nerd bert 's Techdirt Comments
Latest Comments (79)
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On the post: How The DMCA's Digital Locks Provision Allowed A Company To Delete A URL From Adblock Lists
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On the post: Court Rejects Cell Site RF Signal Map In Murder Trial Because It's Evidence Of Nothing
nerd bert ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2017 @ 12:59pmRe: Re:
Quite right. I've had to design these chips in a past life and the signal propagation changes are just massive as you move and keeping the main signal constant is a real challenge as the signal changes multiple orders of magnitude as you hit reflections, rain and humidity changes, etc. Unless you were doing real-time analysis directly beside the phone these kinds of analyses are pretty much worthless to pinning down a phone.
The defense expert witness, a Mr. William Folson, had it exactly right: the kind of analysis performed will tell you with somewhat moderately good precision that a certain area may be susceptible to dropped calls (and even then, not always if there's a change in the weather, a truck driving beside you, etc), but unless the wireless company is able to pin down the electronic environment by monitoring multiple simultaneous nearly coincident signals it would be virtually worthless for trying to determine position accurately. There is, after all, good reason we have power-hungry GPS chips in our phones for location information.
About all this "analysis" would be good for is impugning the honesty of a suspect who says he across town at the time. I'm glad the judge listened to the actual technical folks who work on these things rather than the law enforcement types who, frankly, aren't practitioners. It's rare enough to see good science understanding in a judge that I think we should celebrate what he did here. -
On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed
nerd bert ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2017 @ 02:28pmRe: Re: Re: Re:
Shouldn't have told the cop that he was armed...
There is some debate about how Castille should have responded. In most CCW classes in MN (required for a permit), they tell you to say, "Officer, I have a concealed carry permit and I am carrying. How do you wish to proceed?" Then you're told to repeat back the officer's instructions before asking to proceed to follow them. All in all, it's meant to slow down the interaction to allow everyone time to calm down a little and to make sure that each side understands exactly what is to come next. You'll notice that Castille should have mentioned the fact that he had a permit before saying he had a weapon, although in theory Yanez should have known that Castille had a permit if he'd run the plate before the stop. Now, that's how the CCW instructors tell you to handle things, but that's not what the law requires. In Minnesota you are not required to tell the cop you're carrying unless the cop asks first at which point you are required to answer honestly. So there is a great deal of discussion on how this should be handled, and one of the problems is that despite requests from MN gun owners, Gov. Dayton(D) has refused to come up with a protocol on how CCW carriers should respond when stopped by police. That is contributory to the mess here. It would be awfully nice to get a standard so that cops could be trained in how to respond appropriately. Now, on a personal level, I think I can say that Yanez has no business being a cop and was very lucky to have skated as he did. How he handled things was just wrong, and he doesn't seem level headed enough to be trusted with a weapon. Even the NRA can agree with that, as you can see from Colin Noir's epic rant on what a disgrace this whole situation was from the point of view of a black man, lawyer and NRA commentator. The problem being, even if you believe that Yanez was a fool and morally deserved to be convicted, it can be hard to overcome the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt" in a case like this, as Noir points out, no matter how much you might dislike the fact that Yanez was acquitted. -
On the post: Sorry East Texas: Supreme Court Slams The Door On Patent Jurisdiction Shopping
nerd bert ( profile ), 23 May, 2017 @ 06:43amRe: In the name of the Corp., for the Corp., and by the Corp. and keep the peons paying.
But as the article points out, Delaware is now becoming even more troll friendly than East Texas. How will companies incorporated in Delaware react to that fact? I really suspect that you will now see jurisdiction shopping -- but on the part of companies seeking protection from patent trolls. Given Delaware's current configuration of laws and patent-troll friendliness, I expect to see some pushback on Delaware legislators from companies or an exodus of companies, especially tech companies, incorporated there.
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On the post: New Tools Allow Voice Patterns To Be Cloned To Produce Realistic But Fake Sounds Of Anyone Saying Anything
nerd bert ( profile ), 03 May, 2017 @ 08:30amRe:
Some folks view this with doom and gloom.
