Posts by martinusher

Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief after suspected Iran attacks

Re: NSA recommends...

The PLC controlling traffic signals doesn't need to be updated every five minutes. Its a machine. For newer intelligent signals it will accept inputs that alter the sequence or sequence timing but the basic operation is always the same, as are the mandated delays such as the minimum yellow phase time.

The problem with IoT protocols is that they're Web based so when code is updated it often wants to bring updates to libraries which in turn might need updating because of any unexpected problem. Its a sort of doom loop of code update froth where the actual purpose of the update is lost in the updates to the updates. In real life process control a machine or system is a tested entity that's intended to work for an extended period of time doing the same thing day in, day out.

(IoT itself seems to be designed for the convenience of vendors since it seems intended to tie units to vendor's cloud system in the hope that there will be recurring revenue from this. There are several standardized ways to manage and modify remote equipment that aren't tied to a vendor's cloud. Personally, I find interaction with IoT kit slow, klunky and unreliable -- its sort of thing that might be tolerable for a home thermostat (assuming it works) but is totally unacceptable for operating a chemical plant.)

We do have a 'State Water Project' in California. It manages the large scale infrastructure -- the dams, reservoirs, aqueduct systems and so on. These facilities tend to be staffed.

Next down are organizations like the Metropolitan Water District that take water from the state project (and other sources) and distribute it to local users. At the retail level we have companies like CalAmerican who retail the water to the user. (CalAm used to be an acquisition of Thames Water but heaven only knows who owns what these days -- all we know as users is that they recycle a lot, chiefly the 'leaky pipes' thing to justify rate increases.)

Retail systems vary greatly in size and scope. For example, Los Angeles City has its DWP -- "Department of Water and Power" that not only retails water but sources it (its similar to how Manchester had its supply organized before it was hijacked and stolen in the 1980s). The DWP also supplies electricity and is a big moneyspinner for the city (which is why there's constant pressure to privatize it).

The kind of system that might be prone to hacking is some Heartland community that is relatively small and self contained, getting water from an aquifer or river. Its possible that the Iranians could hack such a system but based on experience its actually more likely some bored teenager in a back bedroom in Rugby or Southampton.

New Boeing finally gets going, 15 years after debut

Re: FDA

>But the FCC don't regulate anything anymore

Its found a new life as the agency that bans imports of things. The way they do this is that anything with commnications capability in it needs FCC certification. This was once pretty routine -- once radios and antennas were certified (a tedious process) then the chipsets and designs would be forklifted into all sorts of products which would automatically get certification. Not any more. The FCC is refusing to give type approval to -- effectively -- anything made in China which is a de facto blanket ban on imports of Chinese made equipment and components.

Don't forget that we have a government stacked with lawyers. It explains why they are often not 'reality based'.

Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras

Re: Allegations?

I'm a bit puzzled about how police could use Flock cameras for stalking since they're owned by a commercial company and the product -- the camera's information -- is sold. So, yes, there's probably violations of NDAs or theft of information going on that can enable stalking but directly tying camera information to stalking is really just normalizing the government's ownership of the camera network. (Its a subtle point which may be lost on people in the UK because cameras there are owned and operated by the government; they can't do this directly in the US because of the Fourth Amendment. Normalizing some ostensibly prohibited practice is the precursor to the Supreme Court allowing it.)

As for the cameras, they're all over the place. There's a website that tells you where they are but once you know what to look for they're easy to spot. Since they're solar powered (at least around here) and communicate wirelessly theycan be erected in almost minutes on a traffic signal (remember that most of our signals are on booms across the roadway so have a substantial pole to support that boom -- the Flock cameras are attached to the vertical pole with a couple of metal straps).

The clever bit about these cameras is we don't use those easy to read old school license plates that are mandated for UK vehicles, we've got a whole variety of styles and colors that vary widely from state to state. This doesn't much of a challenge for modern ALPR software. (ALPR does explain why the California Highway Patrol suddenly got all hot and bothered about missing front license plates -- they never used to bother much because they don't really fit most vehicles but suddenly it became a thing a few years ago.)

Signals are grim for Jodrell Bank Observatory after UK science funding decision

Re: This is personal

Bus fares are just the tip of the iceberg. Everything in the UK is not just really expensive but incredibly bad value for money. You've got yourselves into a situation where the price of everything is primarily overhead with the cost being justified by the polite fiction that its some kind of 'service'. Except the place is really grungy -- you probably don't notice it if you live there, its the classic 'boiling the frog' scenario.

The rationale for flat rate fares on public transport is that it cuts down on administrative overhead. Every variation to a fare structure costs money to administer and enforce, money that might provide good (office) jobs for some but is detracting from the actual money spent on the service. That's why most countries use a flat rate model rather than the multiplicity of zones and concessionary fares that characterize most of the UK. (I'm still smarting from being reamed for seven quid to travel across two zones in London -- and don't even think about mentioning train fares.)

Its everywhere. You pay as much or more for groceries as we do in California. You pay as much or more for housing. Your health care system is free "at point of service" (assuming that a) you can find service and b) its something that's covered) but then mine is as well. Something has to give; you can't go on pretending that this is normal. Somehow you have to maintain the capability to continue science and other useful work (but not by throwing pocket change at it). The Sacred Cow that really needs turning into steak is finance; its bleeding you white with its insatiable demands.

