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Comment Dragonfly BSD, Funtoo, and (for now) Gentoo (Score 1) 187

I'm happy to see that you don't hate systemd. That was the last shoe to drop. I'll complete the switch to BSD now!

Dragonfly BSD works quite well on the desktop, as does Funtoo Linux, which is systemd-free. Gentoo also works and still uses OpenRC by default, although there is growing concern some of the devs are quietly preparing to push a systemd agenda (kdbus patches in the kernel, one of the devs commenting he hopes systemd would become the Gentoo default, and a habit of the moderators in the Gentoo forums to shut down any discussions critical of systemd).

Linus may not be showing good leadership in this instance, but not everyone has drunk the urine just yet, and there are others stepping up to the plate to maintain or create alternatives.

Comment Speed is indeed important (Score 1) 6

Not everyone has a brand-new computer; The manuscript of the book I'm about to publish is in Open Office Word, about 400 pages and full of large images, and autosave is a real pain because it takes minutes to save the file.

Like another commenter said, I wouldn't make it the most important thing, overall efficiency is. But software speed is important to anyone with an older computer, especially a Windows computer, because the computer slows as the registry grows, and the registry never gets smaller, only bigger.

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:Ehhhh... (Score 2) 133

That's all true and not even disputed in the paper (which is linked in the article). The paper doesn't argue that all universal search results are bad for consumers, and some definitely are better. What's at issue is "local" search, like looking for a doctor in your city. In this case, there isn't one correct "answer," there are a bunch of them. And what you probably want are doctors with lots of good reviews. Instead, you get doctors with fewer reviews who happen to also have google+ pages.

Comment Re:Why is Uber better? Serious question. (Score 2) 230

> 2) Ease of Payment

2.a. Payment is handled via Uber, not the driver, and price is agreed ahead of time. No possibility for hidden charges, unapproved charges, sightseeing tours, etc.

2.b) Pricing Standardization. Ever been in a DC Taxi before they installed meters? They had a "zone" system and your rate was based on how many zones you crossed. Not familiar with the city? Good luck figuring it out. Every city has its own quirks and pricing games. With Uber, you know exactly what you're going to pay and how the transaction will be handled.

5) Convenience. No standing on the corner waiving your hands in the air. In a strange city where cabs aren't everywhere? How do you call one? How long will it take? Where are they? With Uber, you'll see where your cab is while it's on route and know exactly when they'll arrive.

Education

AP CS Test Takers and Pass Rates Up, Half of Kids Don't Get Sparse Arrays At All 128

theodp writes: Each June, the College Board tweets out teasers of the fuller breakouts of its Advanced Placement (AP) test results, which aren't made available until the fall. So, here's a roundup of this year's AP Computer Science tweetstorm: 1. "Wow — massive gains in AP Computer Science participation (25% growth) AND scores this year; big increase in % of students earning 4s & 5s!" 2. "2015 AP Computer Science scores: 5: 24.4%; 4: 24.6%; 3: 15.3%; 2: 7.1%; 1: 28.6%." [3 or above is passing] 3."Count them: a whopping 66 AP Computer Science students out of 50,000 worldwide earned all 80 pts possible on this year's exam." 4. "Remember that AP exam standards are equated from year to year, so when scores go up, it's a direct indication of increased student mastery." 5. "Many AP Computer Science students did very well on Q1 (2D array processing–diverse array); >20% earned all 9/9 pts" [2015 AP CS A Free-Response Questions] 6. "The major gap in this year's AP Computer Sci classrooms seems to be array list processing; Q3 (sparse array): 47% of students got 0/9 pts."

Comment Re:That's good (Score 1) 146

Why are we letting this hypothetical employer off the hook for basing their hiring decision on this non-issue? That's my question.

The narrative that you pose is one where people must be protected from the unreasonable views and actions of third parties as a result of finding information out efficiently. Is that feasible, practical, reasonable? And how are we to ascertain if it is worthwhile? By what metric?

Censorship

BBC Curates The "Right To Be Forgotten" Links That Google Can't 146

An anonymous reader writes, quoting the BBC's Internet Blog: "Since a European Court of Justice ruling last year, individuals have the right to request that search engines remove certain web pages from their search results. Those pages usually contain personal information about individuals." The BBC, however, is not obligated to completely censor the results, and so has taken an approach that other media outlets would do well to emulate: they're keeping a list of those pages delisted by the search engines, and making them easy to find through the BBC itself. Why? The BBC has decided to make clear to licence fee payers which pages have been removed from Google's search results by publishing this list of links. Each month, we'll republish this list with new removals added at the top. We are doing this primarily as a contribution to public policy. We think it is important that those with an interest in the “right to be forgotten” can ascertain which articles have been affected by the ruling. We hope it will contribute to the debate about this issue. We also think the integrity of the BBC's online archive is important and, although the pages concerned remain published on BBC Online, removal from Google searches makes parts of that archive harder to find.

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.

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