Posts by trindflo

Elon Musk pukes over pork-filled budget bill with Tesla subsidies on the line

Re: Blocking funds is only one path

Have a vote for kakistocracy! Not sure how I've been missing that word all these years. Does it translate into Spanish as cacastrocracy?

Wyden warns telcos still leave Senate in the dark after Trump DOJ snooping scandal

Sounds like the carriers know who can hurt them

And don't care much about anyone else

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

The first English to Russian translating machine

The joke goes:

The first English to Russian translating machine was proudly being demonstrated when an impertinent reporter fed it the phrase:

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"

And the machine responded with computer speed in Russian what is best translated back into English as:

"The Vodka is good, but the meat is poor"

SEC SIM-swapper who Googled 'signs that the FBI is after you' put behind bars

Chicken or the egg?

The article wasn't very clear in my opinion, but it seems like the FBI found the suspicious searches after confiscating the scammer's computer. That is, it seems like the searches were evidence of his guilt, not the reason he got nabbed.

Ex-NSA bad-guy hunter listened to Scattered Spider's fake help-desk calls: 'Those guys are good'

Had the person say as much once they were back in the office. It's kind of scary when the hackers know who is out of the office and when.

Boffins devise technique that lets users prove location without giving it away

Isn't this something you could do with traceroute?

Just sayin. Ping times reveal a lot.

Dems are upset about DOGE's IRS hackathon, but the IRS says it never happened

"a senior Treasury official denied"

One who is clearly in no danger of losing his job.

US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired

Re: Confused

Pretty funny, but what is completely unbelievable is that the test is free.

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

Re: Remember the original Google search?

If you are saying no, you don't think the new and improved google that decides what you really want and ignores any attempt to restrict it to searching for exact strings is actually an improvement, I agree with you.

If you are saying no, you don't remember a time when google searched for what you told it you wanted it to search for, my condolences for missing out on the experience.

Workday handed no-bid deal to fix staffing meltdown at Uncle Sam's uber-HR agency

Re: We're sure that this contract is being let in pure transparency and sunlight.

points for "merdelargo"

Elon Musk’s xAI to pull about half of its smog-belching turbines powering Colossus

Re: Does one demobilize gas generators?

Agreed. I doubt there is anything mobile about the generators. They will lose their commission for the current purpose and obtain a new commission at the same locale, resetting their temporary status and restarting the twelve-month clock wherein they can be termed temporary and not require NOx emission scrubbers.

Trump's wind farm funding freeze is so much hot air, say states as they blow sueball to Washington

Anything to do with the trade war with China

Don't the windmills need rare earth metals? Part of China pushing back was to freeze the sale of rare earth metals to the US.

Or maybe Trump is just creating the crisis du jour to distract from his statement that he wasn't sure if he was supposed to uphold the constitution.

Maryland man pleads guilty to outsourcing US govt work to North Korean dev in China

Re: Interviews??

Make me think the interview process was similarly outsourced.

Doesn't "Full Stack" mean we actually need a team, but aren't willing to pay for one? You just handle all the messy details and we'll take care of the profits?

TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech

"nobody gets treated worse than I do online"

I suspect if you aggregated all the coordinated attacks from far-right media on the various targets du jour, you would find trump's targets get treated worse than trump does online. Especially if you take truth into account.

If you want to talk about in real life there is no doubt that trump's targets are getting treated much worse, and his favorite targets seem to be those least able to defend themselves.

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Re: I'e already said this

Do we stop at evicting Windows from living rent-free in our heads? Maybe evict alphabet too and go back to uucp, or is that a bridge too far?

Microsoft mystery folder fix might need a fix of its own

Or use a third party to supply the patches without the latest new security holes

There is a solution cheaper than Microsoft's to keep Windows 10 running securely

0patch pcworld article

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

dirty power

There is an area west of Los Angeles (west end of simi valley) that houses a lot of industrial machines (with large motors...inductive loads). They also rent to retail businesses. Apparently the local power company has never seen fit to install the proper capacitors on the power lines to balance the inductive loads and the retail shops will suffer with mystery problems on any computers until someone helpfully points out they will likely need an isolating UPS.

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

Re: Surely

Presumably the song Holiday?

The Green Day version is good and I prefer the original cast recording from American Idiot.

I know of two other unrelated pop songs with that same title by Vampire Weekend and Bee Gees.

When Microsoft made the Windows as a Service pivot

Re: Lessons skipped and still not enough paranoia

They are restricted by a team of Microsoft employees that get to decide they have a business interest in gathering that information. That restriction doesn't seem very reassuring to me.

Europe hits Meta, Apple with €700M in fines for flouting DMA

You forgot to include Mr. GFY Xitter in the list

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

Re: It may not be Russia.

I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for the search term; very enlightening.

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

Re: Two obvious problems here

In Outlook a group will look like a normal email address, and is configured somewhat like an email user, but when you send something to that group it gets forwarded to others. Usually it will be given a name containing 'list' or named after a function to make it obvious you are sending to a group, but not always.

