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Comment Re:In the Canadian case (Score 1) 263

Then I remembered this quote by Robert Heinlein:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

That's not Heinlein, that's H.L. Mencken, and I can assure you, he would not be on the side of the truckers in this case. He didn't like stupid people, and called the under-educated middle class 'the booboisie'.

Comment Re:49,889km (31,000miles) of cable (Score 2) 62

New Zealand's ministry of foreign affairs says it could take more than a month to repair breaks in the 49,889km (31,000miles) of cable that serves the South Pacific.

Given that Earth circumference is roughly 25,000 miles, that cable must take a lot of detours if its length is 31,000 miles!

Or maybe, just maybe, 31,000 miles accounts for more than one specific cable that needs to be fixed...

Yes, the actual cable in question is a direct connection between Suva in Fiji and Nuku'alofa in Tonga, a distance of about 750km, give or take.

Submission + - Maryland To Become First State To Tax Online Ads Sold By Facebook And Google. (npr.org)

schwit1 writes: With a pair of votes, Maryland can now claim to be a pioneer: it's the first place in the country that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads.

The House of Delegates and Senate both voted this week to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill passed last year to levy a tax on online ads. The tax will apply to the revenue companies like Facebook and Google make from selling digital ads, and will range from 2.5% to 10% per ad, depending on the value of the company selling the ad. (The tax would only apply to companies making more than $100 million a year.)

Proponents say the new tax is simply a reflection of where the economy has gone, and an attempt to have Maryland's tax code catch up to it. The tax is expected to draw in an estimated $250 million a year to help fund an ambitious decade-long overhaul of public education in the state that's expected to cost $4 billion a year in new spending by 2030. (Hogan also vetoed that bill, and the Democrat-led General Assembly also overrode him this week.)

Still, there remains the possibility of lawsuits to stop the tax from taking effect; Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh warned last year that "there is some risk" that a court could strike down some provisions of the bill over constitutional concerns.

Submission + - Tesla Wins Lawsuit Against Whistleblower Accused of Hacks (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The US District Court of Nevada awarded Tesla a win in its lawsuit against a former employee, filed two years ago. You may recall CEO Elon Musk referred to this incident in a previously leaked email calling on employees to be "extremely vigilant." Martin Tripp, who worked at the company's Nevada Gigafactory, was accused of hacking the automaker and supplying sensitive information to unnamed third parties. Reuters reported Friday the court ruled in Tesla's favor and dismissed Tripp's motion to file another reply to the court. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to Reuters, the court will grant Tesla's motion to seal the case.

Submission + - DuckDuckGo Is Growing Fast (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, announced that August 2020 ended in over 2 billion total searches via its search platform. While Google remains the most popular search engine, DuckDuckGo has gained a great deal of traction in recent months as more and more users have begun to value their privacy on the internet. DuckDuckGo saw over 2 billion searches and 4 million app/extension installations, and the company also said that they have over 65 million active users. DuckDuckGo could shatter its old traffic record if the same growth trend continues. Even though DuckDuckGo is growing rapidly, it still controls less than 2 percent of all search volume in the United States. However, DuckDuckGo's growth trend has continued throughout the year, mainly due to Google and other companies' privacy scandal.

Submission + - Why passenger jets could soon be flying in formation (cnn.com)

ragnar_ianal writes: Look at the V-shaped formations of migrating ducks and scientists have long surmised that there are aeronautical efficiencies at play. Aerbus is examining this in a practical manner to see if fuel efficiency can be enhanced.

Building on test flights in 2016 with an Airbus A380 megajet and A350-900 wide-body jetliner, fello'fly hopes to demonstrate and quantify the aerodynamic efficiencies while developing in-flight operational procedures. Initial flight testing with two A350s began in March 2020. The program will be expanded next year to include the involvement of Frenchbee and SAS airlines, along with air traffic control and air navigation service providers from France, the UK, and Europe.

"It's very, very different from what the military would call formation flight. It's really nothing to do with close formation," explained Dr. Sandra Bour Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus UpNext, in an interview with CNN Travel.

Comment Re:Why systemd and not flat flies. (Score 5, Insightful) 135

Why don't we keep entire databases in text? Why not store all google search results in text?

Because logs aren't databases, and don't require the same kind of structure.

There's a reason why databases keep their own logs in plain text format, even when they are specifically designed for information storage and retrieval. They are hedging against catastrophic system failure, in which the only way to diagnose problems is outside the system. That's pretty much the role of logs. They're diagnostic tools. And they are designed—well, supposed to—be accessible when the system itself isn't working. So that you can find and fix what's wrong with the system.

People suggesting that it's sufficient to intercept the logging data as it's being gathered and stored in binary format probably aren't experienced (or bitter) enough to understand the multitude of mysterious ways in which systems can fail, and have yet to come to terms with the paradox of simplicity, and why its beauty transcends all ornamentation.

Comment Re:Seems like waste of time (Score 5, Insightful) 353

I did a double major in Theatre and English Literature in university, and then went on to spend a couple of decades coding and working in tech.

I learned an immense amount of deeply technical matters in theatre. I had to learn basic engineering, the physics of sound and light, electronics and much, much more. I used to be able to calculate lighting power loads in my head.

And yes, we spent classes learning to communicate with only gibberish, or without speaking at all. We did silly trust exercises and re-learned basic movement, speech, vocalisation and other skills.

But the single most important thing I learned—a skill I still use every single day—is how to put my fucking ego and even my dignity aside and focus on joining my efforts with those of others in order to create something that is bigger than anyone's individual contribution.

