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Comment iOS users feel it (Score 1, Insightful) 311

I currently have a web radio transceiver front panel application that works on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, under Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. No porting, no software installation. See blog.algoram.com for details of what I'm writing.

The one unsupported popular platform? iOS, because Safari doesn't have the function used to acquire the microphone in the web audio API (and perhaps doesn't have other parts of that API), and Apple insists on handicapping other browsers by forcing them to use Apple's rendering engine.

I don't have any answer other than "don't buy iOS until they fix it".

Comment Re:Depends (Score 2) 517

Because at work I have to install all kinds of Adobe crap and Java, and other software that uses proprietary files and each piece of crap "requires" something running in the background. They don't actually require it, but Windows allows it anyway. And let's not mention the fact that you really can't do anything about it, because the developers of those software packages are so used to it, that you will probably break them if you try to do things the Right Way(tm).

Here, at work, we image the PCs (we have 3000+) before sending them to the final users. One thing we do in our images is to disable autoupdates (Java, Adobe, Chrome, Firefox &c), and that makes the computers much snappier. We also filter the Windows Updates, pointing WU to an internal server. That makes the machines snappier in general. (Obviously, we keep one eye for security updates and push those to the users on the logon script, as needed).

Comment Re:Randomness can't come from a computer program (Score 1) 64

Most of us do have a need to transmit messages privately. Do you not make any online purchases?

Yes, but those have to use public-key encryption. I am sure of my one-time-pad encryption because it's just exclusive-OR with the data, and I am sure that my diode noise is really random and there is no way for anyone else to predict or duplicate it. I can not extend the same degree of surety to public-key encryption. The software is complex, the math is hard to understand, and it all depends on the assumption that some algorithms are difficult to reverse - which might not be true.

Comment Re:Bad RNG will make your crypto predictable (Score 2) 64

The problem with FM static is that you could start receiving a station, and if you don't happen to realize you are now getting low-entropy data, that's a problem.

There are many well-characterized forms of electronic noise: thermal noise, shot noise, avalanche noise, flicker noise, all of these are easy to produce with parts that cost a few dollars.

Comment Randomness can't come from a computer program (Score 2, Interesting) 64

True randomness comes from quantum mechanical phenomena. Linux /dev/random is chaotic, yes, enough to seed a software "R"NG. But we can do better and devices to do so are cheap these days.

I wouldn't trust anything but diode noise for randomness. If I had a need to transmit messages privately, I'd only trust a one-time pad.

Comment Re:I'm spending 60% of my monthly income on rent (Score 4, Insightful) 940

Maybe you should learn what communism is before calling anyone "commiefriend". (Which I have to say, is really repulsive. It's sort of like picking your nose over the internet.) I think you are discussing the difference between lasiez-faire ecomomics and regulated markets. Communism is a very great difference in scale from that. And it's never been tried on a national scale just as "free market" has never been tried because there are always economic biases that make it impossible. What there has been so far is socialism.

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