You make the rather false presumption that any other OS out there is somehow secure. They aren't. Entire botnets are made up of MacOS(X), Linux, and BSD machines.
Well, the interesting bit is that the two Trojans identified as being the culprits didn't use the ads and app installs for anything else but to rake in unearned cash. They themselves autoroot any device they find themselves on and then the show begins. The question is, did the Chinese firmware company intentionally use those trojans, or not. I would have to think that they did, considering their past behavior.
Except in many cases now, it's not just the primary site running a single CoinHive script, but by multiple instances of it being run by every third-party site with JavaScript loaded on the page you're visiting.
There was an FBI agent that gave a presentation at Widener School of Law detailing the fact that banks have been far ahead of.gov in these matters. What you see in the average bank even way back around 2000 is still ahead. The NSA, DOD and CIA have the most secure.gov systems and they are still less secure than bank systems because banks aren't prone to letting contractors of any sort access to certain primary systems or data unlike.gov agencies.
They didn't have to do any wool pulling, as Hollyweird has had the Democrats in their pockets since at least the 1960's. When you have an entire political party in your pocket, you tend to get away with whatever you want.
It isn't just Republicans though, Verizon has many, many Dems in it's corporate pocket, for instance, as do Comcast. Take a gander at any state where Verizon and Comcast operate and you will find greased palms on both sides of the political aisle. The only two things that have kept them in check are the various courts and federal bureaucrats. It certainly hasn't been the FCC or any of the State or Federal Congresscritters.
Some of us absolutely can't stand the awful defaults of an ugly gray or blue browser with gray or white scrollbars a blindingly bright white background upon which black text is displayed and ads all over the damned place.
The problem is, the way our interconnected networks are designed ("the internet") basically guarantees that your data is being read or recorded by someone, somewhere, even if they aren't the intended recipient. Just take a gander at how many hops appear during a routine traceroute. Any one of them could be having fun with your data and there is nothing you can do about it basically. Sure, we created band-aids like TLS and HTTPS to try to remedy the (many) fundamental design flaws, but there is really only so much that can be done to protect data when it travels outside of your local network until a fundamental re-design and re-build of the entire thing with data security as a top priority takes place.
The information leaks from the various intelligence agencies have pretty much confirmed that most networks and corporations are compromised in some fashion, and many, if not most, software based (and even some hardware based) encryption schemes are as well.
Yeah, this may be true, but I have yet to see a Leaf or a Tesla anywhere within 300 miles of where I live and like I said, there's basically nobody authorized to work on them that's even close (mainly due to strict state EPA commercial regs regarding anything with a Lithium-based battery). At least for the Leaf, I would expect to find at least one on the dealer lots, but I have yet to see one there either (there are 15 Nissan dealers within 300 miles of my home, none of them carry the Leaf).
Maybe once the chargers become (much, MUCH) more available it might happen, but I know here you either get a Prius (a poor choice, and not just because of needing access to a charging unit at some point) or you go with one of the several models of CNG vehicles that are available (and we have CNG stations, as my state sits right on top of the Marcellus Shale and made a big push for dealers to carry CNG vehicles and the fuel suppliers added CNG pumps all over the place).
Regarding the battery situation, you'd probably love it here. If they catch you tossing out a Lithium-based battery in the regular trash it's a $10,000 fine per battery. Disposing of mobile devices with glued-in batteries and end-of-life laptop batteries is a damned nuisance now as there is only one scheduled disposal per year in my area (and that is also the only time you can dispose of LCDs and LEDs).
As an interesting fact: Our state keeps statistics on how many miles are traveled in the state by registered CNG vehicles and by electric vehicles. CNG is right around 25 million combined miles (commercial and non-commercial vehicles - but mostly bus, snow plow, municipal, and big-rig traffic) per year and electric is at.28 million, although that is expected to rise to 2.8 million within the next 5 years once the municipal (mostly police and bus) electric vehicle fleets start operating full time.
