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Comment Re:Really all this cloud stuff (Score 1) 98

boils down to security and being able to punch through firewalls and NAT... Really there should be a protocol to solve this problem that is industry wide.

There is. It's called IP forwarding. Your router almost certainly supports it because without it and its auto-configuration friends UPnP and NAT-PMP you wouldn't be able to play lots of online games.

That's not the problem. The problem is, how do you tell your phone what your home IP address is? That also has standard solutions but ISPs don't like giving out static IPs and dynamic DNS requires that you have a domain name. Used to be you could get a free one, but those services seem to have died off so now it's $15 a year.

Comment Re:Never buy any product that requires... (Score 1) 98

Like it or not the cloud is a necessity for anything that extends beyond a few meters from your home.

It's not a necessity, but it certainly makes it a lot easier.

There is a problem with things that are not a few meters from your home requiring cloud access though. Like a garage door opener. Optional cloud integration so you can control it remotely, fine, but the base functionality should be local. The problem with cloud stuff is that it's an ongoing expense. If you're not paying a subscription eventually the provider is not going to be able to keep it going.

Comment Re:I assume you are joking, but ... (Score 1) 150

We are only a year out from the murder of a health-insurance executive, so the police are more on edge than usual.

Then we need to threaten such things much more often, so that the cops will eventually get used to it, and relax. ;-)

Debian never tried to kill me through my computer. I'd appreciate it if my car manufacturer made their car as safe as my computer.

Fuck it, I just want a Debian car. Then I won't need to extract bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, as my zombie revenant tracks down the CEO of Subaru, and the rotting flesh of my hands tightens around his throat as payment for the time a popup distracted me.

Comment There's no consensus definition of E2E encryption (Score 1) 89

Some people are busting out "definitions" of "End to End Encryption" but people were already using that as in informal descriptive term long before your formalized technical jargon was made up. Nobody should be surprised if there are mismatches. Have faith in our faithlessness.

I personally view the term as an attempt to call semi-bullshit on SMTP and IMAP over SSL/TLS. In the "old" (though not very old) days, if you sent a plaintext email (no PGP!), some people would say "oh, it's encrypted anyway, because the connection is encrypted between your workstation and the SMTP server, the connection from there to some SMTP relay is encrypted, the connection from there to the final SMTP server is encrypted, and the recipient's connection to the IMAP server is encrypted."

To which plenty of people, like me, complained "But it's still plaintext at every stop where it's stored along the way! You should use PGP, because then, regardless of the connection security, or lack of security on all the connections, it is encrypted end to end. Never trust the network, baby!"

Keep in mind that even when I say that, this is without any regard for key security! When I say E2E encrypted, it is implied that the key exchange may have been done poorly/incorrectly, mainly because few people really get to be sure they're not being MitMed when they use PGP. You can exchange keys correctly, but it's enough of a PITA that, in the wild, you rarely get to. You usually just look up their key on some keyserver and hope for the best. Ahem. And I say "usually" as if even that happens often. [eyeroll]

Indeed, every time I hear about some new secure messaging app/protocol, the first thing I wonder is "how do they do key exchange?" and I'm generally mistrusting of it, by default. And sometimes, I'm unpleasantly unsurprised, err I mean, cynically confirmed.

But anyway, if my E2E definition matches yours, great! And if it doesn't, well, that's ok and it's why we descend into the dorky details, so that we can be sure we're both talking about the same thing.

Comment Re:We don't have to allow this, it's a false choic (Score 1) 53

Assuming you live in a society with property rights, you do in fact have the right to both buy and sell that property. Like all rights, it's not absolute and can be limited in special circumstances. Corporations are just legal mechanisms for multiple people to share certain of their individual rights, most prominently property rights.

Warner Brothers is heavily in debt and has been posting big losses since the beginning of 2022. Their financials certainly look like they're in dire straits.

The deal hasn't closed yet. US regulators will be looking at it pretty carefully.

Comment Re:"All five nucleobases" (Score 1) 42

There are five. DNA and RNA each have four but not the same four. RNA uses uracil instead of thymine. The basic five can be modified after the nucleic acid is formed, methylctosine being the most common.

There are also a bunch of other nucleotide bases that aren't normally incorporated in DNA or RNA, some of which have been found in space, and artificial ones we've engineered to fluoresce or kill cancer.

Comment Re:Okay, so ... (Score 1) 71

I have a very large sample size, but you are correct. American's on social media and slashdot are fucking weird.

We all are a bit off. Anyhow, if you wish to read my take on it, I posted about what the constitution has to say about t6his, and why the Republicans ignored the order.

Nullification of States Rights by presidential edict, and placed in a spending bill removes a tool the Republicans have used for many years.

But let us not believe that insanity is limited to Republicans, or Americans. The world shows that in a world full of Kooks, the USA isn't even remotely the worst. The world has a lot of latter day Visigoths. They are always at the gates, and we must decide if we let them in or not.

Comment Re: Here we go (Score 3, Insightful) 47

By "in the 1940's" I assume you mean when the UN handed the region to the Jews? There were no "Palestinians" at the time, that ethnonym was invented by Yasser Arafat

There was Palestine. That's a distinction without a difference.

So, that initial "theft" was actually the rest of the world recognizing that the Jews needed their land back

And just look at the beautiful Genocide they've created there!

Congratulations! Look who you've sided with.

I'm not siding with anyone here. I dislike all religious ethnostates because they always go wrong at some point. The only thing I like is when they become more secular, like Iran was before the USA tampered with it. I am siding against genocide. If Israel can stop doing a genocide, I can stop disliking Israel for doing genocide and just focus on their religious oppression.

Comment What does the constitution say (Score 1) 71

The tenth amendment to the constitution plainly states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

A lot of reading to catch up on what powers are delegated to the federal government, and plenty of interpretation has happened along the way.

Now, the legal question is why have Republicans ignored this order? It sets a real precedent, that's why. It nullifies States Rights. Republicans have long used states rights, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to do things like nullify restrictions on gun ownership, immigration, and Devil's lettuce. States rights have been used to modify discrimination against the elderly and disabled, and limited the ability of rape victims to sue in federal courts.

States Rights is also used as a Dog Whistle for a number of other things, like desegregation, same sex marriage, and reproductive rights. A lot other this rhetoric was used by the Dixiecrats, who en masse moved to the Republican Party when the Democrats became too liberal on segregation.

So to the issue at hand, States Rights is an important tool in the Republican Party's toolbox. One they wish to not have nullified. And a lot of states rights ideology makes sense no matter what party you are in. After all, the tenth amendment was put in there for a reason.

And despite the years of obsequious Marching to Trump's demands, at least some Republicans understand that Trump won't be in office forever, and a Democrat will eventually land in the office, with all the powers Trump declared as his own.

Wikipedia has a nice writeup, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment Re:Hugs my 2000s car... (Score 1) 150

Honda is showing the beginning of the end by selling cars not designed by them, so maybe you won't have to wait too long for their come-uppance. Their only full sized EV is a GM product and they didn't even bother making any interior changes so it doesn't even look or feel like a Honda inside. It sounds like this can only be an improvement at this point.

It's so weird given that Honda was the undisputed champ of making a good simple reliable car in the 1990s. How did they get here? Did they hire execs from Sony?

Comment Re:vast demand for AI (Score 1) 87

Oh yeah, Gemini is great!

I finally just had to block the AI search results on Google because they are so much worse than worthless every single time. The "citations" linked never say what Google claims they say. Every time I search for information on something I know about already I can see that Gemini doesn't know shit.

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