Posts by Robert Helpmann??

Re: Sounds like bollocks to me

If they really thought they had something that could be made and would be useful they wouldn't be telling anyone about it would they?

It is typical that companies, including those with a primarily military customer base, publicize upcoming tech in this fashion. They may show demos on YouTube or put out press reports, but it is plain and simple advertising to potential customers and investors. If these things are defense tech of some sort, they go dark when the developing company either cans the project or starts field tests.

Re: reading this late on a friday afternoon.

Stellar expansion due to aging wouldnt do it - no change to the masses involved.

Right up until the star expanded enough the planet's orbit was inside the star's atmosphere, or soon before. While the mass wouldn't change, the fact that the planet was going through a cloud of hot gas would cause its orbit to deteriorate. Prior to that, the planet would be affected by heating which may cause loss of mass when combined with the solar wind more than previous in the life of the stellar system.

Re: Giuliani - could have been worse

At least in the US when they vote one lot out, the whole lot most appointees are let go; you're not left with all of the same appointed civil servants with the same bad ideas, though the career civil servants are left in place to run things while the political side gets sorted.

FTFY

Re: I'm not sure you can make the its not porn argument

A police officer can't rifle through my garbage can and pull stuff out without a warrant.

Actually, they can. In fact, pretty much anyone can legally go through someone else's garbage as long as it is not on private property. Once you put it out on the curb, it becomes fair game. Paparazzi are notorious for doing this sort of thing and it is an argument for owning a shredder if you need to dispose of sensitive documents.

Your point about what constitutes probable cause is well taken, though. I believe the issue here is that the statement that child porn had been found was used to obtain the warrant. I doubt that this will be thrown out as the image, technically porn or not, should have been enough to obtain the warrant as it was a screen shot of a known victim. That in and of itself should have been enough to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.

Re: Science-Fiction getting more real every day

I could probably rig a test in a lab with liquid nitrogen...

The simple way to avoid freezer burn on your steak is to put a glaze of water on it and then vacuum seal it in a plastic pack - its temperature is not going to matter much as long as it is frozen. On the other hand, irradiating it and leaving it in a sealed plastic bag in your pantry would work, too, though it would require a different set of equipment. Why don't you try both and tell the class how it turned out?

Invented or discovered?

"Invent" implies that the arrangement was created by Alan Schoen whereas "discover" implies that it existed independent of him and then he found out about it. In this context, I suggest that he invented the class of physical arrangements and the experimenters in the article are discovering its properties.

Re: How about we be given the option of audits…?

Open source is not enough to get eyes on if the people who are competent to check the code have no incentive to do so. If the code in question only applies to a niche market, then it is unlikely that anyone will spend time investigating or testing out of idle curiosity. In fact, it is unlikely that that enough potential testers will even be aware that there is something to look at. It would seem that this would call for a bug bounty to attract outside eyes, a dedicated security testing group internally or both.

Re: Bah!

Whilst locking up laser wielding fuckwits might be just, there's millions of fuckwits, so where are you going to put them?

I suggest any number of small islands in various oceans might prove useful for this purpose. Just air drop food in from time to time. There's no real need for guards, so it would end up being relatively cheap. We might even set up cameras all over the place and create a reality show from the footage and turn a profit. Yes, this could work.

Re: NEWS JUST IN!!

The Russian military, in response to this contract, have gone ahead with their project to issue mirrors to their units

That's just fine as it will make them stand out really well on radar,

Re: A bit transparent...

Regarding Ms. Palin all I can say is: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.

- Howard Tayler

Re: Diabetes?

I don't see why people with diabetes should get a free pass.

I don't see anywhere in the story where a free pass was given. The guy apologized publicly and lost his job. As far as how diabetes influences actions, I have watched it play out with my dad once and a friend later. It mostly comes down to them looking at it as "I feel fine so there can't be a problem" except they are completely out of control and act like tantrum-throwing children. I make no excuses for this as there are none of which I am aware, it's just that I can imagine how this particular drama might have developed.

Re: Space is awesome

Additional up-vote for statistics pun.

Re: @phuzz Networks Messing with the Primal Forces of Nature*

There are up- and down-vote buttons, but you, AMFM, deserve your own sideways button. Well played, sir!

Re: Welcome to the future!

People voted Trump because they are seeing this hollowing out of the US economy, and decent jobs being replaced by crap like Uber gigs, zero hours retailing contracts, theme park attendant or burger flipping jobs.

