Posts by The Man Who Fell To Earth

China is likely stockpiling and deploying vulnerabilities, says Microsoft

Re: It's a case of supply and demand...

Now if only Microsoft felt this was important enough to have an internal security team tasked with finding zero days in it's own software. Cost of such a team would be a rounding error on it's balance sheet.

Elon Musk reportedly outlines horrible Twitter layoff process

Twitter the next Starship

Burning on the launch pad?

You fire 'em, we'll hire 'em: Atlassian sees tech layoffs as HR heaven

Oh great.

So Atlassian will become even ShiTwittier?

Microsoft mulls cheap PCs supported by ads, subs

A CS student's wet dream

I can't image such a machine being anything but a giant root magnet. Who wouldn't want a cheap/free PC that could be made useful once cracked?

China promises its digital currency will offer 'controllable anonymity'

Re: Use before date

"Money that rots away, if sitting still too long - that is pure evil."

It's called inflation. I'm old enough to have been working in the '70's.

Re: Thanks

You'll be perfectly safe as long as you never post about Winnie-the-Pooh.

Kioxia warns of potential cost of US chip policy over China

Threshold

Once a country's industry is at a level where it is really limited by capital, not know how, sanctions just cause it to focus on putting capital into the sector. Kioxia is correct, China may have an intermediate slow down in it's semiconductor sector, but if it's government decides to throw money at it, not only will it still get to where it wants, but it will develop all the competing supporting technologies like mask aligners. It's not like they don't know the Physics. And once they develop their own support technology, those support tech companies will compete on a global stage. Long term, a loosing strategy.

Hong Kong wants to be the world’s home for virtual assets

Re: No.

Agreed. Hong Kong is the last place to use for financial transaction of any kind. (Well, besides the rest of China.)

Elon Musk shows what being Chief Twit is all about across weird weekend

Bad code review

My favorite thing is the reports that Musk has brought in a bunch of Tesla software engineers to look over the Twitter code. Nothing like having a bunch of software engineers notorious for pushing code that doesn't work to review other code that doesn't work.

Russia says Starlink satellites could become military targets

Re: Seems reasonable and fair

The only hope of putting a dent in Starlink, which has 3000 of it's 30,000 satellites already up, is using directed energy weapons. And so far as anyone knows, no power has DEW's mature enough to do that.

Russia and China's biggest beef with Starlink is it potentially allows their citizens to get around there censor filters.

Chip fab locations more important than oil well placement, says Gelsinger

Re: Copyright Mandy Rice-Davies

Yet he's putting a fab in the skill desert of Ohio. Go figure.

Re: "...will be more important in future than where the oil wells are."

Oil will be critical for the chemical and plastics industries into the future for as far as anyone can see. There are no renewable feedstock substitutes for the vast majority of chemicals and plastics. Burning oil has been a waste for a very long time.

Founder of zero-emissions truck venture Nikola found guilty of $1b fraud

enthusiastic salesperson who never intended to defraud anyone

If that flies, then no one is safe.

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

Re: "an inability to determine productivity"

Measuring productivity during COVID in the WFH stage didn't change. It was (1) was the quality of their work meeting expectations by your usual criteria and (2) were people meeting their deadlines? Since my group develops hardware & software together, the only problems that "got worse" had nothing to do with WFH or work quality, as they were all supply chain issues which could be easily documented as why deadlines were slipping. When the lead time on some chip that you use 250,000 of per year suddenly gets quoted as 60 weeks, that's a problem but it has nothing to do with WFH. Even the face time issue is a red herring, as back when we had no one going in, having a set time each day for a 15+ (as needed) minute group "how's everyone doing" on Teams kept the group cohesion and continually broke the ice between members to have private Teams discussions as needed for their work. Wasn't perfect, but this crap about not being able to assess whether people are doing their jobs if they work remotely just underscores how inept the management is at the place doing the complaining.

Sniffed them out?

So at Canopy, all mangers are brown nosers?

Only two issues are (1) Is the employee's performance meeting expectations, and (2) does the second job (even if it's as a volunteer at some charity) represent a conflict of interest?

Japanese giants to offer security-as-a-service for connected cars

Cybersecurity

Security should be an ongoing obligation of automakers for at least 15 years after the unit was manufacrured. Legislation should be put in place with stiff penalties to back it up. Or is it the owners problem when a few years after purchase, the car can be opened and driven without a key?

Microsoft HoloLens proves to be a headache for US soldiers

"$22 billion contract to build 120,000 custom HoloLens augmented/mixed reality headsets"????

Is that correct? That's over $183k per headset.

China doesn’t need to take Taiwan’s fabs to escape US trade bans

Re: "Cut off from..."