I don't care one way or another if people drive electric vehicles or they choose something else, as I honestly don't think they are really anything more than a placebo (at least currently) due to the large amount of energy consumed and the toxic pollution that gets produced when they are manufactured offsetting any benefit they might have by not producing exhaust particulates. Maybe if enough commercial and municipal fleets swap over and we come up with far cleaner and less energy intensive processes for battery manufacturing and manufacturing the on-board computers and related parts it'll really make a difference (has anyone had the balls to ask Elon directly how Tesla is dealing with the currently unavoidable toxic pollution created from the manufacturing of electric vehicles?)
It's quite easy to stop if they truly wanted to stop it. Good luck translating any sort of virtual currency into any hard form of the same if there are no outlets that you can do it at. No amount of wishing can save Bitcoin and the like if governments and the WTO collectively decide it's a problem (on top of the problem of virtual currency value disappearing into nothing in an instant if enough people decide that it's no better than the stuff that came with my Monopoly board game).
We have massive herds of cattle and large landfills producing copious amounts of methane gas daily, yet he wants to convert electricity into methane. Mayhap he isn't aware of the various methane reclamation projects starting to pop up in and around landfills and the large ag gigs, because otherwise he's going to spend a lot of money to create a resource (and wasting a lot of generated electricity) there is already an abundance of otherwise.
That depends on how long it takes for the battery bank or controllers to need to be replaced. If those crap out at 100k miles for any reason then the cost of replacement for the batteries and/or controllers is higher than that of a complete ICE rebuild/replacement by several thousand dollars. In many cases this absolutely requires the service to be performed at an authorized (and HAZMAT licensed with all of the extra and expensive endorsements) repair facility that may or may not be anywhere close to where you and your vehicle reside.
I live in a more rural area, and I always chuckle at the people who buy a Prius when the closest place that can legally work on the vehicle is 1.5 hrs of drive time (at the 65mph highway speed) away.
Uh, that's because at least in the case of theme, it doesn't need that cruft functionality as an extension because it already has a theme engine as part of the browser. I'm running a dark Chrome theme with custom tab sizes and icons as we speak. As for sidebars, I don't think those even exist in Chrome the way Firefox has them and never has (and ultimately they aren't useful for this browser anyhow). That leaves WebRequest API and that's so minor the majority of users won't notice nor care.
It isn't just some....pretty much every corporate giant and military in the world purchases Intel's chip offerings, in bulk. Intel's consumer-end market is and always has been a fraction of their overall sales (and that includes the bulk-buyers in this segment such as Dell and Apple). This has only slightly changed in the short era since ARM-designs took off in popularity. If AMD and a few other of the smaller chip makers could procure those kinds of contracts, things might actually change, but until then we're stuck with Intel basically at the top of the heap for the foreseeable future along with Samsung, being the other 600-lb gorilla in the chip space but whom rarely gets discussed when they are arguably just as bad as Intel.
The parts in Apple's devices are made by the exact same manufacturers that fab the parts every other device (there are only three radio manufacturers for these devices to choose from after all). There are only so many board, screen, and chip fabs in the world. This is why the Chinese are able to take those same parts and slap them in their own clone devices for a fraction of the price that Apple charges (They go without iOS, even though the device was internally identical otherwise, and in some cases beat the iPhone to market in China at least). The same goes for smart tvs, etc. You see lots of brand names but the parts inside of them are virtually identical due to the same limitations in the amount of parts manufacturers (this is especially true about the visual panels themselves).
The person you replied to is right on the face of things, it's a device assembled of COTS parts to an Apple design spec, there is nothing inside of them that are manufactured by Apple or otherwise makes those parts in any way special from what is found in similar devices assembled from the same parts under other brand names.
This is true...and those buzzwords are often a misnomer for what actually occurs....such terms as Lean Manufacturing, Agile, and Quality Assurance in particular. I have yet to see a company of any size greater than 10 employees be agile at anything, Lean Manufacturing in practice, instead of streamlining intelligently to increase productivity and quality, just means fewer employees, longer hours per employee for as little compensation to those employees as possible, and more automation even if that automation leads to mediocre at best product quality. Quality Assurance is hit and miss. In some business sectors it means remedying defects in products or making sure metal shavings aren't in your dog's treats, in others it means someone may be monitoring your phone conversations or similar nonsense.
Look up "copyright harmony", and you'll find the answers you seek young padawan.
In short - the US DMCA has an affect on every nation it has trade agreements with and if you need a recent example of how this plays out, look at the Kim Dotcom case.
