Posts by Alan Brown

FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash another

https://validator.w3.org

You're welcome

Troops’ phones gave away location data to foreign adversaries

Re: re: no actual policy that requires servicemembers to turn off geolocation capabilities

That low power mode invariably includes switching off the antenna preamp, which makes the device very deaf.

Re: ...and this is news?

It's no secret that OnStar is no longer deletable in GM cars.Apparently in the years leading up to that change it was very difficult to actually delete it from a build anyway

I know China is a bogeyman, but there are more credible and probable threats to USA citizens at home

Re: I just remembered something even worse

That's an extension of the principle that most spycraft is carried out in the reading room of the local public library

Newspaper stories are a very telling way of knowing what's happening on a base. Things like contract announcements or employment ads can provide a lot of information to anyone who's got a good apparatus collating data

The most important lesson from Bletchley Park wasn't the encrypted messages, it was how much information was contained in the metadata

Disgruntled 0-day hunter 'humiliated' by Microsoft pledges 'bone shattering drop' as Redmond calls cops

Are these actually 0-days?

0-days are things already being exploited (usually discovered BECAUSE of the exploitation) - and are effectively public already

Backdoors are not 0-days - and should be published when found so the culprits can't cover their tracks

An actual unexploited vulnerability is rare, but there's no obligation to withhold publication unless the company in question is playing nice. The moment they step outside that zone, they're part of the problem.

Reversions (reinclusion of old bugs) should be published when found. The bad guys are already looking for them as part of the standard toolkit

Shrinkwrap and clickwrap user agreements have been struck down in several countries and USA states. Merely forcing the user to scroll to the end to click OK doesn't mean it was read and they don't override business/consumer law in any case - with judges generally taking inclusion of unlawful/unenforceable clauses as evidence of Bad Faith and/or "Coming before the Court with Unclean Hands"

There are 2 kinds of "0-days"

Ones already being exploited

Ones which will be exploited shortly after release

In most cases I've looked into, the former was happening but the companies concerned always tried to blame their exploitation on the research publisher

The working assumption should always be that the "bad guys"(*) already have and are using an exploit even if that's not yet visible.

(*) State actors are the largest group in this sector and none of them are "good guys", merely bad guys with differing agendas

Re: Typical large corporation throwing its toys out the pram

You're assuming the reseacher/publisher is a USA resident.

Say what you will about the DMCA, it doesn't apply beyond USA borders. Besides there are provisions in it for research and interoperatibility)

Re: Security?

"internal turf wars are a daily thing"

When a company has poliicies of discarding the lowest X% of programmers in any group regardless of their talent or output, that's normal.

It's the fascist principle of "All life is struggle" and results in the biggest danger to any manager being his own subordinates knifing him in the back.

The age discrimination, shipping regardless of bugs also has roots in fascist principles.

This really shouldn't be a surprise. Hitler's Germany used the Confederacy as its template (and the Union was only slightly more moral in the exploitation stakes. Wage Slavery vs Physical Slavery). Those principles of amoral exploitation are deep-rooted in American culture - even the "Pilgrims" had that attitude (their beef with England was not being allowed to oppress their neighbours), as did the 1770s colonists (Britain was holding them back from ignoring treaties and taking neighbouring tribal lands, the tax thing was an excuse, not a reason)

Re: It's the Hubris

"at that time, it wasn't even copyright infringement to copy computer code"

At the same time as dumpster diving was happening, Bill Gates was _VERY LOUDLY_ and very publicly griping about "software pirates" and "theft". The hypocracy was pointed out at the time, which just seemed to make him angrier

Let's be clear that under the Berne Conventions, copyright is copyright.

In later years MS simply TOOK software and installed it in their distributed OS without paying the authors, or paying them a derisory amount, pointing out that they could bleed dry anyone who tried to sue them (Doublespace and Stac - one of the few cases which MS lost). Citrix Winframe, Scandisk, Quarterdeck's QEMM, Sybase(Microsoft SQL server), MSIE (Spyglass Mosaic, licensed from Spyglass on a royalty basis, then given away for free with no royalties paid)

They also engaged in anticompetitive behaviour: "DOS isn't done til Lotus won't run" and purchasing competitors in order to shut them down. ("Embrace, Extend, Extinguish")

Gates my be a philanthropist now, but it seems mainly driven by reducing his tax burden than any altruistic motives. Then again he may have studied the lead in to the French Revolution...

