Re: Old and incorrect (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Amazon AWS continues to use TrueCrypt despite project's demise on 2014-06-16 19:10 (#249)

Plus some projects, like TrueCrypt.ch , are set to continue forward with TrueCrypt - even if the original developers are no longer taking part.

Insightful Graph (Score: 2, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Blogger: Newspapers Can't Succeed By Repackaging Old Goods on 2014-06-16 10:03 (#23Y)

That survey graph is, to me, the greatest tell-tell of the article. The young age groups value smart phones (48%) and computer (18%) sources while nearly skipping more traditional media like tv (13%) and print (0%)

If that trend continues, old school media will definitely need to look into some refactoring.

Re: Coastal change and flood risk assessment (Score: 2, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Google buys satellite imaging company Skybox for $500 million on 2014-06-12 02:22 (#226)

I was half-expecting that they would use their fleet of street view cards to start launching quadrocopters with aerial cameras. With satelites, even the expensive ones can only go down to a foot or so of resoultion while a fleet of quadrocopters with megapixel cameras could map every last inch of everyone's backyard.

Re: Mighty Big Headshot (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Secret of Short Intense Workouts Revealed on 2014-06-10 17:48 (#21P)

Settings -> Story Image Style -> Icon :)

Re: Mighty Big Headshot (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Secret of Short Intense Workouts Revealed on 2014-06-10 03:07 (#21G)

It is the picture of Michael Conkright, PhD, the TSRI assistant professor who led the study of the article in question. At least it's more relevant than the broken window stock photo from a few stories back.

Re: Fahrenheit 451 (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in When dystopia comes, it will look like: on 2014-06-06 05:40 (#210)

Ok, the Catching Fire bluray finally reached the top of my Netflix queue and now I have to take back most of what I said about Hunger Games. I still think the first movie sucked (they are fighting the wrong enemy), but the 2nd movie did a decent job of recovering the series. I might even go see the 3rd movie while it's recent. :)

Packages (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in New GnuTLS buffer overflow on 2014-06-04 22:05 (#20R)

Exim (mail server) and CUPS (print server) are on the list.

LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 22:42 (#1ZE)

LUKS encrypted file systems have been natively supported in most Linux distros for 5+ years. These encrypted file systems can be easily created on the command line or with a GUI tool like "gnome-disks". If you, for example, insert a thumb drive formated as a LUKS, the desktop environment pops up a password dialog to automatically mount the file system for you.

TrueCrypt mainly catered to Windows users. Also, the TrueCrypt license was incompatible with both the free-software and the Open Source Initiative philosophies.

Defacement? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in FalseCrypt? on 2014-05-30 01:01 (#1YW)

Ya, I've been waiting on a more official reply from the maintainers. The current homepage on SF really looks like a web-defacement and not something that is official.

To make things worse, the "new release" of the software is signed using the official key. Does that mean that they were able to deface the site and nab the private keys at the same time?

Re: It depends (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Favorite story image style: on 2014-05-29 02:33 (#1YF)

Err, no need to resort to a browser extension to remove the images. The site allows you to pick "None" for story image type on the settings page.

Re: Methinks (Score: 2, Funny)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Preorders start for the Firefox OS Phone on 2014-05-28 22:40 (#1YD)

What gave it away? The rounded corners?

Checklist (Score: 0)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Appeals Court Halts Copyright Abuse Case on 2014-05-28 11:24 (#1XV)

  • Internet - Check
  • Porn - Check
  • Unauthorized copying of a licensed work and getting away with it - Check

Waa waa (Score: 3, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org in S & P sets Tesla's credit rating to B- on 2014-05-28 11:21 (#1XS)

Sounds like someone got butt-hurt about not being included. How dare they successfully raise money without getting one of our credit reports!

