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User: PopeRatzo

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Comments · 25,788

  1. Memory Palace on Ancient Technique Can Dramatically Improve Memory, Research Suggests (theguardian.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone taught me Giordano Bruno's "memory palace" technique when I was a freshman at uchicago, and it made everything about my academic career as student and teacher so much easier. If you don't know what that is, you really ought to look it up.

    The story of Giordano Bruno is a ripping yarn, too. He was a mathematician, astronomer, poet, and theorist in the 16th century. He was also a Dominican friar. He was one of the guys who came up with the "infinite universe" theory and the notion that the Earth was not really stationary with the heavens moving around it. He was a brilliant dude, but had absolutely no patience for people not as smart as him. Even so, the Church tried to move him around, to Oxford, to Rome, to France, hoping he'd find a place where he couldn't upset too many people.

    He's one of the few people in history to have been excommunicated from three different religions, including one that he wasn't even a member of. Yes, he was actually preemptively excommunicated.

    His love of learning and his obsessive reading finally did him in. See, he liked to read while on the crapper,, like most of us, and he kept a well-worn copy of poems of Erasmus behind his toilet. So, when the Pope's men came for him, they found the Erasmus, and since it was "forbidden" by the Church, that pretty much was the end. Even then, they'd have let him go if he'd just have recanted his notion that Earth wasn't the only "world" in the universe. Not being able to abide stupid people, he told them to go fuck themselves. Then, they tried and convicted him of a host of thought-crimes, from heresy to occult practices to general mopery.

    They burned him at the stake in 1600.

  2. Re:keepass on Ask Slashdot: Should You Use Password Managers? · · Score: 1

    Ah, thank you. That's what I was looking for.

  3. Re:Are they wrong? on How Wiretaps Actually Work (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    [I]t has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

    As we have been told countless times since November, the United States is not a democracy.

  4. Re:Are they wrong? on How Wiretaps Actually Work (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    President Trump may not be "the" President to restore the Constitution

    Suck it up, Buttercup. Trump won, you lost. Go back to your Breitbart hugbox.

  5. Re:Highly irregular on How Wiretaps Actually Work (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A General Hayden explained on the Late Show the other night that the president can tweet whatever he damned well pleases - Since he's the ultimate classification authority, information just BECOMES unclassified BY being tweeted.

    Even if something becomes unclassified because the president tweeted it doesn't mean it becomes TRUE because the president tweeted it.

  6. Their whole business model is about skirting regulations, taking advantage of the under employed or unemployed

    I can't think of too many corporations that does not describe.

  7. Well, they do have that 100% record for the accuracy of what they've leaked.

    The question isn't whether the leaks are accurate. The question is whether the leaks match their press release summary.

    The answer, since you're unwilling to look for yourself, is "no".

  8. Re:keepass on Ask Slashdot: Should You Use Password Managers? · · Score: 1

    As of one year ago, keepass could only work on macOS in an emulator, and the password database was not portable from Windows. My question was about whether that has changed.

  9. Re:keepass on Ask Slashdot: Should You Use Password Managers? · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I know the program can be used on macOS, but can a password database created on a Windows PC be used on macOS?

  10. Re:keepass on Ask Slashdot: Should You Use Password Managers? · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Have they finally made Keypass databases portable from Windows to macOS? Last time I tried, I couldn't import to macOS.

  11. Go get Wikileaks' "summary" of the first Vault7 release. You'll know you're on the right one because it's a list of bullet points.

    Now get the actual first Vault7 release from Wikileaks. You'll have to do a little searching, but see for yourself if the summary (made to be released to the Western media) actually corresponds to anything in the Vault7 release itself.

    You will be surprised, especially if you think Wikileaks is a force for transparency.

    If you're really lazy, go read some posts by infosec experts and pro-privacy bloggers. They're already doing some of this work for you, and you will still be surprised at what they say. I don't want to spoil it by telling you.

  12. I think what they're trying to say is that Digital Transformation will be the disruptive self-driving Uber of dashboards.

    I think.

