Cop Car's Beat

More from News for Nerds - Bah, Humbug to CAPTCHA

Cloudflare Wants To Kill the CAPTCHA (zdnet.com)53

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday May 15, 2021 @09:00AM from the there-has-to-be-a-better-way dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet:Cloudflare is testing out the possibility of security keys replacing one of the most irritating aspects of web browsing: the CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs are used to catch out bots that are trawling websites and are often implemented to prevent online services from being abused. "CAPTCHAs are effectively businesses putting friction in front of their users, and as anyone who has managed a high-performing online business will tell you, it's not something you want to do unless you have no choice," Cloudflare says.

To highlight the amount of time lost to these tests, Cloudflare said that based on calculations of an average of 32 seconds to complete a CAPTCHA, one test being performed every 10 days, and 4.6 billion internet users worldwide, roughly "500 human years [are] wasted every single day -- just for us to prove our humanity." On Thursday, Cloudflare research engineer Thibault Meunier said in a blog post that the company was "launching an experiment to end this madness" and get rid of CAPTCHAs completely. The means to do so? Using security keys as a way to prove we are human.

According to Meunier, Cloudflare is going to start with trusted security keys -- such as the YubiKey range, HyperFIDO keys, and Thetis FIDO U2F keys -- and use these physical authentication devices as a "cryptographic attestation of personhood." This is how it works: A user is challenged on a website, the user clicks a button along the lines of "I am human," and is then prompted to use a security device to prove themselves. A hardware security key is then plugged into their PC or tapped on a mobile device to provide a signature -- using wireless NFC in the latter example -- and a cryptographic attestation is then sent to the challenging website. Cloudflare says the test takes no more than three clicks and an average of five seconds -- potentially a vast improvement on the CAPTCHA's average of 32 seconds.You can access [link removed by blog owner] to try out the system.

Week in Review - 6/5/2020

Health: For a few days, I kept having a new "symptom" to think about each day. As of this morning...no symptoms. I lived through 'em all and I'm pretty sure they had nothing to do with COVID-19 or any other virus. I think it was a combination of age/heat/food choices/hydration. The age and heat are still with me, but I've been doing better on the food choices and hydration for the past week.

Heat: The heat has about knocked me out. After doing yard work (mostly deep watering our nine newest trees - requiring uncoiling, dragging about, and re-coiling 200' of garden hose) a couple of days ago, I was beet red. That's not unusual for me when the temperature is over 80 degrees F, let alone when it is in the upper 90s. I come inside; drink a cup of water; splash water all over myself; swab my face, arms, and legs down with alcohol; and sit under a (ceiling) fan for 20-30 minutes. * The two, new dogwood trees were looking wilt-y, so I daren't wait until morning. Otherwise, I've done yard work in the morning when it has been cooler. I still get hot, but not beet red. (I think it would be nice if I could perspire!) Hunky Husband even found it hot. He was dragging when he came in from his jogging this morning.  (Maybe he just walked this time?) HH perspires enough for the both of us.

Politics: A long-time lurker has emailed to ask, once again, why I try to refrain from political discussions on my blogs. The Dilbert cartoon (above) in this morning's Wichita Eagle (I would provide a link, but it is behind a pay wall) pretty well sums up a major reason. I'm sure that I could be the person in the red shirt or in the blue shirt, in that cartoon, depending.

As I always believed during my working days, just because something can be done doesn't mean that it should be done. Similarly, as was quoted in an article headlined Ill-considered posts lead to lost jobs amid protests, crisis in this morning's paper, "You don't need to always say something." There are times when one must speak up; but, one must address the right audience when speaking up. I choose, in my blogs, to remain silent and be thought a fool, when it comes to politics. (Apologies to the late President Abraham Lincoln.)

