Category Archives: Business

Business, Law, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Google

3 Comments

Oh, yes, we can totally trust the company:

Yes, Chromium is bypassing the entire source code auditing process by downloading a pre-built black box onto people’s computers. But that’s not something we care about, really. We’re concerned with building Google Chrome, the product from Google. As part of that, we provide the source code for others to package if they like. Anybody who uses our code for their own purpose takes responsibility for it. When this happens in a Debian installation, it is not Google Chrome’s behavior, this is Debian Chromium’s behavior. It’s Debian’s responsibility entirely.

Yes, we deliberately hid this listening module from the users, but that’s because we consider this behavior to be part of the basic Google Chrome experience. We don’t want to show all modules that we install ourselves.

If you think this is an excusable and responsible statement, raise your hand now.

Nothing evil about that at all. Nope.

I wonder if they’re pulling this stunt on the Fedora packages as well?

I don’t normally have a camera on my desktop, or a mike plugged in. I keep the camera taped on my laptop. Not sure if I can physically disable the mike, though.

[Update a while later]

I apologize for any confusion. The “quote” above is not a literal one. I just put it in quotes to distinguish from the blogger’s own commentary. It is his paraphrase of what Google says. I’ve changed it to italics.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

John McCain

8 Comments

In which he is an idiot (sorry, behind a paywall):

The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Tuesday downplayed the potential national security significance of NASA
continuing payments to Russia to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

“I have a much bigger problem with the Russian rocket engine,” Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters at the Capitol. “I don’t see what the impact is, financially, of the Russian riding as compared with $300 million worth of rocket engines. There’s no comparison.”

But this is what I found interesting:

McCain’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), told reporters Tuesday that U.S. dependence on Russia for space-related items is a national security issue. But Thornberry also said the challenge with paying for Russian rides to ISS is much like the RD-180 scenario: one faced with limited options.

“It ought to be a lesson for all of us about letting key capability atrophy and becoming dependent upon somebody else whose reliability can be called into question,” Thornberry said. “That doesn’t mean you snap your fingers and solve it any more than you snap your fingers and solve the Russian engine issue.”

Actually, we could. All we have to do is be more accepting of astronaut risk.