* Posts by Flocke Kroes

4531 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2007

India to launch android into space to test crewed launch capability

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Practical reasons

On average women are lighter so consume less food and oxygen leaving more mass available for equipment. Also women are not as badly affected by long term zero gravity.

Rocket Lab is a David among Goliaths in the space race

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Re: Nature reserves

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is adjacent to John F. Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Vandenberg State Marine Reserve is adjacent to Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Wallops Island National Wildlife Refuge hosts the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

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Re: Which rocket?

When I criticise Musk (which is quite frequently) I make an effort to get my facts right. There are so many opportunities that screening out the false and unprovable leaves plenty of material. There is a wide range of press. Much of it is slanted to attract a cross section of the market with a specific viewpoint. Even more will aim for outrage over accuracy because it sells.

The quote I was irritated by referred to the largest rocket ever created exploding in a national reserve. The full stack Starships exploded far from Boca Chica,

Press referring to the extensive and spectacular damage to the launch site as an explosion is just click bait. The site was built up using sand dredged from the river then covered in concrete that according to mathematical models was strong enough for one launch. Rocket exhaust cracked an tore up the concrete sending chunks of it beyond SpaceX property. The exhaust continued by excavating a large crater under the launch table. Sand did travel several kilometres. Several universities asked for and received samples from the locals. The samples were shown to be the same as sand from the river with particles sufficiently large that they were not a respiratory hazard.

There were thousands of comments on the internet about loads of concrete dust but I did not see any official document saying there was anything but sand. Concrete did get a mention: SpaceX were asked not to tidy up chunks of concrete to avoid disturbing nesting birds.

There are hundreds of genuinely horrible things Musk has said and done. There is no need to convince me he is an arsehole - I am already there. You are not going to convince Tesla investors because they have a financial incentive to stick there fingers in their ears and shout "La la la la la." Convincing members of the Cult of Musk is an even harder up-hill struggle. Quoting factually challenged click bait will just get anything you do get right ignored by the CoM.

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Which rocket?

"Well, we didn't explode the largest rocket ever created in a national reserve."

IFT1 blew up over the ocean as did stage 1 of IFT2. IFT2 stage 2 blew up in space. SLS has not blown up yet. Various Starship test articles have blown up but they were at most only first or second stages - smaller than a Saturn V. Saturn V did not blow up. The Russians had some big explosions but I am not convinced they were in a national reserve. That would leave rockets that pre-date Saturn V. There were plenty of explosions back then and all the big US launch sites are in nature reserves. I am sure at least one qualifies but I have no idea which.

(Really looking forward RockLab flying the same rocket twice.)

Survey: Over half of undergrads in UK are using AI in university assignments

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Re: right and wrong

If an AI gets homework right then that is fine by me - the student must have generated several versions and understood the subject well enough to rejected the bad ones. Rejecting homework because one LLM says another LLM generated it is problematic. There is a high false positive rate which gets even higher when testing work that predates LLMs and has been used as training data.

(The way to profit from a gold rush is to sell shovels.)

Tesla power steering probe upgraded after thousands more incidents reported

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Re: Woke mind virus meaning

Judging from the current scores nearly 75% don't know what it means and 20% think it means the speaker is a Nazi. I am not convinced the remainder constitute a majority.

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The CEO has been busy in court defending his $55B compensation package. Along with $44B for Twitter that is $99B from the same judge. According to Forbes he is now in second place, just ahead of Jeff. Clearly the guy has far more important issues to deal with than Tesla drivers being able to steer.

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Re: Austin maxi

I drove one and it worked fine until the cost of fixing the brakes would have been more than a newer junker. The spark leads / distributor / coil needed a wipe down if there was condensation but car electrics were often crap in that era.

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Re: Woke mind virus meaning

Woke used to mean something like awareness of racial inequality. Modern usage among Republicans resembles "Social Justice Warrior" but is intended as a dismissive insult. "Woke mind virus" is a direct quote from a Musk tweet implying lack of racism is a contagious delusion.

