* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

AES-256 keys sniffed in seconds using €200 of kit a few inches away

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Holmes

Re: I'm not even surprised.

Well, you can always redesign the chip to obfuscate its energy usage,

Here for example, from 2003 (paywallyed): Masking the energy behavior of DES encryption [smart cards]:

Smart cards are vulnerable to both invasive and non-invasive attacks. Specifically, non-invasive attacks using power and timing measurements to extract the cryptographic key has drawn a lot of negative publicity for smart card usage. The power measurement techniques rely on the data-dependent energy behavior of the underlying system. Further, power analysis can be used to identify the specific portions of the program being executed to induce timing glitches that may in turn help to bypass key checking. Thus, it is important to mask the energy consumption when executing the encryption algorithms. In this work, we augment the instruction set architecture of a simple five-stage pipelined smart card processor with secure instructions to mask the energy differences due to key-related data-dependent computations in DES encryption. The secure versions operate on the normal and complementary versions of the operands simultaneously to mask the energy variations due to value dependent operations. However, this incurs the penalty of increased overall energy consumption in the data-path components. Consequently, we employ secure versions of instructions only for critical operations; that is we use secure instructions selectively, as directed by an optimizing compiler. Using a cycle-accurate energy simulator, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this enhancement. Our approach achieves the energy masking of critical operations consuming 83% less energy as compared to existing approaches employing dual rail circuits.

Capita flogs Asset Services division for £888m

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"recover lost profits"

Can someone translate this? I don't know this particular dialect of marketingese.

Russian hackers selling login credentials of UK politicians, diplomats – report

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Do you suffer from delusion?

Heaps of Windows 10 internal builds, private source code leak online

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Re: Ooooh, goody...

How would any of the Windows source code give sensible users the OS they actually want?

You are too sensible for these parts. Begone!

Does the leak include versioned file? Much fun can be had in checking coding hotspots.

NASA? More like NASAI: Brainy robots 'crucial' to space exploration

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Re: Autonomous exploration of Alpha Centauri

Please quantify your thoughts in kilowatt and janskys otherwise it's just a waste of time.

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Parlor games

Get back to me when the basic problems of von Neumann probes have been solved.

I will be waiting next to my phone.

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Re: Autonomous exploration of Alpha Centauri

chain of repeaters between here and Alpha Centauri which can handle the data with ease

A chain of weedy transmitters does not make a viable repeater chain and will definitely not be able to handle anything with ease.

Where do people get that stuff? Stephen Hawing?

You neet to put a RTG on each of those weedy probes and fit them with largish radio dishes.

"Microprobes" these ain't.

Lordy! Trump admits there are no tapes of his chats with Comey

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Re: Oh well

I think Afghans and a lot of Iraqis and Syrians want to discuss this "forgiveness" thing.

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Do you want your soma served dissolved in a cold martini, sir?

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Big Brother

Still don't understand this bullshit

So it's Comey who tapes but it's Trump Emperor who gets whipped for it?

Or as Counterpunch writer Mike Whitney puts it in "Comey’s Lies of Omission":

Following his first meeting with Trump on January 6, he [Comey] started recording contents of his private conversations with the president-elect on a secure FBI laptop in his car outside Trump Tower. He didn’t even wait until he got back to the office, he did it in the goddamn parking lot. That’s what you call “eager”. In his testimony he admitted that he kept notes of his private meetings with Trump “from that point forward.”

Does that sound like the normal activities of dedicated public servant acting in behalf of the elected government or does it sound like someone who’s on an assignment to dig up as much dirt as possible on the target of a political smear campaign.

Will the chocolate ration now be increased from 250g to 200g?

PLATO mission to find alien life is given the thumbs up

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Re: Go PLATO

If we wait a bit it seems that we again won't know other galxies existed because accelerating expansion will have thrown them all beyond the horizon of causality.

It's about 150 billion years. I think this wouldn't even fit into a Perry Rhodan timeline.

Numbers war: How Bayesian vs frequentist statistics influence AI

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US Air Force resumes F-35A flights despite not knowing why pilot oxygen systems failed

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Re: Comrades?

But Russia is not so much soviet now (not that the Murricaner have noticed)

A, the good times of Firefox

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Re: To put it another way

> multidimensional

Maybe string theory can help?

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Paris Hilton

Re: No failure was identified

"because it doesn't believe the life support systems malfunctioned."

