Posts by Eddy Ito

Grandma's Gordian knot

Grandma becomes a problem if she uses multiple devices. Her iPad will need the same keys as the PC and her phone. Sure the server can hold the public key and even include it in the header completely transparently so Grandma never even sees the key in the signature, thus avoiding a potentially extended attempt to explain what a public key is. The issue is the private key; if synchronization during setup and/or migration isn't dead simple then grandma isn't going to handle it when she buys a new $device and it can't be so simple that it's easily hacked. The server could handle the private key also but if it isn't a private server then it really isn't a private key and even if it is a private server it presents another layer of security headaches.

Re: Taxes

I hear New London, Connecticut didn't make out so well with the Pfizer deal once the tax breaks expired. Hopefully the Amazon deal won't be another Kelo type mess.

Charlie Brown's Linus had a security blanket. I'm sure the airline would be willing to supply one if you asked nicely. Ok, maybe they'll charge you a few bucks.

How? Easy

Apparently in Hawaiian they have a saying just for situations like this it's wedu nagivafaka.

Re: Popcorn time!

And before you can say "nanny state" there was legislative outrage in Cali. Get your weed burners now kids before Miguel makes them illegal. Creme brulee is soon to be endangered in the nanny state.

Sorry AC, I'm going to disagree and say the electronic thermostatically controlled cooling fan is far superior and more efficient than the belt driven wind generator of yesteryear. And the electric in tank fuel pump that is immune to vapor lock. Oh and thank heaven for the new electronic ignitions with the electronic spark advance.

Come to think of it I'm happy electronics and wires have replaced all but maybe one or two vacuum lines in the engine compartment. My mid '70s Civic was just a mess of vacuum hoses running every which way to mechanical controllers. Hell it looked like a plate of spaghetti and if even one of those hoses was loose or a controller started to leak the car ran poorly and burned fuel like mad. It also meant chasing down every single damn line to see if it was loose or developed a split somewhere; it was a nightmare. Yeah, I'll stick with a scanner plugged into the OBD2 port and type the resulting code into DuckDuckGo.

I'll add that my early '80s feulie VW wasn't much better.

No, I expect ships to take things from Hawaii to LA to Frisco, Seattle, San Diego, Anchorage, etc. I also expect ships to take things from Puerto Rico to Miami to Norfolk, Houston, New York, Boston, Portsmouth, etc. As it stands a ship comes into LA and disgorges it's entire cargo and departs to a foreign port to reload again even if the original load it's going to Frisco it gets unloaded and goes by truck or rail. It's much more economical if the ship can take on cargo headed toward Frisco and the ship makes a second or third stop; all the time shifting cargo from A to B, A & B to C, and so on. You see, Hawaii isn't big enough for large ships to dock there before heading back so they come to LA and another ship, a US ship, takes cargo from LA to Hawaii, because that's efficient, not. Feel free to substitute Puerto Rico on the Atlantic.

Sure, it isn't suitable for overnight delivery but my UPS ground shipment that was sent from North Carolina, coming to the LA basin, was sent on the 19th of this month and scheduled delivery is currently the 31st. Not exactly a lot slower and consider the Teamsters also drive other trucks that deliver dry goods and myriad other things other than pseudo-mail. Besides time constrained delivery largely goes by air. A hot-shot delivery by truck is far more expensive than any overnight air package although not if your talking an Antonov Mriya - that's expensive.

As to efficiency, there is no question that a truck which carries 2 TEU at ~ 5 to 7 mpg is less efficient than a train. A train is also far less efficient than a ship as a train that carries the 15,000+ TEU of cargo a ship can would be on the order of 30+ miles long and would burn far more fuel. Got well over a half hour to wait at a rail crossing? Neither does anyone else. You might get 1/6 to 1/10 of that on a train but that's pushing the limits of reality.

At present, trucks make up about 20% of all traffic and more in fly-over country. They also contribute a disproportionate amount of wear and tear to the road bed and to air pollution. In the end it isn't about going the long way around, it's about using the best tool and taking the best routes. Semi-trucks are the equivalent of everyone driving an SUV solo to work where cargo ships are closer to commuting by the metro. It isn't the fastest but it isn't like anyone's socks, toilet paper, gearmotors, etc. are going to go stale on the way through the Panama Canal.

In short, repealing the Jones Act wouldn't harm UPS but it might kill shippers like J.B. Hunt, et al. and open up the rail system to commuter traffic but that's about it. Well, it might turn Puerto Rico into the Hong Kong of the Atlantic and Hawaii could give Hong Kong a run. You know what? I'm Ok with that because Hawaiians and Puerto Ricans are good people and it's all good if they can profit by easing my commute and reducing the prices of things I buy.

