Posts by martinusher

A software-defined radio can derail a US train by slamming the brakes on remotely

Paranoia's a Decade Behind Reality

The up and coming thing in railroading is "Communication Based Train Control" where R/F links replace most trackside signals. This is not easily hackable but there's been an amateur project that uses the data traffic to get a real time picture of trains on a particular section of track. (Think of it as the next step up from those real time transit displays.)

If you successfully hack these links then you can potentially cause trains to collide. Obviously someone will likely notice what's going on and issue verbal orders to train crews but this is probably worth a bit of paranoia to the professional paranoids.

BTW -- The UK is experimenting with this on a section of track in North London. I think the plan is to extend it to the East Coast Main Line. The prototype area has actually had the trackside signals removed.

Let's Quake in our Beds

This article seems to be referring to the "End of Train Device", a combination red flashing light and brake pressure monitoring unit that's attached to the last car of the train. US freight trains can be literally a couple of miles long, often having locomotives distributed along the length of the train instead of just a set of them at the front so the engineer (the train driver) has a rather delicate job of monitoring what's going on along the entire length of the train. The brake pipe pressure actually varies along the length of the train as brakes are applied and released and everything is designed that any fault will cause the application of brakes and so bring the entire train to a halt (eventually). Someone fiddling with the brake pipe, either electronically or physically, will do this (its the equivalent of a coupling break somewhere along the train length).

This is for freight trains, of course. Passenger trains are just like the ones in the UK (apart from being a lot slower on average). As for derailment, experience suggests that our freight trains don't need a whole lot of help to derail, they pretty much do it by themselves. They actually don't do it quite as often as it seems but the results can be spectacular (and destructive) because of the size of individual freight cars.

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

>Raspberry Pis are made in the UK.

I think what you mean is "RPis are assembled in the UK from (nearly all) imported components". The pick and place machine and solder tunnel used in the assembly process is almost certainly imported (likely German) and I'd guess that the PCB material and solder paste didn't originate in the UK. I'd be surprised if even the cardboard carton they're put in originated in the UK.

However, we shouldn't lose sight of the notion that most business users -- and probably all domestic users outside of the hard core gaming community -- could get by just fine with a RPi. They'll need an (imported) monitor or TV, of course.

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

> UK Grown like Yorkshire Tea

That's a re-export. Sorry. We've got armies of bureaucrats keeping an eye on this and slapping appropriate tariffs.

Its possible to grow the stuff in the UK but its not cost effective except for boutique marques. Fortunately what passes for 'tea' in the US is 'bag of random vegetable matter dipped in lukewarm water' so we could probably get by with dried lawn clippings.

Re: Not "reciprocal"!

The tariff will be paid for by the butcher doubling the price you pay for your meat.

Which pretty much sums up what tariffs are. They're a tax paid by people in the US. Revenue from this tax has already figured into the "Big Beautiful Bill" calculations.

To continue the analogy, you may carry through on your threat to become a vegetarian but the butcher has plenty of other customers. Since you're proving to be capricious -- unreliable -- it would be in his best interests to focus his trade elsewhere, selling you stuff if its convenient (and profitable) but devoting most effort to increasing other trade.

Smartphones in the doldrums due to crap demand and tariff woes

Politics is constraining choice as well

I've got an Huawei/Honor phone, its one of the last models sold in the US before we banned them. I've no plans to replace it. It works for my needs and thanks to intrusive government policies and provider monopolies my choices for a replacement are now constrained to what feels like second tier makes sold at premium prices. Its the same with other things I might like to purchase; the tariff wall just means that my wallet is now staying firmly shut, only to be pried open "in case of emergency". (...and "local makes" -- its all about the subscriptions now, isn't it? The days of straightforward "I give you money, you give me stuff" transactions are well behind us.)

You have a fake North Korean IT worker problem – here's how to stop it

..and it assumes that such workers are entirely useless, they're just unproductive spies, rather than competent workers.

I suspect that what's really useless is the DoJ and their spy novel grade conspiracy BS. Unfortunately with the actual and impending carnage of the Federal government and its agencies this is one agency that won't see any cuts, at least ones not related to ideology (i.e. 'disagreeing with the leader"). Add to this the small practical detail that NK shares a land border with both Russia and China, countries that are currently on our (s)hit list. Regardless of a particular government's official position might be you can bet that the locals aren't going to be falling over themselves trying to implement sanctions policies for us.

