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Comment Re:Define your damn acronyms (Score 1) 74

Could you write the Guardian and tell them that, please?

My point is that expanding the acronym isn't useful, except perhaps to chemists who would already know what the acronym expands to. Explaining what PFAS are is useful. And the article did that:

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.

So, I think the Guardian did a fine job of explaining what matters.

Comment Re: Out of date, all right. (Score 4, Informative) 77

No - thatâ(TM)s the universe expanding at a constant rate. If you stretch a sheet evenly all over, and then observe from a particular point on that sheet, youâ(TM)ll see the relative expansion being faster the further things are from you. Whatâ(TM)s being proposed here is that the cosmological constant can vary both in terms of time and space.

Comment Re: Obligatory (Score 1) 80

Iâ(TM)m pretty sure at this point being extremely old tech is the point. If they stuck sure modern microprocessor in there that could do actual real computation in a meaningful way itâ(TM)d be hard to get exam boards to accept students having them during exams.

That said, the price is ludicrous and clearly only based on schools requiring exactly that model.

Comment Remind me to stay off Baloo Uriza's lawn (Score 1) 86

Funny thing is, the police are constantly ticketing and arresting people driving with suspended or revoked licenses where I live. Somehow I don't think that's going to solve the problem.

Self-driving automotive technology continues to improve, but human drivers hit their limits about a century ago. If anything, the trends are going backwards for human drivers, as U.S. highway fatalities have ticked upwards in recent years.

The politicians in British Columbia can rail against progress in the short term, but 20 years from now everyone will be looking back on arguments against autonomous vehicles and wondering what all the fuss was about.

Comment Re:Welcome to the machine (Score 1) 260

The Chinese beg to differ with Ms. Thatcher. I would contrast their performance to Great Britain's.

Let's do that: GDP per capita of the UK: $46k. GDP per capita of China: $12k. But maybe China does better at distributing the wealth? Nope. UK Gini coefficient: 35, China, 47 (higher is more inequality). Until recently China had phenomenal growth rates, but that's only because (a) they started from a very depressed level and (b) they mostly abandoned socialism. As Xi is reasserting more socialist policies their growth engine has largely stopped and their growth rate is currently below that of the UK. It's still positive at the moment, but if Xi continues what he's doing, it will likely go negative.

Socialism -- not social democracy, which is a thoroughly capitalist economy that accepts high but strongly progressive taxation to fund a strong safety net -- consistently drives economies into the toilet whenever applied on any scale larger than a kibbutz. Without fail, every time.

Comment Re:This has been known for ages (Score 1) 146

Press the power button 5 times rapidly to enable "emergency mode" or whatever they call it. Biometric unlock will be disabled and you will have to enter your password/PIN to access the device again.

I don't think this is true. If you enable emergency mode video recording you have to enter your PIN to end the recording, but biometrics will still unlock the lockscreen. While the recording is going, hit the power button to activate the lockscreen, which will be unlockable with biometrics. You can also swipe up from the bottom (assuming gesture navigation) and switch to other apps. The device is not locked and not in lockdown mode while in emergency mode.

What you can do is press power and volume up to bring up the power menu, and then tap the "Lockdown" icon. That will lock the device and disable biometric authentication.

If you really, really want to lock it down, power the device down, or reboot it and don't log in. Android's disk encryption scheme uses your PIN/pattern/password ("lockscreen knowledge factor", or LSKF) along with keys stored in secure hardware to derive the disk encryption keys. It would make for a long post to go into all of the details, but given the hardware-enforced brute force mitigation,if the attacker gets a device in this state it's extremely difficult to decrypt any of the credential-encrypted data on the device without your LSKF. This is particularly true on devices that implement "StrongBox" (all Pixels, some Samsungs, some others). Android StrongBox moves some crucial functionality, including LSKF authentication and LSKF brute force resistance, into a separate hardened, lab-certified[*] security processor with its own internal storage, a "secure element".

Of course, note that appellate courts in the US have split on whether or not your LSKF can be compelled. Some have ruled that unless the PIN/pattern/password is itself incriminating, it's no different than compelling the combination to a safe, which has long been held to be constitutional.

[*] For anyone interested in the details, the required certification is Common Criteria EAL 4+ (5+ is recommended, and common, many devices meet 6+), using protection profile 0084 for the hardware and equivalent "high attack potential" evaluation for the software, plus AVA_VAN.5 penetration testing, all performed in a nationally-accredited security testing lab. While certification isn't a guarantee of security (nothing is), the required certification applies the highest level of scrutiny you can get for commercially-available devices. Apple also uses a similarly-certified SE in their devices, but it's not clear whether they use it for LSKF authentication, or whether they use their (uncertified) Secure Enclave.

Comment Re:Who on SLASHDOT is using biometric data for con (Score 1) 146

Must be quite entertaining to watch you unlock your phone hundreds of times a day.

JFC...why in the world would you need to be accessing your phone "hundreds of times a day"???

Maybe not hundreds, but at least dozens. For most people their phone is their digital assistant in all sorts of ways... not only for communication for for calendaring, looking up random things, reading the news or books, listening to music, getting directions, checking their bank account/brokerage, doing calculations, fitness tracking, managing shopping and to-do lists... the list goes on and on.

Comment Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score 1) 512

They don't get to claim the moral high ground.

True, and neither does Hamas. For that matter, neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian people get to claim the moral high ground, since both overwhelmingly support the actions of their governments. Both are in the gutter, and digging downward. A pox on both their houses, and I don't think we should support either one. I am okay with humanitarian aid to starving people, though.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

There's a third and fourth reason too: 1. Fewer charges per year. It's a minor but still useful additional convenience to only have to plug in once a fortnight instead of once a week

I suppose. I prefer to plug in every time I park, then I basically never have to pay any attention to range except on long trips.

2. Fewer charge-discharge cycles per year, so the battery should last longer

Yeah, that's another side of my second reason, though cycles really only begin to bite when you get close to full or close to empty. Oscillating near the middle is fine.

Comment Re: Send the lab... (Score 1) 65

The idea that you need 1000x the mass of propellant to get home is false. The 1000x multiplier is true on earth, but not on Mars with minimal atmosphere and much less gravity. You need about 3 times less delta v to reach orbit from Mars than you do from Earth. That means you need 20 times less propellant, and thatâ(TM)s before taking account of atmospheric drag.

Comment Re: Pandemic Russian Roulette (Score 1) 65

We already decided it was good enough when we went to the moon. We quarantined the astronauts for 30 days, and left it at that. Hell, their customs declaration even stated âoeto be determinedâ in the âoedid you bring any pathogens etc to the USâ section.

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