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Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 12:07 pm
by The Happiness Engine
We've all been worried about how mobile phones are stuffed with sensors that can watch what we watch, hear what we hear, track where we go and note what we do. The evolving world of personal data privacy is based around these not being stored in the vast vaults of big data, keeping them from being grist to the mill of manipulating our digital personas.
But what happens if the phone itself grinds that corn? It may never share a single photograph without your permission, but what if it can look at that photograph and generate precise metadata about what, who, how, when, and where it depicts?
This is an aspect of edge computing that is ahead of the regulators, even those of the EU who want to heavily control things like facial recognition. By the time any such regulation is produced, countless millions of devices will be using it to ostensibly provide safe, private, friendly on-device services that make taking and keeping photographs so much more convenient and fun.
It's going to be very hard to turn that off, and very easy to argue for exemptions that weaken the regs to the point of pointlessness. Especially if the police and security services lobby hard as well, which they will as soon as they realise that this defeats end-to-end encryption without even touching end-to-end encryption.
So yes, Apple's anti-CSAM model is capable of being used without impacting the privacy of the innocent, if it is run exactly as version 1.0 is described. It is also capable of working with the advances elsewhere in technology to break that privacy utterly, without setting off the tripwires of personal protection we're putting in place right now.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:20 pm
by Ice Cream Jonsey
If Steve Jobs were alive, I bet he would be interested in phones telling him which employees were trying to get raises and employment at other tech companies and he wouldn't give a shit about the abuse of kids. We should have listened. :(
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:08 pm
by AArdvark
How did child abuse happen before the internet? The mails, I suppose. The pervolinos will just go back to that.
Or just some kind of dark web stuff that will enctypt a nasty picture inside some other, inoffensive photo. And they wont catch everyone and we'll all suffer privacy loss for it.
THE
NO CHOICES
AARDVARK
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 9:03 am
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Did you guys know that Google Protects Every Search With Encryption? They've only put a toast up every time I have brought forth their stupid page for the last three days to say so!
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:05 pm
by The Happiness Engine
Today I was looking at a linux box and noticed a rather peculiar process backgrounded:
`tail -f /dev/null`
I am not sure what this dev team thought was going to happen but now I know someone typed that in, so now do you.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:46 pm
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Trust no-one!
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 3:30 am
by Casual Observer
You're right, zero trust is the holy grail of cybersecurity.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:00 am
by Ice Cream Jonsey
It's important to me that you know I was just making a joke about being so paranoid that a person tails dev/null to make sure they aren't against them too.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:17 am
by AArdvark
What does that dev null mean?
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:22 am
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Putting anything into the file /dev/null means it just disappears. So if you tried to tail (or: get a running list of stuff in there) you'd never see anything. It be gone.
(You know what? That's my UNRESEARCHED MEMORY; the older I get the less I find I actually know about anything, haha. It would not surprise me if there was a "Well actually" regarding it.)
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 1:41 pm
by The Happiness Engine
ICJ is correct, but a little context:
In Linux, Everything Is A File. Your speaker? A file. The hard disk? A file. An actual file? No psyche, its also a file. The resources being used by a program? All files. It is weird and wonderful.
So under the category of special files is /dev/null. Its contents are Literal Nothing. It's not zero, because that's a different file, /dev/zero, which is just a zero. Nothing can ever be in /dev/null, nothing can ever come out of /dev/null, so looking at it is kind of like staring into a black hole.
P.S. to linux nerds: have a too-large log file but can't restart the process writing to it? `echo < /dev/null > /path/to/large.log` saves the day! I have JUST learned this and need to know why it's not literally printed on the front cover of "Intro to Linux"
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:26 am
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Aardvark and I have talked about how word processors and the like get "finished" but they have a team there and they have to give them something to do.
When they changed pasting in Sheets to CONTAIN formatting by default, I knew they would break "Paste without Formatting" and they have. Many times.
Maybe it's Brave, but I doubt it. Paste without Formatting is once again broken in Sheets. Every spreadsheet seems to eventually default to including the formatting, which is maddening. IT IS A SPREADSHEET. It probably has its own font and size. You could make it a toggle or you could make pasting with formatting the thing with the weird key combo.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:34 am
by pinback
The Happiness Engine wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 1:41 pm
P.S. to linux nerds: have a too-large log file but can't restart the process writing to it? `echo < /dev/null > /path/to/large.log` saves the day! I have JUST learned this and need to know why it's not literally printed on the front cover of "Intro to Linux"
I've done this, but just...
echo "" > largefile.log
Didn't occur to me to use /dev/null.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:12 pm
by The Happiness Engine
Less typing, that's better.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:14 pm
by pinback
Not as cool though.
"I just echoed an empty string to it."
"I just echoed the fuckin' opposite of existence to it, motherfucker."
Stackoverflow would prefer your method.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 1:50 am
by RealNC
pinback wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:34 am
I've done this, but just...
echo "" > largefile.log
Cool kids use:
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:33 am
by Tdarcos
pinback wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:14 pm
Not as cool though.
"I just echoed an empty string to it."
"I just echoed the fuckin'
opposite of existence to it, motherfucker."
Stackoverflow would prefer your method.
Programmers prefer precise solutions to hacks. While the other way might work, it depends on quirks in the shell (by 'quirks' I mean the general features and behavior) which if someone develops an 'improved' shell that changes that behavior - and programmers love to change things, they're like engineers in
Star Trek - the /dev/null method will work and the other might not.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2021 4:06 pm
by The Happiness Engine
chars=( 4C 4F 4C ); for c in ${chars[@]}; do printf "%b" "\x${c}"; done; printf "\n"
I did.
Also there is no possible change to any shell that has ever existed that would break any of these methods.
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:25 am
by Tdarcos
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 9:03 am
Did you guys know that Google Protects Every Search With Encryption? They've only put a toast up every time I have brought forth their stupid page for the last three days to say so!
Whoop tee do! Ever since that company (Let's Crypt?) that got its issuer certificate into the chain recognized by all major browsers, and offered sites free SSL certificates,
everyone can offer encrypted connections. Even Jolt Country does! Notice this page's web address starts with HTTPS://
"Jolt Country: where your pointless blatherings are fully protected by 256-bit encryption!"
Re: Great Moments in Computer Programming
Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 6:40 pm
by Casual Observer
OK, I'm just about at my wits end with Google Chrome and am thinking about uninstalling. The only thing holding me back are all the damn passwords it's stored for me that I will have to go back and recover. That and my integrations to salesforce, apollo.io, zoominfo, seamless.ai, and getemail.io, etc.
Chrome has always been a resource hog, we all have known this for years. Now, on my machine, Chrome is doing something I didn't know was even possible. It's periodically freezing, not just itself but certain functions for the whole computer. Magically, with no warning, Chrome tabs just stop working, period. At the same time, some functions on the current webpage work while others do not. Ok, that's one thing. A whole other thing is it stops me from changing applications. I can't go to word, I can't open powerpoint, all I can do is some of whatever is facing me in my browser right now. The only solution is the old three finger salute, restart Chrome and then recover pages. This is happening 3 - 4 times per day now.
Has anyone ever heard of this?
Is this a Virus?
Do I re-install Chrome or say fuck you google. If so, what's the best browser to use nowadays? I assume Edge isn't it. I hear Firefox has been chugging along all this time, is that any good now?