Posts by Eclectic Man 3949 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jun 2010
Did they try with boiled eggs? I have only seen it done with raw ones. The fact that most of the mass is fluid and there is an air sack is probably essential, as it allows the internal movement to absorb the energy gradually.
Probably need someone with a degree in viscous fluid dynamics to explain it properly, though.
I fully recommend the report, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-05/Brand%20New%20Air%20Traffic%20Control%20System%20Plan.pdf if only for the pics. I actually have that fan!
I don't want to be dismissive, but I would be impressed if they replaced one airport's complete systems in a mere 3 years. Even with existing tech it would be a challenge, but going for 'state of the art' is, as Sir Humphrey Appleby might say, 'ambitious'. And if ATC is in a bad way, what about ground traffic control systems?
However, I wish them luck.
Now, where did I put that Cunard brochure?
AI only replaces actual people when it does their jobs as well or better than they did. This is wishful thinking at best, and at worst it is crippling the US tax gathering capabilities.
Did Bessent say how long it will take for this AI to start delivering? Of course not, because he doesn't know and has not let contracts before firing staff.
re: Her rack:
One of the UK national papers today had a front page item: 'Do women prefer 'six pack abs' or hair?' with images of a toned bald man and a 'plump' but beautifully coiffed man.
(My suspicion is they prefer a man who treats them with respect, but hey-ho, I am willing to learn.)
In all seriousness, if the DB security people were watching an unidentified stranger gaining physical access to their servers and took no action, their reaction is to be expected - major arse covering exercise.
I remember telling clients that their security policies should require people to ensure that strangers were challenged by a trained security guard. DB security failed abysmally.
I wonder if any data has been compromised or money 'gone astray'.
(Let's face it, we all know who should be sacked.)
I wonder how long the system has been operating? Electrical insulation decays after a while. The blame may fall onto one wire, but the whole thing should be examined. Years ago (sometime last century), I was told that a signal box on the UK's railway could not be maintained as the insulation on the wires was so old it had decayed. Any movement and it would all fall off.
My guess is that it is not just this system, so although the investment announced is welcome, it will probably be a big job.
Bombastic Bob: c) Climate change nonsense is NOT "useful science"
veti: c) Just plain false.
Sadly Trump agrees with Bob, rather than, for example the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union:
"Two major US scientific societies have announced they will join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact days after Donald Trump’s administration dismissed contributors to a key Congress-mandated report on climate crisis preparedness.
On Friday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) said that they will work together to produce over 29 peer-reviewed journals that will cover all aspects of climate change including observations, projections, impacts, risks and solutions.
The collaboration comes just days after Trump’s administration dismissed all contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, the US government’s flagship study on climate change. The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors had left the future of the study in question; it had been scheduled for publication in 2028.
The NCA had been overseen by the Nasa-supported Global Change Research Program – a key US climate body which the Trump administration also dismissed last month. The reports, which have been published since 2000, coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/03/us-scientific-societies-climate-report
Come on, Bob. Look at the literature, find out how much coal, oil and gas has been burnt since 1800, look at the change to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and do the math. (Please.)
Years ago my car (a Ford Focus) needed a replacement exhaust pipe. I took it to a garage and asked, and they quoted the replacement part as being about £20 plus labour, but it was not an official Ford part, just one approved to be used. So I asked what was the difference between that and the official Ford part. "About £70" came the reply, I asked "what is the in use? I spend a lot of time motorway driving and I want to avoid having an annoying noise." They said the Ford part was made of thicker steel. So I went for that one. When I collected my car, the mechanic was so impressed with the official Ford part tax he said he'd be putting one on his own car and not going the 'cheap' route.
Right to repair is all very well, but the question of equivalence of parts and operation is important. If the part fails, what does it take with it? Can it jeopardise the mission or the crew?
Re "gain-of-function" - Fauci was trying to point out to Rand Paul that it is an imprecise term and there is a more accurate one in use. This is what happens in science, we learn, improve and refine. That is not Fauci redefining it himself but the whole relevant scientific community being more precise, over several months. And Paul was bullying Fauci, talked over him and would not let him explain where Paul was incorrect. That is not Fauci being 'buried under his bull'. Frankly as a former ophthalmologist, Paul should know better about medical science than that.
Your fist link (none of which are to health websites btw) includes the statement in the digest:
"There is still no direct evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab."
