You obviously didn't RTFA. They had to create this GVFS thing because their code base is huge and they don't want to sync hundreds of gigs between remote locations. Also they were not using VSS before switching to Git, they were using Perforce.
I never said they actually *used* VSS. Actually, it's been well known that they have almost never used their own tool - VSS - nor hosted the source on Windows. No, I referenced functionality that is in VSS that is also in GVFS and nearly required for host VS works - which I'm pretty sure also exists in Perforce, Clear Case and a few others. SVN actually has the functionality too but their devs heavily advise against using it because if you need that kind of functionality your development process is actually broken.
Oh - and I didn't need to RTFA this time because this whole move was discussed a long time ago. I already knew their reasoning - their reasoning just happens to be wrong. They need to fix their process and code management.
I won't spend time searching for you, but there are blog posts from softies describing the various attempts over the years to segregate code, and this is the result of that failure.
Well...that's in all actuality a management failure. I'm familiar enough with a lot of stories about the codebase to say that it's a massive piece of junk. There is no reason why it couldn't be managed better and segregated - that'd actually help them in many many respects if they actually took to action and did it. But they're putting the priority in doing things other than making their life better. However, like with most companies they'll only actually do the hard work that's necessary when the shit hits the fan like with the XP -> Longhorn debacle that reset and create the XP -> Vista project - the only point in their history where they did a massive amount of work on the codebase itself without adding features because it was so borked.
But then, their whole patch system is borked too - they have a long (long) history of one patch fixing something and then next unfixing it - sometimes delivered together. The WMF bug did that for years - originally fixed in the Win9x series it was still being fixed in Windows 8! Breaking apart the repository would help solve that. Treating your own projects as third-party tools helps solve that.
And git has some nice utilities (f.e git submodule) that helps bring things together when you need to - projects become meta projects and you can track dependencies easily, do upgrades, etc. in very controlled ways.
If it can be abused, then someone will do it. Why is it so difficult for developers to learn this?
True, but don't stop there. Defense is about layers, so ensuring even the functions internally don't trust data coming into them any more than they absolutely have to also makes not only for a great defense strategy but also for very good debugging - the code will become smarter and bugs will be more obvious and easier to catch early; and no, it doesn't have a significant impact on performance.
No one locks down Windows b/c it breaks too much when doing so. But then, having developed to the Win32 API in the past - the API itself is just plain broken when it comes to security.
Yes, the Desktop is large market, but mobile dwarfs the desktop by itself, and servers have a lot of information that would be far more valuable than most desktops.
This would give a cost for driving 426km of 42.6L x $1.11/L = $47.29. The cost per km would be $47.29/426km = $0.111/km. In other words gasoline costs $0.111/$0.0299 = 3.7 x more or 370% more than electric per km!
I don't know where you live, but where I live, its about 70cents or so for the gas, and another 40 cents per liter in taxes. Doing the math at 10L / 100 means $4 in taxes per 100km... or 4 cents taxes per km.
That's more in TAXES per km than your electric vehicle costs in electricity right now. If you think the government is going to let that revenue disappear your nuts... so for a realistic comparison take your 0.0299 cents/km... and add 4 cents taxes to it. Because that's probably how its going to go.
Suddenly, the electric... is still better but its 7 cents vs 11 cents, which is a LOT less dramatic.
So to use a real-life example - the State of Georgia in the US expects to collect $60 USD per vehicle per year in the Gas Taxes. However, the legislature passed a $200 per vehicle per year tax on EV's over a year ago to make up for the $60 loss - a 3.1 fold increase - thus instead of adding 4 cents, as 12.4 cents - 15.4 cents vs 11 cents - and EV is *more expensive*.
And what exactly led you to believe the claims that Zestimate is an appraisal? And besides, the header here says "Nobody believes the Zestimates", so what is the problem?
2. an estimate of value, as for sale, assessment, or taxation; valuation.
Sheesh.
