homeomorphic

1950 called. They want their worldview back.

> Today Switzerland is part of EU

No, it is not. [1]

[1] http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/index_e...

I'm really crossing my fingers for Jolla in particular, and Sailfish/Mer in general, to succeed. It's becoming clear that Android's currently debatable status as free software is heading decidedly in the non-free direction.

Sailfish/Mer's Android compatibility also makes it sounds at least somewhat realistic that there's room for it in the market.

Moreover, what I've heard about it is that it's aiming to be much more of an "ordinary GNU/Linux system with a radio and a slick touch screen interface" than Android has ever been. Does anybody have any hard information on this? It would be so delicious to have a platform that's more like an ordinary computer than what's offered in the mobile space today.

> It uses X. That itself is outdated before I start talking about out of date design principles.

All major window managers and desktop enivornments use X today. Some, such as KDE, Gnome and Enlightenment have begun work towards becoming Wayland compositors, and their underlying GUI libraries (Qt, GTK, and so on) towards supporting Wayland instead of X. However, you'll be hard pressed to find any significant number of them running on anything but X today.

I too want Wayland to succeed and take over for X, and when that day comes, XFCE should hopefully be ready for it. Complaining that XFCE uses X today, though, makes no sense.

> I personally don't like the black menu bar, I don't like the big childish icons, I don't like the slate gray gradient window box and I don't like the UI design's 2000s take on Finder. It's just not pretty in my opinion.

This, it seems to me, is just an expression of your personal taste. While that certainly matters do yourself, it doesn't really bring much to the discussion.

Why 16?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_d...

I think that's what einhverfr had in mind when he asked what happens when the PV cells get covered in snow.

Someone else suggested that they're probably used by diagnostic tools.

It's a link to a scribd version of the PDF. Try clicking.

Are you sure you haven't visited webpages that tell your browser to send requests to your local router lately?

The point is that certain large prime numbers (of certain forms) are curated and published in a catalogue because they are notable (in and of themselves). The process you dismiss as trivial allowed Carmody to encode the illegal program as such a prime, and hence have it independently published in said catalogue, where it belongs entirely independently of whether it happens to turn into the illegal program when run through gunzip.

Sure, but all the adversary needs is for the user to visit a webpage that makes his/her browser contact the router (i.e. from within the LAN). If the adversary has to take into account defeating the user's password, this becomes an impractical attack. With the backdoor, however…

> Man-made climate warning is most likely a hoax that fuels a multi-billion-dollar industry and is used, among other things, to erect protectionist barriers against Chinese and Indian cars. So there are extremely powerful vested political and economic interests to ensure that there's no possibility of an honest debate, even to the point of falsifying data I would suspect (never mind the indoctrination of young children across most of the western world).

What you present here is, as far as I can tell, an argument that there are (well-monied) interests that stand to gain from having people believe in AGW. That is a valid point to make, but it does nothing to prove the conspiracy that you sketch. Do you have any proof?

You go on (sorry, it's cumbersome to quote on my phone) to suggest that the fact that there are people who take a religious view towards environmentalism matters for the debate. I agree to a certain extent that this is a problem, but the solution is simple: don't listen to the enviro-religious people. Listen instead to the science.

What do you feel that this adds to the discussion? Seriously - if you want to express yourself, please do so in a way that adds to the conversation.

(I realize that this very comment of mine also does not add anything.)

I don't think anybody has suggested introducing the basic income amount of a country with that from the country with (one of) the world's highest costs of living. $33.6k is, at least in comparably priced Norway, a very very low income. As in: way less than what a cleaner or a supermarket cashier would make. The amount would obviously be different in different countries.

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income.

My (probably wrong) impression was that hardly any Swiss work those kinds of jobs anymore as it is, and that the country relies on migrant temporary workers. How true is this?

Also, your comment is great in general. It really made me think.

It doesn't matter. He's counting the number of times a continuous curve C on the surface of the Earth crosses other continuous curves (state boundaries). A crossing is a property of the curve and its embedding onto the Earth's surface. While a (continuous) map projection can deform both C and the state boundaries, it cannot create or destroy crossings.

To draw the crossings, however, he needs to pick a projection and project both C and the state boundaries, which I guess is why he included some PROJ.4 calls.

I doubt that any airport anywhere uses neutron scanners (whatever those may be).

> The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's the draining of capital flow that happen when the monetary system dries up. Whether you believe that to be unfairness or just some players being so adept at the game... that doesn't matter.

> The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.

What you're saying may be true now, but surely it won't always be true? Who's to say that every mundane task won't (relatively soon) be automated? We need to start thinking about how we should deal with this.

Respectfully, I think you're missing the point. It's not about any one person being interesting enough. The fifth amendment gives the (American) people a right not to incriminate themselves. The point is that a sizable chunk of the population can now unlock a lot of information about themselves without the fifth being an issue. I don't think the writer of the article claims that this is an effect that was actively saught after by Apple or the govt - it's simply here and people need to know and think.

It's as if someone invented a key you could turn to remember whatever you forgot. Great invention, but the article is saying: be aware, turning the key is not self-incrimination, and so now you have no 5th amendment.

"You still don't seem to have much general idea of what the court's about", said the painter, who had stretched his legs wide apart and was tapping loudly on the floor with the tip of his foot. "But as you're innocent you won't need it anyway. I'll get you out of this by myself." "How do you intend to do that?" asked K. "You did say yourself not long ago that it's quite impossible to go to the court with reasons and proofs." "Only impossible for reasons and proofs you take to the court yourself" said the painter, raising his forefinger as if K. had failed to notice a fine distinction. "It goes differently if you try to do something behind the public court, that's to say in the consultation rooms, in the corridors or here, for instance, in my studio."

[...]

"I inherited these contacts. My father was court painter before me. It's a position that's always inherited. They can't use new people for it, the rules governing how the various grades of officials are painted are so many and varied, and, above all, so secret that no- one outside of certain families even knows them. In the drawer there, for instance, I've got my father's notes, which I don't show to anyone. But you're only able to paint judges if you know what they say. Although, even if I lost them no-one could ever dispute my position because of all the rules I just carry round in my head. All the judges want to be painted like the old, great judges were, and I'm the only one who can do that."

[...]

"We're talking about two different things here, there's what it says in the law and there's what I know from my own experience, you shouldn't get the two confused. I've never seen it in writing, but the law does, of course, say on the one hand that the innocent will be set free, but on the other hand it doesn't say that the judges can be influenced. But in my experience it's the other way round. I don't know of any absolute acquittals but I do know of many times when a judge has been influenced. It's possible, of course, that there was no innocence in any of the cases I know about. But is that likely? Not a single innocent defendant in so many cases? When I was a boy I used to listen closely to my father when he told us about court cases at home, and the judges that came to his studio talked about the court, in our circles nobody talks about anything else; I hardly ever got the chance to go to court myself but always made use of it when I could, I've listened to countless trials at important stages in their development, I've followed them closely as far as they could be followed, and I have to say that I've never seen a single acquittal." "So. Not a single acquittal," said K., as if talking to himself and his hopes. "That confirms the impression I already have of the court. So there's no point in it from this side either. They could replace the whole court with a single hangman." "You shouldn't generalise," said the painter, dissatisfied, "I've only been talking about my own experience." "Well that's enough," said K., "or have you heard of any acquittals that happened earlier?" "They say there have been some acquittals earlier," the painter answered, "but it's very hard to be sure about it. The courts don't make their final conclusions public, not even the judges are allowed to know about them, so that all we know about these earlier cases are just legends. But most of them did involve absolute acquittals, you can believe that, but they can't be proved. On the other hand, you shouldn't forget all about them either, I'm sure there is some truth to them, and they are very beautiful, I've painted a few pictures myself depicting these legends." "My assessment will not be altered by mere legends," said K. "I don't suppose it's possible to cite these legends in court, is it?" The painter laughed. "No, you can't cite them in court," he said. "Then there's no point in talking about them," said K., he wanted, for the time being, to accept anything the painter told him, even if he thought it unlikely or contradicted what he had been told by others. He did not now have the time to examine the truth of everything the painter said or even to disprove it, he would have achieved as much as he could if the painter would help him in any way even if his help would not be decisive. As a result, he said, "So let's pay no more attention to absolute acquittal, but you mentioned two other possibilities." "Apparent acquittal and deferment. They're the only possibilities," said the painter.