Agreed. If China invades Taiwan, they will empty TSMC's buildings and ship the equipment to the mainland. I have watched first hand China execute that strategy via aquisition in the US. So the scortched earth policy would be the best one.

Water pipes hold flood of untapped electricity potential

Re: The elephant in the water pipe?

Microgeneration of hydroelectric is, like all hydroelectric, gravity fed. I looked into Powerspout's ~1kW micro-hydroelectic for our cabin in Vermont a few years back to supplement our 7kW solar installation. A 1kW or 2kW generator does not sound like much, until you realize it will run 24/7 while solar usually does not hit it's max rating on most days even for a few minutes.

https://www.powerspout.com/

If someone weaponizes our robots, we'll be really, really sad, says Boston Dynamics

Re: It won't start with weapons...

The pledge isn't worth the paper it's printed on. If Boston Dynamics changes owners yet again, it will depend on the new owners.

Apple exec sues over 'ageist' removal of $800k stock bonus

Re: Is retirement in the USA

Mandatory retirement at a set age was abolished in 1986 by an amendment to the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).

Irrelevant

The point of the suit is that he's never told Apple when he intends to retire. There is no mandatory retirement in the US in general. Mandatory retirement at a set age was abolished in 1986 by an amendment to the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). There are some exceptions for occupations that have high physical fitness requirements, such as military personnel and airline pilots.

One of my best Systems Engineers is 74 and had no plans to retire anytime soon. I will turn 66 soon and I plan to work well into my 70's. Apple should settle, as if he can document his claims, they don't stand a chance.

FBI: We tracked who was printing secret documents to unmask ex-NSA suspect

Re: Very strange

Wrong. A lot of laser printers print(ed) the yellow dots.

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

China's infosec researchers obeyed Beijing and stopped reporting vulns ... or did they?

Not that it would really help...

But it would seem getting the UN to come up with some disclosure rules for countries would at least give everyone a straw man to point to and say "Not reporting discovered vulnerabilities is a violation of UN..."

Starlink broadband speeds slow as subscriber numbers grow

Re: elsewhere

T-Mobile already does. 5-G fixed mobile broadband for $50/mo. No contract. I have both Comcast & FIOS into my house (load balanced) for business reasons. Both are cheaper or equal in price to the T-Mobile deal, but there's a 5G tower near me. It will be interesting to see which one raises prices first causing me to substitute T-Mobile for them.

As for Starlink, I used to be only able to get 1.5Mbps DSL into my Vermont cabin, until after 18 months on Starlink's waiting list, I got Startlink. It usually measures out around 60Mbps down, 12 Mbps up, which is a vast improvement. But it does drop out occasionally despite my having a clear view of the sky. Since the DLS is only $24/mo, and my router can handle two ISP's, the DSL is always on to handle those Starlink glitch times.

Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users

Re: Lie down with dogs

Apple could stop it if they wanted. So one would think Apple must be benefiting.

US accident investigators want alcohol breathalyzers in all new vehicles

Re: Test FAIL, and not the one you are thinking of

There is also the issue that there is no general correlation between blood alcohol level and breath testing, for a whole lot of reasons including the lack of specificity of the sensors. The sensors will interpret all organic molecules, such as ketones, the same as ethanol. They also will interpret organic molecules found in cleaning products and personal care products, like other alcohols, propanols and the like, the same as ethanol.

White House to tech world: Promise you'll write secure code – or Feds won't use it

self-attestation

Software companies never lie. Should work just dandy. I sleep better already.

Twitter whistleblower Zatko disses bird site as dysfunctional data dump

Re: Glad I never used the little Tweet birdie

Twitter is for Twits.

Dump these small-biz routers, says Cisco, because we won't patch their flawed VPN

Open soirce

There are a boatload of open source router OS's these days. Surely one of them works with these units.

OpenWrt or DD-WRT?

One would hope one of the myriad of open source router OS's will work with these units.

Amazon drivers unionize after AI sends them on 'impossible' routes

It's the Sharecropper economy, Stupid

It's part of the neo-sharcropper economy, which is a clone of the worse version of sharecropping.

In traditional sharecropping, the landlord fronts the money for owning the property & for planting the next crop, the sharecropper does the work, and the landlord & sharecropper share in the proceeds of the crop sale. The goal is for both the landlord & sharecropper to make money and this system has them co-invest in the crop, albeit in different "currencies", and share the investment risk. It's a brutal system in practice, barely above slavery & feudalism.

The digital sharecropper economy ah la Uber, Amazon delivery, and such, is vastly more abusive to the "sharecropper" than in normal sharecropping. In the digital sharecropper economy, the "digital landlord" takes on almost zero risk and simply skims cash off the cash flow. The "digital landlord" thus makes money regardless of the profit & loss of the "digital sharecropper". The "digital sharecropper" takes on 100% of the risk both in terms of capital investment (owning & maintaining a vehicle or property) and in terms of operating profit/loss.