FWIW - Zillow explicitly says: "The Zestimate is just a starting point. Let us connect you with someone who can give you a professional evaluation." They also say that their Zestimate can be wrong if they don't have the right information and home owners that claim a properly on Zillow can edit the "Facts" about the property to update the information.
However, every realtor I've ever discussed says right out that Zillow shouldn't be trusted. IOW, if the person filing the suit is really in the real estate industry (as they claim) then they would know that it's common knowledge that Zillow values shouldn't be trusted and every buyer/seller is advised of that when working with an agent to buy/sell a home - thereby negating the entire claim before the court.
There is also very little evidence that a Zestimate does a proper appraisal - finding appropriately comparable homes and making the correct adjustments as a professional appraiser would do.
I read the description and it reminded me too much of the Antitrust (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_34) from 2001, just rehashed with different actors, etc.
Microsoft has always been the company of "just barely good enough"; while Apple (under Jobs) always focused on what would make something Great; MacOS/NextSTEP/OSX all had strong design focus with ease of use and being intuitive.
You'll notice that there's a ton of courses on "How to use Windows", "How to use Office/Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc"...but there are very few on "How to use a Mac". You just don't need them.
Microsoft always focused on the Corporate Customer - Corporate IT; Apple focused on the end-user.
It's just natural that people would remain more loyal when they're generally treated well. Now that's not to say that Apple hasn't had issues with customer support in the past (they have); but they certainly focus more on the everyday user.
That said - while I like MacOS/OSX in general, I can't stand the keyboard, shortcuts, etc - enough that I put Linux on the Macs that get assigned to me. But I don't use Windows either if I can ever help it.
In general, if you do something on your employer's time and/or using resources provided by said employer than you can be pretty sure they'll own it in the end.
That is, even if you're doing it off-hours, if you use a company provided resource, then it'll still likely end up belonging to them.
Best bet - just avoid the whole scenario.
BUT if you find yourself with too little work (due to cyclic cycles in the industry, or between projects, etc...) you can always reach out to your manager and work something out. Just be sure to get it in writing and signed off by legal and any execs at a high enough level that they can't change the agreement easily. If you're employer won't do that - or if you as an employee won't do that - then all bets are off and it's just best to avoid using company time or company resources to do anything outside of company work.
AT&T has been branding their HSPA network as "4G" for years. AT&T retail phones show "4G" for HSPA and "4G LTE" for LTE.
Correct. 4G was technically a 3.5G. LTE wasn't really what 4G was suppose to be either since 4G was suppose to be a pure data network; they never quite made it. 5G might be what 4G was suppose to be...but not likely...it's all re-branding for marketing purposes.
So because of falling bridges, you can't solder your own radio?
That's a strawman argument. You can solder your own radio all you want, obviously.
What you can't do is offer your radio-building services to the public, claiming that your expertise as an engineer means they can trust that the radios you create will be (a) electrically safe (which is an issue once you're talking about stuff with more transmission power than a cellphone or walkie-talkie) and (b) comply with FCC regulations.
To be fair, you can actually do that. You don't need to be an Engineer for either of those.
If you build your own device you can certainly sell it; you can also have the design verified by a third party (just like FCC compliance). However, it would be smart if a Certified Professional Engineer (PE) signed off on the device but again - not necessarily required - depends on the field you are working in and what your *customers* may require - that PE doesn't have to be *you* but someone you contract. Most PE's primarily do review of non-PE work to make sure it is good and then give their blessing.
And in fact, any Engineer can't claim on their own FCC compliance - you can only do that once the FCC tests and approves the device as being FCC compliant.
and saying "I'm am engineer" to lend his letter more weoght.
AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM!
If you haven't proven yourself to be competent (e.g. by earning the license), you don't deserve to have more weight lent to your opinion. Claiming to be something you're not in order to gain advantage is fraud.
And yes, the Software field is abundant in this - it's also completely unregulated outside of the perhaps the State of Texas - that is, no Engineering Regulator Board approves Software Engineering licenses, and the term itself is allowed to be used without issue unless the Boards being licensing it.