End quote

I'm sorry for pasting so much. I had just laid behind me these very pages in The Trial when I put the book down and visited HN. This story made me wonder if I was still reading. It's been said hundreds of times during the Summer of Surveillance, but I'll say it again: K. seems to be living a low tech version of today or the near future. Viewed from afar it is a truly frighteting ordeal that feels physically straining even when the person involved isn't even real, let alone a citizen of your country - far less yourself.

Even though it's akin to shouting "1984 isn't a manual" on Reddit, I wholeheartedly recommend that anybody who has not yet read The Trial should do so immediately [1]. Even if you don't end up feeling the relevance, it's such a short book that it's worth a read even if you don't like it.

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7849

This thread seems like a valid place to ask a long-standing question of mine.

Are there any projects aiming for a hardware security token with the following properties?

1) Open hardware running open software.

2) Support for many and long keys.

3) Relatively fast signing on-board - i.e. keys are inaccessible to the host computer. (Obviously, I'm not expecting it to be feasible to sign gigabytes using a USB dongle).

4) Some PIN-entry-like low-grade security obsticle to delay an attacker that physically steals the dongle.

I am aware of CryptoStick [1], but the current version is sold out and also does not satisfy 3 and 4 (and only partially 2, since it only takes three RSA keys and there's no support for EC, as far as I can tell).

I really want to move away from passwords, but it seems very hard to do without a device satisfying 1-4 above.

[1] https://www.crypto-stick.com/

You mean finite, not discrete :-)

> In Norway if you want to log in to your bank you need a friggin Java Applet.

Not with Skandiabanken. Their only special requirement is a phone for doing two-factor authentication by SMS.

If you wanna use the horridly flawed BankID, which they do also offer, you probably need Java as you say.

Rant to foreigners about BankID: The conversation must have gone like this at a meeting of Noreay's major banks:

- Public key crypto is good.

- Yes!

- But users are too stupid/lazy to safeguard their private keys...

- Good point. How 'bout some trusted party taking care of those for the users?

- Yes! And you know who you can trust? Banks!

- Agreed then, we'll sit on the private keys, and when the customer wants so sign for say a mortgage, they just authorize us to do so for them.

- That last step sounds cumbersome...

- Nah, we'll just do it over the Internet.

- But won't that put us back where we started?

- Hush! I can't hear you over the sound of future income!

Even accepting all of that, can someone please tell my why gold is supposed to be different? I get the fact that gold has traditionally, for the longest of time, been seen as a low-yield, low-risk investment, and that what people see something as is what matters. But if gold's value comes from the fact that people think it's worth something, how is it fundamentally different from stocks of Foo Corp.? On top of that, it doesn't really do anything on its own. I just don't get it, for anything other than perhaps off-the-record physical movement of large values (which I don't suspect mr. Paul of doing… yet, anyway).

Edit: I get that gold is (economically) stable, but I don't understand why. Aren't people afraid that someone will find some huge unknown ore?

As a citizen of a (current) EEC-non-EU member country a feel there's a huge difference. But yes, my comment was a bit pedantic :)

Stolen documents? No, no. He was, at worst, carrying a copy of information someone else copied without being allowed to so.

You see, if he were carrying stolen documents, someone at Booze Hamilton would be saying "shiiit, that manilla folder with the post-it saying important stuff, don't lose got stolen!".

If someone tells you a secret, hd might be a hero or a villain... but a thief he is not!

The EU came to be in 1993 :)

I'm not so sure. There seems to be an unwillingness to consider phones general purpose (which isn't that strange, since not long ago they were indeed special purpose). Just look at the acceptance of vendor lockdowns.

I also think we can expect that things which are today 100% legal, like free software on hardware under the user's control, will be targeted too. In this area I expect anti-gun-like retoric: "with so many important aspects of society happening online, we cannot allow potential criminals and terrorists access to tools that can do so much damage". (~)

The future was supposed to be amazing. What happened?

(~) I finally see the pro gun rights people's point of view. I'm disappointed in myself that it took a "me-relevant" analogy for me to understand.

I think your optimistic view misses something important: nomatter how well browsers can execute JS, it's not truly general purpose computing as long as the stuff beneath the browser - from OS to hardware - is out of your control.

It's great that the in-browser ecosystem is expanding and improving, but IMO we will still lose The War if we cannot tell our chips to do whatever we want. I hope we won't settle for the browser when we can and should have it all.