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Comment Re:No more anonymous porn surfing (Score 5, Insightful) 203

by yendor (#62248515) Attached to: Porn Sites Will Be Legally Required To Verify Age of UK Users

Given they planned to give it to MindGeek (and probably let them monetize the data as payment) it may not be stolen... it's just handing a very dominant company yet more private data.
If I go to Reddit where there is adult data available I would be tracked despite not looking at it. Will the age verification stop at a flag on the account? Am I allowed to have more than one account? There are legitimate reasons to use a not personal account, whistleblowing in the InfoSec space for example or contacting journalists regarding government practices.
Lastly, when the data is monetized it will likely be sold to nasty regimes and we know how that goes.

Comment Re:Think of the children! (Score 4, Informative) 203

by yendor (#62248499) Attached to: Porn Sites Will Be Legally Required To Verify Age of UK Users

Blocking the DNS lookups I guess....
The original bill was looking at "other countries who have successfully implemented protection technology" which is China, Iran and a I think Russia.

They wanted to make MindGeek to be the gatekeeper which means handing the dominant player even more power.

Comment Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations. (Score 1) 174

Have you seen these?
"This War of Mine"
"Beholder"
"Papers, Please"
"Valiant Hearts"
etc etc

A lot of people like the war games in game and real life. Paintball and laser shooting games being a good example. There's a lot of them just like there is a massive group that like football (european and egg-hand-ball type) who play the repeated EA releases.
Playing realistic war is about as old as war itself and has too many explanations to be worth testing. Most people like realism because they can suspend belief.
Veterans I've spoken with play wargames to unwind and deal with real life experiences that no-one really understand. I have never been big on the shooters myself but some of my sons enjoy some which always seems to relate to the immersive group experience just like raiding in WoW or a standard tabletop game of Risk.

Comment Re:I guess the lesson here (Score 1) 301

by yendor (#52321265) Attached to: Peter Thiel's Lawyer Wants To Silence Reporting On Trump's Hair

Gawker has a long and sordid history of outing people left and right while claiming to be a voice for all sorts of activism.
Seems like they believe firmly in "But we are allowed to do this because we are doing it for good"

Gawker is clickbaity gutter crap and Trump seems to be equally vile but I somehow can't dislike Thiel. Gawker almost always picked targets who didn't have the funds to respond. Thiel and Gawker both played the system and Gawker finally lost.

This article makes me feel like slashdot is no longer worth reading. Sad to see but after 16 years the content is gone and the quality with it.

Comment Re:authors (Score 2) 231

by yendor (#52119731) Attached to: 2015 Nebula Award Winners Announced

Nominations look fairly balanced and reasonable so it's probably just a consequence of the membership voting as they tend to do. Literature isn't really easy to quantify so you always end up with certain social biases in time.
A bit heavy on the fantasy for my taste.

Submission + - JP Morgan Chase Attacked; data for 76million stolen

Submitted by JakartaDean
JakartaDean writes: J.P. Morgan Chase said about 76 million households were affected by a cybersecurity attack on the bank this summer in one of the most sweeping disclosed breaches of a financial institution.

The largest U.S. bank by assets said the unknown attackers stole customers’ contact information—including names, email addresses, phone numbers and addresses. The breach, which was first disclosed in August and is still under investigation by the bank and law enforcement, extended to the bulk of the bank’s customer base, affecting an amount equivalent to two-thirds of American households. It also affected about seven million of J.P. Morgan’s small-business customers. It isn’t clear how many of those households are U.S.-based.

The bank said hackers were unable to gather detailed information on accounts, such as account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. Customer money is “safe,” the bank said in a statement to customers on Thursday.

