* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Is this a solution to Trump signing away your digital privacy? We give Invizbox Go a go

Charles 9

Re: So who's worried about the browser vendors?

The whole problem is a matter of trust, and at its ultimate level, the problem is intractable; there's no way to ensure that whom you trust hasn't been subverted without your knowledge. It ultimately amounts to a Leap of Faith that you have to place your trust SOMEWHERE to get things done at all.

Charles 9

Re: re: most people have little to fear

"No. It's the present regime of Trump and the heartless Republicans and selfish Libertarians that is feared. Of course May, Erdogan, Putin, Mugabe etc too. There could be no tomorrow after this lot."

Oh? What about a future regime the criminalizes all encryption not backed (and crackable) by the State? "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" and all that? Never say things could get worse because in the end the law is just ink on a page.

SpaceX wows world with a ho-hum launch of a reused rocket, landing it on a tiny boring barge

Charles 9

Re: ULA

I was about to say. I think you might have more success with a rear-opening cargo plane than with a helicopter. Deploy a catch wire out the back as you fly past, snag it and reel it in. If you miss, circle around for another go (start from high enough and you should get several attempts).

Charles 9

Re: Amazing

And because Mars' atmosphere AND gravity differ, it would likely be impossible to design a glide lander capable of working on both planets.

New plastic banknote plans now upsetting environmental campaigners

Charles 9

Re: We need to stop paying attention

Except they won't take no for an answer. That's why we have eco-terrorism: because they know at SOME point we HAVE to respond.

Charles 9

I think so. I think we call it lard in other animals, especially pigs.

Charles 9

Re: How long does an animal have to be dead to satisfy Vegans?

If they're petrochemical-based, yes, but what about if the plastic is plant-based?

Charles 9

Re: Missing a trick

You could perhaps FAKE some of it. Put in the worst offenders (lard, tallow, peanuts, tree nuts, gluten, dried milk) to put "NOT Kosher, Allergen-free, or whatever!" on the front of your bar and and simply put on the back of the label "May contain one of the more of the following:" and list off all the fad ingredients of the month. Much easier to change the label than change the product. And it's not like you're going to mass-product the things.

Charles 9

"Hemp and linen are both well-suited to substitute for cotton in all but one respect: cost*"

As I understand it, while linen can be used as an all-weather clothing, it's better used in weaves, where its ability to take a pattern really shines. Knit bast fibers (linen, hemp, etc.) tend to fall on the delicate side of the care scale along with silks (they don't seem to be as hardy and are more vulnerable to various substances), making their uses in things like T-shirts and undergarments not as affordable.

Charles 9

"Cotton has the highest requirement for pesticide inputs."

But you can counter simply asking if they want to go back to wool or linen undergarments, T-shirts, and so on. Because as far as I know, no one's managed to find anything even close to cotton in terms of its desirable qualities.

Charles 9

Re: Stupid....

Actually, last I checked, hooved animals don't really handle three legs all too well. At least with equines, loss of function in one leg is considered sufficient grounds for euthanasia.

Charles 9

What about cottonseed oil, a natural byproduct of the cotton industry, unless everyone wants to go back to wool and flax? Sunflower or safflower oil?

Charles 9

Just curious. How will other people complain if other oils were chosen instead?

Y'know CSS was to kill off HTML table layout? Well, second time's a charm: Meet CSS Grid

Charles 9

Re: What's new?

The difference is using rows and columns for inline tabular data and using rows and columns for fundamental website layout.

Europe to push new laws to access encrypted apps data

Charles 9

The fact you'll stand out like a sore thumb since your tweet has no legible text in it...

You not only have to prevent the plods from decrypting your message, but most of the time you also have to hide the fact you're communicating at all, or the plods simply track the tweet activity to nail you down.

Charles 9

Re: "you stand out like a sore thumb"

But you have to assume the law will demand the back door be EASY for law enforcement to implement, meaning they can probably screen the stuff near-realtime and anything that comes out STILL encrypted, like I said, sticks out.

Charles 9

Re: and picture messaging will be banned

"Assuming you can meet up in person at least once without being bugged/spied on, it's trivial to pre-arrange this sort of thing and no amount of technology or anti-encryption laws can defeat it."

But as I've mentioned, THERE'S your problem: The First Contact problem. How can you be sure you aren't being moled?

Charles 9

Re: Back to the future

Code systems STILL need some kind of exchange to establish it, which puts you squarely in the First Contact problem (meaning you can be moled). Unless you can demonstrate a means to establish a code system without actually meeting in person?

Charles 9

Re: No 6...

That wasn't due to masochism, though. More due to having a Gorean (male-supremacist) mindset which means women can get offended.

