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User: GargamelSpaceman

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  1. Putin isn't dumb or totally ignorant on Putin Gives Federal Security Agents Two Weeks To Produce 'Encryption Keys' For The Internet (gawker.com) · · Score: 1

    So, does anyone know what he could be aiming at by this?

  2. Re:Someone should mod that up on Antivirus Software Is 'Increasingly Useless' and May Make Your Computer Less Safe (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 1

    That works if you are careful. If you are not careful, you need Avast.

  3. Re:More than a few questions on Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Meh, in this narrow case, who cares? Go ahead and litigate it in your mind to the extreme, the guy is basically a beligerent at war with the US. In the end, the result is the same and also the ethics. Think of how many Americans Abraham Lincoln had targeted and killed, and a good thing too.

  4. How many bodies to spare on him with possible imminent riot that could force their hand or even allow him to escape if a retreat were forced, and what plan might he have had or desperate suicidal attempt to do more damage might he have hatched then?

     

  5. Re:#BlackLivesMatter on Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com) · · Score: 2

    Not sure if BLM is a movement with leaders or something more like Anonymous. More than likely those BLM supporters who want to kill cops are the minority.

    Still I hardly hear a peep from them about cases where the cop does wrong and is prosecuted and ends up convicted of a crime ( or when everyone fully expects that and the cop is sitting in jail ). I hear the noise from BLM about cases where the cop most likely won't suffer any legal sanctions.

    Therefore, if we generally expect the legal system to come to correct conclusions, then we would expect BLM to be generally wrong about the cases that anger them.

  6. Re:What a complete... on Microsoft President Brad Smith: Computer Science Is Space Race of Today · · Score: 1

    In my day they would give us a page of 20-30 long division problems. Today they concentrate more on abstract concepts and will assign four to six.

    I remember I would try to do them, and get five or six done and then pass in the page incomplete. Due to silly mistakes, I'd get bad marks on the tests too.

    But I always understood all the concepts, but was unable to do complete the sheer number of problems especially without error. Compared to my classmates I sucked at math.

    But then on standardized tests, I would do upper 90s percentile. On one state given test I took in 8th grade I got the best score ever in the history of the school, because the test was doable without any computation. You could look at the question and the answers and rule the wrong answers out without putting pen to paper. Maybe I got real good at that because I was so bad at not making mistakes.

    Anyway in 8th grade I was a C minus to D student who struggled to factor polynomials.

    However, I was able to earn a 4 year college degree in math by age 18. I switched majors to math from biology, after doing well in a required calculus class that I had dreaded because I suck at math. And being bad at computation, I eventually became good at using tools to do it for me and became a computer programmer.

    IMO the way they are teaching now is better balance.

  7. Star Wars: A space Opera.
    Star Trek: wow space stuff is futurisic and cool man. Refreshing escapism without Cowboys and Indians.
    Star Trek TNG/Voyager: A soap Opera. 15 year olds wanking it to tight uniforms pre-internet days.
    Star Trek post 90s: You're still watching that? There is such a thing as internet porn ya know.
    Star Trek 2010s: Keep mining for dollars: Will enough gratuitous cgi action attract new fans who are already jaded to CGI effects and rescue a dead franchise?

  8. I don't seem to remember any replicators in the original Star Trek from which those slaves originate. Also in the original, Harry Mudd was a thing. With replicators, why would someone like that exist? Also, the Ferengi make no sense with all powerful replicators. Anyway, the Holodeck would end human ambition and drive to explore forever.

  9. Re: That's the state of the universe then... on Physicists Confirm a Pear-Shaped Nucleus, and It Could Ruin Time Travel Forever (sciencealert.com) · · Score: 1

    Pretty much this. Why does a nucleus being pear shaped have far reaching implications about time but a pear being pear shaped not? Maybe there is a reason, but not in TFA. Maybe they are saying they point a certain way like a compass needle? Strange.

  10. Re:That's the state of the universe then... on Physicists Confirm a Pear-Shaped Nucleus, and It Could Ruin Time Travel Forever (sciencealert.com) · · Score: 1

    Whenever I read physics stuff I feel like I'm the last segment of the Human Centipede of knowledge. Pear shaped, meaning a nucleus points in a direction meaning things aren't symmetrical.. How is that again? What does this have to do with time? They just say it does, and maybe they know why but it's meaningless to me.

  11. Re:G-force limits, too on AI Downs 'Top Gun' Pilot In Dogfights (dailymail.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    I bet high Gs severely limit your ability to do or think about anything but not passing out or losing your lunch. AI wouldn't notice a thing.

  12. Re:Not a real world test on AI Downs 'Top Gun' Pilot In Dogfights (dailymail.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    I wonder if those who designed the F35 had the scenario of AI 'on the team of' pilots in the future all along. The emphasis on interconnectedness almost seems like it was designed to be a remote flying command centre eventually that could lead robots into battle safely. The fact that AI probably cannot be depended on to carry out an entire mission on their own means you'll need humans to give commands. Now I don't know enough about how drones are currently operated remotely to know how feasible it would be to cut them off from their operators with jamming, but maybe having the ability to issue commands from nearby would cut down on the possibility of drones being disabled completely by an electronic attack such as jamming.

