Posts by Eddy Ito

Re: Ultimate Virtue Signalling

But it's virtual empathy so it's more a virtual virtue signalling. Of course we all know 'virtual' is just a marketing term meaning 'not'.

That Zuckerberg, he sure comes off as virtually caring.

Re: Perhaps

Exactly, companies like Facebook at least have to appear to care about the herd they are farming for fear of mass retribution or revolt while Equifax has no such check as they know there is little to nothing the herd can do.

Re: Terrorist?

Under Nevada law, his act was one of terrorism regardless of motivation. I note the police are not calling it a terrorist act and that is most likely because the investigation would proceed in a slightly different manner such as determining which group, likely motivation, and ties to other groups. It appears he was a solo actor and little evidence toward motivation has been identified at this point so I suppose it makes sense to look at it in a different way.

Re: IT'S FRICKIN EASY

To drive from northeastern Maine to San Diego is 48 hours or so according to Google Maps, about 5 to 6 days.

Having done approximately this a few times now in both directions, Maine to LA, I've got it down to 4 days with 12+ hours of driving the first two days so the last two are shorter. That said, it's a much nicer trip if you have the time to explore some of the more interesting places like some of the national parks and forests. Much of it is a bit off the main highways but easily worth an extra few days or a week if you've got the time.

Re: I hope she didn't take all 81 pages in one go...

The transcript of her interview with the feds is 81 pages. The report she copied was only 5 pages.

Re: He gets less than 2 years, while that kid that sent pics of himself gets 10

Not that I doubt your word, but I don't recall reading about this anywhere. Got a link?

Yep. http://klcc.org/post/teen-who-took-x-rated-selfie-and-texted-photo-guilty-child-porn-washington

Re: I hope this doesn't affect his credit rating...

It's a different metric and not credit as we hoi polloi know it since rich people theoretically can back it up with cash as a security. Even so, when you're rich, you don't spend your money, you spend other people's money so that if/when your business goes under you limit your liability. Why risk your money when you can sucker someone else to do it and get the profit either way? Just look at the latest example of the LA Rams/Chargers stadium boondoggle.

They could also have taken the route of putting a fraud alert on people's credit reports which wouldn't even bother those trying to get credit as a stop gap measure while they were busy screwing the pooch between when they discovered the breach and now.

I'll be sending the bill for my freezes at the other companies to equifax as well as a bill for the time it took for me to do it since it was considerable as the web sites and automated phone systems of both transunion and equifax fell over multiple times for me. Fortunately experian worked on the first go. I'm thinking somewhere in the $75-$100/hr range is a reasonable rate and if they don't pay I'll be happy to take them to small claims court.

I recommend everyone else hit by the breach do the same as it will be fun to watch equifax implode responding to 143 million small claims cases worth about $250 a pop. A rough calc shows that to be about three times their market cap of ~$11.2B

Re: CIO & CSO Steps down

How many people are in jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with their academic degrees, yet still manage to do a perfectly good job?

Probably plenty but if it's the case where she had a dozen years of experience in the field then why has nearly every trace of her experience been wiped from the internet? Appearances matter and it looks more like a coverup. It only raises suspicions that the job was filled by "who you know" rather than "what you know" and if it comes time to sit and answer questions in front of congress how do you think it will play out? I'm not saying she wasn't qualified but it's pretty clear that the ball got dropped on her watch and everything that's being done only makes it look worse.

Well the CIO and the Chief Security Officer both just retired. My question is why did they hire someone with a degree in music composition for the position of Chief Security Officer? That's not to say the CSO wasn't qualified but I'm not sure where security and music intersect especially when it comes to throwing nearly half the population of the US to the wolves with their lax patching practices.

I already put a security freeze on both my and the wife's credit at experian, transunion, and innovis. I couldn't do equifax because shockingly the website refuses to place one but I'm sure it will allow me to sign up for the $19.95/month lock option and the phone system is so overloaded I can't get through even to the "All of our representative is busy" spiel. Seriously, it's been a long time since I heard a busy signal. They do have the option of putting on a freeze by mail but they want a copy of some form of government ID and I definitely don't want them to give them any additional information.