Charles 9

Re: Strong encryption exists, and is "in the wild".

But it's not necessarily torture if it's "Think of the Children!" or "Do It or the Earth Explodes!" Plus you can just say, "He's lying!" and support your case by replacing one of his legitimate files that's frequently accessed.

Charles 9

Re: No 6...

Thing is, with rubberhose cryptanalysis, you run the risk of encountering a wimp or a masochist. Wimps are too soft and faint at the mere threat; you can't keep them coherent enough to talk. Meanwhile, masochists get off on pain so just beg for more.

As for threatening family, they could also be estranged or black sheep, meaning they counter, "Never liked them anyway."

Charles 9

Re: Terrorists (and other bad people) abide by laws don't they....

But the moment you do, in a world where all other systems are Ementaller, you stand out like a sore thumb, and if you try to stego your way past, you're likely to get your message mangled.

Charles 9

Re: and picture messaging will be banned

Mangle pictures in transit and most stego gets squashed. Who cares if you can't detect it if you make it practically useless for "The Bad Guys"? You're still coming out ahead.

Charles 9

Especially when the ACTUAL risk of an existential threat is constantly rising. By definition, no one can survive such a threat, so you can never defuse that kind of fear without encouraging suicide.

Charles 9

Re: Back to the future

But with a greater chance of a Panopticon, the odds of a dead drop being watched or a First Contact being moled are greater.

Charles 9

Re: Strong encryption exists, and is "in the wild".

Which allows the perfect blackmail. Slip a block of pure random data into a user's computer and then tell Scotland Yard the victim is a pedo. No way to prove the block isn't his, absolutely impossible to decrypt (because it was never encrypted to begin with), you tell the news about it, and it's Game Over.

Charles 9

Re: Strong encryption exists, and is "in the wild".

"There is absolutely nothing that any .gov can do to change this."

Yes, there is. Simply ban the use of any and all encryption that cannot be cracked by the state. Declare it an act of TERRORISM or whatever that means if you're caught, you and anything associated with you are basically ruined forever.

Then you just have to deal with stego, which has its own limitations, especially for improvised messages. mandating media mangling would probably be a good start there.

Firefox Quantum: BIG browser project, huh? I share your concern

Charles 9

But at the time, most smart phones were iPhones (Android only took over a few years ago), meaning that they would've preferred Safari, not Chrome.

Charles 9

Re: Surprised that speed is still an issue

"If I leave it running most of the day it can use over 1Gig of memory and regularly peg the CPU at over

70%"

IINM, that's mostly the websites' fault, not Firefox's, unless you can show the same thing leaving it open for a whole day using nothing but about:blank.

Charles 9

Re: VNC

Actually, it's BOTH of yours, as BOTH ends have to give and take. That's why there are data caps and peering agreements.

Charles 9

"I just wish they'd go back to the drawing board and quit fucking with the UI."

Except it's the SAME UI Chrome used to steal most of Mozilla's users. Sounds to me like Google hit upon something we hate but MORE people LIKE.

Charles 9

Re: I don't know about lynx and w3m

Thinking about it, but I have an 8GB cap and regularly do some heavy work (media encoding, 3D, etc.). Currently keep an XP VM knocking around for legacy apps.

Charles 9

Re: Please don't F up the UI

"That is my main concern with Chrome--I hate the UI"

Your sentiment seems to be in the minority since Chrome is the dominant browser currently instead of Mozilla, which seems to be behind the proverbial 8-ball.

Charles 9

Re: I don't know about lynx and w3m

Linux is not an option because I use Steam, and most of my library is Windows-ONLY.

Robo-AI jobs doomsday may, er... not actually happen, say boffins

Charles 9

Re: Displaced not redundant

That can only apply if the cost of living is really, really LOW (say, Third World low). Otherwise, it increasingly becomes a case of living wage or no wage. People who work two jobs deprive more people of work, exacerbating the issue. Meanwhile, like with horses, there are upkeep issues with human labor, plus you need multiple laborers to cover the 24-hour day, inconsistencies, etc. It's not like the Sprawl where people are born and raised in the company and are thus totally loyal to it, etc.

Charles 9

Re: Displaced not redundant

"Food is cheaper now than it has ever been, more people eat out more of the time, even on minimum wage life has never been better in this (or any other non-war torn) country."

Care to back that up? Sure, some things are cheaper, but they're the small fry on the average budget. Plus we're currently in the middle of a soft spot in fuel prices. If we took numbers post-Katrina when fuel prices were 50-100% higher, that changes the outlook.

http://www.mybudget360.com/cost-of-living-compare-1975-2015-inflation-price-changes-history/

Charles 9

Re: Inverting the pyramid

Not perfectly, but it still seriously reduces manpower. Instead of a line of workers, you have one or two line supervisors, and when things breaks, you bring in an on-call contractor only as and when needed.

