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Comment What does the new phone do differently? (Score 1) 120

Generally, this is the reason I refuse to upgrade phones other than price. If the new phone is $1,000 I expect that much added feature to replace what I have. I'm rocking a Samsung Note 4 and it does literally everything I need, and until it fails/cracks/stops performing in some way I'm not going to switch. I got that phone new, it's 4 years old and still does everything a Note 8 would do as far as I can tell. That's the reason you can't sell new phones - their is a dearth of innovation and the old ones are 100% of the functionality of the new. In fact, other than a newer processor the camera on the new model is worse, it is only slightly larger on screen, and has a bit more ram that I'm not even using all of anyway. Why would I upgrade? It makes sense for me to wait until the last possible minute to do so both for this reason, and the reason that they will have all the kinks worked out by the time I swap. At that point, it makes sense for me to buy the second to newest model refurbished and save like $900.

Comment New Fork incoming? (Score 1) 859

It is literally impossible to adhere to these restrictions, and most of the people violating them would do so purely by accident. I love the weird logic of neurodiversity too, this is basically pretending people with mental disabilities are A OK, or something. How do you know what anyone's preferred pronoun is before you ask them? Most people just ask for names, and infer pronouns - especially online. See, if you want to promote a good message you put out something along the lines that we should cherish our differences, you don't start the Third Reich. We can only pray that FreeBSD forks, and the retards that came up with this nonsense get what they asked for, namely, an exodus.

Comment Re:Why do they need help? (Score 1) 220

This is SO true. I've had about five razer mice and nearly every single one of them has failed. They are crap... You want good stuff? Buy Logitech... I've never had a product from them fail except due to excessive wear or the fact that I needed to upgrade to some new tech. Many of my Logitech mice and keyboards have lasted over eight years. Razer=shit, bottom line.

Comment So wait a minute... (Score 1) 588

Trump talks about considering an idea (which means nothing) and then another company starts getting feedback about the hypothetical situation that might never occur sparking outrage about faux news. There is never going to be a Muslim registry, and many of Trump's comments after that initial comment reflect what might actually happen: People from terror states being tracked, which is just prudence -- and already happens. This whole based on religion tracking thing will get destroyed in any higher court in the land, so I have no doubt that Trump would never waste his time. I second the sentiment that this is simply shit journalism and should have never got on slashdot, and slashdot is becoming a shit news source by extension.

Comment Re:Hmmmm... (Score 1) 42

Chrome is a power-whore. I have one of those Core M machines that sips power and can run about 10 hours on battery if nothing is running really. In this state with the screen down the whole laptop draws about 4-5 watts, but the minute you switch on Chrome 6-8 constant. It's all the phone-homing, syncing, and other stuff that is constantly running in the background that draws the power. Now this is about a 30-50% increase in use so for these types of computers this is a massive test increase in draw. I was measuring this with idle pages as well. You will find chrome is nearly ALWAYS running and doing something even if you sitting a web page that hasn't moved for an hour.

Comment Already being done for Lawnmowers! (Score 1) 460

Do you think people who mow lawns all day keep running to the gas station to fill all of their equipment? Hell no, they got 20+gallon tanks of extra gas that they drag along with their equipment. I can't see how this is any different, and good luck enforcing anything in this regard without getting every landscaper from here to China pissed off. Anyway, we allow tanker trucks full of corrosive chemicals drive down any "main" street and they are so dangerous that if one of them tipped over and spilled they'd kill anyone downwind. Gasoline is not nearly as dangerous, as it is not especially good at explosive burning -- it only becomes so when it is aerosolized and hit with an electrical charge in a confined space. This is just not as dangerous as people think -- Semis have 100-gallon tanks of diesel and no one complains, most cars are 20 gallons, etc... "Explosive" gas tanks everywhere! It's not going to be any more dangerous, especially if the hauling vehicles take safety precautions that we use with other vehicles. (Plastic containers to prevent sparks if they are impacted, cages, etc...) Mostly, much adieu about nothing..

Comment Re:Not a surprise (Score 1) 265

Most of the people scanning are script kiddies, so unless you are vulnerable to the very specific things they are having a tool to attack the danger of the port scan is very low. I rather deal with the problem by making sure only authorized hosts can connect to specific services, or obfuscating common programs like Wordpress (like the database folders, and install directories....) just to break all these types of attacks. I also rather keep things "fixed" by being current on patches... Most of the exploits are known and patched, and the people getting infected by them are not keeping with patches.

Comment Re:Turn it off (Score 1) 265

I was using pfsense with a special trigger script that counted how many times a particular IP raised alarms. I set it to some decently high number (some programs actually "port scan" as a part of their use...) and then only troubles were flagged. For other alerts (actual attacks) I might IP block someone instantly.... Just set the block time for a week or more and watch them give up. :)

Comment Self-fulfilling prophecy? (Score 3, Insightful) 241

It's pretty obvious the most common language is going to have the most apparent bugs and the most security woes because it is the one that is most used to solve the majority of problems. It also will be the most likely for hacker and bad people to be using as well as working to exploit as it is the language that they are most familiar with. Every language is going to have security issues it's what happens with the running application when it faults that matters, and that is likely within the control of the developers even when the language and library authors are contributing to the issues. Really, the number one "cause for exploits" is trusting input that shouldn't be trusted -- and that's that same problem for nearly any language... It has nothing to do with PHP!

Comment Gaming PCs are just silly... (Score 1) 325

Other than a few sandbox games that will run on less than awesome hardware there is virtually no reason not to take the gaming to the console. Building your own machine sounds great, but when you have a problem it is _YOUR_ problem. I experienced this myself several times and the other way to look at it is - you are down not playing games and screwing with the machine. You will probably be playing your console while the money or parts arrive. You can have quite a few XBOX Ones and PS4s for that money... I can't really see the point... other than... like..Warcraft or something that is PC only and doesn't require the best hardware. PC gaming used to be cheap and unique, now it's expensive and the consoles are just as good for most things.

Comment Are their bandwidths metered? (Score 1) 622

I'm not personally aware of any large carrier that charges on data volume (for upstream/backbone) and they are paying for the same electricity basically regardless of use. Outside of making sure they have enough pipe all the costs for Comcast, Time Warner, etc... are fixed! So, yes they can give you an unlimited plan because basically unless you're flooding the pipe their own bandwidth is unlimited. The argument that you should pay more for more use is nearly insane -- it does't cost them anything extra for you to burn thousands of extra GB because they pay nothing extra for the data crossing the wire; as long as they have enough bandwidth to cover a bad day they are fine. (They would have already bought this ahead of time, so... Yea, it's already there even if you aren't using it...) This is price gouging at its finest and what they don't realize is all they will do is make municipalities launch their own ISPs without these silly fake restrictions. A 10+gig MPLS isn't exactly that expensive for a small town, and some towns have 30+ gig fiber just laying around for the future... Really, they're just going to make sure they die off -- as if cable fees weren't enough.

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