I will be sending them the bill for the credit freezes at the other agencies however.

I'll add that the transunion site has been falling over to this lately also.

Re: Probable cause

I always wonder why when they reveal that it's a retriever, shepherd, malinois, or other general purpose breed which is what I'd expect for dogs on patrol. Given these are dedicated sniffer dogs, why aren't they scent hounds like beagles, foxhounds, bloodhounds, etc.?

Re: I wonder who the real oppressor is here...

Yep. It's hunting for an enemy because there is the possibility that people may start to get wise to "the war on [non-entity]" that results in unending warlike behavior. It's one of the main reasons I have a love/hate relationship with Rand Paul. Sometimes he's just a bit too far out there like it should be the state's right to decide on whether marriage is strictly hetero or allows homo which is total bullshit because the state has no business getting involved in the relationships between consenting adults. Other times it seems like he is the only member of congress who has any lucid thoughts at all.

Re: Safety?

Now I'm confused. I thought we were talking to consumer deliveries like pizza not deliveries to distribution outlets. In any case alcohol and tobacco require age verification and I don't see a drone doing that although I suppose you could let it scan your ID card. Not that it ever stopped straw purchases of booze and cigs.

I guess the pressing question is does an Uber/Lyft qualify as a commercial vehicle and what about the Domino's delivery guy who supplied most of the folks on campus back in the day?

Re: Interesting principles behind this

The farm analogy is misplaced. Sharks don't farm they hunt so it's closer to shooting Bambi in a meadow than taking a cow from a farm. Hiring a butcher to cut it up is entirely optional so no middleman necessary. Of course I don't think sharks actually hunt humans it's a more opportunistic behavior than specifically trying to track down the ungainly poor swimming stick figure that likely doesn't taste very good to a shark seeing as we lack the blubber of a seal. Of course we could equally be a delicacy or acquired taste.

That said, I don't see how a shark would even entertain the notion of a farm or even a meadow as it is quite impossible for it to visit one let alone comprehend any similarity or equivalence to their environment. To a shark the entire land masses are likely likely little more than holes in the ocean where it's really hard to breathe and best ignored other than those tasty morsels that sometimes wander about on the fringe. That isn't to say sharks are stupid; indeed they are very smart at figuring out how to do what they want to do and very clearly learn new techniques but I don't see why they would devote any brain power to wondering what the world is like outside their own universe when the task of surviving the day is potentially so daunting.

Re: Replacements

The neural net won't work because it will take at least six years of continuous and repeated "none of the above" responses before there is even a reasonable chance for a half decent candidate because the people best suited to the job aren't power hungry megalomaniacs and don't want it.

Then again, if government can't screw everything up for six years that may be the best option.

Re: As has been said often before

No, jail isn't at all appropriate. Garnishing their personal income and assets to cover the costs of the 130+ million impacted people will incur would be a good start. I'm sure we can find an old Ford Pinto for them to drive to work once the Jaguar has been sold.

Re: We reached out to Google for additional information

I wonder if it's the result of the Drive File Stream roll out and the announced death of the Google Drive app as announced in this googleblog post.

Re: EV1

In terms of modern personal transport, you have to consider that EVs are in their infancy.

Are they? EVs used to be the preferred method of transportation before internal combustion engines became reasonably stable when they competed with external combustion engined vehicles like the Stanley Steamer. There was no clear winner back then but IC engines won the day with help in part from electric motors which made them easier to start. Today we've largely segregated different power production forms to a particular usage based on ease of use. Perhaps that time is changing for some uses but it remains a stretch particularly for the high power, long endurance, and mobile segments of industry.