The WTO has already confirmed that China has been dumping solar panels on the international market, much like they did their cheap (low-quality) steel back in the '80s. A poster above said they think it was local government subsidies, etc, when in fact it was their national government subsidizing all of the costs from mineral extraction to all production and shipping costs.
They figured this out because they took all of the data such as costs of materials, how much panels sold for on average, how much the cost average was to produce in an automated factory and found that they were pricing their panels (at the time) at 26 cents per kilowatt hour generation value, which was an impossibility when every other manufacturer in the entire world was around $1.85 kw/hr.
The thing you're ignoring though - it will end up just like it is now, with ads plastered everywhere AND they expect you to run their miner or not use their stuff/visit their page. Also, there is way too much room for abuse, everyone and their uncle will shove their stuff in no matter what any "spec" says they are allowed to do/should do.
Both hinge on if China beats us to having working hypersonic missiles with EMP warheads. We have the missiles (being tested now, their propulsion and first flight tests already worked), now we just need the warheads. They are working on gaining the missiles, but are not anywhere close to having the warheads.
Whomever has these can literally snuff out the economy (and power grid) of any rival in a virtual instant in this age of everything being computer controlled. Modern vehicles of all stripes? Toast. Research facilities, hospitals, etc. All toast. Their nuclear arsenal couldn't even be launched, so we wouldn't even have to fear M.A.D. retaliation.
I keep backing the people who have been making the Shadowrun games (Shadowrun Returns, etc). I haven't been disappointed in the least with the outcomes of doing so.
Google is already working on changes to their update mechanisms for Android (and Android's successor OS test builds) that cut out the cause of delayed/non-existent updates entirely: Wireless companies like Verizon.
To add further: Most states I know have laws on the books prohibiting convicted felons from associating with one another at any time after their release. These laws are conveniently ignored when it comes to business employment issues, but are one of the tools LEOs and prosecutors use regularly to put these men and women back behind bars in a heartbeat.
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You make the rather false presumption that any other OS out there is somehow secure. They aren't. Entire botnets are made up of MacOS(X), Linux, and BSD machines.
To let the Russians know in no uncertain terms that they are not as slick as they'd like to think they are.
Well, the interesting bit is that the two Trojans identified as being the culprits didn't use the ads and app installs for anything else but to rake in unearned cash. They themselves autoroot any device they find themselves on and then the show begins. The question is, did the Chinese firmware company intentionally use those trojans, or not. I would have to think that they did, considering their past behavior.
Except in many cases now, it's not just the primary site running a single CoinHive script, but by multiple instances of it being run by every third-party site with JavaScript loaded on the page you're visiting.
This shit needs nipped in the bud.
Except in this vector the "free" software alternatives don't even come close to accomplishing what they should. All two of them.
There was an FBI agent that gave a presentation at Widener School of Law detailing the fact that banks have been far ahead of .gov in these matters. What you see in the average bank even way back around 2000 is still ahead. The NSA, DOD and CIA have the most secure .gov systems and they are still less secure than bank systems because banks aren't prone to letting contractors of any sort access to certain primary systems or data unlike .gov agencies.
They didn't have to do any wool pulling, as Hollyweird has had the Democrats in their pockets since at least the 1960's. When you have an entire political party in your pocket, you tend to get away with whatever you want.
It isn't just Republicans though, Verizon has many, many Dems in it's corporate pocket, for instance, as do Comcast. Take a gander at any state where Verizon and Comcast operate and you will find greased palms on both sides of the political aisle. The only two things that have kept them in check are the various courts and federal bureaucrats. It certainly hasn't been the FCC or any of the State or Federal Congresscritters.
Some of us absolutely can't stand the awful defaults of an ugly gray or blue browser with gray or white scrollbars a blindingly bright white background upon which black text is displayed and ads all over the damned place.
To remedy those situations, we need extensions.
The problem is, the way our interconnected networks are designed ("the internet") basically guarantees that your data is being read or recorded by someone, somewhere, even if they aren't the intended recipient. Just take a gander at how many hops appear during a routine traceroute. Any one of them could be having fun with your data and there is nothing you can do about it basically. Sure, we created band-aids like TLS and HTTPS to try to remedy the (many) fundamental design flaws, but there is really only so much that can be done to protect data when it travels outside of your local network until a fundamental re-design and re-build of the entire thing with data security as a top priority takes place.
