Posts by Henry Wertz 1

Why are these on the open internet?!?

Title says it -- why are these on the open internet?!?

Quite simply, specialized equipment (medical instruments, scientific instruments, "car computer" some auto shops have, to name 3...) should never be placed on the public internet. The OS itself will become increasingly out-of-date, and unlikely to have vendor patches for known vulnerabilities. And the application code, if it's fully custom it may or may not be following secure programming practices. If the application relies on some standardized libraries or web platforms or whatever, there could be more and more known exploits for these over time, which (again) may not ever be patched. You also don't have to worry about someone figuring out your admin password in bigguy 8-). I thought everyone knew this, I'm surprised to read about significant amount of hospital gear online.

I've heard of newer equipment using Linux instead. I'd expect the Linux install itself to be plenty secure but if the device has any web access, or administrative port, or whatever open, you are then still at the mercy of whatever application code the device uses, and if this is secure or not. Of course out of the box security won't help if your password's bigguy 8-) . So needless to say I still would not put it directly online.

Not even legal under US law

"Yes, the Americans are trying (as usual) to apply US law to other countries. But this seems to be deeper than even that."

Not even that, the NSA's argument in insisting it's actions are legal under US law (despite being explicitly illegal under the law), is to say the NSA's head lawyer determined it was legal, therefore it's legal. So really they're not even trying to apply US law overseas, just trying to get what they want.

One big problem

I thought I'd go take a look a this. One big problem -- Unity Web Player is only for Windows and Mac! This is the point where someone would make a snarky comment about Linux having "no" market share or something. 1) Simply not true. 2) This GCHQ-backed site is meant to attract people into infosec, I would expect the demographic drawn to this site to be significantly off the norm in terms of both OS and browser usage.

edit: Per Google there's kludgey way to make Unity Web Player work as a firefox plugin, that may or may not actually work. But still, I would hope something brand new would just use HTML5 or something.

So...

So, not only incompetent but evil. Defending the use of torture is evil. Diverting paying customers already-paid-for hardware to a third party (no matter who it is) is evil to a lesser extent. The actual diverting systems to the NSA -- well, who knows, Fiorina could have plausibly denied knowing the extent of the NSA's spying programs, and this may not have reflected on her too badly. Bragging about supplying hardware to what are now known to be illegal and unconstitutional spying programs? That's evil.

Also, the last thing the US needs is increased military spending.

QR Code? Why not I guess

QR Code? Why not I guess. I have no desire to scan my food and see where it came from, but QR codes are free to use, just printed on so cost is approximately zero. Compared to some few cents for an RFID tag, and most phones can't do anything with it. A little easier than going to a web site printed on there and typing in a production code.

Good on them

Good on them. You'd probably have distinct cpe (customer premises equipment) for EPON as rolled out by Verizon for FIOS, and EPON as rolled out by a cable co. then (unless the proper firmware can support both modes of operation.)

But, cable? Some of the cable cos are running their billing systems on a mainframe, it handles billing, sending "hits" to set top boxes (or disabling it as the case may be), provisioning or unprovisioning cable modems, and so on. Using DPoE sounds far easier than trying to come up with a totally new setup for EPON.

It'll be expensive...

I think this could be expensive.

The cars that were running at 5x the US legal limit may be within European limits; emissions limits up to Euro Tier 5 are almost 6x the US limit, and Tier 6 (introduced 2014) is still about 2.5x the US limit. VW's going to have problems with these cars in the US, but in Europe I doubt they need to adjust anything, and if they do it should be pretty mild, shaving a few .01 g/km off the emissions.

The ones that were putting out 30-40x US limit? Those are trouble. I'll just note that by 2010, VW had the only diesel road vehicles available in the US without urea injection. Navistar planned to continue using an EGR-only solution, but switched to urea injection almost literally at the last minute of 2009, after they found they had not found a engine management software and tune that'd meet emissions and maintain driveability, power, and fuel mileage. VW has perhaps two unpalletable choices:

1) Strictly software/tune update. This would need no new hardware (the EGR hardware's already there after all). But this likely would hamper driveability, power, and economy, and looks like lawsuit city as well as further harming their image (I mean, who wants a mandatory software update that does that?). They'll have to be very careful that a much more agressive EGR usage doesn't lead to any stalling, this would be an even bigger problem.

2) Retrofit urea injection. Hopefully there's a little empty space somewhere in the back to add the tank! This could be quite costly, a tank would have to be fit and something'd have to be added to the exhaust system for the urea injection. At $1,000 a car time 11 million cars it'd be like $11 billion. Ouch. But it shouldn't affect engine performance since it's exhaust aftertreatment.

"Don't do IT"

"As for the neglected, urine-soaked keyboard, our reader notes: "Doctors, nurses and other medical staff generally did not 'do IT'.""

