* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Charles 9

Re: Facebook and Twitter weren't the only places...

But the "pull" places still allow things to stew, then the friends in low places, so to speak, can then spread the filth to all and sundry through whatever methods are available (including stuff that existed before Facebook such as e-mail bombs, Usenet postings, and bulletproof hosting). Even if the initial clip only existed in the Darknet, those friends could easily spread it like a plague into the Clearnet.

Charles 9

Re: It can be difficult, but..

Can you? Or will the Darknet crowd start copying and spreading their stuff into the mainstream like a plague, beyond the ability to control (I hear this particular video had reached that stage already with YouTube overwhelmed with the whack-a-mole routine)?

Charles 9

Re: Responsibility

You have to get at them, first. What do you do when the C-Suite suddenly relocates to a country that refuses to extradite?

Charles 9

Re: "How many people when they drive past a road accident can't resist rubber necking"

"I guess it boils down to this: censorship and moderation is harmful. Massive unedited and unpoliced platforms are harmful. There must be an in-between solution that keeps smaller platforms independent, and checks and balances kicking in when audiences start getting huge."

And what if the medium is actually UNhappy, such that too much censorship is simultaneously not enough, leaving you with the worst of both worlds?

Charles 9

Re: "cut the stream straight to an ISIS video"

"That is a problem that is difficult to solve without fundamentally changing Facebook - though funnily enough not a problem major, professional broadcasters have. Wonder why that is."

Limited inputs. They only take in so much footage a day: mostly from already-trusted sources like their own reporters, established news feeds, etc.

Expand that scope to the unwashed masses and you hit a major problem of scale.

Charles 9

Re: "cut the stream straight to an ISIS video"

"And this is where education comes into it, teaching people that just because something is on the internet and endorsed by a C-list celebrity, it does not make it true."

And as P.T. Barnum claimed, there's a sucker born every minute, and these suckers can take the rest of us with them. So what do you do when education doesn't work?

Charles 9

Re: Is it even possible or sensible?

Is it? What happened when torrent sites got busted and shut down? New ones sprang up in their place. There's a strong demand for stuff like this. Facebook was simply the "first in" regarding it, but if they make themselves untenable, odds are something else will rise to take its place: possible in the Darknet where they don't worry so much about laws.

Charles 9

Re: It can be difficult, but..

Friends can substitute for money if they have sufficient motivation. Just look at Afghanistan where such breakouts DO happen.

Charles 9

Re: I disagree completely with this

"There is a whole philosophical argument on what is right and what is wrong depending on who you ask, however that isn't the issue here, the issue is that social media should be sticking to the laws of the country it operates in regardless of how you or I feel about those laws."

Oh, WHICH laws then, seeing as how they operate in numerous, often-conflicting jurisdictions simultaneously? Suppose a host's law directly clashes with a client's law, and each claims legal jurisdiction because of respective physical presence? Whose law applies?

Charles 9

But that would still give them justification (in their heads) to rise up and challenge the laws by force. After all, perceived injustice has triggered (successful) independence movements in the past, so there IS history.

Charles 9

Re: Ambiguity; not in this case.

Simple. To many of these people in question, it's a WAR, usually a total war where it's Us Or Them. That gives them all the justification they need because they feel if they don't act, they or even the world is dead.

Charles 9

Re: Why share?

"Agreed. The more light gets cast into dark places, the less darkness remains."

But sometimes, the truth is scarier than fiction. Trying to cast out all the shadows can leave nightmares bare that should have never seen the light. To counter your adage, "Better to strike a match than curse the darkness," someone said, "Even if that match lights the fuse that blows us all up?"

Charles 9

Re: Why share?

"Only defense we have is to ensure they remain connected to the majority, nothing is hidden, and we can inoculate the majority early on."

Part of their problem is their refusal to connect to the majority: convinced in their worlds that they're in the wrong. Meaning any attempt to force them to connect is only going to be considered a hostile act.

Charles 9

Re: Why share?

Detachment from reality is one aspect of sociopathy. It's a spectrum. You can have high-functioning sociopaths and low-functioning ones.

Thing is, what is society supposed to do with the "rejects": those who refuse to conform and actually think it's society that refuses to conform?

Charles 9

Re: "the item the author of the article fails to address"

Well, for some people, that tiny little corner is able to shout back 20 times as loud, initiate a hostile takeover of the rest of the brain, and even threaten to take the whole person primal. And there's very little we can do about these kinds of people: Law of Averages and all.

Charles 9

Re: "the video would have been shared differently"

"I would happily live in a city with little or no police presence. It is only on very rare occasions that they're a deterrent to crime, and they would much rather be out harassing some young person who has the wrong skin colour or the wrong sexuality than respond to any sort of crime. Unless it's something with a bit of excitement of course."