Save the Mars Sample Return mission, plead Congresscritters

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C/Fe *

If you are looking at the prices of SLS and Gateway then I can understand the sticker shock at the price of human spaceflight. I hope you can understand why I do not like the current price of sending sample return robots to Mars. That price comes from using current rockets and single purpose hardware.

I would be happy scrapping SLS and Gateway right now if the budget was switched to sustainable space projects - both human and robot. It would delay the return to the Moon but make each trip cheaper while removing the worst limitations: ½ a trip per year returning four astronauts and a Lunar regolith paper weight. In real life the budget would switch to other projects that return a high percentage as campaign contributions.

The only hope of changing the way funding is allocated is by raising public awareness. 8 boots on the Moon will do that far more quickly than 80 robots anywhere. Robots did not fund cheaper access to space. It was the ISS commercial resupply and commercial crew that got us Falcon 9. Robots (Starlink) are bringing in investment that gets Starship to LEO. Artemis is funding LEO propellant storage and transfer (huge payloads beyond LEO).

Getting robots to automatically deploy solar panels and communications antennas after the vibrations of launch is difficult and a source of failure. A helping human hand in LEO would reduce costs and increase reliability - if pieces of Artemis like EVA suits become available.

(* reference to some Isaac Asimov books: Carbon/Iron, humans and robots working together)

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Re: technology of the day

I think congress are highly motivated to write a blank check if the recipient returns a high enough proportion as campaign contributions along with some waffle about protecting jobs in 50 states. SLS was doing fine as a money pit until Starship put a time limit on the self licking ice cream cone. China making progress only adds incentive to spend, not achieve. China doing a Mars sample return first adds a stronger reason to spend more. SpaceX bringing samples back ends the reason for funding - without providing the benefits to congress critters.

The threat of Starship has already produced an SLS launch, the exploration upper stage contract and work on Mobile Launcher 2. Congress do not want a repeat of the HLS disaster. The best they could do with that was a firm fixed price contract with a competitor to do less for the same money years later. There is still a chance of some cost plus contracts for Mars sample return components.

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Re: technology of the day

I think that is the really important part of what you said. A Mars sample return based on what is currently available requires developing new, single purpose equipment. Waiting a year or two makes basic Starship and New Glenn available. Waiting a bit longer and Starship will be refuelling in orbit and New Glen re-using its first stage. More time and other goodies from Artemis become available - perhaps long term storage of liquid hydrogen and Stoke's re-usable stage 2 (Nova).

Starship is intended to be a large Mars lander (and more). With long term storage of LH2 Nova might be adaptable into a Mars lander. I would be happy for Mars sample return to wait until more of the pieces become multi-purpose commodity items.

Critical vulnerability in Mastodon is pounced upon by fast-acting admins

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Re: Trust Mastodon

You get to choose which server hosts your account.

Your choice can be influenced by how the monkeys describe themselves.

If the description proves inaccurate or you prefer different monkeys you can switch you account to a different server.

There is accountability: poor hosts can be de-federated.

If poor maintenance of one server could have negative consequences for accounts held on others then the same effect could be achieved by malice. The fact that this has not happened shows that such an attack requires more effort that bad actors have so far been willing to apply.

The fact that you have other (probably good) reasons not to take an interest in Mastodon explains your ignorance. I had enough interest to do some research and try Mastodon last year. What you get out of Mastodon depends on how much effort you put in and how many people you find with similar interests who make some effort. Last year I was not getting enough from Mastodon to make it worth the effort I was putting in. Other people have different interests and priorities so will have a different experience. I am sure I will try again some time.

JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

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Re: click without reading

If 'reject all' is not easy to find I try a different web site. That and 'clear cookies on exit' combined with frequent exits.

Ransomware payment rates drop to new low – now 'only 29% of victims' fork over cash

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CEO of ransomware facilitator gives good reasons to ban payments

"organizations will do what they must to survive"

If paying ransomware criminals is not an option then "what they must" becomes:

*) Making good backups and confirming they can restore.

*) Not keeping data they do not need.

*) Not keeping data online when a DVD in a locked filing cabinet will do.

*) Not using outlook to view something that claims to be a picture of Anna Kournikova.

*) Paying an intermediary who takes the money and runs instead of funding more ransomware.