Maybe but it could one of those things that keep happening because the overall design is just too hacky, has fundamental problems and you really can't even debug it properly. Like those Toyota "Sudden Unintended Acceleration" events.

pilots being instructed to avoid the specific altitudes where their comrades ran short of breathable air

I don't know what to conclude from that, it sounds like the Linux nouveau driver behaviour.

Homeland Security: Putin’s hackers tried to crack electoral networks in 21 US states

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Re: It's not the hacks that were detected that are the problem...

The first thing about these hacks is that you must realize that there are no hacks.

It's another one of those "revelations" that will be forgotten soon, only for bigger "revelations" that will be forgotten soon to be issued in the next episode and even bigger "revelations" that will be forgotten soon to be revealed in the episode after that.

Pure Hollywood productions.

The desire of the Empire to go up against Russia is on the par with the desire of Wilhelmine Germany to go up against France. Afterwards, there is regret.

OnePlus accused of installing cheat codes for benchmarks with new handset

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Re: Where have I heard that before?

O.J. Simpson when the cops turn up for wife beatings?

Breach at UK.gov's Cyber Essentials scheme exposes users to phishing attacks

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Accradeeditors?

2 kool 4 komputing: Teens' interest in GCSE course totally bombs

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Re: pointers ,

Is this a song by Tom Waits.

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4 brilliant developers

Yea, about that (but I posted that already)

you'd need a stunningly good reason to do it locally

Like, because you are suddenly just another 3rd world country, possibly even being bombed by the US for insubordination to their foreign policy goals.

When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

1) music 2) movies 3) microcode (software) 4) high-speed pizza delivery

So, okay, in that Neal Stepehenson quote, one would probably have to remove 1), 2) and 3). And who wants pizza?

No wait, there is still fintech. Ah, never mind.

Samsung's 'Magician' for SSDs can let crims run evil code

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"does not validate"

Someone may have though that "Minimal Viable Product" means "compiles and can be shipped" as opposed to "solves core customer problems in a satisfactory way"

Stack Clash flaws blow local root holes in loads of top Linux programs

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Paris Hilton

Re: Security 101: If they're sitting at the computer...

"If they're sitting at the computer....then it's not YOUR computer anymore."

How is that relevant?

Report estimates cost of disruption to GPS in UK would be £1bn per day

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Re: @Dan 55

If the GPS sats are clobbered by a Carrington event

These satellites are not known for trailing very long conductive loops, so I doubt this would even be a problem.

As for a Gamma Ray Burster, you will have to redecorate the whole shop in any case, not sure if the remaining 600 million years of biologically usable Earth will be sufficient though.

When corporate signage goes BAD

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I think it's secretly a clock

WHy not.

Brit uni blabs students' confidential information to 298 undergrads

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Re: Luddite!

really? do you want to go back to typewriters and paper too?

Apparently it would be a very good idea.

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Re: Another reason to ban Outlook.

The "recall" option only works for the recipients on the same Exchange tenant though.

The only way to make this kind of dumbass attack not happen is clear separationof concern in the office. You deal with the mental health spreadsheet, you physically go to another laptop in the office. And no sneakernet.

We sadly read:

Given the university is supposed to be making mental health a priority

Only in the ago of diversity and social justice. Previously, the university was supposed to make teaching & research a priority.

Israel gets spooky with national quantum lab

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Holmes

Re: Rockin' all over the world

Given that it is Israel we are talking aboutm Jehova is sure to decorrelate such attempts at freeloading!

As for the case for enriched uranium, secrets diffuse into Israel, not out of it.

will use single photons as the communications medium

Shurely "will use (entangled) photons as the correlation medium" would be the correct way of putting it.

Hotheaded Brussels civil servants issued with cool warning: Leak

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I know that drill

leave early, provided that the hours not worked are subsequently made up

I'm sure they will be made up, I'm totally sure of it.

Just like knotted-up headphones: Entangled photons stay entwined over record distance

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Re: Very impressive but a bit sad.

Magic is for the movies.

Now watching STALKER. Now that's magic, and it doesn't even help.

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Re: FTL Comms?

Here is tha article on "correlation across time", the universe is fun (maybe actually a database doing full convolution with itself everywhere anytime, shame about the 3D+1 illusion?):

Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time

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Re: FTL Comms?

