Comment Re:Same for Mechanical Eng Too (Score 1) 227
Yes. The recruiters who troll LinkedIn must just search for one specific skill and spam everyone who has it. I always get offers for jobs I'm either not qualified for or would never willingly do.
Comment Got more offers by not being interested (Score 2) 227
Last year I realized that I'd never changed my LinkedIn job profile info to "not interested" after starting my new job a year earlier. I'd been getting a lot of pings from recruiters, and I thought that might discourage them. Nope. Saying I wasn't interested made the recruiters even more interested in me!
Which would be great if any of them had a job better than my current one, but they never do. Everything is more boring work I'm less qualified for, for less pay.
Comment Re:The good news is... (Score 4, Insightful) 211
It was horrible. I did a really crappy job.
Sadly, you were probably better than the guy before you and the guy after you.
I venture to say that just because you realized you were doing a bad job, you were already doing a better job than the vast majority of managers (especially ones who think of themselves as "good").
Comment Re:Skype? What happened to Sametime? (Score 1) 208
Skype help?
Perhaps Microsoft is paying them co-marketing dollars for doing positive PR for Skype? Maybe that's his great vision on saving the company.
Comment Sounds like a good policy anyway. (Score 2) 35
should be restricted to communicate only with trusted devices
Sounds like a good policy anyway.
Comment Re:Whitelisting executables... (Score 1) 190
Not just Sony.
McAfee, Norton, Oracle (that damn Ask toolbar), HP Support Assistant, Razer mice, Skype.
Heck, it seems most Windows software has a "malware" buisness model these days.
Comment Re:Words without actions are meaningless (Score 3, Insightful) 107
"We're sorry we've solve you shitty products but will replace it at our expense" is actually doing something.
The ideal response in my mind would be: "We're sorry - so here's how to unlock the boot-loader and here are third-party open source firmware providers that we tested for you."
Generate Memorizable Passphrases That Even the NSA Can't Guess 267
HughPickens.com writes Micah Lee writes at The Intercept that coming up with a good passphrase by just thinking of one is incredibly hard, and if your adversary really is capable of one trillion guesses per second, you'll probably do a bad job of it. It turns out humans are a species of patterns, and they are incapable of doing anything in a truly random fashion. But there is a method for generating passphrases that are both impossible for even the most powerful attackers to guess, yet very possible for humans to memorize. First, grab a copy of the Diceware word list, which contains 7,776 English words — 37 pages for those of you printing at home. You'll notice that next to each word is a five-digit number, with each digit being between 1 and 6. Now grab some six-sided dice (yes, actual real physical dice), and roll them several times, writing down the numbers that you get. You'll need a total of five dice rolls to come up with each word in your passphrase. Using Diceware, you end up with passphrases that look like "cap liz donna demon self", "bang vivo thread duct knob train", and "brig alert rope welsh foss rang orb". If you want a stronger passphrase you can use more words; if a weaker passphrase is ok for your purpose you can use less words. If you choose two words for your passphrase, there are 60,466,176 different potential passphrases. A five-word passphrase would be cracked in just under six months and a six-word passphrase would take 3,505 years, on average, at a trillion guesses a second.
After you've generated your passphrase, the next step is to commit it to memory.You should write your new passphrase down on a piece of paper and carry it with you for as long as you need. Each time you need to type it, try typing it from memory first, but look at the paper if you need to. Assuming you type it a couple times a day, it shouldn't take more than two or three days before you no longer need the paper, at which point you should destroy it. "Simple, random passphrases, in other words, are just as good at protecting the next whistleblowing spy as they are at securing your laptop," concludes Lee. "It's a shame that we live in a world where ordinary citizens need that level of protection, but as long as we do, the Diceware system makes it possible to get CIA-level protection without going through black ops training."
