Posts by Malcolm Weir

Cisco turns to titanium spoons and sand dunes to build a better … box?

Re: Google Gemini says (so take it with a pinch of salt)

European or American badgers?

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again

Re: /usr

Well, as right as anyone except Thompson or Ritchie.

Ritchie said: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/HAWoZ8g-xYk

Re: /usr

(Sorry this is so late as to be probably irrelevant, but...)

The 'dd means "command and copy" but "cc" was already taken' thing is a very old joke from the V7 man pages, I believe.

The real origin story is the IBM/JCL "DD" (meaning "data definition") thing.

Source: second comment in this thread: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/HAWoZ8g-xYk

[ I mean, feel free to argue with The Man, but he was there, and unless your name is Ken Thompson, you weren't. ]

Re: /usr

I would suggest that its not canonical at all. If you look at the general naming policies, abbreviated words were common ("bin", "dev", "etc") and acronyms less so (although not unheard of: "dd" is an acronym for "command and copy" -- true, dat)

Ring kills Flock partnership amid surveillance scrutiny

Gunshot phrenology

I didn't know that Flock had got into "gunshot detection", which is the phrenology of "public safety" scams.

There's a company that used to be called "SpotShotter" which changed it's name to "SoundThinking", presumably to escape the bad reputation it earned. They admitted that they could retroactively _create_ an alert to justify police action, which is nice for them!

(The problem with these sorts of systems is calibration: detecting something that may or may not be a gunshot is one thing, but geolocating it requires careful understanding of the locations, atmospheric conditions, where large trucks (etc) happen to be located -- parked or moving -- and so on, which is generally impractical to maintain in an urban area).

Supermarket sorry after facial recognition alert flags right criminal, wrong customer

Re: Ban it

Technically, the court would not "deny hearing the case", they would dismiss the case (that they were hearing). The issue is _when_. The earliest would be at the "motion to dismiss" stage (hence the name), where the court looks at the evidence in the light most favorable to the challenged party (in this case, if the park was being sued, then they'd file the MTD and the court would treat everything the scrote doing the suing as gospel). Once the case survives the MTD, you get to discovery, etc, and get to find out that the who was spouting a load of nonsense...

Re: Ban it

Nah, just the manual version of Fujitsu's Horizon...

Re: Ban it

So... if the ICO the training ground for OFWAT or is it the other way around?

UK watchdog to rule on £246M Post Office subsidy over Horizon scandal and IR35

"HMRC reckons that only one in 10 contractors in the private sector who should be paying tax under the current rules are doing so correctly."

One wonders that, if only 10% get it right, perhaps it would be an idea to change the setup?

Trump spectrum sale leaves airlines with $4.5B bill for altimeter do-over

Re: Older designs

Yet apparently all the bad old systems were fixed two years ago (the last time the airlines had a whine about this). Oh, well...

Since the law only requires between 100MHz and 180MHz of spectrum to be auctioned from the 3.98Ghz to 4.2GHz band, the solution is trivial for those who've mastered applied counting: sell 3.98GHz to 4.16GHz, leaving at least 40MHz as a buffer (if you sell 180MHz) or more (if you sell less). And since the RA's were fixed two years ago, that should be ample.

We will be cruising at 35,000 feet and failing to update our Apache HTTP Server

Re: re: Aircraft IFE systems are not connected directly to the airplane's avionics

Yep.

IFE is the customer's responsibility (like seats), so there's no benefit for the airframer to "consolidate" the system with mainstream avionics, which are produced by third parties (e.g. Honeywell) anyway.

Also, airframers spend a lot of energy trying to limit the certification boundary, because even if they're doing the certification themselves, paperwork is needed (somewhere to put those tick boxes). Larger boundary, more paperwork, more cost.

Finally, not every aircraft customer wants the same IFE.

Baikonur's only crew-capable pad busted after Soyuz flight

Re: Trump took credit

Well, we got the Autopen: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/justice-department-quietly-replaced-identical-trump-signatures-on-recent-pardons

Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away

Re: Ooer!