Sadly, only Texas did and their stuff was largely around UML and other things typically covered in a Software Engineering class that is ultimately completely useless to the actual practice of Software Engineering. Not sure if they still regulate it or if they have since given up.
Netflix and Amazon series writers are all the same union as the broadcast nets. So it's more likely the new kids would look to license (more) archive material from the older networks, as the oldsters have a much deeper inventory. If recent Netflix and Amazon original shows make their way to the broadcasters more rapidly, the value of Netflix and Amazon original content to the consumer diminishes greatly.
Probably won't affect Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. Their contracts are not broadcast contracts like ABC, NBC, CBS, etc have. I would expect they have their own streaming contracts, and Netflix at least is known for offering better deals than Hollywood and the Broadcasters when it comes to making their original content. Joint-Developed content, however, might suffer though.
The irony is that it may prevent them from licensing material to the broadcasters though.
I think you're talking about one particular application/protocol, while i'm talking about a class of devices.
There's nothing stopping you from using RFID in more elaborate ways. Once you have something that knows sort of a private key, but without the ability to reveal the actual key, you're on smartcard-level security. And that was my whole point when saying
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
If you're using the RFID as a seed into something else (e.g a seed to generate a decryption key)...then yes, you're correct - you can use it in more elaborate ways; however, Smart Cards are not RFID; they're more akin to NFC - a separate standard that allows a lot more to take place for communications. RFID is a dead simple tech and extremely limited too; move beyond that and you're no longer doing RFID.
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
No, gaining access to the smart card contact pads won't help you in any way, neither will MITMing it.
IOW you're full of shit.
RFIDs are far simpler than Smart Cards, and a lot easier to clone. The RFID protocol just extracts a single integral value - what length of data, what is in the data, etc is completely up to whomever programmed the chip and determined by the chip used too. But in the end, it's not very secure, and often they're passively powered - meaning you just apply power and the RFID chip starts transmitting the number where actively might be able to do some other stuff too, but even then that's really just for when you don't have time to passively power the chip before reading it.
Once read, the chip value doesn't change, and can therefore be easily cloned. IOW - you could (in theory) use a rifle with a directional antennae to read an RFID chip from a fair distance away - this was proven years ago at a quite distance from the chip - https://www.theregister.co.uk/..., in part due to security concerns with RFID data being implanted into passports. Once you read the data, cloning is generally easily to do - just program a similar chip to emit the same value.
RFIDs are rather stupid in terms of data security and complexity. Typically the value is aligned with a value in a database somewhere - the RFID value being just an lookup in a column in the database; so minimal data is transferred and allowing the system to otherwise track it using other means.
So yes, copying RFID is trivial and by itself provides no means of verifiable authentication as a result; combined with other data (f.e a PIN number), however, it can work pretty well.
I would go even further and say that just because instagram has some feature (like stories or whatever) doesn't mean that all users utilize that feature... I can't stand them, and I wish there was a way to disable them in instagram altogether. It's just an annoyance and consumes screen space that could be used for something interesting. That, plus the "live" (also stolen) feature are designed to keep you perpetually engaged in the platform through FOMO, "maybe you won't see something if you go offline for a few days."
Like FB's new "Your Story" and "Direct" taking up 3/4" (20mm) of screen space? Yeah...just as annoying.
...it assumes that all potential users of Snapchat would actually use Snapchat. That is *never* the case. So yes, FB might take *some* real potential users of Snapchat, but the majority are probably people that would never use Snapchat any way and only use it because it is in the FB app.
Personally, I won't use it either way - thus I'm not in that "potential user" category...but you shouldn't make that assumption - it's a really bad one.
We have dedicated courts specifically for Bankruptcy and Immigration. We need a dedicated court for both Patent and Malpractice issues.
We have dedicated courts for Patents, that's a good bit of the problem. Congress created it to take the load off SCOTUS (who use to be the sole arbiter of patents cases); since then NPE's have arisen and it's become a nightmare for everyone.
