Posts by cyberdemon 3170 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2010
It's "clean energy" because it's a damn sight cleaner than fossil fuels or biomass, which are the only real alternatives to nuclear (baseload generation can't be provided by renewables as we all know, cos we can't ever build enough storage)
Even Wind and Solar produce 'waste' mind you, and a lot "more" of it than nuclear does. Of course it's not radioactive, but why should that be the only thing we care about?
> That depends on how "solid" it is, it may not roll easily lol
Well, I would argue that anything above a "4" on the Bristol Stool Chart is not a "Turd", but a "squit".
And to keep "on topic", I await the next "release" from the "bowels" of Microsoft, to see if it can be polished and/or glittered, without the aid of spray lacquer..
However, I do remember the UserFriendly cartoons, which have sadly all but disappeared from the interwebs..
A few still remain: https://nuless.org/comics/2016.08.03/User%20Friendly-2016.08.03.gif
I fondly remember the "Oracle DBA" cast as some sort of satanic monk, who would fix one's database in exchange for souls of the innocent.
> As root
Are you sure about that last part? Anyone can write to /tmp
If this was a root exploit, he'd surely have demonstrated something more sensational, such as writing in /etc
I also thought this required the user to "print" to the fake printer, which is "user interaction"?
But yes fair enough about disclosure following leak, although I understand he had already said he was going to disclose it at the end of the month, did he say that before or after the leak?
WTF? Even if it could be fixed immediately, we need time to patch it.
What, other than massaging a wannabe supervillain ego and causing global panic, could be his reason for going full disclosure so early?
Icon: I'm sure he'll be listening out for this for the next few hours at least
EDIT: OK, if it's 'just' CUPS-browsed as alluded to above, then he's just overhyping it. Hardly "Every Linux system" as claimed (which would suggest that my router/firewall is probably vulnerable too)
> It would be far, far, far, far more dangerous, for example, to have traffic lights that can accept remote commands to make them green. And I bet you we already have that too.
No, we most certainly do not.
Traffic controllers have a secondary monitoring chip (usually m68k micro, sometimes a GAL chip) that is programmable only locally. It has independent voltage sensors to detect if conflicting 'phases' (ie approaches to a junction) are green simultaneously, and will cut the power immediately if violated.
The main controller does not usually have direct network access either, it only sees a pattern of 16 bits with dedicated functions, for synchronising traffic lights across an urban network. And a bit can only 'request' a state transition, the controller will never violate min/max timings between lights.
I worked on these as my first job out of uni.
Also, I think it's pretty unlikely that someone could set up a radio transmitter big enough to drown out Droitwich, without being noticed pretty damn quick by the MoD..
As for "hacking" Droitwich, it's pretty low tech and i'd have thought fairly high security. Crapita would be a far easier target IMO
Well, what I meant by 'a new kind of load shedding' is doing it in advance before frequency response is required, so that frequency response should not be required.
Also, doing it to "decarbonise the grid" by switching off customers who haven't paid the protection money"green levy", and thus avoid calling on gas plants when the wind stops blowing. Switching off a few old pensioners sat in front of their electric fires may be cheaper / longer duration than batteries..
By refusing a Smart Meter, I am opting out of all that malarkey and hopefully delaying its implementation.
Basically John, what i'd like you, Crapita, Ofgem, and/or NGESO to demonstrate is:
That it is not technically feasible for a bad actor (and I don't mean Tom Cruise) who has already compromised Crapita's IT systems, to issue a command to a large number (say 10 million) Smart Meters and get them to "simultaneously" disconnect (i.e. within the same half-hour interval).
If such a hack is feasible, then I believe it could cause a high-frequency event big enough to cause cascade failures such as high-frequency generator disconnection, interconnector trips, etc. leading to a nationwide blackout and "black start" procedures.
It beggars belief for me that the Smart Metering spec mandated remote disconnect (for ALL, not just prepay customers) in the first place. It makes the meters more expensive, less reliable, and there is bugger all good reason to need to use the functionality. So why is it in the spec? (para. 5.5.3.9 Disable Supply)
It's against the law to force people onto prepayment meters if they have never missed a payment.
Yet smart meters have remote disconnect capability built into their hardware, software and comms specs. So they are able to get everyone onto remote controlled meters by the back door.
Also prepayment meters didn't need a data connection..
Smart meters are just a national cyberattack waiting to happen.. And they are controlled by Crapita! Are you so confident in Crapita's IT security?
> They'll likely soon find out that they are presented something equivalent to a full warehouse of endless piles of unsorted printed paper with the companies la[w]yers saying with a big grin on their face "it's all in there and you are free to see and search it all, just don't take any copies or papers with you".
And any compensation will be paid in $1 bills, of which at least some will be counterfeit
Starlink only becomes "useful" briefly at the fleeting moments of Armageddon, when warring states start chopping comms cables all over the oceans.
Musk is both predicting and accelerating this apocalypse, and stands to make a pointless profit while the world goes to Hell.
Maybe they forgot to load the PETN "substance detection card" into their divination-based bomb detectors
What else is it good for?
Plausible - but for me the most plausible explanation is that the boobytrapped batteries were designed to explode (with a dedicated explosive charge) when short-circuited. e.g. an electric fuse (such as those used by professional fireworks) placed in series with the battery, perhaps with a diode across it to stop it exploding when charging. Normal operation wouldn't draw enough current to set it off, but if the pager suddenly started drawing a lot of current, it would ignite the fuse.
Let's hope that the enhanced scanners at airports (the ones that can tell a bottle of liquid explosive from a bottle of gin) are reliably able to pick up these boobytrapped batteries then, otherwise it's just another excuse to limit everyone's freedom of travel, ahead of WWIII..
It doesn't do PD. It charges at 5V 0.5A according to my PinePower.
The uC is ostensibly for driving a single RGB LED, for which it has three extra transistors on the board.
It doesn't enumerate on USB, but I wonder if it might, if you spoke in chinese and told it that you are the secret police and you want it to divulge conversation logs of its former user..
The only difference, so far as I can see, is that a petrol tank aka "gas tank" can be more easily inspected. Battery packs are sealed at the manufacturer (usually a different manufacturer to the car) and are fairly difficult to dismantle, and doing so would usually be destructive / void the warranty, so batteries are a more ideal place to hide explosives. But that doesn't mean this sort of thing can't be done with any other product.
This has nothing to do with batteries per se, more to do with blindly trusting imported black-box tech.