The information leaks from the various intelligence agencies have pretty much confirmed that most networks and corporations are compromised in some fashion, and many, if not most, software based (and even some hardware based) encryption schemes are as well.
Yeah, this may be true, but I have yet to see a Leaf or a Tesla anywhere within 300 miles of where I live and like I said, there's basically nobody authorized to work on them that's even close (mainly due to strict state EPA commercial regs regarding anything with a Lithium-based battery). At least for the Leaf, I would expect to find at least one on the dealer lots, but I have yet to see one there either (there are 15 Nissan dealers within 300 miles of my home, none of them carry the Leaf).
Maybe once the chargers become (much, MUCH) more available it might happen, but I know here you either get a Prius (a poor choice, and not just because of needing access to a charging unit at some point) or you go with one of the several models of CNG vehicles that are available (and we have CNG stations, as my state sits right on top of the Marcellus Shale and made a big push for dealers to carry CNG vehicles and the fuel suppliers added CNG pumps all over the place).
Regarding the battery situation, you'd probably love it here. If they catch you tossing out a Lithium-based battery in the regular trash it's a $10,000 fine per battery. Disposing of mobile devices with glued-in batteries and end-of-life laptop batteries is a damned nuisance now as there is only one scheduled disposal per year in my area (and that is also the only time you can dispose of LCDs and LEDs).
As an interesting fact: Our state keeps statistics on how many miles are traveled in the state by registered CNG vehicles and by electric vehicles. CNG is right around 25 million combined miles (commercial and non-commercial vehicles - but mostly bus, snow plow, municipal, and big-rig traffic) per year and electric is at .28 million, although that is expected to rise to 2.8 million within the next 5 years once the municipal (mostly police and bus) electric vehicle fleets start operating full time.
I don't care one way or another if people drive electric vehicles or they choose something else, as I honestly don't think they are really anything more than a placebo (at least currently) due to the large amount of energy consumed and the toxic pollution that gets produced when they are manufactured offsetting any benefit they might have by not producing exhaust particulates. Maybe if enough commercial and municipal fleets swap over and we come up with far cleaner and less energy intensive processes for battery manufacturing and manufacturing the on-board computers and related parts it'll really make a difference (has anyone had the balls to ask Elon directly how Tesla is dealing with the currently unavoidable toxic pollution created from the manufacturing of electric vehicles?)
It's quite easy to stop if they truly wanted to stop it. Good luck translating any sort of virtual currency into any hard form of the same if there are no outlets that you can do it at. No amount of wishing can save Bitcoin and the like if governments and the WTO collectively decide it's a problem (on top of the problem of virtual currency value disappearing into nothing in an instant if enough people decide that it's no better than the stuff that came with my Monopoly board game).
We have massive herds of cattle and large landfills producing copious amounts of methane gas daily, yet he wants to convert electricity into methane. Mayhap he isn't aware of the various methane reclamation projects starting to pop up in and around landfills and the large ag gigs, because otherwise he's going to spend a lot of money to create a resource (and wasting a lot of generated electricity) there is already an abundance of otherwise.
That depends on how long it takes for the battery bank or controllers to need to be replaced. If those crap out at 100k miles for any reason then the cost of replacement for the batteries and/or controllers is higher than that of a complete ICE rebuild/replacement by several thousand dollars. In many cases this absolutely requires the service to be performed at an authorized (and HAZMAT licensed with all of the extra and expensive endorsements) repair facility that may or may not be anywhere close to where you and your vehicle reside.
I live in a more rural area, and I always chuckle at the people who buy a Prius when the closest place that can legally work on the vehicle is 1.5 hrs of drive time (at the 65mph highway speed) away.
Uh, that's because at least in the case of theme, it doesn't need that cruft functionality as an extension because it already has a theme engine as part of the browser. I'm running a dark Chrome theme with custom tab sizes and icons as we speak. As for sidebars, I don't think those even exist in Chrome the way Firefox has them and never has (and ultimately they aren't useful for this browser anyhow). That leaves WebRequest API and that's so minor the majority of users won't notice nor care.
