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Comment Thinking about a different type of site isolation (Score 1) 14

by emm-tee (#60637578) Attached to: Firefox 'Site Isolation' Feature Enters User Testing, Expected Next Year

I'm interested in a different type of site isolation, which would stop advertisers etc. tracking you, without having to rely on a maintained list of tracking companies.

The idea is, that when browsing a particular site, all cookies set (including third party cookies) are kept in storage specific to the site being browsed (i.e. the site matching the domain in the address bar). E.g. if I'm browsing ZDNet.com, and a Facebook cookie is set, it is still stored somewhere under ZDNet.com cookie storage. If I then browsed Facebook.com, it would not be able to see that cookie, as it would have its own separate cookie storage.

Obviously it would need to be possible to add some exceptions on a per-site basis.

Ever hear of a feature like this?
Facebook

Facebook Notification Spam Has Crossed the Line (wired.com) 98

Posted by msmash from the meeting-sales-targets dept.
Facebook has always nudged truant users back to its platform though emails and notifications. But recently, those prods have evolved beyond comments related to activity on your own profile. From a report: Now Facebook will nag you when an acquaintance comments on someone else's photo, or when a distant family member updates their status. The spamming has even extended to those who sign up for two-factor authentication -- which is a great way to turn people off to that extra layer of security. "The part of it that bugs me is that two-factor authentication is something [Facebook] should be encouraging people to use, but instead the way this is working here is that they're driving people away from two-factor and making people less secure," says Matt Green, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, who has done contracted security work for Facebook in the past.

"It's abusive, people's attention is deliberately tweaked by what looks like a two-factor authentication message." Green says he's received near-daily SMS messages from Facebook since January alerting him that one of his friends performed some action on the platform. Before he started receiving the messages, Green says he hadn't logged into Facebook for a long time and had actually forgotten his password. The weirdest part about the SMS notifications is what happens if you reply to them. If you respond, your message is posted to your own profile. Further reading: Facebook Really Wants You To Come Back, Facebook Is Spamming Users Via Their 2FA Phone Numbers, and Facebook Makes Moves On Instagram's Users.
Apple

Apple's HomePod Speakers Leave White Marks on Wood (bbc.com) 86

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Apple's new smart speakers can discolour wooden surfaces, leaving a white mark where they are placed, the firm has acknowledged. From a report: The US company has suggested that owners may have to re-oil furniture if the HomePod is moved. The device went on sale last week after having been delayed from its original 2017 release date. Apple told Pocket-lint that it was "not unusual" for speakers with silicone bases to leave a "mild mark." But the gadget review site told the BBC it had never seen anything like this problem. The website's founder, Stuart Miles, told the BBC that a speaker left a mark on his kitchen worktop within 20 minutes.

Comment Re:Suspect reliability (Score 1) 230

by emm-tee (#50729103) Attached to: Volkswagen Seeks To Repair Its Image By Focusing On Electric

I have never seen a single quality survey in the last 20 years where VW was not near the bottom of the heap. Durable I would agree with from personal experience. Reliable? No way. The data simply doesn't support that assertion.

You must not have been looking at the same quality surveys then.. 6 out of the top 10 car models in this satisfaction survey from last year are VW or one of its brands (Skoda):

http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/2014-jd-power-survey-volkswagen-big-winner/1296353

Even the lowest scoring VW is still mid-table
Earth

In Germany, a Message-in-a-Bottle Found 108 Years After Its Release 57

Posted by timothy from the notify-the-police dept.
schwit1 writes with a report that an early 20th century experiment has generated a belated data point. One of many floating bottles released 108 years ago to study currents was recently found by a German couple; it washed up on a beach in Amrum, Germany. From The Independent: When the couple unfurled the note inside, they found a message in English, German and Dutch. It asked the finder to fill in some information on where and when they had found the bottle, before returning it to the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. It said whoever did so would be rewarded with one shilling. Communications director of the Marine Biological Association, Guy Baker, told The Daily Telegraph: "It was quite a stir when we opened that envelope, as you can imagine." Once at the association, staff recognised the bottle was one of 1,020 released into the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 as part of a project to test the strength of currents. Mr Baker told the paper: "It was a time when they were inventing ways to investigate what currents and fish did. Many of the bottles were found by fishermen trawling with deep sea nets. Others washed up on the shore, and some were never recovered. Most of the bottles were found within a relatively short time. We're talking months rather than decades."

