"I feel like some of these stories are like Bob's Home Security fails to protect you if your wife is a serial killer."
To an extent they are, but if you are using cloud providers, the other tennants, and the monkeys at the cloud provider itself should all be considered potentially hostile.
And even within companies there is this (legitimate) concept that everyone in IT shouldn't hold the keys to payroll, finance, HR, and the R&D trade secretes... so there are lots scenarios where the people administering the systems, the servers, the cloud fabric etc, shouldn't be able to get access to the contents of the virtual machines.
I mean, seriously... great level subject. Long underground hallways with pipes carrying water, electrical, and even steam (!!) connecting buildings... labyrinthine wings, most rooms with multiple exits, lots of interior and exterior windows, rooms within rooms, hub-spoke layouts, theaters, open stair cases, interior balconies, the science wing had bona fide radioactive storage, biohazard storage, greenhouses, centrifuges, lasers, loading areas for trucks, etc, etc... the grounds had courtyards, reflecting pools...
I don't think finding an example of a market that's even worse really supports your argument.
I will say that consoles are a bit of special market in my eyes, because a) they are strictly an optional luxury toy. b) they are almost exclusively just for games. c) people generally own one or more of them; this is popular, common and not particularly burdensome.
A phone is a much more general purpose tool. Sure it has games, but people use them for work too. And unlike a console, most people only will buy one, and it would be a serious burden to carry a bunch around to get access to different apps. So Apple behaving like their phones are a gamecube is a lot more obnoxious and anti-consumer than when nintendo does it.
But that's not a defense of the console makers. They really also should also be forced to open up more too.
That's like saying GM can block you from getting your oil changed at minute lube, and its not anti-competitive because minute-lube can produce its own cars and perform oil changes on those.
That's fucking idiotic.
And its the main reason i don't own an apple ios device. I want multiple store fronts. For example, I want stuff i buy on humblebundle to work on all my compatible devices.
I have no objection ot the apple store existing, but buying an apple phone shouldn't amount to consent to only purchasing from the apple store, because apple actively blocks other stores from existing. That's anti-competitive.
Should your teleco get a cut of all your telephone and online purchases because they built the platform you are using to make those purchases too. Never mind your shiny little phone that's peanutes here; what about all the telephone and internet infrastructure you use? Why does Apple get a 30 cents of every dollar you spend while holding your phone, but ATT, Comcast, Verizon, etc etc don't get 30 cents on every dollar you spend on Amazon, or ordering Pizza, or on Apple Store purchases etc. Your piddly little phone is useless without the network, why shouldn't they get 30% of every dollar you spend using the network?
"They spent a lot of money on the infrastructure you use, and there's no reason to let others profit from it for free." Right?
" If you don't know, that's fine, but don't pretend I asked a completely different question."
All politicians have private lives and private accounts essentially exempt from government oversight regulation.
Indeed this has been dragged through the media for years now... good Ol' Hillary's email server -- the primary problem with her having it was that she conducted state department business on it which broke the rules since it wasn't being properly captured for archiving and FOIA records compliance etc.
The secondary issue was the potential for dissemination of classified information.
But simply having a private email account / email server for private non-governance related activity would have been perfectly fine under the rules.
I don't think this isn't really about 'personal life' vs 'public life'.
Its not public life vs private life... its simply that he's designated that twitter account an *official* communications channel, by using it as such, and even referring to it as such... now it IS that.
And now its held to the same rules and regulations that all official communications channels with the government are held to.
"I think the question is a good indicator of whether someone is an open borders "let everyone in" advocate, whether publicly or not."
I disagree.
Voting is a constitutional right. You shouldn't need to prove anything to anyone before exercising it.
The state should have to prove you aren't a citizen, rather than you proving that you are. The burden should be on the state to prosecute fraudulent voting and fraudulent voters, and convict in the courts.
It should not on the citizens to establish to the states arbitrary satisfaction that they are in fact citizens before they can exercise their voting right.
Otherwise, you are denying citizens their most basic constitutional right without any evidence. This is appalling.
Voting is not like driving.