Duo who sold car crash victims' data must repay £118k

The simplest issue would be vicarious liability for use of illegally obtained data regardless of purchase from third parties

IE: Solicitor buys leads from a claim management company which is using leaked data or calling random numbers == Solicitor is jointly and severally responsible for the law breach and "How could I know?" is not a valid defence.

It's not that hard: Scammers _and_ the people who pay them share joint liability

The original TCPA did this EXACTLY because of the plausible deniability aspect advertisers could potentially hide behind.

Criminal wannabes even more dangerous than the pros, says ex-FBI cyber chief

Re: Want to stop ransomware? Ban paying ransom.

If it wasn't crypto it'd be something else. That's just a tool.

Italy's kidnapping problem was almost wiped out by criminalising ransom payments (gangs were taking ransoms and killing the victim anyway, similar to what we're seeing with software ransoms)

AI eyes scanning for bugs create a worrisome Linux security trend

because security people love getting attention

Most of them don't and prefer to be part of the background - it's easier to operate in that manner rather than painting a target on your back.

The loud ones are usually salesdweebs or script kiddies.

Commercial space pleads with NASA to stop moving the goalposts in orbit

When does NASA _NOT_ have sunk cost fallacy?

James Webb telescope could have been built more cheaply and faster if it was scrapped and started over (twice) even with those costs folded into the project budget

SLS is a perfect example of sunk cost resulting in extreme expense and dubious usability

The current situation reminds me of the comparison between R100 and R101 - one was commercially developed (Vickers) and quite sucessful whilst the other literally crashed and burned on its first revenue flight - which resulted in the sucessful commercial venture being scrapped and crushed with steamrollers by government edict within a month

"There are also laws in the US that publicly traded companies have to act in the best interest of their owners (shareholders)."

Not quite but near enough. This is case law interpretation of existing laws and there's an important caveat - "unless the shareholders direct otherwise"

Meaning that if the shareholders direct that the company prioritise green R&D or very long term survivability (or anything else) over maximising shareholder returns, then the company must follow those directions as best it can without damaging its viability.

The problem is usually "activist shareholders" who want to asset strip the company and destroy its viability in the process. Couple that with sociopathic management and you have a perfect storm on your hands, as we've seen so often over the last 40 years.

Re: The president and congress dick around with NASA every damn year

Chinese farmers stopped buying soybeans because the government culled hundreds of millions of pigs whilst combatting the spread of african hemmoragic swine fever. You don't buy animal feed for animals that don't exist and farmers (should) have natural disaster insurance to account for that kind of thing happening in their largest customer.

US Pork was set to sweep in like rescuing angels (and would have subsequently purchased all the unsold USA soybeans - the Chinese market is 3 times the size of the USA one) but the orange turd's mantrums slammed that door in their faces mid negotiations.

Amongst other things, that shitcanned USA-China collaboration on TMSR-LF1 (a rebuild of ORNL MSRE) and pretty much ensured that China will be the economic hyperpower of the last half of this century.

Re: The president and congress dick around with NASA every damn year

Getting food at the grossery is different from being able to afford it.

Re: The president and congress dick around with NASA every damn year

If the dam continues at the current pace Hoover dam is less than 18 months from Deadpool (water levels so low the outlet works cant function - effectively a few feet above the old riverbed level - at which point the river below the dam dried up entirely) and hovering close to levels where the hydro turbines can't function anymore.

The turbines were already reengineered to handle low water about a decade ago, at cost of 40% reduction in output (vs shutting down entirely). Once you hit hydro shutoff there's only a few months until Water supply to Las Vegas fails (it would have already if new tunnels hadn't been drilled by a mayor with foresight, whilst facing considerable opposition from LV businesses. The previous two inlet levels are high and dry.)