I, on the other hand, welcome this new technology!
"Honey, I never said THAT! You aren't remembering our conversation correctly. Here, let me play the recording I made of it." -
On the post: Prosecutors Have Pulled Data From More Than 100 Phones Seized From Inauguration Day Protesters
nerd bert ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2017 @ 12:04amRe: Re: LOTR Warrant
Please read the article, it states:
More than 100 phones taken from arrested Inauguration Day protesters have had their data exfiltrated...
It's not merely being in downtown DC, it's being arrested for being involved in an act that is being criminally prosecuted. If you were arrested at the scene of a burglary would you expect your phone to be searched? I sure would. As I guy who works on chips, I'll say this: unless your passcode is actually a passphrase and a long one at that, even perfect encryption software won't protect you if the phone is in my possession. Give me access to the hardware and I can almost certainly bring some industry standard tools to bear and read the data off the chips. (Yes, Apple does blow the JTAG fuse, but I can rebuild it and read all the data off the memory chips with some fancy but standard machines, just as an example.) Not that given the state of software today that I'd expect you'd need to go to those lengths, but they are available if you don't have a software crack in your back pocket and you have deep (government) pockets. -
On the post: Welfare Agency Responds To Criticism By Feeding Complainant's Personal Info To Obliging Journalist
nerd bert ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2017 @ 07:38amRe: incompetant government
Incompetence? Probably. But it's also a sign of how screwed up civil service rules are that you can't fire folks for this kind of screw up. And the lack of accountability leads them to a sense of divine lordship over the hoi polloi; government goes from serving the people to ruling the people.
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On the post: 'Fake News' Now Means Whatever People Want It To Mean, And Legislating It Away Is A Slippery Slope Toward Censorship
nerd bert ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2017 @ 12:36amRe: Re: All news is fake if you know what you're talking about
If you want the perfect example of your own bias, there's nothing more dangerous in this world than a software developer with a soldering iron.
And of course, you missed the point completely. You understand a subject well. You see how well reporters cover that subject. You see how well their background has enabled them to cover things completely out of their competence. And you even begin to trust them to cover something arguably more complex than a software bug? Just what are you smoking?! -
On the post: 'Fake News' Now Means Whatever People Want It To Mean, And Legislating It Away Is A Slippery Slope Toward Censorship
nerd bert ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2017 @ 08:57amAll news is fake if you know what you're talking about
We're mostly technical folks here, and we've read the results of reporters trying to cover topics we know well. So why the heck do any of you trust them on anything as large and complicated and uncertain as the effects of economic policy? Of social policy? Of health policy?
The first rule of trusting a reporter is to remember that they're the folks who were too incompetent to become English majors. Sure, there are a few who have learned enough to cover a particular subject well, but 99% of them give the other 1% a bad name. -
On the post: Apple Says Nebraska Will Become A 'Mecca For Hackers' If Right To Repair Bill Passes
nerd bert ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2017 @ 06:54amJohn Deere to the rescue!
Who would have thought that John Deere, of all companies, would be poster child of companies that would deny you the right to actually own and do with what you want for something you've purchased?
In a completely honest way, I'm glad that we've got a non-tech company that's taken point on this. It makes it much easier to explain to the neighbors why they should care about this issue by telling them that they can't service their lawn tractor anymore if John Deere gets its way. -
On the post: Court Orders Small Ohio Speed Trap Town To Refund $3 Million In Unconstitutional Speeding Tickets
nerd bert ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2017 @ 08:47amRe: No need to screw the residents
It should come out of the town officials' pockets, but ever heard of insurance? It's far more likely that the town will go to its insurance policy, the insurance company will fight them over the minor fact that this unconstitutional and then settle for a partial payment, at which point the town's denizens will owe something, but not everything.
I've lived in a few states, but I'd have to say that Ohio probably has higher proportion of towns that exist solely to be speedtraps than most states. -
On the post: Landmark Court Decision Means Canada Has Now Joined The 'Right To Be Forgotten Globally' Club
nerd bert ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2017 @ 08:51amRe: This ruling sounds more like...