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* I am reminded of a time in July, 1980, during a long string of triple-digit temperature days, when I had taken a TR-182 [turbo-charged, retractable gear Skylane] prototype out for an operational test flight. It was 104 degrees F, that day. After refueling (using a step-ladder) and parking the plane, I walked into the experimental hangar and stuck my head under the circular-troughed hand washing station to cool down. The mechanics found me a sight to behold, I'm sure; but, they were kind enough not to give me a bad time. They were good people.

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ADDITION OF 6/5/2020 11:30AM - More from Slashdot.org

Does this posting (below) mean that we Yanks are, in general, hypochondriacs? Perhaps I had no "symptoms" (see, above) at all? I was just fooling myself!

COVID-19 Pandemic Causes 42% Drop In ER Visits Nationwide, CDC Says (upi.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD on Friday June 05, 2020 @06:00AM from the striking-decline dept.

schwit1 shares a report from UPI: Visits to hospital U.S. emergency rooms have dropped by more than 40 percent so far in 2020, compared to the same period last year, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC researchers compared total visits so far this year to the same five-month period in 2019. The number of ER visits declined from a mean of roughly 2.1 million per week between March 31, 2019, and April 27, 2019, to a mean of 1.22 million per week during the "early pandemic" period of March 29 to April 25 of this year, according to the CDC. ER visits declined for every age group, with the largest proportional declines in children 10 years old and younger at 72 percent and children 11 to 14 years old at 71 percent, the agency said. Researchers found the largest declines in ER visits occurred in the New England states at 49 percent, as well as in the mid-Atlantic region at 48 percent. That region includes New York and New Jersey, which has been the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.

ER visits related to abdominal pain and other digestive problems fell by more than 66,000 per week from year to year, while those among patients reporting musculoskeletal pain -- excluding low-back pain -- dropped by more than 52,000 per week, according to the CDC report. Visits for "sprains and strains" declined by nearly 34,000 per week, and those related to "superficial injuries" fell by nearly 31,000 per week, the researchers said. Conversely, ER visits for "exposure, encounters, screening or contact with infectious disease" increased by nearly 19,000 per week from 2019 to 2020, the analysis found. Specifically, some 18,000 ER visits occurred per week across the country for COVID-19 symptoms through the end of May, the researchers said. The researchers say more research is needed to determine whether the decline in ER visits could be attributed to "actual reductions in injuries or illness [due] to changing activity patterns during the pandemic" lockdown, or if Americans simply delayed or declined emergency care.

Launch of JPSS-1 with Pet Peeve #16

LIFT OFF! NOAA’s JPSS-1 Heads to Orbit

Nov 18, 2017

The Joint Polar Satellite System-1 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 1:47 a.m. PST this morning. The satellite’s next-generation technology will help improve the timeliness and accuracy of U.S. weather forecasts three to seven days out.

“The value of the new JPSS satellite cannot be understated after this tragic hurricane season,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “JPSS offers an unparalleled perspective on our planet’s weather, granting NOAA advanced insights which will be used to guard American lives and communities.”

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Although I planned to post about the launch of JPSS-1, I must mention that, much to my chagrin, the article contains word usage that is one of my pet peeves. At some time during the past 20 years, people have decided to invert the meanings of some American English terms. In this case, Secretary Ross is quoted as saying, "The value of the new JPSS satellite cannot be understated after this tragic hurricane season...." In my day, he would have said "The value of the new JPSS satellite cannot be overstated after this tragic hurricane season...."

Another word whose meaning has been inverted is "transparent" or "transparency" when used to apply to a process rather than to a medium through which light passes. It used to be that when I told my customer that the change in personnel in my office should be transparent to him, I meant that he should not notice any difference: the change would be internal to our processes and what the customer was exposed to would not differ from his past experience. Now, if I told someone that the change in personnel would be transparent, she would expect to be told about every little change that happened. How do these things happen?

