Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Demon-Haunted World

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 289 posts

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#41

Post by npsimons »

pdonis wrote: post #13
dclowd9901 wrote: post #4

Counterpoint: software such as thermostats that control our energy consumption or phones that lock themselves while you're driving are better if people can't consume in a responsible manner. Is it nanny-state? Yes, but maybe some people need a nanny.

> if people can't consume in a responsible manner The problem is that in the nanny state regime, the state gets to define what counts as "responsible". Which really means certain people (those with wealth and power) get to impose their definition of "responsible" on everyone else.

Case in point, does anyone really believe seeing a nipple is more harmful than seeing violence?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#42

Post by cpeterso »

zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

My iPhone 6 used to be snappy, but now takes almost 10 seconds to just open an app. Perhaps new OS updates are not as well-optimized for older iPhones as they are for the latest version.

Ars Technica's Android 8.0 deep-dive has some interesting charts showing Android device performance deteriorating over time:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-tho...

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#43

Post by breadbox »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #4

Counterpoint: software such as thermostats that control our energy consumption or phones that lock themselves while you're driving are better if people can't consume in a responsible manner. Is it nanny-state? Yes, but maybe some people need a nanny.

But of course the problem here is that the nanny is the corporation, which is just as inclined towards -- and far more capable of -- advancing itself to the detriment of the consumer.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#44

Post by 52-6F-62 »

zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

I've experienced and noticed a different problem. I've had the same phone for almost 5 years (have a hard time replacing something that still works well and is in good condition), and I've found it's not the speed that has worsened and I can live with not having certain features to run some new apps; it's the storage.

My phone's storage is not large by today's standards, I have 16 GB. I run fewer apps than I did when I got the phone, and have run the same general collection from day one. I have less music on my phone than I had in the past. I have only had to continually remove applications and music as just about every week it has warned me that my storage is almost full. This only started within the last year. I won't have added anything new, keep my cache flushed, etc and I still have to continually remove items.

Is there something practical I'm missing here, or... ?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#45

Post by iak8god »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #39

FTA: "Dieselgate killed people" What's the source for this claim?

Every year a shocking number of people die from illness caused by air pollution [1]. While it might be difficult or impossible to put a head count on "Dieselgate," the increased emissions certainly killed some.

[1] http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-e...

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#46

Post by bmurphy1976 »

leggomylibro wrote: post #38
zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

I don't get this; everyone says it, but I've never seen it in smartphones. Laptops, sure, but Windows really DOES accumulate a lot of cruft, and OSX's updates never seem to improve performance. Smartphones, though? The only slowdown I've noticed is when the battery starts to go. And then you can usually tell; the device gets hot as the battery pushes up against all the ESR it's accumulated, the CPU steps back a bit..…

I've experienced slow-downs with both iOS and Android devices. They almost always corresponded with newer versions of operating system and all the extra functionality that came with the upgrade.

The apps are also evolving. Compare Facebook today to what it was two or three years ago. The app does a ton more and all that extra functionality doesn't come for free. I suspect one of the primary reasons they broke messenger out into a separate app is that the Facebook app was simply too damn big.

There have been instances where an upgrade has made my experience better, but the trend has definitely been in the other direction (for me anyway).

I also have another concrete example: the original Nexus 7 had an SSD that didn't support trim. Over time it became nearly unusable as the SSD became fragmented. It was also severely bandwidth constrained. The device was decent until the first major Android revision came out. At that point, the new version of Android so significantly increased the bandwidth requirements on the SSD that it effectively strangled the device.

What was an awesome device the day I got it became absolutely unusable. Eventually I installed a version of CyanogenMod and formatted it with an SSD friendly file system which made it passable again but, still sucked compared to the day I bought it.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#47

Post by cortesoft »

ehsankia wrote: post #11

I'm curious about the WannaCry situation. If the killswitch was truly to detect being in a VM, could they still not have bought the domain and just left unresponsive, or even better, just generate a random new domain every single time. I guess they just didn't foresee someone buying the domain.

And how effective is that defense, anyway? I mean, couldn't you just clone the VM, and start responding or not responding to different domains until you hit on the right one? Or hell, have your VM check a domain and respond correctly if the domain isn't registered?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#48

Post by SubiculumCode »

harrisi wrote: post #40
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

Certainly having the receipt doesn't actually do anything? Do you measure the volume of gas in your tank before and after filling up? Regardless, this seems very easy to test. Just fill up a gas can and check that you're paying the right amount for the amount of gas in the can.

Without a receipt there are two things that can be a problem: 1) Less gas is pumped, 2) Charged more than the pump said.

True the receipt protects against 2) more than 1) because the car's tank does not have an accurate guage.

I remember listening to a story once about a fraud at the gas tank in which the normal amount of gas was only given out when requested in an even increment a five gallons which was how much The Regulators requested when they came and tested a gas stations pumps. they were caught after a spicious regulator requested an odd amount of gasoline and got the wrong amount.

with a combination of receipts and camera/ML classification that classifies when a customer is filling a tank versus filling their car will allow avoidance of weights and measures regulators. This is a problem I foresee.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#49

Post by luckyt »

ehsankia wrote: post #11

I'm curious about the WannaCry situation. If the killswitch was truly to detect being in a VM, could they still not have bought the domain and just left unresponsive, or even better, just generate a random new domain every single time. I guess they just didn't foresee someone buying the domain.

Yea, this part was confusing to me as well. How would a VM "simulate" the internet? Does it return a dummy page? I don't understand what mental model of VM behavior that the virus creators had in mind when they designed this killswitch.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#50

Post by cr0sh »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #4

Counterpoint: software such as thermostats that control our energy consumption or phones that lock themselves while you're driving are better if people can't consume in a responsible manner. Is it nanny-state? Yes, but maybe some people need a nanny.

Guess I'll keep my Honeywell mercury tilt switch thermostats a little while longer.

As for the phone - if things start going this route, they can keep the damn thing. I'll figure out some other way to communicate, I don't have to have their phone.

Furthermore - in regards to the thermostat setting: If I have the money to pay my bill for what I use, what damn business is it of anyone what I do as long as I can pay for it, and it isn't directly harming them?

Again - they'll have a hard time though bypassing tech that's 100+ years old...

But if the power company says "well - you have to have this to get power from us" - then that just moves me one step closer to going off-grid.

Post reply on HN