Posts by Suricou Raven

Re: But..

The government will simply point out that, while Telegram really is unable to comply with the request, this is because they have taken deliberate action to make sure they are in that situation.

Re: What data did DOJ seek?

It's obviously a precedent thing, because after three years I doubt the data is of any value to an investigation.

I'm surprised they only used a run-of-the-mill drugs case, rather than try to find some juicy child abuse imagery. MS wouldn't wan't to fight that one too hard in court, it's just terrible press.

Re: so Desperation

And lose the next election as their opponents paints them as exposing Americans to danger and personally responsible for the next terrorist attack?

The people are afraid. They demand that something highly visible be done to reassure them that they are safe. Not easy to do, when the media are constantly pushing people into a ratings-raising panic.

Or, more cynically, they could serve up both the miner and the ads.

Re: Information is a dangerous good

It actually works pretty well. The more hoops you make people jump through to read something, the fewer people will read it. Yes, the hardcore activists will mess around with VPNs in their quest for unfiltered information - but the common internet user will simply find another site to read, one a bit more sympathetic to government interests.

Pirates actually don't like 4k rips. They are really huge to download, and few people actually benefit from them. Even if you have a silly-high-resolution big-screen TV, you still have to get that picture through a comparatively limited retina.

Re: Bill Rewriting History again

It's called a Trojan login, and it's got a long history. I once wrote one back when I was in school - it looked exactly like the Netware login screen, written in quickbasic. It sufficed to fool our IT head/network manager. Requiring ctrl-alt-del as a preventative measure is effective - the only way to change what those keys do is by altering the interrupt vector list. That can't be done without administrator access, and even then it's tricky because you need to do kernel-level stuff. Your malware would need to be a device driver.

In the US, the definition of prostitution varies by state. In some of them it is very broad.

Re: Orwellian redefinition of "predjudice"

Putting aside political insults, it does describe a certain tension. ML engineers are interested in developing the most accurate statistical models possible, but sometimes accuracy must be compromised for social or legal reasons. If you machine learning engine crunches numbers and decrees 'arrest all the black suspects' or 'stop treating cancer patients over 80, they don't have enough years left to justify the expense,' then it might very well be giving statistically valid conclusions - but people are still going to be very upset if those acted upon.

Simple conclusions like that can be ignored, but the bias may not always be so obvious. When your program for estimating car insurance premiums is a black box made by a ML process, it can be difficult to determine if it is incorporating gender or race into the model. Even if you exclude that information on the input, it can be inferred from other things.

Re: Facts

I doubt the evaluation was that deeply rooted in analysis.

A more likely cause of reasoning is "These images make me feel disgusted, so they must be banned."

Re: direction-finding...

75MHz is within feasibility for a loaded whip antenna on a vehicle. It'd look just like the antennas commonly seen for CB. If he can't be tracked, it's quite possible that is because he is constantly moving - either working with a driver, or playing pre-recorded insults.

Wrong emissions.

This scandal is about smog-making emissions, not climate-changing emissions.

Re: Fucking law enforcement.

You are guilty of having been accused of possession of child abuse imagery. That's enough to seize every electronic device you own. You were fortunate in this case that they swiftly identified their real target and decided you were no longer of interest.

Re: Oops... those files are gone

Yet Trump has made no effort at prosecution, even though it was a major theme of his campaign.

Perhaps his lawyers have explained that if he tries, at best she will be found innocent, and at worst has fellow Republicans will be terrified of bring next up, given how rampant off-the-records dealing is by both parties.

He was studying reverse proxy hacking. In the process he inadvertently triggered a response from BT's transparent proxy.

Re: The beds have a flaw

The video does show the beds include an air tank and water. If there's a chemical CO2 scrubber under there as well, perhaps that's the plan - just keep the entombed customer alive for a day or so while the rescue services dig their way down. I'd hope there's a signalling device in there beyond just banging on the lid

Re: At the risk of inciting... something..

There's the problem, though. If you do use blind recruiting - and it can be done, simply by withholding names and photos from the people who make the hiring decision - what you end up with is not a diverse workforce. What you end up with is a workforce made up mostly of men (who are more likely than women to study computer science) and entirely excluding people from low-income backgrounds (Who can't afford to take a three-year full-time degree course). And, because ethnic group and income correlate for historical reasons, it'll be mostly upper-middle-class white men.

At which point the HR department does their survey and expresses their great concern that the workforce is not very diverse at all, and that this reflects poorly on the company, and that the only way to address the situation is to deliberately seek to focus hiring and promotion efforts on the under-represented groups.

Shortly after, those white, male, upper-middle-class employees start to get angry because they notice they are being passed over for promotion in favor of some less-qualified black woman.

Re: Not a good test

Yet another reason I don't think a manned mars mission is going to happen.

I'd like it to happen. I think it should happen. I wish it would happen. But in the end, it won't - because some group national leaders is eventually going to have to look at the bill and realise that's a hell of a lot of money even by government standards. Especially as the public is going to insist upon bringing the astronauts back again afterwards.

Re: He's right. The "dark net" doesn't exist!

My pet peeve with journalists on this subject is their constant confusion of 'dark net' and 'deep web.' They mean very different things, but journalists can't seem to tell them a part.

Re: Obvious Comment

I see it as a repressive government verses a ridiculous superstition. I can't really cheer for either side here.

Re: THE POOL IS CLOSED DUE TO AIDS AND STINGRAYS (who also have aids) desu desu desu

Let me quickly check.

Yep, it exists.

My brain hurts.

Re: An Exercise in Futility?

1) Cryptocurrency was born of the crypto-anarchist community. They don't trust banks, and they certainly don't trust governments. Crypto-currency provides a means to do away with the middle-men who take their cut and play games with your money to their benefit. This does make it especially appealing to the criminal underground, and to people who object to any government regulation of finances for ideological reasons.

2) When something is that easily moved around and so interchangable with others of itsself, currency and commodity are really the same thing.

3) Certainly. But people are selfish bastards. They'll happily burn up power if it brings them money. If you wish to be better than that, please go ahead and donate your idle processor time (and thus electricity bill) to a worthy distributed computing project.

Re: Hype

Remember that fuss a while ago about Google being given access to a vast trove of NHS medical data?

Deepmind is why. Playing games is a good way to refine the technology, but it's all just data in the end. Blocks in a warehouse, counters on a go board, features on an MRI scan. The first applications are already in use - the NHS uses a program called Streams that analyses blood test results in conjunction with patient history to spot imminent kidney failure. Nothing that a human specialist couldn't handle - but the software does it faster. It's based on machine learning by the same Deepmind division that produced this game-playing research.