They don't have to "Sign it away to heirs". Copyrights automatically become property of their estate, Unless they put in a legal structure to explicitly donate that asset, and their heirs will ultimately direct the disposition.
And the Executor of the Estate has to usually be convinced of to do what is being asked, they often have not understanding of the field, etc - so it's usually a very long, hard road; usually code gets rewritten in those cases.
The standard GPL license has a clause allowing the code to be distributed under the current license *or any future version* of the GPL license.
That's not part of the GPL AFAIK, rather it's the language some developers (not all) put into the code files that they are licensing. Personally, I don't do that and any version of the GPL that does auto-include such language is something I'd avoid. Sure, I trust the license that I am using now but I don't necessarily trust a newer version to do something I don't approve of.
It's easy to do your own programming on your own computer. It's only through the trap of sloppiness one would use their employer's equipment. That's one reason it's nice the California law focuses on that: make some minimal effort to partition your life, and in return get some (unfortunately minimal) protection. Likewise, "free time" for someone on salary is meaningless. The problem is entirely "existing or prospective," which this policy doesn't seem to change from the California baseline. It's onerous because:
- you are likely to be interested in similar things to your work, otherwise you wouldn't have taken the job.
- for large companies the category is incredibly broad. For example, at Google it would cover basically anything, so the pattern of discretion that their judgement committee exercises determines how onerous this rule is, not the law, and not the policy.
Well, this may be something that is more unique to GitHub (and similar companies - GitLab, BitBucket, etc) where the companies product is something it's employees would like to use on their own for their own projects. Essentially, if they were an employee of GitHub under most normal policies they wouldn't be able to use GitHub for their personal work or contributing to projects hosted by GitHub as that would be using "company resources". So the change is slight in that it is really just allowing their employees to use their product - which has become a standard in the industry - for the employee's personal works without GitHub being able to claim ownership of random things.
And in all honesty, when I talk to employers about jobs I make sure to have something similar - I have my own projects that I am working on, and while I avoid using company resources for those projects, I still want clarity that it's mine and the company can't take it or I don't sign.
It's a nice snarky response, but not appropriate for lab technologies. Lab prototypes are not exactly like commercial cells; they tend to be heavy and/or require a lot of supporting hardware and/or are sensitive to their operating conditions and/or other issues. The potential of a technology that's been researched in the lab requires analysis; turning it into finished commercial products takes money. You can't just say "send me a working battery" as if things pop straight from lab tech to some sealed product that blows refined commercial products off the market.
Thankfully, at least from reading the paper, the tech being utilized here doesn't sound particularly complicated to build. Hopefully there will be some outside attempts to reproduce it soon. If outside attempts confirm the results, then it can start to come time to think about making it into actual battery products. Although they're going to need to have a firm understanding of exactly what's going on in order to be able to optimize it. If outside attempts can't reproduce it? Then there's a good chance it'll go down the cold fusion route.
To which they could just invite him to the lab. The snarky response is mostly to keep away people that are just tossing out theories with no proof. Musk would probably be glad to stop by and see a working prototype, get the explanation, and then participate in the validation phases. But it keeps away the people asking for research money saying "I can do X if you give me $YYYYYYYYY" - he's not interested in funding that.
Mozilla is largely use to be used by tech-savvy people. I use it because I can mod the living daylights out of it, from about:config, to the way it acts, looks, performs using on-baord tweaks or add-ons. No other browser allows this level of customisation. Mozilla are losing users because they cannot leave well enough alone.
FTFY. With changes Mozilla is making, they are quickly killing their long time user-base. By FF57 they will have probably 50% of their current users.
I've been a long fan of Firefox due to the TabGroups (Panorama) functionality. FF57 will see an end to that as the new API that the add-ons must use can't support it. Add on to that the massive memory/cpu bloating that has gone on lately, and Firefox is being replaced more and more with Chrome.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously didn't RTFA. They had to create this GVFS thing because their code base is huge and they don't want to sync hundreds of gigs between remote locations. Also they were not using VSS before switching to Git, they were using Perforce.