Yup. Security Level 4 (& therefore level 5) requires:

"The cryptographic module shall contain tamper response and zeroization circuitry that shall continuously monitor the tamper detection envelope and, upon the detection of tampering, shall immediately zeroize CSPs. The tamper response and zeroization circuitry shall remain operational when CSPs are contained within the cryptographic module."

(A CSP is a Critical Security Parameter, so keys and the like. Whacking them is results in crypto-erasure).

This means that Level 4 & 5 devices basically tend to have three power domains: normal power, battery backup for moving the thing around and surviving innocuous power outages, and capacitors that have enough juice to bork the thing when someone cuts the red wire.

Re: you need an incinerator

While those would be fairly effective tools to break the thing, the calibrated incinerator is the only way to make sure (you could drill in such a way as the wafer gets dislodged but not damaged, for example). This boring bit of trivia brought to you by NATO STANREC 4570 and NIST SP800-88...

I checked with the cranky sod who designs our security stuff (using a mirror), and this is of absolutely no use to anyone, because you cannot test it. Is the data gone? Who knows? You can dismantle the bricked thing and apply forensic techniques to see if you can get any useful bits off the carcass, but that only tells you about that that particular device self-bricked... Maybe the next unit you get all forensic on will yield different results? For physical destruction of a flash device, you need an incinerator... and not just any old incinerator, but a calibrated incinerator.

SpaceX loses debut V3 Super Heavy in ground test mishap

It's interesting (to me, anyway) to compare Space X with Blue Origin. Journalists tend to downplay the latter's progress, but consider:

New Shepard has had two failures: one on it's first flight in 2015, and one failure in 2022. The interesting thing about the later one is that it proved something important: the launch escape system worked perfectly and landed the capsule safely (from about 26,000ft).

But my favorite thing about Blue Origin's efforts is summarized by noting that Jeff Bezos has personally flown on New Shepard...

Benioff retreats from idea of sending troops in to clean up San Francisco

Re: Benioff is wrong.

Salesforce's "Dreamforce" event is a private event not open to the public. Is there any reason why the City & County of San Francisco should provide security for free? Also, if you _can_ hire 200 off-duty cops, that sort of suggests that there are at least 200 cops available for emergencies of any kind...

Apple ices ICE agent tracker app under government heat

Re: come 2028

One positive thing from this week: a (ludicrously expensive) gathering of all the General and Flag officers is the US military watching Donold Trump and Hangover Hegseth try to woo them. I've seen more responsive statues. So "martial law" may be a big ask.

Taiwan gets chippy about US request it shifts manufacturing

What's at risk?

Much is made of the Taiwan/China/USA axis, where China and USA balance each other out so to let Taiwan get on with being a capitalist powerhouse.

But if the USA does become functionally unreliable, to whom will Taiwan turn?

It seems plausible that Taiwan will recognize that there is another force aligned against China, and strike a deal with India. It seems likely that Modi could strike a deal that _also_ features onshoring (with India not the USA), but on a realistic timescale and coincidentally cut the USA-India semiconductor supply chains, so that highest-tech remains in Taiwan and the medium tech gets a foothold in India.

The real reason why Trump is killing the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai'i

Re: Regularity

Change in rate of change is not the same as change in rate...

Re: Put it somewhere else?

Yes they could (and they do). But then the historical trail is lost. And that's delightful to deniers because deriving trends across anything less than decades (deniers would prefer centuries) is extremely vulnerable to challenge, which delivers (flakey) ammunition to the deniers trying to maintain the status quo ante.

The biggest mystery to me is the effort that people put into justifying pollution....

Re: Trump and his cronies

You say "tilted", others say "balanced".

The others probably have the better case.