And If the state thinks voter fraud is a big problem, then start investigating suspected cases. Get evidence that someone voted fraudulently -- arrest them for it, deport them for it.
Add legislation to force recounts or even re-elections if voter fraud is discovered in amounts sufficient to have swung the election. Voter fraud should not be tolerated.
But due process should be followed. Citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty. And to deny someone's birthright and essential right of citizenship? By default? Without any evidence of wrong doing? Is that who we are?
You are going to call me out on the garbage island (which yes, is just a higher concentration of plastic particulates that can't be seen by the naked eye...) but you are going to let the Cthulhu aliens go unchallenged.
It can mean only one thing... yaji'u ash-shudhdhadh
"I never understood why people thought this was funny, Chewbacca doesn't live on Endor."
I mean, i don't think its the greatest joke ever told. But whether or not Chewbacca does or does not live on Endor is completely irrelevant. I mean you realize that right? To call that error out, to suggest THAT is the sticking point for you??? --- because what? If Chewbacca DID live on Endor then this argument would have somehow worked ?
The fact the idiots hearing the argument were convinced by an utter nonsense argument was the joke.
The fact that, no Chewbacca doesn't even live on Endor is an inside joke for star wars nerds on top of that; because anyone who only saw RotJ once back in the 80s and doesn't remember it scene by scene could well accept that premise that Chewbacca was from Endor too -- but it doesn't even matter whether its true or not; its just the icing on the cake.
Remember that floating island of plastic garbage? Things that float are on surface. How on earth a bag got from the surface all the way down to the bottom of the ocean I can't even imagine... Cthulhu aliens must have pulled it down.
"We are creating a generation of sociopaths, who have inverted their priorities and have no notion of right or wrong."
People ostensibly working for a civilian advertising company; don't want to contribute directly to the development of autonomous military drone killing machines. And you call them 'sociopaths' who have no notion of right or wrong?
I didn't say there was no use case for it. I said the use cases were not important, and that the risk/security situation and compromises to use for its use cases don't make any sense.
If, for example, you are paralyzed from the neck down, your situation is quite different, and the added convenience of voice commands to your quality of life makes it worth accepting the security risks. But if you are able bodied its absurd to accept the current security risks in exchange for the relatively trivial conveniences it offers.
Also, I absolutely do want it to be more secure... but simply wishing for things doesn't make them possible.
Security does not need to be, nor should it ever be, an all or nothing approach.
100% Agreed.
But the difference between a physical door and an amazon echo is that I absolutely do need a door and I absolutely don't need an amazon echo.
So I absolutely do need a to balance security with effectiveness with convenience with expense... and voila we have various door locks.
I don't need a voice assistant. And the convenience afforded by not having to reach for the remote to pause a movie or to not have to take my phone out of my pocket to dial it doesn't merit the kind of security compromises one has to make for the utter fluff it offers as features.
Voiceprints are a good start as they can instantly stop the most prolific attacks.
And your house stops working when you get a cold. People don't necessarily want voiceprints because it makes the system less convenient. Now they have to add and remove people... their parents, or their visiting kids, or their friends from out of town, and the babysitter... you have to have to managed fine grained security... do you need a voiceprint match to pause the TV what about to set a timer or play a song? If yes... then your guests can't pause a movie or add a song to the queue without a whole setup process... if no... the neighbor kids can prank you...
Basically it's a hugely effective method of blocking spam.
The issue is that is a huge attractor for spam in the first place, while offering no benefit proportional to the security risk it creates.
Sure you can. Just fork it and maintain your own project from now on and get everyone to switch to your fork. Seems a bit extreme over a joke in the documentation.
"so what? they play audio through my mailbox slot and tell it to play a podcast?"
That's about the most innocuous thing you can do. In the prank category -- you could tell it to play never gonna give you up at full volume at 3am. every day.
Moving up from there... tell it to call everyone on your contact list and hang up, or to text them all weird messages.
Tell it to send a booty call to your crazy ex. Tell it to text a break up message to your girlfriend.
Tell it to unlock your door - i mean amazon sells a door lock now specifically so you can do this with amazon prime. If it catches on this could be pretty big and not some nerdy niche zigbee thing.