I never said they actually *used* VSS. Actually, it's been well known that they have almost never used their own tool - VSS - nor hosted the source on Windows. No, I referenced functionality that is in VSS that is also in GVFS and nearly required for host VS works - which I'm pretty sure also exists in Perforce, Clear Case and a few others. SVN actually has the functionality too but their devs heavily advise against using it because if you need that kind of functionality your development process is actually broken.
Oh - and I didn't need to RTFA this time because this whole move was discussed a long time ago. I already knew their reasoning - their reasoning just happens to be wrong. They need to fix their process and code management.
I won't spend time searching for you, but there are blog posts from softies describing the various attempts over the years to segregate code, and this is the result of that failure.
Well...that's in all actuality a management failure. I'm familiar enough with a lot of stories about the codebase to say that it's a massive piece of junk. There is no reason why it couldn't be managed better and segregated - that'd actually help them in many many respects if they actually took to action and did it. But they're putting the priority in doing things other than making their life better. However, like with most companies they'll only actually do the hard work that's necessary when the shit hits the fan like with the XP -> Longhorn debacle that reset and create the XP -> Vista project - the only point in their history where they did a massive amount of work on the codebase itself without adding features because it was so borked.
But then, their whole patch system is borked too - they have a long (long) history of one patch fixing something and then next unfixing it - sometimes delivered together. The WMF bug did that for years - originally fixed in the Win9x series it was still being fixed in Windows 8! Breaking apart the repository would help solve that. Treating your own projects as third-party tools helps solve that.
And git has some nice utilities (f.e git submodule) that helps bring things together when you need to - projects become meta projects and you can track dependencies easily, do upgrades, etc. in very controlled ways.
If it can be abused, then someone will do it. Why is it so difficult for developers to learn this?
True, but don't stop there. Defense is about layers, so ensuring even the functions internally don't trust data coming into them any more than they absolutely have to also makes not only for a great defense strategy but also for very good debugging - the code will become smarter and bugs will be more obvious and easier to catch early; and no, it doesn't have a significant impact on performance.
you can lock down Windows too and no-one does.
No one locks down Windows b/c it breaks too much when doing so. But then, having developed to the Win32 API in the past - the API itself is just plain broken when it comes to security.
That's a helluva "niche" right there.
Yes, the Desktop is large market, but mobile dwarfs the desktop by itself, and servers have a lot of information that would be far more valuable than most desktops.
This would give a cost for driving 426km of 42.6L x $1.11/L = $47.29. The cost per km would be $47.29/426km = $0.111/km. In other words gasoline costs $0.111/$0.0299 = 3.7 x more or 370% more than electric per km!
I don't know where you live, but where I live, its about 70cents or so for the gas, and another 40 cents per liter in taxes. Doing the math at 10L / 100 means $4 in taxes per 100km... or 4 cents taxes per km.
That's more in TAXES per km than your electric vehicle costs in electricity right now. If you think the government is going to let that revenue disappear your nuts... so for a realistic comparison take your 0.0299 cents/km... and add 4 cents taxes to it. Because that's probably how its going to go.
Suddenly, the electric ... is still better but its 7 cents vs 11 cents, which is a LOT less dramatic.
So to use a real-life example - the State of Georgia in the US expects to collect $60 USD per vehicle per year in the Gas Taxes. However, the legislature passed a $200 per vehicle per year tax on EV's over a year ago to make up for the $60 loss - a 3.1 fold increase - thus instead of adding 4 cents, as 12.4 cents - 15.4 cents vs 11 cents - and EV is *more expensive*.
And what exactly led you to believe the claims that Zestimate is an appraisal? And besides, the header here says "Nobody believes the Zestimates", so what is the problem?
Oh, perhaps it could be THE FUCKING DEFINITION OF "APPRAISAL"!?!?!
2. an estimate of value, as for sale, assessment, or taxation; valuation.