Uncle Sam needs you to fight for 6G leadership and security, lest Beijing get there first

Re: Pointless

American standards have also been abused by the US government by giving them grounds to control the flow of technology even if that technology didn't originate in the US. This has resulted in the past in standards being basically "not American", the most notable being the cipher used in AES. Many people don't realize that export of WiFi equipment from the US is restricted, you had to get an export license to sell the kit abroad because of the RC6 code used by WEP, and that it would only get granted for short key lengths. This might seem a bit silly since WEP is known to have about as much security as a piece of damp tissue paper but by the time this became obvious the US had ceased to make WiFi devices. Everyone else, though, was making and selling WiFi kit, it was just made and sold outside the reach of the US government so license restrictions are moot. The lesson, though, is still relevant -- if you allow the US government any leverage at all over any technology then they will use it, often to your detriment, so its best to develop global standards outside the US where they can be openly discussed, agreed to and implemented.

In this case we're seeing a desperate attempt to lock the Chinese out of 6G, returning control to the US in the process. The US got blindsided over 5G; everyone was making so much money out of 4G that they were not putting the investment into 5G. The standards got finalized with US chip manufacturers caught wrong footed so they did what comes naturally to them -- use their leverage in Congress to institute a ban on Chinese flagship technology companies (primarily Huawei). At the same time local carriers started putting out a half assed ("interim") version of 5G and everyone started talking up 6G which was, naturally, going to be far superior to 5G (and, anyway, you just cant trust those Chinese). Hopefully "the world" isn't going to fall for this trick. Standards are standards and if US companies have something meaningful to contribute, great. If all they're interested in is control then they deserve to be ignored.

Microsoft is losing the battle to protect license lucre. It better get used to the feeling

Re: [IBM PC] "was barely more than Intel data sheets made flesh."

The reason for the three ring binder with schematics and BIOS listing was that this was SOP for computer manufacturers at the time. These Big Iron merchants had grown up delivering complex, finicky, bits of custom hardware which often needed the intervention of a technician to get to actually function after installation. The PC itself was seen as a toy, as a peripheral on a par with a VDT ("Video Display Terminal") and included adapter cards to interface to IBM's mainframes. IBM didn't quite realize what they'd made (it was, after all, effectively an Apple ][ clone made with an Intel chipset) which was underscored by the way that the let Microsoft sell its non-custom version of PC-DOS to anyone who wanted it ("and the rest was history").

The origins of MS-DOS/PC-DOS are well known. It really was a CP/M clone, right down to the OS entry points and "jump around" capability to access those entry points. (That's MS-DOS Version 1.4). Microsoft improved it by cloning UNIX like file calls which rapidly superseded the CP/M entry points (which were eventually dropped). Microsoft's main contribution was complexity; their software was deliberately made far more complex than it needed to be which made cloning it difficult because you had to clone not just the functions but also any bugs and side effects. Windows just carried on the tradition; the original code was developed from 'event driven' programming, a way of simulating an operating system using a stack of Windows (which may, or may not be, graphical). There were viable GUIs around for a PC long before versions of Microsoft Windows became viable (the earliest versions were a disaster, as were their original attempts at networking).

Anyway, its all moot.....I gave up on Windows ages ago.....

Swiss train maker tells ransomware crooks to get off at the next stop

Re: Probably the best response

Trains themselves are hardly mass market devices. I daresay there's a handful of enthusiasts who'd like to own a copy of the documentation on a trainset but most of us are just riding in the things, not trying to repair them. Any truly secret sauce -- materials selection and processing, profiles etc. -- wouldn't be needed by customers and so would be unlikely to be in a public facing database.

AI vendors have found someone to pay their infrastructure bills: You

Its obvious who's going to get screwed

We see it everywhere -- corporations are in business to make money and the most reliable way to do this is to achieve pricing power and exercise it. (Second most reliable way is to get the government to pay for it.)

I've yet to see any everyday application of AI that's worth me paying for. That's not to say the technology is useless but rather that it has rather less utility for mass consumption than the marketers would like.Like the Web the entire mass ecosystem seems to revolve around applications that are virtual and self-sustaining -- they exist because people believe in them, not because there's any real RoI from using them.

Re: Madness

Surely you've read pieces on this site that refer to customers as 'tenants'?

Windows 10 refuses to die, and the security bill is coming due

Who (or what) are you calling "Old"?

The World of Marketing relies on a very simple paradigm -- "Old Stuff Bad, New Stuff Good". Which as nothing to do with how useful something is or how well it works. I've got a variety of old tools, some of which might be 50 years or or more, but I don't look at some date code on them and replace them as if they're perishable.

The only reason why Windows 10 is obsolete, old, bad and so needs to be junked is that Microsoft has deemed it so.The code still works as well as it ever did with the only problem being that if it is always connected to the public Internet -- preferably directly so without any kind of firewall -- then it will get probed and owned by myriads of hopeful hackers (most of them bots, I'd guess). In a more controlled environment it will just work, and continue to just work, until the underlying hardware falls apart. (Its got some built-in failure mechanisms like immovable sectors on a disk and a tendency to hammer parts of that disk but I think this mechanism is happenstance rather than some Machiavellian plot.)

