Apple's recent decision to rework its latest encryption in a way that makes it almost impossible for the company to turn over data from most iPhones or iPads to police.

"Almost impossible".

They really think you're stupid.

It's interesting that this story hits Slashdot the same day as the story about Apple double-pinky swearing that they'll never, unh-uh, not ever unlock your iPhone for law enforcement any more.

I don't believe a fucking word. They'd throw a baby off a bridge for a $2 bump in their stock price. It's the same with any corporation, but they're closed ecosystem just means there's no way to protect yourself.

All this "canary" bullshit begs the question why, if Apple really cared one little bit about their customers, don't they just come out and say what they have to say. Apple may be one of a very small handful of corporations that actually could stand up to the surveillance regime. As far as I'm concerned, tacit complicity is worse than loud complicity. Especially when your selling yourself as someone who can be trusted with peoples' mobile payments and personal information and when you pretend you "Think Different". Remember the famous 1984 Apple ad? They are now part of the problem.

No, because your dev machine for this new language has to run a particular operating system, and most indy devs won't throw out a grand for a machine with no guaranteed payback.

I'm using the example that was often cited in the 90s, you're 3 hours into your vacation and are worried you might have left the stove or coffee maker on.

Here's a radical idea: an automatic shutoff. You know, like those $10 electric water kettles have had for years that shut themselves off when they reach a boil? You could have a stove that simply shuts itself off if it fails a state check. Come on, your example sucks. A 50 cent circuit that does automatic shutoff is a hell of a lot less expensive and intrusive than giving your stove and coffee maker an IP address and having to connect to it via a cell phone. And I hope you're vacation isn't on some relaxing beach or national park where there isn't cell phone service, or you're screwed. Meanwhile, the auto-shutoff would be looking out for you even if you happen to be water skiing without your cell phone clipped to the belt of your swim trunks. Yes, your example sucks.

Otherwise you have to worry the whole time, or call somebody and beg them to visit your house

So it's easier for you to accept an "Internet of Things" and all its attendant costs and loss of privacy, than it is to make friends with a neighbor you can call and actually check on your house?
Maybe you need a different type of "connectivity" in your life, friend,.

Networked coffee makers were, of course, already decades old, though most were custom built.

I have a cheap coffeemaker from Target that turns itself off after 2 hours. Which is great because coffee only gets nasty if it sits on a heating element longer than that.

I find it... unlikely... that you truly cannot find your own examples of where information about "things" is useful to the owner of said things.

It's not about not finding examples. It's about those examples not being worth the cost in terms of money, effort or the loss of privacy. Read my post. That was the punchline: It's not worth it.

Of course, none of this will happen, because it requires that we create a set of standards that everyone abides by.

It won't happen because our lives have been monetized for the benefit of a very few. It won't happen because now we are the consumables. The Internet has become a tool of tracking, behavior modification and political control.

The "Internet of Things" is a solution without a problem. There is nothing about the Internet of things that could not be accomplished without the built-in violation of privacy. When are people going to figure out that a large percentage, if not the majority of all new technical "solutions" are actually methods of taking something from you, instead of providing you with some service or improvement to a product? Once you get past the novelty, it's actually quite an ugly picture. From "smartphones" to mobile payments, "connected" appliances and all the rest, it's not meant to make your life better, but to alter your relationship to your possessions in order to enrich someone who does not have your best interests at heart. It's not enough that they've turned the Internet itself from a revolutionary platform for communication and the sharing of data into a shopping mall where the product is you. Now they have to turn your very life into a terrarium for their own enrichment.

And the worst part of the Internet of Things is that it's just not worth the price, no matter the price.

Along with the longer articles mentioned, here's a one sentence summary of the ruling:
Adding the words "on a computer" doesn't change the patentability of a supposed invention.

In Alice, someone basically tried to patent "do escrow on a computer". The court ruled that "do escrow" isn't new or patentable, and adding the words "on a computer" doesn't change anything.

Some in the Slashdot crowd may be tempted to, through wishful thinking, add meaning that the court rejected. The court did NOT rule that having that you can't patent anything that can be done on a computer. They ruled that:
(not patentable) + (on a computer) = (not patentable)

The wording of the opinion also suggests that probably:
(patentable) + (on a computer) = (patentable)

In other words:
X + (on a computer) = X

They said that whether or not it's done on a computer doesn't change the patentability, if the computer part is standard, normal computing processes on a generic computer.

That implies that a new invention which uses a computer in a new, different, and useful way may very well be patentable. So for example it leaves the door open to the idea that a method of doing calculus on the GPU instead of the CPU might have been patentable a few years ago - that was a new, inventive way of using the computer, different from how computers had been used before. Alice talks specifically about "wholly generic computer implementation" as not adding anything to the application.

> no court in the U.S. has the authority to order a specific change to a product.

Not that they'd actually order that a backdoor be developed, but most courts can order specific performance. In many states, small claims courts are limited to monetary damages, but any other court of general jurisdiction can issue a specific performance order. You see this used in custody cases where the father is ordered to provide health insurance, for example. It's also common to have specific performance ordering a government official to take some action, such as issuing a title for a car that didn't have the normal documentation. In general, a court can order whatever the court thinks is equitable, subject only to the prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment ".

I think I answered them quite clearly. If there are English words you're unfamiliar with in my answers, I'd be happy to explain those words to you.

Here are two questions for you:
Why would you blame and punish the victim, rather than holding people accountable for what they do?
The attacker committed a crime / act of war. The victim tried to provide important services to people and was attacked while doing so.