Dead people could be designated authors of Atlassian Confluence docs and that can't be changed

"Hard" is not a reason to "do"

It's too hard to fix that security flaw that allows someone to steal all of your money.

Sure.

This is why we moved away from Atlassian products. Too many dumbass architectural flaws.

NASA's Artemis rocket makers explain that it's a marathon and a sprint

Re: Covered in ... ?

As someone who worked for NASA at one time, it's disappointing to hear the design is predicated on "eating your seed corn", as the farmers around where I live would say.

DeFi venture OptiFi permanently locks up $661,000 of assets in code snafu

Re: You wanted deregulated finance

"All your money are belong to us."

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

Open-Shell

Just use Open-Shell and let Microsoft's GUI designers, who clearly have nothing productive to do all day, screw around until someone with a brain at Microsoft realizes they can save money by letting them all go.

US court backs FCC decision to let SpaceX fly Starlink sats at lower altitudes

Altitude

"SpaceX was last year given permission to launch more than 2,000 of its broadband-beaming satellites at 540 to 570 km above Earth instead of its usual 1,100 to 1,300 km range."

Every Starlink in the sky is at 550km or lower. What is this sentence talking about? https://satellitemap.space/

Microsoft fixes Windows 'idiosyncrasy' that hampered some SMB file transfers

It's Microsoft

Anyone check if the compression is lossless?

Googler says she was forced out after opposing $1.2bn cloud contract with Israel

Don't be Evil

Is and always was Googles sarcastic motto. The real motto was always "Resistance is Futile...". You all know the rest.

LastPass source code, blueprints stolen by intruder

Re: Let me guess...

LastPass should just spin it as their attempt to catch up with open source Password Safe (https://pwsafe.org/).

Zuckerberg: Yes, Facebook kept Hunter Biden's laptop under wraps

Re: The Republican Party & Hunter Biden

"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil." - Max Lerner

Heroku to delete inactive accounts, shut down free tier

Ok, i'll bite

How are inactive accounts "abused"?

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

This is why I issued these to my crew

My car jacking crew, that is.

Satterlee Bone Saw 13"

https://www.amazon.com/SurgicalOnline-Satterlee-Handle-Stainless-Steel/dp/B01N6UD6NN

NSO Group CEO steps down, 100 employees let go too

Re: I fear you guys are focusing on the wrong bunch of A-holes

That would require Apple to be internally honest about the security of their products.

That was fast: MetaGuard emerges as an 'incognito mode' for the metaverse

Re: "Coincidentally, VRChat has its own premium subscription ..."

It's always only about money. Customers are just grist for the mill. Privacy is just something they give lip service to.

China, US relations further soured by CHIPS Act

That's Rich

China claiming CHIPS Act is anti-competitive, after decades of China selling things like solar panels below cost.

World record for strongest steady magnetic field 'broken' by Chinese team

Re: Dumb question time...

You measure against phenomenon (such as the Hall Effect, Quantum Hall Effect, or even optically using the Zeeman Effect) that rely on what Physicists call "first principles" if you can. If you can't you can calibrate some other sensor against a first principles measurement.

Bitter magnets (yes, Bitter should always be capitalized as its after Francis Bitter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bitter) have been around a long time, about 90 years. Superconducting magnets have been around over 100 years. Measuring ultra-high magnetic fields, both pulsed and continuous, has been around a very long time. I used to do it at fields up to 22T continuous in the '80's as a grad student, later worked in a lab that did it pulsed up to about 50T. Been out of the field for decades, no pun intended.

Microsoft's Secure Boot fix sends some PCs into BitLocker Recovery

Re: Quality control

Agreed. After this months Microsoft Borkfest Update, we have a boatload of PC's reporting error 0x80073701 when trying to install KB5016616, "2022-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 21H2 for x64-based Systems".

Apple says 2017 MacBooks don't have FlexGate defect. Aussie tribunal orders a fix anyway

Apparently

He's holding it wrong.

Four charged with tricking Qualcomm into buying $150m startup

Re: I guess it's a cultural thing

Germany does not have the US's 1st Amendment.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, a Law like in Germany would be a violation of the US Constitution. The US 1st Amendment means the government cannot prevent publication of anything. (Private parties can if publishing violates a contract such as a non-Disclosure Agreement.) Even classified documents that end up in a publisher's hands can be published in the US, as was done with the Pentagon Papers in 1971. (The people who gave the classified documents to the publishers can be prosecuted for doing that. Participants in a trial who violate a judge's gag order can be held in contempt if they talk to the press, but the press can't be prevented from publishing what they learned.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers