Posts by Daggerchild 838 posts • joined 3 Dec 2013
I had some code that mailed me if someone was using my stuff the dangerously wrong way.
Alas, never got to the released version, but it would have been amusing for an error handler to have physically manifested a batwielding human behind the developer.
No mention of Windows. Immune? Reeeeeeeeally?
Forget your weaksauce, I am downvoting you for your appalling lack of capitalisation and punctuation.
This, is what happens when you play Fortnite in English class.
If Google do that the EU will cheerfully smash them over the head and collect several billion more.
If people start leaving Google's play store, the EU won't be able to fine Google anymore for leveraging the only game in town.
Maybe EA should port Origin to Android?
Same with Steam I think. With the same kind of cut. You can bypass Steam for payment tho.
Actually, if you're outside of the Google Play payment apparatus, doesn't that mean you're independently juggling credit card details? For kids?...
I think there may be several more cans of worms in this smashable lootcrate...
You've got one nasty case of Internet philosophy poisoning there...
I'm not entirely sure if people who care about people have a future in this world.
Where is the predator/prey equilibrium when the predator can invisibly rip the innards out of prey anywhere in the world?
I've a fiver on the 'legacy' Internet eventually being closed down for a completely regulated and patrolled one. This is basically why we can't have nice things - we aren't nice things.
And we haven't even reached the predatory AI ransomware stage yet. No I'm not actually kidding.
Anyone remember that nice blue beheaded chap in a box?
"the wifi in the Seventh Transept is excellent"
You have completely lost the plot here: Google says "if you want to sell a phone with Google Apps, ALL your phones MUST have Google Apps"
I know this breaks all the rules of Internet arguments to ask this but, are you sure what you just said is *actually* true?
I was specifically talking about the manufacturer making a vanilla Android, devoid of Google Apps. I think you're assuming they then install a competing App ecosystem which triggers the Anti-Frag Agreement bomb.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but manufacturers actually already have the choice of shipping Android either with the whole Google Suite, or none of the Google Suite, and you're asking for the latter.
Do you want Google to put into their Suite contract the stipulation that manufacturers must make a product without Suite? Otherwise, how exactly is it Google's fault that manufacturers aren't giving *easy* access to something nobody is asking them for?
"Is it popular or just the thing you buy because it's the only thing you can buy?"
It's a fair question, but is it Google's malicious fault the Public don't want to buy a Lumia or a Blackberry? My Lumia was quite passable when it wasn't spontaneously rebooting or spinning on the CPU in the background burning the battery.
I'm trying to work out if Brussels actually understand what it is they're asking for. An armoured OS and API that is destined to become the most attacked platform on the planet, from inside and out, is not a thing that 'simply' comes about. It is in fact a continual living war against every commercial hacker on the planet.
Being invited to walk newly-naked into this hellstorm in the name of healthy competition will not get the reaction they expect. For the Public, watching new competitors getting mugged by things used to hunting Google, will not persuade anyone to leave Google's walls either.
Are they expecting Google to port their Appstore to Android forks? Do they understand that the trunk is in fact part of the security tree? Sure, you can chop the top off, and it might regrow, or be graftable, but if you chop the bottom off... not so much.
Been there, wore the suit, analysed the packets, wrote the reports. Toddlers with knives, as far as the eye can see..
Everything is cheap, lethal, toxic or 'boring!'. Everything found on the ground goes straight in the mouth. They *have* to have what their friends have, or they tantrum, and mother over-rules you.
It is as critically important a job as it is soul-crushingly pointless. Good luck!
"So, that means offering Google Play Services to all and sundry"
1) If you followed the convo, I was talking about the circumstances of the PREVIOUS fine.
2) Tell us how you'd do a secure and armoured pipeline of money, data, authentication, and user defence, if other people can replace your parts with cheap stuff that either leaks, siphons off or changes things.
3) What is so horribly terrible for *hardware* manufactures, that the *default* but *user changeable* search engine is Google? Don't you find that strange?
Google enforce a default known-secure path from the UI, down to the hardware. Because that's the only way to do it.
You do not understand what you are asking for.
"Don't act like Google is developing Android out of the kindness of their heart."
You are going to LOVE what the manufacturers will do when their powers aren't bound by Google's contract. All those horrible decisions about what search engine you use, and what apps you use, and who gets your data, they will all be made for you.
Yeah, there's quite a few things bound by that demonic seal the manufacturers want smashed... Enjoy!
"they spend a year wasting the Commission's time in offering solutions that clearly took the piss"
Fun fact: NOBODY knew what an acceptable solution looked like, and only Google was working to find one. It was in all the other parties interests to not agree they found one.
Can you think of a way of showing a product result, in a generic search (for that product name), that uses all competing product search engines equally, at Googlespeed? No?
You did? Now consider whether you're just spraying the user's interests around the Internet to anyone who sticks their hands up as a competitor. Free meals!
Google knowing what the user is asking for, but not being allowed to manifest it, because someone else might know the answer too, will come back again, and again, and again, as technology advances.