I confess to having a W10 machine still. Its used occasionally for specific off-line tasks. Even if I could be bothered to replace it I don't fancy spending the time and effort bringing all its software up on a new platform. I already wasted a couple of hours at the weekend on a balky USB interface, something that used to 'just work' on an older W10 system but doesn't want to work any more (its got 'timing' written all over it). I've got things to do, and those things don't involve messing around with 'the latest' software because experience -- and decades of interfacing with applications programmers -- have taught me that 'the latest' is rarely tested properly, for most of my purposes its more trouble than its worth.

At last, a good reason to buy an AI PC: Reining in runaway token bills

Probably don't need anything that special

A higher performance PC, the sort you'd use for gaming, can run usable LLMs. They won't be state of the art, of course, and we're not talking about training but for the vast majority of everyday tasks they are likely to prove adequate.

With all this software and network bloat we tend to forget just how powerful a typical PC is, even a 'last year's model'. Given the cost of buying (thank you, memory) new systems there's likely a rather healthy market in using applications that make optimal use of existing processing power. Its not just Linux, Open Source etc. either -- there's just so much crud in modern software that the actual useful work done is for many people a small fraction of the available computing power. Its one thing to trade convenience for speed but you can overdo it (and vendors aren't exactly falling over themselves to suggest alternatives to "just buy more of the same").

Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8 GB Core i5

Re: Principles (again)

The fundamental problem with advertising is that it hits a point where adding more decreases its effectiveness. Despite the enormous resources devoted to marketing to me, personally, the typical advert says absolutely nothing relevant to me. It just gibbers the same old slop, day in, day out, wasting resources that could be used to help lower prices. (Its not just the cost of the advertising, its the entire ecosystem, all the businesses, all those jobs, an endless hive of churn trying desperately to separate me from my income.)

...and yes, the reason why Windows dominates this space still is that its easy. It doesn't require any thought to set up endless streams of low quality code and graphics (see "Self Serve Checkout") so the kind of mindset that can't stop pushing meaningless ads at us is going to really like this capability (plus all the business tools to demonstrate how this campaign is really working and, by the way, you wait till you see the next one!).

AWS sustainability claims don't hold water, lawsuit alleges

But why water?

My rather naive understanding of data centers is that they're devices for turning large quantities of electrical energy into heat. Water is one of the most common ways of transferring that heat which is why you find cooling ponds next to facilities like broadcast transmitters and satellite stations but these facilities don't actually use water except for topping up losses due to evaporation etc. Its cycled -- clean water is used in a closed cycle with the heat transferred to 'dirty' (natural) water which then transfers it directly to a body like a river or sea or to the air via things like cooling towers.

All this suggests that the systems we've been in such a hurry to build are thrown together without any regard for power usage, cooling or other infrastructure (except, obviously, data connections). Which is rather to be expected from the entire cowboy nature of the AI industry -- it seems that everything is jerrybuilt to get it up as quickly as possible regardless of long term RoI, just get it up, get the investors' cash and let the chips fall where they may.

Another German state heads down the open source sovereignty road

The keyword is 'tenant'

As soon as software providers started using the word 'tenant' to describe their customers you knew that the days of buying a tool that you could use in a business or other organization were numbered. The business model isn't about solutions, service or suitability but maintaining and strengthening customer lockin. So expect mushrooming features, proprietary interfaces and formats, essentially everything needed to make an organizations data more difficult to manage even as it professes precisely the opposite. Any sane organization would push back, eating the transition costs in the process because the longer you leave it the more difficult and expensive any transition will become (lock in, of course).

You cannot build wealth or independence as a lifelong tenant. It just keeps you as a serf.

Brit supermarket giant triples down on facial recog to nab shoplifters

Understandable, unfortunately

Its a logical extension to store "loss prevention personnel" watching you on CCTV. Which if US practice is anything to go by they do far more extensively than people realize. The most likely use of this technology is to trigger a notification that someone of interest has entered a store. This may be because they're suspected of shopliftnig or they have been caught once and have signed an agreement not to enter the company's stores for a period of time.

Systematic shoplifting is now a real problem. The problem is not people stealing a bit of food because they can't afford to eat -- the people who work in those stores aren't paid that much so understand exactly where these people are coming from -- but rather its the systematic stealing of high value items, especially cosmetics and the like, for resale on platforms such as Facebook Marketplace. These thefts are often organized and the stores have an interest in not just aggregating the thefts but also discovering where the products are being fenced. The alternative is that you find more and more products locked up which makes everyday shopping a chore.

(As for people in the UK complaining about CCTV and facial recognition -- where were you all 20--30 years ago? What did you think would happen once all those cameras went up?)

C programmers commit fresh crimes against readability

This used to be routine

Back in the early days of UNIX applications had to be compiled not just for each system type but just about each individual computer. It was normal for applications to be delivered as source so it was common to run the source through an obsurfurcation program that produced "Shrouded Source". This filter removed comments and whitespace, replaced variable names and generally tried to make the code unreadable.

I've had junior colleagues who seemed to think that making difficult to read lines of code was clever. They tended to either get reformed or find another job. Source is designed primarily to be human readable.

Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Then forgot about the processors

Re: ARM

>you are having to fab your own chips.

