Posts by DropBear 4735 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013
No. I basically have two completely independent sets of personal data management apps on my phone, ex factory: one by Google, one by Samsung. Which one do you think supports syncing to a non-connected, offline desktop app? That's right, neither. All they let you do is look at what you have on your phone - while it's plugged in.
"In conventional fixed-wing aircraft, loss of an engine means you start gliding back to terra firma under the pilot’s control. In a helicopter, autorotation happens: the main rotor keeps turning thanks to wind pressure, providing enough lift to make a controlled descent to a safe landing."
...and in basically all modern "air taxi" prototypes which tend to be many-rotor aircraft, you won't even notice the loss of one of them if you have a bit of luck. At worst, you'll find it advisable to land as soon as possible, but plummeting is not on the table, as long as those devising the flight software were something other than monkeys with typewriters.
Multiple redundant power supplies would be expected and with four rotors you don't need them all to land in a reasonable manner. With six, you can even pretend nothing happened. And there are actual flying designs with eleventy billion smaller rotors - those would be basically indestructible short of dropping a bridge on them or flying them into a mountain.
ALL OF WHICH are inherently safer than either fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft having to snowflake down to the ground unpowered, trying to stay in the air very much like a brick doesn't, placing its hopes and prayers on the ability of the pilot to crash at least somewhat gracefully.
PS: ...also? Parachutes ARE a thing on these, and they deploy basically instantly. Look up "ballistic parachute" some day.
Duh, of course it's obvious. And of course it gets granted anyway. That's patents for you these days. Hopefully you have more money than $industry_giant if you wish to dispute it legally though. Sometimes I think I should just patent "method and apparatus for transporting liquids by counteracting gravity through forming a concave shape" and start collecting license fees from everyone who wants a glass of water...
Except a "square" is just fine by me - I would hope to use it as a book reader, and the format would be just fine for that. Incidentally, it's why I would have no interest at all in a "clamshell" folder. One would think web browsing would be also significantly enhanced seeing as how the current 2:1 displays either show five lines of text in landscape or "hahaha get an electron microscope" in portrait.
They are. See my reply to Irongut above. Not entirely sure what the legal technicalities are regarding lawsuits vs. complaints to data protection authorities, but one should not forget this is THE Max Schrems we are talking about. I trust he knows what he's doing.
Which is exactly why NOYB jumped on them immediately as soon as GDPR went into effect. The only thing is, legal matters aren't exactly a "blink of an eye" business; but the complaints _are_ filed.
Yeah, about that - it always honestly puzzled me. Is it truly so directional anyone behind it would be considered safe...? Naive question perhaps, but what little conventional wisdom a civilian might have regarding traditional explosive stuff generally indicates you don't want to be _anywhere_ around any of them when they go off...
What he said ^. "Battle Bots" is what a remotely controlled hunk of metal looks like. Boston Dynamics "robots" may lack actual AI for proper autonomous operation but as far as immediate locomotion goes any computing power is potentially remote merely for convenience, not because it couldn't be built in. And frankly "shoot anything that moves or just raise the alarm if anything does" as dumb and limited as it may be, is not the hard part when robots are involved - that "not falling on your ass at the first rock" part is.
Another RSS El Reg reader here - I have quite a few "live bookmarks" and have never read RSS any other way; looked at a few readers a while back but just didn't see the point - "live bookmarks" work just fine and Feed Sidebar lights up a button whenever there's something to read and lists the titles nicely by site on the left. I guess Mozilla just really, REALLY wants to make sure I never even consider using their latest crap.
What I don't understand is, if they think RSS is obsolete - what are they proposing instead? How are you supposed to be notified that a site you haven't been to for two years sprung back to life and emitted a new post...? And FYI I mean some way other than a Facebook feed whatever that might be because fuck Facebook sideways.
The utility of a wide e-book reader might be debatable (although I would prefer a "two page" one given the choice), but the point I was trying to make was merely that at the time Amazon launched their tablet the "colour" tag was not really redundant - it really was their first device with a honest-to-goodness colour screen...
Yes. Otherwise known as "an e-reader". Traditionally equipped with a very low-power, but also very slow and black-and-white screen. When you're Amazon and that's where you're coming from, your tablet being a colour one is a meaningful distinction, even if e-readers aren't quite really "tablets"...
It's quite true though; constellations hold the absolute worse record at pareidolia. Compared to how much most of them actually resemble their names to any degree, perceived images of Jesus on knotted wood or toast are practically photorealistic stuff. Which is probably why the constellations are named wildly different things in different cultures, even when the formation is distinctive enough to consist of pretty much the same stars in most of its variants. Is it a dipper, is it a cart or is it a bear then...? Screw that nonsense, I get that we're stuck with it but it's still indefensible...