Well, at the university hospital here, the staff would probably be PROHIBITED from switching out the keyboard, even if there was a spare in the room. Security, don'tcha know. (And I'm not sure that's excessive, given HIPPA rules IT would be expected to make sure there's not, say, a hardware keylogger in line with the keyboard as they switch it out, while you can't expect random staff to be taking that close a look at the keyboard plug as they plug it in.)

Emissions figures are not comparable

"b) how come all the emission figures of comparable cars are in the same set of ranges."

They aren't.

In the US in recent times, you've had LEV (low emissions vehicle), ULEV (ultra low emissions vehicle), SULEV (super ultra low emissions vehicle) and PZEV (nonsense term "partial zero emissions vehicle" -- because California wanted to mandate something like 20% "zero emissions vehicles" i.e. electric, and the car cos pointed out that it was dumb, there wasn't enough electricity in California to charge them.. instead of eliminating the mandate, they just made an extra-clean emissions tier and said car cos could ship those instead to meet the requirement.) In Europe you've had Tier 1 through Tier 6 vehicles (Tier 6 being the cleanest.)

Cars sold here, the sales sticker shows a little "emissions compared to other vehicles in this class" sticker, ranging from 0 to 1 (with 1 being the legal limit). You'll see some that are 0.9-1, a general range from 0.4-1, and some as low as 0.1 or so. (Not counting the one electric I saw, the EPA pretends coal-fired power plants don't produce pollution and rates those a 0.)

In a general sense, a car company that has been using the same engine unmodified for years will have the hardest time meeting emissions, it'll need more intervention from emissions controls and touchier engine tuning to perhaps just barely meet emissions. If the engine is not inherently at least somewhat clean it can be very difficult to have it meet emissions and have decent driveability. A car co that has been using the same engine but modifying it's internals from time to time will have fewer problems (my 2000 Buick has SULEV emissions... well it did new, I don't know if it does now with 225,000 miles on it... despite using a 3.8L V6 that originally came out in the 1950s -- but GM had updated and refined it in the 1970s, a major rework in the 1980s, another in the early 1990s and another in 1998.). A car co that comes out with a brand new engine design knows they are maybe be using it at least 10 or 20 years, so to make sure they have a fighting chance of meeting whatever emissions there are then, it usually runs substantially cleaner than required when it comes out.

IE? For porn? What are you stupid?!?!?

Seriously, porn sites (along with warez sites, and some streaming video sites) have the seediest advertising available. I would just assume if you went there with Windows + IE you'd be pwned, multiple times per page.

"Please Americans, get involved, be critical, don't eat shit, vote."

Pray tell, vote for who? The people running range from extreme religious nutjobs to slightly less religious nutjobs, to people who are somewhat normal but still favor giving the gov't more and more power. I mean, I plan to vote libertarian, but most people here pretend there are only two parties (who effectively would be a single party in any other country); nobody good is running for either party.

Disagree

"In this regard, WinTel devices are a much better gamble, if you assume that sooner or later, you'll be hit."

I must disagree. Don't get me wrong, pretending tablets are some kind of replacement for notebook computers is daft, so I'm not advocating that either. But I would NEVER advocate Windows on the basis of "assume you'll be pwned, it's easier to get support for Windows". You might have other good reasons, but honestly Windows is probably the worst system on the market to deal with if it gets pwned.

You move away from Windows and you'll find -- well first you'll find you're really much less likely to get pwned. But if you want to pretend it's inevitable....

In contrast to Windows where you have a WIndows install, numerous layers of patches, seperately installed apps (which may have to be installed in the right order) and on and on. No package management. in Linux, when I had a corrupted system due to some bad RAM (as I installed updates, the updates were corrupted), I could just tell it to reinstall all packages on the system, problem solved (I *could* have had it only reinstall packages where a checksum didn't match but I didn't bother.) I could have done this from a LiveCD if I doubted the integrity of the installer. Macs make it easy to reinstall too, to install software (often times just drag it over), and so on. OpenBSD makes it easy to verify package integrity and replace bad packages.

Linux and Mac (and probably BSD) also have bootable "LiveCD"/"LiveUSB" systems you can boot into, Windows usually doesn't.

if you DO try to fix things on a live system, Windows WILL NOT allow you to delete an in-use file; virus, spyware, and exploit writers know this and make sure they lock the files open so they are non-removeable. Linux, Mac, and BSD do allow deleting in-use files (the disk space isn't freed until nobody's using that deleted file, or you reboot...) So cleanup is easier than on Windows.

You want to kill those naughty processes? In Linux, Mac, or BSD, they will just be processes, feel free to kill them. In Windows, courtesy of the weird concept of processes and "services" being different things, it's just as likely to show up as "svchost" as to show up in any useable way.

Dodgy streaming site time!

"Netflix - it's a library "

Well... books are "retired" from my local library when they wear out, not just whenever for whatever reason. So I wouldn't compare Netflix to a library.