America doesn't fab chips but acts as if it has a monopoly on fabs through its extra-territorial control over European and Japanese manufacturers. Its possible that if the Europeans grew a pair and told the US that they'd facilitate overseas fabs (read that as "Chinese") unless the US got a bit less controlling then there should be room for compromise. Semiconductor design and fabrication is a global enterprise, it long ceased to be a US monopoly. It might even benefit the US long term because its primarily relying on its leadership from decades ago and not really putting in the work for newer architectures, relying on its bureaucracy and financial muscle (and compliant / subservient governments) to maintain its position. This is going to last precisely as long as it takes the Chinese to overhaul us (which they will do -- its not a matter of 'if' but 'when').

Microsoft has mostly repaired a flaw in Surface hardware that allowed unprotected devices to be bricked by a single packet

Breaking a fundamental communications rule

All communication interfaces should be prepared to accept any input at any rate without failing. Obviously they're free to reject improperly formed or overwhelming amounts of traffic but this can't be allowed to cause a device to fail.

Device testing should assume this. There is no such thing as "this can never happen" because experience tells us that if something can happen then it will, its just a matter of time. I've spent a good chunk of my working life dealing with the fallout from situations where the designer only considered the operating state(s) so the system failed every now and again because sometimes an unexpected state snuck in.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Re: Zombie Starmer's Victorian internet: An Internet without Things.

I'm an avid reader of Victorian and Edwardian literature (and that means the cheap 'n cheerful stuff, not just Dickens) so I'm quite up to speed on Victorian social graces and morality, The one thing you can say about morality in that era is that it was pragmatic. Their world was obviously different - male dominated and rigidly structured by class with the upper classes in particular approaching marriage as an exercise in stock breeding rather than anything to do with romance (so what's new?) but within that envelope there was a pretty good understanding of things like 'needs'. Unfortunately its easy to slag off this era because of the way that popular culture has promoted just a handful of stereotypes.

One thing that was omnipresent there was the notion of honor which meant, among other things, that gentlemen did not read other's mail. This rather quaint notion persisted up to WW1 (when the British finally realized that Germany had no such sensibilities) so to a Victorian the idea of poking around in someone's private papers looking for smut would be unthinkable.

The idea's pretty weird today, if you think about it. In my (albeit limited) experience people who are constantly looking for perversions tend to be a bit, er, 'strange' themselves. They really can't help it, its like this is front and center in their mind while most of us have all sorts of everyday things competing for our attention. Unfortunately at a government level this kind of obsession is a cover for impotence -- you can't do anything about real problems, its too difficult, so you invent ones you can deal with and pretend that you're really being quite efficient.

Re: Warrantless search

Based on the size, ubiquitousness and historical track record of our intelligence agencies I don't have a lot of confidence that they're keeping us safe. I think their most probable function is to keep themselves in a job, to sustain the fantasy world that they live in that provides them a reason for being. As for 'Nork' being interested in the UK I'd guess that the only reason would be a case study on how not to maintain a nation state, "Follow this path if you want to go from owning the world to relatively insignificant inside a handful of generations", that sort of thing.

(The other thing worth studying is how the British people somehow keep things together and moving despite their government. This miasma of crisis and incompetence isn't peculiar to now -- go back decades, even centuries, and you'll see the same structures and patterns. Occasionally things break loose and there are glimpses of a bright future but 'the money' clamps that lid down firmly again.)

Brit maritime agency heralds fresh global rules for crewless cargo ships

Sssh! Don't tell anybody!

Those very large ships are effectively running under automatic control. Sure, there's usually a couple of people keeping watch on the bridge (e.g. one officer, one seaman) but they're not actually driving the ship, its going on a pre-programmed course. The bridge crew are looking out for random traffic and obstructions (but are really are there to carry the can if the navigation system screws up)(they're needed near land or fishing grounds because fishermen and recreational boaters tend to pop up anywhere)..

The crew earn their keep docking and un-docking the ship, keeping it maintained and managing the ship's course and schedule.

Nearly every ship is transmitting AIS informaitn. This allows the ship to transmit where it is, where its headed and how fast it is going (its similar to ADS-B for aircraft). This allows timely course correction should there be a course conflict. These large freighters don't steer or brake at all well because of their size so course planning is more like choreography at a snails' pace but serious real world if you get it wrong..

UK's top crime agency hamstrung by legacy IT, watchdog warns

Its the bureaucracy, stupid!

One of the banes of life in the police service (according to someone who worked in their version of the trenches) was paperwork. Everything had to be logged, categorized, reported, faxed, reported again, faxed again ad nauseam. This left the typical plod -- at least the ones left to plod after all the other special duties and offices were subtracted from the headcount -- comparatively little time to actually plod about being visible and generally crime fighting. It seems that in recent years 'efficiency' and 'automation' appears to be to take all this paperwork and put it inside a computer. Obviously imperfectly, from what this article says.

What's needed, obviously, is more efficiency. Which, in our modern world, means "more IT spend", or in old speak "Jobs For the Boys" (modernized to "Persons" these days). The notion of maybe rationalizing the information flow, cutting down the paperwork (real and/or virtual) has probably never crossed anyone's mind.