Tell it to turn off the heat in the dead of winter while you are on vacation.
Tell it to start your car in the garage. (yeah... this already a thing you can do... fucking brilliant)
Tell it to record your conversations and send them to me. Tell it to send me your photos. Tell it to post all your photos to facebook or twitter. Tell it to forward me your email, or post them all to facebook and twiiter.
Tell it to install new skills / features / apps to do stuff you didn't intend.
Tell it to buy you something from amazon. I hear you can get 1,000 ethernet cables. (Maybe I'm even the seller of such marked up cables.)
Tell it to call 911. (siri at least already does it)
Too bad you posted AC, because you made some good arguments.
"Actually this is what we did during Obama. Wait it out as painful as it was. Now we have some measure of relief."
While I don't really see anything Obama did as being as nonsensical as Trump, you aren't wrong -- that is the whole purpose of term limits, so that the president is always just a temporary situation. And the country is given a chance to re-calibrate its direction every few years. This is a good thing.
The Paris accord - was symbolic, and participation in it was symbolic. It meant we collectively acknowledge there is a problem and want to fix it. Nobody thinks the Paris accord is going to fix everything. Trump withdrawing from indicates he's in flat denial that mankind even has a responsibility to maintaining the planet.
As for the Iran deal, It's in everyone's best interests for countries to have mutually dependent interlinked economies. Not only is that good for the economy, but its good for peace -- nobody wants a war that's going to cost you more than you could ever hope to gain from it. And its much less likely that a war would break out between trading partners that are mutually benefiting each other. Its also in our best interests to have Iran trading with us, rather than isolating it into an opposition block.
"The wall."
This isn't about immigration policy, this isn't about open borders, this isn't about one-world-government nonsense. This is about the fact that the very idea of building a physical 2000 mile long 30 foot high wall is just plain stupid. Doubly so in a country that is despearately behind in important infrastructure projects like bridge maintenance. Even if we diverted all that money to the wall, it would be falling over in places before they even finished building it, and then what? We're going to fix a stupid wall while our bridges collapse?
Even customs and immigration think they can do their job just fine without a wall.
As for your tangent about one world governments and George Soros and whatnot... take your meds. Nothing you said there is even on the radar of what the issues with Trump are about.
And really most of this stuff is just as bad even if it is audible. It just means one has to figure out when you aren't home before they hold a speaker up to your mail slot / under the door / up to a window.
And how are they going to secure it? Voiceprints -- we already have software that can defeat voiceprinting with a small sample. Passwords? That you have to say aloud everytime you use the device? That's pretty much pointless.
This type of technology is fundamentally broken and from what i can see so far, it cannot be fixed.
Yes, they both would have been lousy presidents, but I don't think it would have been chaotic or unpredictable.
"Romney" really would have been fine, perfectly average.
"Sarah Palin" -- I think John McCain would have been a good president. It was sad he tried to pander to the far-right nutjobs with Palin as VP, but as long as he wasn't impeached or killed the VP doesn't really do much and even Palin would have been ok in that role. President Palin... would have been pretty awful though, but I think she'd just have been a puppet for the rest of the republican party establishment rather than a the uncontained chaos that is Trump.
So, your recollection is that he was really disruptive until he was stopped. (The second foundations intervention in stopping him is rougly equivalent to Trump's elected term expiring - ie "we the people" elect someone else in his place.)
And after he's removed from power, his disruption stops and the machines will start turning to 'restore history' to the path it was on prior to the disruption.
It's a great analogy. And we are the 'second foundation', which is kind of poetic really.:p
Slashdot Mirror
"I feel like some of these stories are like Bob's Home Security fails to protect you if your wife is a serial killer."
To an extent they are, but if you are using cloud providers, the other tennants, and the monkeys at the cloud provider itself should all be considered potentially hostile.
And even within companies there is this (legitimate) concept that everyone in IT shouldn't hold the keys to payroll, finance, HR, and the R&D trade secretes... so there are lots scenarios where the people administering the systems, the servers, the cloud fabric etc, shouldn't be able to get access to the contents of the virtual machines.