AI models hallucinate, and doctors are OK with that

Re: Not surprised

I imagine all of us are playing doctor using the internet to some degree. I consider it 'homework' to bring a conjecture based on the internet sources available to me to my doctor, BUT I still ask the doctor and accept the professional knows more than I do and can sift through the noise better than I can.

The idea that doctors would use an AI isn't ominous to me. The idea that doctors would rely on an AI is very ominous.

It's been demonstrated that programmers who rely on AI lose some of their ability to think outside the bot. Specifically designing, optimizing, and debugging talents get lost.

Reducing something to a practice that doesn't need to change by writing it down is a good thing. But you have to be willing and able to throw out that procedure when things do change.

Back to doctors, if they use an AI for everything as a first step and the AI is correct 99 times out of 100, will the doctor notice the time the AI got it wrong? Probably if the AI is grossly wrong and recommends amputating the fourth leg, but maybe not if it is something subtle that requires a great deal of talent such as reading an X-ray or MRI.

This is the FBI, open up. China's Volt Typhoon is on your network

Re: Going by the accompanying thumbnail, it looks like it's too late...

Picture was already gone by the time I read the article. Thanks for sharing it. Reading Stormlight now and I needed that picture!

Linux royalty backs adoption of Rust for kernel code, says its rise is inevitable

Re: Veteran C and C++ programmers, however, are understandably worried...

>> From what I read, Rust is a far cry from a Java-like garbage collector

>Rust is a programming language, not a memory allocation technique.

In the post I was responding to there was a comment about garbage collectors. I was saying Rust isn't that and doesn't do that. The register makes it easy to find the post being replied to with the curly arrow to the upper left of a post; I use that quite often to get a better idea about what is being replied to. My comment would look strange out of context.

>> which essentially allows memory to leak until you run out of memory then makes everything wait while it tidies up

>That's not fair. Modern GC implementations can be used which do a lot of clever stuff in the background. They can't reduce the delay to zero, but you can tune

That's true, and what you're saying is the overhead is less noticeable because it is artfully spread out over time. Depending on what is being done, it's also reasonable to just hope the program is done quickly enough that no GC is needed at all and it just gets handled in process run-down. As a gross description of what a GC does, I think my description explains it. Because of that I don't think a GC belongs in a driver or anywhere that timing is important. And again, Rust isn't that.

> I've no idea what this means, but Rust enforces bounds checking at compile time

Agreed. Enforcement at compile time is all good. Rust also labels code as unsafe that does not perform bound checking at run time as Phil Lord points out. Naturally someone who doesn't understand all the implications will declare there will be no unsafe code in a given project and it will become enforced. This is a hidden performance cost. I've been wondering how we are somehow getting something for nothing in terms of memory safety, and now I know the answer. As expected, there is no free lunch.

> Rust doesn't "call a subroutine" (since when was calling subroutines a problem ?). The memory allocation stuff is done at compile time.

Taken a little out of context. Calling a function at an assembly language level is calling a subroutine. Boundary checking, if performed at several layers of nesting, would compound the costs of boundary checking. As for since when is calling subroutines a problem, there is quite a bit of overhead involved in setting up stack frames. I've measured it and it is much worse than is apparent.

Re: Veteran C and C++ programmers, however, are understandably worried...

C (as opposed to C++) is arguably closer to a macro assembler than a high level language. I think the lack of boundary checking has more to do with what C is best at than its age.

Re: Veteran C and C++ programmers, however, are understandably worried...

Thanks for getting me to look into the reality of Rust. I tend to tune out when things degrade into snark, and the comment you pointed out certainly qualifies.

From what I read, Rust is a far cry from a Java-like garbage collector (which essentially allows memory to leak until you run out of memory then makes everything wait while it tidies up). A lot of what Rust does is enforce better practices through the compiler.

On the other hand, Rust fans seem to sweep bounds checking (that is also an aspect of Rust) under the rug or insist that everyone else does it and you should just get with the program. Bounds checking does have an effect on performance as you say, and this would be compounded if the checking is happening in multiple layers.

I will say that multiple layers shouldn't exist in a driver that is written for performance. Calling a subroutine imposes a huge performance penalty.

And now having looked into Rust, I'm of the opinion that it is a tool that is best used where appropriate. If blistering speed isn't required (the DMA routines do seem like a good example), the tradeoffs might well be worth it. It also seems there is a hype aspect that seems to infer you can let an AI or an intern write your device drivers and the magic tool will make it all work out, which isn't a beneficial ethos. It is a tool to use and not a god to worship.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Surprised component

Technician thought he had broken the test rig because there were no signs of power. Unplugged the board being tested and checked: nope, the test rig was fine. Connected everything back up, and still seems like no power.

After sitting back and thoughtfully stroking his chin the top of the line driver that was plugged in backwards audibly ricocheted off the 30 foot (9 meter) ceiling. Then the lights all came back on the test rig.

He said he hadn't missed getting an electronic caste mark by more than a couple of seconds.