Submission + - Scientists Say Your Nose Can Tell When Your Death Is Imminent

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Mo Costandi writes at The Guardian that a new study shows that losing one’s sense of smell strongly predicts death within five years, suggesting that the nose knows when death is imminent, and that smell may serve as a bellwether for the overall state of the body, or as a marker for exposure to environmental toxins. “Olfactory dysfunction was an independent risk factor for death, stronger than several common causes of death, such as heart failure, lung disease and cancer,” the researchers concluded, “indicating that this evolutionarily ancient special sense may signal a key mechanism that affects human longevity.” Jayant Pinto of the University of Chicago prepared special felt-tipped pens scented with five common odors—fish, leather, orange, peppermint and rose—and presented them one by one to volunteers. After each presentation, the volunteer was shown pictures and names of four possible answers, and was asked to select the correct one. Getting one answer wrong was considered okay, or “normosmic”, but two or three errors labelled a person as “hyposmic”, or smell-deficient, and four or five counted them as “anosmic”, or unable to smell. Five years later, the researchers tracked down as many of the same participants as they could, and asked them to perform this smell test a second time. During the five-year gap between the two tests, 430 of the original participants (or 12.5% of the total number) had died. Of these, 39% who had failed the first smell test died before the second test, compared to 19% of those who had moderate smell loss on the first test, and just 10% of those with a healthy sense of smell. Despite taking issues such as age, nutrition, smoking habits, poverty and overall health into account, researchers found those with the poorest sense of smell were still at greatest risk.

The researchers stress that it is unlikely to be a cause of death itself, arguing only that it is a harbinger for what is to come. The tip of the olfactory nerve, which contains the smell receptors, is the only part of the human nervous system that is continuously regenerated by stem cells. The production of new smell cells declines with age, and this is associated with a gradual reduction in our ability to detect and discriminate odours. Loss of smell may indicate that the body is entering a state of disrepair, and is no longer capable of repairing itself.

Submission + - FDA issues Guidance on Cybersecurity of Medical Devices (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: The Security Ledger reports (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityledger.com%2F2014%2F10%2Ffda-issues-guidance-on-security-of-medical-devices) that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued final guidance on Wednesday that calls on medical device manufacturers to consider cyber security risks as part of the design and development of devices.(http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm416809.htm)
The document, “Content of Premarket Submissions for Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices,” (http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM356190.pdf) asks device makers seeking FDA approval of medical devices to disclose any “risks identified and controls in place to mitigate those risks” in medical devices. The guidance also recommends that manufacturers submit documentation of plans for patching and updating the operating systems and medical software that devices run.

While the guidance does not have the force of a mandate, it does put medical device makers on notice that FDA approval of their device will hinge on a consideration of cyber risks alongside other kinds of issues that may affect the functioning of the device. Among other things, medical device makers are asked to avoid worst-practices like 'hardcoded' passwords and use strong (multi-factor) authentication to restrict access to devices. Device makers are also urged to restrict software and firmware updates to authenticated (signed) code and to secure inbound and outbound communications and data transfers.

Comment Does shower mean soap? (Score 3, Insightful) 250

by yendor (#47073887) Attached to: Four Weeks Without Soap Or Shampoo

I ask myself if the showers that kill the flora is just water or use soap.
Shampoo is something I long ago stopped using and after a short period I stopped producing excessive amounts of oil. The only times I have to shampoo is when because of a skin condition.

Using soap in general isn't something I feel is needed since a regular rinsing leaves me non smelly.

Question is if I am actually breeding these little microbes and my lack of soaping is why I don't smell or if it's simply because I'm not a smelly person as some of my friends and family asserts?

Comment Where are the bigger electric cars. (Score 2) 359

by yendor (#40683205) Attached to: Another Elon Musk Bet: Half of All Cars Built In 2032 Will Be Electric

I can't see how this will work when not a single electric car is aimed at families.
Living in London I am repeatedly told I should be driving a "green" car instead of my big Renault Espace diesel. The complaint I normally get is that diesel is dirty but as far as I can find while that is true for old diesels without modern filters (+10 years old) it isn't the case with the modern diesels.
Also I almost never drive anywhere with less than 6 people in the car and walk whenever the distance is within a mile and there is nothing bulky to transport.

I have done extensive research into available electric cars but they simply aren't big enough to fit more than 3 children or 4 in a pinch when they have grown out of the legally mandated child seats.

Until we see 6 and 7 seater electrics I don't see it as being anything other than a DINK statement to show off the "green credentials".

Comment Re:Receptionist (Score 1) 432

by yendor (#26370753) Attached to: Hippies Say WiFi Network Is Harming Their Chakras

The Electrically sensitive people have been known to suffer for persecution from people who have the audacity to expect them to have consistent symptoms along with some verifiable reactions to fields.
Mostly the poor persecuted sufferers have been able to sense fields with less than 50% accuracy, less than the test group that simply guessed.

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