As for misquoting you (actually it was an accurate quote), I expanded the context to see your reaction. You see, you misrepresented what I had posted by ignoring the point of my statement concerning the chain of custody of Hunter Biden's laptop (which you claim to address by a link to 'the real Biden laptop conspiracy'). If you are so unhappy about misrepresentation, please try not to do it again.
Umm, well, thanks for that.
Regarding voting fraud. If allegations have been tested in court, then they have been dealt with. I was actually asking you to explain the absence of any newly revealed claims of voter fraud from the 2020 election, specifically by vote counters, which have yet to be tested in court. The point being that none of the court cases against the result has succeeded, yet Trump persists in claiming the 2020 election was 'stolen' from him. In order to prove that, there need to be new revelations and for them to be tested in court.
The link of Rand Paul attacking Fauci, who was being polite and rejecting everything Paul accused him of, was interesting, but, frankly, not supportive of your case. Nowhere does Fauci accept the virus was engineered, rather than natural. Rand Paul's questions were designed to attack and humiliate Fauci, rather than elicit information, which is what politicians tend to do when they want to make a point or look strong to their 'voter base' rather than learn something.
I suggest you watch it again and listen to what Fauci said, and consider the possibility that he might be right. And try posting a link to a reputable health web site that does claim the virus was 'artificially enhanced', and explains why and what modifications there were, if you can find one.
Then you claim: "Being able to realise the facts is the important part, and where on here facts are ignored, rejected and downvoted because it upsets someones opinion."
Yup, being confronted with reality can be painful, embarrassing even. As for downvotes, well, someone (and I suspect that it is just the one person) seems to be downvoting almost every post in some threads which point out where Trump or his administration is wrong, mistaken or being foolish. (I will doubtless get a downvote for this post.). But that is no reason to avoid posting. People are literally being blown up in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, in comparison a few downvotes seems a small price to pay for advocating peace and freedom for all.
BUT, the next important part is logical reasoning from 'the facts' to a conclusion. Your claim that Fauci was 'destroyed' by Rand Paul is incorrect, he was attacked, verbally, and defended himself. Rand Paul was aggressive and rude. Your conclusion was incorrect, not supported by the recording of the exchange, so your reasoning was illogical. And Trump's team, in his first term claimed to use "alternative facts" after it was pointed out that Obama's inauguration was far better attended than Trump's.
The Trump administration can work with whomsoever it chooses, but we can argue their choice of sycophantic loyalists over competence is bad for American and the world.
Oh, but, according to you: "Your [i.e., my] opinion is irrelevant".
The first link you provided show that Pennsylvania has a mess in its electoral legislation that the politicians seem unable or unwilling to resolve. The second and third show that voting irregularities were caught and the authorities took action. In particular the interviewee in the video on the CNN link specifically rejects your claim of mass voting irregularities having had any material effect on the election. You have not provided any reference to allegations of voting fraud tax have not already been subject to judicial scrutiny.
Regarding Covid-19. I am not an expert geneticist, but the claim that there was "gain of function research to make it more lethal and spread easier through humans" is serious and does really need to be supported with evidence from some competent authority, but you did not supply a link for that.
However, this:
"In conclusion, all these specific features observed in SARS-COV-2 helps scientists to rule out the idea that this pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus is the result of a man-made action that could be either engineered in the laboratory or further created as a bioweapon out of conspiracy."
from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7982270/#:~:text=In%20conclusion%2C%20all%20these%20specific,a%20bioweapon%20out%20of%20conspiracy.
Which goes on to say: "Recent discoveries revealed evidence of the presence of the virus around the world before it emerged in Asia. There is growing evidence of its true origin as a global organism that was waiting for favorable conditions to emerge instead of originating in China. "
indicates that your claim is not supported by the science.
You omit the conclusion to my sentence of what I believe regarding Hunter Biden's laptop. The full sentence (I have put in bold the part you left off) is:
"I believe that Hunter Biden had a laptop, but that the failure to ensure a secure custody chain potentially invalidated any data thereon."
The part you left off is the crucial bit (is that why you omitted it?). Preserving a secure chain of custody for evidence is essential in legal proceedings. There was a case years ago where a School employee was accused of having child pornography on his laptop. He denied any knowledge and would have been convicted of a serious offence, except that his accuser, had had access to the accused's laptop, and had the same illegal pornography (plus a lot more) on his own PC. As the chains of custody for both computers were preserved, it was clear who the perpetrator was, and who the innocent party was.
Whether or not I am an idiot is probably for others to judge, but I have never referred to the Steele dossier as a way of disparaging President Trump. Personally I believe that any speculation as to whether Putin has 'Kompromat' on Trump is pointless.