I run into none of these problems. Go ahead and google a free stream for that movie, download it with downloadhelper or jdownloader. Done, you have a copy that will not randomly disappear at the whims of whoever, it won't crap out in the middle, it won't give you licensing errors.

I found Netflix worked perfectly fine -- but I couldn't find ANYTHING TO WATCH ON IT. I mean, I'd go look for some movies, they weren't there (I wasn't expecting something unrealistic like some movie that just came out.) I went to look for a few older TV series, they weren't there. I found one TV series, but the episodes I wanted to watch, that entire season was missing. I was glad I was just a guest at someone's house and not paying for it!

"So, this is what modern technology has brought us to, it appears. Whether or not I'll be able to watch a film smoothly is going to depend on which studio made it."

Or pirate it. Silky smooth.

STUDIOS: If you want to cut back on piracy, you MUST quit playing these games with Netflix, Amazon, etc. and license out your whole catalog. It's a win-win. The end-user would actually get to watch what they want; Netflix etc. would get more subscribers; piracy rates would drop since people could actually watch what they want via Netflix etc.; and ultimately you studios would get more money too. (If you studios get a per-stream payment, there'd be more streams; if you get a per-user payment, there'd be more users; if you get some flat rate, you might just want to start out to a similar rate as now since that's clearly all they want to pay... but agree with Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. that the payment increases as they paying customer base does.)

heavy vehicles diesels already get extra testing

"Light vehicles only? Almost certainly the right time to go back and sample all vehicles of the last few years from all manufacturers (where liability can attach) while we have a window rolled down."

Actually, under a 1998 consent decree -- due to excessive NOx emissions on their large diesel engines -- with Caterpillar, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Volvo, Mack Trucks/Renault and Navistar, they already all do undergo extra emissions testing. Just like with VW, they'd pass the EPA test, but then got caught spewing out all kinds of NOx at other times. The info I found now says they would all pass the EPA test, but at highway cruise conditions switch to a seperate mode that allowed very high NOx emissions. (I could have sworn I remembered reading, circa 2000 or so, that a few were actually caught detecting the EPA test and failing most of the rest of the time, but they don't state that now.)

They were given big fines, told they then had to make up for those excess emissions by cleaning up the engines (to meet newer standards) a year or 2 ahead of schedule. They did get a minor concession -- during the extra emissions testing, the vehicles actually have a seperate "not to exceed" limit of 1.25x the limit they must meet during the standard EPA test. It sounds like (other than a few vague test parameters like air temp will be under 100 degrees fahrenheit, and that the engine is not being tested under a few unrealistic conditions like running it up to redline with no load on it) they are not told what these tests are, to ensure they try to meet emissions within the whole range.

I'll be interested to see what car cos (if any) raise a complaint about this extra emissions testing. My suspicion is that most car cos actually followed the rules, and any that put up a fuss about this extra testing most likely also cheated.

VW's fault, not hippies

This is in no way "hippies" fault. Regarding CO2 reductions and so on, there are two points where you are wrong here. 1) These vehicles EASILY exceeded US fuel economy requirements; in no way was fuel economy requirements (or CO2 emissions) a factor for this behavior here in the US. 2) The VWs actually got artificially LOW mileage ratings at least here in the US, since virtually the only time the emissions controls actually worked was during the EPA tests. People want fuel efficient vehicles, this does not make them hippies.

Second, diesel auto (and truck) makers in the US *EXCEPT* VW have had no problem using urea injection to reduce NOx adequately. This system has no impact on power or fuel economy (other than I guess whatever difference a few pounds of vehicle weight makes), since it's exhaust aftertreatment. Urea's not some exotic material, and (per google) I can go buy jugs of it at the auto parts store right now.

I have been curious a few times if further emissions cuts are worth it, if they significantly compromise fuel economy. I mean, emissions were cut 50% between 1950s and 1970, just by requiring the crankcase fumes not be dumped onto the street, and using automatic chokes (for those who've never used a carbureted car, the automatic choke is where you pump the gas pedal once before you start the car, and the choke gives the cold engine the extra fuel it needs until it warms up.) Between then and 1990 emissions were cut 90% compared to 1970 levels (which were a 50% cut from pre-1970). Current standards are a 99% cut of 1970 levels.

If car cos have no problem meeting a 95% cut, but have big problems meeting a 99% cut (without killing gas mileage and driveability) then perhaps these cuts should be rethought. That said, it seems like for the most part car cos have NOT had problems meeting emissions (except VW).

The point he should have made was...

The point he (David Slater) SHOULD have made right away was to point out the camera was not lost, then found with monkey selfies on it. That was what I had read, that was probably what a lot of people read. Rather than pointing out he used a tripod + trigger and set the shot up (which would have helped public opinion -- I agree with it at least), he seemed to argue over minutiae of copyright (which seemed to generate a "Barbara Streisand effect" of people putting up the photo instead.)