Re: anti-collision

I've got to agree as it seems to me that the vehicle was braking just before impact. The back end of the fire truck is pretty low and the attitude of the Tesla looks to me to be distinctly nose down and under the back of the truck which would indicate it was braking. The damage looks comparable to the 2013 NHSTA crash test which is done square on at 35 mph but the fire truck looks to be at a slight angle.

Re: Biofuels?

I imagine in the fairly near future we won't need to clear anything as high efficiency LEDs in appropriate wavelength makes indoor farming more practical. It would be interesting to see how something like the Sears Willis Tower with over 100 acres of floor space compares with an equal size farm on energy and water usage. I figure things that need pollination may be the biggest hurdle but I don't see why an indoor apiary wouldn't work.

Re: That’s just one example

Every tariff only punishes the local population not the intended target. It might help a few people but largely it's a job killer as you point out with steel. Another example is sugar in the US and you'll see that we pay about 40% more than the rest of the world. You'll also find out why high fructose corn syrup is so widely used and why confectionery jobs move out of the country. If we're lucky this tariff will have similar results and we'll only lose three jobs for every one we save. Somehow I don't see us being that lucky.

Re: Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

If it wasn't for the fact that he isn't a committed communist I would assume he is an MI5 agent.

And there's the crux of the situation. He isn't a communist but he certainly does follow the twisted sister of communism which is crony capitalism. It's still essentially a command economy, how else does one direct to whom the money goes, and given that Putin may well be the richest man on earth - unofficially of course. In the end, while he may not be a communist, he's certainly the next "best" thing. Oddly that largely fits most everyone in the US Congress with the only difference being some want money and others want control and, unfortunately, they're willing to trade one for the other. I'll let you figure out which color team desires money and which desires power.

Why on earth do you think a seaport is relevant? This is an HQ site, not a distribution center!

Sure but you only really need about a dozen people to run an HQ site. I know lots of companies with their main HQ in places like Bern or Grand Caymen and not more than a few members of the C suite and their assistants. IIRC there was one company that only had one full time employee. Why would states compete to have a handful of people? They wouldn't.

Amazon has 123 Labs to do their coding and product development for the Alexa and Fire. I'm sure there are plenty of people in a call center in Mumbai to handle customer support. That leaves distribution and AWS and I may not know exactly how many people are permanently employed at one of their large data center/server farm but it takes a few for distribution even with all their robots. The question is then what exactly is going in?

Californican?

How exactly does that differ from a child learning these facts in school?

While this may often be how standardized testing works in schools, actual learning is a bit more complex. Learning to walk for instance is something people do but it's not something a machine needs to do as it's easily programed. It never needs to know what it's really doing just react to a series of inputs, it doesn't know what walking even is other than a set of routines. This is the same thing. The only difference is that it has to do some OCR to recognize "words" and keep it all in a buffer. Then it's getting a question that, to it, might as well mean 'give me the text nearest the words "Southern California" and "abbreviated"?'

The amazing part to me is that the human score is so low but I'd imagine most folks would be pert near perfect if they got to keep the entire text in an exact "buffer".

Maybe they could just make the alert a simple "Now would be the perfect time to tap your stash of good stuff and don't sweat saving any for tomorrow."

Re: get stuffed FBI

Reverse engineer the secret key? Nah, nobody will have to do that. All they'll have to do is file a FOIA request and the DOJ will likely hand them the key. It will be redacted of course but done wrong, like this:

... Hush, don't tell anyone, the secret key is "password12345"

Re: Color me unsurprised

Is the constitution just a token veneer over a turd sandwich?

It has been since at least the Volstead Act.

Re: "All security 'features' run the risk of making things less secure."

Yes but

the PSP doesn't implement common exploit mitigation techniques such as stack cookies, No-eXecute (NX) flags, or address space layout randomization (ASLR), making exploitation trivial.

If the PSP (Platform Security Processor) doesn't implement common security techniques then it really does sweet fuck all for security, might as well be a FAP (Fuck All Processor).

Re: Semtex

No legislation will stop a terrorist or any other criminal for that matter. Consider how easy it is to build a drone from parts and ingredients for improvised explosives aren't that difficult to come across. Legislation making it difficult to buy cold medicine in the US didn't win the drug war it just shifted the problem of meth overdoses to fentanyl laced heroine.

Most legislation typically has one of two functions but may contain both as bills hang around and get amended. Fundamentally laws largely either punish people after the fact because they didn't conform or it punishes law abiding taxpayers before the fact so somebody can profit with a wink and a nod.

Re: How convenient

... selling new CPUs without upping any specs. How convenient indeed.

Technically it is upping the specs since the new processors wouldn't need to be kneecapped by software in order to be "secure". I imagine the marketing line will be something like 'our new processor run as fast as the old one was supposed to without pissing ring-0 data!'

Re: F#ck Ajit Pai

Repeat after me.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

The FCC doesn't maintain your phone line.