    If we really wanted to get to the bottom of this, we should get IT executives together in a room and then shoot the room into space.

  13. Re:Hacked phones are hacked phones on WikiLeaks CIA Files: The 6 Biggest Spying Secrets Revealed By the Release of 'Vault 7' (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    What the CIA malware is doing, is capturing and exfiltrating the data before it is encrypted and sent in the apps and after data is received and decrypted (my guess, is that it is tapped directly into whatever controls device input and output at a hardware and OS level).

    That's right. If your phone is hacked, it is no longer secure.

  14. Re:Numbers are skewed on Americans Are Having Less Sex Than 20 Years Ago, Study Finds (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    The Japanese dudes are all fucked up relation-wise. We've had stories on here about it. Why can't you beat your dick to normal hardcore gangbangs like the rest of us instead of tentacle cartoons?

    American men prefer the cartoons of Peter getting cucked by Lois and Cleveland.

  15. Numbers are skewed on Americans Are Having Less Sex Than 20 Years Ago, Study Finds (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do these figures include jacking it to Hentai?

  16. I've been going over this most all day (I'm retired, so I got fuck-all else to do on a rainy day).

    From what I can tell, the biggest takeaway is that a hacked phone is not secure. Encryption is still OK, and Signal and WhatsApp are still secure as far as we can tell. Everything else has already been known. Also, it's a good idea when vendors patch vulnerabilities, apparently. Who knew?

    EFF has written some interesting stuff about Vault7 today, on their webpage and Twitter account.

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

  17. Re:Wrong on Twitter To Get Even Harsher On Trolls (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    If they want to do this, they have to abide by certain laws.

    To which laws are you referring?

    It does not matter who is paying for the service, the service that Twitter provides is communication, not ad placement.

    I'm pretty sure it does matter who's paying for the service when you're talking about Twitter breaching some sort of "contract" with their users.

  18. Re:how would we know? on WikiLeaks Reveals CIA's Secret Hacking Tools and Spy Operations (betanews.com) · · Score: 2

    Although it may surprise you, outside your insular liberal bubble most people look at the so called 'carbon' problems as a total hoax.

    You could have learned in one simple search that your comment is a lie.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

  19. Re:$2000 rebate on a $40000 electric vehicle on New York State To Launch Electric Vehicle Rebate (foxnews.com) · · Score: 2

    The working man now only owes $38,000.

    Or about the price of a Ford F-250.

  20. Re:DDG and Bing also gives fake news result on Google's Featured Snippets Are Worse Than Fake News (theoutline.com) · · Score: 2, Funny

    This just in! There is no evidence of a U.S. President being in the Klu Klux Klan!

    We now know that Barack Obama was in fact a member of the Klan, and here's photographic proof:

    http://img.theepochtimes.com/n...

    That's how he was able to sneak into Trump Tower to bug all the phones.

  21. Bureaucrats with Guns on Local Police Departments Are Building Their Own DNA Databases (ap.org) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are people in the United States who hate the government but love the police. Never really understood that.

  22. Pheminist Phone on Jolla Sailfish Will Build A Google-Free Mobile OS For China (silicon.co.uk) · · Score: -1, Troll

    Jolia sounds like a girl's name. I'm not using any phone made by some feminazi "woman-in-tech".

    Telling you, these SJWs are out of control.

  23. Proposed by Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) on Bill Would Legalize Active Defense Against Hacks (onthewire.io) · · Score: 1

    The cyber is hard.

  24. Re:substance abuse on A Norwegian Website Is Making Readers Pass a Quiz Before Commenting (niemanlab.org) · · Score: 1

    mg / dl or permille?

    I'm sorry, I'm too drunk to Google "permille".

  25. Re:More clarification needed... on UK: New Drivers Caught Using a Phone Will Lose Their License (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    This ensures there are no moments where the phone slides around on the seat and your reflexes kick in and you reach for it while driving.

    I got you. That makes sense. You think a shirt pocket could qualify as a hands-free holder? I don't really like those suction-cup things you put on your dashboard.

    I can't hold a phone when I'm driving anyway. It would mean I'd have to put down my beer.