People seem to think this is an case of either "we are being spied upon by preposterously crafty chips" or "nothing really happened, move along", apparently forgetting that the latter option is off the table. Either the former case is true, or if it is not, then someone went to a lot of trouble setting up a large scale scam sufficiently elaborate to convince / fool a major news outlet - that in itself is very much major news if so. The option with zero actual credibility is "oh, Bloomberg just had a bad dream..."
There's also the possibility that nobody actually did any of this yet, but someone form either side is intending to, knowing full well that the next time this becomes news absolutely nobody would believe it even if there were photos of the stuff this time - in fact it would probably never get published at all for that exact reason. A creative bit of prior restraint perhaps...?
This is devolving into "I swear the story I read said those motherboards come with embedded Youkai who steal your soul when you power it up". It's thoroughly amazing how initially objective information completely turns into whatever agrees best with what was already in the reader's head upon consumption and how fiercely most people insist that absolutely no such thing is happening...
That could be problematic considering those in possession of the kit insist there is nothing to show and those insisting there is have no access to the PCBs. Seizing stuff wouldn't really prove anything at all either at this point since if the claims are real, moving the evidence out of the way would have likely been the first thing that was done...
"Four Yorkshiremen" should be all the proof you need that there's no situation bad enough that couldn't be imagined being worse with a little creativity; that does not mean that the comparatively better situation is not pretty fucking bad regardless. Yes, right now we're better off that your examples. No, in spite of that, objectively speaking we're nowhere near "good enough" or even "acceptable". Modern existence may be a take it or leave it deal and not immediately life-threatening but that doesn't mean we have to like it...
Whoa, slow down there! All these technical details of how a wrist-mounted gadget is supposed to not only generate but also image with x-rays, backscatter or not, are sending my head spinning! Yeah I know this is a site for techies but that's no reason to overwhelm the reader like this describing the technology it's supposed to be using...!
Exactly. If I wanted a dumbphone - which this _IS_ - I could still have either an old one or a new one, damn nearly for free. Reading the headline I was hoping they came up with something that would enhance my control over my data and privacy on an actual smartphone but no - they just went for the trivial baby + bathwater "solution".
In theory, the same functionality still exists except it uses the "" (quotes) operator, as evidenced by Google itself whenever you click on a small "must contain <search term>" link under a result that lacks it, resulting in your term changing to in-quotes in the search box. I say "in theory" though because it still seems to me "must contain" is treated more like a weak hint by Google rather than "not a single result that does not have this, capisce?!?"...
No. People have (or lack) principles. Corporations only have an insatiable hunger for profit by any means necessary. Whenever a sufficiently principled person is in control of a company to a sufficient degree, you might get to see the company acting responsibly - in any other situation all you'll see is raw greed thickly glazed with PR.
While it certainly might be the case that Bloomberg was simply duped, please consider that strong, unequivocal denials by no means mean those issuing them tell the truth - rather merely that they are VERY sure Bloomberg will never be able to prove they're lying. Or, alternatively, that they have an iron-clad excuse for lying if they ever get caught.
One is reminded of the old joke about an engineer, a theoretical physicist and a mathematician travelling together and seeing a black sheep. "Look, proof that black sheep do exist!" says the engineer. "No, it's only proof that at least one black sheep exists", counters the physicist. At which point the mathematician mutters "actually, this only proves that at least one sheep that is at least half black exists..."
I was just about going to upvote you then you went into that HID thing. With all the head-splitting madness that HID descriptors added to the already depression-inducing complexity of USB, what on Earth do they have to do with security of unrelated types of USB devices? At best, you're trying to fault the fact that composite USB devices can exist, simultaneously reporting several different types of peripherals attached over the same single USB port - but that has nothing to do with HID.
It also has nothing to do with security - even if composite devices would not exist, there would be nothing preventing a suitably malicious piece of hardware to momentarily stop performing its apparent legitimate function, detach from the USB bus then re-attach and enumerate as a (single) completely different kind of evil USB device pwning your box.
Is this perhaps about PS/2 nostalgia from a time when human-input devices used distinctly different ports than anything else (and so did everything else from everything else)...? If so, I guess I'm just not old and grumpy enough to follow you there - being able to plug a virtual keyboard/mouse RF dongle into the single USB port of a headless Orange Pi does have definite advantages; and if I never ever see a zillion-wire thicker-than-a-boa LPT cable it will still be too soon...