Analysis of historic weather patterns indicates that the 19th-20th century was 25% wetter than normal and this one has been 20% drier than normal (it started getting dry shortly before the dam was completed). The problem with that is that all the water treaties and allocations are based on that wetter period and are 20% higher than the river can sustainably provide, whilst everyone invol;ved utterly REFUSES to face facts and accept that lower drawoff rates are needed. The river is about to make that decision for them.

It's not just Hoover dam and Lake Mead. Glenn Canyon dam and Lake Powell are even more badly affected, as is the Davis dam downstream. The Colorado river is still (barely) functional as it reaches Mexico but hasn't consistently reached the sea for decades and the wetlands there are in critical danger

Re: The president and congress dick around with NASA every damn year

"There's also the matter of the country going hungry, reduced exports and no food to turn into alcohol to water down the petrol."

Which is something that's in the process of happening thanks to tariffs affecting the cost of imported potash

The first thing that will happen is sharply reduced exports as USA farmers can no longer compete on world markets whilst internal costs increase (this is already happening) and then the cycle will start spiralling into a crash.

The effects are delayed slightly as there were high USA stockpiles for the 2025-6 growing season but the oncoming 2026-7 growing year is looking to be nasty. Many farmers aren't even bothering to plan for planting

The element of forward planning and effects projections has always been missing from USA actions. This time it's directly hitting home in ways that will strike to the heart of the problem pool of voters (who will still blame libtards and commies regardless)

Re: NASA Acting Associate Administrator for Space Operations…

"which has exploded on five our of eleven attempted launches"

In case it slipped your attention, SpaceX have subjected those stacks to loads vastly in excess of the anticipated ones in order to ENSURE they blew up and then work out what broke first (plus how it did so) in order to iterate towards the strongest & lightest working solution (ie: These are INTENDED to be destructive tests providing critical data)

You can computer model this shit all you like, real world mechanics and engineering are still orders of magnitude more complicated than what we can simulate and many of the stresses involved are very difficult to replicate on the ground in practical testing

A sucessful launch and landing, only proves what you already know. A failure expands by demonstrating what you DON'T know.

It might be big loud and public, but device failures in the testing phase are not R&D failures, nor are they setbacks in the overall scheme of things unless you're chasing politically motivated hard deadlines which in the space industry have repeatedly proven to have emphasis on DEAD

Re: NASA Acting Associate Administrator for Space Operations…

Acting or permanent, the administrator is a political figurehead

The DEPUTY (director, administrator, etc) is the important one in any USA bureaucracy.

Rocket science is easy. Rocket ENGINEERING is where the difficulties start

Yup, this in spades.

The Russian module in particular was built with American money as a way of ensuring that ex-Soviet designers didn't get poached away into weapons systems development

The USA has been its own worst enemy in this area - the same senators who insist that parts be made in their state to secure voters employment as the ones who insist that newer technology not be developed because what works is good enough. A classic example is the shuttle solid boosters - they were a quick kludge intended to only be used until manned-flight-safe liquid fuelled return-to-base boosters were ready. Those liquid fuelled boosters were cancelled because solid fuelled boosters existed and did the job adequately. We all know how that ended up.

As for why the boosters ended up being made in Utah (which limited segment size thanks to transport constraints). that's entirely down to "government pork". It would have made more economic and logistical sense to build on the space coast and barge to Canavera, but legalised bribes (lobbying) got in the way.

Engineer sabotaged hardware then complained when it didn't work

This is why I always install fan and temperature monitoring kit in areas where people can interfere with the kit.

It's also why fire marshalls periodically conduct surprise inspections - especially after being forwarded internal mails which say "fire inspection tomorrow, please ensure all fire doors are CLOSED and passageways clear"

Re: Chesterton's fence

When it comes to politics, the biggest problem is that when a minor issue pops up there's a mentality of we must do SOMETHING.

Often the best thing to do is nothing whatsoever and the SOMETHING merely exacerbates the issue, turning it from minor to major

Re: Chesterton's fence

In a lot of cases, I BUILT that fence, know exactly what it was for, put it in as a temporary workaround, have determined it's no longer needed - and then get blocked by management from removing that fence, which is now an impediment to doing things correctly "Because we've always done things this way"

Re: Back in the late 90s/early 2000s

The best I ever saw was the scrolling text one saying "The System has crashed and all data is lost!"