Control freaky household appliances - (Pet Peeve #15)

Joared (of Along the Way) posted about a member of her household that went to eternal rest - her Hotpoint Refrigerator (1962-2017). Oh, how many of us long for the simple, old days, eh? At one point in my life, the only setting on the ice box was the insertion or removal of a block of ice. Now, each shelf of our refrigerator adjusts position/location, some refrigerators have various drawers for various temperature settings, there are multiple temperature settings, some feed water and/or ice cubes to the exterior without opening a door/drawer, and various vanes may be adjusted to control humidity and/or air flow. Oh, me!

The newer of our refrigerators (perhaps vintage 2005?) is another Kenmore. The controls are shown in the photos, below. The first photo shows the main temperature controls for refrigerator and freezer compartments.

 The next photo shows the main chilled air distribution controls.

There are secondary air-flow controls - one for the fruit drawer, another for the vegetable drawer.

Although we don't have external delivery of cold water and/or ice, we do have an ice maker - with controls.

Even worse, these days, are laundry appliances. Hunky Husband's current clothes washer and clothes dryer include more control settings than the V-2 Rocket launch system that sent the first American critters into space - fruit flies in the launch from White Sands Missile range that reached 63 miles in altitude according to Wikipedia, qualifying the travel as space travel. Of course, that flight took place in 1947, well before the birth of any of my own major household appliances, at any point in my adult life, so it should have been simple, eh? (I was making a point about the complicated control systems on current major household appliances, so perhaps you'll forgive me?)

First, the washer:

 
Then the dryer:

 
Further, the water softener and the heating-ventilation-air conditioning-humidifying system controls:

When asked if we wished to have wireless control of the HVAC system, I said a pleasant but firm, "No!" Who wants the Russians turning up the heat?

Finally, only to show you that I can be pleased with controls, a fine example of simple but effective controls on the microwave oven that I bought my mother (her only microwave) just a few months before her death. After Mother died (June 1994), I took the microwave to my office. Most of my subsequent lunches were taken from home (not a change) and heated in that microwave (cleaner than the communal microwave available to us - and saving me time by its close proximity.)

To use the little microwave oven (aptly named "Half Pint"), one places the container of food inside (I had purchased a spring-driven turntable for it), sets the spring-driven timer, and (when the soft click indicates that the time has elapsed and the power to the magnetron has been switched off) pushes down on the handle to open the door to retrieve the food. Can't get much simpler than that. Mother had never purchased (or allowed anyone else to purchase for her) a microwave oven believing their controls to be too complicated.

Can you tell that one of my pet peeves is over-complication of consumer products? Note that I didn't even mention cell phones, not wishing to bring on a stroke. For 50 years I kept preaching that there was no reason that computers couldn't be more user friendly. We've made some progress on that front (we consumers don't normally have to worry about using hexadecimal location codes); but, there is much more to be made. Just because we engineers take pride in our facility with our products is no excuse for inflicting overly complicated products on our consumers.

P.S. No, I've no desire to go back to the "good old days". They weren't that good. I don't want us to go back to pre-penicillin days or to the days when an interviewer had no qualms about denying a job to a person because he or she (depending upon the job) was the wrong sex. I don't want us to go back to the days when gays were even more horribly maligned - and transgender didn't even appear on the horizon. I guess I can still preach for simplicity without sending us back to the stone age.

Three times less - (Pet Peeve #14)

The Wichita Eagle daily newspaper carries a supplement within each Sunday edition, Parade. Parade has little to recommend it being mostly populated by "pop culture" déchets (doesn't that sound classier than garbage?) The one thing that I seek out to read each Sunday is the column Ask Marilyn, by Marilyn vos Savant. While the column raises the standards of Parade, it is usually beneath Ms vos Savant who, years ago was advertised (not by herself) as being the most intelligent person alive at the time. It may have been true, then, and it may still be true for all I know - or care. She gives abundant evidence of, at the very least, being a logical person.

