* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Confirmed: TSA bans gear bigger than phones from airplane cabins

Charles 9

Re: Meh

So, I was right, #1 and #2 applied to you. They DID search the case AND Customs did a check on it, identifying your bag in the process.

Charles 9

Laptops, especially ultrabooks, CAN'T go in the hold because they have Lithium-Ion batteries in them (make them a spontaneous fire risk).

I'm still waiting for an incident to occur that involves a bomb that's practically impossible to detect (like the one with the bomb literally up his butt--he just forgot to take it out first).

Charles 9

And before anyone says it's a hoax, recall the Daallo attack. That WAS a laptop bomb.

Charles 9

Re: Batteries?

As I noted, I think the directive is meant to ban their transportatiobn, full stop. If you can't check them and you can't stow them, you simply can't take them with you.

Charles 9

Re: Smaller-than-phone devices exempted?

Didn't one of those CATCH FIRE about a week ago?

Charles 9

Re: Meh

One, SOP for lost bags is to search them in case they're contraband or assembled-on-the-spot bombs.

Two, since the luggage has an ID on it, they can tie it to the passenger and Customs can gets notified. Meaning they can also present a bill.

Three, there's no guarantee you'll even get the lost baggage.

Charles 9

Re: Safer Baggage

I wonder how long that will last when people with appendectomy scars start trolling, "I have an implant bomb!" Since even a full-body x-ray's going to have a hard time finding an explosive INSIDE a body. And let's not start with dildo bombs (no joke; someone actually DID that one).

Charles 9

Re: Meh

I already have, and he's right. The gate BEFORE the Luggage Claim is the Passport Control counter, where you show your "Papers, Please!"

The gate AFTER the Luggage Claim is Customs, where you're required to declare your belongings. Customs MUST wait until you regain ALL your belongings: including the checked baggage.

Charles 9

What I'm more concerned about is that OTHER directive: "No Lithium batteries allowed in checked luggage" which is there due to the fire risk and therefore won't be going away. Since most of the devices in question have lithium-based batteries, how can they get them on the plane at all given they're now barred in BOTH locations?

Germany, France lobby hard for terror-busting encryption backdoors – Europe seems to agree

Charles 9

Gestalts. Greater than the sums of their parts.

Charles 9

Re: Any politician that proposes shit like this...

"Those not able -that is, everyone of them- should be put into a barrel and thrown into some big waterfall. Oh, and the barrel should be filled up to the brim with cacti."

And if they're masochists?

DNS lookups can reveal every web page you visit, says German boffin

Charles 9

Re: RaspberryPi + PiHole

Not so sorted. PiHole only caches for five minutes.

Charles 9

Re: How do you defeat against your own ISP recording your browsing history?

But can you REALLY trust those VPN providers to actually have the servers located in the countries listed AND not talk to Five Eyes on the sly?

And some of us can't use ad-blocking domain lookups due to false positives.

Charles 9

No it won't, as the article notes. They can re-establish your trail, especially if it's the ISP (who ASSIGNS your IP) doing the tracking.

Charles 9

No, the caches are just too short. Even ip-hole only caches for five minutes.They're saying you can solve it by keeping your cached entry for MUCH longer: say until it no longer works.

Charles 9

"1) Going to the DNS for every request is inefficient. Caching for some period would be assumed to be standard. That period could be assumed to be more than a few minutes."

Unless, of course, it's the ISP that's doing the caching. Then they can still track you.

Charles 9

Guess it's time for yet another use for a Raspberry Pi:

Use your raspberry Pi as a DNS cache to speed up your internet

Charles 9

Unless you're using a CGNAT...

Charles 9

Re: Simple fix

And if that's not possible (I can't on my R7000 because the latest versions still don't support WiFi)?

Charles 9

Re: Explanation please?

Yes. Most of the images don't come from wikipedia itself, for example, but from the Wikimedia Commons (another domain, another lookup). How many pictures does that one page contain compared to other pages on the 'Pedia? What distribution of 'Pedia/Commons requests are made?

Put simply, because of all these side requests, just one page can create a fingerprint that can be combined with other pages to create a distinct trail. And unlike what the article says, many of us have longer-term IP allocations (otherwise, home servers don't work so well). Worst part is that this sniffing is all done via basic Internet protocols; trying to mask them will require changing the protocols which may not be efficient or even possible.

Linux, not Microsoft, the real winner of Windows Server on ARM

Charles 9

"Wow can be played on WINE. I haven't tried it since WINE 2.0, but with WINE 1.9.x and Legion, it worked without a performance penalty when using OpenGL. Unfortunately, Blizzard's implementation of OpenGL is buggy, and since it's not a supported API, they're not improving it (by their own admission)."

Last I checked, Battle.Net also BANS you for using WoW on WINE. So it's really a non-option. And let's not get started on their new ubergame, Overwatch. All WINE reports on it has been Garbage, so it doesn't look like Blizzard even cares. And like I said, Valve has little to show for all its efforts, and they're a company that KNOWS about Microsoft's plans. What do you do when no one seems to care the sky really is falling?

