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Comment TV Is Dead (Score 2) 60

by QBasicer (#60632618) Attached to: Quibi Is Shutting Down
Other than for live sports, I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to watch the garbage that gets pumped out by these studios. Secondly, I don't know why people pay for services that show them ads. If I'm paying for it, I don't want ads! That's the best thing about Youtube Premium.

Submission + - SPAM: Windows Update/Defender BSOD's HP Desktops

Submitted by xmas2003
xmas2003 writes: For Thanksgiving Black Friday, I bought this nifty HP Desktop. It has worked great since then ... until a couple of weeks ago ... when it started spontaneous Blue Screens of Death with a KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error. After some WTF is going on, I stumbled across this (growing fast) 25+ page thread on the HP support forums — a LOT of people are having the same PIA problem.

The posters have done some great research and since the Internet is not awash with BSOD reports from other vendors, this appears to be particular to (a broad range of AMD/Intel) HP Desktops. While HP has failed to chime in (HELLO!), other posters report that HP has told them it is a Microsoft problem. But all indications are this is brand specific and some sort of weird interaction that is related to Windows Defender.

Disabling Windows Defender seems to stop the BSOD's, but this is not easy to do because the machine can get into a BSOD reboot loop and you have to get into the recovery console to do some manual registry entries — see post #47 from Salty Lager — which is not something the average Joe User will know to do. So for the majority of owners, their machines are currently worthless. And even when a fix is available, they'll have great difficulty applying it.

This highlights several things. Software is complex — what could be specific about HP Desktops that would cause this BSOD? Also, it's cool how some technically astute end users can troubleshoot the problem and share their findings for others. Finally, the lack of customer communication is pathetic as the silence from HP/Microsoft is deafening ... so it's unknown if they even recognize there is a problem, much less working on it.

Comment Re:Automated source tools (Score 1, Informative) 96

by xmas2003 (#59691752) Attached to: Serious Flaw That Lurked In Sudo For 9 Years Hands Over Root Privileges
Sudo has always been very aggressive about addressing security issues and the developers take it very seriously - they have been doing this for several decades. Good thing since by the nature of the tool, it escalates privileges.

So while a bummer to see this exploit, that should not discourage anyone from using it and it is a de-facto tool in the sysadmin toolkit.

Ditto what Brian-Fu said in that I'm curious how the "su - works just fine" people log their commands, provide some granular control (by user and command), etc. etc.

And let me know how well that scales with you have hundreds/thousands of machines and dozens of Sysadmins ...

Submission + - SPAM: Longest Running Webcams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After 25 years of showing the grey sky of San Francisco, FogCam has shut down. This may (?) make Fishcam (also running since 1994) the current longest running webcam. By comparison, Watching Grass Grow has "only" been around since 2006 and is equally as exciting — here's 12 years of a front lawn in 2.5 minutes.

What other notable long-running webcams are out there?

Submission + - Will Apple Maps EVER show ski lifts & runs?

Submitted by xmas2003
xmas2003 writes: Six years ago, Google Maps started showing ski lifts & runs. This ends up being incredibly useful to actually knowing WHERE you are, since otherwise all you see is a giant green blob of National Forest Land ... which is exactly what Apple Maps shows and is totally worthless.

So while you can use Google Maps to know where you are at the ski resort (but you shouldn't need to use that to know where you are on the mountain!), what really sucks is if look at FindMyFriends on your iPhone, it uses Apple Maps ... so all you can see is that your friends are a certain compass heading and "some" distance away from you ... but you have no idea where they are relative to the ski lifts and runs.

Come on Apple — get your act together — start overlaying ski lift and runs on your Maps. Or if you can't fix that (and other oddities of Apple Maps), then allow FindMyFriends to use Google Maps!

Submission + - SPAM: Watching-Grass-Grow.com upgrades to new webcam 1

Submitted by xmas2003
xmas2003 writes: The Watching-Grass-Grow.com website has been providing an "exciting" view of a front lawn for over a decade. The webcam is being upgraded after 7 years so you can now view the grass in crystal clear HD — use the alternate views to see the dramatic improvement. Mr. Grass reviewed various cameras and says "Maybe in a couple of years, I'll upgrade to 4K ... or even 8K ... so you can see individual blades of grass! ;-)"
Link to Original Source

Comment Is this racist or economic? (Score 4, Informative) 497

Are you sure that Apple isn't just plunking their stores in places where people have more money? From TFA:
"Apple Store neighborhoods have a median household income of about $73,475 per year; black American households earn a median average of $38,555, according to the ACS estimate for 2016. The median household income in the Bronx is $34,299."

Submission + - AI Training Algorithms Susceptible to Backdoors, Manipulation (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Three researchers from New York University (NYU) have published a paper this week describing a method that an attacker could use to poison deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Researchers based their attack on a common practice in the AI community where research teams and companies alike outsource AI training operations using on-demand Machine-Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) platforms. For example, Google allows researchers access to the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine, which research teams can use to train AI systems using a simple API, using their own data sets, or one provided by Google (images, videos, scanned text, etc.). Microsoft provides similar services through Azure Batch AI Training, and Amazon, through its EC2 service.

The NYU research team says that deep learning algorithms are vast and complex enough to hide small equations that trigger a backdoor-like behavior. For example, attackers can embed certain triggers in a basic image recognition AI that interprets actions or signs in an unwanted way. In a proof-of-concept demo of their work, researchers trained an image recognition AI to misinterpret a Stop road sign as a speed limit indicator if objects like a Post-it, a bomb sticker, or flower sticker were placed on the Stop sign's surface. In practice, such attacks could be used to make facial recognition systems ignore burglars wearing a certain mask, or make AI-driven cars stop in the middle of highways and cause fatal crashes. Albeit such demos have not taken place, they are theoretically possible.

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