Re: Trump and his cronies

Whether or not one agrees with the argument, the idea is that EV subsidies balance things like cheap oil licenses (justified because "we all need oil for fuel") and atmospheric pollution from refineries, gas stations, vehicles and transporting volatile liquids around the place.

Re: Our "throttled" future (an ad nauseam argument)

Also noteworthy were the murderous fools lobbying the local government to refuse or redirect federal aid to improve precautionary emergency measures (like sirens) because, and I quote, "the devil is in the Whitehouse".

As to the "too little, too late".... no. That's never going to be the case, because even e.g. reducing sea-level rise by a millimeter is better than NOT reducing it. This is the denier's favorite claim: asserting that we can't prevent climate change, so don't bother trying to reduce it.

*sigh* this is is where the anti-science evangelists like JE "triumph".

Note the claim has been subtly elided to actively acknowledge that the climate _is_ changing, but it's not our fault. They then shrilly screech that the climate has changed in the past (duh! Ice ages, anyone?) so it doesn't matter and we shouldn't do anything about it.

This denialist pattern is exactly the same as e.g. noting that thermal springs often contain high levels of geogenic arsenic, so we may as well dump toxic waste into them.

To put it another way, even if mankind is only directly (i.e.. Ignoring things like widespread deforestation) responsible for X% of the climate change, what evil turdbat would oppose reducing that X%? In mathematics: if Z is the total climate change, and X is the proportion due to anthropomorphic factors, Y being the rest, then X+Y = Z, and reducing X reduces Z, and fewer people die.

As the grown-ups have pointed out, Trump didn't nominate Laura Grimm, he nominated the dude who forced NOAA to put a a false statement supporting The Idiot Trump's moronic tweet about the path of a hurricane. Remember that farce with the Sharpie? Because we do....

Ah, so you acknowledge that when you stated that it WASN'T Trump but NOAA that's defunding the observatory, you were misstating the facts, i.e. you were being a dingbat.

The Trumpbat instructs, others implement, who's responsible?

Ding, ding, ding!

And, poor delusion dingbat: we've established that your supreme overlord Trump doesn't do everything himself (because he's not competent, apart from anything else), so what REALLY happens is that Lutnick proposes, Trump agrees, and then Senate rubber stamps. Possibly Lutnick is "guided" by Trump's minders (Miller?) to propose an individual that's been suitably obsequious or butt-kissy, but that's a distinction with no real difference.

And no, I wouldn't be surprised about Grimm. But I'm (not really) surprised why you think the Chief of Staff of NOAA is relevant to this issue? Yes, Ms Grimm came to NOAA from WWF. But she's the ACTING head, until the Senate confirms the nominee (and you jolly cleverly outlined the process, smart boy!) and in the meantime she's just the caretaker.

The nominee is Dr Neil Jacobs, who's principal claims to fame include trying to pressure meteorologists to support the Orange Overlord's stupidity about the path of a storm (Hurricane Dorian, as it happens) and the notorious Sharpie incident, as well as other examples of dumbness (see e.g. https://blog.ucs.org/rachel-cleetus/we-watched-neil-jacobs-confirmation-hearing-for-noaa-administrator-and-are-concerned-about-what-we-heard/).

Re: Oh, dear

That commentard nails his colours to the mast by ignoring the reality that e.g. Roy Spencer is a believer in "Intelligent Design"...

"So it's NOAA killing the MLO, not Trump"

Bloomin' 'eck!

Talk about trying to split hairs while having his cake and eating it!

What the Eel tried to wriggle out of saying is that it is TRUMP'S NOAA killing the MLO.

What dingbat thinks the any government operates by having the chief executive make _all_ the decisions personally?

In this case, Trump picked Howard Lutnick as SecCommerce for his sterling work supporting the "stolen election" lies, fundraising for Trump, and for his stupidity in agreeing that tariffs are a splendid idea. Lutnick theb picks the head of NOAA that agrees to parrot the Glorious Leader's idiocity, and never suggest that the Emperor's New Cloths might be... unusual.

xAI's Grok lurches into right-wing insanity, offers tips on assaulting man

Re: "The response should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect"

There's plenty of evidence. Musk happily tells the world+dog that he's unhappy with the results so tweaking the thing.