It isn't just some....pretty much every corporate giant and military in the world purchases Intel's chip offerings, in bulk. Intel's consumer-end market is and always has been a fraction of their overall sales (and that includes the bulk-buyers in this segment such as Dell and Apple). This has only slightly changed in the short era since ARM-designs took off in popularity. If AMD and a few other of the smaller chip makers could procure those kinds of contracts, things might actually change, but until then we're stuck with Intel basically at the top of the heap for the foreseeable future along with Samsung, being the other 600-lb gorilla in the chip space but whom rarely gets discussed when they are arguably just as bad as Intel.
The parts in Apple's devices are made by the exact same manufacturers that fab the parts every other device (there are only three radio manufacturers for these devices to choose from after all). There are only so many board, screen, and chip fabs in the world. This is why the Chinese are able to take those same parts and slap them in their own clone devices for a fraction of the price that Apple charges (They go without iOS, even though the device was internally identical otherwise, and in some cases beat the iPhone to market in China at least). The same goes for smart tvs, etc. You see lots of brand names but the parts inside of them are virtually identical due to the same limitations in the amount of parts manufacturers (this is especially true about the visual panels themselves).
The person you replied to is right on the face of things, it's a device assembled of COTS parts to an Apple design spec, there is nothing inside of them that are manufactured by Apple or otherwise makes those parts in any way special from what is found in similar devices assembled from the same parts under other brand names.
This is true...and those buzzwords are often a misnomer for what actually occurs....such terms as Lean Manufacturing, Agile, and Quality Assurance in particular. I have yet to see a company of any size greater than 10 employees be agile at anything, Lean Manufacturing in practice, instead of streamlining intelligently to increase productivity and quality, just means fewer employees, longer hours per employee for as little compensation to those employees as possible, and more automation even if that automation leads to mediocre at best product quality. Quality Assurance is hit and miss. In some business sectors it means remedying defects in products or making sure metal shavings aren't in your dog's treats, in others it means someone may be monitoring your phone conversations or similar nonsense.
Look up "copyright harmony", and you'll find the answers you seek young padawan.
In short - the US DMCA has an affect on every nation it has trade agreements with and if you need a recent example of how this plays out, look at the Kim Dotcom case.
The WTO has already confirmed that China has been dumping solar panels on the international market, much like they did their cheap (low-quality) steel back in the '80s. A poster above said they think it was local government subsidies, etc, when in fact it was their national government subsidizing all of the costs from mineral extraction to all production and shipping costs.
They figured this out because they took all of the data such as costs of materials, how much panels sold for on average, how much the cost average was to produce in an automated factory and found that they were pricing their panels (at the time) at 26 cents per kilowatt hour generation value, which was an impossibility when every other manufacturer in the entire world was around $1.85 kw/hr.
The thing you're ignoring though - it will end up just like it is now, with ads plastered everywhere AND they expect you to run their miner or not use their stuff/visit their page. Also, there is way too much room for abuse, everyone and their uncle will shove their stuff in no matter what any "spec" says they are allowed to do/should do.
Both hinge on if China beats us to having working hypersonic missiles with EMP warheads. We have the missiles (being tested now, their propulsion and first flight tests already worked), now we just need the warheads. They are working on gaining the missiles, but are not anywhere close to having the warheads.
Whomever has these can literally snuff out the economy (and power grid) of any rival in a virtual instant in this age of everything being computer controlled. Modern vehicles of all stripes? Toast. Research facilities, hospitals, etc. All toast. Their nuclear arsenal couldn't even be launched, so we wouldn't even have to fear M.A.D. retaliation.
I keep backing the people who have been making the Shadowrun games (Shadowrun Returns, etc). I haven't been disappointed in the least with the outcomes of doing so.
Google is already working on changes to their update mechanisms for Android (and Android's successor OS test builds) that cut out the cause of delayed/non-existent updates entirely: Wireless companies like Verizon.
To add further: Most states I know have laws on the books prohibiting convicted felons from associating with one another at any time after their release. These laws are conveniently ignored when it comes to business employment issues, but are one of the tools LEOs and prosecutors use regularly to put these men and women back behind bars in a heartbeat.