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Comment Gigawatt Ponzi scheme (Score 5, Insightful) 212

I remember getting into an argument here about four years ago about this problem with Bitcoin- that "mining" coins is based on everyone racing to use as much electricity as possible, and the number of kilowatt-hours burned per generated coin increases with time, as part of the design. "ATMs use electricity too" was the consensus opinion.
Now we have a "currency" that gets "mined" using more electricity than Ireland uses. The wattage devoted to this crap has increased sevenfold during the past 12 months. People only use it as an investment, making it useless as a currency. "Everyone accepts it as payment" doesn't mean anything when everyone who has it is too scared to spend it.

Comment Re:Good gravy (Score 4, Insightful) 465

As long as they stick to trolling, they can't do much more damage than they already have. At this point, you're either aware of them, or your mind is already in an alternate universe where kids get molested in nonexistent pizzeria basements by a presidential candidate who fits the typical pedo demographic to a "T". (Although I think I missed the episodes of To Catch a Predator where elderly female politicians arrive at the door with pizzas.)

The Russians would get more payoff at this point from cyberattacking the electrical grid on Election Day. But those who are in a position to prevent this don't seem to mind the trolling at all.

Comment Re: Censoring vs. Educating (Score 1) 308

According to court precedent, a baker has to bake a cake for a gay wedding. But they cannot require him to ice it with "God is dead". If a white supremacist couple comes into a Jewish bakery they must be served, but they can't require swastika icing.
Youtube is a private company, not some sort of public square or civic space that must accommodate free expression in all forms. They offer an equal platform to everyone no matter what their political persuasion. (Being a private entity, they're not required to, but they do.) But if you upload nothing but crap, and they decide it's crap, they have the right to kick you out. Unless the cops show up to arrest you because someone didn't like the politics in your videos, no U.S. court will consider your First Amendment rights to have been infringed. They'll just say you can upload your videos somewhere else if you don't like it.

Comment Re:Stop utilizing 3rd parties (Score 1) 277

Why is this marked Troll?
A lot of Silicon Valley companies have convinced themselves that they run some sort of civic space where all "viewpoints" must be tolerated long past the point where cops in a public square would have been busting heads.
It's a private company in an unregulated market. None of your tax dollars go to it, your First Amendment rights do not trump their own, and alternatives to them are available. It's their right and in their interests to maintain a proper signal-to-noise ratio. Believe it or not, people stop visiting web sites when they begin to resemble landfills, so it's in the site's interest to purge you if you upload horseshit.
If you don't like Twitter, move to Gab- a site where I would naturally expect to get kicked off. If Youtube deletes your video, upload it somewhere else. If you don't like it, deprive it of your content and see if anyone cares enough to follow you.

Submission + - Microsoft issues an emergency fix for Windows 10 to address processor bug (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: News of an enormous security bug affecting millions of processors can't have escaped your attention over the last 24 hours or so. While Intel goes into a panicked meltdown, desperately pointing out that there's another bug affecting other processors too, software fixes are starting to emerge.

macOS has already been patched, and fixes have started to roll out to numerous Linux distros as well. Now Microsoft has pushed out a rare, off-schedule emergency fix for Windows 10 users which should be automatically installed. Users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 will have to wait until next week for a patch.

Submission + - Researchers reveal meltdown and spectre hardware level cpu exploits (techreport.com)

nanoflower writes: Researchers at Google and other institutions have revealed detail on two new security exploits, Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown is the one that has had the most exposure since it directly impacts Intel CPU made in the last decade. Spectre is a similar exploit but it impacts AMD/ARM/Intel and possibly other CPUs. OS vendors are working on patches for both exploits that will have some impact on performance but how much impact is not truly known at this point.

Submission + - Details of "Meltdown" and "Spectre" Attacks Against Intel & AMD Chips Disclo (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: Researchers have disclosed technical details of two new attack methods that exploit critical flaws in CPUs from Intel, AMD and other vendors. They claim billions of devices are vulnerable, allowing malicious actors to gain access to passwords and other sensitive data without leaving a trace.

There have been reports over the past few days about a critical flaw in Intel CPUs that allows an attacker to gain access to kernel space memory. It turns out that there are actually two different attacks and researchers say one of them impacts AMD and ARM processors as well.

The attack methods, dubbed Meltdown and Spectre by researchers, rely on hardware design flaws and they allow malicious applications installed on a device to access data as it’s being processed. This can include passwords stored in a password manager or web browser, photos, documents, emails, and data from instant messaging apps.

Submission + - Yes, Your Amazon Echo Is An Ad Machine (gizmodo.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: CNBC reports that Amazon is in discussions with huge companies that want to promote their goods on Echo devices. Proctor & Gamble as well as Clorox are reportedly in talks for major advertising deals that would allow Alexa to suggest products for you to buy. CNBC uses the example of asking Alexa how to remove a stain, with Alexa in turn recommending a Clorox product. So far it’s unclear how Amazon would identify promoted responses from Alexa, if at all. Here’s the really wacky thing: Amazon has already been doing this sort of thing to some degree. Currently, paid promotions are built into Alexa responses, but maybe you just haven’t noticed it. CNBC uses this example: "There are already some sponsorships on Alexa that aren’t tied to a user’s history. If a shopper asks Alexa to buy toothpaste, one response is, 'Okay, I can look for a brand, like Colgate. What would you like?'" So it seems like Amazon wants to get you coming and going. Not only does the company want to let you buy stuff with your voice. Jeff Bezos and friends also want to make money by suggesting what to buy and even by pushing those products higher up in the search results so that you’re more likely to do it.

Submission + - Roombas Will Soon Build a Wi-Fi Coverage Map While They Clean (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The feature is arriving later this month on the iRobot app, making it possible for WiFi-enabled Roombas to create a map of indoor signals. The map exists alongside the existing Clean Map feature, letting users toggle between the two, like they would, say, satellite and standard imagery in Google Maps. The maps themselves won’t go into too much detail — no upload and download speeds like you see on many mobile speed test apps. Instead, the information will show up as decibel readings. Really, it’s intended as a handy way of showing off where you might want to toss a range extender, to help get rid of dead spots.

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