After you've generated your passphrase, the next step is to commit it to memory.You should write your new passphrase down on a piece of paper and carry it with you for as long as you need. Each time you need to type it, try typing it from memory first, but look at the paper if you need to. Assuming you type it a couple times a day, it shouldn't take more than two or three days before you no longer need the paper, at which point you should destroy it. "Simple, random passphrases, in other words, are just as good at protecting the next whistleblowing spy as they are at securing your laptop," concludes Lee. "It's a shame that we live in a world where ordinary citizens need that level of protection, but as long as we do, the Diceware system makes it possible to get CIA-level protection without going through black ops training."
Comment Re:One-sided relationship (Score 1) 139
We don't want American spy agencies listening to our https traffic either. Just because Alice is shooting at me, it doesn't suddenly make it OK for Bob to stab me too.
This is an attack against the SSL trust model. A CA knowingly created a rogue certificate for malicious purposes. This wasn't an accident. A Diginotar type response would not be inappropriate.
Comment Re:We already got Blender? (Score 1) 198
And back in the 1990's we had BMRT (a free renderman clone); until they came and paid/threatened the guy to stop making the free clone available.
I'm sticking to really free stuff now.
Comment Browsers getting too complex (Score 3, Insightful) 237
Is it reasonable to expect browser makers to hold their own in an arms race against exploits?
The problem is that browsers are trying to become an OS - with all the complexities associated with one.
If we want back to a world where HTML was mostly about content -- that could be displayed in everything down to things like the Lynx browser -- they coudl be made secure.
People wanted more, though -- so they decided to allow extensions like Java Applets, Flash Plugins, and ActiveX controls. Obviously more complex, those were not surprisingly insecure.
So now people decide to take all the complexity and insecurity and build it directly into the browser itself?!? WTF.
Makes me miss gopher clients. Maybe we should go back.
TL/DR: Javascript+HTML5 is the new Java applet + Flash Player + ActiveX control.
Comment Re:Waring against AI.... (Score 1) 341
He, like most rich and powerful people are, is afraid of that which he cannot or could not control. Bostrom, the philosopher drumming-up all the fear, is afraid of that which he cannot or could not understand.
Look how the powerful record and media companies reacted (and continue to react) to file sharing. Look how a chess champion reacts to being beaten by a computer.
I think that the powerful don't want something more powerful than them and the smart don't want something smarter than them.
But I believe the wise will always seek that which is wiser than them.
What was this thread about again? Cars?
Look how the powerful record and media companies reacted (and continue to react) to file sharing. Look how a chess champion reacts to being beaten by a computer.
I think that the powerful don't want something more powerful than them and the smart don't want something smarter than them.
But I believe the wise will always seek that which is wiser than them.
What was this thread about again? Cars?
Uber Sued Over Driver Data Breach, Adding To Legal Woes 32
wabrandsma writes with news about the latest trouble facing Uber. "Uber Technologies Inc has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over a recently disclosed data breach involving the personal information of about 50,000 drivers, the latest in a series of legal woes to hit the Internet car service. The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco by Sasha Antman, an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon, says the company did not do enough to prevent the 2014 breach and waited too long — about five months — to disclose it. Antman says Uber violated a California law requiring companies to safeguard employee's personal information."
Comment Not yet, let them decide. (Score 1) 734
If you don't sign before the child reaches 18, the child is not considered an American citizen.
So I read this as meaning you have 18 years for such a decision to be made? In that case, don't do it now, but let them make their own minds up when they're (hopefully) intelligent teenagers who can understand the implications and how they might want to live their adult lives (such as if this might include moving to the US). Unless you plan on returning to the US or splitting up with the mother and want custody, there are zero benefits for them to be US citizens now so either let them decide or make the decision at a time when it makes sense.
Comment Even worse - extensions == "chmod +x" ?!? (Score 2) 564
What seems even more stupid is that some OS's seem to think the last 4 characters of a filename convey some magical meanings -- like if it should be executable; or what application is should magically launch when clicked.