At least the court isn't demanding that Google delete the links. It's requesting it, which is a far different thing and something and honestly, not a bad path for them to follow. Compare that with how France does its right-to-be-forgotten cases.
Still, I have to admit going to some of the indexes that curate RTBF cases just to see what's "forgotten" so I suspect that the Streisand effect is more prevalent than most petitioners think. -
On the post: GOP Senate Streisands Elizabeth Warren And Coretta King In Attempt To Silence Her
nerd bert ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2017 @ 08:38amRe: She was warned and she persisted
McConnell has been around long enough to have some political savvy. This is a rookie's mistake.
Maybe, maybe not. Wikileaks showed that the DNC did all it could to get Trump the GOP nomination figuring that nobody would vote for such a buffoon as part of their "deep strategy." McConnell is viewed by both sides as very politically savvy, so he may well be trying to make someone who is under 50% reelection preference in MA the national face of the Democrats in a similar strategy. As HRC found out, choosing what you think is your weakest opponent isn't always a winning strategy.
But it should be noted that quoting King was not her downfall as others have done that in Sessions' hearings. Her reason for this rebuke was that she said she shared the same views about Sessions, which was what crossed the line. The whole rule is there after fistfights broke out in previous sessions over these kinds of insults.
You get a bunch of power hungry narcissists together and what do think is going to happen? Expecting politicians to behave themselves is worse than herding cats. -
On the post: Lock Them Up! Trump Staff Still Using Private Republican National Committee Email Accounts
nerd bert ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2017 @ 02:47pmRe:
Nah, all politicians are the devils....
If we could actually trust them to create a true Chinese Wall between their public and private emails, I'd be fine with them having two accounts. The problem arises when you have to trust someone like Clinton who turned over all her emails except her "yoga lessons and wedding plans." Right... 35K plans and yoga appointments... You interested in this Cloth-or-Something I've got for sale?
If you trust any salesman you deserve what you get, and politicians are salesmen at their core. -
On the post: Do You Want A Police State? Because This Is How You Get A Police State
nerd bert ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2017 @ 09:46amRe: Not your ordinary wrong, fractally wrong
One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community.
We have the right to live in a safe community. We have the right to healthcare. We have the right to be forgotten. We have the right to choose a bathroom based on our mental state. We have a right to be safe from hot coffee spilling on our crotches when we put coffee cups between our legs.
When you expand your definition of "fundamental rights" to include anything that you think would be nice, you expect consistency from politicians as to what are "fundamental rights"? Seriously folks, much of this discussion of "rights" has been corrupted from overexpansion. You might as well call yourself a computer programmer because you managed to sum a column of numbers in Excel. -
On the post: Law Enforcement Has Been Using OnStar, SiriusXM, To Eavesdrop, Track Car Locations For More Than 15 Years
nerd bert ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2017 @ 08:51amRe: Re: Re:
Similarly, your fridge will probably last 20 years, but the "smart" part of it will be obsolete, or unsupported in 3 to 5 years.
You haven't bought a modern fridge have you? Between the high speed compressors and the reliability of modern capacitors 20 years is a pipe dream. (FWIW, the NAHB reports that the average lifetime of new fridges in the last 30 years has declined to under 13 years.) -
On the post: Vice Joins Trend Of Killing News Comments Because Giving A Damn About Your Site's Community Is Just Too Hard
nerd bert ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2016 @ 09:54amRe:
It's quite amusing to note the sites that are dropping comments. NPR, while one of my favorite outlets, isn't exactly fair and balanced in its reporting and was called out quite often by conservatives for both implicit and explicit bias.
Similarly, BusinessInsider dropped comments this year the day after Trump's election. Their editorial staff was, again, very biased towards one ideology in their writings and many of their readers put some unwelcome corrections and different viewpoints to their stories, so their dropping comments the day after the election wasn't terribly surprising.
I've basically stopped visiting both sites after their change.