Can you encode data at one ground station and have it immediately received at the other?

No.

We are talking correlation only, never information transfer.

1) Arrange to create a single quantum system, from which you can split off two qubits

2) Transport qubits to where the business ends are: A. B

3) Extract classical bit from qubit 1 on location A at time T1: cbA. This is a random bit.

4) Extract classical bit from qubit 2 on location B at time T2: cbB. This is a random bit.

5) However we have correlation: cbA = ~cbB (so it's "correlation at a distance", not "action at a distance")

6) If QM is correct, the "single quantum system" effect holds over arbitrarily large distances, and even across time (whatever T1 and T2 are, and they can be exchanged due to special relativity)

You'll soon be buying bulgur wheat salad* from Amazon, after it swallowed Whole Foods

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Trollface

This must be it.

After the CIA narrative outlet "The Washington Post" got bought, I figured the next move would be to get moneyed yuppies eat LSD unawares.

This must be it.

Bezos' Vision:

Whole-Food fed upper-class crusties consensualized by WaPo augmented reality, while Amazon tat & toilet paper ordered via Alexa is being delivered by drone to their well-defended burbclaves as Deep State operatives monitor their contentment level from Blue Horizon spysats.

Component makers have their server chums by the short and curlies

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Re: Server prices rising

Maybe the public cloud sucks it all up?

They also go massively into the RAM-rich smartphones, so production of modules for smartphones has been increased to the detriment of modules used in servers.

However, Forbes says that Gartner predicts:

Now, Gartner has predicted that DRAM and NAND prices could begin to decline next year, while potentially crashing in 2019. There have been some current trends that support this outlook. For instance, over the last two quarters, expenditures on equipment to produce DRAM is up by about 46%. Major manufacturers are also planning to limit memory content on devices. For instance, the DRAM content of the upcoming iPhone 8 is rumored to be capped at 3 GB, much like the current generation iPhone 7 Plus, as the company looks to keep costs in check.

Facebook has a solution to all the toxic dross on its site – wait, it's not AI?

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Zuckerberg's third vision?

A bunch of Oompah-Loompas, toiling behind the scenes at removing bales of hate from the premises all day long, singing loudly while they do so.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft's 'Ms Pac-Man beating AI' is more Automatic Idiot

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Holmes

Re: Refined thirty year old technology?

> Nearer 200.

What? 1817?

Shurely you are joking Mr. Hagan, or do you intend to imply that Mr. Babbage was up to more than he let on?

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If you are sadistic, you give the ghosts their own machine learning algorithm...

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Re: Refined thirty year old technology?

In the sense of a Spitfire being a refinement of a Wright Brothers plane: Yes.

See my answer above.

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Terminator

Re: It's not very good AI

Machines operate in an environment where the rules prevent them ever doing anything else, so it literally bounds their possible actions.

Well, the point is to allow the rules to be generated, discarded, rebuild, recompressed, weighted, tuned, indexed. analyzed, briefed, debriefed etc. at runtime.

So there are really are no fixed rules, except for the most simple reactive systems. It's like with the spoon, of which you have to realize there is none.

Morpheus knew this: You will always be faster... because they live in a world built on rules.

Morpheus reads a script...

(More in the area of "logic-based rule-based systems" as opposed "let's mess around till it works rule-based systems", there is actually a nice softcover by Cambrdige University Press by Robert Kowalski (who injected the mathematical logic part into Prolog) on what "rule-based systems and logical thinking" are about: "Computational Logic and Human Thinking: How to be Artificially Intelligent". (PDF here)Seems to be a good intro and a contender for a 21st-century update on all those books with titles "how to think logically" etc. that go back to the 19th century at least ... well the book on what is called Port Royal Logic came out in 1683, I see.)

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Re: Problem?

Indeed, Indeed.

"Blank Slate" AI has died back in the 60s I think (so has "Blank Slate" cognitivie science I would hope).

Well, "Artificial Life/Evolution" would be the closest to it nowadays, but that's a few layers down, so to say.

Next up: The negative-externality-dropping Beast of Redmond creates Roko's Basilisk from old pieces of WinNT networking code. THE END!

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Holmes

Where is my lab coat and pipe?

