Posts by Mephistro

Re: Firefox reading view

Blocks can also be removed using the Tor network.

Re: Hard as I try... (@ GrumpyOldBloke)

No need to criminalize anything. You make compilers that create only safe code -in the context of the discussed processor bugs-. and somehow force the OS to accept only executables created using these tools. the progamming standards just provides a list of things that safe executables can and can not do, and the compilers&such enforce said rules. The las step consists on the Hypothetical OS checking that the executables have been developed using these tools, probably by using some crypto-negotiation and similar dark magicks.

Does this make sense? Honest question.

Re: EU Are Being Vindictive (@ Shadmeister)

"Pure and simple vindictiveness."

No. Pure and simple logic. You'll likely agree that there's no guarantee that any country external to the EU will keep its political/military interests aligned with those of the EU in the future, and even if they did, giving them the set of "system's keys" would compromise Galileo's security in many unacceptable ways.

Re: Floating point crypto operations?

I'm not an expert, but elliptic-curve cryptography sounds like it needs some floating point arithmetics.

Re: Oath Hell too please (@ AC)

"Past 3 days, everytimeI open the browser (Firefox) it nags me to give my consent (or otherwise) before I can go to my homepage (Yahoo)"

I've suffered similar symptoms after Firefox upgrades. My workaround is to restart the computer. I guess the certificates store gets messed somehow in the update, perhaps with the help of Ghostery or a similar tool that, for some reason, I never remember to shut down before updating the browser. 8^)

Re: Is this good or bad?

The term in the industry is "procedural generation and has been around for quite a few years."

Hmmm... yes and no. Procedural generation usually works well for simple-ish games, like platformers and bi-dimensional games, as in "The Binding of Isaac" (a game to which I've been irrevocably addicted for several years). Even for these examples, the procedure has to be developed by a human who decides on the rules for the procedural generation, i.e. the programmers create the heuristics, which implies lots of thinking and effort if they want to make a good game.

Now, an AI creating the levels is a different beast altogether, in the sense that once the neural network has been created, it's very difficult to know what it's doing or why it's doing it, and hence it's almost impossible to tweak, debug or improve.

Frankly, I don't know for sure whether NMS's levels were generated using AI -as the company marketing department stated often- or are just procedurally generated, but I totally agree with you that the results were bland and boring. Ditto about Mass Effect: Andromeda and other similar games like Star Citizen.

Re: “...hated us for being over-paid and under-skilled.”

"Bad practice to leave it like that for any enterprise machine for just this reason."

True, and that's the reason why I set the BIOS to start from the HD before leaving. I suspect the culprits were either the guys who had installed the machines two years before or the luser himself.

This history included several other juicy details, but they would make me -and the customer- easily identifiable, which is a no-no.

Re: I'm an European citizen and I hate Brexit and its perpetrators, ...

And you think that ignoring the will of the majority "bodes well for our democracies"?

Sorry, but your straw man is a stillborn. You'll have to make another one.

What I think is that one of the sides (pro-Brexit) fed you -as in "you, the British public"- almost exclusively with a deluge of manipulation, misinformation and downright lies, while the other side told you mostly the truth, although in a clumsy and disorganized way. The Remain side didn't hire media manipulation outfits to reinforce your preconceptions and target your -"you, the voters"- psychological traits by caging you in in a myriad echo chambers, something they managed to do using lots of your stolen private personal data.

...and spent vastly more than the Leave campaign

A big difference is that the Remain side did it by legal means and telling -mostly- the truth, while the other...

As for the money spent... you aren't factoring what's owed to Murdoch and other similar scum for their role in this shebang. Unfortunately when you finally learn about the true price paid, it'll probably be too late to do anything about it.

Seriously, mister Grout, if after all these months of information regarding the consequences of Brexit you can't still see how you have screwed up, perhaps it's you the one who hasn't got a clue about what a democracy is/should be.