As for talking to people, I expect you do, but do you listen to them? How often do they say that you are talking nonsense? And would you take any notice if they did? The most important thing to know about anyone is how they react to being told they are wrong. I hope the above demonstrates that I reacted appropriately: I read the links you provided, listened to the video, have corrected your abbreviated quotation of what I wrote and pointed out where I believe you are wrong and why, with rational argument and logic. Hopefully you will agree that it was in a polite and clear manner. Sorry to say that you, on the other hand, produced links that contradict your argument, and selectively quoted me omitting the crucial part of a sentence. Which is not so good. Sorry.
Me: "there is nothing to stop any vote counter with evidence of impropriety in the 2020 election coming forward."
You: "There is a requirement of overwhelming evidence needed to get a judge to accept that."
I was not referring to getting Judge to accept anything, merely the fact that not one person who actually counted votes in the 2020 presidential election has come forward to allege in any way impropriety in that election. Not one. Yet you seem to accept the allegations without any supporting evidence at all (a link to what you claim to be the evidence reported by a reputable site please, I haven't found any. But maybe I'm not looking in the right places, your help is politely requested.)
You: "So back to Covid was natural, Bidens laptop was a lie, Steele dossier, etc. Recognise them. Go on."
Covid-19 was real, whether it was purely natural or partially generated in a Chinese laboratory, or natural and leaked from said laboratory (the city in question, Wuhan, does have a major virus research institution, so that is not beyond possibility), I have no idea. The answer to your issue with Covid-19 is only relevant if you consider that the disease that killed millions was designed as a weapon or not. The fact that literally hundreds of thousands of Americans died because Trump did not take it seriously is not conspiracy theory, and does matter.
I believe that Hunter Biden had a laptop, but that the failure to ensure a secure custody chain potentially invalidated any data thereon. Any competent lawyer could argue that without a clear and secure custody chain, the laptop could have been tampered with to implicate Hunter Biden in criminal activity. I worked briefly with the Digital Forensics Group at HMRC, they are sticklers for secure and provable custody chains.
Steele dossier: I have no idea, doesn't seems have had much effect.
Frankly I think you need to get out more, meet some people in real life who will tell you when you are being a twit and don't always just support whatever you say. And yes, I do mean face to face conversations where you and they are in the same place, not web sites like this.
It is merely there to 'encourage the others' to toe the line. The real damage is being done by seriously damaging the essential IT security infrastructure as described by The Register in https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/23/trump_us_security/ and the recent near closure of CVE.
Now, don't get me wrong, this is terrible for Mr Krebs, and it will be at best very difficult for him for at least the next 4 years, but it will serve very much as a warning to anyone who promotes reality that contradicts the Trump playbook. Trump has already done a great deal to silence the 'Global Warming' scientists, his attacks on Columbia and Harvard Universities is a serious attempt to stifle free speech. Defunding much of the USA's national science programmes and USAID is designed to silence any form of dissent, or, as most scientists call it 'evidence based decision making'.
Mr Krebs was just a prominent target who was a thorn in the side for speaking truth to the world. Anthony Fauci could well be next, even retirement may not spare him from Trump's ire.
The White House page from the link describes accusations, as yet unproven, against Chris Krebs. The facts are that none of the people who physically counted votes in the 2020 presidential election where Biden was declared the winner, has come forward to claim that votes were rigged, miscounted or otherwise allege misconduct. Not one. In her book about her experiences in NAZI Germany, 'The Past is Myself', Charitable Bielenberg* describes her husband's experience observing the vote counting the numerous referenda on issues concerning the oppression of the Jews. All of the counters knew that the public was 99% against the NAZI legislation, but the result announced was 99% in favour. Now, that must have given the opposition great comfort, knowing that the NAZIs were hated by the vast majority of the German people.
You could claim that no one would dare to criticise the result while Biden was President, but now that Trump is President, there is nothing to stop any vote counter with evidence of impropriety in the 2020 election coming forward. No one has, we know this because the Trump supporting media (Fox News, for example) would be putting them on every broadcast, they would be literally world famous. And then there would be an avalanche of others confirming their statements. There are literally thousands of individuals who counted the votes. Their complete failure to criticise the result shows that the previous election was, as Mr Krebs stated, the most secure in American history.
The idea that every single one of the vote counters is either a conspirator or has been silenced in some way would imply a degree of coercive control and a conspiracy so powerful that Trump could never have won the 2024 election.
