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Comment Re:ProtonMail users (Score 1) 26

PGP with a normal email client does nothing to protect your "metadata", i.e. who you are, who you communicate with, the subject line, date, etc. All you can do is use TLS/SSL and hope that the email servers communicate with each other encrypted without NSA backdoors (i.e. they have a copy of the TLS/SSL private key).

Comment Re:Wait a Trump minute... (Score -1, Flamebait) 43

You mean GNU/Linux, so off-topic. Changes in Linux the kernel are not needed to bring Linux to the Desktop. What is needed is a way to distribute software that works for small programming teams -- without tuning packages for every distribution or complicated installation instructions for users. See Torvalds rant that getting his diving software out is easier on Windows&Mac than it is on Linux.

Crime

Police Request Amazon Echo Recordings For Homicide Investigation (cnet.com) 168

Tulsa_Time quotes a report from CNET: Amazon's Echo and Echo Dot are in millions of homes now, with holiday sales more than quadrupling from 2015. Always listening for its wake word, the breakthrough smart speakers boast seven microphones waiting to take and record your commands. Now, Arkansas police are hoping an Echo found at a murder scene in Bentonville can aid their investigation. [First reported by The Information, investigators filed search warrants to Amazon, requesting any recordings between November 21 and November 22, 2015, from James A. Bates, who was charged with murder after a man was strangled in a hot tub. While investigating, police noticed the Echo in the kitchen and pointed out that the music playing in the home could have been voice activated through the device. While the Echo records only after hearing the wake word, police are hoping that ambient noise or background chatter could have accidentally triggered the device, leading to some more clues. Amazon has not sent any recordings to the officers but did provide Bates' account information to authorities, according to court documents. The retailer giant said it doesn't release customer information without a "valid and binding legal demand." "Amazon objects to over-broad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course," the company said in a statement. Even without Amazon's help, police may be able to crack into the Echo, according to the warrant. Officers believe they can tap into the hardware on the smart speakers, which could "potentially include time stamps, audio files or other data."] Police also found a Nest thermostat, a Honeywell alarm system, wireless weather monitoring in the backyard and WeMo devices for lighting at the smart home crime scene. Officers have also seized an iPhone 6S, a Macbook Pro, a PlayStation 4 and three tablets in the investigation.

Comment Re:Germany has way more problems than Facebook (Score 1) 321

Actually the government is quite popular and Merkel is going for a 4th term. It's because they managed the refugees. Mandatory German lessons, set then up with some prospects, made sure they were distributed reasonably.

People are happy that Germany did it's bit too help when others, including the counties directly responsible for the crisis, did almost nothing.

Don't confuse slashdotters with facts.
Doesn't matter that crime statistics show that refugees are not more likely to commit crimes than citizens. Doesn't matter that immigrants have been shown to bring a net profit to social services because they pay more than they take. Doesn't matter that they take labour that citizens do not want to take and have been shown to be a net benefit to the market. Doesn't matter that these are the educated liberals of Syria that are extremely helpful in identifying ISIS collaborators because who attacked them and killed their friends and relatives. No, like every refugee situation before (Hungarians, Cubans), lets be envious instead for every euro they receive and every job they can hold.

Comment Re:Nature varies (Score 1) 244

We have some observational constraints on the speed of light.
11 billion years ago (when the universe was 2 billion years old), the speed of light was about the same as it is now. https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.087...
Otherwise, the light crossing certain objects would be different. This result is essentially independent of cosmology.

I guess that the cosmic microwave background also places limits. If the speed of light had been infinite at that time, I suspect the last scattering would be affected. This is ~300.000 years after the big bang.

But at the time of inflation ... sure, could be infinite, I guess.

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