It raised blood pressure almost instantly in a lot of people. Frequently that blood pressure went even higher when they realised they'd been fooled.

Re: Repair shop bodge

Cases like that make me tempted to contact the insurer in question and suggest their loss adjuster inspect the device more closely

Insurance fraud is why most of us can't have nice things

Re: Not the same, but ...

"the IT dept have managed to recover "most" of the email"

ZFS helps a lot with this kind of thing (as long as you enable the snapshotting feature)

It reduced my headache load a lot.

Re: Not the same, but ...

I turned up to deal with one networking closet to find someone had turned it into a high powered laser test area and disabled the cooling fans because "noisy"

Guess which someone was complaining about "the Internet not working"

"It's the best possible location, no windows for anything to leak out of. We submitted paperwork to take it over."

They damned near got the equipment inserted where sun doesn't shine

The closet got a much more substantial lock and (management backed) threats of removal of all networking equipment on HSE grounds if someone pulled that stunt again

I remember my first 486dx2-100 . It sprinted - 40 bogomips. Unheard of speed

(By way of contrast, that's about what you get in a basic 50-cent ESP32, with a 2010s era i7-4790 hitting 38,000. The 486 computer with 128MB of ram cost over $5000 before adding a pair of 4GB drives at $2000 apiece)

Re: At my place of work

"I suspect he landed the degrees he did by being a good test taker."

As a technician, we always suspected that about engineers. Many of the ones who went from tech to engineer did so because they couldn't be trusted not to break things and as such had plenty of time to do paperwork (which they also usually managed to break)

China's not thrilled its AI experts want to leave the country

Re: Leading IT and AI aint Rocket Science but it is a Cheap Chic Crippling Expensive FOMO Conundrum

China, which the USA has repeatedly accused of doing that which it's done since its creation (and to a far greater extent than China has ever done)

There, FTFY

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/

It hasn't stopped btw. I watched a friend's invention get stolen and patented by a USA company in the 1990s

Re: Wrong headline

> NeurIPS therefore believes it can’t accept submissions from any SDN or affiliates

I get the impression they're telegraphing that the USA government has already started leaning on them - hard

BOFH: Are you ready to raise our expense account limits now?

Re: obviously

It could certainly be used to plausibly explain the accounting discrepancies

Re: B&Q sell those

Or the friendly shipboard computer's alternate personality

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Re: Comparing fruits

> There is a lot of concern in the US about 'Welfare Queens'

Which totally avoids the actual welfare queens in the military-industrial complex, automobile industries and American farming (the latter being the ones who make the most noise about such things whilst standing there demanding payouts - It was their failure to hedge for a large customer having a zoonotic (animal pandemic) that resulted in the USA-China trade war.)

$HINT: Farmers who have gone out of business because the government culled their flocks to curb the spread of African Swine Fever tend not to buy animal feed for animals and farms that no longer exist with money they no longer have). If China really wanted to hurt the USA all they'd need to do is arrange for a few infection breakouts in the pork farming states (it's wildly contagious to the point that transporting infected animals in an enclosed trailer can easily result in transmission a couple of miles downwind of the roads used - and plausible deniability factors heavily into such things)

It's not simply misdirection at the scales involved.

Re: Comparing fruits

"The USA attempted to make alcohol illegal once and it was an unprecedented disaster that resulted in tens of thousands of people dying and established the Mafia as a powerful force in American life."

They then failed to learn anything from the experience and made a bunch of other substances illegal(*) with even worse results - those substances are vastly more widespread and cheaper than they were previously with profit margins being high enough that vendors are willing to take the risks associated with selling to schoolchildren - because, money

(*) All those newly minted FBI G-men had to be kept occupied somehow

Meantime Portugal wiped out the problem in a couple of years with sensible policies and destroying the profit margins. It worked so well that associated crimes plummteted as addicts no longer need to fund their habit and most importantly the uptake in teens/adolescents fell away markedly (see above regarding profit margins) whilst HIV infection rates were slashed

The USA attitude to this kind of thing is what you might expect in a country where institutional cruelty is baked in, medical bankruptcies exist and the incarceration number exceeds anywhere else in the world, including all those authoritarian dystopias which jail people for not worshipping the Dear Leader. Looking to USA laws/procedures for guidance/best practice is best done with a small salt mine onhand.