Today's column hit my core. It addresses English usage that has been bugging me for years. Such use started to be seen/heard in the world of advertising; but, over the years, has crept more and more into the popular parlance and even into academic writings. Ach, mein Got! (Bogie: If I'm going to thumb my nose at pop culture, I have to do a bang-up job of it! We'll let Stu tell me that I missed the mark.)

A question had been sent in to Ms vos Savant by Jack Clark in North Carolina.

I have always associated multiplication with addition (more), and division with subtraction (less), so I don't understand current phrases such as "three times less" and "twice as small." Can you explain?

Ms vos Savant replied.

Yes. Those phrases, which make many of us wince when we hear newscasters and commentators use them, are just plain mathematically illiterate! In arithmetic, the term "times" means "instances of," in the way "two times three" means "two instances of three," or six. A person who says "three times less" probably means "one-third as much," and one who says "twice as small" likely means "half as small." In short, they have it backward!

Thank you, Ms vos Savant! I only wish that a kindred type of phrase had been also addressed: a phrase in which one says "five times more" when they actually mean "five times" - or - "four times more".

OMG - "There is always a way"? (Pet Peeve #13)

I'll not give away where I found that Utopian quote; but, the discussion centered around the future of the human race - rather short-term in the discussion but could be opened up to the long-term. I wanted to answer that, "No, idiot, there is NOT always a way!" But...it is against my operating principles to actually write that a person is an idiot, particularly online, and there was no reason to make him/her the butt of my bad temper. Yikes! Let us assume that I made the whole thing up. (Oh, yeah.)

Obituaries - good for the survivors

Am I senile? Am I hallucinating? I know that, at least once I have posted about the strange (to me) ways people choose to say that someone died, in an obituary. But...I can't find it to which to link.

OTOH: I have posted about an obituary that struck a cord with me (Good life, refreshing obituary - Kay Arvin). Well, here's another obituary that struck a chord with me. It probably isn't new to you since it is said to have gone viral. Hunky Husband forwarded this link (from The Wichita Eagle) to me: ‘Hardware failures’: Obituary for Illinois man goes viral.

The photo of the obituary (from an Imgur posting): My mother-in-law was confused by this obituary, so she read it to me.... I'm sorry that the man died, but his brother wrote a bang-up obituary!

Poorly-formed plurals of Latin words (Pet Peeve #12)

Although reading "data is" (or, as the local newspaper printed the other day, "media is") is a pet peeve, I got my come-uppance from Jorge Cham, creator of PhD Comics.

 

Misuse of privilege (Pet Peeve #11)

From Slashdot.org comes this posting:

Stopping Universities From Hoarding Money 69

Posted by samzenpuson Thursday August 20, 2015 @08:14AM from the pile-of-gold dept.

HughPickens.com writes: Victor Fleischer writes in the NYT that university endowments are exempt from corporate income tax because universities support the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. But instead of holding down tuition or expanding faculty research, endowments are hoarding money. Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers for managing about $8 billion, one-third of Yale's endowment. In contrast, of the $1 billion the endowment contributed to the university's operating budget, only $170 million was earmarked for tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes. Private equity fund managers also received more than students at Harvard, the University of Texas, Stanford and Princeton.
Fleischer, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, says that as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act expected later this year, Congress should require universities with endowments in excess of $100 million to spend at least 8 percent of the endowment each year. Universities could avoid this rule by shrinking assets to $99 million, but only by spending the endowment on educational purposes, which is exactly the goal.  According to a study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity a minimum payout of 5 percent per annum, would be is similar to the legal requirement for private and public foundations. "The sky-high tuition increases would stop, and maybe even reverse themselves. Faculty members would benefit from greater research support. University libraries, museums, hospitals and laboratories would have better facilities," concludes Fleischer. "We've lost sight of the idea that students, not fund managers, should be the primary beneficiaries of a university's endowment."

