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Comment Not quite old but... (Score 4, Insightful) 635

Firefox 28 (with tabs-on-bottom if you please), Windows 7, and Linux with Gnome 2 (aka MATE).

I'm basically just holding out with old (or "old") software to avoid the current plague of horrible user interface design. The entire "UX designer" movement we're seeing right now is nothing more than a user-hostile circle jerk, doing the perpetuating the same ideas because everyone else is doing it. It's frankly a cancer upon computing, and my only hope is that we eventually see enough pushback from users that the morons at Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and elsewhere realize their mistake, fire all the useless UX blowhards, go back to real usability studies, and let us all get on with a life where we won't always worry that clicking "update" will almost certainly royally fuck everything up.

Firefox

Mozilla Rolls Out Sponsored Tiles To Firefox Nightly's New Tab Page 171

An anonymous reader writes Mozilla has rolled out directory tiles, the company's advertising experiment for its browser's new tab page, to the Firefox Nightly channel. We installed the latest browser build to give the sponsored ads a test drive. When you first launch Firefox, a message on the new tab page informs you of the following: what tiles are (with a link to a support page about how sponsored tiles work), a promise that the feature abides by the Mozilla Privacy Policy, and a reminder that you can turn tiles off completely and choose to have a blank new tab page. It's quite a lot to take in all at once.

Comment Such a Waste (Score 4, Insightful) 156

After the travesty of the first two films, I'm not looking forward to the third movie.

While far from perfect, I felt that Peter Jackson at least made an attempt to stay true to the original story in Lord of the Rings. For the Hobbit he didn't hold anything back as sold out to the suits at Warner Brothers. Both he and the Tolkien family should be ashamed they agreed to this abortion screenplay.

Comment Re:Turing test not passed. (Score 5, Insightful) 285

It was passed as defined

The Turing Test was not passed, and the only people who claim it was are ignorant reporters looking for an easy story with a catchy headline and tech morons who also believe Kevin Warwick is a cyborg.

The test was rigged in every way possible:

- judges told they were talking to a child
- that doesn't speak English as a primary language
- which was programmed with the express intent of misdirection
- and only "fooled" 30% of the judges.

And, even after all that, Cleverbot did a much better job back in 2011 with a 60% success rate.

This Eugene test outcome was a complete farce -- something to remind everyone that Warwick still exists and to separate the ignorant and sensational tech news trash rags from the more legitimate sources of information.

Google

Google Is Offering Free Coding Lessons To Women and Minorities 376

redletterdave writes: According to a blog post from Gregg Pollack, CEO of the Code School, Google is paying for three free months for any women and minorities interested in tech to expand their skills. The offer is part of Google's $50 million "Made With Code" initiative, which aims to help close the gender gap in tech. While Google is also offering the same vouchers to the women in attendance at its annual I/O developers conference this week, the search giant has released an online application that's available to women everywhere. Google says its available vouchers for women number in the "thousands."
Science

Fabien Cousteau Takes Plunge To Beat Grandfather's Underwater Record 84

An anonymous reader writes Fabien Cousteau, grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, plans to spend 31 days underwater off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. He has already spent 3 weeks in an underwater laboratory called the Aquarius, and hopes to break his grandfather's record of 30 days in an undersea habitat. "There are a lot of challenges physically and psychologically," said Cousteau, 46, who grew up on his grandfather's ships, Calypso and Alcyone. Cousteau added: "We'll be able to do Twitter chats, we'll be able to do Skype sessions, we'll be able to do Facebook posts and Instagram posts and all these things that we take for granted on land, but up until now it was impossible to do from down below."

Comment Re:Hacking the Xbox (Score 1) 58

I don't agree that multiple question marks necessarily == multiple questions, but I'll take the advice of my anonymous friends and restructure my question:

During your original Xbox expose, was there a memorable experience you had that stands out -- perhaps a particular part of the hardware that you found especially well-designed (or laughably poor), or maybe a method that yielded unexpected success (or failure)?