PETA has no case on 3 bases: 1) With the tripod setup, it makes it relatively clear David Slater did set up the shot and should have copyright. 2) IF the camera had been dropped, the monkey would not know pushing the shutter button took a photo, the monkey did not consciously set up the photo so the monkey should not have copyright either. In this case, the photo would be public domain. 3) PETA's some random 3rd party, to both the monkey and Slater, even if the monkey was somehow assinged copyright and owed royalties, PETA has 0 claim to them.

To show how far "setting up a shot" can go (there was no controversy over copyright in this case though), I read a while ago about some of these olympic swimming finish line photos. The photographer (and copyright owner)'s total input was basically "Wow, it'd be dope to stick some cameras at the bottom of the pool pointing up at the finish line. Do that". Technicians installed the cameras and wired them to triggers; some intern hit the actual shutter button (repeatedly for rapid-fire shots) as swimmers approached the finish line.

"What you're supposed to do in IPv6 is to maintain an internal network like you do before using Unique Local Addresses (fec0::/10) and let the firewall do the translating for you like it does now for NAT."

I'm glad you mentioned this. I kept wondering "If things go entirely IPV6, am I really going to end up with these routable IPV6 addresses, and have to set up firewall rules instead of just running NAT?", I didn't realize there was actually a solution for this. 8-)

I guess actually two -- the second, "unique local addresses", you can literally do whatever you want under fd:: and it should not be routed onto the public internet, so you either have NAT or no internet access. IETF urge you use a randomly generated fdxx:xxxx:xxxx:: network prefix, so for example if two businesses merged their networks they'd be statistically unlikely to have an address conflict.

I had the same problem

I had the same problem, but finally was saved by power supply and motherboard failures over the last year or so (I was using desktops, not servers). A P4, a second P4, and an Athlon XP 3400+? Ugh did they ever suck down power. Luckily a bunch of the University upgrades on 3-5 year upgrade cycles, so I can buy nice systems for like $50.

FDE wouldn't help against a hack

"My idea was to use FDE. The AWS VMs would be provided with a decryption key at boot time so thay can access data stored on the disc. The key would then be deleted

I was thinking of using EncFS. Why would this cause problems with Data Protection Act?"

1) Yes it would, per some other commenters, it's about keeping control of the data, not control of *unecrypted* data.

2) Yes on a second front. How many have a data breach because a powered off server or disk is physically carried off? Very few (I recall reading about someone or other that had their server seized, and the feds could do nothing with it because it was encrypted, so it does happen. Also, it happens with portable computers, CDs, USB sticks, and tapes.) How many have a data breach because their system was hacked, asked to send all that juicy data out, and obligingly complied? Quite a few. Full disk encryption would do nothing against this attack.

"I'm not dead yet!"

To be honest, just because Microsoft is pushing -- HARD -- for forcing all sales to be "cloud services" (by cutting the rate they pay their resalers for boxed copies of software and increasing the rate they pay for "cloud" versions of essentially the same software), doesn't mean that on-site licensing is dead, or even in bad shape.

There are types of software where this is possibly the case -- e-mail, for example, there could be legal, or compliance, or "we have custom software" reasons for on-site e-mail service, otherwise it's a hard sell to sell on-site software versus web-mail, hosted POP or IMAP, or (god forbid) hosted Exchange.

Otherwise, I'm seeing plenty of cases were people and businesses want to buy the software when they get the computer, and be done with it. Over the lifetime of a computer, they could be getting a "better" deal using online subscription compared to buying 2 or 3 major versions of some software. But they aren't buying 2 or 3 major versions, they're buying one and not worrying about it getting out of date; they'll buy the new version when they get a new computer. (Except the accounting software, which must be updated regularly to have the proper tax tables. Probably another good candidate to move away from on-premises licensing since it has to be purchased every year anyway.)

XCode download

"1) put up a caching server in China (inside the great firewall) for the 4GB Xcode download to eliminate the incentive for developers to grab versions elsewhere."

This. I'm not in China, I'm here in the US, and I still found the XCode download excessively slow as well as error-prone (Apple's servers would every so often crap out and cut the download off mid-download.)

Too much variation

I don't believe in the "cultural bias" or the "there's all these types of intelligence", I don't believe in "physical intelligence", sorry. That said, there's so much individual variation in IQ, whatever other types of intelligence people want to make up, and all other factors, that comparing by group is not terribly useful IMHO. Someone could be a real genius, and it'd still be hard for them to get anywhere if they have little to no money, everyone they know has little to no money, and if they want to just build something there's little to no natural resources and little to no other materials (for example, there's no scrap material to build something cool out of, or there is scrap but it's already being used for walls and roofs.)

As for banks... the success of M-Pesa has nothing to do with incompetent western banks, and this in no way indicates some importance of not letting them fail. They should absolutely have been allowed to fail, and the deposits moved to banks that did not take part in this incompetence. Iceland did this; IMF and other banks swore up and down that Iceland MUST prop up these banks, or Icelanders would never be able to have a bank account again, use a bank card, or take place in currency exchanges. Iceland said "nope". None of these bad things happened.

