beltorak 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Why Are Some People So Intent On Making Netflix More Like Traditional TV?

    beltorak ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 12:18pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    I can probably help answer this with my vast store of rampant speculation.

    TV Shows are for the most part created with the understanding of needing to support advertisement slots. They script, direct, and shoot around these blocks of times just like you work around a physical pillar. So plot developments and scene changes are broken into these time boundaries, like acts in a play. Some shows try to stretch a dramatic moment over the commercial break, so you leave with a closeup of someone's puzzled mug, and come back to the exact same spot in time. (Some shows have also adapted to this in the extreme by replaying a few moments before the ad breaks; then there are shows that rewrite history during the replay... but ignore those for now.)

    Now we throw in consumer devices that were created to automatically skip ads in recorded shows. It has to have some way of detecting these ads (if it is to be worth a damn), and to do that it probably uses some measure of the signal that indicates the commercial video is not "native" to the show. Perhaps it will detect an excessive number of black frames with zero audio, or an audio base frequency shift, or the picture colorspace is different. (I have no idea how Dish's Hopper works btw. rampant speculation.)

    To combat this (consumers are not seeing our ads! o the horror!) the show producers and ad networks try to make the ads feel like as much a part of the show as possible, at least as far as being able to fool the software.

    So the hulu devs have a couple of easy choices. They can just automatically insert ads at certain time markers (offset a bit to avoid splitting any contiguous voice patterns), or they can try to find a scene break where the background is drastically different. Or (as I don't watch hulu either) they can go the extremely cheap route and just put ads in at 18:00, 28:00, 38:00, and 48:00....

    Slightly off topic, even though I don't watch a lot of TV anymore (or movies really), I am occasionally blasted with a thought while watching a movie - you know the cognitive-emotional roller coaster you go through when a great movie is adapted to a crappy cable network and they shoehorn the ad break into the last part and it completely destroys the flow of the plot's tension? Yeah, at those moments I am thinking "this is exactly where Lifetime will put 5 minutes of ads"... and it has the exact same effect of pulling me out of the movie for a bit.

  • On the post: Google Denies Narrow Warrant Request For Emails; Government Responds By Asking For Everything Ever

    beltorak ( profile ), 12 Mar, 2015 @ 10:33am

    Re: Get a foreign email account

    I think there's a very good chance that in the MS-Ireland case the person in question is not a US citizen. MS made the analogy that it would be like Ireland issuing a request for a US citizen's emails from servers on US soil.

    But you also have to watch what country your emails are in. For example, Australia has gone full retard, which upsets me because I've already paid for my fastmail account; but regardless I'll be switching to runbox soon.

  • On the post: Google Denies Narrow Warrant Request For Emails; Government Responds By Asking For Everything Ever

    beltorak ( profile ), 12 Mar, 2015 @ 06:25am

    if only it worked like this for the public

    Isn't this the same thing that ended up shutting down Ladar Levinson's lavamail? "Oh, you can't tap a single email address? then just give us the keys to all your encryption. We promise not to look at anything we shouldn't...."

    Shame it doesn't work like that in the other direction;

    Because it would take too long to find the specific documents covered under this FOI request, we now request all documents in your department. We promise not to look at any documents not covered under the FOI request. Honest.

  • On the post: Is America About To Experience The Billion-Dollar Pain Of Corporate Sovereignty First Hand?

    beltorak ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2015 @ 06:55am

    > The reality is that ISDS does not and cannot require countries to change any law or regulation.

    This, from the same people who profess that the threat of the possibility of 50 years behind bars in no way forces someone to plead guilty to a crime they didn't commit.

    This, from the same people who profess that the threat of a fire wiping out a place of business in no way forces a business person into buying "fire protection" from Ma's Boys.

    This, from the same people who believe that the threat of some innocuous series of events being strung together to make anyone *look* guilty of anything in no way forces someone into modifying their behavior, making them less free.

    This, from the same people who believe that the threat of having their unpopular proclivities and activities exposed to those that have power over them in no way forces someone to modify their speech, thereby making us all less free.

    This, is about what I expect from them these days.

