Thanks, I didn't know that.

Nevertheless the practice of putting login credentials in the URL is extremely bad and the session file with saved URLs is just one of several places where someone accessing your computer can see URLs, like in the address bar itself and in saved bookmarks. Encrypting the session file is sort of like putting a bandaid on a severed femoral artery. Another bandaid would be encrypting HTTPS bookmarks and obscuring the text in the address bar on HTTPS sites unless you enter a master password to reveal it. But that would be kind of ridiculous, wouldn't it?

The websites that are still putting your username and password in their URLs are the ones who should be named and shamed. Whether they are using SSL or not, it's a terrible practice, for precisely the reason that you have no idea how the URLs may be stored or revealed by the end user's computer.

Yes, I know. The login and password credentials in the red oval are encoded in the stored URL of a web page that was open in a tab in a Safari browsing session. Those URLs are created by the websites you visit, not by Safari. Safari just stores the URLs so that your tabs can be reloaded when you reopen the browser. Safari isn't secretly copying your login data in plain text and then failing to encrypt it, it's just storing the URLs you currently have open in your browsing session. There's nothing sinister or incompetent going on here.

It's good that they are now encrypting the stored browser session file. It certainly doesn't hurt anything to have another layer of protection. But that same URL information will be stored, unencrypted, in any bookmark that you make when visiting such a website while you are logged in. If someone sits at your computer and examines your bookmarks or looks at the URL in your open tabs they will see your login credentials in such URLs. Unless you want to be forced to enter a master password every time you try to edit a bookmark, use a bookmark, or examine the URL in the address bar, there is no solution to this. The solution for protecting the saved session file is FileVault, and locking your computer when you aren't sitting in front of it, which is exactly the same way you protect all the other vulnerable data in your user account.

The root cause of the login credentials being revealed in plain text in bookmarks, the session file and the address bar is the deplorable practice of websites putting your login and password in the URL in plain text. The solution to this is to smack the websites upside the head until they modify their security practices.

Again?

First, it's previous versions of Safari that are affected. Interesting how that isn't even mentioned.

Second, as already pointed out on the MacRumors forums, the stored "session" data is merely the URLs of the web pages you have open, which is passed over the wire in plain text anyway when you open or reopen the URL.

If you're encrypting your drive with FileVault and have a decent password on your user account, this becomes entirely an issue with the piss-poor security practices of the STUPID WEBSITES that are revealing your login information in plain text right in the URL. Any bookmark of such a URL with also "reveal" your "unencrypted" login credentials. Which is entirely the fault of the website.

Also, it's fixed in latest Safari.

So... yeah. End of the world, apparently.

I imagine the baitfish has a similar mental state at any point in time prior to being eaten by an anglerfish.

Any perceived benevolence, animosity or innocuousness in a completely amoral organism like a corporation is an illusion. For your own safety you should learn to pierce that illusion. There is no reason to "feel bad" for a steamroller when its operator is being reprimanded for running over a dog. The fact that the steamroller was, up until that moment, being used to help create a road system that you will personally benefit from does not negate nor excuse the canine compression incident. It is the dog and/or the machine operator that you should have an emotional interaction with. Not the machine.

Google is neither friend nor foe overall, and is quite capable of being commanded by its human operators to perform both highly benevolent and highly antagonistic activities simultaneously at any given point in space and time. Also, its past behavior has little bearing on its present or future behavior. Your entire argument is therefore pointless.

The truly unfortunate thing about this article is that the only way to complain that it is pure unadulterated trolling clickbait that should never have appeared on Slashdot is to come in here and comment... which is exactly what they want us to do. More comments and more eyeballs means more ad impressions. They get rewarded for being stupid.

This is exactly how all the major news networks devolved from actual journalism into nothing but talking-head pundits screaming anti-factual idiocy at each other to feed their chosen audience's pre-conceived biases.

There really needs to be a separate, independent website somewhere where we can all get together and plan mini-boycotts every time the Slashdot editors put something utterly idiotic and biased like this in the lineup. Maybe after literally NOBODY comes in and comments on the stupider articles they'll get the picture and hire some smarter editors. Maybe in this way we could keep Slashdot from descending into total tabloidism and paid slashvertising.

Something simple, like the ability to nominate and then vote yea or nay on boycotting a nominated Slashdot article. Maybe the ability to make a one-line comment explaining your vote. If it gets too many nays, we boycott that particular Slashdot article by neither entering that page nor commenting on it. Thus, drastically reduced ad impressions for bad posts. Posts that aren't stupid enough don't get nominated, or don't get enough nays. Simple. A meta-Slashdot.

Maybe somebody could even turn it into a browser plugin that would let us nominate, vote and check the boycott/no-boycott status of each article on the main page by injecting some code right into the page as it loads, like a GreaseMonkey script.