Yup. I did my university... quake2 iirc
I mean, seriously... great level subject. Long underground hallways with pipes carrying water, electrical, and even steam (!!) connecting buildings ... labyrinthine wings, most rooms with multiple exits, lots of interior and exterior windows, rooms within rooms, hub-spoke layouts, theaters, open stair cases, interior balconies, the science wing had bona fide radioactive storage, biohazard storage, greenhouses, centrifuges, lasers, loading areas for trucks, etc, etc... the grounds had courtyards, reflecting pools...
It practically begged to be a death match level.
I don't think finding an example of a market that's even worse really supports your argument.
I will say that consoles are a bit of special market in my eyes, because
a) they are strictly an optional luxury toy.
b) they are almost exclusively just for games.
c) people generally own one or more of them; this is popular, common and not particularly burdensome.
A phone is a much more general purpose tool. Sure it has games, but people use them for work too. And unlike a console, most people only will buy one, and it would be a serious burden to carry a bunch around to get access to different apps. So Apple behaving like their phones are a gamecube is a lot more obnoxious and anti-consumer than when nintendo does it.
But that's not a defense of the console makers. They really also should also be forced to open up more too.
" Steam is free to release their own SteamPhone"
And what does that have to do with anything?
That's like saying GM can block you from getting your oil changed at minute lube, and its not anti-competitive because minute-lube can produce its own cars and perform oil changes on those.
That's fucking idiotic.
And its the main reason i don't own an apple ios device. I want multiple store fronts. For example, I want stuff i buy on humblebundle to work on all my compatible devices.
I have no objection ot the apple store existing, but buying an apple phone shouldn't amount to consent to only purchasing from the apple store, because apple actively blocks other stores from existing. That's anti-competitive.
Should your teleco get a cut of all your telephone and online purchases because they built the platform you are using to make those purchases too. Never mind your shiny little phone that's peanutes here; what about all the telephone and internet infrastructure you use? Why does Apple get a 30 cents of every dollar you spend while holding your phone, but ATT, Comcast, Verizon, etc etc don't get 30 cents on every dollar you spend on Amazon, or ordering Pizza, or on Apple Store purchases etc. Your piddly little phone is useless without the network, why shouldn't they get 30% of every dollar you spend using the network?
"They spent a lot of money on the infrastructure you use, and there's no reason to let others profit from it for free." Right?
" If you don't know, that's fine, but don't pretend I asked a completely different question."
All politicians have private lives and private accounts essentially exempt from government oversight regulation.
Indeed this has been dragged through the media for years now... good Ol' Hillary's email server -- the primary problem with her having it was that she conducted state department business on it which broke the rules since it wasn't being properly captured for archiving and FOIA records compliance etc.
The secondary issue was the potential for dissemination of classified information.
But simply having a private email account / email server for private non-governance related activity would have been perfectly fine under the rules.
I don't think this isn't really about 'personal life' vs 'public life'.
Its not public life vs private life ... its simply that he's designated that twitter account an *official* communications channel, by using it as such, and even referring to it as such... now it IS that.
And now its held to the same rules and regulations that all official communications channels with the government are held to.
Uh... no...that came out 17 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Tremors 6 came out a few few weeks ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So the next movie will be Tremors 7.
Yeah, but you probably don't buy things you aren't sure about.
Suppose you buy clothes or shoes though, people will order two sizes with the intention of trying them on and keeping just the one that fits better.
Other times, the material is thinner than expected or quality is otherwise lower than expected, so they just get returned it outright.
"I think the question is a good indicator of whether someone is an open borders "let everyone in" advocate, whether publicly or not."
I disagree.
Voting is a constitutional right. You shouldn't need to prove anything to anyone before exercising it.
The state should have to prove you aren't a citizen, rather than you proving that you are. The burden should be on the state to prosecute fraudulent voting and fraudulent voters, and convict in the courts.
It should not on the citizens to establish to the states arbitrary satisfaction that they are in fact citizens before they can exercise their voting right.
Otherwise, you are denying citizens their most basic constitutional right without any evidence. This is appalling.
Voting is not like driving.
And If the state thinks voter fraud is a big problem, then start investigating suspected cases. Get evidence that someone voted fraudulently -- arrest them for it, deport them for it.