*) Not surviving and being replaced by a competitor with better security.

Robots with a 'Berliner Schnauze' may appear more trustworthy to locals

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Robots sounding competent is currently a problem for multiple reasons. I would prefer them to sound daft so when the GPS says "At the level crossing turn left" some people would go straight on instead. Some presidents trained in sounding thick so some voters would think "he is too stupid to lie". Email scam spammers sound stupid to avoid wasting their time with people smart enough not to convert their pensions to gold and hand it over to a courier.

It's true, LLMs are better than people – at creating convincing misinformation

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Re: LLMs tend to produce coherent, albeit bland material

In this case it is what they were asked to do in the prompt. LLMs may well come across differently if you ask:

Write an account of the battle of Hastings in the style of a swivel-eyed, froth-at-the-mouth raving loony conspiracy theorist.

The such prompts might actually be useful for making it look like real events are fantasies believed only by anti-vaxers.

Musk lashes out at Biden administration over rural broadband

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Re: People don't understand the goal of these subsidies

The theoretical goal is to provide a service of an agreed quality - by whatever means. The practical effect has been to give free money to telecoms providers. The FCC made a mess of it when the republicans were in control. Republicans blocked appointed of a democrat choice for years and now democrats are not doing a spectacular job either.

Starlink started by providing an intermittent service that would not qualify for subsidies. When more satellites were launched the service did meet the requirements. As more customers were added, performance dropped below standard in some areas. There are some words from an exceptionally unreliable source that speeds meet the threshold for subsidies in the areas subsidies were agreed to. Now we have words from the FCC that agreed future subsidies should be cancelled now because the FCC believes that Starlink will not be able meet the required performance in the future.

I can understand cancelling and re-negotiating the subsidies because the original agreement was insane. I can understand stopping subsidies because requirements are not being met or fail to be met in future (not sure if this has ever happened before). Starlink was priced to include agreed subsidies. Now that the government is short of money excuses are being made not to pay them.

The choices appear to be: break a bad agreement without real evidence of good or bad service quality. Give money to an arse hole who is probably providing a good service in some areas. Give more money to some other less blatant arse holes who will provide less (or judging by past performance keep the money and do bugger all).

I am not convinced any of these options stands out as being better than the others,

Robocaller spoofing Joe Biden is telling people not to vote in New Hampshire

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Re: How well-spoofed is it?

A Trump bot must not run because that would prove it is a fake.

Clearly some loser is terrified of losing to Biden twice in a row.

Sierra Space bursts full-scale inflatable space habitat module

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Re: Five times over-pressure?

The target was 4x when new. The real test is what it can do after being in space for its designed life span plus a decade's supply of life extension waivers.

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

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Re: "third-party cartridges with reprogrammable chips"

A bar code could do that.

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As fingers can spread out they can move a small amount sideways. Flatten your hand and move all the fingers to one side then the other. One way, index finger is longer than ring and the other ring is longer than index.

[set stupidity=Daily Mail]Be careful though, leave your fingers on the wrong side an you will instantly become psychotic.[set stupidity=normal]

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

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GEO / LEO

The old studies are for satellites in geostationary orbit. The benefits are they spend very little time in the Earth's shadow and they remain in place over the receiver. The down side is GEO is a long way away so it is hard to focus power onto a small receiver and at costs much more to get satellites that high.

The alternative is satellites in Low Earth Orbit. They spend half their life in the Earth's shadow and the other half casting a shadow on Earth. As they are nothing like 100% efficient an converting sunlight into microwaves they would have a net cooling effect.

Although I have not bothered to check, I assume from the word 'constellation' that this is LEO version with multiple satellites so each ground station gets mostly continuous power.

Musk claims that venting liquid oxygen caused Starship explosion

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Engagement. Adverts don't sell themselves.

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Re: whatever announcements on X, no-one to stop him

I am amazed he has got this far with only an 'adult supervision on the internet' order from the SEC. Judging by the way he is wetting his pants at the prospect of another deposition with the SEC I have some slim hope that eventually his actions will have significant negative consequences.