Hegseth signs flying memo to expand military use of cheap drones in oddball video

Re: Cynical thought

Its what happens when you populate your Administration with Fox News retreads. You get all style but no substance. We're actually degrading our capabilities daily as the Administration systematically purges the Federal government of any expertise that's likely to either say 'no' or come up with the wrong answers.

For now the Marines aren't being used on raids in Los Angeles, they're 'guarding' Federal facilities. I think the intent was to set up situations where the ICE paramilitary shock troops were sent into districts in a manner that would invite the locals to take pot shots at them, something that could be spun as 'insurgency' and justification for suspension of civil rights etc. So far nobody's taken the bait, in fact in a recent Compton raid ICE managed to do something that's eluded people for decades -- they've united Black and Latino gangs.

As an aside, I think that characterizing Putin as a 'fascist dictator' is totally incorrect. He's popular (among Russians, of course) which is why he keeps winning elections. On the other hand, our own (Federal) government is working closely o the fascist playbook in its systematic take over and corruption of institutions and its insistence on personal loyalty rather than loyalty to the Constitution. This idea might be a bitter pill for Americans to swallow and, obviously, many of us are pushing back however we can but currently we're far more of an autocracy than Russia is. We're not alone, either -- many Western democracies are now only democratic in name only with governments actively following policies that don't reflect the interests of large sections of the population while becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent or even just cynicism.

$36 million? No way. $135 million per unit plus ongoing expenses, that's more like it.

Jack Dorsey floats specs for decentralized messaging app that uses Bluetooth

Re: He's obviously just discovered Meshtastic...

Amateur radio emergency communications is well organized in the US, it being part of official planning. What that means locally is that radio equipment is maintained in key facilities -- government buildings, large hospitals, police stations etc. -- that's dormant except for a scheduled weekly test to verify its all working. Really serious emergencies needing this equipment are likely to be very rare but should something like a large earthquake occur that takes out the normal infrastructure then its handy to have backups while systems are being restored. Because of geography and size communication can be quite spotty here, especially in remote areas, with the amateur VHF repeaters actually being one of the few systems that give practically universal coverage. Satellite messaging will improve things but there are few technologies out there that can boast the potential range for the ultra low cost and ultra low power that LoRa offers.

As for paranoia, a year ago I'd say "Nah, no chance" but given what's been happening with raids by armed paramilitaries some level of paranoia might now be prudent. Needless to say, there's now a tracking app -- "ICE Block" -- but its only a matter of time before cell service gets selectively blocked in operational areas. (...and if you think "It can't happen here....." then you should remember the words of Pastor Niemoller.....)

He's obviously just discovered Meshtastic...

....but doesn't quite know what it is.

For ElReg readers who haven't heard of it, here's a brief explanation. Its built on low power "LoRa" radios that typically work in the 900MHz unlicensed band (in the US around 915MHz.) These radios use a "Chirp Spread Spectrum" modulation technology that has quite absurd range for the power deployed (40mW), its line of sight but people have been getting 40Km or more point to point. Meshtastic is a community software effort built on inexpensive radio modules (pre-tariff they're typically about $20 for two or so) where the radios form a cooperative mesh like a Zigbee network. Using these I can send low bandwidth messages around the Los Angeles area (that's where I live).

There's lots of information about this on the Interweb. Despite this its still an obscure technology, one reason being that its too small, too low powered and too cheap for people to take seriously -- I have a radio amateur license and live in an area where there are lots of active amateurs but with a handful of exceptions they all turn their noses up at this technology as if it wasn't real. "We're working on it".

(You could do a similar mesh with BLE but won't work anything like as well.)

Chipmaker GlobalFoundries acquires chip designer MIPS

MIPS did have a niche in network devices. We're going back a decade or two to when general purpose processors were involved in packet classification and movement (I'd guess they're not now -- anyone care to comment?). Most processors are really bad at this job with the one exception I know of being the MIPS.

