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Comment Re:How is the Ukraine war going? (Score 1) 64

I don't know if you're a russian bot or some deluded idiot, but it amuses me to do a breakdown of your post.

NATO turned what was originally intended to be a mostly peaceful show of force like the temporary invasion of Georgia into a war of attrition.

First of all the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Georgia involved a few hundred dead in the first two days, and another 5000+ civilians killed in the ethnic cleansing after that, all for a land-grab to seize control of territory covering half of Georgia's coastline that Putin wanted.

Secondly, the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Ukraine involved hundreds dead, ballistic and cruise missile attacks on all of Ukraine's largest cities, and Putin publicly admitting the goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government... and that's just within the first 36 hours. Within two and a half months Russian officials began admitting the intent to permanently annex parts of Ukraine, proceeding with a constitutional amendment a few months later claiming to annex vast territories that Russian had not remotely taken control of, and which Russia is not remotely capable of capturing. Donetsk alone has a population of over a million, two million if you include the metro-area. Russia spent months and many thousand of lives to capture, and later lose, villages in the range of low tens of thousands.

Remember WWI when the lines were pretty much static for years and then suddenly it was all over?

Yes, I remember. As I recall it wasn't exactly "sudden". As I recall... Russian casualties were around five million killed, wounded, or captured, the Russian economy was collapsing, Russia was running out of food, and Russian literally lost it's own capital to civilian rebellion. A few months later the Russian government collapsed and surrendered vast territories including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and its allies (known as the Central Powers). Right about that point the U.S. joined the war reinvigorating the Allied Powers. Germany&friends knew they couldn't win a protracted war. They attempted a quick win, and, in short, they failed. The Allied powers steadily beat them down, with the allies eventually breaking through the lines and progressively liberating territory. With the Allies steadily advancing and the war obviously lost, German forces began rebelling and Germany surrendered.

That's what's happening here. Russia has most of Donbas plus a buffer zone in some other regions that directly border Russia. Ukraine is throwing men at the front lines for Russia to kill but is running out. Territory held is largely irrelevant compared to the number of men killed and weapons destroyed.

So much to unpack there, but it's amusing how you cite "territory held is largely irrelevant" given that the tide has turned and Ukrainians are now the ones breaking through lines and liberating territory from Russian occupation. It's not much yet, but all the map trackers show the reversal. Russia is now officially loosing more territory than they gain. Russia WAS slowly gaining small bits of land, largely through sending meat waves of untrained ill equipped soldiers at Ukrainian lines until the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and had to fall back. However now 7 out of 10 Russians killed are killed by drones. The "no man's land" between the two sides is now many kilometers wide. Any Russian trying to advance gets hit by a drone. Russia has also losing on average 1 air defense system every day, and rapidly depleting. Russian supply lines are getting pummeled by drones. Russian refineries are getting pummeled by drones, with progressively worsening fuel shortages for both the military and for the increasingly rebellious population. Cheap advanced Ukrainian drones are taking out expensive crappy Russian drones, including Russian's new jet-drones. Practically every country on earth is asking Ukraine for their military drone tech, the Russians can't remotely match it. Russian's economy is also fucked, but that topic pretty needs a separate book to cover.

Interesting side notes on weapons destroyed. Russia is destroying it's aircraft almost as fast as Ukraine is, between incompetence and maintenance failures and friendly fire shooting down their own aircraft. Also the nation that is the biggest donor of tanks to Ukraine is... Russia. Ukraine captured countless Russian tanks intact because the Russian military is so abysmal incompetent and corrupt. And as I mentioned, Russian air defense units are depleting. The war is now approaching 5 years, longer than the entirety of WW1. Ukraine is a small fraction of Russia's size, and Russian is literally losing and headed towards another soviet-union-style collapse. The biggest shock to the world of this entire war is just how worthless Putin has made Russian military, through systemic corruption and systemic incompetence.

Polls show the Ukrainian population isn't interested in surrendering. They are defending their homes. It's simple, the war will end when all the soldiers go home. When Russian soldiers go back to their homes in Russia, and when Ukrainian soldiers go back to their homes in the currently occupied parts of Ukraine. Although that's not likely to happen until Putin either expires or is overthrown. Not only is he fanatical enough to drive his country to collapse in the attempt, he knows if he did end the war in failure he'd get killed or overthrown for it.