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Re: required fuel

(Giving far too much weight to an unreliable source instead of waiting for the mishap report): In the absence of fuel, oxygen reacts with engines which then explode.

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Parts of the deluge were spotted last January. IFT1 was the following April. The biggest delay for IFT2 was regulatory approval for the deluge. The biggest delays to Starship come from regulatory authorities not being staffed and resourced sufficiently to keep up. This is not just a SpaceX problem. The rest of new space has similar issues but they are not good cover for delays to SLS/Orion.

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Re: Give us a payload

The first payload will be a batch of Starlink V2s. I am sure there is a stack of them waiting. If they do go boom the loss of a mass production factory's first batch will be small compared to a big artisan built satellite.

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Re: Eyes on the prize

Tesla shareholders funded most of the Twitter purchase. The share price crashed as Musk sold to make up the difference between the loans and $44B. The price recovered because investors took advantage of the low price and their share purchases drove the price back into the silly range again. Musk is actually very good at hyping the value of Tesla. There is supposed to be a limit to how much you exaggerate the value of your publicly traded company. Eventually the SEC will get around to slapping his wrist again - hopefully a bit harder this time.

Musk got some fools to invest in Twitter giving it cash in hand when he took over. That cash has paid the interest on X's loans used to buy Twitter. There cannot be much left. Soon we will see if Musk is really committed funding Twitter like Bezos funds Blue Origin. Musk learned some lessons from being kicked out of Paypal (he missed the important one: Paypal gained an enormous amount of value after he was gone). Taking away his control of Tesla and SpaceX will not be as easy even though I am sure it would benefit both companies. The cost would be his continued control of Twitter. Perhaps not that high if he succeeds in completing the transformation into a place for Nazis to scream at bots while everyone else ignores them.

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Re: This explains the other failure

There is a popular explanation for the booster. One benefit of hot staging is the propellant stays settled at the bottom of the tanks. For IFT2 the second stage pushed the first stage backwards lifting the propellant which then sloshed during the flip. The tanks are pressurised with hot gaseous propellant. The slosh cools the gas and reduces the pressure. The engines need a minimum intake pressure to operate so the engines went out. The engines supply the hot gases that pressurise the tanks. If the oxygen pressure exceeds the methane pressure then the big methane pipe that runs through the oxygen tank gets crushed. It is also possible for excess oxygen pressure to invert the common dome between the tanks. This would explain the engines going out and propellant leaking from the middle of the booster before the explosion.

As no reasonable person would rely on Xitter for factual information I will wait for the mishap report instead of trusting words from Musk. There will be a public version of the report but it will be drastically edited. (Not quite as badly as HHGTTG's entry for Earth.)

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

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Re: Osborne

That is the popular story but reality was significantly different.

Osborne appointed a manager to handle the Osborne 1 business while he focused on completing the Osborne 2. That went really well until this caretaker found a stack of unpopulated Osborne 1 main boards and decided to build them up into complete computers. All the tooling was worn out and had to be replaced. Many of the parts had long lead times. All the company's cash was tied up for months with no new Osborne 1's to sell. There was no money to complete version 2 and put it into production.

This was at a time when clock speeds and memory sizes doubled every 18 months at constant or falling prices. The competition moved on while Osborne was stuck with a potential pile of old computers that would not sell and a new design he could not afford to build.

OpenAI tweaks its fine print, removes explicit ban on 'military and warfare' use

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I was thinking of Asimov's three laws of robotics.

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

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Re: ransomware

I was thinking literal ransomware:

Want to drive to work this morning? Send ₿0.001 to Russia. Want to drive home afterwards? Send ₿0.001 to North Korea.

PC 'price hike' coming as cost of memory soars – analysts

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It is about time I bought some more flash storage but if Gartner says the price is about to rise I can delay a month or two.

NASA's Artemis Moon missions take a rain check until 2025 and beyond

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I agree with your timeline for different reasons

One of the few thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on is funding SLS whenever Boeing whistles and more generously than NASA asks for in their budget request. The goal is to spend as much money as possible before the majority of tax payers realise they are getting fleeced. 2022 was a bad year for SLS as they had to actually demonstrate some utility - and risk a big public failure. That time is gradually approaching again with three possibilities:

Success: Keep funding cost plus SLS but trickle fund adjacent firm fixed price contracts to create as much delay as the public will accept.

