed to drive on my private roads, on my private land and in what manner, causing
damage, etc, to my business, to my property and told me that I wasn't allowed to prevent it from happening.
NOTE: for your metaphore to work and actually precisely describe the situation, the 10k acres of land need to be not continuous, but all the free space between the private houses of private home owner that where here before you came.
(i.e.: you only own the land where you build your network of private roads. The people living here aren't living on your privately owned land, they own their own land).
Nice metaphor you have here, because when you look into the details it breaks in the exact same way that anti-net-neutrality-trolling breaks down to.
So you want to decide who can drive on your private roads and who can't ?
On the grounds that it causes you damage to accept any random vehicle to drive there ?
Then why the hell did you pretend your private roads network is "18-wheeler truck ready" when all you build is small gravel bike paths ?
(ISP: Why complaining that traffic from website XyZ that you want to throttle overloads your network ? Should you have provisioned the network well enough to be able to sustain the bandwidth that you sell to your customers. If you complain that youtube causes too much traffic on your network, you're the bloody idiot for having oversold your capacity to your customers. No you can't be an ISP selling "up to 100 mbits connection" to 20'000 customer while only having a 1Gbit upstream, even if you put the magical "up to")
- That point by itself is already very close to false advertising. Something which can get you sued for in some jurisdictions (those with strong consumer protection)
Also, all the people who own houses which are enclosed in enclaves in your territory are already paying for said roads. They are paying all the costs. Then why do you also want to tax incoming delivery trucks into your private network ? The delivery company has paid tax to the government (or whatever entity) for the building and upkeep of public roads. The home owner are paying your for the building and upkeep of your private road network. There isn't a single meter of road that isn't being paid for. But you still want to get profits, just because you happens to be in control of the gates around the private land ?
(ISP: companies such as Netflix are already paying to have a given bandwidth in their data center. Customers are already paying for a certain bandwidth on their data plan. All involved bandwith and interconnection is paid some way or another. Why the fuck to you suddenly want extra money from Netflix ?)
- That point by itself is already very close to raketeering. You can get into real trouble with this in lots of jurisdiction.
Also how can we be sure that you have no vested interests in how you are taxing incoming delivery truck ? It's a bit fun when every milk delivery man needs to pay exorbitant fees to enter your network, except "Joe's Milk Jugs" which happens to be *your uncle joe* who own a dairy farm ? into whose company you're a shareholder ? and sit on its director's board ?
(ISP: the whole point of taxing Youtube and Netflix is to favour ipTV services from a provider who is part of the same mega-corporation).
- That point by itself could bring legal wrath on you because of violation of rule about competition, antitrust, etc.
And by extending further all the above to there most extreme conclusion :
Actually you're in a very critical position : By applying insanely big fees, you can control who goes in, who goes out. You can completely wipe out competition. You can end up deciding which companies are allowed to deliver food. You can severely limits the acces to anygoods. You can bascially decide which news
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation
To be more precise, you do not want under the control of *ANY* bit entity.
Be it governments, or be it huge corporation.
And here liese the problem...
If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
...because it took some time for the big corporation to be big enough and vertically integrated to be able to pull off easily the kind of shit that forced the creation of net neutrality regulations.
There's a difference between what was once just a bunch of universities communicating with each other on equal grounds, and a huge corporation basically having a monopoly on internet over a whole region and deciding what every one will be able to see or not.
I remember some time back there was a NIC card which had some kind of cpu/ram/etc with it. I think it may have been able to offload torrents or something like that.
One such NIC was the Killer NIC (no, not that one).
Microsoft Research also developed an USB variation of this.
Do we need that kind of things these days and maybe some BSD based guardian to live there to report on any strange stuff being sent or received?
Basically you would have a computer spending full time making sure your computer is secure, or trying to.
That's exactly how Intel ME /AMT and how IPMI (the industry standard equivalent for servers) were sold back then.
The only exception :
- they were sold to management, not to you the end-user. So ITs could remotely manage your workstation or company servers remotely, even if they are powered down, while keeping you, the user entirely out of the loop.
- nobody though about software freedoms (freedom to study/modify, etc.) thus you, the end user, end up now with a blob on which you have absolutely zero control, but which could be exploited to remotely hose your machine even if it's powered down.
(At least IPMI can be kept on an entirely separate network port, which will be kept on a separate private network and thus will never get into contact with the internet - thus limiting any potential remote exploit. IntelME is an entirely different can of worms.)
We started buying AMD after that.
Speaking of which, have you found a way to disable AMD PSP on their latest CPUs ?
Or do you just keep buying the pre-PSP ones ?
They don't live in the CPU have ring negative 9999 access, and you can turn them off!
AMD's PSP lives in the CPU.
Intel's ME is a ARC core on the motherboard's chipset.
As in : in theory, you could remove the RAM and the CPU out of their socket, and as long as there's a PSU connected to the motherboard, this shit still runs.
(In practice, the system running on it requires a bit of cooperation from the main CPU and expects a little bit of RAM handed to it. So without CPU and RAM in the socket, the OS will probably crash, but that's just an implementation details. The actual hardware is separate and autonomous, and you could imagine a specially crafted version of Minix that handles all its nefarious purpose (e.g.: flash a trojan-infected UEFI on the motherboard on NSA's orders) from within the confine of its limited resources without ever needing any request be server by the main CPU).
(Libreboot has detailled explanation of all the small details if you want)=
The situation is a bit worse with Qualcom chipsets.
The thing running with Intel ME on the motherboard's own embed computer, or with AMD PSP on the extra security core on the latest CPUs, is just basically a ROM.
You're free to hack it.
You might break your computer while doing it (e.g.: some require signed bit to get executed, most of these embed "ring -3" OSes have watchdogs that force the whole system to reboot or not even leave reset if they don't trigger, etc.)
But you can still break your computer if you want and maybe in the process produce a fully functioning computer with the "ring -3" OS either completely disabled or defanged and reduced to the most innocuous minimum (only the part triggering the watchdog, no networking at all).
With mobile chipsets (mostly Qualcom, but applies to others too) the thing that is in the northbridge of your SoC and that is in charge of handling the RAM, etc... is the baseband modem.
It's the piece of hardware that is also in charge of what goes out on the radio frequencies, and these frequencies happen to be heavily regulated (unlike the 2.4 Ghz used by everything else like Wifi, Bluetooth or your micro-oven).
If you don't hold a special license (like telcos and soc manufacturer do), you're not even legally allowed to modify this piece firmware.
That's the whole reason while, for their smartphone Librem 5, Purism is using some older FreeScale chipset, and keeping the baseband modem in a separate chips that doesn't have access to any critical component but only speaks over a standard protocol.
in short :
- researchers can freely try to find ways to completely remove or at least de-fang Intel ME and AMD PSP. And laptop manufacturer are free to then re-use this work to produce Intel-ME-less / AMD PSP-less laptops.
- researchers cannot legally modify the baseband firmware, and if a phone manufacturer were to try to use their work to produce phone using special "firmware with the backdoor removed" they'll be in for a hefty fine and their product banned. The only way would be for the people holding the license to the radio frequency (basically telcos, and chipset/SoC/PCB manufacturer) to accept their mods upstream and release an official firmware.
If they still want X in a year, fine, otherwise there's a life lesson about marketing, peer pressure, and temporality to be taught, which is far more valuable than a Cabbage Patch doll or Pet Rock.
On the other hand, this lesson comes at the price of being the only single kid who received it, and being ostracized by the rest of the school's kid for being weird by not following the same trends as every body else "normal", by not having the same outfit, the same popular toys, etc.
Basically, by making the kid more aware and more immune of the above marketing/peer pressure/etc. problems, you're also pushing them into becoming social outcasts and being percieved as "that weird kid".
There's a sweet spot of weirdness were the kid actually doesn't even give a damn about not fitting in the group, is creative enough to find their own interests in life (without needing group approval) while still being a tiny bit social enough to have a very interesting clique of other non-conforming friends.
(And, personal experience, it also helps a lot when the kid happens to be quite a bit taller then any potential bully...)
But that might not be the case of everyone. Some kids might be actively trying to resist your lessons about not needing to fit in because of sheer fear of rejection by the others.