It's not really people's fault though - they're all taught as a kid that honesty and good always defeats evil, and good deeds always get rewarded / bad deeds always get punished; and while sooner or later most end up understanding to some degree that's not exactly how it all works, some just never really grow up to realize how ludicrously unhinged from reality all that drivel actually is.
"That would be "none", then?"
None needed. Trying to shoot down a moving drone has been explicitly tested, on video, with people invited from a range of law enforcement agencies; they all failed, until the drone slowed down to a near-stop on a sharp turn of its previously agreed-upon (!) route. That is not to say there exists no sharp-shooter capable enough to reasonably likely shoot down a drone - that is irrelevant. What it does say instead is that the average law-enforcement gunslinger goon is seriously unlikely to hit a drone that isn't sitting still, from a typical "shooting range" distance.
"Who knows"
Anyone with a brain, older than 11. There's no "if" in that sentence. All power gets abused all the time. No exceptions. That is the nature of the human beast. All you can do is try to create a system of checks on the use of that power and hope it's strong enough to balance abuse. Except that as long as those wielding (or granting) the power would be responsible for also creating the checks, they have zero incentive to tie their own hands, so nope - and power long stopped caring about pretending to be accountable to anyone these days.
I'm not so sure. I don't think the chip does very much most of the time on average, excepting the immediate bus-hugging logic I certainly wouldn't expect it to run its internal processor (if it even has one) at anything like "CPU" level speeds. Besides, all it really needs anyway is a good connection to the internal ground plane - using that for thermal dissipation at least partially instead of a conventional heat sink is already standard practice for certain types of designs...
"the ability to check the motherboard for objects that shouldn't be there that are on the nanometer scale."
So, um, you reckon they did all that firmware hijacking via a single flip-flop...? Because double or single digit nanometer scale is what individual features of a single transistor are at, not any fucking chip of any fucking level of complexity.
I suppose by drilling a somewhat larger via into one of the internal layers you should be able to hide a chip in the cavity it creates without any bulges whatsoever. Yes, it would be noticeable if you examine the board structure carefully (ie. knowing what you're looking for, by x-ray / transparency) but probably not on a cursory looking-at-the-external-layer-only check.
And I'm not sure such a method would give away anything extra - even if your chip is on the outside, mounted on the surface as any other chip, it would be clear from the PCB layout / trace / footprint modifications necessary to mount it that it was a job done at the factory, while such an extra component would be much easier to notice than an internal chip even on a less thorough check of the PCB.
The only way to plausibly deny the source of the modifications would be to bodge in the extra chip rework-style (possibly even requiring extra patch wiring) but that would stick out like a sore thumb at any kind of glance to anyone opening the case - and even that would merely shift the blame away from the factories themselves, still leaving China as the only logical suspect, unless someone tried blaming the NSA & co.
One kinda wonders how exactly they were caught in the first place - it's not like tossing some kit under a coat in a car will automatically attract any law enforcement within three miles or something. Were the Dutch a) tipped off by someone who knew what was going on, from either side of the fence or b) were they already watching the "diplomats" or c) did the maid in the Marriott notice one too many Yagi antennas in their room or d) was the OPCW already so spooked by the previous hacking attempts that they were actively looking out for this sort of presence around their building or e) was the car parked in a fixed place 24/7 with a bunch of scary-looking blokes just sitting in it or e) did the "diplomats" simply check into the hotel as "Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange"...?
Which is why I flat out would not buy any device that _forces_ me to apply updates by whatever means. That is not to say I would never want to apply an update to a device, but the thing is a lack of updates may or may not have actual consequences for my specific device depending on its specific circumstances (it more likely won't though) whereas any update may or may not break functionality I depend on (and it more likely will - most updates I applied to a device did break _something_). And at this point, I'm done dealing with things breaking - if I can't rely on it to work untouched 5-10 years, I don't want it. Life is literally too short to keep dealing with the endless amount of stuff that wants to be maintained each time the direction of the wind changes.
"a single datum of anecdotal evidence"
Here's another one. There weren't exactly lots of female IT teachers where I graduated - but the one I always admired and ended up having frank discussions with later was always very clear about having always had a keen interest in tech very much in spite of and not thanks to the innumerable attempts of her family to "straighten her out" back to playing with dolls, as was thought to be exclusively appropriate for a girl at that time in that culture.
"not that liking dolls is the definition of being girly"
Public Opinion: "Dolls are for girls, yo!"
RealDoll LLC: "Oh really? Hold my beer..."
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