  • On the post: Have You Been Debating What Color Some Random Dress Is All Day? Thank Fair Use

    beltorak ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2015 @ 09:13pm

    Re:

    I think you are selling this example short. It is something that a lot people have had direct exposure to. Normally when you start a discussion on fair use, you have to fill in back story, when the work was created, the copyright it falls under, what fair use allows, and how some example is fair use.

    With this you can side step all of that and just point out that technically the photograph is under copyright, but fair use allows all these articles to be written with the original and remixed images, immediately - no waiting for some gatekeeper to give each and every newsie, blogger, and facebooker permission to make their point. Take out all the pics and the articles would be very hard to follow - you would have to go back to the original pic, and could only imagine the photo manipulations.

  • On the post: Have You Been Debating What Color Some Random Dress Is All Day? Thank Fair Use

    beltorak ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2015 @ 09:02pm

    Re: Re: Re: The answer is photography

    a while ago this one also made the rounds; it is my favorite. No matter how much I tell myself that the labeled squares are the same shade of gray, my mind automatically "corrects" it to what it should be.

  • On the post: Have You Been Debating What Color Some Random Dress Is All Day? Thank Fair Use

    beltorak ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2015 @ 08:57pm

    Re:

    gah; i replied to the wrong person :-/ sigh

    yeah, it seems to be the perfect combination of color acuity and "the mind making shit up" (or, "correcting what you see to align with what you know should be true").

    I bet this image also drives you up the wall....

  • On the post: Have You Been Debating What Color Some Random Dress Is All Day? Thank Fair Use

    beltorak ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2015 @ 08:53pm

    Re: Magic is real !

    yeah, it seems to be the perfect combination of color acuity and "the mind making shit up" (or, "correcting what you see to align with what you know should be true").

    I bet this image also drives you up the wall....

  • On the post: Here's 140 Fully-Redacted Pages Explaining How Much Snowden's Leaks Have Harmed The Nation's Security

    beltorak ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2015 @ 01:30pm

    Re: Speaking of wasted ink...

    make sure to tape the papers in a loop so they have enough copies to get to all the relevant people. start on a friday evening so they have ample time over the weekend to work on it.

    see black faxes (time code 6:50)

    (no, don't really do that)

    ((jeez, do i really have to put that to cover my ass in case i get swept up in some surveillance net??))

  • On the post: Study After Study Shows The DHS Has An Intense Morale Problem That Can Apparently Only Be Solved By Study After Study

    beltorak ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2015 @ 07:03pm

    Re:

    sounds like you are describing a government agency that's too big to bail on.... sad times....

  • On the post: FedEx Refuses To Ship Perfectly Legal Milling Machine (Which Can Also Craft Gun Parts), Can't Provide A Coherent Reason Why

    beltorak ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2015 @ 01:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bad article mistake

    I think you have the right of it. I would like to point out however that the CYA approach only seems reasonable because this legal tort domain in These Modern United States is batshit crazy. It's purely a defensive move on FedEx's part.

    Just like PayPal cancelling a business person's account because someone made a payment to them with a joke of a memo "for cocaine".

    Yes, it's the same stupid that gives rise to "zero tolerance" policies, and yes, FedEx would undoubtedly be on the receiving end of a lawsuit for exercising common sense.

  • On the post: As Blurred Lines Trial Starts, Take A Listen To The Special 'Copyright Only' Remix That Jurors Will Hear

    beltorak ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2015 @ 12:56pm

    Re:

    well computers can't hold copyrights so that won't be a big deal. computers can probably infringe on copyrights tho, and in causing untold trillions of dollars of global economic damage because copyright infringement will probably lead the computer to be summarily executed on the spot.

  • On the post: Virginia Lawmakers Attempting To Reform State's Asset Forfeiture Debacle By Pushing For A Conviction Requirement

    beltorak ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2015 @ 11:44am

    Re: Re: Random Idea From Brit

    this is it exactly. if the people in power were in any way intellectually honest or even consistent, it would be a different story.

    But in These Modern United States: citizens are people who have rights (insofar as they are granted them anyway) and responsibilities (that are imposed on them); corporations (that in many senses "own" citizens) are people that have rights but no responsibilities; and property (that citizens own and are empowered by) have responsibilities but no rights.

    How fucked up is that?

  • On the post: Virginia Lawmakers Attempting To Reform State's Asset Forfeiture Debacle By Pushing For A Conviction Requirement

    beltorak ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2015 @ 11:42am

    Re: Disagree about minimum standard

    Yes absolutely; the property should be restored to the owner, unless the owner is found guilty for the crime under which the property was seized. None of this "seize for drugs, bust for prostitution, keep the car" bullshit. In fact this should be exactly what the 4th amendment covers. Anything else is (IMHO) an unreasonable seizure. (It should go without saying that seizure of the property should be a reasonable punishment for the crime to begin with.)

  • On the post: Superfish Keeps Digging Deeper And Deeper Hole: Still Refuses To Acknowledge Seriousness Of What Its Software Did

    beltorak ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2015 @ 04:35pm

    and we thought technologically clueless lawmakers were the only bad thing we had to worry about

    Yes, it's Komodia (which Superfish doesn't name) who appears to have done this, but it's Superfish who decided to use Komodia's braindead stupid method of breaking HTTPS. Yes, you tested it, but your tests suck if you didn't spot this kind of security mess.


    This goes beyond calling out that their tests suck. Maybe their tests do not. How many laptop provisioners have a line item in their test suite "does not expose user to massive MitM"? Probably none (arguments can be made that they should....)

    This is purely and simply "technology and security cluelessness" in spades.

    Because any halfway decent laptop provisioner should know the end result of what they are purchasing from their subcontractors. Even hearing a high level, 30,000 feet description of the process ("we inject ads into shopping sites for you by decrypting web sites and reencrypting it so the user doesn't notice") would have had any halfway competent neuron exposed to the security disasters in recent years lighting up like a distress flair. This conversation absolutely should have happened between superfish and komodia, or lenovo and superfish.

    Being this ignorant of technology and security, for lawmakers and provisioners alike, is flat out unacceptable.

  • On the post: Russia Reaches The Censorship Endgame: Banning VPNs, Tor And Web Proxies

    beltorak ( profile ), 17 Feb, 2015 @ 12:54pm

    Re:

    they won't outright ban it in the US; they'll just mandate IPSEC with DUAL_EC_DRBG.

  • On the post: How The Great Firewall Of China Caused A DDOS Attack In France

    beltorak ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2015 @ 07:38pm

    Re: Interesting choice

    I find it fascinating that China chooses to reply to requests for blocked domains by returning falsified results. That alone should be ground to get their DNS servers banned from the system until they fix the problem.

    Wouldn't that mean that anyone from the outside would not be able to resolve hostnames that are theirs to point to? It also wouldn't help the fact that everyone on the inside is likely using those DNS servers by default.

    > I wonder why they don't reply to those requests in the correct way: by saying that they can't resolve the domain name? Or why they don't do it like the US does it: reply with the address to a server that displays a big ol' "you're breaking the law!" message?

    That would be too straight forward; by sending requestors to a wrong page, they sow confusion among the enemy. "Hey, did you check out that site?" "Yeah, they were selling cute kitten doilies!" It might be a while before they communicate that something is wrong.

  • On the post: Court Rejects EFF's Arguments Over NSA Internet Surveillance

    beltorak ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2015 @ 07:31pm

    Re:

    It is impossible to create a system that cannot be gamed. i believe that follows from Turing and Gödel.

  • On the post: How The Great Firewall Of China Caused A DDOS Attack In France

    beltorak ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2015 @ 07:27pm

    Re: A vaguely similar story...

    saying that config change was on his standard cheat-sheet and he didn't understand why it did that or why we were so upset.

    wow, not only is he clueless but he doesn't understand why you're upset that he's incompetent and taking your money.

  • On the post: Samsung's Smart TVs Are Collecting And Storing Your Private Conversations

    beltorak ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2015 @ 09:42am

    Re:

    at the end of citizenfour, snowden and greenwald were sitting in snowden's living room talking about another leaker; they were writing the sensitive parts down on paper, on a table with a glass top.

    yeah, right back where we started.

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