Learning to recognise when a conspiracy theory is nonsense, and not credible is something I would advise everyone to try. If you think that the 2020 election really was stolen from Trump, please look through my argument and explain why the thousands of vote counters who actually know what happened, and are now able to come forward without fear of retribution, have remained silent. (Because I really do want to know, but, being a mathematician, I am only interested in facts and reality, not allegations, suppositions or guesses.)
One other issue. The requirement by Trump is to comply with the presidential Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 . It is generally considered that laws are not retroactive. I don't know about the USA, but Suspect that even President Trump cannot enforce retrospective orders, experts on the US constitution please advise.
I await your esteemed reply.
* My copy is pub by Corgi, ISBN 0-552-99065-5
Apologies for replying to my own post, but I have just returned to this site to find: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/x_accounts_europe_drop/
In which is the paragraph:
We asked Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, why Europeans were leaving X, and it responded, "Europeans are leaving the social media platform X primarily due to concerns over misinformation, hate speech, and a perceived decline in content moderation since Elon Musk's acquisition in 2022."
So AI's can get stuff right, after all.
I have not left Xitter, as I was never on it, and never issued a Xit (pronounced, I understand, as 'zit'). Have I missed much?
McKinsey claims that people don't understand AI, that people are unsure about its benefits and:
"McKinsey advises that companies need to assess AI computing needs early, anticipate potential shifts in demand, and design scalable investment strategies that can adapt as AI models and use cases evolve."
This reminds me of what the 'Independent Financial Advisors'* told me when politely asking me to trust them with my pension funds:
'It all depends on what you think the stock market is going to drover the next 30 years'.
If I knew, I wouldn't want an IFA**.
But regarding AI. The article points out that maybe specific AI's can be quite good, but General AI may be really difficult. Anyone reading the Register for the last 5 years could have told McKinsey that.
D'Oh icon, 'coz stating the bleeding' obvious. innit.
* An IFA is basically someone who gets paid to advise you how to lose, sorry, invest, your pension fund and other monies to ensure they, sorry, you, get the highest return.
** I don't. No investor management firm has ever beaten just investing in the FTSE 100 tracker find over the long term. And, as I intent to live for 'the long term
I have always found that telling an organisation to correct information they hold about me or I will complain to the ICO about. them breaching the UK's GDPR tone quite effective. Let's hope they don't read this and reckon they can get away with braking the Act. 'Coz let's face it, proper funding and staffing for the ICO is not that high on the government's agenda right now.
I do have issues with the FT's reporting. They are very 'capitalist' as you put it. On 20th Feb, page 8, they published an article accepting that research shows that the environment matters a great deal for development and life expectancy among humans. On Thursday 6th March, they had no fewer than three articles (pages 3 (two articles) and 21), including the main opinion piece stating that benefits should be cut to save government money to be spent on other things, without once mentioning the effects this would have on those receiving benefits. I even wrote to them about it but sadly my message was not printed.
So, as with a lot of other things, with respect to the FT, caveat emptor.
Sadly the best organised web site I have visited requires an exorbitant subscription for ongoing access, although they occasionally allow a month's membership for £1. It is the Financial Times, ft.com and one of the best around, but, very very pricey (to me, multi-billionaires, such as the average Register reader may disagree).
I am deeply concerned by the unnatural emphasis on his nipples, and why does the veining in the 'marble' cover only the torso and neck and not the head? It looks like something the villain in a Dr Who episode would have created of himself to promote his leadership over his people.
"the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024.
Many of these occupations have been described as being vulnerable to AI: accountants, customer support specialists,
...
"AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation," the authors state in their paper."
They may be looking at the wrong occupations. Maybe they should check ones that are not being replaced or 'enhanced' by the use of AI, but at ones that have to cope with the effects on people of implementing AI. My experience of AI chatbots is that they are unhelpful, and I may need counselling or professional psychological help after attempting to 'use' them. I'd look for an increase in the hours spent by psychotherapists, CBT practitioners, and bar staff, consoling and sympathising with people who've been 'ChatBotted'.
(Try using the Thames Water Chatbot to get single occupancy tariff.)
OTOH, I recently had a very frustrating experience with '%*& from Customer Services' regarding a bodged job a work person gather company and provided to me in June 2023 (the person used sticky tape to 'repair' a toilet siphon, which is contrary to the Customer Rights Act 2015, but because it is 'out of warranty' and I cannot prove their 'plumber' did it, they have rejected my complaint. This was a 'human' person, without, it seems to me, compassion, empathy, or any interest in future business from me. (Moral: Photograph everything when a work person comes to your home, parts that have failed, the part replacing the party the failed, etc. so you have actual proof of what they did.)