We shouldn't judge processors on the single criteria of how they stack up on your desktop. Obviously when MIPS first tried to get traction as a server or similar they would have built a board that was capable of running PC peripherals and put it in a beige tower but that's because all that hardware was readily obtainable (and cheap). I don't think they intended it to be used as a daily driver. Other vendors would have done the same thing with greater or lesser degrees of success. AMD saw the light and abandoned their RISC (although its probably lurking somewhere in their graphics processors), Zilog, who knows, but successor processors to the 68000 are going strong.

US sanctions alleged North Korean IT sweatshop leader

I don't suppose he was actually an IT worker?

That's the problem with being a 'sharp end' IT worker like a programmer. You either can do the job or you can't, there's definitely no question of 'posing'. OTOH, there are plenty of roles in business where you can pose successfully but those tend to be filled with bona-fide "Born in America" Americans, not foreigners (and definitely not foreign contract workers).

Microsoft finally bids farewell to PowerShell 2.0

Bash was an option, believe it or not

If you install Cygwin, the code that emulates Linux on Windows, then the default prompt is bash. Unlike regular bash, though, this program knows how to run Windows programs -- they're all just Windows executables, after all -- so you can mix and match Windows with traditional shell commands/utilities as you think fit. You can can even use the '!#' construct to invoke scripting languages if that's what you want to do.

Cygwin has been the go-to for mixing Linux and Windows for years. Although MS has pushed back with their pseudo:Linux and their pseudoBash but its all really 'embrace, extend, extinguish' -- only the truly faithful or those under mandate from the C-Suite would believe this was progress.

Game, set, botch: AI umpiring at Wimbledon goes long

Humans are part ofthe game

I've spent decades refereeing amateur football (US -- "soccer") matches in the US and obviously I'm infallible even if the players, coaches and spectators think otherwise. However, what mistakes I and my colleagues on the line make are made equally so it mostly balances out. We're part of the game, just another actor for the players to take into account like an uneven pitch or the wind blowing the ball off course.

Introducing automation into the game could be helpful but if its allowed to dominate then it takes away from what is essentially a human activity. After all, with the sophistication of modern simulations we could eliminate the entire game infrastructure and the players, turning the match into a video game or even just do away with the simulation, run it at speed and just present the the results and maybe a few choice highlights. Bookies would like this but its just not sport.

US Air Force holds hypersonic resupply site review amid seabird concerns

Re: It is actually the other way around...

Minor damage (or even guano) can render stealth aircraft visible.

Ousted US copyright chief argues Trump did not have power to remove her

Technical;ly she's right but times have changed

The government here in the US is set up specifically to avoid the possibility of someone or group monopolizing power. Its a bit messy, obviously imperfect but its a form of democracy that sorta/kinda works. At least it did until it doesn't. Trump is is really the bellweather, the strongest signal yet that there's been a significant shift in the nature of government that didn't just happen overnight, its the result of a carefully thought out ongoing process. Part of that process involves corrupting ostensibly non-political roles, caretaker type jobs that by custom and practice have always been regarded as non-political because they keep the system running. The Library of Congress isn't just the Copyright Office, its the country's institutional memory (it does the same job as the National Archives in Kew). If this is corrupted then its possible to 'adjust' institutional memory to favor political strains so the Librarian, like other institutions like the CBO and the Treasury are kept out of politics. Not any more, though -- they're now a tool for power (and the knives are out for the CBO and Treasury because they're not toeing the party line).

Quite a few of the comments here reflect a desire to emulate us. Be careful what you wish for.....

Wayback gives X11 desktops a fighting chance in a Wayland world

Re: obXKCD, etc.

Its not 'set in your ways' so much as a sort of pushback against making 'ix' systems like Windows systems. Not every computer has a 'seat' -- a graphical screen, keyboard and mouse -- but the way we train programmers has meant that for many this is all we know.

The main problem with 'X' is that its too damn clever for its own good. its built around a general computing model that's way too abstract for a lot of users. (It took me ages to understand it and I'm not even sure that I really do). Sure, it has shortcomings, but anything designed back in those halcyon days before we learned (the hard way) that abuse and crime were important problems has similar shortcomings. It could do with a rebuild but because most of us have been brought up to think of a computer as a user interface we're just too steeped in the methodology (and mythology) of PCs to design anything other than a Wayland.

Let's Encrypt rolls out free security certs for IP addresses

I'm missing something here....

Couple of minor points...

