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User: MobyDisk

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  1. Re:Forward thinking... on Robot Workers' Real Draw: Reducing Dependence on Human Workers · · Score: 2

    Obviously, the wealthy fully-employed robots will buy them!

  2. Proof that Wikipedia mobile is just fine on 'Mobilegeddon': Google To Punish Mobile-Hostile Sites Starting Today · · Score: 1

    The summary says that Wikipedia does not have a mobile site. That isn't true. The BBC article linked from TFA actually says:

    Sections of sites owned by the European Union, the BBC and Wikipedia currently fail the search giant's Mobile Friendly Test developer tool.

    I just tested the Wikipedia mobile site with their tool and it says "Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly." However, if you feed it wikipedia.org instead of en.m.wikipedia.org it complains that the links are too close together, which is definitely not the case. Even the picture it shows of "How Googlebot sees the page" is quite clear.

  3. Not a revenge plot on George Lucas Building Low-Income Housing Next Door To Millionaires · · Score: 1

    Lucas claims this is not a revenge plot.

    Lucas's representatives said this is not revenge for the blocked film studio, reports The Daily Mail.

  4. Re:Valve needs to use their clout on NVIDIA's New GPUs Are Very Open-Source Unfriendly · · Score: 1

    Good point. I wonder if they would ever actually do this? It's definitely non-trivial, but they may have people with the capability of doing that.

  5. Re:Segways are awesome on Chinese Ninebot Buys US Rival Segway · · Score: 4, Informative

    Walking: 3mph.
    Segway: 12mph.

  6. Re:Valve needs to use their clout on NVIDIA's New GPUs Are Very Open-Source Unfriendly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They *should*, if their goal of legitimizing Open Source video drivers is true.

    Legitimizing Linux gaming is not really dependent on having open source the drivers. It is dependent on having good drivers. Valve does not have a stated goal of supporting open source. Their goal is to sell games.

  7. I want thingiverse + github on The Makerspace Is the Next Open Source Frontier · · Score: 1

    This article is spot on. I've experienced this when working with 3D objects on Thingiverse. It allows you to "remix" someone's work, but that is a fork. It doesn't really allow for collaboration. Lots of times I've found someone's .SCAD model and improved it but I have no way to contribute it back to them other than to post a comment and hope they notice. So some objects have dozens of "remix" forks, which have more forks, etc.

    Lots of people make their objects to work for just themselves. It's the hardware equivalent of "works on my machine!" It's great that they have a way to publish and get the object out there. It allows other people do the "systems engineering" and figure out how to make the part work in general. But most of that engineering work gets lost. So many times I download an object, only to find it didn't quite work. I improve it, and then nobody else gets to benefit from that. It's kinda sad.

  8. Re:So what is the answer? on In New Zealand, a Legal Battle Looms Over Streaming TV · · Score: 1

    FYI: The article says they aren't using VPN. They are fooling Hulu's geolocating system since it is based on DNS.

  9. Just make geoblocking illegal on In New Zealand, a Legal Battle Looms Over Streaming TV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The concept of geoblocking digital data is silly. New Zealand could solve this problem by simply making it illegal.

  10. Slashdot clickbait headlines on Supernovae May Not Be Standard Candles; Is Dark Energy All Wrong? · · Score: 1

    Headline: Supernovae May Not Be Standard Candles; Is Dark Energy All Wrong?
    Summary: Does this mean dark energy may not be real, or that it may just be slightly weaker than we previously thought?
    Articles: It is slightly weaker than we previously thought. Not significantly though.

  11. Re:One highly-publicized case is all it took on Reason: How To Break the Internet (in a Bad Way) · · Score: 1

    This is a really good fair question. I thought about this because in my reply to the article, I cited this same example.

    A private company paid a bunch of money to another private company and users got better video streaming performance.

    So which private company paid which private company? In this case, Netflix paid Comcast. Isn't that... odd? Netflix paid Comcast even though Comcast did absolutely nothing?

    So imagine if Comcast wasn't a monopoly. I can think of 3 possibilities: 1) Comcast would have upgraded their infrastructure. 2) Customers would have moved to another ISP who had more bandwidth. 3) Comcast would have paid Netflix to colocate their servers within Comcast's network, since it saves Comcast from having to upgrade their infrastructure.

    Because Comcast is a monopoly, they profited from *not* upgrading their service. That's maddening! But that is what monopolies do: they profit from extorting other companies using their monpoly power, rather than profiting from providing a good product. So the net result is that Comcast customers don't have better bandwidth. So what happens when another content provider has bandwidth problems with Comcast customers? Perhaps the company will fold. Or perhaps they will do what Netflix did, continuing the ugliness.

    Now here's a criticism of my argument: What did the FCC's network neutrality do to prevent this scenario? I'm not sure it actually helped. Can someone chime-in on that? What does the new regulation do for deals like this between ISPs and content providers? I'm not sure there is a solution here other than competition.

  12. Interesting article on Reason: How To Break the Internet (in a Bad Way) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article is full of colorful language about network neutrality advocates, but also some sound reasoning that is unfortunately based on technical misunderstandings or misinformation. Once you look past the mischaracterizations (it's a political piece, after all - you speak to your audience and insult everyone who disagrees with you before you even consider making a point!), it's actually not that bad. There are lots of items in it that I'd like to respond to, as if I could fix the author's misunderstandings, but I'll just pick a one:

    The more good content that providers make available, the more consumers will demand access to sites and apps, and the more ISPs will invest in the infrastructure to facilitate delivery.

