Comment Re:Not Boeing. (Score 1) 218
Thanks.
Saw that in the article and totally brain-farted while typing.
Thanks.
Saw that in the article and totally brain-farted while typing.
Indubitably. Win10 Test is a product demo. So Microsoft is going to monitor it in a way that would be unfeasible for a shipping OS. They're trying to collect user data to make sure people are using Win10 the way they THINK people are going to use it. This is a byproduct of the Windows 8 metro/modern UI fiasco. If they don't disable/remove this level of monitoring when the OS ships, corporate customers will simply opt not to run with the OS...AGAIN.
Seriously, NO company that's in ANY way serious about security is going to put up with a built in keylogger that's reporting back to MommySoft.
Apple is doing the same thing with a live, shipping OS. Which is completely fucking heinous.
Now, will they get away with it?
Probably, because the rabid, turtleneck-and-jeans brigade of Mac fanatics will buy absolutely ANYTHING from Apple, so long as it has the Apple logo on it.
There's almost zero reason we should put LFTR and Fusion into an adversarial relationship.
LFTR is closer to market right now, and fuel for it is ridiculously plentiful. It can easily power this planet for hundreds of years.
At the same time, Fusion is around the corner (though it's been "around the corner" for several decades).
Still, instead of dealing with:
* Nasty, polluting fossil fuel generation
* Solar/Wind/Hydro installs that fuck up the local ecology
* Dirty, ancient solid-fuel fission tech
Take the first step forward with LFTR and MSR fission.
Yes, we'll have waste still. But it's FAR easier to design storage/depletion facilities that last 100-300 years. Current fission plants are producing stuff that'll be hot for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. And, quite simply, we can't guarantee anything we engineer will last that long. The oldest (mostly intact) megastructures on this planet are the Egyptian pyramids. And they're only about 4500 years old. Mostly because they're just a giant pile of stone.
Still with LFTR/MSR, we can lower emissions and give ourselves time to grow and improve the grid while we get the kinks out of Fusion technology.
With portable, modular solutions like Boeing's fusion skunkworks project, we can put cheap, safe power generation capacity just about ANYWHERE.
When more power's needed? Just drop another unit next to the first and keep adding until your requirements are met.
And when it's time to decommission a unit? Simply truck it away!
And both of these technologies are engineered, from the get-go, to be inherently safe.
With LFTR/MSR fission. If power is cut, you don't get a runaway reaction. By design, the reactor dumps the medium into dump tanks, away from the reagent.
With fusion, you turn off power to a fusion reactor or change the dynamics inside the reactor, and the process shuts down naturally. Snuffed like a blown out candle.
But, will all the "nuclear = bombs" hysterics ever allow this to go through?
Hell no!
Step 1: Build permanent habitation in orbit. In a way that can easily be converted to a "space dock".
Step 2: Use it as a launch pad for permanent habitation on the Moon. Build the infrastructure, build large (mega-engineering projects). Once it's done, THEN move people in permanently. Use this method as the basis for expansion elsewhere in the solar system.
Step 3: Once permanent habitation has been done within Earth-orbit, send out automated devices to construct a similar space dock in Mars orbit, and possibly one in Venus orbit.
Step 4: Use the Mars dock as a launch pad for permanent habitation on Mars using the Moon's habitation as a template. Due to Venus' EXTREMELY unfriendly atmosphere, I'd likely say convert the Venus station into a solar power-to-battery facility.
Step 5: Once the Moon and Mars colonies are firmly established, use the template for occupying the moons of the outer planets.
Basically the orbital facilities would be staging areas for occupation of the various planets/moons. They serve as fall-back points in case of catastrophe. And, once the colony was safely established, they'd become fuel depots.
Going with a "launch from orbit" model also saves fuel and wear and tear on interplanetary vehicles.
Whisper, darling child of the online anonymity surge, is going to war with the Guardian over a story saying the app tracks the identities and locations of some users.
Launched two years ago, Whisper says it’s the “safest place on the internet,” a social networking app that lets people anonymously share short messages — “whispers” — supposedly detached from any identifiable information.
But in a lengthy takedown published Thursday, the Guardian claims otherwise, saying Whisper uses a handful of tools to subvert its own claims of privacy and anonymity. Whisper, according to the Guardian report, tracks newsworthy users and uses roundabout methods of finding out the locations of users who decline to share it; the company then shares that information with third parties, including the U.S. government, the Guardian reported.
The outlet also said the app changed its privacy policy after it was made aware that the Guardian’s story would run.
All of these claims, Whisper officials said, are patently false.
Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, went into attack mode immediately after the story was published, saying it was a “pack of vicious lies” and that “the Guardian made a mistake posting that story and they will regret it.”
Reached by phone, Zimmerman categorically denied the basis of the story, saying that while certain degrees of tracking (such as a city of location) are possible through simply connecting to the Internet, the methods the Guardian described are “either outright false or misguided or misinformed.”
“Clearly, their intention was for absolutely no reason to write a hit piece about us and try to scare away our users,” Zimmerman said, sounding irate at times.
The Guardian story describes techniques that Whisper allegedly uses to find “newsworthy” users, such as those who work at Yahoo and Disney, or on Capitol Hill. It also says there is a technical backdoor that allows Whisper to pinpoint the location of users who have declined to share their location with the app, and that Zimmerman and another executive had requested staff to exploit it.