Sheesh.
FWIW - Zillow explicitly says: "The Zestimate is just a starting point. Let us connect you with someone who can give you a professional evaluation." They also say that their Zestimate can be wrong if they don't have the right information and home owners that claim a properly on Zillow can edit the "Facts" about the property to update the information.
However, every realtor I've ever discussed says right out that Zillow shouldn't be trusted. IOW, if the person filing the suit is really in the real estate industry (as they claim) then they would know that it's common knowledge that Zillow values shouldn't be trusted and every buyer/seller is advised of that when working with an agent to buy/sell a home - thereby negating the entire claim before the court.
There is also very little evidence that a Zestimate does a proper appraisal - finding appropriately comparable homes and making the correct adjustments as a professional appraiser would do.
I read the description and it reminded me too much of the Antitrust (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_34) from 2001, just rehashed with different actors, etc.
Microsoft has always been the company of "just barely good enough"; while Apple (under Jobs) always focused on what would make something Great; MacOS/NextSTEP/OSX all had strong design focus with ease of use and being intuitive.
You'll notice that there's a ton of courses on "How to use Windows", "How to use Office/Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc"...but there are very few on "How to use a Mac". You just don't need them.
Microsoft always focused on the Corporate Customer - Corporate IT; Apple focused on the end-user.
It's just natural that people would remain more loyal when they're generally treated well. Now that's not to say that Apple hasn't had issues with customer support in the past (they have); but they certainly focus more on the everyday user.
That said - while I like MacOS/OSX in general, I can't stand the keyboard, shortcuts, etc - enough that I put Linux on the Macs that get assigned to me. But I don't use Windows either if I can ever help it.
In general, if you do something on your employer's time and/or using resources provided by said employer than you can be pretty sure they'll own it in the end.
That is, even if you're doing it off-hours, if you use a company provided resource, then it'll still likely end up belonging to them.
Best bet - just avoid the whole scenario.
BUT if you find yourself with too little work (due to cyclic cycles in the industry, or between projects, etc...) you can always reach out to your manager and work something out. Just be sure to get it in writing and signed off by legal and any execs at a high enough level that they can't change the agreement easily. If you're employer won't do that - or if you as an employee won't do that - then all bets are off and it's just best to avoid using company time or company resources to do anything outside of company work.
What does it say on phones elsewhere?
Marketing speak.
AT&T has been branding their HSPA network as "4G" for years. AT&T retail phones show "4G" for HSPA and "4G LTE" for LTE.
Correct. 4G was technically a 3.5G. LTE wasn't really what 4G was suppose to be either since 4G was suppose to be a pure data network; they never quite made it. 5G might be what 4G was suppose to be...but not likely...it's all re-branding for marketing purposes.
That's a strawman argument. You can solder your own radio all you want, obviously.
What you can't do is offer your radio-building services to the public, claiming that your expertise as an engineer means they can trust that the radios you create will be (a) electrically safe (which is an issue once you're talking about stuff with more transmission power than a cellphone or walkie-talkie) and (b) comply with FCC regulations.
To be fair, you can actually do that. You don't need to be an Engineer for either of those. If you build your own device you can certainly sell it; you can also have the design verified by a third party (just like FCC compliance). However, it would be smart if a Certified Professional Engineer (PE) signed off on the device but again - not necessarily required - depends on the field you are working in and what your *customers* may require - that PE doesn't have to be *you* but someone you contract. Most PE's primarily do review of non-PE work to make sure it is good and then give their blessing.
And in fact, any Engineer can't claim on their own FCC compliance - you can only do that once the FCC tests and approves the device as being FCC compliant.
AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM!
If you haven't proven yourself to be competent (e.g. by earning the license), you don't deserve to have more weight lent to your opinion. Claiming to be something you're not in order to gain advantage is fraud.
And yes, the Software field is abundant in this - it's also completely unregulated outside of the perhaps the State of Texas - that is, no Engineering Regulator Board approves Software Engineering licenses, and the term itself is allowed to be used without issue unless the Boards being licensing it.
