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drucken

2,355 karma · joined January 15, 2012

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drucken··on MSVC CRT Sneaks in Telemetry by Default?
Note this Reddit comment by what appears to be a couple of MS devs:

(fourbadcats) Indeed. This sure better be an oversight of something not disabled when transitioning from release candidate to RTM. We will lose credibility with our customers if we claim that our application does not collect any usage data when this is going out over the wire. I noticed that notelemetry.obj is not present with VS 2015 Update 1 so this may have been introduced with Update 2. Let's hope it's gone in Update 3.

and this too:

(spongo2) Let me gather some details

However, this is definitely highly disconcerting.

drucken··on [dead]
"Keywords: humor"
drucken··on First ever comet material found on Earth
More detail available at:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131011-first...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24381-black-glass-coul...

drucken··on Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years
The Guardian is a UK newspaper. "<num>m" always means Million in the UK, unlike continental Europe.

I agree that the continued use of the abbreviation in the article itself is bad journalism.

drucken··on Lavabit founder turned over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout
Isn't the key this sentence: "Wired reported the government as complaining that a Lavabit representative indicated that Lavabit had the technical capability to decrypt the information, but that Lavabit did not want to ‘defeat [its] own system."?

If they used something like Perfect Forward Secrecy, could they not legitimately have claimed to be unable to defeat their own system (as it is currently configured)?

drucken··on World’s first digital laser unveiled in South Africa [video]
More detail: http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/new-laser-system-de...
drucken··on Show HN: UX Archive - The best way to compare iOS 6 and iOS 7 user flows
Is that reduction in softness and use of glaring colors the default interface? It looks quite a horrible change and makes it look similar to other phone ecosystems...

Otherwise the UX changes look quite good in general.

drucken··on Less is exponentially more (2012)
^^well expressed stelonix.

This topic/article should have been re-titled, "Rob Pike on Why Go continues to be incorrectly marketed to systems programmers".

Go is not a systems programming language, since it gives barely a passing nod to control. Thus, it does not fall in the same core domains of C++ or C.

drucken··on How the U.S. is forcing Internet firms' hands on surveillance
So, the only "escape clause" US courts have given against this kind of intrusion is end-to-end encryption, hardware and all?
drucken··on Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs
"The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?"

This is the correct interpretation, at least as far as public polls over EU prove time and again in the UK.

If you actually combine the different responses to EU surveys, almost everyone in the UK across all factions of life, even today, mostly have interest in remaining in the EU solely for the common market, if that.

It is probably not helped by the fact that the most respected or even revered UK political leaders of the last 50 years, i.e. Churchhill and Thatcher, were extremely lukewarm about the EU project.

The difference compared to political attitudes of the public on the continent is very stark indeed.

Note. As for the European Convention on Human Rights opt-out, that is mostly a UK Conservative government/conservative media issue that they want to force through and they have had very little actual broader public debate or support. Of course, that does not mean that it will not go through eventually regardless, especially when "terrorism" is used to justify just about anything these days...

drucken··on How multi-lingual children learn languages
There are too many factors involved here.

For example, human languages are reinforced completely differently.

From birth, you will hear from inside the womb often one language. Later, you hear and speak either a couple or more languages but generally in different contexts, e.g. mostly one with parents, maybe one or more with friends or strangers and one with school and media.

The latter context is normally reinforced further with reading and writing, while the former rarely or not at all. I suspect, though without more studies it would be impossible to know, that it is the exclusively spoken languages that are most affected. The reading and writing languages, as well as being used in different contexts, are highly likely to be processed by the brain differently.

In addition, almost all of these human language uses will be tied to life events and (strong) emotional feelings.

So, the comparison to programming languages seems tenuous at best, especially since there are plenty of other contexts where one can misapply learned rule-sets in general. The word "language" is almost a misnomer across these two different fields, in my opinion.

drucken··on Sell your data to save the economy and your future
Technology available to a few among many has always existed.

Only lack of political leadership, and in the modern world, lack of global political cooperation, is disenfranchising the middle class and re-investment back into society.

It is the age old tug of war between forms of oligarchy (plutocracy and corporatocracy are forms of oligarchy) and forms of democracy. Severe societal crises, including wars, ensure a return of power in every case.

drucken··on Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me
In the US and virtually only the US.
drucken··on Can gaming be the turning point for Linux on the desktop?
Never.

1. Only one thing wins the desktop: pre-installations.

2. Gaming requires superb driver support, which almost always means commercial drivers. Linux's licensing inflexibility makes this very difficult.

drucken··on EU Commission Sued For Refusing To Reveal Trade Agreement Documents
This is excellent news!

The verdict date of 7 June, is even more critical due to TAFTA's end of June deadline - an agreement and process of negotiation that potentially makes the controversy over ACTA pale in comparison...

drucken··on Teenager Designs Safer Nuclear Power Plants
This is just an ORNL technology uranium-plutonium fuel cycle MSR. It has been known of since the 60's.

It is also inferior to the thorium fuel cycle based Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), a prototype of which ORNL did actually create and which has been widely espoused by Kirk Sorensen, formely of NASA, for seven years already.