I must say, I do find this fascinating. 20 years ago, it was considered this big technological disadvantage that these various countries had no significant copper landline networks (and no plans to build out a significant amount of them.) Fast forward to the present, and services are provided via wireless with microwave backhaul, it's may even be an advantage to not have all this "legacy" copper lying about that has to be maintained to some extent.

But yeah, besides the mobile payments being so helpful, it's obviously helpful in places where it could take all day to drive somewhere and back, to be able to make a phone call first and make sure whoever they're going to visit is actually there first.

Software, mileage, and urea

"Does anyone know what the difference is? It seems to me that taking random vehicles off the production line and having a government witness isn't going to make any difference if the software on all the cars is programmed to recognise that it's on a rolling road. So is this guy talking rubbish, or is there really some difference between how the two continents do testing? "

You're right, he's talking rubbish. I think he's assuming the EPA and Euro equivalent were given modified cars. With US versus Europe, once there's software in there to detect one specific driving pattern, having it detect a second one would be relatively easy, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't simply detect both. (That said, one of the diesel models wouldn't have to cheat on the Euro test at all, it was reported to be at 5x the US emissions limit, which would put it right at the European diesel NOx limit.)

There's a parallel scandal where car co's for the European tests can bring a prepared car, so the mileage gap between one of these and a regular car is getting up towards 30% on some models. These cars can have the gaps taped, side mirrors removed, and apparently even have the alternator removed if it can make it through the test before the battery runs flat (and can drive around with no ventilation otherwise.) There's more a push towards more realistic testing rather than accusations of cheating though (US EPA test, for example, even has some air conditioner use.)

Regarding urea, I've read recently that none of the VW models involved use urea injection. Bad news for VW, most diesel engines in the US are now using urea treatment because of the consequences of using enough EGR flow alone to meet US NOx emissions.

Consternation

"Consumers just keep using what is available and the Joe Sixpacks can't even tell Vista and 7 apart."

They can't *tell* Vista and 7 apart, but the kind of people you'd assume would just use whatever is on the PC will still tell you about how bad Vista sucks, and how bad 8 sucks (to be honest I did find 8's UI totally unusable). I've talked to plenty of people who NEVER used Vista, or 8, and will tell you how awful they are and how great XP was and 7 is.

To Microsoft's consternation, I think they assumed people who are less computer literate would not hear about Win10's data collection at all, or if they heard about it assume it's not a big deal. Instead, I hear people assuming that literally all your info will be sent to Microsoft as soon as Win10 is installed, they're absolutely terrified of the prospect of ever running Win10. I've heard people just assume that it'll send all your documents (including the content of USB sticks and external drives), all your bookmarks, your browser history, usernames and passwords, and even screenshots of your screen to "analyze" what you're doing. Of course, Microsoft has done little to disclose exactly what they DO send, and the privacy policy is in fact far too broad (since it's trying to cover data use by both the local OS and a random collection of "cloud" services.)

Seedy

"Yes, this exit node could be used by terrorists, child pornographers - well basically anybody."

So can a computer lab, a (non-TOR) internet connection, a telephone, hell, "they" might even just plain check out books from the library itself.

That said, when I checked out TOR like 10 years ago, the .onion sites available were mostly seedy. Real seedy.

"The blurb is a bit vague but sounds like this is aimed at setting up internet commerce and performing transactions in Bitcoin."

I wouldn't need that huge (well not that big I guess) heatsink and fan to run the Pi. This thing does have a Bitcoin mining circuit (often times an FPGA) attached.

Anyway... I'm assuming the bitcoin mining speed isn't too quick? Don't know for sure, but generally the bitcoin rigs that have any resonable chance of ever making you a bitcoin use 100s-1000W of power, they'd have a much larger cooling system than pictured in TFA; and the (seemingly) more reasonble setups are enough slower than the high-end rigs that you're chance of ever mining a bitcoin are pretty low.

Previous event

"Given the ADAC report, it is surprising that only VAG have been singled out so far..."

In 1998, Caterpillar, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Volvo, Mack Trucks/Renault and Navistar all entered a consent decree with the EPA over NOx emissions. In some cases they would only operate the NOx emissions controls during the EPA test (EGR valve, or urea injection, or in one case apparently they were meeting NOx strictly using engine management but again only during the EPA test.) In a few other cases I don't think NOx controls were disabled during non-cruise driving, but when cruising they would enter a lean burn cruise mode that'd sharply increase NOx (except during the EPA test.)