Re: Taken to its logical conclusion

And that's just it. Kaspersky has offered the US gov't the source code so it's not like there could be anything hiding. No, Shaheen is just kettle clanging for the media because she feels Hassan has been too uppity lately and stealing all the limelight by hanging out with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Re: It should be illegal.

This is California, all it takes is a little money and a good ad campaign, which could simply be the name of the proposition, and folks will vote yes to anything. I can easily see the spin being something like 'Prop 1984 a.k.a. Amber's Cameras' which would simply say 'help us stop child abduction! Amber alerts are good but we need to the ability to track child abductors and stop human trafficking. Vote Yes on Prop 1984 and save our children from a lifetime as a sex slave in North Korea!'

Seriously, I'm willing to wager real money that gets copied nearly verbatim on at least one California ballot in the next few years.

Re: This is what happens when all the leaders are engineers

From the cartoon mockup it looks like there are only six rows of seats in those pods so even at four rows it's 24 people per pod. That's an expensive trip and you'd need lots of pods to make it mass transit and I don't see it ever being able to handle even a tiny fraction of the new year holiday traffic. I'd think engineers and scientists could figure out those pods likely aren't feasible since there is little else to it other than a few rows of seats and it will certainly need some mechanicals on board such as HVAC which will require some sort of thermal store and longer trips will need some sort of air treatment or CO2 scrubber. Maybe even pump the cabin pressure down to save on O2.

Overall it looks more like a bunch of marketing folk got together to make a sales pitch video for non-engineers.

Re: What is a 'drone'?

Meh, there's the MQ-8 Fire Scout which can carry more than that and has a turbine engine. There's also the slightly earlier Hummingbird by Boeing. I think my personal favorite is the Snowgoose simply because it's different even if it doesn't have a turbine engine.

My problem is with the "destroy property" first bit since it would imply that it would be able to differentiate between a person pushing a shopping cart and another pushing a baby carriage/pram. Does it take out the leading "property" in an effort to save the obvious person in each case? What about instances like cos-play where someone may be dressed as a horse; does it save superman and hit the "horse"?

If an accident is unavoidable...

Sorry, this is one that irks me a bit so pardon the tangent. I question whether the vast majority of "accidents" are actually accidents. Certainly when the miscellaneous deer, turkey, etc. darts out in front of your car it is an accident but in general when another human is involved it is far more likely that one party is being negligent. It could be the prat who is over tired and falls asleep at the wheel, is too busy playing pokemon on their phone to look up, or is otherwise simply being a dumbass whether inside the car or not. I'll even allow that since we expect some humans to be dumbasses such as the small child who rashly chases a ball into the street because they don't know better and so would fall into the deer category because they're aren't yet fully aware of concepts like responsibility and negligence although perhaps a case could be made against their parents.

A crash resulting from mechanical failure could be an accident if the failure is of the type that isn't foreseen such as an unnoticed defect in a control arm allows it to separate and the wheel falls off, a highly unlikely event. Mechanical failure would be negligence if it was a wear item that wasn't replaced in a timely manner such as the brake pad that's been screaming for several months and has now ejected the cylinder from the caliper resulting in a total loss in hydraulic pressure in the circuit; something I've actually seen when I worked at a service station¹ in my youth.

Essentially if we can eliminate the negligence parts we could greatly reduce the number of crashes and we'd be left with the very small number of true accidents that need to be addressed. Unfortunately autonomous vehicles can't do anything about the haphazard dolt who is engrossed with their current texting session and either driving a current vehicle or even walking.

^{1. For the younger folks, a service station is where someone would rush out to your car when you pulled up to the fuel pump and they put fuel in your car, washed the windows, and checked the oil. The were also capable of performing other repair services on automobiles ranging from anything as simple as a tire repair or changing the oil to rebuilding a transmission. Most of them now only sell soda, chips, coffee, etc. as well as leave you to filling your car yourself unless you find yourself in New Jersey where, if you're lucky, the "attendant" might remember to reinstall the filler cap.}