.. there was a popular graffiti at major railway stations, airports and sea ports:
"Would the last person to leave the country please turn off the lights."
It seems to have been a cascade from a single failure, rather than a problem at an actual 'single point of failure'. It is indeed worrying that such a massive outage could occur due to a single event. The report from the technical inquiry will make interesting reading for power engineers the world over.
"credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for 12 or 24 months"
Fraudsters know exactly how long, and how effective, credit monitoring and theft prevention services are. In the UK registration with CIFAS lasts for 24 months, and fraudsters with your information will wait it out and then scam you and your bank, building society, pension funds, savings accounts, shares accounts etc. again and again and again. (They've got away with over £120,000 from my accounts, and I expect they will try again when the 'protections' afforded by CIFAS registration lapse later this year.)
A rather more worrying take on the current US Administration's obsession with AI is here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/28/maga-iq-inhuman-future-intelligence-ai
"A coalition fixated on intelligence is staking the US economy on AI – which will devalue the very skills the right fetishises
One thing that Donald Trump and his Silicon Valley partners share is an obsession with IQ. Being a “low-IQ individual” is a standard insult in the president’s repertoire, and being “high-IQ” is an equally standard form of praise for those on the tech right. Yet in the drive for US supremacy in artificial intelligence – signalled by the $500bn (£375bn) Stargate project announcement in the White House and an executive order to integrate AI into public education, beginning in kindergarten – there is a hidden irony. If their vision for our economic future is realised, IQ in the sense that they value will lose its meaning."
The DARPA attempt to 'exponentiate mathematics' may merely be an attempt to put us dangerous liberal lefty mathematicians out of jobs.
(Admission, I have no idea what my 'IQ' may be.)
The thing that gets me about this is that DARPA must employ a substantial number of seriously good mathematicians. Didn't they get asked what they thought of it, or was it more of a "would you like tons of cash and a nice shiny new computer to play with? If so then just say "yes" to 'Can AI help with maths research?"
(I think I may have answered my own question here.)
I have often wanted to tell a 'psychic' or 'medium' that I would fully accept not only the existence of an 'afterlife' but their ability to communicate with dead people, if only they write out Fermat's proof that there are no Natural number solutions to an = bn + cn for a, b, c, n > 2 . It would, of course be in the French of that period. Even if there was some subtle flaw it would probably show insights into number theory only to be had by a true genius. And if it worked!! Well, nobody would accuse anyone of having proved Fermat and not claiming the credit.
Still waiting.
The belief is that half the patients in Broadmoor high security mental hospital (where, for example Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper' is incarcerated) could be released without harm to anyone. The problem is in knowing which half ...
Of course, the appalling sex predator, disc jockey and TV personality Jimmy Savile was a consultant to Broadmoor. He was on a TV programme explaining why the cells were taking a long time to renovate, due to the specification for the secure doors having ben changed. Ironic, since, had he been caught, he could quite possibly have been sent there.
Well, at least they would be typed. When I was a Maths* postgraduate student at Leeds in the early 1980's sometimes the problem marking undergraduate examples scripts was reading the thing, let alone trying to find some thread of rational thought linking the actual question to ideas relevant to the solution. (A colleague experienced the stunning "0+0 = 1", and another one had an answer that claimed as the sum of the ai's equalled the sum of the bi's, therefore ai = bi . The perpetrator decided one could 'cancel' capital sigmas on each side of the equation.)
OTOH the mischievous imp in me would ask an AI to rate the other AI's 'discovery', send it back to the originating AI, and repeat, ad nauseam. However amusing, sadly that would just be a waste of energy.
* I'm English / British, we say "Maths", not "Math'. It is a cultural thing, sorry for any offence / offense.
Einstein's proof of Pythagoras' theorem is supremely elegant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem see section on proof by similar triangles). It appears to have been a stroke of genius. Similarly for Archytas' finding a construction for the cube root of 2, in 3 dimensions (https://www.joerg-enderlein.de/archytas) to solve the problem of doubling the cube.
It is not the number of papers published in pure mathematics that is important but their quality, and the usefulness of the theorems. We are actively using, as cutting edge cryptography, mathematics done hundreds of years ago.
I doubt that an LLM or AI could generate anything of the usefulness of the mathematics created / discovered* by Fermat, Newton, Gauss, Euler, Bernoullie, Poincaré, Archimedes, Apollonius, Cantor, Hilbert etc. Nor the physics discovered by Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, Dirac, etc.