-- Although it might seem so the Internet isn't just websites hosting transactions

-- Having to manage innumerable, rapidly changing, certificates is going to lead to lapses and lapses tend to be security breaches that can be exploited

-- I thought that IPv6 was going to fix the problem with mutable IP addresses

DNS -- name lookup -- is useful and important but if its allowed to become preeminent, a cartel product, then it defeats the entire purpose of the Internet

Gone in 40 days: US drops ban on export of chip design tools to China

Re: TACO indeed

>So thoroughly superior is China's position in this power struggle that TACO had to chicken out in only 40 days.

Smart people would have noticed that our government is spending all its energies trying to stop people from doing things while the other lot are just carrying on patiently and methodically overcoming any obstacles that we might put in their way.

Forget the Light Brigade or Custer -- we're more like the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill bankrolls $85M Space Shuttle shuffle

Yum!

I like a good pork roast!

Re: Just Wondering

It doesn't even need to be working if its just a museum piece. It can be structurally identical to the original but as its not going to fly then it doesn't need the really expensive bits.

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Re: Upgrade? Why?

The place I worked at had already started replacing individual desktops with small footprint lower power PCs. This is all most workers need because the PC is really is doing little more than being a graphical terminal with any application heavy lifting being done remotely.

Its not just the cost savings (although significant). It makes IT's job a whole lot easier when a good percentage of a company's systems don't need constant maintainanace.

Re: 2%?

>Except the 1%, who probably don't know how to use a computer anyway.

They've got people for that......

China successfully tests hypersonic aircraft, maybe at Mach 12

A Chinese colleague described their engineering to me in terms of "If all else fails, lower your expectations". They're not infallible but they do seem to have a space station orbiting above our heads, they do seem to have brought a kilo of moon material back for examination and they do seem to be able to build mundane technology like high speed rail networks and airliners. So I wouldn't put anything beyond them. What's not making any sense is that while we're pounding the table trying to think up ever more technology to deny them they're just trundling along developing stuff (because, let's face it, all we've done with our bans and sanctions is give them something to focus on).

I don't think the Chinese care too much what we think. Their idea of successful economic growth is likely to be lifting their population out of chronic poverty rather than satisfying the voracious appetites of a bunch of (foreign) banks and hedge funds.

Anyway, nobody seems to have noticed that TSMC is a Chinese company. OK, its located in Taiwan in what used to be called the "Republic of China" so it may not be politically part of the mainland. But Chinese society goes back millennia so pretending that you can culturally separate a people by Cold War style politics over a mere human lifetime is a bit farcical.

Top AI models - even American ones - parrot Chinese propaganda, report finds

Re: @tiggity - Let's try a historical question the Americans consider to be sensitive.

>I don't understand the down vote you received.

I get them routinely even with anodyne topics....I think someone's got a bot......

Re: Let's try a historical question the Americans consider to be sensitive.

...and using this article's logic you might regard a popular overture by Tscaikovsky as a piece of Russian propaganda.

I hate it when authoritative sounding pieces blather on about 'propaganda' without actually mentioning what they're actually talking about.

French city of Lyon ditching Microsoft for open source office and collab tools

Its what happens when you politicize technology

Open source may or may not be as good as Microsoft's products but the calculus is not just about who's got the best product, most features, lowest price and so on. Software and so users' data is now not just a raw material for future product marketing but also a strategic material that could be controlled at a moment's notice. This makes systems that are not entirely under the control of an organization unnecessarily risky. For many users the risks are still very low but they'r there and they're steadily growing so the smart money might start migrating even if there's no obvious reason to do so right now.

WD escapes half a billion in patent damages as judge trims award to $1

A few more like this would be great

SPEX Technologies is a NPE so getting a $1 award rather than the half billion they were expecting is.....well.....tasty. We need a few more of these just to make this type of patent litigation a crapshoot where the litigant potentially loses money.

Huawei's latest notebook shows China is still generations behind in chipmaking

Re: motorcycles

Our daughter's father in law is a sucker for this sort of thing -- he likes "the latest". His current ride is a K1600, that pricey but rather nice six cylinder BMW sport tourer. It goes with his other (pricey) toys. I'm a little older than him, I think, and may have a better developed survival instinct because I aged out of my (heavy) Honda ST and replaced it with an inexpensive Royal Enfield twin, what I call my 'geezerbike'. It complements my old (71) Triumph -- another light, low and very rideable machine.

