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Comment Re:Define your damn acronyms (Score 1) 74

Could you write the Guardian and tell them that, please?

My point is that expanding the acronym isn't useful, except perhaps to chemists who would already know what the acronym expands to. Explaining what PFAS are is useful. And the article did that:

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.

So, I think the Guardian did a fine job of explaining what matters.

Comment blockchain is a complete fraud (Score 2) 66

There is no such thing as "extra electricity", only wasted electricity. Bitcoin's energy usage produces absolutely nothing positive for society.

Watch this documentary on the subject.

It's funny that they use really messed up, third world countries as some sort of crypto "use case." These are societies that will try anything and have very lax regulation and environmental standards. Bitcoin doesn't solve any of their real problems. It's just more exploitation.

Comment Re:Welcome to the machine (Score 1) 260

The Chinese beg to differ with Ms. Thatcher. I would contrast their performance to Great Britain's.

Let's do that: GDP per capita of the UK: $46k. GDP per capita of China: $12k. But maybe China does better at distributing the wealth? Nope. UK Gini coefficient: 35, China, 47 (higher is more inequality). Until recently China had phenomenal growth rates, but that's only because (a) they started from a very depressed level and (b) they mostly abandoned socialism. As Xi is reasserting more socialist policies their growth engine has largely stopped and their growth rate is currently below that of the UK. It's still positive at the moment, but if Xi continues what he's doing, it will likely go negative.

Socialism -- not social democracy, which is a thoroughly capitalist economy that accepts high but strongly progressive taxation to fund a strong safety net -- consistently drives economies into the toilet whenever applied on any scale larger than a kibbutz. Without fail, every time.

Comment Re:This has been known for ages (Score 1) 146

Press the power button 5 times rapidly to enable "emergency mode" or whatever they call it. Biometric unlock will be disabled and you will have to enter your password/PIN to access the device again.

I don't think this is true. If you enable emergency mode video recording you have to enter your PIN to end the recording, but biometrics will still unlock the lockscreen. While the recording is going, hit the power button to activate the lockscreen, which will be unlockable with biometrics. You can also swipe up from the bottom (assuming gesture navigation) and switch to other apps. The device is not locked and not in lockdown mode while in emergency mode.

What you can do is press power and volume up to bring up the power menu, and then tap the "Lockdown" icon. That will lock the device and disable biometric authentication.

If you really, really want to lock it down, power the device down, or reboot it and don't log in. Android's disk encryption scheme uses your PIN/pattern/password ("lockscreen knowledge factor", or LSKF) along with keys stored in secure hardware to derive the disk encryption keys. It would make for a long post to go into all of the details, but given the hardware-enforced brute force mitigation,if the attacker gets a device in this state it's extremely difficult to decrypt any of the credential-encrypted data on the device without your LSKF. This is particularly true on devices that implement "StrongBox" (all Pixels, some Samsungs, some others). Android StrongBox moves some crucial functionality, including LSKF authentication and LSKF brute force resistance, into a separate hardened, lab-certified[*] security processor with its own internal storage, a "secure element".

Of course, note that appellate courts in the US have split on whether or not your LSKF can be compelled. Some have ruled that unless the PIN/pattern/password is itself incriminating, it's no different than compelling the combination to a safe, which has long been held to be constitutional.

[*] For anyone interested in the details, the required certification is Common Criteria EAL 4+ (5+ is recommended, and common, many devices meet 6+), using protection profile 0084 for the hardware and equivalent "high attack potential" evaluation for the software, plus AVA_VAN.5 penetration testing, all performed in a nationally-accredited security testing lab. While certification isn't a guarantee of security (nothing is), the required certification applies the highest level of scrutiny you can get for commercially-available devices. Apple also uses a similarly-certified SE in their devices, but it's not clear whether they use it for LSKF authentication, or whether they use their (uncertified) Secure Enclave.

Comment Re:Who on SLASHDOT is using biometric data for con (Score 1) 146

Must be quite entertaining to watch you unlock your phone hundreds of times a day.

JFC...why in the world would you need to be accessing your phone "hundreds of times a day"???

Maybe not hundreds, but at least dozens. For most people their phone is their digital assistant in all sorts of ways... not only for communication for for calendaring, looking up random things, reading the news or books, listening to music, getting directions, checking their bank account/brokerage, doing calculations, fitness tracking, managing shopping and to-do lists... the list goes on and on.

Comment The whole industry is a giant decentralized scam (Score 1) 9

It's about time everybody realize there's very little going on in the crypto industry that's not fraud and grift.

Here is a great documentary explaining why. It's a shame it isn't getting the attention it deserves, but I guess crypto companies are still prime advertisers in mainstream media and nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds.

Comment Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score 1) 517

They don't get to claim the moral high ground.

True, and neither does Hamas. For that matter, neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian people get to claim the moral high ground, since both overwhelmingly support the actions of their governments. Both are in the gutter, and digging downward. A pox on both their houses, and I don't think we should support either one. I am okay with humanitarian aid to starving people, though.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

There's a third and fourth reason too: 1. Fewer charges per year. It's a minor but still useful additional convenience to only have to plug in once a fortnight instead of once a week

I suppose. I prefer to plug in every time I park, then I basically never have to pay any attention to range except on long trips.

2. Fewer charge-discharge cycles per year, so the battery should last longer

Yeah, that's another side of my second reason, though cycles really only begin to bite when you get close to full or close to empty. Oscillating near the middle is fine.

Comment Re:FALSE impression - LOOK at the charts (Score 1) 215

The charts clearly show that the 100% is only hit for a few brief minutes at the top of the day with solar panels at max output. For 2/3 of the 24 hour day, those "renewables" are not even managing to produce 60%... which means that for the vast majority of the time, traditional power is MANDATORY to prevent extreme blackouts.

You're missing the point.

The point is that CA has now gotten to the point where storage is a real requirement to continue growing renewables, at least if they don't want to simply be discarding a lot of renewable generation. That is, CA has now gotten past the easy part of renewable growth, where the renewables are cutting into but not fully replacing fossil fuel generation. From here forward, it's going to be harder, and the state is going to have to be breaking new ground.

This is both a major milestone and an inflection point in the difficulty of converting.

because the renewables are getting in there for their chunk of energy supply (at the time and volume convenient to THEM) the traditional sources must adapt - which makes THEM more expensive

Even that is not enough when renewables generate >100% of consumption for significant parts of each day. Then you have to start figuring out how to store that excess production. In the short term they can probably sell some of it to other states, but as other states transition their own production that's going to become less useful, especially for solar. Time to start building out storage!

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