Posts by Pete 2

Doesn't inspire confidence

> have been "applying mechanical, electrical and thermal techniques to prompt the valves to open."

When the acme of Boing's technical input is to whack them with a hammer.

Double worst option

> It’s a mix for software engineers: they’ll be able to work remotely some of the time but will occasionally have to go to the Amazon campus for meetings and so on

Meetings are generally a waste of everyone's time (apart from when organised by those few, rare, managers who actually know how to run a meeting). They are also one of the easiest things to perform from home. So to force IT staff to spend extra time commuting to do something that is almost always pointless takes away twice from their productivity

Bzzzzzzz - phut!

> Collecting solar power in space and transmitting the energy wirelessly to Earth through microwaves

And if they do it right wrong they will zap all the nacent constellations of thousands and thousands of internet satellites that the likes of Musk, etc. are spending $$$ billions on launcing.

Right to repair != right to bodge

> Radio regulations have been this complex and a thousand times more for ages, and as you may have noticed it hasn't hurt the market for smartphones.

and therein lies the problem. When can something be said to have been repaired?

Is it when it appears to the user to work, or when it works AND meets all the regulatory, safety and environmental standards that the factory-produced item had to meet?

Then, where does the high-cost test equipment come from. Who will have (say) £100k of correctly calibrated instruments in their home workshop?

1990's colour scheme

> a new bathroom for cosmonauts.

From a 25 year old design. So is it coloured avocado?

If NSO spyware is any good ...

> Representatives from a number of bodies came to the NSO company today

They would have known about this visit weeks ago.

I always said tidying up leads to problems.

> The reactor in question is scheduled to pump out power until March 2023, when its operating permit expires

Although the cleaners' operating permit expired later that same day.

First one up, wins

> We are therefore concerned that NGSO satellite services could be deployed before an appropriate level of coordination has been possible with other operators

Isn't that exactly what they are trying to do?

It's a two-way street

While some company worker-ant is interviewing a candidate, that candidate is also assessing them. And by extension, the organisation that thought it would be smart to have that individual project an image of the company. One that is almost entirely superfluous, to people who neither know nor care about its products, ethics, "work-life balance" or anything else except the number on the offer letter, if their manager is going to be a complete 'hole (or just a partial one), whether they will gain any marketable skills and whether the coffee is any good.

The internet as we know it

So basically China is going to completely rebuild the internet!

Without any ...

> Live-streamed kids

There goes children's TV

> commenting facilities that turn toxic;

and all of social media.

> Animated video nasties featuring crime, bloody violence, or other negative stereotypes

and virtually all video games (or at least the popular western ones)

> sexting

and pr0n

> encourages conspicuous consumption;

and online shopping

> permit or foster bullying or trolling

plus any other social media that the earlier diktat missed.

But on the bright side:

> the CAC has encouraged local web operators to create a healthy, civilized online space that leaves Chinese youth less likely to experience mental health problems.

Which might make losing all the rest not so bad.

Mostly harmless

> a majority of which are in the EU or OECD, commit that they will use our products responsibly," the report states.

not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Just do a "Guantanamo" and move your dodgy operations to a jurisdiction that is not in the EU or OECD.

Privacy is free!

> I've learned that clawing back private space takes real work – and costs real money.

What costs, is anonymity combined with wanting to use all the regular services that the internet provides. Services that are a significant expense to the company or individual that sources them. Costs that on a per-user or per-visit basis are too small to charge directly, so are "charged" to the visitor by on-site advertising, cookies and selling the fraction of a penny's worth of tracking data to those who wish to buy it.

If you want real privacy: nobody, anywhere, knowing anything about you then buy a tent and go to live in the wilderness - good luck with that. But nobody actually wants that much privacy. What people seem to be most annoyed about is the intrusions into our lives that advertising - the result of all the accrued costs of the "free" web services we use all the time - creates.

In social terms, the internet is still quite new. A generation or so. Few people are worried about someone recognising them in the street - we all grew up with that and the expectations that come with it. It is actually quite nice to encounter a friendly face, smiling and showing (fleeting) interest in your wellbeing. Nor are people particularly concerned that their neighbours could know when you leave home, return, what (or who) you are carrying. Nor when you go on holiday, stay away overnight, get visited by the cops or an ambulance draws up.

The argument that this is less important is that the information is strictly local. Nobody from the gutter press publishes every detail of everybody's life. (Not that anyone would read it). Being local means that anything stupid, illegal, brave or exceptional you do stays within the local community. The counter-argument is that everyone in that local community knows exactly who you are: they point at you, whisper as you pass by, the conversations stop when you walk into the pub ...