Per Google, some diesel VWs use urea injection and some use EGR. It also seems the reason VW was caught is quite ironic. Some researchers in the US and Europe intended to test a few vehicles to show they could meet the more stringent US emissions pretty easily, so as to advocate more stringent emissions in Euro-spec vehicles. They first found (on VW using urea injection) that the US and Euro-spec vehicles used urea at exactly the same rate, then tested the exhaust pipe emissions to find it varied by vehicle, some models were like 5x the limit and some closer to 25-30x (the 40x being a peak.)

VW may be in for some real trouble if the MPG or power substantially drop when EGR or urea is operated. (I think with urea owners would be in luck, since urea injection's an exhaust post-treatment it shouldn't affect mileage or power, just urea consumption.)

" there is nothing in a management module that can't be done from ssh and the shell."

You can power on the machine remotely. You can go into the BIOS or EFI if there's anything that needs adjusting. If the system doesn't boot, you can access grub and single user mode. Even if a system's working, if it takes a bit longer than you'd expect to boot to an ssh-able state, it may be informative to watch it boot (although there should be reasonable logs in /var/log too.)

I must admit to having never used a system with an integrated management module, but I can see how they'd be quite useful.

Movies

Do I expect random people to be using raw codecs and shooting like 8k 60fps video? Nope. But, I can say at least Hollywood could use a setup like this. The claim is that Avatar takes up 1PB of space in whatever master format they used.

I don't have any suggestions...

I don't have any suggestions, this is a complex topic.

I do think it's actually good for the economy to "raise up" people that are just scraping by, however it's done. Quite simply, someone who has money "left over" at the end of the month has money to spend (which increases economic activity) or save (which should help later, either when they by a big ticket item later, or when they retire and actually have something saved up to retire on.) Someone who works hard, but ends up with enough to pay rent, utilities (electricity, heat, water, trash) and food but then has nothing left over, has nothing to spend.

So, the problem with doing everything via "the dole", well, I saw this in person. A friend of mine years back was making like $8 an hour, and the boss offered him a dollar an hour raise. He pointed out, he was receiving low income benefits, and the way they were structured he would have had to recieve a raise to $12 an hour to make up for the loss of benefits! It's a problem when one can make the same income doing nothing versus long, hard hours at a crappy, low-paying job, people don't have an incentive to work.

As for raising the minimum wage... first off, I must address inflation. The US CPI (consumer price index) is useless as an estimate of inflation; since social security, and a bunch of other gov't spending, is indexed to increase at the rate of CPI increase, since 1980 the feds have been gaming the system to keep CPI-measured inflation artificially low. A primary technique is "hedonomics". This follows the theory "when items get more expensive, consumers will by less expensive substitutes"... and they have, they replaced steak with hamburger, some electronics items with cheaper equivalents, they play games like put a top-of-the-line ipod on there so that it's price can decrease 90% over a number of years, masking increases in other products... and so on. Using current CPI charts, the claim is there was DEFLATION in 2009 and inflation has been like 1-3% a year otherwise. Using 1980 CPI charts, inflation has averaged around 7.5% recently (quite low around 2009, and higher after that.)

Given the 1980-method CPI... so the minimum wage set in 2009 was $7.25. Getting $7.25/hour now is equivalent to $4.80 an hour then. Given the high inflation rate, it'd be tough at best to actually get by on $7.25 an hour, it could well be time for another minimum wage increase. But, I also don't see any jobs locally actually PAYING minimum wage, the lowest I see locally is like $9 an hour.

The odd thing is, I've read more and more recently about businesses who have not upped their pay in years complaining "there are no qualified applicants out there". Even Amazon said to expect "1 day shipping" to take at least 4 days to ship as the holidays approach, because they can't find people to pack shipping boxes for them. So someone asked the Amazon rep, "have you tried offering more pay? Your pay is very low". The answer? "No, and we don't intend to." WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT THAT? It seems to be a SERIOUS economic breakdown, a breakdown of the natural laws of economic equilibrium, when jobs pay so low that nobody will fill the positions, but the employers will just leave the positions unfilled rather than pay a reasonable wage. I'm curious if, longer term, these businesses will suck it up and start to pay better, or just keep on whining and let their service degrade from being understaffed?

RICO's excessively broad

RICO really is an excessively broad law. I know why it was written, you'd have various gangsters that would direct criminal activities, but have the best lawyers (as well as judges and juries) that money could buy. (To be honest, it's puzzling to me that any normal person could order a hit and they'd of course be found responsible, but these guys could be caught dead to rights ordering a hit but somehow be able to claim only the hitman is responsible.)

But, all it says is a group where members have committed 2 illegal acts off a lengthy list can be prosecuted under RICO. So, you find one "climate change denier" who (maybe) dined and dashed once, and you find one who had a check bounce. Done, that's 2 illegal acts, you can charge them under RICO.

Is this a proper use of the law? Hell no. People I disagree with, even if they're wrong, still have the freedom of speech. People must remember, freedom of speech is an absolute, it's not "freedom of speech unless I disagree with it" (clearly.. since people wouldn't try to restrict speech they agree with.)