Charles 9

It's not the UI that's the real issue. It's the application support. And by that, I mean mainstream, first-string applications like one would buy at a store. This is especially true of games (one of the few genres where you really need a genuine PC in your room to get the best experience due to their performance demands). Put it this way: it's saying something that a company as big as Valve, running one of the strongest online gaming networks in Steam, and well aware of the creep threat Microsoft poses, STILL can't convince developers like Bethesda to rally behind Linux and free themselves from dependency on a single OS. Meanwhile, the other gaming network companies like Blizzard and EA treat Linux like it's an afterthought. Last I checked, neither WoW nor Overwatch can be played on Linux (not even with WINE). And that's just for starters.

Charles 9

Re: I presume the authour knows....

"...that Windows Desktop on Arm is already gearing up...and it runs the "normal" version of windows."

But does it run Crysis? Or Steam, for that matter?

Charles 9

"This is huge. SBSA is the real threat to Intel."

I will agree at least to that extent. For years, ARM has been a fixed-hardware architecture: hobbled for the most part by those vertically-integrated black boxes. To endorse and encourage the use of a general enumerated bus opens the way for ARM systems to be more general-purpose since ARM CPUs no longer have to, as the article notes, be bound to fixed hardware profiles.

Charles 9

AND many of those exclusive programs are performance intensive. That includes all the games that keep plenty of gamers pinned to Windows for better or for worse.

Tip for darknet drug lords: Don't wear latex gloves to the post office

Charles 9

Re: Why would he wear latex gloves?

Depends on the substance. Latex gloves are totally useless, for example, against dimethylmercury.

Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning – now throw yours in the trash

Charles 9

Re: Easily fixed

"Already happening. Third Party Blobs."

I'm thinking worse: inlined right into the article in a way that can't be easily filtered (such as making the word "ADVERTISEMENT" into a PNG with a randomized name or something), and if the government throws a hissyfit, re-base in a country where such laws don't exist.

Charles 9

Re: @Charles 9 Easily fixed

"I use Adblock, and NoScript. So FB and Google don't see me."

Don't be so sure about that. FB in particular have become masters of finding ways to get their content loaded inline with the actual content whether you have blockers or not. And more and more sites are probably going to get proxies so that they're inline with the content, making them part and parcel. And while YOU may stop visiting them, what about being outvoted by nigh everyone else?

Charles 9

"Yeah you can, easily. They haven't yet come up with a way for a satellite to see through trees (just look at forestry in Google Earth - can you see the ground? No?"

No, but just because YOU can't see it doesn't mean someone else CAN see all the way to the ground AND is keeping it a secret. Always assume your adversary is more capable than they're letting on. After all, isn't the data center in Utah really just a cover for a working quantum computer busily cracking all the historic crypto that's being housed there?

Charles 9

Re: Amazon's customer's are actual people

Or simply the only part that Amazon WANTS to look like it's actually making money. The rest use AWS as a screen to avoid taxes and regulation.

Charles 9

Re: Illegal advertising to children in the room

But how do you know what they're doing when they're alone, given (by definition) no one's watching them?

Charles 9

Re: Too gay for words

"startpage for searching - it does a google search but strips out your identifiable data."

And how long before Google blocks Startpage or finds a way to tunnel through startpage to find the real user underneath?

Charles 9

If Star Trek can do it, why can't we is probably the mindset of most of the people targeted.

US military's latest toy set: Record-breaking laser death star, er, truck

Charles 9

Re: debris will still be a pretty effective kinetic weapon.

And most ballistic missiles AREN'T powered in their descents.

Charles 9

Re: HEMTT

No, they can't cross railway tracks because the railway crossings are all huge humps. Physically, American vehicles aren't that much different from their European counterparts. If a car can bottom out on a FLAT railroad crossing, It would probably become an instant YouTube sensation.

Charles 9

Re: Bah!

"As for keeping the beam on the target, that works against you all the way because in order for the turret motors to keep pace with the angular change in target position, you have to be far enough away to make the rate of change relatively slow"

Why? Shouldn't turning a mirror should be a heck of a lot easier than trying to turn a hypersonic missile and still maintain integrity and target fixation.

"What happens if you paint your missiles with the paint used for lining roads? Or cover it with cat's eye reflectors?"

Against a 60kW beam? They'd burn or melt tout suite.

Charles 9

Re: Still not seeing this

As I said before, they need to be tougher than is currently possible with manmade technology to be able to reflect a 60kW beam back for more than a split second. The moment the reflective surface warps in any way, it stops being reflective, which means it becomes absorptive, which means it's gonna melt PDQ. And if it only takes a momentary hit for things to get nasty, evasive maneuvers will only work so much as the laser would only have to be lucky a few times to start causing trouble. And since we're talking a mostly-solid-state weapon with near-zero lead time, it's probably going to be able to track an incoming projectile more easily than the projectile can dodge.

Charles 9

Re: OMFG this is an astonishing story.