Charles 9

Re: Displaced not redundant

Probllem there is that the cost of living hasn't fallen as quickly as the average wage, plus inflation affects the cost of living harder than the average wage. End result, cheaper goods are STILL out of reach for people locked into pittance jobs that pay EVEN LESS.

Charles 9

Re: Inverting the pyramid

And as for having people with the money to pay for your goods, the robot masters can simply cater to each other.

Charles 9

Re: How about the jobs that those robots create ?

"Unless we start creating robots to create and maintain those other robots...

Then its robots all the way down !"

No, you route them into a loop. If Robot A can service Robot B and Robot B can service Robot A (or at some point in the chain, the robot or robots can circle back to service the first robot in the loop), then you solve the "Who Services the Service Robots?" with "One of the other Robots."

Robo-Uber T-boned, rolls onto side, self-driving rides halted

Charles 9

Re: Learning to deal with shitty drivers

"Not only could they have an emergency that I'm unaware of, but it also makes for less stress and it's better to have people like that in front where you can see them then behind you which requires you to take your eyes off the traffic to check."

In the US, there's a more practical reason, too. We call it "letting the rabbit run." Letting a speeder pass means it's the car the cops spot first (and will subsequently stop), meaning you can play looser. I've also heard rumors of trucking convoys employing a "rabbit" car at the head of the convoy that lets the whole convoy drive faster, figuring if the cops act, it'll be on the rabbit, and the time they save is worth more than the speeding ticket.

Charles 9

Re: I'll give

"A short browsing of YouTube reveals a vast range of human drivers in various countries all around the world doing some very dimwitted things behind the wheel of a car."

I ALSO hear stories of drivers who act out of reflex, and because of it avoid an accident. They don't even know HOW or WHY they did it, indicating they acted SUBconsciously, intuitively. It's hard to teach intuition because we don't even KNOW how our intuition works: it all works reflexively, without our conscious thought.

Charles 9

Re: SRIMECH

I always preferred bots that didn't need SRM's...because they could still operate upside-down.

Charles 9

Re: Learning to deal with shitty drivers

Plus the minimum margin of safety is greater than the maximum margin before someone cuts you. You need at least two car lengths, yet you'll be cut at only one car length.

Robots are killing jobs after all, apparently: One droid equals 5.6 workers

Charles 9

Re: Analysis?

"Besides, we ALL know that cheap labor in China (and other places) is taking away the low-skill domestic manufacturing jobs anyway. I'd just as soon see robots do that level of work, with domestic employees building (and/or maintaining) the robots (at a higher wage)."

One, what's to stop them using cheapER robots in China, and using local help (and less of it) at lower wages?

Charles 9

Re: Globalisation

"A shift will take place that focuses building efficient, functional and useful stuff that complements human labor."

COMPLEMENT...or REPLACE? Isn't that why industrial robots were made? What about the shift to container shipping? The next industrial transformation (and I'm going to take a guess it'll be road freight--it meshes well with containerization) is as likely as not to take more (squishy, error-prone) humans out of the equation.

Charles 9

Re: Major Rethink...

Another problem is cultural in nature: and I'm talking ANCIENT cultural, as in "earning your keep" all the way back to "hunt/gather or DIE" ancient. I dare say it's just about instinct, meaning it'll be nigh-impossible to teach away. It's one reason crime won't go away, either, because what one sees as crime another sees as "I survive and you don't."

Charles 9

Re: jobs aren't entitlements

And before you counter that adding robots means jobs handling the robots, industrial robots are designed to be low-maintenance. What would've taken an assembly line of people to do now just needs one or two technicos monitoring the whole line to make sure nothing's going wrong and the occasional contractor to come by when something does go wrong.

It's like how shipping changes drastically with the move to container shipping, as someone noted in a previous related article.

Charles 9

"How they raise wages, however? They will raise *total* income, because rising productivity implies that much - but as far as I can see, approximately all of that income will go to the people owning the robots. So they will - buy more robots, I guess?"

Worst comes to worst, the robot masters can just cater to each other and seal off the walled garden.

Charles 9

Re: Analysis?

"Does anyone pity the poor "buggy whip" makers, when the automobile displaced the horse? Or livery stable operators? Or how about when computers took over BANKING, and you no longer needed rooms full of 'calculators' with adding machines? Yeah, it's a lot like THAT."

As a matter of fact, I do. Because you have to consider the knock on effects of displacing breadwinners with little prospect for starting over. Children, families, whole communities can be left in the lurch. And you know what they say about the desperate.