Posts by Charles 9

Re: I'm forced to wonder

You meant MOST. And be careful about shutting that computer off. There's a chance it won't turn on again. You can tell that from the inevitable casualties after a blackout (sometimes long enough to beat an UPS).

Can't without going black. See, this is why trademark protection exists: to prevent your name getting smeared by the competition.

Re: I couldn't in good conscience do that kind of deep analysis work to assist an ad-slinger

You're lucky. For others, that pittance falls "below the Cost of Living in the cheapest town within moving distance". In which case, it's either take the crap job...or starve on crap.

Not enough dosh. Need to be at least a BILLIONAIRE, as those companies tend to have have good teams of lawyers AND a few connections to the lawMAKERS as well. And since laws are made by man, they can be UNmade by man.

Re: Two things

Bad memories mean people forget mnemonics: meaning little black books get lost and master passwords get forgotten. That's how bad we're talking (as in bad enough to forget their birthday or even their name sometimes). Yet they're too proud to ask for help.

Re: Who to block?

The day people willingly leave Facebook and the like en masse will probably come some time after the heat death of the universe. You overestimate the intelligence of the average Internet-goer, thus my derisive line, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY PRIVACY!"

No, because it'll probably be the government that puts the Tescos up to it. In which case, if the courts say one thing, they can always change it to fit.

Re: Who to block?

And like I said, what if the subdomain BELONGS to the government? As they say, truth is stranger than fiction...

Re: Two things

"Whataboutism can be a useful rhetorical device to further a discussion. It can also reveal a passive, defeatist approach to life's problems. Just because greedy, corporatists are seizing control of an engineering toy, doesn't mean we have to give up and go home."

The thing about edge cases is that they don't STAY edge cases. And there are people out there who encounter Murphy more often than most. Not to mention people who have to live with people with terrible memories (as in sometimes they can't recall their name yet are too proud to ask for help).

As for solutions, I always recall my favorite whine: "I want it all, and I want it yesterday! Now JFDIE!" Thus ICU to me isn't Intensive Care Unit but Instructed to Chase Unicorns.

"(it really should be asked of the user once a new profile is created and changed later, with a per-site override)"

NO, because of Joe Stupid. And YES, you have to protect Joe Stupid from himself or he'll take the rest of us with him.

Re: Two things

"Of course, you have to then type in your address and credit card details every single time, but that's the price you have to pay for wearing a tinfoil hat."

So what do you tell people with bad memories who can't recall stuff like that to save their lives, to say nothing of stuff like passwords (Now was it correcthorsebatterystaple or donkeyenginepaperclipwrong)?

Re: Who to block?

It would probably also break too many sites to the point you hear, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY PRIVACY! JUST LET ME GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!"

Re: Who to block?

And if the site in question IS the local GDPR body? Or another government website?

Re: I'm forced to wonder

Then use an active protocol like VNC instead of shoehorning state into what was mostly a passive protocol.

Frankly, what's needed is to reduce web functionality drastically so that we go back to a mostly-passive environment. Anyone who complains get their Internet access cut off by their ISP (on pain of fines and possible criminal culpability) until they re-earn their Internet License.

Re: I guess that...

Including GOVERNMENT websites, meaning no benefits and so on?

Re: Grrr....

But that's shy corporations exist in the first place. They were made to shield liability.

Re: It's not enough to block - you need to salt (or fuck depending on your style :) )

Don't know if that will work. We end up paying for extra data capacity, and they probably whitelist as a precaution.

Re: Cookies

I'm waiting for the day the ad and the content are part and parcel, either due to Product Placement like in TV shows, or by ad companies BECOMING the content providers. Either way, ads become articlrs, articles become ads, and your only recourse is to go, "Stop the Internet! I wanna get off!"...and go back to your junk mails, billboards, product placements, etc.

Re: Build a List?

And if they instead finagle, bribe, or simply get the government changed?

Re: Who to block?

Nah, they'll just bribe them or put out to get it changed.

Re: I'm forced to wonder

Or they'll just suffer Click Fatigue and whine, "JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!"

Re: Icann

Resistant to corruption? HAH! It's a Work of Man.

Re: We don't need no stinkin' DNS

They're still works of Man, though. ANY work of Man can be corrupted with enough effort.

Re: Unfortunately it's just us

When you're talking corruption, especially on as high a level as this, laws don't help, as the corruption seeps into the laws themselves. This is the "ink on a page" phase.