As for the actual issue... on the one hand, I don't think it's reasonable to think that unlimited amounts of CO2 can be pumped into the air and nothing will ever happen -- the climate change deniers are jokers. I do think, just because some politician or other who knows nothing about science has an unscientific opinion, that is no reason to give them so much as a second of airtime though. On the other hand, I also think it's a bad joke to say "Well, temps are going up but slower than modelled, we aren't getting the change we expected, so lets make up new statistical methods until the data matches our model." No reason to give a politician airtime either that believes in voodoo statistics.

Most likely, some of the CO2 is being absorbed by carbon sinks the models don't account for, then (when those reach capacity) the CO2 level (and temps) will go up faster.

To be honest, even if CO2 was no problem, the supply of fossil fuels is finite (and becoming increasingly hard to tap into as easier deposits are played out.) The future (a generation or two now) could be pretty bleak if the economy (production, transport, food, energy, and so on) were still as fossil-fuel-dependent as they are now, you'd end up with an economy that has to slow down (and gas shortages, electricity shortages, perhaps food shortages, perhaps plastics-based-products shortages) more and more as it becomes harder to extract the oil and coal at a fast enough rate to meet usage. Or, a few generations from now, you could have vehicles using much less fuel (if any, but I'm just not seeing all-electric given current tech, and given you then have to produce that much more electricity to charge them all....), electricity generation using much less fossil fuels (maybe still coal plants for base load, but not for almost all generation as now), and oil mainly used for plastics production; there'd be plenty of fossil fuels available to meet this lower demand, and hopefully they'd aim to further reduce consumption to avoid using up what's left. Reducing long-term reliance on the fossil fuels really is a necessity even if greenhouse gas didn't exist.

Hopefully...

As far as I know, these VW engines are fairly modern, the injection system is modern, and presumably they have the emissions controls installed since they meet emissions during the EPA test. Hopefully, these engines can actually run reasonably clean, so when VW rolls out "the patch" the owners don't have the TDI start running horribly, or have the MPG plummet, or both. Then, they'll have the EPA *and* the TDI owners going after them.

edit: from the EPA link "How much more pollution is being emitted than should be? NOx emission levels are 10 – 40 times higher than emission standards", so no, it's not like it makes 40x when you gun it and is OK the rest of the time.

Hah! That's bastardly!

A Zork maze dialing dungeon? That's bastardly 8-)

It'd be funny if it backfired, like the "Random old guy that's played Zork" gets through the dialing dungeon and wants something done with his OS/2 system 8-)

I like this solution.. and Java

I like this solution.

It solves worries over the developer going out of business or something, and being stuck with a product that'll expire with no recourse. It also avoids the potential problem (from a customer's standpoint) of having software that isn't updated but you have to keep paying subscription to use it.

More importantly, it solves one anxiety over subscription software pretty easily. So, you buy version 6 of some software, and you try version 7 and don't care for some change, or there's a compatibility problem, or there's some GUI changes (and you want to get something done, not learn the new GUI), whatever. With some subscription software where it just continually autoupdates, you're boned, you can't run some particular version of the software. With this, you get a fixed version a year you can run if you want.

Re: Java. Sorry, Java fans, but Java's pretty bloated. (As is .NET) That said I do like these style of languages anyway, as well as Python.

Agreed

It's up to the developer to pull it or not, but I wouldn't use an ad blocker that blocks everything.

When I used adblock plus, I didn't use the default list. I only blocked ad brokers that put up ads that made noise (without interacting with the ad), or forced a popup past the popup blocker. When I briefly had adblock quit working (updated firefox and there was not a adblock update yet), I found either the few brokers I'd blocked had cleaned up their acts, or sites weren't using those brokers any more. Normal sites ads do seem to follow some code of conduct so I just don't end up with much I'd need to block. I expect endless junk on couchtuner-like sites, I suppose I could try to block it but I don't.

"Apple famously painted themselves into a corner with the unmaintainable spaghetti code that was OS9. They went - cap in hand - to Berkeley University and asked if they could use BSD as the underpinning of OSX....."

"Classic" MacOS was awful. I won't defend it. I thought the worst "feature" was their insistence on claiming cooperative task switching was "multitasking". (Multitasking, the OS gives each program a timeslice, when it's done it's done... cooperative task switching, which is NOT multitasking, it's up to the app to yield it's time, making a call saying "OK I'm done"... if it never yields, the ENTIRE system locks solid. Which, along with having no memory protection, is why these systems locked up so damned often.)

What actually happened here was... Apple "deposed" Steve Jobs. Jobs went and started Next computers (NeXT always seemed to be capitolized differently every single time, even on the NeXt computers and literature themselves.) *They* took Mach microkernel + BSD and developed Objective C programming language, as well as a very modern (for 1985) object-oriented GUI. Jobs was convinced if the OS and computer were nice enough, people would pay like $10,000 for them. So, fast forward a few years -- next was on the ropes, but so was Apple due to the crapulence of OS9. Apple actually went cap in hand to buy up NExt and reinstall Jobs as CEO of Apple, OSX is a direct decendent of NextStep. This is why so many functions on it start with "NS".