However, that does not seem to concern many people. Possibly because city-life brings with it a certain degree of anonymity. One that means that few people know their next-door neighbour's name. But that also means they would step over your twitching, bleeding body on the pavement, rather than call an ambulance and therefore invade your personal space - or get involved in your life / death.

That, also, is a form of privacy. The sort that the tent-dweller would get. When someone in the year 2106 finds the remains of your tent and a phone clutched in your cold, desiccated hand and the last message on its screen would have read "No signal".

Here's my guess

> the researchers claim they were able to access a root shell, without adequately explaining how they accomplished it

login: root

password: admin

perhaps? Or if the first attempt didn't get there, how about

login: elon

password: musk

How to suck an egg

> creating "business models" which include "identification of the correct commercial and operational models to deliver the technology strategy

Which sounds a lot like paying companies to learn how to be better (or even just barely competent) at providing solutions that the government would want.

The problem being that in the past, HMG has awarded contracts to companies that have demonstrated NO competence (such a awarding a ferry contract to a company with no ships).

On that basis, should not a significant amount of the money up for grabs be awarded to government departments. So that they can "identify the correct commercial and operational models" to know which companies might (just) be able to fulfill the contracts they are awarded?

But that would require the self-awareness to recognise their own incompetence. A Catch-22.

Wimps!

> Branson will be the first of the duo to take a flight

Yet both have been beaten to space by another billionaire: Charles Simonyi.He made it to the ISS in 2007, so has not just been on a up and down again flight, but orbited, visited the Space Station and then did it again in 2009.

Hack me if you can

> cyber insurance has two selling points as far as politicians and political policymakers are concerned: insurance could help limit the financial damage to organisations hit by ransomware, while due diligence by insurers and their brokers could help force relative slackers to adopt better security hygiene.

And as far as businesses go, the advantages of cyber insurance are that it is quick to implement and it looks like the board of directors is taking the problem seriously.

In reality it provides a way of protecting the business without having to make any significant technical changes. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a high correlation between businesses that do not employ techies (and their managers) who are capable of keeping an installation secure and those outfits that are most likely to be hit by ransomware.

So insurance probably works out cheaper than hiring talent and financing all the improvements that those experts and best-practice exponents would require.

Cheaper, that is, right up until the time when the company gets hit and discovers that their insurance won't pay out as the insured company only paid lip service to the terms and conditions. (And then, it's probably still cheaper to give the CIO a severance package, than to make the necessary changes).

Maybe cyber insurance providers should employ their own teams of hackers. Ones who will demonstrate the security or lack of, by test-hacking their customers before providing insurance to them?

All about policies

The questions that this survey is based on asks questions about whether countries have plans and organisations in place.

For example, the first question about Technical measures is "Is there a National/Government CIRT/CSIRT/CERT?" and follow-ups are in the form of "Are the above mentioned CIRTs (CSIRT or CERT) affiliated with FIRST?"

There is no requirement for any of these processes or bodies to actually be effective. Just that there is a office door with a title on it.

As thereport is nothing more that an administrative exercise full of YES/NO questions. It does not address any realistic issues about the actual security of internet users or the number of hacks that succeeded or tried.

You get the impression that if these people were surveying national health services, they would be asking questions like "Do you have hospitals?" rather than inquiring about the diseases that affect people or the ages that they die.

Sauce for the goose

So if we are all to be taxed on tech purchases because some "creatives" prefer to spend their days on the sofa waiting for their agents to call, then how about a tax on their performances to pay for all the people who write FOSS - that all those artists undoubtedly use for free while they are on the internet all day?

Forgot to renew the support agreement?

> The primary payload computer halted on 13 June

Because the warranty ran out on 12 June.

Sends a very clear message

> approved half a dozen major bipartisan antitrust bills aimed at clamping down on the growing power of Big Tech

That message being that those big tech firms are not making nearly enough "donations" to american politicians.

For example: the leaders and founders of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, who are notoriously stingy about donating to politics

Going back in time

In the "olden days" this would simply have been called a Service Pack.

W10 SP1? or given all the 4-digit builds and Hx releases, SP12?

Footnote: given that this version will be EOL'd at the end of next year, it's hardly worth the bother of installing. What will come after it?

People who live in glass houses ...

> The (russian) President added that Russia stands accused of ten attacks on US entities, but sent 45 complaints about US-sourced attacks to Washington in 2020 and another 35 so far in 2021.

It does seem to me that the americans are far more concerned with their own cyber-vulnerabilities that the russians are with theirs. Even though the solution is entirely (OK, maybe not entirely) within their own control. It seems to me that if the SIX TRILLION DOLLAR MAN can toss around such huge sums as part of his "plans" for the USA, then it wouldn't take a particularly large portion of that money to build up the electronic defences of those 16 "specific entities" that seem to present the hacking world with a list of easy targets.