  13. Re:Have to give it to Apple..... on 'Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives' (daringfireball.net) · · Score: 1

    It seems electronics hardware is always user hostile. I have a headphone aux jack on my car. I am not about to replace it for the life of the car. Also my ears cannot appreciate better sound than the aux jack can deliver. Since I do not own an FM radio other than the one in my car, I was looking for something non-shit and portable. Don't want a CD player, just radio and aux jack. I wanted something like the 80s boom box, but with a quality reciever that works as well as a modern car radio, and has perhaps bluetooth but definitely aux. I want it durable and decent. I was looking at Home Depot and the radios there looked good. Most had a phone compartment with an aux jack. They were about 100 bucks, and I would have picked one up, but then I saw they took the damn rechargable lithium batteries of corresponding line of tools ( DeWalt, Milwawkee etc ). I want that except I want it to run on D cell batteries like the Boom Boxen of olde.

  14. Re:The message is clear: on Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    I was more interested in cartoons than news when Reagan was president.

  15. Re:Impressive but useful? on Malware Can Use Fan Noise To Steal Data From Air-Gapped Systems (helpnetsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, 100-600 hz means we aren't talking about any great amount of data at a time. It seems opening documents in front of a video camera would capture as much text as or more quickly.

  16. Re: The message is clear: on Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    I guess I consider a web link saying 'Click here for illegal shit' a prompt. Certainly without the link they wouldn't have visited the URL.

  17. Re:Pound is in the toliet on BBC: UK Votes To Leave The European Union (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    With the pound in the toilet they might get a balance of manufacturing.

  18. Re:End of Great Britain? on BBC: UK Votes To Leave The European Union (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Isn't this strange? Scotland: We're tired of having no political effect because we are a small part of large whole that effectively ignores us, so dammit, let's leave and become a member of a larger less responsive group that will even more thoroughly ignore what we want!

  19. Re:You missed a couple of sections on Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    Your ego will be smashed when they hack into your computer and steal your kitty porn.

  20. Re:The message is clear: on Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    File timestamps and traces left by programs, maybe even logs depending on the program leave a paper trail that would be a goldmine for forensics. You would have to explain why none of your super secret files changed in the expected ways. At the very least it would be suspicious. Anyway if they'd installed malware on your computer they already know all your passwords though keylogging.

  21. Re:The message is clear: on Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org) · · Score: 1

    I thought Bill Clinton showed the country how to deal with this: I do not recall.

    Anyway, I have not read the decision itself b/c pdf, but wouldn't downloading child porn on Playpen give the cops probable cause enough to make a search legal without a warrant? If you carry a kilo of cocaine into your house in front of a cop's eyes, they don't need a warrant to come in and get it from you, and then they can search too.

    If anything the disturbing thing here is that they were operating the site, distributing illegal child porn that might not otherwise have been distributed. What ever happened to entrapment?

  22. Re:Okay, seriously Britain on Europe's Robots To Become 'Electronic Persons' Under Draft Plan (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    There already is the laws about corporate personhood that adequately prepare for AI lunacy.

    Corporations are like lifeforms already, they have a will to survive, a means of gathering resources and a metabolism. They divide and consume and evolve already - an artificial life form.

    As they phase out all their human components, we'll be left with strong AI which is legally a person.

  23. Re:Bring up profile manager from command line on Experimental Firefox Feature Lets You Use Multiple Identities While Surfing the Web (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    That did work, but I think that disables firefox sync which I do not want to do.

    according to docs -no-remote disables sending or accepting of 'remote commands' which I believe are sync. I like sync.

    So I am still stuck editing profile.ini whenever someone clicks that blasted checkbox

  24. Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy. on Experimental Firefox Feature Lets You Use Multiple Identities While Surfing the Web (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    Why must I go to palemoon to get 64 bit firefox?

    Also, the money they get from Yahoo comes at a price. They are driving away casual users who will be annoyed about 5 times by being herded to Yahoo and then switch browsers rather than remove yahoo from their search list ( I don't hate yahoo, but I end up removing any trace of it to avoid getting it accidentally if yahoo is paying for this, then do they realize it's hurting them? )

    Having driven away all their casual users, then why not appeal to savvy elites with privacy and other features that give them some advantage over the proles?

  25. You could still do that with commandline options that specify a profile.

    What I do with firefox is I have different profiles and select one using the profile manager.

    Then I have different skins for each profile, so I don't accidentally type something into the wrong window and embarass myself. I have a 'red profile' for shitposting ( actually Samurai Jack themed ) and a green profile ( green for money ) that I use my real name on, and do banking and buying stuff. My red profile doesn't get my credit card number or my name.