Vehemently disagree

I vehemently disagree with effectively the entire content of this article. In the case stated, there's a few seconds of some song playing in the background. This does not harm the owner of the song, reduce the value of their song, and this is not a derivative work of their song. The song is not the focus of the video. The big music company is not the victim. And Chilling Effects is not there to discourage DMCA filings, it's there to discourage abusive DMCA filings that do not consider fair use, or even check if the filing is correct or not before filing it. Companies (and individuals) who file inaccurate DMCA claims on a regular basis SHOULD be named and shamed.

Expecting people to license each and every tiny bit of anything in their videos and photos sets a dangerous precedent. I could point a camera to my right to record the rain, and you think I should have to pay Judge Mathis because it's playing on the TV, pay if one of these paintings or photos hanging on the wall in the room happens to reflect off the window, probably have to pay if the design on the manhole cover on the street happens to go into view (would I pay the city or the designer of the manhole cover?), maybe I'd have to pay the designer of the houses in view, and maybe have to pay Sherman Williams or whoever since their paint is on the houses. It'd get ridiculous and unreasonable.

Too shabby -- down with DRM!

"Well, they continued to support the Zune service for three years after they killed the Zune."

Given the amount of resources a DRM server should require (basically none), three years is poor.

"And instead of dumping the remaining customers (Shout out to Ballmer and his kids!), they're transferring them to an alternate service. Not too shabby."

Yeah, they're transferring people from a service they signed up for to one they didn't, that does not support their device.

"Now, does the DRM'd stuff transfer as well if it's also on Groove*?"

Nope, per TFA, this supports XBoxes, Win10, ios, android, and Sonos. No Zune. And this is a "music for $x a month" service, not letting you buy music (which is just as well, since any music you bought would probably be deactivated in a few years anyway, when Microsoft got bored with this service and pulled the DRM servers for it.)

This provides a good object lesson in why you should make sure whatever you get is NOT in a rights restricted format. Anything bought and paid for from Microsoft for your Zune, you're screwed out of it now. Those MP3s you got... wherever... will continue to be moveable on and off the Zune and play fine on it.

WinRT problems

"I've never seen an RT device, nor know anyone who owns one, so can you tell us how it was crap?"

Reviews I saw, they found they could buy a nice notebook *and* tablet for less than the RT tablet (which Microsoft implied could be used as a replacement for a notebook and a tablet.) People found (since they keyboard was really an afterthought) that they could not plug it in *and* use the keyboard. One reviewer that wanted to like it pointed out any individual problem he had with it alone would not have been a big deal, there were just too many little problems all together.

Furthermore, with MacOS8 (or OS9? I forget) transition form Motorola 68k to PowerPC being effectively seamless, and OSX transition from PowerPC to x86 being pretty seamless, and Ubuntu for ARM being so boringly seamless it's like Ubuntu for x86 with a different CPU listed in "About this computer" (and /proc/cpuinfo), people had expectations of WinRT. It was disappointing when WinRT went from first announcement of "Windows for ARM" to "no it won't include an x86 emulation" to "no it won't run Windows stuff ported to ARM either, just a cut-down .NET runtime" over a matter of a few weeks.

"Yeah shame about all those Surface 1 & 2 users who were mislead by MS about thier tablet's inability to run legacy windows apps (even Microsoft ones)."

Don't know if you're serious or not. I thought they made it VERY clear (after about a week of confusion, WAY before Surface shipped!) that these would not be running real Windows in any meaningful sense of the word. The ads showed it running Office, some freehand drawing app, Office, Office, and Office again. You can't expect Microsoft to underpromise and overdeliver, so this made it clear to me that you could expect this thing to run Office, and a freehand drawing app, with anything else being a bonus... not whatever apps you want. Although (per the previous paragraph) expecting WinRT to run Windows apps would not have been an unreasonable expectation.

"Yep, the human eye cannot perceive pixels of this density. But people will buy these claiming to see a difference, just like the folk that claim that they can tell the difference between 24 and 32-bit encoded FLAC files."

You're absolutely right. Even in the link to the 8k youtube video, people claim the 8k video downscaled to display on their 1920x1080 display is sharper than a 1920x1080 video.

Anyway... I can give you a third reason besides "way too expensive" and "nothing to watch on it yet":

Look at the early adopters of HD sets. They bought a set, then once HD players came out, found out they'd been totally screwed over. Their set would have component inputs and possibly DVI, and they'd find out their player has HDMI and (due to movie company request) refuse to put out HD over the component connectors. This will happen to you if you get an 8k set now -- I guarantee whatever disc player you get years from now that supports 8k will NOT have 4 HDMI connectors!