Yet Kirk Sorensen gets a TEDx talk and a 14-year old gets a TED talk...

drucken··on At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom
Statute books everywhere record the new crime of "lascivious or captive winking"...
drucken··on UK MP to Google: 'you do do evil' when it comes to tax
Yup, it is also a British bank, a pre-cursor to HSBC that created the first shadow banking system.

The UK has by far the largest network of control over tax haven jurisdictions, with the exception of the mighty Delaware.

drucken··on UK MP to Google: 'you do do evil' when it comes to tax
Multinationals have no choice. Tax avoidance and jurisdictional arbitrage are standard competitive advantages since the 60's when capital controls were evaded by the banks and the 80's with the politically-backed corporate boom.

The problem will never be solved by private companies. It requires political leadership and global cooperation.

That $32 trillion in offshore tax havens ($12 trillion actively managed by international banks) will keep growing otherwise, as governments and society increasingly cannot pay for what they previously spent, let alone the future...

drucken··on How I 'stole' $14 million from a bank: A security tester's tale
I was referring to the actual heist at the bottom of the article.
drucken··on How I 'stole' $14 million from a bank: A security tester's tale
I really do not understand how cybercriminals sophisticated enough to conduct these sort of heists would then go and deposit all the physical cash into the nearest bank account in the same country?

Or perhaps we only hear of the unsuccessful heists...

drucken··on Hug vs. Handshake
I have been told off more than once for not hugging women. That said, the kiss-on-the cheek thing is very popular in continental Europe for acquaintances.

The only strangers I make a point of hugging are Germans, just to freak them out!

But seriously, as long as you greet sincerely with any action, you are highly unlikely to cause offense. Just note their reaction for future reference after.

More importantly is how much personal space you give them after that point. A one-off strange greeting is almost always acceptable; occupying someone's personal space for an extended time is another matter entirely...

drucken··on Apple using moving letters as captcha
This looks to be a Chrome issue. Neither Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari users see this.
drucken··on Software will not be patentable in New Zealand
Making something patentable does not magically transfer attributes to it, i.e. 'to encourage progress'.

The question is not whether not to patent but whether patentability is appropriate.

In respect to software patents, which is little more than mathematics and a form of art, that has been shown to be wholly inappropriate.

drucken··on Now you can give out your phone number without giving up your privacy.
What does this service offer over the market leader, Burner (http://burnerapp.com/)?

Is it the Bitcoin support?

drucken··on Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US
This is one of the reasons why any possibility of a significant "free trade" agreement between the US and EU is virtually non-existent.

Their principles, economies, and output across a large range of sectors are much more different than many care to admit.

drucken··on Obama May Back FBI Plan to Expand Wiretap Laws
1. "Wiretapping" is the wrong conceptual model for what is proposed and implemented in modern systems. "Vacuuming" might be a better term.

2. This is a power grab, not merely an attempt to maintain equivalent present powers. As people live increasingly more of their lives on or impacted by virtual systems, the power to monitor and abuse whole societies becomes significantly larger. If you have any doubts about this, imagine it is the North Korean government with the technology.

3. Private communication, the minimum of freedom of expression and closest to thought, of any kind is never a hindrance to prevent crime or its investigation. A crime and everything leading to its implementation (and after) has many consequences in the world. It is these effects that are critical and required for crime prevention and prosecution. If there was a technology to monitor everyone's thoughts at the same time, would you use it as part of the criminal system?

4. The costs are orders of magnitude larger to setup, grow and maintain such monitoring systems indefinitely instead of targeting crime prevention and investigation. That's your taxpayer money being spent.

5. If after all the above, the inevitable result is still for governments to have the potential ability to access all communication anywhere between anyone at any time, then to reclaim individuals' rights, they too have a powerful incentive to seek and create systems that achieve the opposite, including encryption. This will occur regardless of law, and the deeper the loss or perception of loss of private rights, the more widespread it will occur.

In short,

"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

drucken··on 3 In 10 Americans Will Not Knowingly Buy Chinese-Owned Brands
Given the US's annual trade deficit with China is more than a quarter of a trillion dollars and growing every year by some $20 billion (i.e. an extra month's worth of trade balance per annum), surveys of this kind are not worth the pixels they are printed on.
drucken··on ESEA turned anti-cheat client into BTC miner
Yup, this is the notorious nProtect Gameguard (http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php).

It is even worse than most anti-cheat clients which "only" monitor and notify.

Not only will it actively pre-emptively change the state of your programs, some changes irrecoverably, but in addition it cannot be independently uninstalled, i.e. the game publisher who bundles it has to provide an uninstaller for it or it will not be uninstalled if you remove the game.

Gameguard is also believed to contain a keylogger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard).

It is basically a commercial rootkit that is relatively easily circumvented by cheaters anyway.

drucken··on Show HN: Type in a search to find the average of the first 50 image results
"Oh no! Server Error: 500 (Internal Server Error)"

This is the problem with services this fun to play with. Here at HN we break our toys!

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