So, basically, you're an anarchist who feel order is always misused and that ANY problem in your area is a YOYO.

Charles 9

Re: Errr, censorship?

Plus, just how many of these streams go up every single day? Ask yourself, if a call center can't have a caller for every tech support call that comes in ("Your call is very important to us." "Then why don't you just answer?"), is there enough sheer manpower in these companies to screen every single upload in realtime? Can anyone prove its possibility or impossibility with actual concrete numbers?

Charles 9

Re: Responsibility

Or they can just provide their own protection. Internal security forces can be a starting point.

Charles 9

Re: It can be difficult, but..

Tell that to people in Africa, Afghanistan, and so on. Lots of people die young, and you call that c'est la vie?

Charles 9

Re: I disagree completely with this

So what about transnational in MULTIPLE jurisdictions where two laws clash? What about things like the GDPR where it doesn't matter where you are because the government is on behalf of the CLIENT? What if the host's law clashes with the client's law, and each claims legal jurisdiction?

Charles 9

Re: Ambiguity; not in this case.

"Murder is not black and white???? "

HOMICIDE is not always black and white. Consider these three scenarios: war, self-defense, and intense chronic suffering.

Charles 9

Re: Responsibility

"You do realise that there are concepts such as "international law" and many countries have treaties where if you commit a crime in one place then flee to another, you can still be arrested and returned to the land where you committed the crime? Especially if your actions are illegal in both places."

Which ONLY applies if said country RATIFIES the treaty. A sovereign business would NOT be party to said treaties. And there ARE countries that will refuse to extradite for various reasons (such as being HOSTILE to the other country).

"As to companies declaring "their own sovereignty", perhaps you can point us to one having successfully done this?"

Not yet, but I can see it as the next logical step. All it would take is enough power to declare their own self-determination AND defend that self-determination in the face of war. That's how the US came to be over 200 years ago if you'll recall.

As for the drug, it's called Reality.

Charles 9

Re: Your "nutter on a rampage" is China's "Tiananmen Square"

"But if you have the reach of Facebook or YouTube, can't someone apply some kind of standards before a snuff livestream is disseminated?"

Kind of hard, especially if it's masked so that it looks all kosher for like 10-15 minutes beforehand and then, suddenly, BOOM! And any service that tries to delay could get left for those who don't and don't care about the consequences (because they're protected by foreign sovereignty or whatever).

Charles 9

Re: Errr, censorship?

"One with far fewer viewers and virtually no impact, hopefully, yes."

But the thing with the Darknet is that it can be used to spread the initial feed beyond containability, and all those "friends of friends" can then infiltrate the mainstream networks using smurfing and swarm tactics.

Charles 9

Re: Responsibility

But how are you going to enforce it, especially if they leave your sovereign jurisdiction or even take the Sprawl route of declaring their own sovereignty?

Q&A: Crypto-guru Bruce Schneier on teaching tech to lawmakers, plus privacy failures – and a call to techies to act

Charles 9

Re: Yes, really ...

NO! The government writes the laws and can punish malcontents. You deal with the government or find yourself in a fate worse than death.

Charles 9

How when budgets are under constant pressure to shrink before sovereign debt hits the tipping points? OR worse, they don't care and the house of cards inevitably tumbles like happened in Greece and happening in Italy?

Charles 9

Re: Thanks Iain!

How do you do that when the general public has, is, and will be too stupid or apathetic to care? Seems you lose no matter what you try. In the past, Old Boys' networks provided a cushioning layer, but more and more people felt disenfranchised as a result, so now the swing to less filtered, more radical politicians, resulting in polarization. And because there was pushback even at either extreme, I doubt you would get a middle ground enough would agree upon, as the unhappy elements would just push back, trying to get back to their desired extreme. Worse, these extreme elements are often more motivated than the middle.

Charles 9

Re: Power?

Which is...?

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Charles 9

Re: Send in other, bigger, better armed drones?

But the thing is, you're not matching a specific person but just trying to find two people out of myriad. In which case it becomes the Birthday Problem and the odds are actually higher than you think.

Charles 9

Re: Hard to shoot a plastic bag

"Spotting rabbits from some distance away where they have natural cover to blend with is on a par with spotting a drone, yet we could do it with relative ease once we were practised. A well-enough-trained camera op can do the same."

But who's practiced to spot a single drone of variable (including very small) size in a wide-open sky with 360 degrees of possible scope...especially if said drone is taking steps to elude detection such as say being painted sky-blue?

Charles 9

But then, as Tyson himself learned, some people DO have a plan for being punched in the face: usually retaliatory in nature and sometimes extreme.