And for those that cannot be secured, at least take the obvious measures and remove them from harm's way by getting them off the public internet.

Should be easy to work out

> A spokesperson for Capita declined to name the telco customer involved

... just wait and see which telco's customer service takes a dive

Dummy thermostats

> "I had, and still have, no idea what that box did," he admitted, "apart from giving a sense of satisfaction and a powerful placebo effect."

One building I worked in had an office that was long and somewhat narrow. There were continual arguments between the people at one end and those at the other as to what temperature the single thermostat, situated in the middle of the room, should be set to.

This escalated to "management" (who had their own, air-conditioned suite somewhere else entirely). After a particularly sweaty summer week, the staff came into work the following Monday and found to their delight, TWO extra thermostats - one at each end of the room.

Problem solved! Situation defused! Heat, cooling and best of all ... control.

Nobody thought to tell the occupants that all three thermostats had absolutely no effect on the office temperature, which was set for the whole building in the control room. But the staff were satisifed that they had been listened to.

> the AU$4.49 monthly price of a Twitter Blue subscription is a cent less than what I pay for my morning coffee.

So would that be for a month's worth of coffee? If not then the comparison is fake

Told you so!

> The two missions will seek to understand how Venus made the transition from a theoretically Earth-like climate to becoming the solar system’s hottest planet

Because the Venusians didn't listen to all the warnings about climate change

You say stop and I say go go go

> international discourse that matches with China's comprehensive national strength and international status

> China can resist criticism if fact-checkers reject its output.

Which leads to the question: what will those "fact" checkers have to base their checking on? If China puts out a story regarding some aspect of (for example) how fast their latest train is, will a fact checker in some foreign country have access to more reliable information that refutes the chinese claim?

Or will this just turn into a battle of propaganda: with each side - the chinese news media and western fact checkers - pushing out contradictory material with no proof from either one.

So just leaving it to readers or media outlets to decide which version of the truth they think their audiences would prefer to believe.

A simpler explanation

> suggested the recent trend for ransomware attacks appear to be designed to “damage the symbols of Western success” — namely the food and energy sectors.

Maybe whoever is behind these attacks simply single out large (rich) organisations with crappy security?

No competition

Despite all the hype, the RP2040 is still nowhere near the ESP32 in terms of specification.

I got a Pi Pico some time ago out of curiosity. I'm now back to the ESP32 for my hobby projects.

Make money fast

> A model with a 2.7 GHz 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, combined with 64 GB of DDR3 RAM, 1TB of PCIe storage, and two AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM costs a cool £5,149.

They'd do better if they took a photo of it and flogged that as an NFT

One more thing

> "To be able to launch a rocket into orbit, you need three things. You need a rocket, a spaceport and you need the regulatory environment.

Unless you are doing it purely as a hobby, it helps to have a paying customer, too.

However with SpaceX dominating on price you have to wonder what USP this scottish space port would have? Something that would induce punters to pay over the odds for a strictly experimental lift into space.

P.S. Isn't Kourou a part of France, in the EU and uses Euros as currency? Doesn't that make it part of Europe?

When unfolding the mirror just remember

... shiny side up

Double trouble

> dealt with an electromagnetic interference (EMI) problem that aborted a recent test flight just as another technical gremlin rears its head.

I suppose they could always ask Boing for some advice?

correct, secure, fast - choose one.

> About half of the samples work as expected (hopefully the authors did not expect it to fail?)

Functionality is nice, but to do it securely is better. If this IBM data can be used to re-write code so that it is hardened against hacks, then it might have some use.

And best of all, is if the code can be made to work efficiently and without bloat.

So Twitter doesn't filter the truth?

> I described PR people as "sociopaths" and "pointless".

> The app said naught.

Making a splash

> IBM says it can fit 50 billion transistors onto a 150mm2 die

The BC108 transistors in my components drawer are cylinders 5mm tall and 5mm in diameter. Assuming rows and columns stacked (not close packed) that would permit 8 million transistors per cubic metre. Or 2.5 olympic sized swimming pools to hold 50 billion of IBM's new product.

As for the power consumption? I hate to think.

Just drop me here

> it hasn’t revealed how much it’s charging for a return ticket onboard its capsule

A return ticket? Does that mean there is an option for a one-way ticket. They'll take you to space and then leave you there. Either to travel onwards or to make your own way back (by parachute, perhaps)

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

> The rover’s flight control software has been stable and healthy for almost two years, and why mess with a good thing there?

A good question.

If the only (small) issue is that 15% of the time the helicopter won't initialise into flight mode, it doesn't sound too risky to simply wait a while and try it again.

Isn't that the answer that software support gives, 90% of the time?