Posts by Robert 22

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

We have met the enemy and he is us!

The fish rots from the head,

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

It is an all you can steal buffet.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

That happened to me once on a very expensive piece of hardware.

Re: Trump doesn't think

He is like the guy who thinks he is the world's greatest chess player because he moves the pieces in ways that nobody else does.

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

Re: Intended to confuse and distress normal people

I'm reminded of the German industrialists who bet on Hitler.

Re: Overwhelmed

Trump is just like the guy who thinks he is the World's greatest chess player because he moves the pieces in ways that nobody else does.

Re: Overwhelmed

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: I feel liberated already...

Calculations with 0/0 = indeterminate number?

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

Re: They're already

Signal may have been approved for the sharing of non-sensitive information, but it wasn't approved for classified information.

It seems that at least some of the people involved were using their own phones. This is a big no-no. Among other things, there are tools available to state actors (look up NSO Pegasus) that can exploit any activity on a compromised phone. And it is apparently quite easy to compromise a cell phone.

Re: I cannot see how bombing the Houthis helps

If his statements are taken at face value, he is clueless about tariffs.

Re: Pegasus Anyone?

I'm reminded of the Three Stooges production "You Nazty Spy." It is on youtube.

Re: Does not compute ....

Didn't you hear that this "Truth" thing is just an obsolete woke concept? Back to your Newspeak lessons or Room 101 for you!

Top Trump officials text secret Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU

Re: Incompetence finds it own level

Trump's Law of Incompetence:

Incompetence drives out competence.

This dwarfs anything that Hillary did. There was clearly very sensitive information being discussed using insecure means and it got leaked through carelessness and or ineptitude. Moreover, the 2016 election was close enough that Republican grandstanding on this issue probably succeeded in swinging the election outcome.

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

"The fact sheet claims agencies spend over $1 billion a year on PCs, and says nearly $6 billion worth of purchases have funneled through the GSA over the past decade - delivering an average savings of 38 percent compared to other procurement channels."

We have a single federal government agency for non-trivial procurements in Canada. The had a standing offer arrangement for computers and software. From what I saw, it seems doubtful that the savings, if any, were any where as near as large as what was claimed. One thing I noticed was that the stuff on the price lists tended to be dated, and when prices were falling (which they were up till recent times), It seemed you were locked into both old prices and old technology. Moreover, if you were looking for anything that wasn't completely standard, you were likely to get gouged.

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

Innovators Dilemma

Dept of Defense engineer took home top-secret docs, booked a fishing trip to Mexico – then the FBI showed up

I worked for the Canadian government. Where I worked, we didn't have a special briefcase, but I recall that documents that were being hand carried in the outside world had to be specially packaged so that, among other things, their sensitive nature was not evident from the outside. I recall hearing of someone losing their clearance (and consequently their job) because they left a package of documents in a locked car where it was visible. Those documents would have been classified no higher than the "Secret" level.

Were those really "top secret" documents or merely "secret" documents (which would still be bad)? People often conflate the two.

Judge orders Feds rehire workers falsely fired for lousy performance

Saying something is true doesn't make it true.

Giving a false justification for an act that would otherwise be illegal is flat out wrong.

That this was standard operating procedure for some of the most vile governments that have ever existed should give one pause.

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: les queer studies?

The US does have an immense edge in snake oil though.

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

It does strike me that if the government accumulates a significant portion of the available bitcoins, they can't liquidate much of it without crashing the value.

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

I haven't used Publisher, but can attest to the challenges in formatting complex documents in Word. The government R&D organization I used to work for, having gotten into the branding bandwagon, had a consultant design a new R&D document format. The complexity of the new document format resulted in VERY unstable formatting. One would spend hours trying to get the formatting correct after a few minor edits.

Trump says US should kill CHIPS Act, use the cash to cut debt

Re: Orange Cockwomble Ramble

When there are big bucks involved, there are huge incentives to devise complex schemes involving shell corporations and other gimmicks for avoiding taxes.

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

In my experience, any project whose name starts with "next Generation" is doomed.

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

I thought it was a wholly owned subsidiary of Eurasia.

Trump teases 25% semiconductor tariffs that will go ‘substantially higher’

For stuff like consumer electronics, having supply chains and economies of scale are absolutely essential. There are few situations where anyone could conceivably justify investing the time and money needed to reproduce them.

I'm reminded of the US Very High Speed IC program back in the 90s. The US government ponied up money to various systems companies to create boutique chip fabs for the military. AFAIK, none of these amounted to much in the end.

America's National Science Foundation workers fired in bulk by Trump now reinstated

Re: Hmm

Robert's First Law is relevant here:

"The more important the decision, the less information will be used to make it."

Re: Hmm

"Isnt this the argument over probationary? And it is a huge problem to not be able to fire people without cause."