The irony in this is that allowing market forces to work things out and having less government regulation of the workplace is likely to accelerate these trends.

"Smart Grid connectivity" doesn't imply Internet connectivity

Yes, but you can bet that someone has in fact connected the power system to the internet so they can monitor their job from home using some random crap they cobbled together after a quick Google search thereby rendering the "Smart Grid" about as intelligent as a box of rocks.

Re: CamelCryption

The FBI, and numerous LEA, have YET to do the one thing that congress will need... That is, to clearly catalogue the cases where terrorists, child rapists and foreign shoe bomb wearing agitators have had to be released without charges because "ENCRYPTION".

I thought that just saying it was so over and over again, very loudly would get the job done. It certainly has worked well in the past. At what point has a passing acquaintance with the facts been a requirement in ramming one's agenda through in a political discussion?

Re: Were this a strategy game ...

What's the odds of 2 towers within 1000ft.?

Not from the same telecom but different telecoms is a definite. Where I live all of AT&T's and Verizon's are close together because of the terrain.

It is more complicated than that. Carriers will bring in portable towers to handle excess traffic for large events. Law enforcement could easily set up shop in such an environment with none the wiser even with detection equipment. It probably would take someone on the inside of all of the providers in a given area to verify that there is not a wolf among the sheep and they might be bound by law not to give up the information.

What I do not understand is how this is different from any other wire tap situation. Why is this not covered by existing law? I should have every expectation that my phone conversation is private by default and would think that tapping a cell phone call is not de facto different than tapping a land line. My guess is that the reason that cases have been dropped rather than give up info about this tech is law enforcement suspects that it would come up short against those laws and so avoids it being brought up in court rather than give up this (possibly, probably) illegal practice.

Formula for gaining an advantage when playing Diplomacy

C₂H₆O

I should also point out that when flipping a coin for a decision, the person flipping is not the one who guesses the outcome. And for a quick demo on how to beat someone a Rock-Paper-Scissors, I refer you to Penn Jillette (around 2:10).

Re: Trumpity Trump

Cheering money for monies money's sake gets you a down vote in my book.

Likewise ungrammatical comments in mine, no matter what I am guilty of in turn.

Re: MIT Lincoln Lab is the bit that deals with defense software and systems.

A lot of US gov agencies use it. Just sayin'

Re: Free Market Protect Us

3: I don't know who listens to Leo, but more people listen to scientists.

Alas, results from our recent election would seem to contradict this statement.

Quit soon after.

The boss was conspicuously absent all day. As I arrived I found him trying to unclip all the wiring and reroute it to a stationary cupboard and my racks thrown out because they wouldn't fit in said cupboard.... I ... refused to rewire or help. Quit soon after.

This! This is how it's done! I have had to do this myself. Either the people you work for and with will back you and value the service you provide or they are going to continue to make whatever you do worthless. Much better to find something worthwhile to do than to stick around in a messed up situation that you know is going to stay that way.

Re: Bidet???

If you lived in a mansion with a bathroom larger than the typical living room and money is no object I still can't see any reason whatsoever why you'd want a standalone bidet!

Because you *ahem* can.

Re: Kill the human middleware

This article sounded a lot like a sales person making an end run around the technical experts and selling directly to management. For example, "Cohen told us later than one client he had – a large bank – was amazed to find that in its environment of 125,000 servers there were 3,000 dev servers that were talking directly to production servers. That's something that even the most hard-working sysadmin is going to be hard pressed to discover." So the dev machines were running in a production environment and didn't have an enclave of their own with a firewall preventing just this sort of thing? It's not that a competent admin wouldn't catch this, it's more that one was not on the job when this crap was put in place. I've stepped into environments where this was going on and helped put a stop to it. It's pretty obvious and if you think otherwise you have probably been on the management side of the fence for too long.

Also, I heard an awful some fluff about configuration and mitigation. So how would one automate security and let machines protect themselves in much the same way that your body's immune system works? What if your boxen get cancer?

Re: Genius of a different stripe

The book, replete with 450 images, will be offered in two sizes...

Yes, yes, but does it come in black?

Check for backdoors yourself

There are a growing number of people who make their living from finding flaws in software and reporting them to the app owners. Establishing a bounty on this would attract these folks and the job would get done. This is a problem that has already been solved.

Re: SCRamjets have only really ever looked good for weapons systems

...a re0usable weapon would be a new concept...

