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Comment Re:Android stack (Score 2) 11

Considering the saying: "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.", I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is probably not very likely. It would be a lot of work, companies likely will not consider it lucrative. Some people might give it a try as a hobby, but if they'll ever finish it...? Also there's no real intersection in the programming languages for OS native languages between Android and iOS. If you would name the "specific niche app" and which functionality / use case it satisfies, perhaps someone might be able to point to an iOS variant?

Comment Re:Punishment (Score 1) 347

Punishment alone might be not much of a deterrent, you mentioned "they don't expect to be caught". I'd say the deterrent is a combination of punishment and how high the chance is that they're caught/convicted. Who knows how high the number of murders would be if the chance was near zero that a punishment would be given? I certainly hope that the Purge series of movies won't be classified in the future as a visionary documentary: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls022338172/ ;-) On a more serious note, this article is about a country where the chance of punishment is rather low at the moment: https://www.voanews.com/a/crime-in-gang-plagued-haiti-hits-record-high-un-warns/7322660.html

Comment Re:Great scott ... (Score 2) 26

Apparently that's intended. From https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/15/meet_hondas_newest_electric_vehicle/

For those outside the US that want to get their hands one one of these things, sorry: Honda tells us it's only planned for the US market. Consider it the Japanese motor maker's attempt to spare you all the pain of having your shins smashed in public spaces by passing waves of motorized carry-ons.

Comment Re:Sad to see Lightning go, but inevitable (Score 2) 191

One thing I wonder about for the somewhat distant future though is, how will we ever move to a new connector if someone in the industry develops a better connector? Since the move to USB-C was in large part pushed by the EU, what is the process (if any) of proposing technological upgrades to government mandated standards?

I read this text:

Regular updates: the Commission will be empowered to adopt delegated acts amending the list and the technical specifications in light of scientific and technological progress or market developments, to improve consumer convenience, avoid market fragmentation and reduce environmental waste. It will also be required to continuously assess whether adding other devices to this list would significantly improve consumer convenience and reduce environmental waste. The first report on this assessment is due by the end of 2025, and every five years afterwards (Article 3).

on https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2021/698819/EPRS_BRI(2021)698819_EN.pdf as at least an indication that they're thinking about possible future technological upgrades.

Comment Re:silly (Score 1) 42

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history-with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." -- Mitch Ratcliffe

The Dutch have a few centuries of experience with managing water, why automate with the potential of something going wrong?

Quite a lot of people seem to like watching a few minutes each, displaying some attention to nature, and it's engagement of the public from the view of the water authorities and the municipality of Utrecht.

Submission + - European police arrest 42 after cracking covert messaging app (news24.com)

lexios writes: European police arrested 42 suspects and seized guns, drugs and millions in cash, after cracking another encrypted online messaging service used by criminals, Dutch law enforcement said Friday.

Police launched raids on 79 premises in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands following an investigation that started back in September 2020 and led to the shutting down of the covert Exclu Messenger service. Exclu is just the latest encrypted online chat service to be unlocked by law enforcement. In 2021 investigators broke into Sky ECC — another "secure" app used by criminal gangs.

After police and prosecutors got into the Exclu secret communications system, they were able to read the messages passed between criminals for five months before the raids, said Dutch police. Those arrested include users of the app, as well as its owners and controllers. Police in France, Italy and Sweden, as well as Europol and Eurojust, its justice agency twin, also took part in the investigation. The police raids uncovered at least two drugs labs, one cocaine-processing facility, several kilograms of drugs, four million euros in cash, luxury goods and guns, Dutch police said.

Used by around 3 000 people, including around 750 Dutch speakers, Exclu was installed on smartphones with a licence to operate costing 800 euros for six months. Exclu made it possible to exchange messages, photos, notes, voice memos, chat conversations and videos with other users. The online service "was praised by the owners and manager for its high level of security", police added.

The earlier Sky ECC probe gave investigators a vast trove of messages sent between secretive drug smuggling gangs.
Breaking that encrypted system allowed police to intercept drug shipments and make a large number of arrests.

Comment Re:landline (Score 1) 11

They don't use a landline because the infrastructure for that hasn't been as widespread as it was/is in the US/Europe. AFAIK mobile has overtaken landline usage in Africa probably at least decade ago. Mobile internet is bigger business there, than landline internet usage. In the past it was pretty pricey to use internet via the wifi of a hotel. A few years before the whole Covid-19 pandemic started, you arrived at an airport and you could get a local SIM with a few gigabytes of data for less than the price of a beer or 4-5.

Comment Re:Somewhat limited relevancy (Score 1) 110

It appears to me that Debian Stable is unpatched after public disclosure, two weeks after the kernel update and one week after private disclosure to the distros. For a two line patch that's obvious on its face. I hope I can't read

If you missed the next line just below vulnerable on https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-0847 then yes, read a bit more carefully next time, please.

Comment Re:Ghost in the Machine (Score 1) 68

While theoretically possible, cosmic gamma rays might not be the most likely. Paco Hope mentions a few good points on his Cosmic Rays Did Not Change Election Results page: https://blog.paco.to/2017/cosmic-rays-did-not-change-election-results like:
  • Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence
  • Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Back to the linked article, the suspected/suggested cause is more in the direction of manufacturing defects.

DRAM chip reliability is ~5.5x worse in DDR4 compared to DDR3.

from: https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/advanced-memory-device-correction.pdf

Comment Re: Mama Mia, my pants smell like parmasan (Score 1) 47

If you're really familiar with how someone looks, then you can recognize them even with a blurred face. Years ago, two colleages approached me, asking if they were correctly ID'ing me on Streetview in front of our office building. They were correct, and my face was blurred. (Wasn't wearing the same clothes, and the Streetview photos were taking during another season.)

Comment Re:"Files" and "Folders" are skeuomorphisms (Score 1) 493

I'm missing the examples for those modern operating systems without "Files" and "Folders"...

2019 linux.conf.au presentation on "Database as Filesystem" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN6IwNriwHc shows some reasons why filesytems are not so bad after all, among those:

  • 9x slower than XFS
  • 7x slower than NFS

for general read/write ops.

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