Touchpad (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Android and the Race to the Bottom on 2014-05-22 21:37 (#1VW)

Wasn't $99 the same price as the HP Touchpad firesale? (After initially launching at $500-600 one month prior)

Re: Fahrenheit 451 (Score: 2, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org in When dystopia comes, it will look like: on 2014-05-22 02:53 (#1V1)

I never understood that movie. Granted, I haven't seen the 2nd movie (not released on Netflix yet)
  • The "Happy Ending" is when all but one (or two) of the kids are dead? (That's a pretty f**ked up plot resolution)
  • Everyone seems content on playing "the game" instead of fixing the real problem
  • No one ever seems to be hungry
Then again, I hated both Battle Royal movies just as much.

Porn Popups (Score: 2, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org in When is your data not your own? When it's in the cloud on 2014-05-21 23:32 (#1TX)

So, lets say after reading http://pipedot.org/story/2014-05-16/what-is-your-offsite-storage-solution you pick a cloud storage provider with a family plan and set up everyone's desktops to automatically back up to the service. As what happens (all too often with non-technical family members), someone is tricked into running dancing_pigs.exe which downloads a whole slew of malware and viruses to the computer. Pretty soon, anything you do on this computer spawns a porn popup. Trying to close the popup, of course, spawn three more popups.

What if one of these malware ads includes an image from the forbidden list and then gets backed up to the cloud because it's in the temporary Internet files? FBI comes and knocks on their door? Or my door if I'm the account holder of the family plan, even though it's not my computer?

Re: They wouldn't need the keys if they had broken the math (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Why Lavabit Shut Down: interview with Ladar Levinson on 2014-05-20 21:37 (#1T7)

Not all SSL algorithms support PFS . If they did, at least forced private key revealing wouldn't compromise past sessions.

Re: Zip wasn't that bad (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in The worst storage media of all time on 2014-05-19 20:36 (#1RK)

Hey, I saw the new Godzilla movie and Walter White's collection of Zip disks survived an earthquake, an EMP, a nuclear meltdown, and 15 years of neglect in an evacuation zone!

Because, you know, everything you see in movies is absolutely correct.

Re: Wallpaper? On my desktop? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Where do you get your desktop artwork? on 2014-05-19 19:58 (#1RJ)

Pick a good plain color background. This used to be a much bigger issue when you had a 133Mhz CPU and 16MB of RAM, but performance is still important for low-end systems, like atom. Although your chosen photograph may be JPG, the desktop will likely have to store the full uncompressed 24 bit color data in memory. For 1920x1080 this is at least 6.22 MB of wasted RAM + enough memory bandwidth and CPU cycles to composite the image to the screen all day.

Re: A neutral access method is always worth having (Score: 2, Funny)

by bryan@pipedot.org in The Browser Is Dead: Long Live the Browser! on 2014-05-19 02:30 (#1QD)

Oblig xkcd, even though TFA already includes this xkcd? :P

Re: Nice! (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Read It on 2014-05-19 01:44 (#1QC)

Thanks. Should be good now.

Re: Nice! (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Read It on 2014-05-18 03:12 (#1PS)

Posting a reply would not be classified as a thread-leaving action.
Implemented. Posting a reply will now prevent the colors from changing on the rest of the comments.

Re: Cable Costs Going Down (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Major FCC Study Shows Cable Bills Rising at 3X Inflation on 2014-05-18 03:02 (#1PR)

Indeed; Snip it. I've never subscribed to cable and don't own a TV.

For the few shows that I have watched, Netflix ships them to me in a little red envelop. Additional benefits are that the bluray quality exceeds the over-the-air broadcast, the episodes contain no advertisements, and I can watch the stuff at my own pace.

Re: No contest (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in What Is Your Offsite Storage Solution? on 2014-05-17 23:28 (#1PM)

Uses Amazon S3 as the backend.

Delete vs Pseudonym (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in European Court Backs Your Right to Disappear Online on 2014-05-16 23:40 (#1P8)

I'd rather more effort on allowing people to use Pseudonyms. Post all the silly stuff you want as "SomeDude" and keep it seperate from your "real name" identity. This, however, conflicts with current Facebook and Google+ policies.