Re: The Internet is for everyone

What's to stop ISPS from just hijacking the port wholesale? DNS over TLS uses a dedicated port, too, which can ALSO be hijacked wholesale.

But can you really trust the crypto industry that can be subverted at any time without your knowledge?

I mean what about the old phrase "If you want something done right, do it yourself"? It seems crypto is a no-win here: you can't trust yourself, but you can't trust anyone else, either.

Re: Meanwhile....

"The rest of us use encryption to do our online banking, buy goods and services and hold perfectly innocent private conversations, because we don't want law enforcement spying on us "just in case"."

Then what did people do before the Internet, then? It's not like it's that much easier to buy groceries online versus going to the store: physical stuff still needed to be transferred.

Re: Meanwhile, ten days ago on Schneier on Security

More than likely this is backend stuff which no end user can circumvent. And remember, China is also hard at work in real time cryptanalysis and anti-stego techniques.

You don't even need back doors for that. Just get an insider to steal some signing keys and no police on the planet will be able to distinguish you from perfectly legitimate business that brings in the taxes and so on.

Remember, SIGNED mallard is a thing.

"And on Android you can always flash a new ROM over the vendor installed one to remove any bloat"

A lot of manufacturers don't provide bloat-free ROMs, and most Android phones will balk on an unisgned ROM, which requires the manufacturer to sign.

It could simply be a matter of a unique version being available exclusively for Russia. Which means its own signature keys and so on, meaning it wouldn't be possible to install anything BUT Russian ROMs (with their concomitant spyware).

In the US, they use cotton seeds the same way. They extract the oil, and the leftover meal becomes animal feed. And it's not just waste from farming, either. The cod industry up in Alaska is said to be able to extract every last bit of use from the fish: including the bones and leftover meat from the human-food process which I recall are dried, ground, and turned into animal feed.

Re: This wouldn't appeal to Vegans anyway.

Something tells me Moses was out to make sure people only ate strict herbivores (ruminating is a peculiar evolutionary specialty that would only emerge in species desperate to have the double-digestion needed to break down cellulose without resorting to cacophagy like the lagomorphs do). Now was there a reason for this? Maybe, for reasons of experience, can't say for sure. But I'm willing to assume there was an at-least-partially-logical reason for it.

Re: Cold turkey veggie

Tree nuts are just fruits without the fruits (as fruits are seed-bearing bodies; nuts are essentially the bare seed by itself), making them kind of a subset, whereas I can't recall anything growing in a tree canopy that could really be considered a vegetable by the botanical definition (botanically speaking, almonds and pistachios are fruits--drupes--rather than nuts).

Re: Cold turkey veggie

Um, that makes it a FRUIT, as it grows on trees, unless you're saying it comes from something like the bark of the tree.

I've given the Burger King one a try. Needs work. May give it another pass in a month or so. Also don't think they'll really pass muster in applications where the flavoring provided by lard/tallow is a desired feature, such as in meat sauces.

Re: Artificial Protein-Based( Meat

"...and superbugs generated through the over-use of antibiotics in intensive farming."

While there have been superbugs produced that way, the worst of the bunch (especially the nascent pan-resistant strains) are coming out of hospitals.

Re: This wouldn't appeal to Vegans anyway.

Then someone will inevitably raise the question: Why cows? Why not ask for a volunteer to give up a bit of leg muscle? Presto! Lab-grown Long Pig with only minimal human cruelty (Transmetropolitan reference).

4 minutes? Most places I know you're expected to pull in place inside of 15 seconds and have the fuel cap off within 30 seconds of stopping (that includes the time it takes to turn off the car, get out, and get to the fuel cap). Any slower and you're liable to get honked. I know I routinely beat those times...and that's WITH a locking fuel cap.

"don't let it get so low that it runs out - generally the sensible option"

EXCEPT electrical measurement of charge is a rather inexact thing. Plus battery quirks can misreport charge. I personally saw my cell phone plunge from 95% to 5% in a blink. That was my first cue I needed to switch out the battery on my phone (AND why I insist on a user-replaceable battery on any phone--because of quirks like this).

TLDR: Your car can read 50% when you get home at night and STILL end up flat the next day, due to misreporting.

Re: The driving test of the future

You also won't go very far, period. This is because the mere act of driving is an inherent risk no matter what you do. All you can do at that point is to live with the risk, understand there WILL be people unintentionally out to kill you, but you have to drive around them anyway and live with your Sword of Damocles if you want to make a living.