So I guess that makes me a Really Bad Consumer.

(The ST1100 is a remarkable all-rounder. Its a heavy machine, especially when fully fueled, but under way its remarkably light on its feet. Fast, too -- you get places remarkably quickly on it. Its also incredibly reliable. I kept mine for a bit over 20 years before passing it on and it was still in as good condition as it was new. Not bad for what is now quite an old design.)(The son in law pounced on it, BTW.)(Which just goes to show that if something's designed right in the first place then it just works. Even the styling never seemed to get out of date.)

HarmonyOS?

Building advanced semiconductors might be very difficult but the same can't be said for operating systems. Anyone can make one, even in the comfort of their own home, with the limitations being merely intellectual, how much ingenuity, labor and organization you could put into the project. China's got huge reserves of labor so the only barrier to making an OS product is the build/buy tradeoff -- everyone's using 'X' so there's no demand for 'Y'. We fixed that for them by effectively barring them from Windows. As any Linux user knows you don't need Windows for day to day tasks, its always been a resource hog, but it remains widely used because of commercial inertia.

OS technology has been largely neglected for decades because of the ready availability of high performance hardware. So the three systems in wide use -- Windows, Apple/BSD and Linux/Android are really quite old architectures that have been highly refined over the years but still reflect thinking from the 60s and 70s. They're vulnerable to anyone who turns up with a more advanced design who can get it widely adopted. This can easily compensate for not having 'the latest' hardware -- cheaper, too.

Australia finds age detection tech has many flaws but will work

Its not age verification we need...

....but rather maturity verification.

But I rather suspect that this "Will Someone Think of the Children!" move likely has ulterior motives.

DHS warns of sharp rise in Chinese-made signal jammers it calls 'tools of terrorism'

Yet more BS from the Federal government

The DHS should know that the criminals who've been conducting lucrative break-ins aren't "Unauthorized Immigrants" using "Chinese made" jammers. We've been plagued by Chilean gangs who come up here as tourists to commit organized thefts. The reason we know this is that our local PD caught a crew more or less in the act and after some patient police work an entire organization was (uncovered and busted. It was like a self-financing package tour company -- thieves come up here and are issued with target lists, places to stay and transport and, obviously, somewhere to fence the loot. Having got one group there's almost certainly others but at least the FBI and local PDs know what to look for.)

But instead of this being a win for the good guys its got to be given a spin to highlight current administration obsessions. Unfortunately nothing that comes out of DC these days can be assumed to be true.

(Incidentally, another trick s to bury a cellphone in a front yard to stream video of a likely target. The phones are cheap, older models that are mostly wrapped in tape to sort of waterproof them)(so they're quite likely to be made in China.)

American coders are most likely to use AI

Not all code is created equal

This likely says more about what American programmers are working on than about their techniques. This is reflected in the questions I see on the 'net, many of which are seeking the optimal language or environment to solve their programming tasks. If you then factor in that a lot of programming is for Web applications, often trying to do things that the Web wasn't designed for, then the AI churn explains itself.

MiniMax M1 model claims Chinese LLM crown from DeepSeek – plus it's true open source

Re: Selection of atrocities

The excesses of autocracy aren't limited to a particular social and economic model. We get this reinforced learning from the cradle that political thinking is just a one dimensional line from 'freedom' to 'that lot'. Experience suggests otherwise.

FWIW Communist societies do hold elections. They just do things differently from us. Here, its been said by cynics for many decades that "We have the best democracy money can buy" but now you don't need to be a cynic to appreciate it. Real choice has never been allowed us and those who complain are ridiculed, marginalized and -- if they get to be too much of a nuisance -- eventually eliminated. Its more obvious in some societies than others, but often after a revolution all that changes with the apparatus of state repression is the logo on the building.

Trump administration set to waive TikTok sell-or-die deadline for a third time

Re: Negotiations take time

I think its more along the lines of "That was half a dozen (or more) crises ago".

We've gone from hyping up the threat of an application widely used by (among other people) legislators to:-

-- Dealing with the fallout from widespread, disorganized cuts in the Federal workforce.