Comment Hacking the Xbox (Score 1) 58

One of my first forays into the realm of hardware hacking was following along as you recorded your exploration of the original Xbox console. I was fascinated by the hardware, but enjoyed your analysis and methods even more. It was you that got me interested in hardware and hacking. (Aside: Thank you very much for releasing your book as a freely-available download and for the open-letter about Aaron and MIT)

What was the most memorable experience for you of your Xbox expose? Was there a particular part of the hardware that you found especially well-designed (or laughably poor)? A method that yielded unexpected success (or failure)? What kind of fallout from Microsoft did you face? I remember you posting the voicemail of the Microsoft employee asking you to remove the images of the Xbox ROM -- something I got a good laugh out of. And as a follow-up: do you have a feeling for how "secure" hardware has changed in the decade since the original Xbox launch?

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, and also for all the work you've done pushing for a world with both open software and open hardware.

Comment Re:7.1a for x64 linux (Score 4, Interesting) 146

Luckily I have a copy of 7.1a for x64 linux

I noticed something the other day when looking for a copy of the install on my own system. It turns out that when you install TrueCrypt for Windows, it puts a copy of the installer in the destination directory! If you're on Windows, take a look in your %ProgramFiles%\TrueCrypt directory. You will probably find a TrueCrypt Setup.exe file (at work so not sure of the exact filename). This can be used to install/repair/reinstall TrueCrypt on any computer.

There have been some good attempts to create a trustworthy TrueCrypt archive, but nothing beats your original installation source, which you can use to verify against various signatures found online.

Comment Re:It doesn't take a genius to come up with an att (Score 1) 155

How can I make this clear? Do. Not. Fucking. Want. Yet another reason to avoid "smart" TVs, I guess.

You really can't as far as I can tell.

You still can, though it might depend on what size of TV you're looking for. I'm in the market for a new TV right now, and I've noticed that Costco carries "dumb" TVs up through the 40" range. There are both smart and dumb sets at 40", with the dumb sets being about $75 cheaper.

But yes, if you're looking for a large set you may have a hard time avoiding them at this point.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 155

Okay, so far so good, but how about the signal amplifying and transmitting part?

TFA discusses that:

a $250 1-watt amplifier could cover a 1.4 square kilometer area. [...] By positioning the retransmission gear at a decent height within line of sight of a tower (on a drone, say, or on the roof of a tall building), a hacker in Flushing, Queens could deliver malicious payloads via the Home Shopping Network to a potential audience of 70,000 people per square kilometer. Or he could also hijack 10 different stations including CBS , NBC and Fox from a single antenna in the Inwood neighborhood of upper Manhattan that reaches 50,000 people per square kilometer. With a more powerful 25-watt amp (about $1,500) the hacker can cover more like 35 square kilometers, taking the reach of the attack into the hundreds of thousands of people.

Comment Re:It doesn't take a genius to come up with an att (Score 5, Insightful) 155

Abstract: In the attempt to bring modern broadband Internet features to traditional broadcast television, the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium introduced a specification called Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband Television (HbbTV), which allows broadcast streams to include embedded HTML content which is rendered by the television.

And for anyone wondering just why the hell anyone would want this, TFA clarifies:

Broadcasters and advertisers have been eager to use the HbbTV to target ads more precisely and add interactive content, polls, shopping and apps, to home viewers.

So let me get this right... "Punch the Monkey", coming to a TV near you? Flashing and bouncing "Take the "Which Ninja Turtle are you most like?" poll for a chance to win $1000!!!"? Malicious "Your TV isn't secure! Click here to upgrade!" ads that install some bullshit TV "app" that does only god-knows-what? Remote scripting running on a device designed without any security in mind, and which will probably never be updated during its 8+ year lifetime?

How can I make this clear? Do. Not. Fucking. Want. Yet another reason to avoid "smart" TVs, I guess.

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