You trust Firefox (Mozilla), Mozilla trusts Digicert. If you don't trust Mozilla to make good security decisions, switch browsers. If you want to second-guess this particular decision, you can adjust your Firefox configuration.
What does it mean to trust an IP address? If you found that a link took you to gmail.com on 127.0.0.1:8716, would you be fine with providing your gmail credentials to that site?
The credentials in WebAuthn are bound to an FQDN (typically the name of the web server but e.g. news.ycombinator.com would be entitled to ask for WebAuthn credentials for ycombinator.com) so it's not as though this is irrelevant.
I can imagine a few dozen extra lines defining a special allowance for localhost in the WebAuthn spec., but then you're also building a bunch of special backend code to handle that too and for what?
I built a toy WebAuthn implementation to understand it better, but I did it on my vanity site, and I don't feel like it would really have been easier without.
patents should require you to release a full reference implementation with full documentation under a free (BSD, MIT) license as soon as the patent runs out
What you say about the second person is true, but all the forms are understandable by all Spanish speakers and all of them are «correct». It is mostly a matter of style.
Thanks for posting Dijkstra answer. I had read it a lot of time ago and was going to post it myself.
Even keeping in mind that it was written with tongue in cheek, Mr Dijkstra does sound like a bit of a jerk in this paper. Also, I think that this response actually validates Rubin's thesis: Dijkstra points to a number of bugs in the second and third versions of the program (i.e., those without GOTO), proving that the GOTO-less version is not only shorter, but easier to get right.
I am not from the UK and in fact I am not even a native English speaker and yet I had always assumed that the tone of El Reg was a parody. I think it is quite obvious.
The tone of El Reg is very similar to many other tabloids though. Most don't take themselves seriously. I gave a few examples of The Sunday Sport in another post, but here's one from a Scottish tabloid, reporting about when someone caught a failed suicide bomber trying to attack an airport:
I don't tend to read many tabloids, but the Red Tops (predictably named because of their design) I've read on occasions do follow the same tongue-in-cheek writing style.
I think it's fair to say they can't all be parodies as you then have to question when a parody is so commonplace that it's no longer a parody; that it instead just becomes that normal thing.
I think some folks are confusing "parody" and "tabloid style".
The definition of parody is:
"a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation." [0]
Websites that would fall into the "parody" category would be The Onion, The Daily Mash, Landover Baptist Church, The Poke etc. Another word to describe these types of sites would be satire.
The Register is not really a "parody" website because it's reporting on actual things that have happened (direct from source or through recycling), but the reporting and writing style is in the same vein or riffs off of the "tabloid journalism" style.
Tabloid journalism can be characterised as sensationalist, ridiculing and hyperbolic, with headlines designed to appeal to your more base instincts.
What The Register does, or attempts to do is inject humour into its reporting by using the tabloid style, it tries not to take itself too seriously. There is as you rightly point out a lot of "tongue in cheek" phrasing in many articles. For example, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I enjoy their headlines and bylines, e.g.:
"Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court - Disclosing minor silliness no longer required, say judges" [1]
"Rust 1.6 released, complete with a stabilised libcore - A world without buffer overflows is what our children shall inherit" [2]
"Boeing just about gives up on the 747 - Even the cargo market's dried up for the Jumbo Jet. Next stop, elephant's graveyard?" [3]
Anyway, I wouldn't get too bogged down, in over analysing El Reg, you either get their sense of humour or you don't.
There are also an offshoot by ex-Register founder Mike Magee which reports in a similar style:
I use Watts on the page where I aggregate my results[1], but since most USB-related projects measure mA (and most battery ratings use mAh), I use the same convention as a default, since 5V can be assumed in all cases.
It wasn't intended to be an excuse for not using "correct" terminology or units.
The reason that these terminology and units were used by OP was because at a fixed voltage it is common for engineers to think about current instead of watts... even when their aiming to reduce power.
I'm not sure of the exact reason for this, but I suspect that it's because:
a) Measuring current is a more fundamental function of instruments. Quite a lot don't even measure power. So talking about current instead of power, even when you're aim is to reduce power, makes for a smoother process from a practical sense.
b) Batteries are usually measured in mAh. At lower power/currents you're usually using a linear regulator and therefore dividing mAh by mA is a very important measure. So you often keep everything in mA.