Add legislation to force recounts or even re-elections if voter fraud is discovered in amounts sufficient to have swung the election. Voter fraud should not be tolerated.
But due process should be followed. Citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty. And to deny someone's birthright and essential right of citizenship? By default? Without any evidence of wrong doing? Is that who we are?
The reference to Santa Monica though was a pretty good clue.
"You can't remember what doesn't exist."
You are going to call me out on the garbage island (which yes, is just a higher concentration of plastic particulates that can't be seen by the naked eye...) but you are going to let the Cthulhu aliens go unchallenged.
It can mean only one thing ... yaji'u ash-shudhdhadh
"FTFY" my ass.
There is nothing sociopathic about wanting to avoid your lifes work to directly go into creating weapons for war.
It might be idealistic. It might even be naive. But its not the mark of a sociopath.
"I never understood why people thought this was funny, Chewbacca doesn't live on Endor."
I mean, i don't think its the greatest joke ever told. But whether or not Chewbacca does or does not live on Endor is completely irrelevant. I mean you realize that right? To call that error out, to suggest THAT is the sticking point for you??? --- because what? If Chewbacca DID live on Endor then this argument would have somehow worked ?
The fact the idiots hearing the argument were convinced by an utter nonsense argument was the joke.
The fact that, no Chewbacca doesn't even live on Endor is an inside joke for star wars nerds on top of that; because anyone who only saw RotJ once back in the 80s and doesn't remember it scene by scene could well accept that premise that Chewbacca was from Endor too -- but it doesn't even matter whether its true or not; its just the icing on the cake.
"Why would I, or anyone, think that?"
Remember that floating island of plastic garbage? Things that float are on surface. How on earth a bag got from the surface all the way down to the bottom of the ocean I can't even imagine... Cthulhu aliens must have pulled it down.
"We are creating a generation of sociopaths, who have inverted their priorities and have no notion of right or wrong."
People ostensibly working for a civilian advertising company; don't want to contribute directly to the development of autonomous military drone killing machines. And you call them 'sociopaths' who have no notion of right or wrong?
I didn't say there was no use case for it. I said the use cases were not important, and that the risk/security situation and compromises to use for its use cases don't make any sense.
If, for example, you are paralyzed from the neck down, your situation is quite different, and the added convenience of voice commands to your quality of life makes it worth accepting the security risks. But if you are able bodied its absurd to accept the current security risks in exchange for the relatively trivial conveniences it offers.
Also, I absolutely do want it to be more secure... but simply wishing for things doesn't make them possible.
Security does not need to be, nor should it ever be, an all or nothing approach.
100% Agreed.
But the difference between a physical door and an amazon echo is that I absolutely do need a door and I absolutely don't need an amazon echo.
So I absolutely do need a to balance security with effectiveness with convenience with expense... and voila we have various door locks.
I don't need a voice assistant. And the convenience afforded by not having to reach for the remote to pause a movie or to not have to take my phone out of my pocket to dial it doesn't merit the kind of security compromises one has to make for the utter fluff it offers as features.
Voiceprints are a good start as they can instantly stop the most prolific attacks.
And your house stops working when you get a cold. People don't necessarily want voiceprints because it makes the system less convenient. Now they have to add and remove people... their parents, or their visiting kids, or their friends from out of town, and the babysitter... you have to have to managed fine grained security... do you need a voiceprint match to pause the TV what about to set a timer or play a song? If yes... then your guests can't pause a movie or add a song to the queue without a whole setup process... if no... the neighbor kids can prank you...
Basically it's a hugely effective method of blocking spam.
The issue is that is a huge attractor for spam in the first place, while offering no benefit proportional to the security risk it creates.
To be fair, the very first sentence in this thread:
"And really most of this stuff is just as bad even if it is audible."
Sure you can. Just fork it and maintain your own project from now on and get everyone to switch to your fork. Seems a bit extreme over a joke in the documentation.
We already have the technology to synthesize voices using a short sample.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
What are you going to do when your voiceprint is hacked? Get a new voice?