GOV.UK goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe

Its all about making your cut

The Britain I left over 40 years ago was effectively cashless. I was paid by direct deposit, I paid my bills, including the rates ("council tax" in NewSpeak), utilities and so on by bank transfer. I had a credit card and ATM card and walked around with barely a pound or two in my pocket. Taxes and rebates were similarly efficient -- for most people a tax return was a small piece of paper that turned up every now and again asking if "anything had changed" in your circumstances.**

I arrived in the US to a society where credit cards were hard to get and banking was done mostly on paper -- mailing checks back and forward. They hadn't figured out the idea of crossed cheques (still haven't) and there was no centralized clearing. Everything was clumsy and heavy-handed with penalties and fees imposed automatically for any misstep. Taxation was onerous -- the annual ritual of preparing returns and dealing with under or over payments occupied a lot of each Spring. Everywhere paper flew back and forward -- we'd invented punched cards and laser printers and had plenty of paper so the mail trucks were kept full.

Gradually we caught up with the UK. Except that the UK really has somehow adopted the kind of mushy quasi-efficient system we have. The reason for not being efficient here is that "it all makes work for the working person to do" -- true efficiency kills jobs. I'd guess its the same now in the UK; you need the appearance of being efficient while providing opportunities for rake offs at every stage of a transaction.

(**Appearances were deceptive. If you were on PAYE you were dealt with by Office 'A' staffed by school leavers. If you were self-employed you dealt with Office 'B' staffed with graduates who all seemed to be on first name terms with your accountant.)

Don’t repeat 5G mistakes with 6G, plead mobile operators

Still hashing out 6G?

The one thing we know about 6G -- something we've know since it was first mentioned by a US politician in the context of how wonderful it was going to be** -- is that its "Not 5G". The 5G rollout fell in a heap because due to the usual corporate reasons the only company that was ready to fully deploy it, who effectively owned it, was Huawei. The "Got To Ban Them For Security Reasons" movement got under way about the the time 5G was rolling out which left me with the impression that its motivation was primarily commercial. Here in the US cell providers were left with partial solutions, interim "5G Like", products to market to users, none of which came anywhere near fulfilling the marketing hype for the technology.

Personally, I'd be happy with just a fully working 4G service. I have no interest in getting on the technology treadmill while the leading edge of the technology is such a shambles. (Currently the only reason why I've got anything like usable cell service at home is that I was given a picocell so my Internet connection is providing cell service for me any any neighbors within range.)

(**I won't mention his name but I think we can all guess who it was.)

Grep this: Microsoft grafts (most) Linux commands onto Windows

Cygwin has allowed us to do this for many years now

Installing Cygwin makes common Linux/Unix commands available to the Windows command line. In addition it allows proper scripting. Cywin's been around since the Dawn of Time (it seems) and not only gives you command line and scripting tools but it turns Windows drives into something resembling a proper filesystem (including file links, something Windows still doesn't seem to have figured out properly).

I'd guess that this move by MSFT is just another of their "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" moves. They stuck with their DOS box for decades, well past its sell-by date, and then introduced their own verrsion of scripting which, like everything else, is just another proprietary tool you have to learn that works almost as well as what its copying but is subtly incompatible so nothing you learn from it can be used elsewhere.

'Dumbass' criminal breaks the 'first rule of ransomware club'

Just effective enforcement?

A lot of crime could be stopped if there was just effective law enforcement. That doesn't mean having police breathing down your neck 24/7 but the idea that if you commit a crime then you will be caught. (I've lived in relatively high crime and relatively low crime areas and the difference between them is enforcement -- break into a house or car locally or try to rob someone and there will be close to 100% chance you'll be caught so only fools try it.)

Cyber crime, phone scams and the like prosper because they're just not priorities to 'the authorities'. Some countries may make it a priority, especially if the victims are their citizens. One of the enduring myths about the Internet is that its anonymous -- its not, its one of the most effective mass surveillance tools ever devised, especially as its self-financing (we pay for our own chains and we'll gladly pay extra for the custom models).

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Re: Who could have predicted this would be a bait and switch?

Its the same model that's used by every other 'service', including on-line gaming. (The trick with gaming is to set up the loss so it looks like 'almost a win'.)

Russian spy agency says foreign spies turned officials' smartphones into surveillance devices

This is old news

The FSB, like our own organizations, seems to be a bit behind the curve in its press releases. As any Reg reader knows spyware has been around for phones for ever. The only thing that's probably not been stated is that phone software suppliers seem to have been surprised at just how easy it is to install this software without the user being aware of it, its almost as if the gate had been left ajar "by accident".

Kaspersky used to do sterling service uncovering all sorts of obscure Windows spyware bugs back in the day. Their work was subsequently verified by Snoden's revelations (which didn't reveal very much, merely confirmed what a lot of us had suspected). They've been a bit low profile since they were declared persona-non-grata by our own governments (more in a fit of pique than out of any genuine security concerns, I suspect) but with all the revelations about Pegasus and other spy coups (e.g. Hezbollah's pagers) its likely that no software gets a pass into anywhere sensitive these days without serious scrutiny.

California passes bill declaring death-by-algorithm to 3D-printed ghost guns

Printers are actually clueless

As are our legislators, it seems.

A 3D printer hasn't a clue what its making. The last piece of software that has any idea of shape is the Slicer and this isn't part of the printer firmware because it often needs to adjust how a model is built up to get optimum quality in the finished product. The printer itself gets simple low level commands of the form "turn this on" and "move print head to this coordinate", usually in what's called "G Code". Its is unlikely that slicers could be mandated not to build gun parts because slicers are traditionally open source so there is no single point where a slicer code supplier and a ghost gun designer could get together and collaborate on preventing the printing of gun parts. This is a very different situation from paper printers where currency designers build markers into their designs that can be identified by rendering firmware in the printer.