Loss of mission: two year delay because that is how long it takes to build a new SLS. Boeing will enjoy the extra two years of funding without having to do much more R&D.

Loss of crew: might actually be enough to end SLS,

LOC would be as bad as an imminent threat of China or SpaceX landing people on the Moon. Both possibilities invalidate the entire purpose of Artemis: funding Boeing. A new reason to fund Boeing would be required. Lack of a good reason is what forces progress on Artemis. Public support has always been irrelevant. Only mass focused public outrage would make a difference. On top of that, politicians want to take credit for a Moon landing. They cannot do that effectively if SpaceX do it without NASA.

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Re: Deadlines

There are lies, damned lies and rocket launch schedules.

No-one with a clue believed there would be humans back on the Moon in 2024 when Artemis was proposed. A popular guess is 2027. Mine is 2028. Even Jim Free showed a lack of confidence in the current September 2026 launch. When asked if the project would be pushed back again he did not say: "No, the date is set in stone and I bet my job/reputation/house on that."

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Re: You don't have a clue

I am glad we agree that It is too early to say how many refuelling trips will be necessary.

Let's test your efficiency claim by replacing the raptors on the booster with Hall thrusters. That can easily improve efficiency (effective exhaust velocity) by a factor of ten - at the expense of trashing the thrust to weight. Such a rocket would never lift the weight of its engines off the pad let alone the propellant and tanks.

My thrust figure is a poor choice for the middle of the mission where effective exhaust velocity has more value. The figure we want is $/kg to the required orbit. That is not something I could find with a quick wikipedia search and even if I could it would be based on so many controversial assumptions that it would be useless.

The important bit is all the numbers are changing while payload to orbit is improving.

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Re: You don't have a clue

SpaceX's original proposal included up to twelve retanking flights and NASA accepted it a reasonable - with the bonus that it is a fixed price contract and any extra flights would be at SpaceX's expense. (SpaceX's proposal was by far the most detailed of the three.) The performance of next year's Starship is unknown because it keeps on improving. Raptor 1 engines were 1.81MN of thrust. Raptor 2's were 2.53MN. Raptor 3's are 2.64MN. Hot staging adds about 10% extra payload.

Someone at NASA came up with 19 retanking flights. Presumably they used old Starship performance data. The payload user guide gave conservative figures and has not been updated. Likewise boil-off figures are currently unknown so a large number can be selected without risk that anyone can prove otherwise. The 19 figure came out at about the same time as it became clear to some of the public that reusing components from the Artemis I Orion on Artemis II would push Artemis I delays onto Artemis II beyond even the delays from SLS. 19 retanking flights was a good distraction.

The parts of NASA concerned with HLS do not give a damn how many flights are required. It is not their problem. Announcing the final number of required flights now would be just as daft as promising that the long pole for Artemis III will not be SLS/Orion. It could be Starship, the space suits, SLS/Orion or something else. One of the interesting figures is that Starship is required to be able to hang around near the Moon for up to 100 days to accommodate delays to the SLS/Orion launch.

You have convinced me that Destin of Smarter Every Day has not put much effort into understanding which issues matter. SpaceX has strong commercial incentives to making Starship extremely performant that dwarf their share of Artemis. There are plenty of issues that will delay Artemis III. I think the biggest is that the FAA is not adequately staffed and resourced to keep up with licensing launches from all the new space companies. They were OK with one company that made changes when there was no other choice. They have stepped up considerably but cannot deal with multiple companies making many changes on each launch.

Private lunar lander Peregrine mission's now measured in hours, not days

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Or someone with a similar level of confidence in Labour.

NASA science bound for Moon after successful Vulcan Centaur launch

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Re: NASA funding

It is more of a mixture. There is now a regular argument over congress's budget that extends past the deadline for keeping existing projects funded on time. Leaving that on one side, different projects get (or do not get) funded depending on who gets the money.