You underestimate the human ability to screw things up and waste resources.
We'll run out of IPV6 shortly after some ISP turns how big a netmask they will sell you into a 'bandwidth' or 'processor speed'-like selling point.
"our proudly Perl-based homegrown online publishing system"
Heh - you too huh? :)
The only improvements I'd want to a UI would be data-based. i.e. make a list of all the things I want to know when I want to look at the main page, and then tick off how many I see straight away, and how much work I need to do to find the others.
If it was me, I'd tag (and potentially inverse tag) all the articles into categories (as judged by invariant criteria), and then let the user promote or demote these categories so the frontpage is always the data most relevant. And not a huge image, a few ads, and a few promos. Scroll wheel usage is a cost metric.
No, you don't want me as a beta tester. I care about stuff way too much, and you want to aim at users with money and power. As a general rule, people with money and power don't care.
Too late for me. This stupid crap has already given me ulcers.
We had to move from a simple reliable and secure serial LOM system to a LOM that just *had* to have network connectivity because the HP serial CLI is not *actually* feature complete, it just markets itself as such.
HP knows the majority of their customers will never use a CLI, and wants to reel in refugees from Oracle's Sun hardware, where you could wholly configure a machine with a single cut and paste *without* freaking out the serial link or needing to reboot the LOM *multiple* times. Enterprise quality.
Why is so much 'progress' *worse* than what came before?
*sigh*
When I was young and stupid, I thought that inventing things that people wanted would make them happy and thank me.
I am older now. It turns out everything can be wielded as a weapon to hurt someone. Often the inventor.
So, Google stand accused of NOT having monopoly access to the user's personal data, and irresponsibly allowing the user to *choose* who they trust?
Exactly what kind of dictatorship powers are people demanding Google give themselves here?
"Google sure misuses it by allowing third parties to access it in the first place."
Do you understand you just demanded Google get exclusive monopoly access to people's personal data on Android?
where it.. belongs..?
Seriously, if you have to explicitly grant that third party the API access to your email, what else should Google do in order to not be pitchforked for allowing the app to access your mail, when you want the app to access your mail?
Is the problem that the API exists, and can be misused by apps that lie, so Google should remove the API? But shouldn't similar APIs be removed too? Messaging? Contacts?
What are people demanding here?
"If the emails were indeed being read without the author's explicit and clear consent, this would likely be unlawful under GDPR"
Well, let's just leave this worry hanging here.
"Again, if no consent were obtained, it would contravene Google's own developer agreement, which requires explicit opt-in consent when a user's "non-public content is obtained through the APIs"."
And let's double down on it instead of investigating the answer.
"In a statement published on its website, Return Path founder Matt Blumberg said his firm had co-operated with the reporter but expressed dismay that the report was "extremely and somewhat carelessly selective"."
Can someone confirm if this user-facing API permission request is in fact the selectively omitted thing?
Apparently it's in the source article. Evil applications can get at your data, if you explicitly allow them to.. ?
Remember breaching the package storage isn't the same as breaching the package signing system (not that I can tell which is involved from the aboves).
That, is a terrifying thought.
"Your honor, I didn't *mean* to order a lifetime's supply of badgers! Or the pressure cookers, fertiliser, whoopee cushions.."
It'd be even worse for lucid sleepwalkers - they'd casually pass any test a bot would throw up.
If I have not seen further than others, it is because I couldn't afford to stand on the shoulders of IP giants.
Are they finally working out they need an API and data interchange format (and conformance test suite!) that isn't proprietary if they want a functioning and fluid market?
Pity I don't trust them to come up with one that isn't totally broken and makes the problem worse, not better.
That needs a neutral API that can't be exploited to the detriment of any party, that is never slow.
Outsourcing an internal organ is not without side-effects, no matter what the organ trader promises.
I envy your ability to state this, even though it's obvious. Mine all unhappened. There are always omissions, e.g. Location:
Why did Google come down hard on a competing Location Service provider? Because they were 'cheaper'. By which I mean the data was worse quality, and was leaching the wrong values into collation systems which were then getting blurred/poisoned, which had knock on effects elsewhere.
Digital fly tipping. User isn't complaining, it's cheaper. Contracted party isn't complaining, they made more money by doing less work. Where's the harm?
"Florida man found badly beaten after argument with second head"
"Mutant Alligator wins election after 'Refill the Swamp' / 'Make America Glow Again' campaign"
The next Californian elections will be fun. Who will you vote for? :
1 - Heartless
2 - Soulless
3 - Brainless
4 - Killer AI
(The AI is campaigning on an anti-corruption platform - it has builtin parity checking, and pledges to fsck humanity)
HP and Oracle's docs/support sites are designed expressly to make you want to pay someone else to navigate them instead.
I miss docs.sun.com.
Content creators have long been demanding a version of PDF that supports embedded HTML5-based media, interactivity and animation
I'd love to see how those print out. I've already seen "Please click on this [link] for more information" in all its brain-dead-tree irony.
