I think it's pretty certain they will have flaws. The developers will be concentrating on software for them to work well, not on security checks. This happens in all sorts of other fields (including medical!), I don't see any reason these robots should be different.
Posts by Christoph
3320 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007
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El Reg mulls entering Robot Wars arena
Comet halo theory for flickering 'alien megastructure' star fails
IBM introduces fleecing-you-as-a-service for retailers
Watch out for bugs
There was a case where two sites were selling a rare book. One had an automated process to set the price slightly less than the rival's price. The rival had an automated process to set a price a bit higher than the first's price (probably with the idea that if they got an order they would buy it from the first and resell at the higher price).
Site 1 saw site 2's higher price and nudged their own up a bit. Site two saw site 1's higher price and nudged their own up to retain the margin. Site 1 saw this higher price ...
A few days later the book was priced at some insane value - many hundreds of pounds.
Eight-billion-dollar Irish tax bill looms over Apple
NASA books space shuttle delivery truck
Australia considers mass herpes release for population control
BlackBerry baffled by Dutch cops' phone encryption cracked brag
They have not cracked PGP
If someone was able to crack well-implemented PGP, there is no possible way that they would let this capability become publicly known. It would destroy most of the use of the crack.
An extreme example, Churchill allowed some convoys to sail where he knew there were enemy submarines, because the losses would be far greater if the enemy realised he could read their communications.
Fortinet tries to explain weird SSH 'backdoor' discovered in firewalls
New US freedom of information law aimed at fixing 'broken' system
Beware the terrorist drones! For they are coming! Pass new laws!
Three-years-late fit-to-work IT tool will cost taxpayers £76m
Re: What they need to clear the paperwork backlog...
But they would have to be people who are prepared to cut other people off from benefits for the crime of being disabled, to starve other people into hopelessness and suicide for being unable to jump through impossible hoops.
Those who are already in that situation themselves might be less than willing to co-operate?
Cops stuff Mumbai thief with 48 bananas
Re: Bananas ?
"Give the criminal Picolax
Icon: how this stuff feels"
And this is what it does. (Somewhat NSFW, especially if you are not allowed to roll on the floor laughing while at work.)
'OAuth please do grow up' say IETF boffins
And another problem
Besides the tracking problem as described above, there's another.
Single point of failure.
It's like using the same password on multiple sites - any bug anywhere in the system lets an attacker onto every site that you use (and possibly other sites that you have never been near).
How hard can it be to kick terrorists off the web? Tech bosses, US govt bods thrash it out
Re: Two issues here.
Define terrorism? Simple. Blowing up innocent people by planting or carrying bombs on the ground is vile cowardly terrorism. Blowing up vastly greater numbers of innocent people by dropping bombs from the safety of a plane far above them, or from a video game console thousands of miles away, is heroic defence of freedom.
UK energy minister rejects 'waste of money' smart meters claim
Catalan town hall seriously downsizes monarch
Tell us what's wrong with the DMCA, says US Copyright office
Foetuses offered vaginal music streaming service
ISPs: UK.gov should pay full costs of Snooper's Charter hardware
Periodic table enjoys elemental engorgement
What did we learn today? Microsoft has patented the slider bar
Aroused Lycra-clad cyclist prompts Manchester cop dragnet
UK digital minister asks for input on strategy, lauds 'sharing economy' biz success
Re: Easy Peasy
Yes, it originated from the EU, and all the governments agreed to it. It was aimed at companies like Amazon, who can do the paperwork involved trivially. Nobody thought about the effect on small businesses for whom the paperwork is completely impossible, costing far more than their yearly takings.
When that was realised, everyone said "Oh dear. That's terrible. Something really ought to be done about it, shouldn't it?".
But a year later nothing has been done and thousands of small businesses have closed. None of the EU governments have actually pounded the table in meetings and said "FIX THIS NOW!"
So the claims that our government are trying to encourage the digital economy in general are ludicrous. They just want more money for their mates in big business - how they get the money is a mere detail, whether it's 'digital economy' or taxing the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Google probes AVG Chrome widget after 9m users exposed by bugs
Boffins unwrap bargain-basement processor that talks light and current
I have you now! Star Wars stocking fillers from another age
Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy
There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches
Re: Screen flashing
Well done that doctor. If he's no idea what has gone wrong, especially with a machine with very high voltages inside (as CRTs had), much better to call in an expert right away than to say "Well it was doing really weird things so I poked and prodded and twiddled everything I could find and eventually it went SPAT and let some smoke out and stopped working, so I thought I should ask for help."
I once had that happen with a fitter, who should know better. He just kept replacing the fuse, then when they ran out of 3 amp fuses tried a 5 amp, then finally called me in. Turns out that early, discrete component electronic counters don't work all that well when a separate fault means they are being handed 3-phase voltage. Several components and a few sections of track on the circuit board destroyed.
Microsoft mandates browser-extension defence to malvertising
New HTTP error code 451 to signal censorship
Chicago cops under fire for astonishingly high dashcam, mic failures
USA doubles visa fees for migrant IT workers
@Dan Paul
Read it again. I am doing no such thing. I am talking about the deliberate and completely unjustified link between letting in foreigners on this visa and the attack on the World Trade centre.
Oh, and I'd be quite happy not to comment on US policy and politics if the US stopped dictating to every other country what their policy and politics should be, and bombing anyone who doesn't knuckle under.
North Wales Police outsourcing deal results in massive overspend
Hollywood given two months to get real about the price of piracy
Big Brother is born. And we find out 15 years too late to stop him
Re: Curious
"How is it that since 9/11 we have had a dramatic increase in the number of terrorist organisations, when prior to that there was only one?"
Because since 9/11 we have been bombing the shit out of various mostly or entirely innocent people with the glaringly obvious direct result of creating more terrorists.
The DoD doesn't need to directly create them. We give millions of people a burningly strong reason to hate us, we leave huge caches of weapons around, we even train people who are supposedly on our side before forcing them to turn against us.
It would be startlingly weird if there were not lots more terrorists.
Re: modulated outrage...
"They collect scads of data but none of it means a thing until after something happens"
They insist that they must have this data because it will let them stop terrorist attacks and crimes.
But they already have this data. And they have not stopped terrorist attacks and crimes.
By their own word, they could have stopped the attacks using this data.
Therefore they are self admitted criminals who permitted attacks and crimes to take place although they had the information which they have stated would enable them to stop those attacks and crimes.
New gear needed to capture net connection records, say ISPs
Plus the technical and administration costs of keeping that information secure but making it available when plod wants to snoop through it.
It is of course entirely coincidental that the costs will be proportionately far greater for small independent ISPs and far less for the big boys. Our wonderful government surely would not want to do that deliberately.
Brit 'naut Tim Peake thunders aloft
HMRC aims for fully digital tax system by 2020. Yeah, whatever
Social media snitching bill introduced into US Congress by intel bosses
@ Kumar2012
I suggest you try reading what the drone pilots have to say about it.
Try this one too. Those kids are "fun-sized terrorists".