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Comment Re:Why the fuck is there a video (Score 1) 271

NoScript, I think. If you check the page source, you'll notice that Slashdot apparently isn't aware that you can load commonly used static JavaScript and CSS as separate files that browsers can cache to reduce page load times and that the video is embedded as a small piece of JavaScript.

Comment Re:Ditch iPhone (Score 1, Insightful) 223

All iOS browsers use WebKit. That's completely orthogonal to the original question: are there iOS browsers that block ads and pop-ups? The answer is yes, there are.

That's nice and all, but it doesn't solve his performance problems. In fact, since WebKit in non-Apple apps doesn't get to use JIT, it will just make his performance issues worse.

The problem is that WebKit on iOS takes absurd amounts of memory, to the point where launching it is almost guaranteed to out-of-memory kill every other background app running on the phone.

His other issue almost certainly has to do with Apple's well known wonky wi-fi support, where wi-fi connections will just randomly stop working despite the signal strength indicator merrily showing full strength. Going into and out of airplane mode will sometimes restart wi-fi in a working state, but frequently your only option is to reboot the entire phone. I know my mom has to constantly reboot her phone in order to get iMessage to work. (Also the only way I've gotten AirDrop to work: reboot both devices, and it'll work for a couple of minutes, maybe.)

The solution to the submitter's issues is "don't use iOS." That's the correct answer, no matter how much you may wish it weren't.

Comment Re:Don't even bother asking (Score 0, Troll) 223

Except you can't do that, because the only browsers available on iOS are reskinned Mobile Safari. The performance problems he's having are caused by Mobile Safari. They're doubled by the fact that only Apple-Blessed Mobile Safari gets to do JIT JavaScript compilation, so any "alternative" browser not only will just be Mobile Safari in another skin, it will also be a slow Mobile Safari!

The correct answer is "if you don't like Mobile Safari, don't use iOS." Whether than means Android or Windows Phone is up to you, but if you want to use a non-Safari browser, you don't use iOS. It's that simple.

Comment Re:free-to-pay model (Score 3, Insightful) 101

The thing is, we (OK, so not all of us, but the population at large) did that to ourselves. People just don't want to pay for games any more. Instead they'll go for the "free" game and play that instead of the paid game.

What was the last truly successful MMO that required a subscription? We all know the answer: World of Warcraft. Nothing has come close to it since then. People just don't want to pay for their games. So to remain alive, the competitors go free to play. But they still need to pay for servers and developers and recoup their costs. So what do they do? They go free-to-play, but then to ensure that there's a reason for people to give them money, they go pay-to-win.

And people pay! That's the issue, people pay them. I think it turns out that the majority of players playing these games don't pay any money. Instead, some fraction of players (the whales) spend thousands of dollars to win. And it's these whales that the companies care about, not the gamers that just want a fun game to play.

It'd be nice to just blame the "whales" but - ultimately, it's not their fault. Because they're willing to crack open their wallet and pay for their entertainment. The problem is the huge number of gamers that aren't willing to shell out even $5 for a mobile game and instead go after the "free" games. Video game development still costs money, so publishers have to find some way to get money - so they go with pay to win.

Because that's where the money is. The market has spoken, and the market is us. Gamasutra was right, gamers really are dead.

Submission + - Thirteen Wikipedia editors sanctioned in mammoth GamerGate arbitration case (wikipedia.org)

The ed17 writes: The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case. One editor has been site-banned, while another twelve are subject to remedies ranging from admonishments to broad topic bans and suspended sitebans. Arbitrator Roger Davies told the Signpost that the case was complicated by its size and complexity, including 27 named parties and 41 editors presenting roughly 34,000 words worth of on-wiki evidence—a total that does not include email correspondence.

Submission + - Two Data Driven Investigations of 'Deflate Gate'

vortex2.71 writes: In light of the NFL 'Deflate Gate' scandal, Slate.com has a pair of articles on the New England Patriots’ statistically unlikely prevention of fumbles and on the change in their fumble rates after Tom Brady lobbied the NFL to allow teams to provide the balls for their own offenses in 2007 . Regardless of your team allegiance, the articles provide interesting statistical insight into the debate from a data science perspective.

Comment Re:Real, real, real... (Score 4, Informative) 98

Where have I head this before? Oh right - Blackhat is the Interstellar of info-sec terrorism films - sigh

Interesting analogy, because the "accuracy" in Interstellar actually was somewhat distracting to me because it made the areas that weren't accurate stand out more.

OK, so there are magic space aliens driving the plot at some point. That I didn't have a problem with. Magic space aliens doing magic, whatever, it drives the movie, willful suspension of disbelief and all that.

Infinite fuel space-planes and the magical spaceship that somehow carried enough supplies for a multi-year mission while looking way too small to do that, on the other hand - those annoyed me. If they hadn't gone for the "realistic" initial spaceship launch I probably could have binned those into the "magic space aliens" "suspension of disbelief" category and just ignored them, but when you go for "realism" you need to go for "realism" everywhere.

Sounds like it's the same with this movie. OK, so the hacking is super realistic, great. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't, making the contrast just that much more jarring.

(That being said, I enjoyed Interstellar. It's a good movie. The science stuff is still a bit bogus, but the core movie is good. Sounds like the same can't be said for Blackhat based on the reviews I've seen.)

Comment Re:good (Score 1) 55

And did he actually carry out those threats or is the traditional police tactic of "let's charge with literally everything we can and see what sticks?"

Because nothing in the article elaborates on these so called death threats and swatting claims. It's almost entirely about the LizardSquad DDOS, that involved neither of those.

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