Tug reaches flaming ship carrying electric cars off Alaska coast

Re: 'Noticing' smoke

Fire alarms tend to only be in human occupied spaces. I suspect this may change, with a consequent increase in the price of transporting EVs by sea...

Re: ships or decks never catch fire

I think the tin foil hat theory is substituting that commentard's lack of information with some kind of conspiracy. However, a quick google finds multiple reports of the fire starting on a deck carrying EV's, which does seem to indicate a reasonable suspicion that the origin of the fire might, you know, be an EV. And sea water doesn't have to be "sloshing inside" for for the humidity level to be elevated due, you know, to the ocean on all sides!

Still, with what we know, the fire started on an EV carrying deck and EV's have a non-zero risk of thermal runaway, particularly if you assume that fewer than 100% of vehicles are manufactured without defects!

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

Re: The best keyboard...

Ah, but having a mechanical "type head" (either the Selectric's golfball or a card punch) put some real mechanical feedback! When you pressed a key, something (else) went _thunk_!

Re: "For most, not so bad"... bloody excellent actually.

Frankly, I'm amazed that there are so many Johnny-Come-Latelies who think the Model M is the epitome of a keyboard.

The cognoscenti know the IBM Selectric II from, I'm told, 1971 reigns supreme. The Model M was just trying to emulate that without that golfball thing....

Re: Over the last half century+ ...

For me the backlight has nothing to do with touch typing, but finding those other weird keys (page up/down, home, the stuff round the numeric keypad).

70-knot winds so far blamed for yacht disaster that killed Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch

Re: Predictive Modeling???

Sciroccos fit the bill...

Re: Acquitted...

Friendly reminder that the acquittal does not mean the accounting wasn't crooked.

Re: Wrong Target....

Fraud is never trumped by "caveat emptor". Failing to notice the duck is lame is the buyer's problem. Actively hiding the duck's lameness is the seller's.

Attackers pwn charter airline helping Trump's deportation campaign

Re: Trump will blame Joe Biden

What, again?

Didn't they target the script kiddies at DOGE a while back?

You're not too smart, are you?

Read the article. It's quite clear that the issue described is that ICE and CBP are lawless thugs and should be first up against the wall. Nothing different today.

But even your sacred evidence makes it clear that Obama didn't ignore court orders, provides no evidence of third-country deportation or blocking due process from the judiciary.

("Immigration courts" are not judicial courts. Once the immigration court has decided, THEN the judiciary gets to weight in).

The difference is DUE PROCESS. Obama's DHS provided much more of it than the fascists do.

Remember the masked alleged ICE agents grabbing people off the streets under Obama? No? How about suddenly revoking valid visas without notice or hearing? No again?

Quite.

This is naive and factually incorrect: there are many more options.

But first, the idea that "if you cross the border without permission" is simplistic, as we would expect from the MAGAt fascists. One simple example is people who cross the border with permission, but for whom permission is then yanked without due process or even notice. Whether or not they are then there illegal is a legal question which may tilt either way.

The biggest dumbness here is the faux binary choice: the US has not had an "open border" in decades, if not centuries. Of course, the MAGAts like to screech that it has, but they're mostly dumb as a sack of rocks, so their errors are understandable if not admirable.

The other side of the faux binary choice comes down to the issue that the US really doesn't have a rational welfare system; sane systems make it substantially easier to manage costs, but that craps on the ability for huge corporations to skim money off the top. For the hard of thinking: Switzerland has pretty open borders with France, Germany and Italy...

(I'm not commenting on the wisdom of various policies, just pointing out the simplistic MAGAt frothing is... simplistic. Shocking!).

US, China agree to roll back tariffs – but only for 90 days

Re: Mouthy American blinks and backs down...