Being able to delete large swaths of posts makes for annoying holes in conversations. For example, I was unaware of a rather infamous reddit troll named "violentacrez", but since he has deleted all his thousands of posts, trying to go back and read anything on the topic is rather difficult. Of course, the information is still out there on sites like thewayback machine, so it fails to delete everything.

Re: No need for a service. (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in What Is Your Offsite Storage Solution? on 2014-05-16 23:19 (#1P7)

I have two NAS devices - both Synology 8 drive units. I keep one at my house and donated the other to my parents. Because 21 terabytes is too much to transfer over the Internet (at least until Google fiber comes here,) I manually sync them every so often.

Timemachine (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in What Is Your Offsite Storage Solution? on 2014-05-16 23:10 (#1P6)

Apple made a pretty simple backup device called Timemachine. It is a small ARM computer with a large hard drive and it's own WiFi that you place in a closet, plug in, and pretty much forget about it. Unfortunatly, it's only as "remote" as the WiFi or ethernet signal can travel - so huricanes and such are still a problem.

Re: Caved in! (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Adding DRM to Firefox on 2014-05-14 23:24 (#1ME)

I think TFA does do a pretty good job of describing why they are "caving in." You can look at it as taking a fully non-free system (Flash) and converting it into an fully free and standards-based system (HTML5 video tag) + a much smaller non-free library.

Or in other words, the non-free part got smaller and easier to remove.

ChromeBox (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in The Year of the Chromebook on 2014-05-14 09:20 (#1K0)

I got a $180 ASUS ChromeBox for use as an HTPC. The native video player can play all the bluray quality files that I've tried. Now if I can just figure out how to use a network share (CIFS or NFS) it would be nearly perfect.

I've tried to stream over HTTP using Plex and Synology Video station, but they both insist on transcoding the video. Anyone know of a good video library app that streams the raw source file using the HTML5 <video> tag? I created my own php project as a test to make sure it worked, but surely there are premade apps for this purpose.

Indiegogo (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in The intelligent roadway on 2014-05-14 02:53 (#1JW)

built by Indiegogo
Indiegogo is a crowdfunding site (like Kickstarter) The devices would be built by the "Solar Roadways" people.

Re: Is it of decent quality? (Score: 2)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Solar Panels Added to White House Roof on 2014-05-13 19:53 (#1JV)

Ill be putting solar panels on my place next year too
I would recommend any homeowner do this. It is one of the best investments I have made to my house, and you have to love getting a negative electricity bill every month. Forever.

Re: Awesome!! (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in WYSIWYG Editor on 2014-05-13 10:35 (#1HY)

Its from: http://ckeditor.com/

My Solar Panel System (Score: 2, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Solar Panels Added to White House Roof on 2014-05-13 02:32 (#1HV)

For comparison, my own house has a 7.685 kW photovoltaic system.

Noticeably fewer security guards, though.

Re: Does Chromium even qualify as a distro? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Best desktop Linux distribution: on 2014-05-12 19:28 (#1HJ)

I recently got an ASUS ChromeBox to play with and was quite impressed. It satisfies a growing number of use cases and may finally enable the elusive "year of the Linux desktop."
  • Instant On
  • Zero software maintenance (apps synced cross device, no antivirus needed, nearly invisible upgrades)
  • Zero hardware maintenance (no hardware upgrades needed, nothing stored on disk)
ChromeOS is still missing one crucial feature: Access to local network filesystems (cifs or nfs) - If they add this, they will win.

Re: Instanteously pushed to front page? (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Saving Nintendo the Ars way on 2014-05-12 18:24 (#1HH)

Three hours and 5 mins; but still pretty quick :P

Some sales numbers for Nintento:
  • Wii: 7 million
  • Wii U: 4 million
  • 3DS: 15 million
  • GameCube: 7 million

Rules of Acquisition (Score: 2, Funny)

by bryan@pipedot.org in How materialism makes us sad on 2014-05-08 17:12 (#1G6)

A man is only worth the sum of his possessions
-Krem

Re: Gah! (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Social Networking Enters the Age of Angst on 2014-05-06 09:03 (#1E0)

The comment preview now shows an abbreviated tree (the comment + it's direct decedents.)