-- Dealing with the fallout from widespread attacks on the US's educational establishment.

--Attacking the workforce that large chunks of the service sector (including Trump's enterprises) are dependent on. (He's sort of of backing off the raids a bit although I think he's having a problem reining in Stephen Miller)(having 'loosed the hounds' they're difficult to recall)

-- Aiding and abetting Israel in its attempt to spark WW3 (hopefully not literally true but unfortunately neither Trump nor Netanyahu are particularly good at thinking ahead and they both have a personal stake in promoting turmoil in the short term)

Much of this chaos is attracting serious legal challenges which even a relatively tame judiciary can't keep the lid on so its not surprising that TikToc has got a bit lost in the wash.

As for 'his cut', if you've been watching what's going on you'll know he's made a fortune recently with his memecoin. This is the first Presidency ever to actively peddle 'merch'.

Japan set to join the re-usable rocket club after Honda sticks a landing

Honda isn't just a car/motorbike/lawnmower powerhouse

They actually make a rather nice small jet aircraft. Its still a bit pricey for me but then I don't have a commute.

Many years ago I worked in R&D for a Japanese company. They have a different way of approaching prototypes. Whereas we in the West tend to make prototypes that are early versions of the intended product they made a lot of different prototype products, most of which would never enter production. What they were really making was 'capabilities', exploring different aspects of product design and production and putting the experience aside for later. Then when they decided the market needed a particular product they just reached into their basket of capabilities, grabbed what they needed and made the product. We, the consumer, just got a finished product that rarely had any flaws. What we shipped in the West was really just prototypes -- customers had to put up with stuff being 'not quite right'/. This gave the Japanese quite the competitive edge.

European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Do you really need that expensive phone?

You really don't need to have a super expensive phone to do all the basic stuff that phones do. I've got a cheapish phone that's a few years old and it does everything a modern phone needs to do. If my experience is typical then it would explain flat or even declining sales of 'the latest' -- you only only really need that super-trifold for the bling, fine if that's what you're into (and even better is someone else is paying for it) but hardly a must-have.

A smartphone doesn't make a very good computing device. The screen's too small (and most of it isn't yours, it belongs to the advertising brokers that auction its real estate to advertisers) and the touchscreen UI is a cumbersome compromise. Its also easy to lose or be stolen, you have to regard it as disposable. I know some people keep their life on it but realistically anyone who's worked with computers (and especially security) knows the practical limits of its technology.

Taiwan thumbs its nose at Beijing by blocking chip exports to SMIC and Huawei

A bit of a futile gesture

China would obviously like to be able to use TSMC's products but I think we all know by now that they'll get along fine without them.

Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud

Re: Just read the article

I read an article today that outlined the way that that the US's foreign policy has been systematically stripped of checks and balances, its now exclusively a tool of the executive. This process has been ongoing for decades but by and large the incumbent President has either neglected or chose not to executive this dictatorial level of power. Now we've given a rather ignorant and vain individual control of this vast power, he neither really understands no knows how to use, this not only drags down the reputation of the US but also makes it supremely easy for our 'adversaries' to be the global good guys. Our press continues with its style sheets, constantly referring to people as 'dictators' and comparing their societies to our 'democracies' but its got to the point where it just looks silly.

Calling Trump an 'asset' like a character in a summer spy novel is just the last desperate gambit to try and convince people that what they're seeing makes sense.

Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data

What's With the Live Data?

You don't typically work with live data, especially if that data's sensitive, when you're developing software so I can't imagine what he was trying to achieve (apart from perfecting being a fool, of course).

That said, I can't imagine in this day and (post-Snowden) age that interns would be given access to sensitive information unless carefully supervised. I suspect that GCHQ is likely more disorganized and short on skills than the government would like to admit and this waffling by barristers about irreparable damage (plus the insane jail sentence) is less about advocacy than 'pleasing one's masters' or 'maintaining the illusion'.

Florida man expands crypto empire with new wireless service and phone

Florida Anything signals "Scam"

Its a shame since there are normal, pleasant, people who live in that state but by and large if I read "Florida" about anything -- and not just something promoted by Orange One of his Acolytes -- I just think 'scam'. The state appears to be Ground Zero for dodgy investment and insurance scams.

