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Demon-Haunted World

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Re: Demon-Haunted World

#201

Post by astrange »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #175
leggomylibro wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 felt it on my Samsung Galaxy S4, and on my SO's Samsung Galaxy S3. Both of which are high-quality devices, not some random el cheapo smartphones. Over the course of two-three years they both went from smooth&crisp to annoyingly laggy to (in case of S3) pretty much unusable even for making phone calls. Now in this story I'm just an alchemist with no experimental controls, but then again, the experience is not iso…

The NAND will indeed slow down after years of heavy use, but if you can erase and reflash it should speed up again.

I’m sure you can find a way to do profiling on a smartphone, anyway.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#202

Post by astrange »

kilotaras wrote: post #186
RachelF wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental impact. However, thus far only the programmer at VW has been prosecuted and sentenced to jail. His "following orders" defense did not work. All the high-level executives will probably walk away with VW paying a fine.

If you're referring to this story[1] person sentenced was engineering executive. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-sente...

Literally every comment I’ve read about this article was by someone who didn’t read far enough in to learn the person really was an executive ;(

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#203

Post by [deleted] »

zlynx wrote: post #79
emerongi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have the original Nexus 7 and it's unbelievable how unusable it has become. I use a slim ROM of KitKat (the Android version it came with) and it's still so freaking sluggish. I only use it for watching videos now, it's unbearable for anything interactive. It used to be quite nice with the slim ROMs, but at this point nothing has helped to get it back to run like it used to. 4years of light use (99% of time si…

The biggest problem on some of these is the lack of TRIM support in the hardware and/or operating system. After the device has written its complete 32 GB or whatever, it drops into slow mode on the storage Flash. There are ways to get the storage performance back, just search for Nexus 7 and trim.

[deleted]

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#204

Post by ConfucianNardin »

executesorder66 wrote: post #183
computator wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever someone refuses to show source code I always think, "what are you hiding in there?" There's usually something. There's a dilemma that developers face when deciding to release source code that's bigger than fear of software theft or the desire to hide something evil in the code. It's a fear of being scrutinized, ridiculed, or humiliated over the quality of their code. Imagine 2 programs that do something us…

The project with open source code can be improved by anyone. The project with closed source code can remain terrible forever even if there are programmers willing to improve it. Here's an example: Looking for a WebExtention alternative to greasemonkey on Firefox. (I know a port is being worked on, but let's ignore that for now) Your options are tampermonkey (closed source), and violentmonkey (open source) Tampermonke…

And here I thought Tampermonkey was open source, but apparently they went closed since I started using it...

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#205

Post by imtringued »

luckyt wrote: post #49
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.

By intercepting every DNS request and routing it to your honey pot server which logs the packets the malware sends to the mothership. What the malware author should do is simply randomly generate the DNS name at the cost of the unlikely chance of hitting a valid domain name instead of hardcoding it.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#206

Post by dom0 »

russdill wrote: post #199
titzer wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were designing my own printer and wanted to both fully utilize ink cartridges (maximize efficiency) and also be able to print absolutely perfect pages when necessary, it'd be a simple solution: two cartridges. One that is potentially "low" and is used for printing low quality stuff, and one that is guaranteed to be full and is used for printing high quality stuff. Presumably, the "low" cartridge would run out fi…

Close, just have an internal tank that contains ink for printing that is refilled by attaching cartridges. When the cartridge that refills the tank is empty, it's time to swap it.

Delete cartridge, fill in paint directly, and voila we are talking about a high throughput ink printer. These don't have, or at least didn't use to, cartridges, they draw ink from tanks and wet an ink sponge with it.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#207

Post by glaberficken »

rb666 wrote: post #132
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…

What sort of weird gas station requires you to specify the amount of gas before actually refueling your car? Is that a USA-only thing? Never seen that in Europe.

In Portugal this is common on SelfService stations as well. To avoid the obvious "fill-up and drive away" style theft.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#208

Post by hutzlibu »

eksemplar wrote: post #174
jordigh wrote: post #145

There is so much "Stallman was right" in all of these examples... non-free software always manages to eventually sneak in malicious anti-user features, where the user has no recourse. At least with free software there's always the fundamental freedom to fork. You think systemd is a Red Hat plot to destroy Linux, then go use Devuan. You don't trust what Google could be doing with Chrome, take your pick of alternatives…

Free software wouldn't protect you in a lot of these cases though. Fuel pumps could run on free software, but since you didn't install it, it could've been easily altered by the people who did. Hell these days, you'd have to build the hardware yourself to make sure someone didn't put something malicious in it.

But all of those systems get a lot of easier to access and be checked by controllers, if their base is open and not just some binary blob. Of course that applies also to the hardware.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#209

Post by hutzlibu »

Nomentatus wrote: post #147

This isn't a new demon-haunted world, this is the old, demon-haunted world before nineteenth-century progressive politics, back when "milk" that wasn't half chalk still might have a fish in it (see famous Thoreau quote on evidence.) We aren't enforcing the laws we have and our grandfathers and mothers had. (Three guesses why.) Not on monopolies, contracts, patent misuse... nothing. Just this week I and Hearthstone ca…

"on the beat, and Trump vowing to fire more regulators, that's what's changed. "

I don't really like to defend trumps sayings, but in this case I don't think there are government regulators needed. The company acted shitty and you took the consequences and quit and avoid this company. That's how market works. No need for regulation here.

The "only" problem with this in general today is, that most people do not understand technology at all, that's why big corporation's can get away with the shit they are doing, as there are still people using their consumer unfriendly, but shiny new products.

I doubt more government regulation would help with that.

Smarter people are required. And I do believe this is happening, it just takes some time.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#210

Post by hutzlibu »

The bigger issue with this, than beeing cheated in the casino, to me is, the increasingly amount of technology around us, we depend on. In a few years robots in the household will be common.

I really want to have my robot servant - but only if he really is MY servant and controlled by ME and not someone else, I do not trust ...

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