Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Useless warnings are useless. (Score 1) 49

The problem you get though is what I call the "California Cancer Warning Problem"
Basically, people can only pay attention to so many warnings. The more often people get false or trivial warnings, warnings where they have to continue to get things done as standard, the more likely they are to just plain ignore the warnings.

While hackers might be able to figure out a way to do something malicious without triggering the warning, the warnings back then were worse than useless, because they not only triggered for just about every document, users by default could not assess the document for safety without enabling the scripting. IE I couldn't by default open the document and look at the scripts to assess them (and some of them were only like a dozen lines) without enabling them.

Saying the warnings were necessary also ignores that there have been exploits that didn't even require opening a document to cause infection. Preview was enough.

Basically, if the hackers figured out something clever, just add that to the check. It would still be a better situation than what we had back then.

Comment Laws for slavery (Score 4, Insightful) 165

I’d argue that slavery wasn’t “legal because nobody banned it.” It was legal because there were explicit laws that created, defined, and enforced the institution.

There were statutes specifying who could be held as slaves, rules that the child of an enslaved woman was automatically a slave, procedures for manumission, regulations on how slaves could be bought, sold, punished, or inherited, and laws requiring that escaped slaves be returned. That’s not a legal vacuum, that’s a full legal framework.

It’s similar to how segregation laws later forced discrimination on people who might not have engaged in it otherwise. The state wasn’t passively allowing something; it was actively mandating and structuring it.

Slavery existed because the law built and maintained it, not because the law failed to forbid it.

Comment Re:Please don't (Score 1) 49

I remember those days where it would warn if there was any scripting at all, rather than look for dangerous commands first.
Just as a thought, not bothering if the script cannot reach outside of the document itself. Functions that access other files or documents, email functionality, and such triggering the warning instead would have been more effective.

Submission + - AI Scammer Exposed: "hold up three fingers in front of your face" (x.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A video is going viral showing scam baiter Jim Browning exposing an Indian scammer using AI deepfake to pretend to be a White man, with the scheme failing when he is asked to hold up three fingers in front of his face.

Comment Re:So it was illegal (Score 0, Troll) 61

Ah, the enlightened centrist. You can't name one "forceful" Biden era piece of legislation.
Says the guy posting as anon coward. But anyways, assuming you are not a troll and just a person with the memory of a goldfish, I'll start with the COVID19 restrictions under Biden(where BLM protests were ok, and Hollywood films could be shot, but no going to Church or any other large gatherings, gyms had to be closed). We will then move onto the power grab that was simply forgiving everyone's college debt. And for even more unity I'll present Biden's sith lord speech from Sep 1st 2022. But maybe you aren't a dog faced pony soldier, I can't be sure.

Comment Re:Blessing in disguise? (Score 1) 78

I got one around 2008. They were the best of the non-premium 1080p HDMI screens at the time.

The one I got had slightly better test review scores on display quality than the LG that year. The Sony was 20% better for 3x the price.

It lasted about twelve years and by then a bigger 4K with much brighter colors was half the cost in nominal dollars, so probably 1/4 the cost in real terms.

And by then cheap flashable streaming sticks were available as was pihole and fairly easy outbound NAT rewriting rules to keep the beasts contained.

Comment Bye bye Wikipedia (Score -1, Flamebait) 31

Wikipedia is choosing to die. There is a lot wrong with a lot of what people are doing with GenAI but it is also super useful.

Even on for authors, of encyclopedia articles, and this notihing wrong with telling ChatGTP to, "take this list of bullets and write it up as a paragraph."

Nor is there anything wrong with asking it to make a diagram of some process etc.

Someone else is going to clone wikipedia and the authorship will no doubt migrate to where they are allowed to use contemporary tooling.

Comment Re:hmm (Score 1, Insightful) 204

He has killed thousands of Iranians, cost the global economy trillions of dollars, cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, ruined the US's reputation as a dependable and reliable partner, and effectively made the rule of law meaningless... but the exact same regime that does horrible things to Iranians is still in power so... winning?
I do love watching Democrats who spent years w/ their "Slava Ukraini" and blockbuster pins, wanting to ship pallets of cash to Ukraine, start to notice that wars are expensive. It is truly hilarious. Almost as funny as watching the Anti-war left completely disappear once Obama took office. Also, I missed your moral outrage when the Iranian regime killed thousands of Iranians, but maybe I just didn't look at /. that day. As for dependable and reliable partner, you misspelled carry the load completely. After all, going to war without the French, is like going hunting w/out an accordion.

Comment Re:Repeat 2007-2008 (Score 1) 204

This supercharged the crisis of 2007-2008. not sure there was many articles written about it, but the patterns are the same.
No, that was supercharged by the easy credit loans, and then the subsequent bundling of said loans into CDOs that could be sliced and sold off as low risk despite the loans inside said CDOs being sub prime, and some of those loans were interest only such that the second the rates started to rise, the risk of default exploded. Same kind of imaginary thinking that goes on in the crypto world, "the line must keep going up."

Submission + - Iran blocks accounts of Starlink users as crackdown continues (iranintl.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Iranian police said on Thursday they had blocked 61 bank accounts belonging to users of Starlink satellite internet in the central city of Yazd, as part of a broader crackdown on unauthorized connectivity.

A local police commander said six Starlink devices were seized and six people detained following searches carried out with judicial approval.

Authorities accused the suspects of trading access to the service, sharing information with foreign-based outlets and engaging in activities deemed hostile. The individuals were referred to prosecutors, police said.

The move comes amid a broader wave of arrests across Iran, with authorities detaining dozens in recent days on security-related charges, including alleged links to militant activity, contacts with foreign media and online activity. Officials have also reported seizing weapons, explosives and Starlink devices in multiple provinces.

Starlink is banned in Iran, where authorities have imposed a near-total internet blackout during the war. Monitoring group NetBlocks says connectivity has dropped to around 1% of normal levels, leaving satellite services among the few ways to access the global internet.

Comment Re:Republicans are trying to privatize it (Score 1) 204

Doing stuff like requiring them to fund pension plans 30 years into the future

Imagine expecting an organization to have real plan and concrete assets in place to meet their defined benefit contractual obligations to employees.

I mean they should be able to use rosy predictions about asset performance and when it does not work just dump the bill on the taxpayers like state and local pension funds for teachers, police, etc do! Or maybe they should be like the cool kids in corporate American declare bankruptcy, sell all the assets to an other entity that just happens to be owned by the same people and again leave the problem to the tax payers with PBGC..

despite the fact that they are a government service

Nope congress is required to establish a post office but the post office is not an agency, constitutionally I suppose it could be but the model is more like Fanny/Freddie. Congress takes a supervisory role.

Slashdot Top Deals

Help stamp out Mickey-Mouse computer interfaces -- Menus are for Restaurants!

Working...