The number of entitled, holier-than-thou shitheads who think they don't owe it to the world to actually live in it is way too high in tech. If your entire self-image can't survive a few hours a week actually learning to communicate, then I feel genuinely sorry for you.

I'm not sentimental, and most of the left's touchy-feely, sharing-caring emotional virtue signaling sends me to the exits quicker than fire in a match factory. But these particular exercises provide you with tangible, useful, reusable skills that you can apply to any collaborative project, and the people who pooh-pooh these things are the ones who are most lacking in them.

Comment Re:Thats what you get for running systemd (Score 1) 306

The developers weren't thinking about hostile input when they were writing code

You'd think, by this point in time, Poettering would be very familiar with hostile input - heck, just look at most of the systemd discussions here on Slashdot!

Yes, but he never actually processed it.

Comment Re:ID (Score 2) 227

Somebody has to build, maintain and pay for the physical infrastructure. Which means means someone owns and controls it. And that someone is not you. Which means you haven't actually "solved" any problems.

I think the point of this exercise is that anyone can build, maintain and pay for the physical infrastructure, so people can effectively pick up stakes whenever they like. The premise seems to be that competitive forces will keep the behemoths from monopolising your data, twisting it out of shape, or rendering it inaccessible to outside forces.

Given our experience of the commercialisation of the open web, and the commoditisation of the user, I'd say that premise is naive. At best, this is a new weapon in the online arms race, and for the moment, it's in the hands of the freedom crowd. The moment there's money to be made from your pod—and that's a necessary condition for SOLID to work—there will be vendors who will customise its contents at the expense of interoperability, and a concerted effort to make it as difficult to move as possible.

Governments will want to be able to control the movement of pods as well, for obvious reasons. And they'll no doubt want to legislate backdoors into the security mechanisms, especially those establishing identity.

I saw Tim Berners Lee back in 2000 when he first proposed what he was then calling the Semantic Web. Most of SOLID derives from what he had in mind back then. Then, as now, his ideas are inspired and powerful, but vulnerable to the buffeting of external forces. And compared to a smart man with a computer, governments and vested interests are looming large these days.

Comment Isn't Messenger end-to-end encrypted? (Score 2) 136

He recalled one incident where Facebook detected that people were trying to spread "sensational messages" through Facebook Messenger to incite violence on both sides of the conflict. He acknowledged that in such instances, it's clear that people are using Facebook "to incite real-world harm." But in this case, at least, the messages were detected and stopped from going through.

Hang on there, I thought that Messenger was end-to-end encrypted. Someone help me out here—I can see how FB could become aware of these messages (abuse reports), but how could messages in an end-to-end encryption setup be 'detected and stopped from going through'?

Comment Re:Oh boy! (Score 1) 195

It's popcorn time!

TOTALLY UNFAIR!!!!

The vote was shut down before all the votes were cast! Vim users were all :wq while the EMACS users were still trying to press EXT_META_ALT_CTRL_SHIFT.

We demand an immediate re-vote. Just as soon as EMACS finishes loading.... so... June 2020... I think.

Comment Re:Clinton Lost Because of Clinton (Score 1) 263

Even 538, which is hilarious biased in favor of Clinton (they're one of the many sites that predicted her victory as a sure thing) ...

They did not. All you've done here is demonstrate your inability to understand statistical models.

On the day before the election, Fivethirtyeight said there was a roughly 2:1 chance that Hillary would win. That does not mean she's going to get 2/3 of the vote every time. It means that two times out of three, when they run this scenario, Hillary wins. Equally, and just as importantly, The Donald wins one time out of three. If you don't think those are betting odds, then you should never place a bet.

And guess what? The one out of three scenario is the one that happened.

Comment Re:$100 Bill (Score 2) 410

I'd prefer to be greeted by being given a hundred dollar bill. I'm not going to expect or demand that it happen.

You know which one I prefer? FUCK YOU, that's the one I prefer.

Merry fucking fuck you and happy fuck off.

Christmas is beyond a travesty now. It's the fucking Gargantua and Pantagruel of holidays—a grotesquerie of selfishness, self-indulgence and fatuous self-congratulatory solemnity that purports to celebrate the most meaningless of moments. Okay, so Christ was a great guy. And he was born, just like every other living creature on the face of this globe, barring the parthenogenesis crowd. Big fucking deal. You want to celebrate something? Celebrate his caring. Celebrate his admonition to seek transcendence by discarding the material things of this world, to leave everything behind and to fucking love one another.

Instead we have this bizarre, distorted twisted mythos of some guy who was too fucking holy to be born because some guy stuck his dick in it. No sir, that could never have happened, because that would be dirty, and the Lord, oh the LORD is so pure. So let's celebrate his pristinity through conspicuous consumption; let's celebrate our unity by driving home to every homeless person, every reject and everyone unloved man, woman and child just how fucking unloved they really are.

Let's celebrate his compassion and caring by making an entire fucking season in which we're forced to confront the despair and the hollowness of our meaningless, pointless existence unless we accept that Mary went spunkless and her boy lives in the sky.

Let's remind every thinking, intelligent person who ever gave it even a moment's passing thought that a massive portion of this species simply cannot allow you to remain aloof of this collective pathology, and if you reject it, or even question it momentarily, you're somehow waging war on society.

So fuck all of you. Fuck you and fuck your elves and fuck your Ho-ho-horrible hyprocrisy and everything it represents.

And next time, mom, don't make me wear this stupid sweater. Just get me an XBox like I asked.

Fuck all of you.

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