I don't think that's entirely true. The writers agree that the character represents the same stereotype as Trump, but the reality is that Trump fits the stereotype of a narcissistic ill-informed blowhard bully as well as Biff does. I'm sure Trump's behavior helped sculpt the character, but does Biff really hang out with a Jeffrey Epstein character the way Trump did? Did Biff bankrupt his own casino the way Trump did?

So I reckon Biff is what Trump is aspiring to be, not what he is...

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Make Aerospace Grotty Again

All of this seems to boil down to you claiming we need better instrumentation. Sounds good. Why are you so opposed to that?

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Re: The anti-lottery

Five down votes? Sorry, guys, the math still maths.

Re: The anti-lottery

Oddly enough, those who smugly claim that only those with a poor understanding of math(s) play lotteries are frequently themselves wrong:

If the odds of being the single winner are, say, 1 in 100,000,000, and the ticket price is $1, then if the jackpot is greater than $100,000,000 your expected winnings will be (jackpot) * (probability of winning) which exceeds the stake amount, so it's worth playing.

(of course, the Game Theory arithmetic is much more complicated in the real world, because of lesser prizes and greater odds, and the number of tickets sold influencing the probability of you being a single winner, and so on, but at some point the game is worth playing...)

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

Re: Proof-of-personhood

Revenue protection is one part of the motive, but quality of service is, remarkably in this day and age, another.

Gaming in particular has value in knowing who and what the player actually is.

For example, there are scurrilous rumors that someone with the improbable name of "Elon Musk" employs minions to play games for him, so he can parachute in and look amazing to his adoring fan base. If you had to sign in using a verified ID it would be harder to masquerade as His Excellency.

But these days I'm told that bots on modern high-profile games are actually likely to be there because the game publisher wants them to be there, as NPCs rather than bots.

(For social media, of course, verified ID is a drawback. Who amongst us hasn't claimed that the toxic rant on their account wasn't the result of hacking? This is a particular problem for many high-profile people and politicians, whose accounts regularly seem to get hacked to post garbage that Absolutely Wasn't From Them).

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: Phonetic Alphabets

Hmmm.... that should be:

A for 'Orses

B for Mutton

C for Yourself

,,,,

Trump’s 145% tariffs could KO tabletop game makers, other small biz, lawsuit claims

Re: Sue him directly.

For information (not criticism):

1. You cannot sue the President for official acts (however daft), you can only sue the US Government, which is what this is. If you try to sue in state court, the federal government will "remove" it to federal court.

2. Even if you win a lawsuit, no-one goes to jail. That requires a prosecution.

3. You cannot prosecute a sitting President; first, if the prosecution is in civil court, it will be removed to Federal court (like with point 1). And the United States (i.e. the US Department of Justice) will not prosecute a sitting President. And the Supreme Court in the case of United States vs Trump said that he's absolutely immune from prosecution for official acts, with no good definition of what constitutes an official act: theoretically, he could declare someone an enemy and order the military to murder them, and that would be OK. Yes, this is ludicrous.

4. The legal position is that the only way to deal with a lawless President is to impeach and remove him, and then a prosecution could proceed, but see last point: any prosecution would have to establish that the act for which a prosecution is being sought is outwith the bounds of a President's official actions, and there's no guidance for how to do that.

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed

Re: Who is to blame?

'Must "just work"' is probably wrong in the language of requirements. "SHOULD just work" is better, but when I'm "designing in" security I assume both that the operator knows the reason for the hoops I'm asking them to jump through, but also if they don't, the security maybe lessened but it's not entirely eliminated! In other words, assume the user will make mistakes and you won't go too far wrong!

Mind you, there are mistakes and there's installing a separate network interface....

P.s. I was amused to discover today that Hegseth's efforts to axe large parts of the DoD is his second attempt: back in 2015 he tried to axe part of the US Military Academy ("West Point"). Literally. With an axe. By throwing it. At a cadet. Who he hit.