Plus that .01% alone would be enough to warp the reflective coating, which will cause it's reflectivity to drop fast.

Charles 9

Re: Still not seeing this

That would add weight, which is a serious consideration for a missile. As for heat shielding, unless you can make a shield that can survive a trip through the Sun's corona, then the substance doesn't exist yet that can absorb all that energy concentrated for more than a split second. And once it's through, the laser only needs a split second to do some major damage to the delicate insides of a warhead.

An under-appreciated threat to your privacy: Security software

Charles 9

Re: Security as a service

And how would they do that and be sure they got it right? Not even formal proofs are universal.

Charles 9

Re: Security as a service

Security CAN'T be totally baked into the OS because it'll get in the way of productivity. And if you can't be productive, what's the whole bloody point of this exercise?

I was authorized to trash my employer's network, sysadmin tells court

Charles 9

Re: So what?

"Taking his money and destroying his reputation so he can't get another job is far more cost effective."

But riskier since he may be able to find SOMEONE to hire him who (a) doesn't know about him or (b) doesn't care. Attaching the criminal record (especially if a felony) tends to stop a lot of job vetters cold.

Dad of student slain in Paris terror massacre sues Google, Twitter, Facebook for their 'material support' of ISIS

Charles 9

Re: "MTB"

"Didn't the merkans use them in WWII? (MTB = Motor Torpedo Boat)"

Mostly in the Pacific Theater, IINM, and Americans called them PT (for Patrol Torpedo) boats.

Bloke cuffed after 'You deserve a seizure' GIF tweet gave epileptic a fit

Charles 9

Re: Trivial fix

"First, premeditated murder requires clear intent and a reasonable likelihood it could actually result in death. Giving someone seizures can lead to death, but as even this case demonstrated -- it doesn't necessarily."

So does poisoning someone. Doesn't always work, either. But as the seized computer evidence shows, murderous intent was clear at the time (Quote, "let's see if he dies", unquote).

As for fixing this stuff, you have to realize that, for many people, strobe effects are desired. At least games that flash give a fair warning to photosensitive epileptics (either on the cabinet or in the manual). It's a case of you can't win 'em all. That's why Japanese TV, while it discourages strobe effects, doesn't outright ban them. Instead, an advisory comes up at the beginning of these kinds of shows: basically, sit further from the TV and turn on the lights. And BTW, it wasn't Pikachu that caused the fits in the 90's but Porygon, which is why that one episode never went stateside.

Charles 9

Re: Attempted manslaughter?

It all depends on the circumstances. Manslaighter can be "intentional" as in it was started by a deliberate act, but the act itself was not meant to kill. That would be a First Degree Manslaughter: committed by a deliberate act but not one with murderous intent. Meanwhile, a death that occurs accidentally but during the commission of a serious crime like a violent felony can be considered either First Degree Murder or Felony Murder: either way, it's among the lowest of the low because it's considered wanton disregard of innocent life during a deliberate violation of the rules of society: basically, willful and even eager defiance of society.

Charles 9

Re: Attempted manslaughter?

If it's premeditated, then it can actually be attempted MURDER.

San Francisco reveals latest #Resist effort – resisting sub-gigabit internet access

Charles 9

Re: San Francisco is old enough

Wind damage is no strawman, and you don't need a hurricane to pull it off. January 8, 1997. Windstorm damages houses. Utility poles specifically mentioned in the Los Angeles Times. Damage compared to Northridge. Just two months ago, two storms in quick succession cause severe damage in San Diego. Again, downed utility poles specifically mentioned (along with trees).

And earthquake damage to utility poles seem serious enough that the state government plans for such an eventuality.

And since you mentioned already-compromised poles, you have to assume EVERY pole in the area is compromised in some way if there's no budget to replace them. Which means they're at risk of toppling at the next local or major disaster. Meaning they can't be trusted. However, since you're in an earthquake zone, burial is risky, too (since they become more prone to seismic effects).

One IP address, multiple SSL sites? Beating the great IPv4 squeeze

Charles 9

Re: End to end is a myth

"There is no way to route back to an rfc 1918 address across the internet without NAT or a vpn."

Then how come I see addresses like 10.0.16.154 in the logs when I don't use a Class-A RFC1918 subnet? SOMETHING must be letting them through.

And as for iOS getting hacked, I hear plenty of stories of them getting hacked. They do it through the APPS.

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

Charles 9

Re: @Matt Bryant

"In socialized medicine you get sick, put on a waiting list, then you die because your appointment has not come up yet.

Many pots are better than one big corrupt pot!"

But at least you have a shot. Without it, you basically let down everyone that depends on you. Widows, orphans, etc.

And one big pot is a single point of failure, it's also a single point of repair, too. Lot easier to repair or even rebuild one big pot than a number of small ones. Thus why modern airliners have two honking big engines instead of four smaller ones.

Charles 9

Re: @Ian Michael Gumby

And LOVED by all those who couldn't get healthcare coverage any other way.

Seems, as they say, you can't please everyone. And the families of those who DIE tend to sue.