    That's what we want, but that isn't what is happening. The ISPs have little economic incentive to invest in infrastructure since they are mostly monopolies. That's why Comcast chose, instead of upgrading their bandwidth when customers started watching Netflix, to pressure Netflix into co-locating servers within Comcast's network. They only could do that because they are a monopoly. Comcast customers could not choose to switch to another provider, and Netflix cannot choose to route around Comcast.

    One would think that after 10 years of political teeth-gnashing, regulatory rule making, and relentless litigating, there would by now be a strong economic case for net neutrality—a clear record of harmful practices and agreements embodying the types of behavior that only regulation can pre-empt. But there isn't.

    This sounds like someone citing their ignorance on a topic as evidence that something didn't happen. In general, the authors need to recognize that:
    - ISPs are tied to cable/telecom monopolies.
    - ISPs can't pick different "business models" without impacting individuals' free speech.
    - We learned these lessons from what came before the internet. :-) Clearly they never had to dial-up to Prodigy to see one "web site" and then use Compuserve to see another one, then dial AOL to email someone else.
    - We've had real issues without Network Neutrality.

    It will be interesting to see how "broken" the internet is in 10 years. Usually those predicting doom and gloom fade away. We shall see, eh?

  13. The only way a new header is going to work is if you use http:/// for the first request, and then include a header that tells the browser it can pull the same pages over TLS, but without doing authenticity checks on the certificate.

    That's what I meant. Someone further up the comment chain said that is how OE works. First it connects with HTTP, then when "data is submitted" (I took that to mean a forms submission) it uses the OE.

    So, in trying to understand the intent here:

    No, we created it to make it actually possible to do unauthenticated encryption with self-signed certificates on public websites.

    We already have that capability, but as you say:

    Currently, nobody uses self-signed certs because of the invalid cert warnings.

    So that seems to confirm that yes, the purpose of this is to hide the cert warnings. Am I missing something?

    Aside: I just learned about dh_anon, which actually does not even require a certificate. Interesting.

  14. The only part that matters on Australian ISPs Must Hand Over Pirates' Info · · Score: 1

    Once they received the names of account holders, the company would then have to prove copyright infringement had taken place.

    So long as they have to prove the infringement took place, then I have no problem with this. If someone commits copyright infringement, and the copyright holder can go to court and prove it, then the legal system is working. But does it seem likely that they will file 4,726 unique court cases? They will instead send extortion letters, or do a big massive case, or sue the ISPs to recover the money, or something like that.

  15. So we created this mechanism just to hide the certificate prompt? It seems like it would be better just to put text on the form that says "Hey, I used a self-signed certificate so ignore the message you see when you click submit" then just submit the form to an HTTP URL as usual. Alternatively, we could standardize on an HTML meta-attribute or HTTP header attribute that tells the browser to ignore the cert. No special browser feature required.

    Surely I am missing something here.

  16. Re: Opposite? on Mozilla Rolls Back Firefox 37's Opportunistic Encryption Over Security Issue · · Score: 1

    How is this better than I'm unclear HTTPS with a self-signed cert? It seems like a convoluted way to suppress a certificate prompt.

  17. But when you submit data to it, the browser will automatically switch on-the-fly to an alternate, encrypted route, so the data is sent encrypted to a alternate destination handling encryption.

    What benefit does that have over regular HTTPs? Why is this different from just having the submit URL be HTTPs? And wouldn't a security-aware user refuse to click submit when they saw the page wasn't encrypted?

    Thanks for the explanation. I've been reading about this since I saw the Slashdot headline a few days ago and I'm just not getting it.

  18. Re:for those complaining about this being too much on LG Accidentally Leaks Apple iMac 8K Is Coming Later This Year · · Score: 1

    You read paper @ 6" away, but read a screen @ 24" away.

  19. Re:for those complaining about this being too much on LG Accidentally Leaks Apple iMac 8K Is Coming Later This Year · · Score: 1

    dpi for printing != dpi on a display.

    A 1200 dpi printer will look better than a 600dpi printer, especially on color because the printer is just dithering 4 colors.

  20. Re:Related to the Boston Marathon how? on Watching a "Swatting" Slowly Unfold · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Boston Marathon is on April 20th. So a hostage situation on April 5th would be unrelated. It would be like saying "Armed robbery at Pizza parlor within sight of the Statue of Liberty" knowing that the Statue of Liberty can be seen for miles away. Or maybe "Armed robbery at Pizza parlor visited by Barack Obama" when Barack Obama was there last year.

  21. Re:Hate groups should die on Hugo Awards Turn (Even More) Political · · Score: 1

    Hate groups should die

    +1 Irony.

  22. Re:Who cares, really? on Hugo Awards Turn (Even More) Political · · Score: 1

    It's was right after you read a book because of the color of the author's skin.

  23. Re:Absolutely on Why You Should Choose Boring Technology · · Score: 1

    I think you meant "should NOT be trying to" then the rest follows logically.

  24. Re:Putin no good on How Professional Russian Trolls Operate · · Score: 1, Troll

    And he increased the chocolate ration to 20 grams per week!

  25. Re:Here's a thought on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 1

    In hindsight, yes. But who would have expected Comcast to lie? Oh.... well... good point then. :-)