It's called a "club". For the effect DARPA is after, I suggest purchase of the Archimedean model. It is very, very large and hits very, very hard. In fact, it can make the Earth move.

Re: sanitise customer kit

ISPs are missing a trick here. Instead of going on about the cost and complexity being too much to handle, they should come up with a solution that will manage the insecure kit and then make it a requirement for internet access that either their or a third party solution be put in place to keep the insecure stuff from being accessible from or talking to the outside. Checking for these things should be automated and not take a lot of effort. The rest could be done with... I forget...I think it's called a "firewall"... Instead, we get crap like "buy connected devices only from reputable vendors" as if there are any that make even a vague attempt at securing their products.

Re: Isn't this just called Steganography?

This is not a new technique, but it is not one that is well publicized, often used, or at least not caught very often. It offers some advantages as listed above in that it requires a one time only access to plant the code, the exfiltration makes use of the company's own resources and tracing the black hats becomes much more difficult as they have left fewer virtual breadcrumbs to follow. While it might not be new, the fact that we are reading about it now probably indicates that its use in the wild is on the upswing.

Re: Multiplying marshmallows

The headline should be changed to More than half of Androids still running old, unpatched version of OS. Vendors may worry about Google undercutting them in the marketplace, but if they cannot or will not keep the OS on their phones and tablets up to date, they can piss off.

Re: Lets play a game

My answer is that in the event of a life/death situation the occupants of the car must die, they knew the risks before they took the job, the car company doesn't care because they already have the money and the pedestrians are potential future customers.

A. This is a flawed analysis from the perspective of the car company: a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

B. Also from that of the customers: there is no job, there is only a consumer product they should have no expectation but that it is engineered to keep them safe. If it gets out that it is not, then point A is out the window on both counts - no-one will buy the product.

Re: He identifies insider leaks as a major overlooked threat

Maybe they're overlooked because they're not really a threat...

Step back a bit from the political side of things and apply this line of reasoning to business. There is a reason that retailers all have loss prevention employees. Insiders are a potential threat simply because they have access. They have, by definition, been allowed inside the organization and can get into much more than outsiders. They are in position to do a lot of damage and often do. Don't confuse motivation with action or methods. An inside job is the hardest to defend against and can do the most damage, no matter the reasons for doing so.

Re: Sounds like a token.

Russia serves Russia - they have no obligation to the rest of the world.

Well said, M. Raven. Well, said.

Re: Pumps have many challenges, security is certainly one.

...who uses a traditional syringe these days?

Perhaps someone attempting a visual pun to go with the term "injection attack".

I followed the link to the Medtronic post. They seem to want to address security issues with their devices but don't entirely understand what that entails. For example, they say this:

"However, the pump will not recognize commands from the USB device without the proper insulin pump serial number. If you’re still concerned, we recommend that you protect the serial number of your pump as you would your social security number, passwords and other important personal information."

This leads me to guess that these devices are vulnerable to brute force attacks against their serial numbers which are used to authenticate an always-on connection to their devices. It's on their website, which means that a potential attacker researching the issue would have an easy start on this. I don't advocate security through obscurity, but let's not make it too easy.

Re: Dezincification

"I zinc, zerefore I am". Sorry, coat, etc.

Why the apology?

Pour chasser le spleen

God save the queen!

- V. Hugo (attrib.)

Re: Black Widow?

It's a redback. I did a double-take when I saw the pic because I thought it was a black widow. As alluded to above, they are related species.

Re: What's an IOT device owner to do?

...not allowing the world+dog to access them through the network.

That! That right there! Some enterprising soul ought to start offering home network security services that start with setting up a router and blocking any attempt to access from outside and move on from there.

Re: HmHmmm

Or do you have a particular reason to be offended by female beast and hairy male legs in white socks and sandals?

I suppose the beast you refer to in this is a camel or perhaps a small feline?

.

.

.

Getting my coat now...

Re: Stings like a bullet

A mistake?

Yes, that should be "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee..."

In remembrance of the late, great Muhammad Ali.

a pre-crime detection system

And we all know how well that worked. How is this likely to be any different?

That was fiction. It was a cautionary tale, to be certain, but this is a real world tool. It is highly unlikely to function anything like the Precrime unit in Minority Report, but like any tool in the hands of those with power, it is apt to be abused at some point. I would like to know what safeguards and oversight are being built into the system.