I believe that in general, the sites that are dropping comments tend to be those with a more partisan take on events, and they also tend to be the ones least willing to actually discuss the evidence and more insistent on lecturing their audience. The art of disagreeing and discussing without denigration is dying and more's the shame. -
On the post: Washington Post Columnist: If This Democracy Is Going To Stay Healthy, We Need To Start Trusting The FBI More
nerd bert ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2016 @ 11:11amRe: Icon status of the FBI is irrelevant.
Actually, the status of icon is relevant.
The DoJ is the boss of the FBI. The DoJ is run by a political appointee and, frankly, is responsive to politicians. The FBI is supposed to be an independent investigative body. When the FBI ventures into the political arena, it is expected that the Attorney General will take the heat of the decisions, good or bad, and allow the FBI internally to avoid the political repercussions both internally and externally.
That's when everything works well. But when you have an idiot AG like we do, who shows exceptional stupidity and meets with the spouse of someone under criminal investigation in a private one-on-one meeting bad things happen. That so offends sensibility that AG in this case has to publicly recuse herself of the responsibility of making the decision on whether to prosecute, in a highly charged political case.
That leaves the FBI chief in a terrible position of having to play politics directly. And with a direct report into the DoJ of someone who is intimately linked to the chief of the investigation's campaign chair.
Like it or not, Comey was screwed, and screwed hard, by Lynch's behavior. He knew what he had to find, and he knew that there would be bad blood inside the FBI no matter what his decision. Agents close to investigations nearly always believe the worst of their subjects, so there would a hard core of those who supported criminal charges. But there was another core who didn't believe they were warranted. And Comey had to take the heat directly, meaning both sides would leak like crazy if they weren't satisfied.
So yes, the image of the FBI has been hit. There's massive internal damage as the veneer of non-political status has been ripped away by Comey making a political decision in the most half-hearted, idiotic way possible (she broke the law, but she didn't mean it?! who makes that kind of decision?). The internal FBI damage is Lynch's responsibility for putting Comey into this situation.
The FBI could have maintained an internal illusion of non-political status if Comey had wimped out and said that there was enough evidence for grand jury. But Comey picked the worst of all possible paths available post-Lynch and has damaged any chance the next president has of uniting the country, has damaged the FBI internally, has brought open politics into an agency that should never have politics govern its actions, and has screwed this country massively for some time to come. -
On the post: Arkansas Congressman Who Helped Protect Citizens' Right To Record Police Arrested For Recording Police
nerd bert ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2016 @ 07:12amRe: updates
So in other words, Walker's sidekick disobeyed the law and got arrested, while Walker obeyed the law and got arrested. The difference being that the cops had to apologize and release Walker, while they still got to charge the sidekick.
All in all, this is a learning experience for the cops and the sidekick.
And as for ""His main purpose was to be arrested." I think that's great! He's making a point on a law that he sponsored and it's rare to see a politician getting that involved in an issue. Normally they're so mealy mouthed that they're unwilling to take a stand, especially one for freedom and the accountability of authority (i.e. the cops).
I guess it's the cynic in me in suspecting that since the election is only weeks away Walker didn't mind the additional publicity. But I'll squelch those thoughts since I approve of what he did. -
On the post: Trump Campaign Threatens To Sue NY Times For Sharing His 1995 Tax Returns
nerd bert ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2016 @ 07:02amRe:
The First Amendment doesn't mean that the press isn't free to shoot itself in the foot. Gawker won on invasion of privacy under a state law, and it seems that the NYT is vulnerable on similar grounds.
I'm not sure who I'm cheering for here. I like transparency, but at some point people deserve some privacy, even at the level of the Presidency. "It's just sex and everyone lies about that" was Clinton's excuse that got him off impeachment, but he still lost his license and was disbarred because he made that lie in a court filing and to me that was the appropriate punishment. It may be that the NYT is doing the public a favor about pointing out Trump's use of tax loopholes (although I will point out Clinton has used the same loophole), but in doing so it may well face serious consequences and I'm ok with that.
An independent California would be even more dependent on tech money
If you believe that Kali would enact laws less likely to protect their tech companies than the US in general, I have a bridge to sell you.