The part of the lesson about "peer pressure" actually goes much deeper than just "you'll see, in a couple of months you won't even want the toy anymore".
It is a very valuable lesson, but it take quite some work to get there depending on the kid.
The subtle difference is that a few of the "precious" metal, have at least some value in them (due to their physico-chemical properties) making them remotely interesting.
Gold, doesn't oxidize and remains gold for most of its life (as opposed to iron which rust).
Silver doesn't oxidize that much.
Silver has interesting chemical properties making it useful to sterilize water.
etc.
Make a long list of there and you find that as metals, they aren't completely useless.
Now, add to that the fact they are rare and hard to obtain
(this was also part of the reason why Aluminium used to be a precious metal before the industrial revolution : it's tremendously energy consuming to smelt bauxite ore into metallic aluminium, and was hard to obtain back then).
They are thus desirable and you can understand a small part of the reason while they are valuated.
(though they are completely over valuated, when you compare their market value with their actual usefulness).
Bitcoins are even worse, in that they are not physical objects and have no intrinsic use.
The only minimal usefulness making the whole system a tiny bit desirable is that the bitcoin protocol is extremely useful (no central authority but distributed ledger instead).
But you have some minute desirability, because of the usefulness of the protocol, and thus speculators jumping on the bandwagon and blowing the over-valuation through the moon.
It has the potential of one day maybe having some value (again, it's a desirable payment system, because of its distributed nature) so in some future potential timeline where its transaction volume is similar to paypal or credit cards, it would make market sense that BTCs got some value. But currently it's quite over-valuated.
Which is why the government should demand interoperability just like they did with instant messaging, email, etc....
Government did what ? Which government ? In which country ?
And let's look at interoperability :
Now that Google is blocking server-to-server XMPP fedaration (and not even using XMPP internally, only as an interface for client), is there a single interoperable instant messaging ?
- Google's Talk/Hangou/whatever it is going to call next week, once it gets merged into the next beta experiment
- Facebook's Messenger.
- WhatsApp (also in facebook's possession, but not even interoperable with the other facebook instant messaging system).
- Snapchat (strongly popular among a very young generation)
- Microsoft's Skype
etc.
Every single instant messaging system is an isolated silo, with no way to send message accross.
SMS are the only interoperable thing, and that's not as much due to government decree as it is due to it being a telecom standard that existed and was interoperable from the beginning with, and lots of companies (mostly in Europe and Asia) saw "inoperable" as a potential selling point ("You can now send SMS to your gand-ma, even if she's in a different country and thus very likely on a different network") rather than a drawback (as in the US. "Want to exchange messages ? Then you need to move all your friends on the same network as you").
Even the only systems that ARE currently operable - e.g.: Microsoft's Skype for Business and Cisco - are only so because they are business software designed to work on interoperable industry standards (SIP and XMPP, respectively) that predate them and onto which the company only have bolted they branding.
And regarding e-mails:
Yes, same situation : it's basically interoperable, not because of some recent government law, but because from the beginning they were industry standards a long time ago back in the age of "internet across universities", long before service providers even existed, long before companies such as Google suddenly became mastodons on the market.
Imagine if suddenly a small upcoming service provider arrived saying "yes, we do offer some mailing system, but it's a different one and not compatible with what everybody is currently using", or if Google began this way with their mail system (although currently some of their "spam filtering" borders on becoming so).
They wouldn't have attracted any interest, just like a phone company giving you a phone line that only works with their system
(although in several countries, there ARE actual law design to fight potential such abuse by a big telco refuse to interconnect with smaller ones).
If your friend list and your posts carried from service to service then people could use competing services without lock-in. At the very least they should allow some sort of aggregation service that sits on top of facebook and other social media services. Google doesn't really have the lockin, there is plenty of competition, it's easy enough to switch to bing, duckduckgo, etc... if people found them more useful. Amazon is probably the hardest to break up. It's lockin is economy of scale and convenience. It's really hard for someone to go head to head with amazon but I once thought that about ebay so anything's possible.
"Understanding" has multiple level.
Even you, dear snowflake, don't have the level of understanding a language that a reknown writer and poet could have of its intricacies.