So, is there a rule yet that sets up penalties for erroneous automatic takedown demands from rich media empires?
Does this mean Slashdot won't be able to quote El Reg articles in their summaries, in Europe?
You just equated a kidney test, with mass slaughter.. ?
I absolutely agree that 'intelligent' neural networks are a threat to humanity, but I'm not nearly as concerned about the artificial ones..
In times past, the test for a Witch was to try and drown her. If she drowned, she wasn't a witch.
I notice everyone here has already decided guilt, devoting paragraphs to questioning the motivations of an AI company doing medical research, despite medical research being Practical Application Number 1 in AI research even 20 years ago...
This is all going a bit "But Her Emails" - everyone knows something was done wrong, but nobody understands what, and nobody knows what the negative effects *actually* are, and nobody can find anything evil, but the ambient fear and hatred is now self sustaining.
Google, do not want anyone's kidneys. Google do not HAVE anyone's kidneys. Please do not stab medical people just in case they could be coveting your kidneys.
.. will be practising talking into a camera without blinking.
You never know when it might be useful to prove you didn't say something you said.
The other thing that jumps out is that /bin/sh wasn't even replaced atomically.
/bin/sh did not exist for a moment, and every other thing running on the system relying on it would have gone boom.
I thought R was statistical, and statistics was insidiously difficult. Based on the assumptions displayed in the wrapper, I'm not sure I'd trust the package either..
"1) Prove they have rights to the content."
You copied that idea from someone else. Prove otherwise. Singing is forbidden. Do not dance to music. Papers please.
When people started their first web pages on their own domains, all those years ago, did they imagine that one day World Governments would be introducing laws to potentially fine you billions because they disagreed with the order you laid it out in?
NASA must surely have planned for this eventuality. Somewhere amongst the rover's electronics they must have included an emergency potato.
"How did the Heron get in to access the fish tank?"
It had help on the inside. The target was translocated across time. Come along, Pond!
"So that means no need for any cattle"
Yeah, they haven't really thought out their endgame.
"How dare you sustain millions of animals as a food source! It is in their interest that we completely decimate or entirely wipe out their breed instead."
Heh. That reminds me, I had a tank of goldfish as a kid. One brutalised, killed, and nibbled the corpses of, all of his tankmates until we stopped trying to replace them.
He was eventually eaten by a heron. Karma.
I do hope the EU get what they're asking for.
If you're doing security armour all the way from the UI to the metal, legally forcing you to allow people to replace parts of that chain, with code from manufacturers notorious for abandoning software, is going to be so much fun.
"<Firstly,> required manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser"
Note: This restriction is on the manufacturers. Not the users. The users can already change them. But the manufacturers want to make the choice instead of the users, because THEY want the user's data... Remind me who the EU are fighting for here, with no EU phonemaker..
"Secondly, Google stopped OEMs from running open Android devices"
Translation: It is evil that Google are not forced to give you their appstore so you don't have to write one when you copy their OS, like Amazon did.
"thirdly, they alleged financial incentives were given to operators and phone-makers to pre-install search"
See first point.
The free-range sheep watch the wolves attack the farmer, and cheer them on.
This is odd. IBM (just by scorfing down all the smaller players) should have been near the front of the pack, collecting all this AI hype and selling some non-AI repainted thing to people who happily wouldn't know an AI if it bit them.
Maybe this is just IBM horking up a big ol' owl pellet, but they should have something to show for all the work since Jeopardy Watson stole the show.
Maybe they simply no longer requires so many humans..
Hark, is that the sound of another of the country's essential systems expensively trying to reinvent a wheel that other people already invented over a thousand times before?
If tests prove they can't do it, and they don't have the resources/expertise to do it, and tasering them is (fun, but) a total waste of everyone's time, but you *need* it to be done right, then TAKE IT OFF THEM and have them rent it back, from people whose job it is to ensure the country's infrastructure isn't embarrassingly insecure shit.
How many times do people need to reinvent an SSL armoured REST API, with a test suite, staging area, and monitoring? It's not like the Internet Protocol is different for a sewage worker and a financial trader.
Google's ranking is obviously fabricated. Google are taking the *real* ranking and then changing it to suit *their* opinion on what is better. How can they be trusted anymore? Do they even consult those they affect?
Their bias is easy to prove : Ask all the competitors how they would rank the results, and they will *all* disagree with Google and rank Google's offerings *much* lower.
It is blatantly evident that Google cannot be trusted to do what is right for America. The search rankings must be *forcefully* aligned with those overseeing the Free Market. Any alternative is, as everyone can see, Evil.
As the venerable House highlighted, humans lie. Especially to themselves. Garbage in will be garbage out, no matter how shiny the box.
Now, if everyone had a portable blood screening device/DNA sequencer, you could get Good Data, and a bot could save tonnes of time for humans. Maybe a little vampiric device on your wrist. FitBite!
Easily solved.
Using patented BikeChain technology, all bitcoins must, by law, be generated using electricity produced only by the owner's musclepower.
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