We can 'exponentiate' mathematics, but will the extra papers be any use? The 'joke' is that physicists are expensive because they need billions spent on particle accelerators, chemists are less expensive because they only need vast complexes , Bunsen burners, fume cabinets etc., whereas all mathematicians need are paper, pencils and a waste paper basket, but philosophers are the cheapest, because they don't need the wastepaper basket.
Still, we can wait and see what DARPA's AI achieves, but it does seem to me to be somewhat inconsistent with the major de-funding of serious science by the current Trump administration. All of the mathematics that I know of was produced as an attempt to model reality, or is some extrapolation from that, even the most obscure mathematical logic, or multi-dimensional geometry is based at source in trying to understand reality, and some inspiration or insight into how to model it.
Genius icon 'cos Archytas' construction is hard.
* Depending on your philosophy, pure mathematics is either discovered or invented, take your pick, I have every intention of ignoring this argument.
The thing I really do not understand is that the current people running the USA clearly still want their own computers to continue to work. A unified CVE is obviously essential to that, yet there is no lead from the White House or top US advisors to say 'actually we really do need to do this, even though it would be difficult or impossible to monetise'.
I cannot help feeling that the problem with MITRE running CVE is that it is a 'not for profit' organisation doing an essential global pubic service, which is not, and cannot ever be, charged for. Of course if you really were looking for organisations that should fund it, I would humbly suggest MicroSoft, IBM, Apple, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe, Google, Cisco etc. They are, after all, responsible for a large number of the bugs listed.
As far as carting about people being killed, you need only look at the report in the Atlantic of the group chat about the attack on the Houthi's. They were joyous that the 'missile' guy had been seen entering his girlfriend's apartment building and that the building was then completely destroyed. No concern at all for the innocent people killed in it. Yes, I know that there are those who comment on this web site who will complain that I am not showing concern for the people the Houthi's attacked with their missiles in and around the Red Sea. The point is this - Hegseth, Trump, Vance, Waltz et al are doing nothing at all to solve the causes of the problem, they just like killing people in support of Israel, without even once considering that the Palestinians (whose heritage in Palestine is far longer than any white man's in the USA), might also have a just grievance,
(Oh, and before you accuse me of anti-semitism, in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, in the list of those Jews murdered by the NAZIS written on the walls, my family name occurs 64 times, I counted them myself.)
Pete Hegseth had an insecure internet connection set up in his office so that he could use Signal on a personal computer
As I wrote to one of the Editors of this august, if not exactly venerable, web site last night*, if I had allowed that sort of thing when I was doing Government IT security, I would have been sacked.
Firstly, the office of the Defense Secretary in the Pentagon will hold information classified TOP SECRET with all the caveats of INTEL, NUCLEAR, SIGINT, etc. Nobody is allowed to enter that room carrying personal IT equipment (mobile phones, smart watches, laptops, tablets, or, I suspect noise-cancelling headphones). There are many articles on the Register and other tech sites and in publications showing how easy it is for an FIS (Foreign Intelligence Service) to hack into unprotected equipment, turn on cameras and microphones and eavesdrop on highly sensitive conversations.
Even assuming that the PC was networked with fibre-optics (to avoid crosstalk with copper cabling), there mere fact that there is a cable (of some sort) that far into the heart of the US Military establishment. This is the most appalling example of arrogance and ignorance where there is a multitude of solid scientific and technical evidence that it is an unacceptable risk outside of climate change denial.
Former Trump associate John Barron reckons that 'August is when you take out the trash' and that Hegseth will be 'let go' then, to avoid suggestions that Trump has caved in to pressure from critics and Democrats. But that must be based only on the assumption that no more egregious errors like this come to light.
*I am not claiming that this story would not have appeared here had I not sent Mr K an email, but merely hoping to encourage others to let the editorial staff know when there is something that is clearly relevant, but which has not appeared yet in their stories.
They are using new 'fly by wire' drones now, range of up to 20km, no radio comms, so can fly through radio blackspots, and are very difficult to detect:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/23/they-cannot-be-jammed-fibre-optic-drones-pose-new-threat-in-ukraine
"At a secret workshop in Ukraine’s north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 10km (6 miles) or even 20km long, to create a wired kamikaze drone."
The sky is so big, that we need as many telescopes as possible to look in as many different directions at the same time, so, if NASA can, keeping Hubble going wold be great, as long as it does not prejudice a better telescope going into action.
But amazing longevity even considering the ability to service it in orbit. Well done to the designers, engineers and boffins!
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