My dear academic fellow,

I contend that this is squarely in the tradition of

Learning Classifier Systems

A better writeup can also be found here:

Learning Classifier Systems: A Survey

There is also this mucho-bucko paywalled article in the IEEE Computational Intelligence: A Survey of Learning Classifier Systems in Games which I'm currently reading, indeed I hadn't encountered the framework of the LCS until I stumbled upon said paper (even though I have a copy of Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, printed 1998, somewhere. Getting old.)

The earlier-talked-about ALPHA air combat NPC also fits into this tradition, it just uses a fuzzy inference system (not sure what that is exactly, it involved another set of equations with sigmas, pis and indexed and/or hatted variables) to do its thing.

Uncle Sam bungs rich tech giants quarter of a billion bucks for exascale super R&D

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Re: If the US builds it ...

This will be 2020, so China may well have the tech in 2 months.

Crouching cyber, Hidden Cobra: Crack North Korean hack team ready to strike, says US-CERT

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Facepalm

The neverending stream of raw sewage from Murrica is nausea-inducing

RUSSIAN HACKERS!

CHINESE HACKERS!

NORK HACKERS!

PUTIN PUTIN PUTLER! KIM JON UHNNN!

PHEAR!!!

I had a good laugh earlier, as the Qatar-Saudi split-of-the.terror-supporters is now re-memed to be the work of ... "Russian Hackers"?

The narrative blaming Russia for the Qatar split does not have any evidence to substantiate it, and Sen. Warren went out of her way to ensure none might be revealed today. It is worth pointing out, however, that President Trump personally took credit for the split himself when it first happened, crediting it to his visit to Saudi Arabia just days prior.

Rather, it originates from Qatari state media having quoted the Qatari Emir saying something the Saudis didn’t like, and subsequently attributing the quote to “hackers.” US media outlets saw the word hackers, and naturally assumed Russia, and it appears that as with everything, this has quickly become something everyone is willing to assume is the case.

Is there anything these Russian Hackers can't do? Can they manipulated base reality by the power of Peek and Poke alone? Was phish-multiplying Jesus actually secretly Russian? More on this ... after this message!

(Maybe the Eurasian continent should start thinking about a first strike against the US with all that there is, a last-ditch effort to try to save the world from brainrot and insanity.)

Voyager 1 passes another milestone: It's now 138AU from home

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Re: Well light is rather slow

It's not too slow, it's not too fast, it just has speed 1.

Marissa! Mayer! out! as! Yahoo!-Verizon! closes!

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Trollface

Rustled my jimmies

"While reaching this moment has certainly been a long road traveled (travelled?), it marks the end of an era for Yahoo!, as well as the beginning of a new chapter – it's an emotional time for all of us. Given the inherent changes to my role, I'll be leaving the company."

The paragraph's turn from auspicious young lady talk into an all-too-sudden "I'll be leaving the company" certainly caused some cognitive dissonance.

French firm notches up 50km unmanned drone inspection flight

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Re: Flight Corridor

Woah. That drone sure comes in peace.

Also good against protestors wielding placards with various nonsensical statements.

Five Eyes nations stare menacingly at tech biz and its encryption

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Big Brother

Re: Privacy of a Trrrst?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that

You are trying to find meaning in a stament that is meant to confuse and dissemble.

You have already lost the game.

Let's have a framework here:

Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism

Discredit a journo? Easy, that'll be $55k. Fix an election? Oh, I can do that for just $400k

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Holmes

I laugh at your funds!

A year-long campaign to influence election outcomes is available for just $400,000, the study says. Whether such listings are in themselves an attempt at disinformation is certainly debatable. US intel agencies, Western politicians and security firms are nigh-on unanimous that attempts to influence the US presidential election last year were the work of the Kremlin.

Thank you for the daily anti-Putler inoculation, but that 400K number seems low fer sure. Lobbyists from at least two well-known Middle Eastern "US allies" implementing alternate forks of Abrahamian religions, as well as influential players like Soros G.. or Adelson S. (et al.) must think they are a bit of a sucker due to overspending?

British Airways poised to shed 1,000 jobs to Capita

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I have heard you can order a box of loyalty on Amazon now.

Often bought together: a box of loyalty and a box of pride. Now with 20% off.

Same day shipping!

AWS launches celebrity-spotting-as-a-service: What a time to be alive

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Re: NSFW would help

Yes, that's a buttabyte sized pic, right there!

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Terminator

Re: The least you could do ...

Yes, like Sarah Connor.