I'd hate to live there as well. During much of the year the climate is unlivable, its propensity for hurricanes and other disasters makes insurance difficult in many parts and it balances the budget by a combination of penny pinching and dinging people for 'user fees' for just about everything. It also can't mind its own business -- its constantly telling people how they should think and live. But I suppose if they're happy and I neither have to live there or even visit who am I to judge?

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

A nuclear battery might be a good idea

....especially a special unshielded one for this particular user.

You'd think that bullying people -- which is what this manager's doing -- would be classed as 'abusive' and potentially actionable but often people have to keep quiet and eat crow because they've got mouths to feed. I've fortunately only been exposed to this sort of thing a couple of times and my position was such that I was able to eventually exact terrible revenge on the person involved. (Its not really personal, its just that occasional really bad day aside this is a sign of poor management skills and general incompetence. Also, they're invariably equal opportunity -- they'll dump on anyone, especially colleagues who weren't in a position to push back, which ruins group coherence.)

Politeness costs nothing.

Blocking stolen phones from the cloud can be done, should be done, won't be done

Simple, effective -- but with an obvious flaw

Once a system is set up to effectively brick any phone, anywhere at any time it will be a matter of moments before it starts getting abused. Technology can't tell the difference between 'stolen' and 'belongs to someone we don't like'. The tool would also considerably simplify surveillance of individuals, in fact I suspect the reason why the suggestion's been getting pushback is likely because it will screw up an already existing capability that people just don't want to talk about.

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

Re: Let's be clear

Its not just IT positions. Its been a bit of a joke in engineering for a couple of decades or more that job descriptions were written that the only possible candidate could be someone employed in a key role in a competitor (who's hardly likely to want a junior position!). It got so bad at one time that there was even a comprehensive article in the Wall Street Journal back in the 2000s about this.

But as everyone has noted, it says more about the company than the candidate. What they're actually likely to end up with is a first class blagger -- someone who knows how to talk the talk. Ideal Marketing material,in fact.

Do you trust Xi with your 'private' browsing data? Apple, Google stores still offer China-based VPNs, report says

What 'private' browsing data?

The only way you can keep anything private is by keeping it local and/or encrypting it. Once it gets out there its anyone's.

The Chinese have a large population but even so I think they'd find a lot better uses for their time than digging around Joe Blow's porn stash. Most of us don't have any data that's worth even looking at (scammers apart). If I was someone who was likely to have sensitive data then I'd make damn sure it was either nowhere near the public Internet or encrypted in such a fashion that it was meaningless (and that's just not code -- you can tell a lot about data not just from the data proper but from the patterns of use of that data).

US Army signs up Band of Tech Bros with a suitably nerdy name

Just watch the license agreements

Given the oven SNAFU reported elsewhere on the site (where ovens broke on a new aircraft carrier that could only be fixed by approved company technicians John Deere style) they'd better make sure the contracts are worded better this time. Imagine -- the country's under attack, the response system is primed and ready.....but there's a component with an out of date 'service' contract....

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

There's video of the plane going down. It wasn't crashing, it just looked like it was coming into land. This suggests that either the wings weren't configured properly or the plane just wasn't flying fast enough. Whatever the cause the crash investigators should be able to figure it out pretty quickly.

Re: Survivor

Among the thousands upon thousands of aircrew deaths in WW2 bombing raids there were tales of survivors who seemed to have miraculous escapes. There's the well known one of the aircrew that jumped from a plane without a parachute but fell through a pine forest into deep snow and then there are lesser known ones like the aircraft being blown up around one who escaped without a scratch, floating down on his parachute. They're mirrored by similar incidents on the ground like a fellow fixing his attic water tank when a (German) bomb comes crashing through the roof, blows his house to pieces and he lands in the neighbor's yard without a scratch.

(I can see that Seat 11A is going to be very popular with passengers in the future.)

Peep show: 40K IoT cameras worldwide stream secrets to anyone with a browser

Not every image is confidential

If you don't want your camera to stream images to the world then the answer's obvious -- don't connect it to the Internet. We don't need to harden everything against Chinese State Sponsored Spies because, frankly, watching nothing happening in our side yard or not particularly fruitful or edifying. Those cheap cameras have probably got adequate security for household use -- just as our front door lock is probably adequate to deter casual intruders but isn't going to stop determined thieves.