Anyway, pointless reply to a bot or a useful idiot. But maybe some random passer-by will find some bits interesting. I don't know about the rest of the world, but mainstream US news rarely mentions the Ukraine war anymore, and certainly not in any detail.

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Comment Re:Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM sta (Score 1) 34

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

Comment Re:Dual purpose age-bracket signal :o (Score 1) 129

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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Comment Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM stack (Score 1) 34

This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

Comment "Smaller than a hair" - no (Score 1) 15

If you read the article carefully, they are talking about lenses THINNER than a hair. I see several of the posts here thinking the width/radius of the lenses is this small, a reasonable mistake given the way this was written. Having a radius that small would severely reduce their light gathering ability, requiring very bright light or very dim images or very long exposure times.

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Comment A boon for the generations toostupid to read (Score 1) 59

Britannica has been around for over two hundred years. I sold a LOT of sets i my day. Unfortunately, there are huge numbers of people who can't or don't read. In my old age, I find myself tutoring/coaching people on how to think and how to study. This last year, I have been coaching 4 people, WITH MULTIPLE DEGREES, who read only about 150 words-per-minute and can't remember what they read. (In my generation , boomer, the average reading speed was 200-250 wpm w/70% comprehension.) A report by abtaba (https://www.abtaba.com/blog/59-reading-statistics) says that 42% of college graduates never read a book after college. Judging from what I see in this forum, I suspect that a lot of them haunt /.

This is a waste of resources! If a person reading 250 wpm reads for an hour a day they could easily read a 100,000 word book each week. If they did that every week that would be over 50 books in a year. If only half those books were on a subject they were interested in, they would have acquired the knowledge/book requirement for a BA/BS degree about every two years. (Assuming they learned how to think somewhere along the way.)

However, letting AI set the standards for learning come with compliance, not thinking. Encyclopaedia Britannica is a proper name. (Notice how I spelled it EncyclopAEdia?) However much a writer tries to include the ligature "ash" (ae) in his text, Ignorant spell-checker, ignorant editors, and ignorant AI will insist on changing it to a simple "e".

Britannica jumped the gun: AI is not ready to improve on an encyclopedia designed to accumulate facts for reader's consumption.

Comment What did they contribute? (Score 1) 167

It is true that the rich got richer. The question is: "Did they get richer by creating more wealth for others and shaving a portion for themselves? or did they get richer by plundering the resources of other people?"

It is not like the very, very rich keep their money in a huge money vault like Scrooge McDuck. You can only do two things with money: Either spend it or invest it. If you spend it, you are creating jobs and making things better for the people who make those products and services you spend money on, whether it is the lower-paid worker who has a job or the higher paid executive and investor that puts the process together. If you invest it, you are providing the resources that enable others to produce goods and services, which provides jobs and income for other people to who can circulate the money through the economy by buying the goods and services they need or want. Being rich does not automatically make you guilty of exploitation, and stealing someone's wealth by government intervention of force should be reserved for those who are guilty of exploitation or theft.

So some smarty is going to say, "Well, what if the person DID keep it in a vault instead of spending it? What if he kept it under his mattress? What if he burned it? From an Economic point of view, those are simply bad investments....

Comment This is not my submission. (Score 5, Informative) 373

I am the submission author.

This is not what I submitted.

Slashdot changed the content and formatting of my submission.

The content changes are significant

Here is a screenshot of my version of the submission.

In my opinion the content Slashdot chose over mine significantly changes the message(s).

I would rather have had the suggestion rejected than have something else substituted in under my username.

Happy Sunday.

Comment Samsara (Score 2) 106

Like a person trapped in a cycle of reincarnation this story has been reincarnated on Slashdot for decades.

Queue all of the predictable comments about how this story isn't accurate, add in some bitching about some common languages, and heated defenses on how that isn't fair.

Comment Re:And yet (Score 1) 139

It isn't just corporate greed.

The livestock industry contributes more to the greenshouse effect than transportation.

Post an article about that, you will get hostile replies, snark, and jokes.

The hottest day reports nobody likes to get are about corporate greed AND the personal failures of many people to make even small adjustments to the way they live.

Queue the real life copies of the comic book store owner from the Simpsons to lecture us why he is top of the food chain, and smugly should not even be told that his habits might be a problem.

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