Hit 'em where it hurts. In the coin purse. No pun intended.

Yes, that's why all of Asia has extremely high incidence of cancer, because they eat nothing but carbs. Oh, wait...

Cancer does in fact "just happen" all the time. In fact you have cancerous cells inside you right now. Normally, the immune system targets them and kills them. Sometimes they get out of control, which we refer to as "having cancer".

All those things you mention are just loosely correlated risk factors. But by all means keep ignorantly telling everyone you know how to prevent all forms of cancer. It's hilarious.

No, it's called science, jackass. I never said anything about blaming "society" for any individual's obesity. That would be silly.

Feel free to go lecture the ever-increasing numbers of morbidly obese six-month-old infants about how they're using "junkie logic" and failing to take "personal responsibility" for their lives. You can start out early telling them how they're useless losers who are just a drag on society while they giggle and drool and chew on their little fat fingers. You'll still be wrong, and you'll still be an ignorant asshole.

By all means tell us how it's all their parents' fault and how it's been perfectly normal throughout human history to put INFANTS on restricted calorie diets and forced exercise programs to keep them from becoming MORBIDLY OBESE starting IN THE WOMB.

The war on fat will continue to be precisely as effective as the war on drugs as long as yours is the prevailing attitude.

In other words, it will continue to be a dismal and ever-more-costly failure that is damaging our society rather than helping it.

The tone of the following should be interpreted as: Congenially argumentative.

Okay, let me see if I can be even more clear. You don't seem to understand what I actually mean when I say "very loosely linked" and "co-incidental". So let me spell out what I've been trying to say. What it means is exactly this:

The condition of having excess deposits of adipose tissue is CANNOT be referred to as the _CAUSE_ of ANY of the associated diseases we are discussing, and it is MEDICALLY DETRIMENTAL to continue to imply that excess adipose tissue is even a partial cause. Period.

REPHRASING: The entire idea of obesity being the CAUSE of any of the related conditions is COMPLETELY WRONG.

By implying that obesity even partially helps to CAUSE any of the SOMETIMES co-incidental diseases you simply continue to feed into the already almost unassailable idea that the obese, and obesity itself, is the root cause of our societal health issues and increased health care costs, when it straight-up flat-out IS NOT.

REPHRASING AGAIN: Medical science is telling us quite clearly that having excess adipose tissue is NOT UNHEALTHY in and of itself, therefore promoting the decrease of excess adipose tissue CANNOT and WILL NOT result in increased "health" because it does NOTHING to address the ACTUAL CAUSES of disease, and just feeds into the stereotype that the obese are "unhealthy" which is contributing to societal blindness about the fact that both obese and non-obese people are dying of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in droves, and it has NOTHING to do with the obesity or lack thereof. The "link" between obesity and disease is statistically NON-EXISTENT. It isn't just "weak".

REPHRASING YET A THIRD TIME: Excessive adipose tissue storage is NOT a disease that needs to be treated. Rather, it is an almost entirely medically HARMLESS symptom of a broken homeostatic metabolic system that normally regulates adipose tissue storage with mind-boggling accuracy. Accuracy that is actually completely impossible for anyone to consciously replicate. Discarding such non-solutions as "diet pills" outright will help us focus on finding and fixing the actual root cause of all these metabolic issues, and when we succeed all the related SYMPTOMS will go away BY THEMSELVES as ACTUAL "HEALTH" INCREASES.

Let me restate that last part because it's very important. Fixing the underlying root cause of these metabolic issues will cause the obese to simply start automatically losing excess adipose deposits, in exactly the same way they started automatically gaining excess adipose deposits, without any conscious planning, until eventually we will be back to 10% or lower societal obesity. Without dieting or diet pills.

I stand by my original assertion that "diet pills", no matter how effective or side-effect free, cannot increase the "health" of any individual or group, and are quite likely to be detrimental to "health".

I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to clarify how I communicate about this issue. Have a great day.

Walled garden paradigms are particularly well suited to giving small children and very old people a safer, simpler environment in which to learn and explore. Your objection is nonsensical in regard to this particular use case.

Being an Apple and iDevice fan for several years I would not hesitate to recommend an iPad 2 if cost is an issue. An iPad Air is advisable if only because it's so much lighter and thus more comfortable to hold for long periods. But people also seem to be saying very good things about the latest Kindle Fire HDX 8.9". Good screen, good speakers and very light, just like the iPad Air. For the life of me I can't imagine how it would be a bad thing to provide an elderly person who doesn't "get" the Internet with a simplified, safer app store choice and brain-dead easy access to millions of books.

Between the Kindle Fire HDX and an iPad with the Kindle app installed, it's a toss-up. Either would probably be excellent for this use case.