As others have remarked its really easy to make a (crude) gun. Making ammunition -- brass cartridges, smokeless powder and percussion primers -- is not at all easy, it can't be done safely at home. Enthusiasts who build their own loads buy and recycle these components. Even black powder isn't easy to mill safely -- the ingredients might be readily obtainable but if you started to make black powder at home you'd get a lot of grief from your neighbors, the local council and likely (in the US) the ATF (plus all sorts of anti-terrorism organizations would start looking at you very closely).

Re: ridiculous

The brass casings have to be manufactured very accurately to function in a gun. They're usually drawn brass. People don't make smokeless powder at home because its way too dangerous. Same with primers. So a DiY load using purchased primers and propellant is possible (and home made bullets if you want them) but anything else just isn't going to work.

People say that its easy to make black powder from easily obtained ingredients. Sure, but its definitely one of those "yes and no" situations. Nitrates have been restricted for some time in the UK because they've been used in home made explosives. Suplhur can be purchased, charcoal made (maybe) and DiY nitrates can even be refined from (enough) urine but the result's going to be quite crude. Blending powder is also a simple way to blow yourself up.

Overall I don't think your neighbors and the local council will be too enamored of your DiY ammo facility. (They might think you're making fireworks which around here is a definite no-no.)

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

Re: The state of Utah may be surprised to discover

Obvoiusly Utah, the UK and othe like-minded states should band together to build a VPA that meets their objectives.

Technology isn't legislators' strong suit. Apparently we in California now have a law that mandates 3D printer manufacturers certify their systems are unable to print gun components before they can be sold here. Trying to explain to someone why this isn't going to work and why.......no, I can't stand the prospect, I think I'll just volunteer fro multiple root canals as entertainment instead.

Troops’ phones gave away location data to foreign adversaries

Re: re: no actual policy that requires servicemembers to turn off geolocation capabilities

You correlate information gained from various sources. A simplistic version would be knowing that APCs aren't too common in our cul-de-sac but we do get the occasional BMW.

Just matching patterns can tell you a lot about unit deployment, rotation and so on. If you can link a person to a MOS ("Miltiary Occuipational Speciality") then you've got some really powerful intelligence information.

There is, though, a school of thought that suggests that if we weren't continually thrusting our military overseas into harm's way then a lot of this would be moot. Its not that the information wouldn't be interesting to a potential 'adversary' but they wouldn't have to manage so much information so often so wouldn't get so well practiced at interpreting it.

Re: ...and this is news?

Getting the information from the provider is cheap and easy if its available but the information can also be gleaned from satellites.

...and this is news?

The Taliban learned back in the 2000s that carrying a cellphone was effectively carrying a target indicator in their pocket. Every now and again I suppose people need reminding of this, especially if they're in a part of the world where they're not exactly welcome. To make maters worse you don't need to actually have individual user data to get useful intelligence off a phone -- just the density of the phones and how they are or are not moving will tell you a great deal.

Google engineer accused of turning Year in Search secrets into Polymarket payday

Re: You have to be joking

a) He's a foreigner and b) He's not an insider (given our present Administration I wouldn't be surprised to find that a rake off is needed to keep on the right side of the law).

The fundamental problem is that our Supreme Court has effectively legalized gambling. In this case its not called 'gambling', its given the polite name 'prediction market', but as anyone from England knows a bookmaker will open a book on anything provided there's an edge they can exploit. The puzzle for me is that while gambling has always been officially frowned on in official US circles as evidence of "moral turpitude" (their term, not mine) the entire financial market system is essentially a giant casino. (Insider trading is, of course, officially banned and if the FTC catches you at it you'll be dinged for at least all your profits but as we all know "its only ilegal if you're caught".)

Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles

I'd hate to be one of the outstanding contributors

On the surface it sounds like your job is secure. In practice it means that you've been noticed and you will be expected to produce at that level indefinitely. Once the yield drops off..... (here the image is one of chicken pies or nuggets, product of Mrs Tweedy).

As for the managers, a lot of them just do information collecting and collating for higher levels of the food chain. Its a function that's best automated. These managers often do training/mentoring work as well but I suppose we don't need this sort of thing these days, we've got AI.

Indra rides off with £1.96B Transport for London ticketing deal as Oyster heads for back-office overhaul

Anyone calculated how much per journey this costs?

My estimate is a bit under10p per passenger journey. Anyone care to correct me?

My point is that rather than focusing on how big and hug and just plain enormous everything is and so how it justifies the contract price. it might be better to focus on how to drive these costs down. London's transit fares are rather expensive compared to other large cities, they're priced (like everything in Britain) to be 'economic' rather than 'practical'. The result is that things become neither economic nor practical. This extra cost could be justified if it was a job creation scheme for Londoners but it appears to be primarily a job creation scheme for Spanish workers (people who seem to enjoy rather cheaper metro fares, BTW).

1 in 5 Brits think AI layoffs could trigger civil unrest

Re: It's just Bullshit, the bubble will burst soon.