Historically civil servants enjoyed a measure of job security in exchange for mediocre financial compensation. That bargain is being thrown out the window. Moreover, it is despicable to tell people they are being let go for poor performance when there is no actual supporting evidence.

Xi know what you did last summer: China was all up in Republicans' email, says book

Re: Broke in? or Broken?

Napoleon observed that one should not interrupt the enemy when they are making a mistake.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

I got caught by that - after installing Mint, my machine wouldn't boot to Windows and, for a while, two of my drives were locked. Fortunately I was able to retrieve the Bitlocker key from my Microsoft Account.

Laptop makers stalled on repairability improvements

I hate designs where you have to undo fragile ribbon cables to upgrade/replace a drive or memory. It isn't hard to run out of storage space if you started with 240 or 256 GB.

NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

I understand that some of the outer planets in the Solar system have cores consisting of diamond. I suppose NASA is being punished for failing to follow up on an obvious business opportunity.

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

It is perverse that it is a literal case where being promoted gets you fired. And I thought the US had bought into the idea that high performers deserve to be rewarded.

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

If he were alive now, Orwell would, among other things, be writing about how language has been perverted in the US e.g., "Right to Work" is code for "we can fire you for any reason or just because we can."

Re: A Gift to the PRC

The US sponsored the Marshall Plan and provided a great deal of economic and military assistance to Europe after WW 2. There were other things such as foiling the French/British scheme to seize the Suez Canal and giving Panama ownership of the Panama Canal. Sure they have also done some pretty awful things, especially in South America and Latin America, but they at least paid lip service to higher ideals. In an unbelievably short time they have squandered an incredible amount of good will, by completely abandoning any ethical or moral compass and demonstrating a obsession with grabbing resources on a scale comparable to Hitler's Germany.

National Science Foundation staff axed by Trump fear for US scientific future

Re: It's over.

The Chinese have been doing that for a while. They are probably rubbing their hands with glee - now they won't have to make such extravagant offers.

Contracts don't seem to mean much in Trump's America. Ask the Canadians about NAFTA.

Re: Hmm

The priority doesn't seem to be eliminating deficits let alone reducing debt. It is making the US a tax haven for oligarchs. Moreover, many of the cuts will prove expensive in the future. Sure cutting the CDC will save money in the short term. But what happens when the next pandemic rolls around?

Re: Hmm

"The waste in Medicare and Medicaid is staggering" Really? What is your evidence? You think that the favored alternative of private sector insurance companies is more efficient at anything other than putting money into the pockets of a few executives?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Seems to match

Trump's measure of merit doesn't necessarily have much to do with ability. His recent appointments bear that out.

It brings us back to the days where "A Woman Has To Be Twice as Good as a Man To Go Half as Far."

Trump’s cyber chief pick has little experience in The Cyber

Re: as what they’re told isn’t evidence based and is done entirely for the ‘feels’.

And the people who make the biggest deal about common sense are often the ones most deficient in it.

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Re: Quintain

When I started work after graduation, my organization had a Varian V77 minicomputer that was bought because somebody thought that someone else could write microcode that would dramatically speed it u in our application. Needless to say, that was all a pipe dream.

Re: What is this article about again ?

You must watch Fox News. There is no actual transparency to what they are doing and so far the things that they have tried to make a big deal about are deceptive nitpicks.

Trump's Dept of Transport hits brakes on Biden’s EV charger build-out

Re: As an EV owner - I say GOOD

Seems to me that the issue is with the handling of the money by individual states. Perhaps in at least some of these cases, there is a two prong strategy whose aims are to (a) embarrass the party holding the presidency at the time and (b) funnel money to the well connected.

Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

Ironically, the US seems to have gone in whole hog on conspiracy theories and disinformation. Moreover there are lots of people willing to provide that for free.

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

Re: I look forward to . . .

There is logic in the idea that increasing the cost of energy encourages conservation measures, such as buying a more efficient vehicle or adding insulation to your house. The problem from the political perspective is that the benefits accrue in the long term whereas the pain is immediately noticeable. The Canadian situation is made more difficult in that the neighboring country is preoccupied with keeping gas cheap.

Intel sinks $19B into the red, kills Falcon Shores GPUs, delays Clearwater Forest Xeons

Re: Sleepy Shores

Reminds me a bit of the business examples outlined in the book "The Innovator's Dilemma."

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

The parallels with the 1930s are absolutely uncanny. While we are busy arguing the merits of tariffs, Trump has already done much to dismantle what is left of the institutional guard rails that were supposed to safeguard democracy. And he hasn't even been in office for two weeks.

Re: Elections

Advanced semiconductor fabs literally cost billions and require lots of know-how. Anybody who builds one is going to have a solid business plan for sure. They can't be built overnight and if they end up underutilized, they become money pits.

Trump’s tariffs, cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts

Re: Shaking

Do you mean the US dollar's status as a reserve currency?