Ah. Another person who got to watch a Sun go nova. The one I saw wasn't a power supply problem, it just decided one day that its time had come.

US senator wants to slap prison term, $1M fine on anyone aiding Chinese AI with ... downloads?

Re: Regards the UK...

Let's just ban hands. Nothing bad can happen without those.

Re: Good going bright bulb!

Most of the groups you list had already been briefed on the products to warehouse ahead of the tariffs taxation without representation. This is just an opportunity to driver their lesser competitors out of business.

Someone is slipping a hidden backdoor into Juniper routers across the globe, activated by a magic packet

Re: Where Is That "Someone"? Guess!

Or Iran

LinkedIn accused of training AI on private messages

Re: Why am I not surprised ?

Will any non-Scottish English speaker understand what a Scottsman says?

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

Since we need to opt out

This article from wired: Wired article on opting out describes places you can opt out.

Here are similar opt out instructions and links from redact.dev

3Blue1Brown copyright takedown blunder by AI biz blamed on human error

our false positives are in like the single digits essentially

Sadly, actual content creators are also relatively in the single digits compared to the flood of content moochers.

OpenAI's ChatGPT crawler can be tricked into DDoSing sites, answering your queries

Re: DDOS? Yep.

Ooh, shiny! A reverse DDOS for webcrawlers that will give LLMs garbage to eat. That one seems to create purely random nonsense, but I bet it could be designed to also emit trash that follows a theme.

FBI wipes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of Windows PCs in America

Re: USB infection is just a vector

USB is a vector that carries an embedded driver that is automatically downloaded to your computer and then runs with privileges. As far as vectors go, it is more equal than many others that require the user to participate (at least since Microsoft mostly stopped blindly executing autorun on all removable devices by default).

The driver needs to be signed by a trusted source, which means the attacker needs to somehow insinuate themselves into a chain of trust, which does happen.

Convenience is the root of all rootkits.

Windows Themes zero-day bug exposes users to NTLM credential theft

Re: What did I miss?

Someone complained. I don't know who, but I have a guess

China's cyber intrusions took a sinister turn in 2024

What don't we know?

I'll assume that Russia has been "prepping" for years. This is the first time I've heard the term. Who else is prepping? Norks? Iran? We only get to hear about it post-attack.

How Androxgh0st rose from Mozi's ashes to become 'most prevalent malware'

turn off wifi for a few minutes?

Turning off the wifi for a few minutes sounds like a quick and easy method if it works. I just looked around for confirmation and couldn't find it. Could you share a reference?

Interpol wants everyone to stop saying 'pig butchering'

Re: intent to shame/blame the victim

"name probably was chosen with the specific intent to shame/blame the victim into not reporting the scam."

Maybe. My guess is that it is easier to victimize someone if you dehumanize them first. The job is a lot harder if you relate to the person as a fellow human being (for the majority of non-sociopaths)

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

China balloon war?

I'm trying to figure out if you're talking about the Chinese "weather balloon" or the Japanese bombing balloons from world war 2.

Don't fall for a mail asking for rapid Docusign action – it may be an Azure account hijack phish

Can these attacks trigger a browser to supply the credentials?

I've long been curious if these phishing attacks are good enough to extract your Office 365 credentials if you stored them in your browser. Ominious in that the victim might assume a broken link and not realize their credentials had been harvested.

We can't make this stuff up: Palantir, Anduril form fellowship for AI adventures

Re: The Devil, as ever, is in the Heavenly Detail

OMG, dude! What you have been feeding that bot? I literally can't read this one at all!

Re: Will the next generation go all Harry Potter

Don't forget Umbrage. Now would they be political consultants or legal services?

Blue Yonder ransomware termites claim credit

American company, large presence in China...

That couldn't be Apple we're talking about, could it?

Chinese boffins find way to use diamonds as super-dense and durable storage medium

Are you thinking of magnetic bubble memory by Texas Instruments? They got it working, but like many things at TI, the engineers lost interest once it was working. It was only marginally margketed and never made it into production to any degree.

Andrew Tate's site ransacked, subscriber data stolen

Re: Experiment

Cool, that arrived within 6 hours.

Experiment

Just looking at the various posts here, it seems like mentioning downvoters gets you a down vote. Let's see if I get one.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to eject hundreds more workers

Elmo's inner planetary goodwill tour

I think we know more or less how to do a round trip to Mars.

I read something recently about the amount of radiation one is likely to encounter on a trip between planets and got the impression a round-trip to Mars could render one a bit crispy. That would be an ethical issue for some.

Like all good road trips, you want to plan things so you spend more time visiting than traveling, and that involves the planets lining up properly. Such things don't always align with the priorities of men. If he doesn't go with the planetary alignments, things could get ugly. Most likely given history, any Mars round trip will be delayed until such time as the heavens had long ago degreed.

But as long as you've paid for the air fare, why not visit the other inner planets? I hear a small sliver of Mercury is liveable this time of year. The Aurora there must be to die for.

Is there already a gofundme setup to send Elmo to Mercury?