Most people don't understand some very basic rules of economics because they never get to appreciate the scale of the whole. (Think of an ant on the side of a building.) Finance doesn't actually create wealth, it merely moves it from A to B (or, more accurately, from lots of little 'a's to some very large 'B's) so all that wealth that the techbros own is essentially an accounting fiction. Their continued prosperity rests on the age old trick of borrowing big and then getting someone else to pay the loan with, naturally, the well connected and influential grabbing their cut off the top. Its a con game that eventually blows up because so much value ends up extracted up front that there's absolutely nothing left to service the mountain of debt. What can't be squeezed out of 'customers' eventually ends up being paid by us all in one form or another, either in destroyed investment value or by getting the government -- all of us -- to cover the debt. Either way we end up impoverished. (One the tricks of capitalism is that only a sucker actually owns the capital because its who gets to control it that's important. Its the difference between gambling with your own money or with someone else's.)

Tech is just this year's bubble. Like every other bubble its got its promoters and its snake oil. In this case the snake oil is that's being marketed is, unfortunately, Power. This is the perfect product because not only is it intangible but the suckers who are reeled in by the promoters -- the politicians and their corporate analogs -- are not only suckers for Power but they just can't get enough of it. (...and like missile gaps and the like you can always sell the fear of not having enough of it or the other guy getting more of it than you.)

(BTW -- I'm not suggesting that AI isn't a useful technology. Its just like everything else, it needs to be used judiciously.)

Survey says no, American workers are not keen on Microsoft's AI

The word's the giveaway

As soon as software marketing starts using the term 'tenant' to describe a user you know you're screwed. If you touch any of these products then you know that a substantial part of the development effort will be devoted to locking you in, making the costs of change too high to be viable, with rents going up to whatever the vendor can get away with. Now this type of software mindset has infested all sorts of other objects and devices -- it seems you can't buy anything these days without it coming with a cloud connection, an account in said cloud and the omnipresent threat that what you purchased may cease to function the way you expect it to at some random time in the future (unless you pay money, of course -- but even then the vendor might decide the product isn't worth supporting any more).

Its not magic or insight, its just about the story of computing. The problem is that software doesn't wear out - if you were happily using Wordstar 40-50 years ago then the package will work in exactly the same way today unless steps are taken to 'upgrade' the software or environment to make it new and improved. Its the only way to keep revenue flowing.

The Navy's autonomous carrier-based refueling drone has finally flown

Combination refuelling drone and gunnery practice target?

Given the world we live in today the life expectancy of this device is likely to be in the order of hours.

One of the many problems caused by starting a war is that your adversary goes from guessing what you're going to do and what tools you can use to knowing exactly what you've got and how you intend to use it. We've been rather smug in thinking that a combination of stealth and blitzkrieg tactics will always give us the edge and we've been reluctant to test it up to now (witness the noise made when Turkey wanted to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems). Iran has now rather foolishly exposed our strengths and weaknesses -- Iran has always been a (primarily Israeli) vanity project but by going all-in we've provided ample opportunities for 'adversaries' to get some hands on experience with weapons systems like the F-35. Expect their effectiveness to diminish so anything built with that level of technology is likely to be easily as vulnerable.

More ancient Linux device support faces the chop

Linux is supposed to be modular

A typical user installation should not need ATM or AX25 support so if these drivers are buggy then they should just be labeled 'caveat emptor' and left alone. ATM is effectively obsolete because it was designed as a way to transfer network traffic over the then synchronous telephone network (specifically fiber long haul links). AX25 is actually alive and very much in use by radio amateurs, they use it for messaging over H/F radio. Its just it shouldn't be part of the Linux kernel -- it turns data streams into audio tones -- FSK -- which is easily handled by user level programs. The interface these days is USB rather than some kind of sound card (which would need drivers and is most definitely obsolete).

Microsoft tackles quality control issues. Just kidding, it's encouraging experienced workers to leave

Re: Got to pay that 'leccy bill somehow

The rule of thumb we used is typically we cost twice our salary. That doesn't include facility costs etc., just our salary.

One thing I've always found difficult to get my head around is the bloated salaries that these firms pay their workforce. I know it happens but you're looking at the way the numbers (don't) add up and can't figure out how these companies can earn their keep paying that kind of money. (I did earn about $130K once which got me the moniker "Principal Engineer" after the company was acquired by Intel but these were relatively rare birds, the real ones usually were off writing papers, conferring somewhere or something like that. Real workers didn't earn anything like that.) Anyway, if you've worked in regular companies in California that level of salary should make you feel insecure because no matter what business you're in the Good Times eventually stop Rolling. You can get really good programmers for a lot less than that and, unfortunately as the ex-employees are about to find out, jobs are actually pretty thin on the ground at the moment.

Nation-states want to cause harm, not just steal cash - stop handing your cyber defenses to the cheapest contractor

Re: Idiots.

I think the reason for ignoring the obvious is that there's no money in it. After all, the fundamental problem with software is that it doesn't wear out so in order to keep businesses rolling along you have to drum up custom, artificially creating a demand for products which if they're modern software products become self-sustaining. (There is always another vulnerability just around the corner and if there really isn't we can easily create them by 'upgrading' existing code, something which invariably will need a hardware and systems change.

I've worked on control kit since the pre-Internet days so some of my work has been to tack interfaces onto existing systems. This is remarkably easy to do safely -- provided you don't just take the expedient of tacking a network stack of dubious provenance (preferably code you can neither vet nor test) onto an existing system. Even with older code that has known security vulnerabilities the addition of a tunnel typically fixes any and all issues (especially as I've yet to meet an industrial system that needs to initiate access to www.scamsite.org!).

Anyway, what do I know.....

Attention data hoarders: Alexa loses its Plex appeal as voice feature gets canned

Re: "Smart"

I actually like voice control What. I don't like is the cloud connection, especially the corporate cloud. Its too intrusive and has too many places it can fail, (I'm used to industrial automation so the idea of sending messages half way around the world just to adjust a thermostat that's almost within reach seems a bit dumb.)

Managing music has always been a problem for me because the apparently simple process of scanning a set of FLACs, identifying a file and transmitting that file to a device has been made progressively more complicated as everyone plus dog seeks to monetize it. But the files that I listen to are of recordings I've purchased and all I'm doing by using digitized versions is making cataloging and accessing them easier. At least it would be really easy if there was a decent interface. I ended up defaulting to Logitech's Media Server because it was about as bare bones as you could get (and it was needed for my Squeezeboxes). Even so its still a nuisance having to bring up a web browser just to play a file. (But at least everything is local.)

I didn't know Plex had Alexa integration but I suppose it doesn't matter now. If Plex doesn't want to support this feature why not open source it?

Opsec oopsie: Dutch navy frigate location outed by mailing it a Bluetooth tracker

Hardly Hiding

You just have to assume that any surface ship can be located and tracked. Obviously AIS is the easy way, like ADS-B for aircraft it reveals the identity, location, heading and speed of the vessel or plane. Obviously the military won't be leaving it on (we hope) when they're busy being the military but they can't hide, its just a matter of how much effort a potential adversary wants to spend looking for them.

Even submarines are getting difficult to hide. Although submarines are currently safe for the most part there are systems coming on line that detect submarine sized disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field.

Loud, power hungry – opposition grows to datacenters as Maine passes bit barn ban

Shoulod be Discouraged

Not just for the obvious reasons but because this type of sprawling, power hungry facility is obviously a technology that's going to be obsolete well before it ever pays its way. Unfortunately a combination of FOMO, investment froth and 'fake it till you make it' means we have to have these centers because if we don't get them first 'the other guy' will have them and that will obviously be a disaster.

We seem to not just be investing in technology that's likely to rapidly become obsolete but also in our ideas about how such technology should be used. I just don't fancy spending the rest of my life paying for a whole bunch of white elephants.

You can finally control serial devices from Firefox

Re: This is NOT needed

...and the protocols they use are embarrassing hacks. The worst is http itself -- it takes TCP, a protocol that's ironically designed to emulate a serial terminal over a network and adds the framing mechanism from FTP to convert it back to a datagram oriented protocol. It being text oriented it can't efficiently transmit binary. It really is a mess.

Most programmers don't have a clue about the firestorm of network chaos unleashed by a simple page load. Obviously there are tweaks and hacks but just adding in WiFi to the mix generates yet more traffic. Obviously there's been lots of tweaks and mods to the protocols over the years but if you start with a fundamentally flawed foundation then all you do by tweaking it is you add complexity which may or may not work (what you do in practice is demand more processing power and network bandwidth until you end up using the equivalent of what used to be a half-decent mainframe to just load a web page -- and that's without the entire advertising ecosystem trying to get in on the act.

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

You don't actually print guns, you know that, right?

You just can't print a complete gun, you have to print components and then assemble them. The legislators who advocate this are just extrapolating from the markings used on currency that prevent high resolution printers from making exact copies. In other words -- they know the 'form' but not the 'function' (so what's new?). They obviously don't realize that its really easy to make a gun, even from 'common household objects'. If you've got access to more sophisticated tools and the skills to use them then you can make progressively more sophisticated weapons.

What you can't easily make is ammunition. The best you'd be able to do at home is a crude black powder load and even then you'll run a fair bit of risk milling the powder. Ammunition is an early example of a product that has to be mass produced -- the exacting tolerances and the difficulty (and danger) or making the propellant and primers mandate specialty manufacturing plants. (People do assemble their own loads but its invariably using manufactured components.) So rather than chasing chimeras trying to restrict the making of gun-like objects if legislators were really serious about preventing the misuse of weapons they'd control the sale and ownership of ammunition. We'd all be a lot safer. But that's one political third rail that no legislator will go near; far better for them to legislate the impossible just to appear to be doing something.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

But this isn't all applications

Coding a news feed web application is an example of form filling -- its complex form filling but essentially you're customizing existing applications and frameworks to do a particular job. This isn't anything like the programming I spent much of my working life on. Its tedious and complex (but that's really more a problem with the environment and tools that in an attempt to systematize the development process introduce their own layers, methods and myths). Its a bit like discovering BASIC in the old days and realizing you could use it to make programs that could do useful looking things with -- until you ran off the limits of the environment, that is.

The real fun starts when you're working outside this type of box. Its typically where a lot of programmers fall flat on their faces -- they can produce perfectly functional code, it just doesn't actually work (and then there's the whole issue of error conditions, component or environment failures and so on). Understanding and marshaling everything needed for even a modest real time system isn't beyond the capabilities of AI, its just that it won't have a pool of existing experience to draw on.