Posts by JohnFen 5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015
"Microsoft intends to let six principles to guide the company's use of facial recognition going forward. They are: fairness, transparency, accountability, nondiscrimination, notice and consent, and lawful surveillance."
Hahahahahahahahaha!!
Oh, sorry, I meant
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
"I mean, do think Google should keep supporting Allo, even though it hasn't gained much traction"
I don't use Google products, but I'm going to guess, based on the comments that I've read over the years, that people's problem with this is that it means that you can't really rely on anything Google releases (at least until it's a big hit) because it might go away tomorrow.
That's a really serious problem. Once you've invested in a particular platform, it's painful and disruptive to to change.
"In the USA, we can exercise our 5th amendment privilege, thankfully"
Yeah, probably not. I'm not sure if the Supreme Court has ruled on this or not, but I've seen a few cases in lower courts where the court ruled that being forced to provide a password is not a 5th amendment violation, as the password itself is not incriminating testimony.
"That wont help if Android and iOS have been required to provide an access portal to the devices keyboard and screen."
That's true (although there would be ways to mitigate it), but that's not what the legislation requires.
"I'm off to start a One Time pads company!"
If you can solve the major problem with one-time pads (key exchange), then you'll be a billionaire.
"I predict tech companies will just withdraw their software from Australian sale or distribution as the simplest way to comply with the new law."
The smaller ones, sure. The Googles, Microsofts, etc.? There's not a chance that they'll leave money on the table in Australia.
What I predict is that sophisticated criminals and people who are concerned about privacy will just use their own encryption and stop relying on the crypto built into comms applications (as they should have been doing all along, anyway).
Here are my personal answers:
"1. Are we ok with lawful intercept?"
Yes.
"2b. If yes, why should one messaging format be privileged and another not (ie why should we accept interception on one and not the other)?"
It's not a matter of being OK with one and not the other, it's a matter of whether or not the government actively prevents you from protecting yourself. That's the part that I don't think is OK. I don't really have a problem with lawful intercept of any communications, WhatsApp or otherwise, but I have a big problem with the government requiring the weakening of defenses. Let's look at telephone tapping -- that's allowed, but but it's also permissible for you and I to use voice scramblers in our calls. If, as these people keep asserting, they just want to maintain the same ability that they have with phone calls -- well, they have that right now. What they really want is much more than that.
"Am I right to think we’re all perfectly ok with big G sniffing our SMS messages, but Lord forbid they see our WhatsApps?"
No, I don't think you're right. There are plenty of people who strongly object to both of those things.
"Don't they realise that if there are backdoors anyone can read their private communications - a back door will let anyone in."
I really wonder if they realize that or not. Maybe they do and they just don't care.
I'm reminded of the US' "TSA approved" locks for luggage. Those locks all take one of 8 (IIRC) master keys to open them. All of those keys are readily available for purchase -- or even by 3D printing -- by anybody. The TSA is fully aware of this, and their official stance is that they don't care because that flaw does not have national security implications. It only sucks for the travelers.
I love their creative invention of a term that implies strong security but in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with strong security. "Double-lock" just means two entities have to sign off on the order. It means nothing.
If they pass this legislation, I predict booming "black market" crypto sales in Australia!
"End of metrics collection experiment."
First, you're using "metrics" in an overly broad sense here. Google purchases this data in order to match up online activity with physical purchase activity. That's a whole lot more than what people tend to think of when they think "metrics".
Second, I don't see anywhere that this effort has ended. I may have missed it, but even the article you linked to doesn't say they've stopped.
Third, it's not just credit card information. Google also has deal to collect Wifi & Bluetooth pings that stores increasingly use to track you. Google has expanded their already overly invasive spying activities into the physical world on several fronts.
I'm not seeing how their behavior is better than Facebook's.
"Just wait until it comes out that Facebook have been doing "data swap" deals with the big financial institutions and retailers, (at least in the US)"
I wonder if there would be an outcry over this, given that Google publicly stated that they do this sort of thing and nobody blinked.
"the main reason to hassle parents to invest in the new tech was more likely to be the fake underground Horror flicks."
I am of that age group, and underground horror flicks (I assume you're talking about "snuff" films) were certainly not what was on anybody's mind. It was all about the porn. Sure, everyone heard rumors about snuff films, but literally nobody I knew was actually interested in seeing any. Naked ladies, though, that's a different thing entirely!
Perhaps this is a regional thing.
"Today's internet was built on the back of advertisers' dollars, yes?"