 

 

Hunky Husband and I were, just a couple of days ago, lamenting over the sky-high tuition charges* the state-owned universities in Kansas are charging these days. When he and I attended a state-owned school in Missouri, tuition was essentially free to in-state students. When I transferred to the then-city-owned University of Wichita (now Wichita State U), tuition wasn't free; but, it did not cost an arm-and-a-leg or I would have been out of luck. Ten years later, graduate school wasn't free at Wichita State U; but, it was reasonable and by then our finances could afford my tuition. Today, I'm not sure how anyone who doesn't get a full-ride scholarship can afford to attend any university!

 

Well, the universities are not alone in hoarding (and I couldn't tell you how much the state-owned schools in Kansas hoard, not having yet checked). We (collectively) decry huge corporations for what we consider to be their poor citizenship, their lack of caring for anyone but the stockholders to whom they are beholding. Even more, I decry all of the non-profit organizations, be they religious-based or be they enterprise-based. In Kansas, not-for-profit companies like LLCs [from Wikipedia: "A limited liability company (LLC) is the United States-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that combines the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a corporation."] and their owners pay no state tax on the income that the corporation produces.

 

Churches and non-profits are so pervasive (and growing!) that it is no wonder we have a hard time keeping reasonable tax rates on the "little people" while producing sufficient governmental income to support the services that only governmental units are equipped to provide.

 

* Tuition (not stated, but these number look like annual numbers to me) for the state-owned universities in Kansas, from College Data:

 

	Kansas	Kansas State	Wichita State	Fort Hays State	Pittsburg State	Emporia State
Equivalent Full-Time Students	19,217	20,169	11,787	11,433	6,236	3,873
In-State Tuition	$10,448	$9,034	$7,265	$4,766	$6,230	$5,746
Out-of-State Tuition	$25,731	$22,624	$15,299	$14,036	$16,336	$17,896
In-State Estimated Total Expenses	$22,880	$20,424	$20,063	$16,082	$17,602	$17,588
Out-of-State Estimated Total Expenses	$38,163	$34,014	$28,097	$25,352	$27,708	$29,738

 

Twofer (Pet Peeve #9 and Pet Peeve #10)

Although I read the entire daily newspaper (well...I ignore the Sports Section), my greatest enjoyment is from the "funny pages" - the pages of cartoons. Sometimes there is nothing interesting there, but sometimes we are lucky and get a twofer. I'll give an example of a twofer from Friday's newspaper - The Wichita Eagle.

            Pickles by Brian Crane        April 17, 2015

Pickles cartoons are based on the lives of an older couple. It plays into many of the stereotypes about oldsters: that excessive time is spent with grandchildren, with pets, with knitting, puttering, loafing....The cartoonist does poke gentle fun at some of the stereotypes.

How did the stereotypes develop? Well, there must have been grains of truths in them. That doesn't keep me from bristling when an acquaintance implies one of those stereotypes violating my Pet Peeve #9. BTW: I'm taking the couple in Pickles to be 10-15 years younger than Hunky Husband and me.

            B.C. by Mastrioanni and Hart        April 17, 2015

I loved this B.C. strip because of Stu's recent posting Generating Pythagorean Triples, a somewhat typical posting for Stu who has an impressive background in mathematics; but, I was particularly attracted to the B.C. cartoon because of a snarky comment that one of his readers had made. One gathered from the comment that she had wasted her time by reading the posting - the subject being of no interest to her.

Obviously, we (the multitude) do not have equivalent interests. I think it bad manners to carry on in public about it, though. It violates my Pet Peeve #10. If a reader doesn't care for a topic, I expect him/her to skip postings on the subject or, if most postings on a blog are uninteresting, to stop reading that blog. When asked (as Stu has, in the past*) what subjects people find interesting, it is perfectly acceptable for a reader to express their preferences in an email. I think that B.C. gave a perfect response.

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* My own answer to Stu was that he should keep on posting on the wide variety of topics that he finds interesting. I am perfectly willing and able to skip a posting that doesn't pique my interest!