Sadly, only Texas did and their stuff was largely around UML and other things typically covered in a Software Engineering class that is ultimately completely useless to the actual practice of Software Engineering. Not sure if they still regulate it or if they have since given up.
Netflix and Amazon series writers are all the same union as the broadcast nets. So it's more likely the new kids would look to license (more) archive material from the older networks, as the oldsters have a much deeper inventory. If recent Netflix and Amazon original shows make their way to the broadcasters more rapidly, the value of Netflix and Amazon original content to the consumer diminishes greatly.
Probably won't affect Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. Their contracts are not broadcast contracts like ABC, NBC, CBS, etc have. I would expect they have their own streaming contracts, and Netflix at least is known for offering better deals than Hollywood and the Broadcasters when it comes to making their original content. Joint-Developed content, however, might suffer though.
The irony is that it may prevent them from licensing material to the broadcasters though.
The RFID protocol
I think you're talking about one particular application/protocol, while i'm talking about a class of devices.
There's nothing stopping you from using RFID in more elaborate ways. Once you have something that knows sort of a private key, but without the ability to reveal the actual key, you're on smartcard-level security. And that was my whole point when saying
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
If you're using the RFID as a seed into something else (e.g a seed to generate a decryption key)...then yes, you're correct - you can use it in more elaborate ways; however, Smart Cards are not RFID; they're more akin to NFC - a separate standard that allows a lot more to take place for communications. RFID is a dead simple tech and extremely limited too; move beyond that and you're no longer doing RFID.
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards. No, gaining access to the smart card contact pads won't help you in any way, neither will MITMing it.
IOW you're full of shit.
RFIDs are far simpler than Smart Cards, and a lot easier to clone. The RFID protocol just extracts a single integral value - what length of data, what is in the data, etc is completely up to whomever programmed the chip and determined by the chip used too. But in the end, it's not very secure, and often they're passively powered - meaning you just apply power and the RFID chip starts transmitting the number where actively might be able to do some other stuff too, but even then that's really just for when you don't have time to passively power the chip before reading it.
Once read, the chip value doesn't change, and can therefore be easily cloned. IOW - you could (in theory) use a rifle with a directional antennae to read an RFID chip from a fair distance away - this was proven years ago at a quite distance from the chip - https://www.theregister.co.uk/..., in part due to security concerns with RFID data being implanted into passports. Once you read the data, cloning is generally easily to do - just program a similar chip to emit the same value.
RFIDs are rather stupid in terms of data security and complexity. Typically the value is aligned with a value in a database somewhere - the RFID value being just an lookup in a column in the database; so minimal data is transferred and allowing the system to otherwise track it using other means.
So yes, copying RFID is trivial and by itself provides no means of verifiable authentication as a result; combined with other data (f.e a PIN number), however, it can work pretty well.
I would go even further and say that just because instagram has some feature (like stories or whatever) doesn't mean that all users utilize that feature... I can't stand them, and I wish there was a way to disable them in instagram altogether. It's just an annoyance and consumes screen space that could be used for something interesting. That, plus the "live" (also stolen) feature are designed to keep you perpetually engaged in the platform through FOMO, "maybe you won't see something if you go offline for a few days."
Like FB's new "Your Story" and "Direct" taking up 3/4" (20mm) of screen space? Yeah...just as annoying.
...it assumes that all potential users of Snapchat would actually use Snapchat. That is *never* the case. So yes, FB might take *some* real potential users of Snapchat, but the majority are probably people that would never use Snapchat any way and only use it because it is in the FB app.
Personally, I won't use it either way - thus I'm not in that "potential user" category...but you shouldn't make that assumption - it's a really bad one.
We have dedicated courts specifically for Bankruptcy and Immigration. We need a dedicated court for both Patent and Malpractice issues.