I suppose that depends on what you mean by "today's internet". You're really talking about the web, not the internet, and a certain large segment of the web is absolutely built on ad dollars. But another large segment of the web was not.
The internet itself is not primarily ad-driven and was not built on advertiser's dollars.
"The World Wide Web is not available at no cost "
In an absolute sense, sure. However, there is plenty of stuff on the web that really is available at no cost (either in data or money) to users. The people running the services have to pay for it, of course, but not the users.
The API issue is not my major beef with Facebook, so them limiting that doesn't really affect my opinion of them.
My beef with Facebook is primarily around two things: first, the straight-up deceptive and unfair manipulation of its users in order to keep them using the platform, and second, the fact that they compile data on me even though I don't use Facebook.
"effectively the same model used by YouTube"
Comparing them to anything Google does isn't doing them any favors.
Facebook is evil and can fuck right off.
"they're making it increasingly difficult to go back to Windows once you're using something else."
Yeah, that's always been the case, though. When I show up at work and have to start using Windows, it always feels like I've gone from driving a sports car to driving a Gremlin.
Well, I was being a touch hyperbolic, but I do think that the essence of what I said is true.
Yes, writing around differences in browser really does suck. But that developers continue to do this simply perpetuates the underlying problem by removing the incentives for browser manufacturers to fix their software. Web developers should just write to the standard and if it doesn't work with some browsers, divert users to complain to those browser manufacturers.
I do understand that, in the case of websites that need to make money, the economics dictate that you should pander to the broken browsers. But doing so just ensures that things won't get better in the web generally.
"UX, UI, the user(you) matters a lot, and you're the ones we try to satisfy the most to ensure that we have repeat business from a client and just a matter of integrity in making a working product. "
Yes, I hear that a lot (particularly from the UX crowd), but I don't see it in practice that much. I'm not really talking about simple layout here, but functionality. Web designers seem to prioritize two things: making the site look shiny (according to whatever the current fashion is) or make use of the latest trendy technology, and (backed up by a tremendous number of articles and commentary on web design sites) being effective at manipulating users to do whatever it is the site operator wants them to do. Neither of those are treating the user with respect.
"Google slurp is morally superior (not that that is saying much)."
I can't go with you there, because, like Facebook, Google slurps your data whether or not you're using Google products (or even whether or not you're using the internet). As far as I know, Microsoft doesn't present as comprehensive an attack as that.
"So you make your browser pander to the tiny proportion of people who don't use a mouse"
Good interface design includes the ability to use an application entirely with the keyboard with no loss of functionality. Most people rarely need to do this, but sooner or later, most people will encounter a situation where it's necessary.
Even though this has been a thing since at least Windows 7, it's not something that works for me. It requires me to remember the name of the application I want to run. If it's one I run a lot, then it's already pinned anyway, and if it's one that I don't run a lot then I'm unlikely to remember what it's called and will end up going through the list anyway.
"During the passage of the Investigatory Powers legislation, he said, the government anticipated bulk EI warrants would be "the exception", and "be limited to overseas 'discovery' based EI operations"."
If you grant a body with a power, you can be absolutely certain that the power will be used to the fullest extent possible. If the limits of a granted power aren't part of the legislation granting the power, then those limits don't exist. What they say about "intention" is always meaningless.
"What do you mean poorly on Linux?"
Since nobody else has answered this, I'll take a stab at it. First, the open source versions of PowerShell are still very new and have the elevated number of bugs you would expect from new software. So I'll ignore those.
Here's what I think is the fundamental problem with PowerShell on Linux -- compatibility. PowerShell does not handle the differences between platforms well at all, and they are not fully interchangeable. So if you write a PowerShell script for one system, there is no guarantee that it will work on another system. The PowerShell ports also implement a subset of what is available in the proprietary version. There are commands available in some environments that simply are not available in others. PowerShell is full of gotchas along similar lines.
The scripting tools that ship with Linux distributions have none of those problems (and are easier to use and more powerful anyway). Not to mention that in order to use it, you have to talk Linux users into taking the extra step of installing PowerShell in the first place. I think getting more than a minority to do this would be a heavy lift.
Given those problems, I honestly can't think of a real world use case for PowerShell on anything except Windows.
"Technically, I guess they could make that claim that if one person in the company used it"
This is likely the case. It's long been standard practice for enterprise software companies to claim "corporation xyz uses us" based on even a single product registration or invoice. That's why such claims should always be ignored.
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