Charles 9

Re: Send in other, bigger, better armed drones?

"never proven that no 2 people have the same prints"

I believe it's actually been DISproven. At least once, two dissimilar people have been discovered to match at least one fingerprint between them.

Charles 9

Re: Hard to shoot a plastic bag

At least the golf cameramen know where to start looking: the golfer. Otherwise, how do you find a bone needle in a haystack?

Charles 9

Re: Fly over it with a helicopter

Most helicopters have TWO rotors, and the tail rotor is just as vital yet more vulnerable.

If you're worried that quantum computers will crack your crypto, don't be – at least, not for a decade or so. Here's why

Charles 9

Re: What about black projects?

"A secret quantum computer is much more difficult than a secret aeroplane."

Explain why given the aeroplane has to be able to fly in unfriendly skies and so on.

Charles 9

Re: Forget that, what about time travel?

"The only thing protecting you is that archiving it is a pain, and it's really not worth the trouble."

Like I said, what do you think that data center in Utah is for? Perhaps they're finding ways to make archiving less of a pain.

Charles 9

Re: If you need it kept secret

Wasn't stacking encryption mathematically proven to be unreliable because it can trigger common-mode faults that reduce the strength to the worst of all of them?

Charles 9

What about black projects?

Does the research take into consideration the possibility of black projects whose very existence is denied and could be much further ahead than the known state of the art? For example, what if the data center in Utah is really just a cover for a working Shor-running quantum computer using the data above to crunch away?

Charles 9

Re: Most encryption can be defeated by holding a hammer over the fingers of the person with the key

"Most encryption can be defeated by holding a hammer over the fingers of the person with the key "

Not if he's a masochist or a wimp. The former would respond, "HARDER!" while the latter would faint before you can even get started.

How to keep your flock of users secure: Let them know exactly who and where the wolves are

Charles 9

Re: So how do we secure our...home network, phone (any), personal details....?

Well, nigh all the points make sense, but the SSID broadcast is the lesser of two evils. Hidden SSIDs can usually be gleaned from scanning the client devices in their power-up phases (when they're seeking SSIDs--known issue).

Don't be too shocked, but it looks as though these politicians have actually got their act together on IoT security

Charles 9

You'll never make it stick, though, since those kinds of people know how to keep their necks on, by hook, by crook, by taking off, or by hostile takeover if necessary.

Charles 9

Re: Updates

What happened to getting things right the first time because you won't have a chance to update it (because the device is being deployed to the boonies with poor communications)?

Charles 9

"But, as we noted at the time, it was also a wasted opportunity: unique passwords are a big problem but so is software that is not updated and left in the hands of consumers."

Since we're talking the IoT, we have to assume there will be instances where the item CAN'T be upgraded due to poor communication: just enough to pass telemetry but far from sufficient to do a software patch. In which case, the best course would be to go back to the pre-Internet practice of getting it right the first time because there are no second chances. If something like this has a problem, you're better off getting the damn thing replaced whole.

Tired of smashing your face into the brick wall that is US net neutrality? Too bad. There's a long way to go yet, friends

Charles 9

Re: Republicans v Democrats

No, because it's been tried before (see the Whigs). The incumbents simply found ways to either break down or Borg third parties. Now the barrier of entry's so high it's practically a two-horse race with no realistic way in.

SPOILER alert, literally: Intel CPUs afflicted with simple data-spewing spec-exec vulnerability

Charles 9

Board replies, "Bullshit. All or nothing. Now JFDI. And don't give us that Turing bit, either. You just need a to make a hypercomputer."

Now you're stuck with searching for a unicorn or never working in this (or any) town again.

Tech security at Equifax was so diabolical, senators want to pass US laws making its incompetence illegal

Charles 9

Good luck trying that. Transnationals are already tough for governments to handle, seeing as how they're designed to play sovereignties against each other.

Charles 9

Re: Come on Europe

Anyone who tries would just find these firms move out of their sovereign reach, unless someone ups and becomes ruler of the entire world. And even then, they may take the Sprawl route and declare themselves sovereign.

Charles 9

Re: GDPR down the throat

But then there's a downside to the downside: it could make those big transnationals resort to the bag of tricks: bribery, legal chicanery, or as a last resort, political campaigning and threatening to take a much-demanded service (or worse, their tax payments) out of their reach.

Freelance devs: Oh, you wanted the app to be secure? The job spec didn't mention that

Charles 9

Re: Requirements

"Some things are too obvious to have to specify."

I've learned the hard way that nothing is as obvious as you think it to me. Even such assumptions as you describe may not cross your programmer's mind. So two words spring to mind:

NEVER ASSUME.