You've completely missed the point of my post. Yes, diet pills may successfully cause fat loss, but they will fail to cause an increase in "health" because all the health problems you talk about are NOT strongly linked to having excess body fat. It's not that it's only an 80% solution, it isn't a solution AT ALL and does nothing to address the problem of living off a high fructose, high sodium, low fiber type of diet.

In other words, if we use this "solution" you're advocating, you'll just end up with a few somewhat skinnier people that still have diabetes, high blood pressure, joint inflammation, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, etc. This is what nobody seems to get yet. All the medical evidence is telling us that all these health issues that the common person assumes are caused by obesity are really just loosely co-incidental. Depending on what method you use to lose the excess body fat you can easily end up making the co-incidental conditions, and thus health outcomes, far worse instead of better.

So no, your insistence that "diet pills" will help make people "healthier" and thus end up reducing health insurance costs is still wrong. Your viewpoint is far too simplistic and essentially does just what everyone else does; incorrectly blaming obesity as being the source of all the major health issues that are actually killing us, rather than just a loosely related symptom. And continuing to try to pin our increasing healthcare costs on the obese is completely and utterly missing the truth of what all current medical evidence is telling us.

I don't suppose you're ever actually going to realize that you don't apply for "ObamaCare" at healthcare.gov. You apply for... shoot, what was that phrase, now I can't remember...

Oh, yeah. It's called "health insurance".

It's the same goddamn magical PRIVATE SECTOR health insurance we had before. The only real difference being that now, due to the law called the Affordable Care Act, the insurance companies aren't allowed to refuse to provide health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. Pre-existing conditions such as the horribly expensive "disease" we refer to as "being a female human who is pregnant or plans to become pregnant in the next twelve months".

The "gubmint" hasn't taken over the health care system. There is no "ObamaCare" that we are all being forced to sign up for. Get a grip. If you choose not to get health insurance coverage, well, that's your choice. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act. But don't act like you're some kind of hero for "fighting the tyranny of ObamaCare". Because that doesn't exist.

Health is something that isn't nearly as simple as almost everyone seems to love to believe. The truth, based on current medical evidence, is that something like 60% of "obese" people are by all metrics besides BMI perfectly "healthy", while something like 60% of the people who are part of the epidemic of diabetes and afflicted with massive amounts of cardiovascular disease are people of normal body weight who everyone assumes are "healthy" solely due to their "normal" BMI. It just plain isn't that simple.

Obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease have been proven in recent decades to not be nearly as well linked as almost everyone still believes. Getting the obese to lose weight with pills therefore will not necessarily result in a strict increase in overall "health" of our society. In fact most of the pills that help promote weight loss have been shown to cause rather extreme negative side effects. Such as fatal heart attacks.

Everyone still believes that you must stay away from saturated fats and cholesterol, even though it's been shown over and over again that increasing or decreasing "dietary" fats and cholesterols has almost no link whatsoever to increasing or decreasing levels of fats and cholesterol in the body and blood, most of which is created by your own liver. In fact, if I'm quoting Dr. Lustig correctly, the link between the ingestion of the fructose molecule and bad blood glucose, fat, cholesterol and triglyceride levels is about 50 times better than the link between those things and the ingestion of any kind of dietary fats. Yes, fructose. According to Dr. Lustig's research, fructose, and its close relative ethanol, may be the root cause of metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes and the explosion of cardiovascular disease. Not starches or dietary fats.

Also quoting Dr. Lustig, evidence indicates that approximately 99% of human beings cannot maintain any form of weight loss for more than a few years, if they even succeed in losing any weight the first place, which most people don't. Thus, no matter how long everyone continues to insist that obesity is a personal willpower problem that should be solved by the individual... THIS. WILL. NEVER. SOLVE. THE. PROBLEM.

EVER.

If we really want to solve the societal pandemic of obesity we need to completely discard the idea that it's caused by some personal moral failing (of the lower classes, no less). We went from 10% to 60% obesity over the last 40 years. If we keep relying on the magic pixie dust of "personal responsibility", 90% of our grandchildren's generation will be obese and 90% will have diabetes starting from early childhood regardless of body weight. There is a systemic problem in the modern diet that is causing this explosion of obesity and diabetes, and we need to find PRACTICAL solutions that fix it on a society-wide basis.

Linky:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lustig+sugar&sm=3

That. Is. Certifiably. Insane.

I believe there is a step coming up shortly in this descent into madness where we will all be forced to pluck out our eyes, cut out our tongues, puncture our eardrums, surgically remove our genitalia and chop off our hands.

You know, to make the world safe.

For the children.

I think you meant to say, "Really, Internet?"

See, the Internet can be very helpful.

I think there's something wrong... with my head.

I read the tag as "SuperMangoTit" and was going to look it up on KnowYourMeme.com.

Don't worry, I figured it out before it went that far.

Side note: I like the way other sites use underscores to replace spaces in tags. Makes tags much more readable.