We have dedicated courts for Patents, that's a good bit of the problem. Congress created it to take the load off SCOTUS (who use to be the sole arbiter of patents cases); since then NPE's have arisen and it's become a nightmare for everyone.
They don't have to "Sign it away to heirs". Copyrights automatically become property of their estate, Unless they put in a legal structure to explicitly donate that asset, and their heirs will ultimately direct the disposition.
And the Executor of the Estate has to usually be convinced of to do what is being asked, they often have not understanding of the field, etc - so it's usually a very long, hard road; usually code gets rewritten in those cases.
The standard GPL license has a clause allowing the code to be distributed under the current license *or any future version* of the GPL license.
That's not part of the GPL AFAIK, rather it's the language some developers (not all) put into the code files that they are licensing. Personally, I don't do that and any version of the GPL that does auto-include such language is something I'd avoid. Sure, I trust the license that I am using now but I don't necessarily trust a newer version to do something I don't approve of.
It's easy to do your own programming on your own computer. It's only through the trap of sloppiness one would use their employer's equipment. That's one reason it's nice the California law focuses on that: make some minimal effort to partition your life, and in return get some (unfortunately minimal) protection. Likewise, "free time" for someone on salary is meaningless. The problem is entirely "existing or prospective," which this policy doesn't seem to change from the California baseline. It's onerous because:
- you are likely to be interested in similar things to your work, otherwise you wouldn't have taken the job.
- for large companies the category is incredibly broad. For example, at Google it would cover basically anything, so the pattern of discretion that their judgement committee exercises determines how onerous this rule is, not the law, and not the policy.
Well, this may be something that is more unique to GitHub (and similar companies - GitLab, BitBucket, etc) where the companies product is something it's employees would like to use on their own for their own projects. Essentially, if they were an employee of GitHub under most normal policies they wouldn't be able to use GitHub for their personal work or contributing to projects hosted by GitHub as that would be using "company resources". So the change is slight in that it is really just allowing their employees to use their product - which has become a standard in the industry - for the employee's personal works without GitHub being able to claim ownership of random things.
And in all honesty, when I talk to employers about jobs I make sure to have something similar - I have my own projects that I am working on, and while I avoid using company resources for those projects, I still want clarity that it's mine and the company can't take it or I don't sign.
It's a nice snarky response, but not appropriate for lab technologies. Lab prototypes are not exactly like commercial cells; they tend to be heavy and/or require a lot of supporting hardware and/or are sensitive to their operating conditions and/or other issues. The potential of a technology that's been researched in the lab requires analysis; turning it into finished commercial products takes money. You can't just say "send me a working battery" as if things pop straight from lab tech to some sealed product that blows refined commercial products off the market.
Thankfully, at least from reading the paper, the tech being utilized here doesn't sound particularly complicated to build. Hopefully there will be some outside attempts to reproduce it soon. If outside attempts confirm the results, then it can start to come time to think about making it into actual battery products. Although they're going to need to have a firm understanding of exactly what's going on in order to be able to optimize it. If outside attempts can't reproduce it? Then there's a good chance it'll go down the cold fusion route.
To which they could just invite him to the lab. The snarky response is mostly to keep away people that are just tossing out theories with no proof. Musk would probably be glad to stop by and see a working prototype, get the explanation, and then participate in the validation phases. But it keeps away the people asking for research money saying "I can do X if you give me $YYYYYYYYY" - he's not interested in funding that.
Mozilla is largely use to be used by tech-savvy people. I use it because I can mod the living daylights out of it, from about:config, to the way it acts, looks, performs using on-baord tweaks or add-ons. No other browser allows this level of customisation. Mozilla are losing users because they cannot leave well enough alone.
FTFY. With changes Mozilla is making, they are quickly killing their long time user-base. By FF57 they will have probably 50% of their current users.
I've been a long fan of Firefox due to the TabGroups (Panorama) functionality. FF57 will see an end to that as the new API that the add-ons must use can't support it. Add on to that the massive memory/cpu bloating that has gone on lately, and Firefox is being replaced more and more with Chrome.