Re: Comparing fruits

Real world example back in the 1990s

University department found that a large chunk of departmental traffic was visits to Playboy's website.

Solution; Block Playboy

Problem: There are multiple aliases for the site and users quickly find them

Solution: Block the IPs

Problem: there are multiple mirrors and they pop up faster than the admin can block 'em

"The ONLY way you can prevent your 12 year old from accessing porn is..."

... by being an actual parent and looking over their shoulder

Technical solutions never work well for what at its core is a social problem.

Re: Comparing fruits

"Human nature being what it is and kids being what they are will be intrigued and find ways around it."

AKA "If you want to get something done, forbid your kids from doing it"

Re: Comparing fruits

The response I usually give to "Think of the children!" is "Just like Jimmy Saville did?"

Seriously the collection of biometric data (and other stuff) is quite dangerous: Not many people are aware that one of the reasons the Nazis were so effective at rounding up "deviants" and other undesireables was because they had access to extensive data collected in the early days of Weimar - data collected when Weimar was progressive/open society, with the aim of ensuring that discrimination didn't occur.

The first target of the extermination campaigns was disabled children and they were amply assisted by IBM in processing census results in particular

The drone swarm is coming, and NATO air defenses are too expensive to cope

Re: Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

Have you ever seen "Pentagon Wars"?

Every single laser demonstration I've seen so far is reminiscent of the events depicted therein.

Drones doen't come in under ideal conditions, they generally don't come alone and they don't hold a steady course when they're in range of defence systems

Having to spend several seconds painting each drone might SEEM effective but these low speed things aren't being torn apart by aerodynamic forces if you simply put a hole in the wing and the sensitive parts are mostly behind several layers of other stuff (the entire drone in the case of the engine)

Sure, you might be able to zap a dozen - but the rest will slip past whils you're doing so.

There's another effect to consider: Gatwick airport was closed down for several days by A drone - singular - that might not have even existed. Nothing was ever found and the only people arrested picked up a substantial settlement from police sometime afterwards

It didn't do wonderfully in wars begore then either. The Phillippines turned into a 41 year insurgency only interrupted by Japan invading

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

There are only a few critical points in any airbase

Control tower. Radar systems. communications centre, fuel farm, hangars, parking aprons

Runways & taxiways only need to have enough holes in them to prevent them being used but you don't even need that with self-targetting kit that can fly itself into parked aircraft and redirect dynamically if the original target is already ablaze

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

Phalanx has enough ammo to deal with a couple of drones, not an entire swarm

A defence system that runs out of ammo is just as useless as one which can't hit its targets

Re: Yes this is an important one

If you don't think Iran can use starlink for attacks on US soil, I have a bridge across the Hudson to sell you.

Re: Yes this is an important one

"US military bases are likely all protected, but what about National Guard bases? "

What about critical power distribution nexus points?

The same transformers marked as being vulnerable to solar flares with a decade or more to replace if multiples go down are equally as susceptible to a shaped charge or three and the results would be the same - blackouts across multistate areas and unstable power distribution for years.

Sending W.DC dark would be the kind of thing someone might do to make a point.

Forget drones – the US Army just took delivery of a self-flying Black Hawk helicopter

Re: Stupid idea

If you don't have your people having to sit in the firing line you don't need medivac nearly as much

Country that put backdoors into Cisco routers to spy on world bans foreign routers

Re: Slow forever

American cars demonstrate what happens to prices when the supply chain is culled

No profit in that

Re: Funny That......Routers But Not....................

The problem is that there are no good guys, merely bad guys all around with differing agendas and a conviction that they're the good guys who do bad things for the greater good

There's a wikipedia entry for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_cause_corruption