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Comment The UK blocked it (Score 2) 33

Long ago, the UK courts ordered all the major consumer ISPs to block The Pirate Bay along with various other popular services. Ever since, we've had to keep up to date on what the latest proxy address might be.

Of course, thanks to the new censorship laws introduced more recently, we're all on VPNs now, so as to avoid having to hand our ID to the wallet inspector for every last website we ever use. And once that was set up, it was nice to discover that the original is still in play!

Submission + - Wi-Fi Routers Can Scan Your Body to Identify Exactly Who You Are (futurism.com) 1

JoeyRox writes: New research out of Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology found that the types of Wi-Fi routers we all have in our homes come with a major privacy vulnerability that can be used to identify any human body that comes within their range.

The study, flagged by Gizmodo, used machine learning systems to identify individuals with an accuracy rate of 99.5 percent. To do so, the researchers exploited a vulnerability in a process known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), which was introduced to allow routers to focus Wi-Fi signals on connected devices, as opposed to the older approach, which is to blanket an entire area in coverage.

While BFI is great for network connectivity, it has a major downsides for privacy. For starters, devices connected to a router using beamforming need to send constant feedback in order to be found. As routers send out and receive network feedback, the signal is inevitably impacted by real world factors like pets, walls, and people.

Making matters worse is the fact that this data is basically wide open for anyone to grab — not only is that feedback data unencrypted, it can also be accessed without ever connecting directly to the router.

Comment Re: A beautiful resurgence (Score 4, Interesting) 91

The jokes about Darth Jar Jar were everywhere of course, but it could have worked. Star Wars lifted a few ideas from classic SF sources including Asimov's Foundation series - in which, we might recall, the terrifying, unstoppable galactic warlord known as The Mule was hiding in plain sight as a clown, who seemed to be merely a harmless entertainer at court. His military success was chiefly thanks to his psychic ability to manipulate others' minds to his liking - Darth Jar Jar could have done very well that way!

Comment I'm just not interested in more Star Wars (Score 5, Insightful) 91

I saw three Star Wars movies when I was young. They were great. Mainly because I was a child and this stuff was new and fresh and exciting to me. Even the Ewoks.

I saw three more when I was not quite so young. They were... poor.

I saw a couple more when I was older. One was great, the other was okay but a retread of one of the old ones, and I never got round to seeing the rest. Didn't care enough.

Now they've got more, and apparently they're based on a TV series they did, which I didn't watch because I wasn't subscribed to that streaming platform at the time. So I'm not going to see those either. Same reason I've not seen a Marvel superhero film since the first Avengers one - just too much homework required with all the backstory. Every scene is a shout out or reference that I won't get. Every character seems to be getting ever louder and angrier and more and more of them have access to time machines. I just don't have it in me to care anymore.

I like the sound of these horror films, though. They're going to tell a complete story? In one film? With a beginning, middle and end, that don't ask me to be up to date on an entire Cinematic Universe? Sounds great, time to check where they're showing!

Comment Re:UK police false positives on facial recognition (Score 2) 86

Thanks, that is very interesting. But something smells fishy.

1. 1 false positive from "over 641,533 faces" seems too good to be true. Very few systems of any kind are that good, and facial recognition? I don't buy it. And that's an oddly specific number to be "over". It does not pass the smell test.

2. "Shows no bias" is similarly too good to be true and doesn't pass the smell test. Didn't Apple have some problem in the last year or two with trying to spiff up faces, where black skin didn't work as well? "No bias" is not credible.

3. "Zero unlawful arrests" is weasel words. Just because an arrest has conformed to various legal standards, such as having a warrant, being cautioned, not beaten up, etc, does not make it a proper arrest. Lots of people are acquitted at trial after having been lawfully arrested.

4. The rate has not changed. Well, yes, it must have, if this is the false positive rate, since it presumably once upon a time had 0 false positives and now has 1, and the denominator has been increasing all this time unless the first 641,533 faces were all recognized in the first day.

5. The only credible answer. There may well be no national false positive rate.

But it's an interesting response. Thanks.

Comment Re:Yeah what you want is irrelevant (Score 1) 86

I don't know what she's been doing. But from the fact that it took 40 years to track her down, and that only because a non-cop found her, I'd say the evidence is strong I know what she *hasn't* been doing -- terrorism, or training terrorists.

Seriously, if she's been living for 40 years training terrorists who haven't done anything to draw attention to themselves or her, she's either been running a false flag terrorist school with the government's connivance, or she hasn't been running a terrorism school.

If society wants to punish her for what she did 40 years ago, fine. But stop pretending the police took a dangerous terrorist off the streets.

Comment It always puzzled me... (Score 1) 28

... why unions aren't much more common among technology workers. Especially given what you hear about the videogame industry in particular, with that mad 'crunch time' culture in which workers are ruthlessly, well, crunched. I'd always ask, well, what does your union say about it? And what do you know, there isn't one, how about that.

Nice to hear of some progress being made, then. I suppose the risk with this for the rest of us is that GTA 6 might be late to release, but, uh, at this point I think we're over that

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