Very good. That's the job of Verizon, T-Mob, @&T, MonkeyLoveCalls, etc.

Figure it out.

Re: Tricky one - does one attribute affect the other.

So far it seems the known complaints are limited to being asked if particular porn images were photoshopped and if she found that kind of stuff arousing and comments about working out naked while the gym was empty. While certainly in poor taste, I can see how Kosinski might see the former as an attempt to understand the thought patterns of other people and not intentionally meaning to cause distress. Likewise, if the clerk doesn't speak out saying they find it distasteful and/or offensive one might reasonably not think anything of it and that's especially true when dealing with someone who often thinks somewhat differently from many as evidenced by his "disagreeing with everyone" opinion. It could simply be more a matter of being socially inept rather than sexual predator. Having said that, I do have to agree that the exercising naked comments made to the other clerk are over the top.

Perhaps the most fascinating bit is his own comments on the matter from 1992 at the end of the WaPo article and that he joined an opinion that such cases "should be judged from the perspective of the victims".

Re: @dan1980

It says that, if your network is transporting 100Mb of data, you can't treat that 100Mb any differently than any other 100Mb of data

I call bullshit. You'd be pretty pissed if they treated your 100Mb of streaming video call the same way as a 100Mb of zipped documents in my email attachment. This is because my email doesn't really care about how long the packets take to arrive or in which order they arrive in. Strictly speaking what you describe forces the network to either bust a nut trying to stream my zipped documents into an account that I won't look at until Monday morning or allow you to sit there staring at a screen while it buffers your video until it finishes.

Getting back to reality, both sides greatly oversimplify the argument and I'd wager it's largely because most of the folk arguing on both sides only parrot the soundbites they think understand. The net neutrality directive was bad because it removed the impetus for congress to actually put any thought into the problem which some members were actively doing at the time but the attitude of the impatient was to preempt any attempt, largely at the behest of folk like Google. Funny story, Google and Amazon have their little spat about who can stream and sell what on each others devices and ensure certain incompatibilities so content can't flow smoothly, never mind Apple's own little walled garden, yet nobody complains about their infractions against "net neutrality" which they began well before any vote occurred. The bad old days of AOL vs CompuServe aren't coming back and net neutrality didn't make them go away.

Re: I may have unbelievable news, but salt water is actually a very good conductor

The problem with a stream of piss is surface tension as it rapidly turns from a stream to droplets. I recall there was a Mythbusters episode about pissing on an electric fence or the third rail or some other charged whatsit.

As for it drying out couldn't one just leave the loose ends in a bit of fluid and have it act as wick?

Re: 67?

What's wrong with 67? According to the SSA he's just one year past his full retirement age. When you consider he gets an 8% bonus for each year until he's 70 it could be pretty smart if he lives long enough to enjoy the ~32% increase. I suppose prison is one way to put it off applying for social security and 6-8 years seems a bit harsh for someone who was essentially a work-a-holic.

Re: Conflicted?

He had help with the price hike on Thiola from the FDA. If they weren't so pernicious folks in the US would be able to pay pennies for the stuff. It isn't like the brand of tiopronin they sell in other parts of the world is substantially different but somehow because somehow the ball got dropped on thalidomide the FDA makes it cost prohibitive to get some meds even if they've been around and safe for a hundred years with a little help and fear mongering from big pharma of course.

Re: Simple workaround

Are we certain the previous versions aren't susceptible to the same problem? I often wonder how issues like this pop up suddenly.

Re: Remember what Sherman said

It's an interesting time and as much as I think the cable companies wish themselves to become the next walled garden of the Compuserve and AOL era, I don't see it working now any better than it did then. Sure, they currently have governmentally granted monopolies handed over by regional governments which is the source of the problem but it seems difficult to fix at the federal level. What can be done at the federal level is to lower the barriers of entry to competition and it just might be worth running that OC768 line into my basement and sell 3.6 GHz wifi service to a few neighbors in the hood. Of course that might mean changing the current spectrum auction rules so Verizon and @&T can't carve it up nicely ahead of time to avoid real competition.

Re: WTF happened to these monkeys

It actually does sound to me like they started with injured monkeys rather than simply amputating the limbs of healthy monkeys. The reason is that they noted that the connection was made to the opposite side of the amputated limb on two of the monkeys so there really isn't much obvious need to use an amputee other than the third monkey who was connected on the side of the amputation.

The results show that the connections between the neurons on the same side as the amputated arm were sparse before training as the absent limb was rarely exercised. But as the monkey was trained, the connections in the brain’s area used for reaching and grasping got more dense.

This leads me to believe that some time had passed between injury and experiment and while it doesn't preclude amputation for this specific experiment it doesn't make much sense to wait however long it takes for the neurons to become sparse after the amputation.