But Zimmerman, fuming at the accusations, said such backdoors are “technically impossible.”
“That is false, that is 100 percent false,” he said. “That was never said by anyone. I have no idea where that quote came from. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I have never, ever, ever asked anybody in my life, and would never ask anybody, for information on a user who opted out of user location. That cannot be overemphasized. That is a 100 percent lie.”
He added that no change was made to the app’s privacy policy as a response to the Guardian’s story. (Still, my colleague Brian Fung noted that any changes to a privacy policy may invite inquiry from the FTC.)
Whisper employees can, however, search for keywords (analogous to a Twitter search) to find users and their “whispers” that may be interesting to some of its media partners, including BuzzFeed, which publishes an ongoing series of posts that highlight interesting or newsworthy messages on the service.
A BuzzFeed spokesman told Valleywag on Thursday: “We’re taking a break from our partnership until Whisper clarifies to us and its users the policy on user location and privacy.”
Zimmerman also said the Guardian has had a months-long partnership with Whisper that used the very techniques the article decries.
“There are at least three Guardian stories written off Whisper, and two of which were using the methods the article is attacking,” Zimmerman said, adding that the outlet initiated the partnership. “The CEO and executive editors were in here, and they were all privy to all this information and explained to us that they were supportive of everything that they had seen.”
Guardian spokesman Gennady Kolker said the outlet “has no comment at this time.”
The Washington Post has used Whisper at least once to find story sources. A spokeswoman for The Post declined to comment.
What would I punish the guy for?
Oh. Let me count the ways.
And seriously. You're allowing him the Nuremburg Defense? ("I was only following orders")
Sorry, NOT a good reason for violating people's rights.
I, for one, REFUSE to be pre-criminalized...
Too late... already happened
Touche.
The only appropriate answer for this sort of thing is "Fuck you. Get a warrant."
Enjoy your stay in government housing while we wait...
If necessary. I will. Part of the reason that the government gets over so much nowadays is that people are TERRIFIED of being seen as a criminal, and they're scared shitless of ANY form of incarceration.
Jim Comey needs to be told to shut the hell up, do his job *RIGHT* and be a good little soldier.
Remember who gives the orders. He is a very good little soldier, getting up there and barking like a dog, very well trained. And maybe he too, will write a tell-all confession after he reties, if the right book deal comes along.
Even the best trained dog gets a rolled up paper across the snout once in a while.
I have no problem being such. As there's nothing in my life I couldn't stand to lose.
So he asks for evidence, you dont provide any, and you get a +5 mod.
Good work, guys.
All the excessive logging in Win10 is due to the fact that it is a TECH PREVIEW.
Once we get to the RTM, you can be sure things like the click-tracking, key logging, etc are all going to be turned off. Because, were they NOT, Win10 would bounce off enterprise/business customers faster and harder than Windows 8 ever did. NO business is going to put up with their OS vendor keylogging them.
It is not our job to make his job easier or effortless.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Our phones and computers are the modern day equivalent of "papers and effects".
Encryption affords us the security promised by this amendment.
Does this make the collection of data by various "letter agency" and police law enforcement departments tougher? YEP!
Does it raise the possibility of criminals "slipping through the system"? YEP!
I, for one, REFUSE to be pre-criminalized , simply because I don't choose to automatically drop trou whenever someone demands to see "ze papers". The only appropriate answer for this sort of thing is "Fuck you. Get a warrant."
I also refuse to abrogate my rights and privileges due to an idiotic appeal to emotion (think of the CHILDREN!)
*I* am not victimizing children. But, the way law enforcement wants to set things up, EVERYONE gets lumped in as would-be rapists, molesters and murderers.
Jim Comey needs to be told to shut the hell up, do his job *RIGHT* and be a good little soldier.
Guess no compelling reason the ever upgrade to windows 10. I'm staying at 7...
Honestly, 8 had some nice little technical improvements under the hood (such as being able to directly mount ISO images as filesystems, etc.
The big problem with 8 was the forced UI changes.
Win10 retains all of those little technical improvements and is looking to (at least partially) undo the UI mess that was created in Win8.
They still have a way to go though. There's a lot of Metro/Modern UI crap that REALLY needs to be cleaned out.
Short answer: No
Long answer: No. Because the tradeoffs just aren't worth it, considering that you'd have to invest in a solar field nearly 400 times the size of your data center and you'd have to allot still MORE space for a HUMONGOUS unobtainium battery setup to store power in off-production hours.
Then there's the environmental impact of clearing that much land just to let it like barren and house all those panels.
We won't even go into the issues of the environmental impact of actually MANUFACTURING that many panels
This directly contradicts Apple's mission of maximizing shareholder benefit by wringing every last possible cent out of every transaction FOR THEMSELVES and telling everyone else to go pound sand.
*Drops dead in shock*
The report demonstrates that if you were to take into account mining, pollution, and adverse health impacts of coal and gas, wind power would be the cheapest source of energy
Sure! Tack in total costs across progenitor markets, and assume a 100% penetration on pollution and health impact. Ignore things like land use, fines for filling endangered species, costs of NECESSARY storage systems, etc, etc.
Yes! We too can cook the books!
Oh yes. And let me know when you have a reliable wind source that blows steadily enough for 24x7 power generation.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn
