Can we get internet connection underwater (wifi). I need to know that

It seems that they go onto someone's ostensibly free WiFi and the malware happens.

Not sure how or why; browser based?
Roger

#1) It's called fear-mongering and the media loves it
#2) There are various exploits available to intercept wireless communications.
#3) New computers are set up for the lay-person who doesn't know the first thing about security and thus has many security features turned off.
#4) It's EASY to spoof 802.11 WiFi access points and act as a man-in-the-middle
#5) 3G/4G are not very secure protocols and are similar to 802.11/802.16
#6) I really doubt there are legions of hackers standing at the ready to take all UR DATAZ. These are most certainly automated attacks.
#7) Apple computers suck bloated donkey balls.

Too little detail in this story, they never specify what kind of "hack" this is. My bet is on wifi hotspots set up by the hackers, which means you have to take the bait first, in order to be "hacked". In reality, when you log on to some complete stranger's wifi, you're basically saying "you're welcome to steal anything from me". Never, ever log on to a wifi-network you know nothing about. of course, this simple piece of good advice isnt as sexy as a "HACKERS WILL HACK YOU!!" headline

really need more details about this... When they had brand new devices, does that mean they were un-patched for known security holes? Or are all these exploits the Russians use unknown, and there are currently no patches, such that a completely patched/updated device is still vulnerable?

Any WiFi captive-portal "login" page could inject known browser exploits into the html - If you use your own MyFi (personal hotspot), and are willing to pay huge for roaming international data, then this form of attack isn't possible.

And the coffee shop owner probably doesn't know that their wireless access point is serving up malicious code. It was either hacked by who they bought it from, or whoever installed it, or by some hacker who went to the shop. But shame on the airport's IT security - if they have official WiFi that was also hacked. (but the criminals might have set up their own wireless and called it "Free Airport WiFi")

Every OS on every device (not just Windows) has security holes, Mac OS X included. The hole gets exploited to allow running some piece of software that the user didn't intend, and that software (malware/virus) collects user data and uploads it back to the criminals servers on the network (these 'data collection' servers are also usually attacked/compromised computers, so they can't be traced directly back to the criminals).

My advice to tourists would be to bring a "dumb" phone for voice calls. (keep bluetooth turned off though) Then you'll remember how great it was to only charge it once a week

I remember when external wifi meant you had this cigarette pack sized box with a USB cable. Now the damn things are smaller than the metal part of the USB end.

No, only if my link drops. Replicate by loading a page, turning off your wifi for a few seconds, or unplugging the cable if you have a wired link, and then try an upvote.

I very rarely load a new featured video from the home page though, I normally browse the unsifted queue and if I do open a promoted one I tend to open it in a new tab.

I think this is fake. Such smooth tracking happens only when there's GPS signal. All cellphones use "AGPS" chips, aka assisted GPS. AGPS requires connectivity to real cell towers to be able to talk to carrier's agps servers. wifi does not work with agps. IF this was taken from a flying plane, you wouldn't see "Verizon" cell connection.

Monsanto has sued individual farmers that have obviously and intentionally preserved seeds from their fields that border Monsanto-bred fields. Even with such a willful and intentional violation, they've never won, and have had to pay all court costs. ZERO farmers have had to pay out-of-pocket because of Monsanto's legislation, despite several admitting to being out-of-bounds.

So, yeah, Monsanto sues people, some are shady, others not, but Monsanto hasn't made a dime, and with a mountain of precedence, it never will... but it does have to sue in order to be seen as "protecting" it's Intellectual Property. I don't think Monsanto is a "Good Guy"... it's a corporation and is only interested in increasing shareholder value.

I'm as liberal as you get, but I'm against GMO legislation without proof that GMO has health concerns. I feel like I'm rather consistent... I don't want to ban weapons, cars, marijuana or smoking unless and until it's been proven through studies to cause death. Weapons, cars and smoking have an inordinate amount of death associated with their use. The chance of a gun accident in a household with guns is INFINITELY higher than one without guns.

Anyways, the point is that there have not been peer-reviewed studies that show that GMO is in any way dangerous. I do believe that corporate-controlled life is dangerous, however.

Keep GMO, get rid of Monsanto. If you're against Monsanto, be against Monsanto... You won't win any battles by going against GMO, as it makes you sound as absurd as creationists, anti-vaxers or wifi-allergists.

I'm sure they'll be hooking up TP with Wifi here shortly

Thanks for all of your kind comments! I managed to get onto a (fast-as-slugs!) proxy to check to see if some of my images had been sneaking through the cracks and... success! You can see my recent 'phonetography' on the tumblr blog I set up. I'll try to post things more as I find time to get to wifi zones. In the mean time, you can see a few recent images from my trip from http://scottricheyphoto.tumblr.com

Let me know what you think.


@zombieater: I didn't know you were from the East Coast. Nice to meet another Maritimer!

@chingalera match.com redirects to a Chinese version of the site. I can read nothing.

Some points:

* No sir, you are completely WRONG about vertical videos, they are hard to watch, and are ridiculous. You not being bothered to hold your phone horizontally is the problem, not people who don't want to watch something where the majority of visual information is in the direction our eyes are not.

* His gripes against Apple are largely correct. I mean, they do prescribe how you must use things and what you must have on your device, but that's not entirely unfair. I mean, it's kind of fair for an OS to be able to expect that certain components just will be there. The camera app, the email app and so on.

* Not being able to remove them from your 'home screens' because Apple doesn't differentiate between a 'desktop' and a list of all installed apps is kind of the problem here. Android has google apps that you can't get rid of unless you root your device and then risk it not working properly. But you don't have to really ever see those apps because you just don't put them on your homescreens.

But in general he's quite correct (except the vertical video thing, he's wrong on that), and it's why I just soooo dislike using apple products in general. I think their hardware is largely nice (although the original iPad lacking a camera at all, then the iPad 2 rocking an amazingly crap one, much in line with the iPhones' original crappy cameras), but when using software to interact with iOS devices I end up going insane. I HATE iTunes, it's insanely restrictive and locked down and... urgh... I dislike not being able to make an iPhone or iPad have nicely clutter free 'desktops' with what I want on them, but am restricted to just rows of icons and folders.

And people flock to them... and ooh and ahh as Apple announce features that have been around for years in other devices and crow about them like they're brand new and amazing. (Facetime anyone? Really, it's been around for yeeeeeaaaars in Australia over the mobile networks, no WiFi needed. And you know what? Pretty much no one uses them. It's as easy as just making a call, except you do it as a video call, but no-one cares, no-one uses it.

And yet Apple launch facetime and everyone goes nuts.

Do you know anyone at all who uses it?

Skype, sure... because when you're at home or office or in a hotel room, that's when you want to be able to talk to someone and see them, and it being on an object on a table works really well... when you're on a phone? Not that many applications.

Although most of them play OK for me, the way they work has changed. Before the change I used to turn off my wifi after, lets say, 1-2 minutes had loaded to avoid using up my bandwidth quota while it loaded the whole darned thing in the background... then I would watch the 1-2 minutes and decide whether to load the rest. If I try that now, as soon as I turn off wifi the whole thing just breaks, no matter how much it thinks it had loaded.

If your connection is the tiniest bit flakey, or under unusual load, this could break things for you that would not have broken with the old loading scheme.

You could consider putting in a bug report, perhaps they'll make the old scheme optional in settings, or just fix the new one?

Reloading the page, then moving the slider to where you were up to, will generally get it going again if it does break. The old trick of clicking the slider just past where it's up to doesn't work as often as it used to.
>> ^notarobot:

Youtube embeds play slow for me too. They chunk along while loading. It's been like that for most videos for me since youtube updated the way that they stream their data a few months back.

Science fiction can justify anything because almost anything IS possible. Suspension of disbelief plays too much into our own environment and timeline -- think about your own life as a stage play 400 years ago and MAYBE you'll consider suspending it a bit more.

His hands glow when he touches a mobile device, so for crying out loud, maybe he has extra signals planted in his brain (via nanotech) to provide additional motor control via WiFi, thus steering the motorcycle with one hand. I just listened to a PhD in bioengineering at Wonder Con say that the idea of creating new signals in the brain for additional limb control is not so far fetched. ("Science in Science Fiction" panel by the authors of this book.)

However, lack of exposition in any shape or form does not work for me -- it's just fantasy at that point. I don't need to be eviscerated by constant exposition, but I need to at least know the ground rules. I felt like this was a subpar combination of Advent Children, the T2 motorcycle chase scene and every Half Life chase scene. More stimulation for my brains PLZ.

(On a side note: BUT! it was good fun and was made to display technical skill, not simply to be judged by a group of non-industry laymen, so upvote because the team who made this has TALENT.)

I really like my Kindle Fire. I am not much into comics, but I did try out a few on the comic reader app that comes with it. It automatically zooms in to each panel in a way that worked for me. I think you can also configure it to just go page by page and choose your own level of zoom. I enjoyed the comics I read, but they're so expensive when you compare them to books at dollars/hour.

My favorite "feature" is the kindle daily deal. You can sign up for this and every day there is a new offer for a book, usually 99 cents. Quite a wide range and I probably buy about a book a week. I'm pretty sure I already have several lifetime supplies of books to read, so I'm good if I'm ever trapped on a desert island that has a power source with standard 110 V plug-in and wifi...