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Comment Turn it around... (Score 1) 78

There's a chance this kid can be turned around like Kevin Mitnick and can become an asset to society. He wants attention, you can get that in negative and positive ways. He's clearly found the negative ways. Cyber security is our current battle front- we need pen testers working for society. He's clearly adept at it. It might take work, but will be worth it.

Submission + - Pagers explode all over Lebanon (nytimes.com)

itwasgreektome writes: Per the NYT, "Hezbollah said wireless devices belonging to its members had exploded, and the health minister said more than 2,700 people had been injured. Hezbollah blamed Israel, but the Israeli military declined to comment."

My question is- were these devices they were using with self destruct features for security, or were batteries somehow overloaded? Or perhaps devices that were sold unwittingly to Hezbollah with this secret ability?

Submission + - Watching your password get compromised with Apple Vision Pro (wired.com)

Zott writes: Though it’s been fixed now, Wired reports on researchers finding a way to read keystrokes (like passwords) “typed” by users with Apple’s virtual reality headset, by analyzing the eye movements replicated in the avatars visible when using conferencing applications. As a user’s eyes are used to direct input to a virtual keyboard, faithfully replicated eye movements were sufficient to reconstruct (using a neural network) typing and predict the entered text with surprising accuracy.

Comment Re: ZIP with AES-256 (Score 1) 154

Seems to be a solid solution if your password list is static, though I'm constantly adding stuff and to do that you have to create a new file every time, or unencrypt it and add, then re-encrypt no? I found out every time I added passwords to my encrypted open office spreadsheet file that it was creating a local, unencrypted, cached copy on my drive (I found my passwords using hxd, in plain text).

Comment Re:Maybe repair the original iPad? (Score 1) 185

Whether or not Apple would fix it is a bit of a red herring (and Apple wouldn't fix it- it's a decade old at least they say). It was whether or not it was fixable. And there are TONS of ifixit / ubreakifix / etc repair centers all over the place that do just that. I repair devices too. And yes, the issue is about Google finding a better way to allow people access to their accounts, but at the same time people often glance over the fact that Google is a free / unpaid service Google provides to users and given that google isn't likely to spend a lot of money adding customer service agents to fix the account access issue (yes, Google makes money off you, but you don't pay them directly in most cases). So the best bet for this lady (actually, the best bet is this article, which will bring it to Google Exec's attention, and probably get her access) is to fix the device she had access to her account in. And then use that device to do a Google Takeout data dump to get all her Google data and archive it in case of future lockout. Another easy fix is if she somehow makes herself a suspect in a case, and then Officers do a search warrant and obtain all her data for her that way. And then she obtains all her data through discovery, and then the case magically goes away (joking, of course- illegal to file a false police report, but this WOULD work).

Comment Re:Maybe repair the original iPad? (Score 1) 185

You CAN fix many iPad problems. IamwaySmarter it seems your noting that Apple chooses not to repair because it costs less for them to just ship a new / refurbished on than to repair it, but that's simply economics. Just like a car that's "totaled" simply because the cost to fix is worth more than the KBB value, but that car can often be fixed at a cost. And all this Ipad probably needs is a new battery or screen, as long as she didn't drop it, then smash it with a hammer, and then dunk it in acid.

Comment Eh, I think the title might be better worded... (Score 1) 101

I think it might be more realistic to say that Google and a speaker speaking in a monotonous, robotic way are pretty much indistinguishable from another. They both sound robotic to me. When it can imitate what people really sound like, normal people, then talk to me. Not that this isn't cool, but from the cursory bits I read and heard it seems to over-hype itself.

Comment This was a study not experiment, correlation only (Score 5, Insightful) 223

There is a great danger in inferring causation here, as this was a survey and not an experiment (with people randomly assigned to either group). The article wrongly states there is causation at play- that going into an internship caused them to be paid less later, rather than a real possibility that those that couldn't get jobs (or well paying jobs) decided to go the intern route instead. And those that got accepted into well paying jobs took them. So the cause might well be that the lesser paid or non-existent jobs caused the internship rather than the reverse.

Comment 50 Years later we'll learn the NSA was behind this (Score 4, Interesting) 222

I think history is gonna show us that we were responsible for the Wana attack. It didn't cross my mind until I heard on NPR that Russia was the county that suffered from the attack the most- even getting into government computers. The Shadow Brokers released this trove of hacking tools a little while ago. This meant the door on using this exploit was going to start closing slowly. We also knew that hackers would take advantage of this exploit. So why wouldn't the US Govt, under the guise of a random hacker, use this exploit to garner as much info as possible on Russia while it was still possible? Remember that Obama told Russia that we would get them back, at the time and date of our choosing. And this would explain why the built in shutdown was hidden in the code- I wouldn't be surprised if that 20 something year old security researcher wasn't tipped off to register that domain name once we'd gotten access to some of Russia's infrastructure, to mitigate collateral damage to the innocent bystanders. That would explain why they "only" got $26k, if their M.O. was to make money there would have been zero reason to include a kill switch in the code.

Comment Like many things, a lot less white and black... (Score 1) 734

Like many things in life this is a lot less white and black the more you read up on it, though there's still probably something to be said here. The headline is meant to grab attention to increase page hits (almost click-baity imo). It seems clear to me that had he not followed up his original email he would not have been fined. And it seems to have added weight to their decision that he was practicing engineering in their state, although as an audio engineer. It seems ridiculous that some (perhaps many) have seen the word "Engineer" as being magical, and only those with that magical title can practice "math" as though it's advanced magic that only learned sorcerers should be playing with. Math is harmless, it's poor implementation in structures and tangible items is what can be dangerous. I see a compelling need to have a law that prohibits a person from going around saying "I'm an electrical engineer" and soliciting work under that title when they are not. At the same time, however, a person who drives a train is an engineer, in a far more true sense of the word. What Mats has done is very gray. I won't be sad if Mats wins his lawsuit against the state, I also won't be surprised if they prevail as the law is there, he did push the issue, and he did seem to be practicing engineering without a license (in his professional time as an acoustical engineer). Also it should be strongly noted that in his original email he was soliciting work- he said it would be nice to be paid for this work he was doing and asked if they had an open position. After insulting their work it seems. Not the brightest job application...

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