Do have any idea what level 4 preparedness costs, or even what it is? If not, perhaps you're not qualified to speak on the subject.

And we should believe Apple why? Who thinks that if Apple gets a national security letter that they're not going to comply? And what about access to the increasing proportion of data that is stored on Apple's servers instead of the local iPhone? Is Apple going to say no to the NSA/FBI/CIA on that, too?

We've heard these promises before.

> TRIM does impact endurance in that it CAN reduce write amplification

Yes. Like I originally said. Trim, by avoiding write amplification in some cases, increases endurance. However, it only helps for otherwise unused blocks, so the impact of trim is application dependent, as I said right in the subject line of my original post.

> TRIM has nothing to do with endurance. TRIM erases cells that are scheduled for erasure anyways; all TRIM does is try to time that erasure such that it occurs at a time that will not effect performance.

I guess you now realize that's wrong. The main purpose of trim is to avoid reading and writing pages that are unused anyway. The SSD doesn't need to reallocate trimmed blocks, because the OS isn't using that data anyway. Less physical reading and writing == more endurance.

> to say that TRIM fixes write endurance problems is highly misleading.

Which is pretty much the subject line of my original post.

> Not to be harsh, but there is if you actually took the time to understand the tech.

Now that you've agreed with what I said (trim affects endurance, but in an application dependent way), are you ready to admit YOU had forgotten exactly what the tech does? Maybe YOU would like to read the wikipedia article to refresh your memory?

1> Why should the boat (infrastructure) be in the Ocean (attached to the Internet)? As previously stated, "profit" is not an answer.

A ship should be in the ocean to bring bananas to North America, and generally get things to people eho need them. Foreign governments should not fire missiles at those ships. The internet made up of infrastructure , and can itself be considered to be critical infrastructure. It makes no sense to ask why it should be connected to itself. I see now you must have read the phrase "critical infrastructure " a lot and forgot that the word "critical" is there for a reason. Kind if like "fighter jet" - most jets aren't fighters, and most infrastructure isn't critical, so if you mean to distinguish critical infrastructure from Sony's PlayStation infrastructure please do so. The stock exchange should be network- connected so you can save fir retirement without paying a broker $150 transaction fee every month. Public health systems should be connected for fast, effective response to a public health crisis.

> Someone breaks into your house and rapes everyone inside, then steals everything of value you have no recourse

If that happens, you should be imprisoned. You failed to protect your family from armed attack. If you disagree , there's your answer to #2. We hold people accountable for what they DO. We don't hold people accountable and imprison them for getting raped or otherwise attacked. We imprison (or kill) the rapist, not the victim.

    The attacker is at fault, not the victim. (The victim may have been foolish in the case of some crimes, but no amount of street smarts will protect you against a hostile super power on the rise.) You cannot protect yourself against China. They have zero-days, they have moles, and no company has the resources to fight China single-handedly. In this, I know of what I speak.

> I don't restrict the argument to just infrastructure. It's commerce as well, where some person/company accepts responsibility for another person's wealth or property (as with the original post and their stock exchange comment). All of these things are the same, and the argument is the same.

Okay, so the dry cleaner DOES need a private army to defend your clothes in case of attack by China.
A minute ago you shifted to "society absolutely cannot function without", but now we're back to all commerce. I can go either way, I just wish you'd pick one and stick with it. It's kind of annoying when you change your position with each post as your previous post is shown,to be ridiculous.

So now we're at "anyone in commerce is negligent unless they have a private army capable of standing their ground agains attack by the Chinese government ", correct?

Well we're kind of getting somewhere.

Infrared: below red
Infrasound: below sound
Infrastructure: below structure

> "Infrastructure" means that everyone relies on this, and society can not function without it.

Not in any way, shape or form, not even a litle bit close or related.
Infrasound does not mean "sound that society cannot function without", and infrastructure does not mean "structure that society cannot function without".

Infrastructure means parts and pieces which are underneath structure. A wire is not itself a structure, but an underlying part of a structure, such as my home network. Wiring is therefore infrastructure. A building's infrastructure is it's wires, beams, etc - all of the stuff that underlies the structure.

You seem to be silently adding "nationally critical " to the word infrastructure. From there, you've decided it's okay for China to attack nationally critical infrastructure.

> For posterity, "the Ocean" is at least close to the function of the Internet, where "New York" is not.

Okay, let's go with that, then.

> If a person runs a boat on the ocean are they not required to have gear to operate safely? If a boat owner had no lifeboats, no radar, no radio, not enough people to staff the boat would they not be held accountable if the boat had an accident?

An attack is not an accident. The government of China is _attacking_ US resources via the internet. We're not talking about accidents - someone didn't trip over the power cord. It's an attack by a foreign force. Having enough people to staff the boat, and a radio etc doesn't do much good when your ship is attacked by a foreign government. Your argument is that the ship (or web site) should have armament capable of defeating an attacking state, a rising superpower no less. "If they can't defend themselves against an attack from China, they deserve to be attacked and it's okay for China to attack them." That's your thesis, right? In the case of shipping, that would mean that each cargo ship should have anti-aircraft missiles, a squadron of fighter jets escorting it, etc. That's what it takes to defend a ship against an attack.

Other people think that operating fighter jets and otherwise defending the citizens against attacks by foreign nations is the proper role of the national government. "To raise and support armies", as the constitution says. Your idea that each citizen should have a private army capable of defending them against China is an interesting one.