Click the story link for the full tree (obviously.)

Virtual Email (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Pipecode source released on 2014-05-06 08:51 (#1DZ)

The in-site virtual email is, for the moment, not connected to the traditional SMTP/POP3/IMAP mail protocols of the Internet. Instead, it is a mechanism to allow users to send each other private messages without giving away their "real" email address. It also allows the system to send you a notice when, for example, you get a comment reply.

Although I did create a tie-in of the system to my "real" Dovecot/Postfix email server, I have left it disabled for now. Potential problems of such a system include:
  • Incomming Spam - real email addresses get lots of spam and, although my system piped the messages through SpamAssassin, some messages would still get through and cause some inconvenience
  • Outgoing Spam - controls and limits would need to be made to prevent users from sending spam and adding to the global spam problem
  • Heavyweight Service - Each user connected to IMAP creates a new Dovecot process. If several hundred users all set their mobile phone apps and desktop clients to use the IMAP service, my poor little mail server would experience some real resource limits.

Re: License (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Pipecode source released on 2014-05-05 19:50 (#1DA)

Wordpress , Drupal , MediaWiki , Joomla , PhpBB , MODX , and PHP-Nuke all chose vanilla GPL. MyBB is LGPL.

Re: Did pipedot's pipe just get spammed? (Score: 5, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Pipecode source released on 2014-05-05 17:43 (#1D8)

Added anonymous viewing of bugs.

Zomg, was this a bug in the bug tracker? Maybe I need another bug tracker to track bugs in the first bug tracker. I guess the GitHub page has an "issue" section too. Soylent is simply using the GitHub version.

Re: Mass Deletion (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in article submission is unprotected on 2014-05-05 17:25 (#1D5)

Captcha added to the submit page.

Re: Thanks (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Pipecode source released on 2014-05-05 17:22 (#1D4)

Likely an optional subscription (around a dollar per month or so.)

As a reward, subscribers would get certain "heavy" features activated like an IMAP email account and extra storage for the blog.

Re: Did pipedot's pipe just get spammed? (Score: 4, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Pipecode source released on 2014-05-05 17:17 (#1D3)

Captcha added to submit page. Damn spammers.

Re: Gah! (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Social Networking Enters the Age of Angst on 2014-05-05 08:37 (#1CF)

can it be given a "parent" link, and the option to see its whole subtree?
Ya, I've been meaning to add that.

Reading your old code (Score: 3, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Programming ruining my memory? on 2014-05-03 22:23 (#1BT)

It's even worse when you look at something you did 5 years ago. Kind of a What the heck was I thinking when I wrote this crap. type thing.

Re: ISS Tracker (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Live Video Feed of Earth From Space on 2014-05-03 00:28 (#1BF)

I was wondering why the video was completely black. The first time I clicked the link, I thought it was just a fubar'd plugin or scripting problem.

Re: Unable to login (Score: 2, Funny)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Rank your trust in the following sites: on 2014-05-01 12:23 (#1A0)

Clear your cookie.

Re: Good Editing (Score: 2, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Skype Gives In: Group Video Chat Now Free, Like Hangouts on 2014-04-29 19:50 (#196)

Indeed. I'm very grateful and would like to thank these editors. A quick look at the submission history shows a good overview of who all is helping to edit and publish articles. (Hint: it's not me :P)

Re: CAPCHA (Score: 2, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Borda Count on 2014-04-28 19:19 (#183)

Although I looked at a number of different CAPTCHA systems, including rolling my own, I ended up going with http://textcaptcha.com/

It's simple to implement, accessible (blind people, etc), and much easier than reading a fuzzy/garbled image. :)

Re: Anonymous Cow Herds Can't Vote (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in Borda Count on 2014-04-28 14:10 (#17P)

The linked wikipedia article goes into great detail (with samples!) of how points are given. There is also a rather large "voting methods" section in wikipedia that give sample ballots of actual elections. I did find it odd that the name-vote from Soylent had the order swapped. In every ballot on wikipedia, "1" is always the highest priority.
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