The deep space tracking network is oversubscribed and long overdue essential maintenance to the point where deep space missions cannot send back all their data. Getting funding for space suits suitable for the Moon took so long that they may not be ready of the current Artemis 3 launch date - which will certainly slip for multiple other reasons as well. NASA could only afford one human landing system for Artemis and because they picked SpaceX money promptly appeared for a second HLS. There has never been any problem funding SLS despite its astronomical cost.

Uncle Sam will pay for your big ideas to end AI voice-cloning fraud

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Free partial solution

My ex-bank's computer phoned me and demanded I say "my voice is my ID" to complete an internet payment. The most obvious thing to do is to take a clue bat to the person responsible.

1) Where did the bank get my number - I did not tell them.

2) How do they know it is the right number.

3) How do they know the phone company connected the call correctly.

4) How do they know I answered the call.

5) What about people who cannot hear / speak?

6) How could I know the call came from my bank.

7) If two companies use this system each can authenticate as me to the other.

IF a telephone is going to be used for authentication then I dial the number I noted down from a sign behind the counter at the local branch of my bank.

Ransomware payment ban: Wrong idea at the wrong time

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Re: Security, they’ve heard of it

I think there is a (false) perception that paying a ransom every month is cheaper than being one step more secure than the next guy.

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Re: class ransomware as a weapon of mass destruction?

I like the idea but attribution is hard. On top of that, if I am pissed off with a country I could take a holiday there to target US critical infrastructure.

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Re: Cutting corners

Every possible corner that can be cut comes with the excuse "I have to or my prices go up compared to my competitors".

This is why we have regulations: competitors cannot cut the corners either.

This is why we have import taxes: If a foreign competitor can legally cut a corner then they lose the advantage to import taxes.

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Re: Mistakes

Disastrous mistakes can happen without ransomware. Making ransom payment illegal just increases the number of pathways to disaster. There really ought to be plans in place to mitigate the most common types of disaster for critical infrastructure. "Funding people intent on making more trouble" should not be on any list of mitigations.

Windows keyboards to get a Copilot key – but how quickly will users jump?

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Re: they believe as use of AI gets more commonplace ...

Another lawyer is in trouble for citing AI hallucinated cases. ChatGPT is getting even worse at diagnosis.

It is hard to tell if this copilot button idea was sourced from AI - Micros~1 have a long history of stunning ideas that predate modern LLMs. Perhaps they will next change the name to 'Autopilot' to cash in on the association with self driving cars.

Formal ban on ransomware payments? Asking orgs nicely to not cough up ain't working

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Re: Ban

Because making and testing backups is trivial compared to eliminating cancer.

NHS England published heavily redacted Palantir contract as festivities began

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NSA is far down the list of my concerns. Imagine how bad things would be if Peter Thiel had access to everyones' medical records.

Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried spared a second trial

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Re: Hold up, hold up....

The key factors are giving bribes and making illegal campaign contributions. If anyone is ever found guilty of such crimes it suggests somebody else could possibly be accused of receiving bribes or illegal campaign contributions. Such a possibility could never be tolerated. Imagine what might happen if voters found out. If by some confluence of unlikely events a trial actually got as far as a verdict the money might have to be returned.

People in power have strong motives to find and create complications - starting by politely asking the government of the Bahamas to miss one of the charges off the extradition order. It is astonishing that the charge was included in the extradition request paperwork to begin with.

Musk floats idea of boat mod for Cybertruck

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Re: Why

This is not a matter of addressing a popular use case but taking advantage of an opportunity. A normal car is a structural frame to spread support from the wheels to light bodywork. A boat is structural hull with a frame to distribute the mass of large components.

The original plan for cybertruck was structural bodywork. Back when it was just a concept the idea of making it dual use as a boat was floated because the structure more strongly resembled a boat than normal cars do. Manufacturability has twisted the original plan but the boat option has apparently survived.

Tesla has had difficulty getting doors to fit properly. The factory for cybertruck has problems with precision manufacture - partly because stainless steel is a difficult material and partly because structural bodywork is less forgiving.

Talking about a cyberboat now is just a distraction from other bad news: Mass production is easily two or three years away. (I only doubled what Musk said - feel free to add a few more years).