"so what? they play audio through my mailbox slot and tell it to play a podcast?"
That's about the most innocuous thing you can do.
In the prank category -- you could tell it to play never gonna give you up at full volume at 3am. every day.
Moving up from there... tell it to call everyone on your contact list and hang up, or to text them all weird messages.
Tell it to send a booty call to your crazy ex. Tell it to text a break up message to your girlfriend.
Tell it to unlock your door - i mean amazon sells a door lock now specifically so you can do this with amazon prime. If it catches on this could be pretty big and not some nerdy niche zigbee thing.
Tell it to turn off the heat in the dead of winter while you are on vacation.
Tell it to start your car in the garage. (yeah... this already a thing you can do... fucking brilliant)
Tell it to record your conversations and send them to me.
Tell it to send me your photos.
Tell it to post all your photos to facebook or twitter.
Tell it to forward me your email, or post them all to facebook and twiiter.
Tell it to install new skills / features / apps to do stuff you didn't intend.
Tell it to buy you something from amazon. I hear you can get 1,000 ethernet cables. (Maybe I'm even the seller of such marked up cables.)
Tell it to call 911. (siri at least already does it)
Too bad you posted AC, because you made some good arguments.
"Actually this is what we did during Obama. Wait it out as painful as it was. Now we have some measure of relief."
While I don't really see anything Obama did as being as nonsensical as Trump, you aren't wrong -- that is the whole purpose of term limits, so that the president is always just a temporary situation. And the country is given a chance to re-calibrate its direction every few years. This is a good thing.
The Paris accord - was symbolic, and participation in it was symbolic. It meant we collectively acknowledge there is a problem and want to fix it. Nobody thinks the Paris accord is going to fix everything. Trump withdrawing from indicates he's in flat denial that mankind even has a responsibility to maintaining the planet.
As for the Iran deal, It's in everyone's best interests for countries to have mutually dependent interlinked economies. Not only is that good for the economy, but its good for peace -- nobody wants a war that's going to cost you more than you could ever hope to gain from it. And its much less likely that a war would break out between trading partners that are mutually benefiting each other. Its also in our best interests to have Iran trading with us, rather than isolating it into an opposition block.
"The wall."
This isn't about immigration policy, this isn't about open borders, this isn't about one-world-government nonsense. This is about the fact that the very idea of building a physical 2000 mile long 30 foot high wall is just plain stupid. Doubly so in a country that is despearately behind in important infrastructure projects like bridge maintenance. Even if we diverted all that money to the wall, it would be falling over in places before they even finished building it, and then what? We're going to fix a stupid wall while our bridges collapse?
Even customs and immigration think they can do their job just fine without a wall.
As for your tangent about one world governments and George Soros and whatnot... take your meds. Nothing you said there is even on the radar of what the issues with Trump are about.
And really most of this stuff is just as bad even if it is audible. It just means one has to figure out when you aren't home before they hold a speaker up to your mail slot / under the door / up to a window.
And how are they going to secure it? Voiceprints -- we already have software that can defeat voiceprinting with a small sample. Passwords? That you have to say aloud everytime you use the device? That's pretty much pointless.
This type of technology is fundamentally broken and from what i can see so far, it cannot be fixed.
"Ted Cruz, Ben Carson"
Yes, they both would have been lousy presidents, but I don't think it would have been chaotic or unpredictable.
"Romney" really would have been fine, perfectly average.
"Sarah Palin" -- I think John McCain would have been a good president. It was sad he tried to pander to the far-right nutjobs with Palin as VP, but as long as he wasn't impeached or killed the VP doesn't really do much and even Palin would have been ok in that role. President Palin... would have been pretty awful though, but I think she'd just have been a puppet for the rest of the republican party establishment rather than a the uncontained chaos that is Trump.
So, your recollection is that he was really disruptive until he was stopped. (The second foundations intervention in stopping him is rougly equivalent to Trump's elected term expiring - ie "we the people" elect someone else in his place.)
And after he's removed from power, his disruption stops and the machines will start turning to 'restore history' to the path it was on prior to the disruption.
It's a great analogy. And we are the 'second foundation', which is kind of poetic really. :p