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Submission + - Comcast Forgets To Delete Revealing Note From Blog Post

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier today, Comcast published a blog post to criticize the newly announced coalition opposing its merger with Time Warner Cable and to cheer about the FCC’s decision to restart the “shot clock” on that deal. But someone at Kabletown is probably getting a stern talking-to right now, after an accidental nugget of honesty made its way into that post. Comcast posted to their corporate blog today about the merger review process, reminding everyone why they think it will be so awesome and pointing to the pro-merger comments that have come in to the FCC. But they also left something else in. Near the end, the blog post reads, “Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not currently compete for customers anywhere in America. That means that if the proposed transaction goes through, consumers will not lose a choice of cable companies. Consumers will not lose a choice of broadband providers. And not a single market will see a reduction in competition. Those are simply the facts.” The first version of the blog post, which was also sent out in an e-mail blast, then continues: “We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced.” After that strange little note, the blog post carries on in praise of competition, saying, “There is a reason we want to provide our customers with better service, faster speeds, and a diverse choice of programming: we don’t want to lose them.”

Submission + - What Does The NSA Think Of Cryptographers? (i-programmer.info)

mikejuk writes: A recently declassified NSA house magazine, CryptoLog, reveals some interesting attitudes between the redactions. What is the NSA take on cryptography?
The article of interest is a report of a trip to the 1992 EuroCrypt conference by an NSA cryptographer whose name is redacted.We all get a little bored having to sit though presentations that are off topic, boring or even down right silly but we generally don't write our opinions down. In this case the criticisms are cutting and they reveal a lot about the attitude of the NSA cryptographers. You need to keep in mind as you read that this is intended for the NSA crypto community and as such the writer would have felt at home with what was being written.
Take for example:
Three of the last four sessions were of no value whatever, and indeed there was almost nothing at Eurocrypt to interest us (this is good news!). The scholarship was actually extremely good; it’s just that the directions which external cryptologic researchers have taken are remarkably far from our own lines of interest.
It seems that back in 1992 academic cryptographers were working on things that the NSA didn't consider of any importance. Could things be the same now?
The gulf between the two camps couldn't be better expressed than:
The conference again offered an interesting view into the thought processes of the world’s leading “cryptologists.” It is indeed remarkable how far the Agency has strayed from the True Path.
The ironic comment is clearly suggesting that the NSA is on the "true path" whatever that might be.
Clearly the gap between the NSA and the academic crypto community is probably as wide today with the different approaches to the problem being driven by what each wants to achieve. It is worth reading the rest of the article.

Submission + - Details of iOS and Android Device Encryption

swillden writes: There's been a lot of discussion of what, exactly, is meant by the Apple announcement about iOS8 device encryption, and the subsequent announcement by Google that Android L will enable encryption by default. Two security researchers tackled these questions in blog posts:

Matthew Green tackled iOS encryption, concluding that at bottom the change really boils down to applying the existing iOS encryption methods to more data. He also reviews the iOS approach, which uses Apple's "Secure Enclave" chip as the basis for the encryption and guesses at how it is that Apple can say it's unable to decrypt the devices. He concludes, with some clarification from a commenter, that Apple really can't (unless you use a weak password which can be brute-forced, and even then it's hard).

Nikolay Elenkov looks into the preview release of Android "L". He finds that not only has Google turned encryption on by default, but appears to have incorporated hardware-based security as well, to make it impossible (or at least much more difficult) to perform brute force password searches off-device.

Comment Re: Emma Watson is full of it (Score 1) 590

Actually I think you'll find that I didn't weigh in on average, hourly, or per-capita wages. In brief:

1/2) Women are variously underemployed and underpaid (this is observational) due to a complex web of social, cultural, economic, and other factors, including but not limited to normative gender roles and opportunities for childcare (the accepted concensus)
3) Is my hypothesis to explain the exceptions, local as they are in time and space. There does seem to be a surge in female employment when traditionally patriarchal societies become capitalistic; indeed, I've heard it argued that the garment factories of Asia are inadvertently driving female emancipation because they're hoovering up all of the cheap female labour that couldn't get into stereotypically male jobs, and those women are then becoming independent.

Comment Re:Emma Watson is full of it (Score 1) 590

1) I wasn't aware that Emma Watson was blaming men.
2) There's no logical path from "both sides are at fault" to "one side needs to do this first before the other side needs to address it".
3) You've not actually substantiated your premise, but I'm going to let that slide because the downstream arguments are more interesting.

Comment Re:Emma Watson is full of it (Score 2) 590

I'm sorry you clearly can't tell I'm taking the piss out of a position that you advanced earlier.

Yes, the "women first" bias in the UK court system's awards of custody certainly needs to be addressed. If people who claimed to stand up for men's rights spent their time addressing these issues and not nit-picking feminists we'd probably have that licked by now.

Comment Re:Emma Watson is full of it (Score 2) 590

Yes, and? 98% and 99% are both vast majorities, but that's the difference between 200 million people getting the short end of the stick and 100 million people getting the short end of the stick.

You might as well say "the vast majority of people live past reproductive age" and say that we can pack in modern medicine.

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