Comment Re:Perhaps not (Score 1) 598

by emm-tee (#45688345) Attached to: UK Men Arrested For Anti-Semitic Tweets After Football Game

But where do you draw the line? If the government has the authority to arrest someone for hating Jews, then why can't they also arrest you for hating Republicans?

They don't have the authority to arrest someone for hating Jewish people. They have the authority to arrest someone for inciting hatred against Jewish people (or any other ethnic group).

"Where do you draw the line?" is a reasonable question, but you can't use it as shorthand for "this is a stupid law": You can be arrested for killing somebody, so why can't you be arrested for looking at me funny? Where do you draw the line?

Obviously, Republicanism is a political alignment, which can be debated and will change during your lifetime. Your ethnic background simply depends who your parents were and is eternal.
Wireless Networking

What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It 120

Posted by samzenpus from the looking-behind-the-curtain dept.
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Artist Nickolay Lamm, a blogger for MyDeals.com, decided to shed some light on the subject. He created visualizations that imagine the size, shape, and color of wi-fi signals were they visible to the human eye. 'I feel that by showing what wi-fi would look like if we could see it, we'd appreciate the technology that we use everyday,' Lamm told me in an email. 'A lot of us use technology without appreciating the complexity behind making it work.'"
Encryption

Most US Drones Still Beam Video Unencrypted 138

Posted by timothy from the hey-it-beats-satellite-piracy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Four years after discovering that militants were tapping into drone video feeds, the U.S. military still hasn't secured the transmissions of more than half of its fleet of Predator and Reaper drones, Danger Room has learned. The majority of the aircraft still broadcast their classified video streams 'in the clear' — without encryption. With a minimal amount of equipment and know-how, militants can see what America's drones see."

Comment Re:Socialist agenda on full display tonite (Score 2, Insightful) 529

by emm-tee (#41735899) Attached to: Third 2012 US Presidential Debate Tonight: Discuss Here
The rich in the US are only interested in their own wealth, and not the longterm wealth of their country. So they don't want to ensure that all citizens have a good education and are able to get healthcare they need. This results in the US having one of the worst social mobility ratings in the developed world. Land of the opportunity for the filthy rich to become even richer, and most of the rest to rot.

Comment Re:NEVER (Score 2) 398

by emm-tee (#41135879) Attached to: Tata Intends To Sell Air-Powered Car In India

I don't disagree with your comment per se, but I think you missed the point of Nursie's comment.

sanman2 said "India's poor" are "turning their noses up" at the Nano.

However, 32.7% of Indians live in poverty. Because of this, Nursie rightly pointed out that "India's poor" probably have bigger concerns than which car to buy.

If sanman2 had said "members of India's lower middle class are already turning their noses up at the Nano" there would be no argument here.

I have been to India several times in the last 10 years and seen huge numbers of people sleeping on the streets and in shanty towns.
Books

One Sci-Fi Author Wrote 29 of the Kindle's 100 Most-Highlighted Passages 239

Posted by Soulskill from the precise-but-not-necessarily-accurate dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Today Amazon announced that a science fiction writer has become the Kindle's all-time best-selling author. Last June Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Hunger Games trilogy, was only the fourth author to sell one million ebooks, but this month Amazon announced she'd overtaken all her competition (and she also wrote the #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks this Christmas). In fact, 29 of the 100 most-highlighted passages on the Kindle were written by Collins, including 7 of the top 10. And on a separate list of recent highlights, Collins has written 17 of the top 20 most-highlighted passages." It's pretty interesting to go through the top-100 list and look at the passages people think are worth highlighting. Taken out of context, many of them could be patched together and re-sold as a self-help book. None are quite so eloquent as #18 in the recent highlights.

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