Posts by Claptrap314

Re: Why would the ad networks care?

Heh. Wanna bet?

I worked for G a few years back. During a talk, a member of their ads team mentioned that recently, someone trying to do the right thing suggested tracking ROI for their ad customers. The answer swiftly came back, "NO!". It seems that the analysis had been done years earlier, and was known to be << 1. Not the sort of thing you want your suckers customers to know.

Re: App used by USA Defense

Secrets in source code is a full stop NO. IaC is no different, just a new set of excuses.

Re: Pranking is abuse

Getting into a prank war with THAT crew? Stuff of nightmares. And induced heart attacks.

They made the right call.

Re: Why would the US military use Starlink?

I went ahead and upboated this, but ever hear of the nine inch drop test?

Yes, military equipment is ruggedized. But when the time comes, it will still break--and then the improvisations start. The best ones get added to the TM.

"He's the Popular Judean's Front"

Re: Funny that...

I agree that S3's control interface is a huge wreck. (15 months here) What I DON'T agree with is at someone can make the access public "by accident". You have to either be a ******* yourself & either not read or not bother to understand what you are doing, or you do it intentionally.

It's almost a shame that when these things blow up, it's not literally in the face of the culprits.

In one story, work was being done in an environment with elevated radiation levels. Slightly more dangerous for humans, instantly deadly for androids. There was no stopping the "Human in danger!" reflex, so the androids were constantly frying their brains. So a special robot was made that would not "endanger human life through action". As opposed to "through action or inaction". The result was bad.

In another case, a half-hearted command was given to an android to perform a task which endangered it. Because of the weak command, the android (the only one on the mission, and the one responsible for various critical functions of the mission) basically went crazy.

So it's not enough that 1 > 2 > 3, it's more like 1 >> 2 >> 3. And Randalf skimmed over that.

Re: Nuff not said

Is FTL travel possible? I have no idea. However, if it is, astrophysics is almost certain to provide important data in figuring it out.

Is colonizing the galaxy a realistic possibility? Probably, but astrophysics is going to give us a LOT of data about how to go about doing it successfully.

These are just a couple of obvious ones. The real benefits of basic research are almost never envisioned by the people doing the research.

Re: .

Whoosh! ;)

Re: Actually Bitcoin…

I am 100% certain that I'm not the only regular commentard that was on the cypherpunks mailing list in its heyday. Please don't speak in such a way about matter when you clearly have first- and second- hand witnesses present.

The goal absolutely was to create a medium of exchange that was beyond the influence (let alone control) of the existing bank-nation-state complex. There is a reason that electronic currency was followed immediately by revolution, after all. The discussions centered around small, rapid transactions. I don't even recall the idea of central exchanges being discussed, but if they had been, the idea would have been dumped on since such sites are obvious attack points for the existing Order. The model was the remailer network. The idea was that the miners _would_ be the servers that people used to promulgate transactions.

Since for the first decade, we had no functional examples, the sheer volume of what was being spoken of was not so evident. It's been a while, but I don't recall anyone addressing the issue. Indeed, the CAP theorem was only published in 1998, and as I admitted recently, I never considered its relationship to coin until it was mentioned here a month ago.

Of course, I cannot speak for Satoshi, but the cypherpunks _were_ the ones playing with it when it came out.

Re: News article, soon, i'm sure.

That's what "cover" means when you are on the playground and eight years old.

Cover fire is intended to be enough to keep the enemy pinned and unable to observe the battlefield. Set your gun to three round bursts and fire when you see movement.

Re: "DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country."

I've got 4000 years of human history that says you're missing what actually happens in diplomacy. I'm certain that anyone with a working knowledge of Old Egyptian or Sumerian politics can best me.

Re: Another goat?

Total US deaths by car accident in the US, 2020: 42,338. (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/) That's an average of slightly less than 116/day. Hardly "thousands every day".

But even if deaths/mile driven (a FAR more meaningful stat) were, say 1% of what you have with humans driving, you still have to contend with the problem of remote control assassination or mass murder that simply cannot exist without these interposing systems.

If you've been paying attention, these issues have been raised here continuously.

Re: Self Hosting

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf

Re: Cut them off at source

So how do the bad guys find them?

This is a market failure, plain and simple. The buyer entirely lacks the ability to evaluate security, and as only a very limited ability to even value it in the first place. Not that government intervention is likely to help much if at all.

Companies release garbage software because the market tolerates it. They can do a LOT better. It's just that they would lose market share if they did.

Re: These Insurance Companies...

This is the first job I've held where security & compliance were part of the JD. I've not dealt with our insurance carrier (yet), but the vendor security surveys are ENTIRELY along these lines.

My personal favorite is when they demand that we rotate our passwords every three months. Of course, NIST reversed its recommendation on that front years ago...

That depends entire on your standard of evidence. In civil cases in the US, it is often "preponderance of the evidence"--in other words, if the evidence is 51-49, the 51 party wins.

No idea what the standard is the the colonial-law system of Singapore, but if the complainants can manage to show that he was using known bad technology (ie, the same tech that had previously failed the defendant), then that's some pretty strong evidence.

Re: "Log in with your Apple ID"

Interesting. I'll try to keep that in mind for next time, I guess.