Comment Re:Selling Chicago one chunk at a time... (Score 1) 93
This is how it is across USA politics.
You seem to believe it's somehow different in other countries.
It is. As always the US is "leading"
Comment Re:Isn't the difference (Score 1) 252
Analytics gathers data for google, they don't "sell" it. No one is sold personal info from Google, all they get to do is tell Google who they want to target and Google decides who gets to see it. The advertiser doesn't know things like your name, phone number, etc until you give it to them.
They sell it, but like all of these services, they sell it aggregated depersonalized, but that makes them no different from the rest of the companies doing this.
Comment Re:Reality Flip Switch (Score 1) 252
Was the Fed flooding the market with cash in 2007-08? I think it was the private banks that were creating liquidity (money) with those weird investment vehicles and loans. What the Fed failed at was not withdrawing money from the economy and running up interest rates to cool things down, but nobody wants an economic party pooper and they would have been savagely criticized for ending the good times.
Yes, and they still are. The interest rate is below inflation which means it is profitable for banks to loan money backed in random crap, because random crap appreciates at the rate of inflation. That is what subprime morgages was, and what is still happening because they are still allowed to loan under inflation.
Comment Re:Isn't the difference (Score 1) 252
But google is the only ad company that doesn't sell your info.
Never heard of Google analytics? What exactly do you think they are doing?
Submission + - Lenovo pre-installs malware injecting ads and spoofing SSL certs (ibtimes.co.uk)
janoc writes: Lenovo is pre-installing adware/malware called Superfish on their laptops which serves ads for products you may be browsing/shopping for, "but cheaper". Unfortunately it also breaks into SSL sessions by installing a false root certificate, allowing for potential snooping on secure sessions.
Comment Re:... and this is surprising how? (Score 2) 153
Come on, it would have been surprised if they did encrypt the data in a decent way,...
What is the point of encrypting private data when you are secretely violating someone's privacy?
Comment Re:someone explain for the ignorant (Score 1) 449
Don't let other see what you type. It is not that hard and is what you told and they print on every terminal.
Comment Re:someone explain for the ignorant (Score 1) 449
Chip & PIN is a liability shift. You're expected to protect your PIN, so if your account is compromised, you're assumed to be at fault.
Britain has had a lot of trouble with this.
That is not how it works, but banks can tell if a withdrawal was done with correct PIN or with an old PINless fallback. If it was done with PIN, you will have a maximum personal liability of around 500EUR they won't cover, but they still cover the rest.
Submission + - Lenovo Accused of Pushing Self-signed MITM Proxy (zdnet.com) 2
jones_supa writes: More OEM crapware coming at you. Chinese hardware manufacturer Lenovo has come under fire for allegedly shipping consumer Windows laptops with software that hijacks secure website connections, as well as inserting ads into search results. The software is called "Superfish" and it installs its own self-signed root certificate authority. Superfish comes with Lenovo consumer products only, and is a technology that helps users "find and discover products visually". The technology instantly analyzes images on the web and presents identical and similar product offers. Google's Chris Palmer has been analyzing the issue on a Yoga 2 laptop. He has confirmed with one other affected user that the certificates used share the same key, which leaves any impacted Lenovo user vulnerable to an attack from anyone able to extract the certificate's private key, with the user left without any warning or notice of such an attack. Superfish can be uninstalled, but it reportedly leaves the root certificate authority behind. On a new laptop, the software can be disabled simply by not accepting the Terms of User and Privacy Policy on initial setup.
Submission + - Malware Preloaded on Lenovo Laptops (techspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Right now it's just a couple of forum posts, and some minor tech news/blogs reporting on it. It appears that malware may be coming reinstalled on some Lenovo laptops, and it's not easy to get rid of. The main article doesn't mention the SSL aspect, but this Lenovo Forum Post, with screen caps, is indicating it may be a man-in-the-middle attack to hijack an SSL connection too. It's too early to tell if this is a hoax or not, but there are multiple forum posts about the Superfish bug being installed on new systems.
Another good reason to have your own fresh install disk, and to just drop the drivers onto a USB stick.
Another good reason to have your own fresh install disk, and to just drop the drivers onto a USB stick.
Submission + - GCC 5 heads toward release and Fedora 22, with F23 introducing new C++11 ABI (redhat.com)
rhmattn writes: Fedora 22 will ship with GCC 5, which brings a whole host of enhancements, among which is a new default C++ ABI. Fedora is going to transition to that ABI over two Fedora releases F22 and F23. This article, written by some of the key players in the GCC community, explains how that will work and what it means for developers, including some useful tips for application developers and packagers.
Comment Re:"Obstruction of Business" (Score 1) 132
The US already has laws for that.
The US also has laws against fraud and racketeering. Doesn't seem to apply to companies over a certain size.
Citation please?
Proof that it doesn't happen? How would that work?
How about you show me cases where marketing boses or CEOs of a large company is indicted for fraud when they do fraudulent marketing?
Comment Re:"Obstruction of Business" (Score 1) 132
The US already has laws for that.
The US also has laws against fraud and racketeering. Doesn't seem to apply to companies over a certain size.
Comment Re:Taken to the cleaners... (Score 5, Funny) 132
Agreed. Touching a competitor's setup at a trade fair is bush league.
I don't buy that "testing" defense for a second. If you're a company that large you test by buying a machine anonymously at retail, take it to your labs, complete a test plan, then take it apart the see the build and components. Just randomly poking at stuff before a trade show isn't even going to give you much data.
Doing this always breaks our machines. I wonder if our competitor has found a way to avoid it breaking?.... Oh, it appears not. How interesting.
Removing Libsystemd0 From a Live-running Debian System 755
lkcl writes The introduction of systemd has unilaterally created a polarization of the GNU/Linux community that is remarkably similar to the monopolistic power position wielded by Microsoft in the late 1990s. Choices were stark: use Windows (with SMB/CIFS Services), or use UNIX (with NFS and NIS). Only the introduction of fully-compatible reverse-engineered NT Domains services corrected the situation. Instructions on how to remove systemd include dire warnings that "all dependent packages will be removed", rendering a normal Debian Desktop system flat-out impossible to achieve. It was therefore necessary to demonstrate that it is actually possible to run a Debian Desktop GUI system (albeit an unusual one: fvwm) with libsystemd0 removed. The reason for doing so: it doesn't matter how good systemd is believed to be or in fact actually is: the reason for removing it is, apart from the alarm at how extensive systemd is becoming (including interfering with firewall rules), it's the way that it's been introduced in a blatantly cavalier fashion as a polarized all-or-nothing option, forcing people to consider abandoning the GNU/Linux of their choice and to seriously consider using FreeBSD or any other distro that properly respects the Software Freedom principle of the right to choose what software to run. We aren't all "good at coding", or paid to work on Software Libre: that means that those people who are need to be much more responsible, and to start — finally — to listen to what people are saying. Developing a thick skin is a good way to abdicate responsibility and, as a result, place people into untenable positions.