Or, you only have a vague grasp of some concepts in a field of work outside of yours, whereas some body expert in the field has a much better understanding.
Even the pets (cats, dogs) in your house can have some basic understanding of things around, even if they don't think in such abstract concepts as you.
This software, due to the way it's build (basically word2vec and deep neural net), has some very basic form of understanding the language.
It's a very simple artificial brain, that is entirely optimised for one specific subdomain (language) and thus completely lacks other forms of thinking (cannot dissert about a scientific article written in said language).
But the way this system works, is that is able to implicitly and autonomously build relationships between things.
The kind of knowledge built into some ontology databases, except that here, the knowledge isn't manually constructed by the scientist filling the database, the knowledge is discovered on the go, not unlike how very young babies would discover the world around them.
Okay, it's a very stupid and limited baby in this case, but still.
It's good enough to catch and understand links between concepts.
I just don't know why that's why. But it's universally agreed that if a computer fits in your hand, all prevously-acquired common sense is inapplicable, but can't be re-acquired fresh.
Actually, it stems from the fact that it fits in your pocket.
Because of the small form factor, manufacturer try to integrate as many things as possible in the smallest place possible.
You end up with chipsets and SoC that contain modem directly integrated into them.
And for licensing and legal reasons, you can't modify that software your self (unless you hold you own very license to use emit on licensed frequencies like those used by cell-phones).
Which could be understandable, but now becomes extremely problematic if now, because of integration, this same modem core also doubles as the SoC's northbridge.
There might be some tiny advantage (in term of low power, wake on network activity, high speed transmission, etc..) but it's absolutely frightening that the RAM of the pocket computer which holds all your personal data is now under the charge of a binary firmware that you're not even legally allowed to modify anymore.
You can add to that other integrations of core (though less invasive ones) like GPU being part of the same SoC but only having blob drivers.
And once you have never-legally-user-controllable firmwares running, you get the rest of the bandwagon jumping in : All the various MAFIAA actors seeing this as an excuse to inflict even more invasive Digital Restriction Management (all this abuse just because some schmuch want to whatch netflix and want it right now on his pocket-computer, instead of waiting to get to a computer with a more media-viewing appropriate screen).
Then phone manufacturer using the presence of low-level locked stuff to make signed code execution mandatory - "In the name of safety" (which might make a tiny bit of sense in the rare edge case where the user of the device is not the owner of the device like corporate settings. But basically screws over the entire rest of the universe) and in the name of enforcing DRM.
But in practice giving them unstoppable ways to inflict ad-wares and other revenue generating crap.
And you end up with the current situation, where the most common everyday computer (the one that fit in your pocket), you can in theory "own it" (i.e.: buy it - i.e.: abandon a sizeable chunk of your fortune for the privilege of hosting it in your pocket) but in practice you can't decide what running on it (you can pick your poison but selecting a few apps, but all the key software remain in firm control of companies who have higher interest into profits than into end-users).
Maybe that's still working today. But if the progresses of Facebook's face recognition is used as a benchmark, very soon, the only way to escape google's detection would be to wear dazzle make-up.
Or like the "hand of cards" metaphore that Palm/HP's WebOS 2.x on top of the existing "deck of cards".
(individual windows - "cards" in webos but basically tabs - could freely be grouped together in small groups.
Not necessarily by apps. You could put a e-mail writing tab and a webpage that you need to reference next to each other in the same hand.)
In my opinion, that used to be the best ever handling of two-level multi-tasking (i.e: different apps with each different tabs within), much better to what is currently done on smartphone (most of which have taken up the apps-as-cards approach (see apps switching and specially closing-by-flinging on Android ans iOS). But then each app has its own personal way to handle tabs (see tabs in Safari - its a completely different mechanism).
The closest would be how you could mix tabs in browser, if all you apps were webapps (e.g.: using Office 365 to edit online, and Gmail to compose a mail. And putting both in tabs next to each other in the same windows).
Windows seems aiming to recreate this.
Because reading text projected at 854x480 at 14 ppi with a max brightness of a paltry 50 lumens is pleasant to do?
Yeah, it's a bit disappointing that they went for a DLP technology and not a laser beamscanning technology as their past partnership with microvision (gives better apparent brightness and crazy high contrast ratios even at lower lumen ratings).
But on the other hand, that's already plenty enough good specs for netflix and chill~
And good frameworks help with that. When I build a house, I don't want a craftsman who takes time to learn how to use an adze so he can plane down lumber to the correct size for the job; I want a builder who knows he can get lumber of the correct dimensions right at the store.
On the other hand, when all you want to build is a garden shed, you can do it yourself in a quick week-end afternoon project by quickly nailing a few planks together. You definitely don't want a several month-long adventure involving half a dozen sub-contractors (and each further down, their own individual group of a dozen of sub-contractors), plus hiring a few special planification manager (because sub-contracors D and Y each out-source their screw to a different sub-sub-contractor. Incompatiubles) which will all require two hectars of work space around your shed. And somehow the garden shed need to be connected to an industrial triphase 380V power connector in order to be able to function.
Some time, over reliance on frameworks and helpers means that some very simple projects that would be handled by a few dozens of C or C++ lines of code (perhaps a couple of hundreds top), suddenly need to pull more than 20 MiBs of libraries in the package and are dependent on 200 different github repositories (hoping that they'll not blocked on the dev's whim - see Node.js and string alignement). And you need to use special command line settings to tell the VM to allocate 2 GiB of memory for the process.
Absolutely. The math has been done and the apprximate amount of money one has to spend if you wish to unlock all of the content (in the game you've already paid good money for) is 2100 $ [vg247.com]! Or, alternatively, without money, it takes over 4500 hours of gameplay to unlock everything!
...but is (saddly) not how things are considered.
In most jurisdictions "gambling" is clearly defined, and thus companies have found way around it, some ways even predating video games.
Basically, for something to be considered "gambling", you need :
- to put money in in order to participate (you need to bet cash, or buy chips, or whatever).
- the RNG being the sole determinant of the outcome (the actions of the player don't have any influence on outcome of game : no matter which numbers one bets on at the roulette or which team a sport gambler bets on, these bets won't change which number the ball of the roulette lands on, or which team will be victorious - well unless underhanded mafia influence was involved).
This has been circumvented by marketeers making "contests" to win prizes :
- the contest has a very small tiny note explaining that there's no mandatory buying to take part into the "contest" (e.g.: if bottle caps need to be collected, you can send a post card to ask for free)
- the randomness is usually only a second step to discriminate among contestant. Usually, there's some trivial stupid quizz to answer (whose answer sometime is literally a few lines above the paragraph with the contest). Thus winners are actually winning by playing a game (of skill), randomness only comes into play to select among the winners because it "happens" that there a lot fewer prices than "winners" (than anyone with 2 brain cells) but those who couldn't answer the quizz because they lacked the necessary skills (a pulse ?) aren't taking part in the second random round.
And lootboxes, as despicable as they could be as a practice, have already a built-in circumvention around being considered "gambling".
- Most of the online games, specially those relying on lootboxes for income, are following the "freemium" model. (even the game that cost an initial price for the game purchase, one could argue that you don't need an aditionnal purchase *per lootbox* the money you put buying the game doesn't correlate to the number of time you're pulling the "lootbox slot machine lever"). As the study mention, you could instead be spending time instead.
Playing the "lootbox slot machine" can be considered free
- You are playing a game (or could be playing one, in games where paying cash for a loot crate is an alternative to going on quests to get them). The RNG only comes into play as a way to handle (artificially) scarce prizes.
In other words :
- you put money in -> some steps happen, the only influence is external (apparent randomness) -> you might get something of value (e.g.: money) out.
That is gambling, legally.
- you do NOT need to put money in -> lot of steps happen, some might be under random influence, but other are under the influence of player's actions -> you might get something of value (e.g.: an object with commercial value that could be sold for money)
That is what "contests", "quizzes" and online games go for.
No matter what Perl looks to you (even if it is valid code written by your cat walking across the keyboard), not every random jumble of noise is valid code.
Yes, it is entirely possible that two files of size > sizeof(SHA1) (= 128 bits) will have the same hash.
But on the other hand, it's very likely that none of them is valid code, but gibberish.
Once you intersect both requirements (must share a hash and must be legit code) suddenly the probability drops a lot (because "must be code" is a very stringent criteria that drastically reduce the search space of possible files to a infinitesimal fraction).
At that point you're in "Shakespear-typing monkeys" territory. Yes, the probability is non-null. But at that point you're better off playing lottery until the collapse of the civilisation, you'd have better odds of winning.
As a matter of facts, "Shattered" the current known computed collision of SHA-1 is a pair random nonsensical blocks of gibberish. It can only be exploited in systems that can embed arbitrary blobs (attachments) and feature a turing-complete language (post-script) that can react upon the blob - PDF files.
Industrial kitchens have some kind of sprinkle system (not unlike completely the fire suppressant system) that can clean/shower the whole kitchen automatically at the flip of a switch at the end of the work day when the cook leaves the room.
A) might not fit in the dishwasher along with the dishes, and
B) the dishwasher doesn't work on anyway so you have to do them by hand, with a lot of scrubbing.
Then please replace your museum-worthy old appliance with something that was built in the current century.
(In addition to being able to successfully handle encrusted pots and actually having room for them, modern dish-washers tend to use a lot less water and a lot less energy than their older predecessors.
And also use a lot less water than humans.)
Unless you're lucky enough to have a left-handed coach, or a disproportionate number of lefties in your club to practice with. Or you simply stick with the sport long enough that the 15% of lefties you meet eventually adds up to a lot of experience.
Or switch to another sport where handedness doesn't have an impact
(e.g.: archery, because you don't to adapt to the handedness of your opponent.
or skiing, riding, (or chess), etc. because they are all symmetrical sports where the handedness of the participant doesn't change a single thing)
I think that relates to "native performance" and "no emulation".
It happens that games usually rely on an API (Direct X up to 11) that doesn't exit on Linux and has no close equivalent.
For games you need a whole emulation layer that will emulate a Direct X API by using the closest API Linux has (usually OpenGL).
Lots of games DO work, but they still get some performance hit and require an emulation of sort (even if a high-level one).
Though currently, the things are changing :
- Most games are slowly switching to the low-level Vulkan API, which does exist as-is on Linux, so wine can function as the usual translation layer. (e.g.: Doom (2016) )
- DirectX 12 has nothing to do with past iterations of DirectX and is a similar low-level API to Vulkan. Meaning that simple DirectX 12 to Vulkan thin translation layer could be possible. (currently being worked on)
- There are attempts of building DirectX 9 and 10/11 drivers running on low-level APIs existing on linux (either on top of Vulkan, or on top of Mesa' Gallium3D - the low-level back-ends used traditionally on Linux by high-level API state trackers - except by Nvidia's). This could also potentially avoid the overhead of DirectX over OpenGL emulations.
In the usual Apple way.
It will cost even more than a Tesla and be even more stylish and minimalist (probably looking like a giant round bubble of brushed aluminium and gorilla glass).
But apple fan will flock to it and buy it anyway because the iCar has an apple logo on it.
All the while the press will praise Apple for revolutionizing the transport industry completely, by being the inventors of self-driving pilotless cars. And of electric drive cars. And of cars all together.
(Though they would still manage to get the thing simplified to the point that even your grand-ma can understand that "autopilot" mode doesn't mean "pilot-less" like some folk believe, but means exactly what it has always meant in naval and aeronautical context)
After a while the fad passes, several bankrupted competitor of Apple will get bought by Huawei and a few other asian companies, who will flood the market with cheap cars (running the free but not quite open system by google - that google gives away to constructor as long as they include the closed binary "google car services" that earn a shit ton of advertising money to Google : "Okay, Google Car ! Let's drive to the cineplex. - Okay, Jack, driving to the cineplex. Do you know that the pizza restaurant there is having a rebate ?")
Apple will sue the now Samsung-owned VW over "curves on automobile" pretending that they own an universal design patent due to their aluminium+gorilla glass bubble car.
Then a few years later, they'll release the revolutionnary Apple iCar X which will look like the sedans that every single other company has been producing.