Posts by oral_suspension

Boffins build blazing battery bonfire

Re: Thorium Cycle Reactors

All nuclear reactor designs are absolutely amazing. All of them will produce astonishing power outputs cheaply and cleanly with virtually no problems, until they are built.

Are you able to read this headline? Then you're not Julian Assange. His broadband is unplugged

Re: Why

Why, oh why, are we still talking about this idiot?

Really? Is that the most insightful comment you can manage?

We are talking about the Julian Assange who fronts Wikileaks, right? The organisation which published the biggest, most embarrassing, most scandalous leaks of secret US government information in history: including, inter alia, the Collateral Murder video (April 2010) the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011). Not to mention the Democratic National Congress and Podesta leaks, and the Russian Spy Files, The Saudi Cables, etc, etc, etc

The Julian Assange who is under criminal investigation by the US for possibly breaching their Espionage Act, and has been the subject of public calls for him to be assassinated by several senior US politicians, who was accused of sexual offences in Sweden and fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy where he has been granted political asylum? This is the Julian Assange we are talking about right?

Go on, think about it for a bit...

Here we go again... UK Prime Minister urges nerds to come up with magic crypto backdoors

You're missing the point

May may be technically illiterate but she is fully aware of the impossibility of what she is demanding. And that is not the point. This is a political strategy

This gives the government and security services a way of denying responsibility whenever bad and scary things happen (terrorist attacks, organised crime, cybercrime, etc.)

It stokes the fear of these bad and scary things, thus broadly justifying current (and future) surveillance programmes and crucially whatever other increased powers they think they may be able to get (suspension of habeas corpus, detention without trial, etc, etc, i.e. whatever is coming in the next national security bill).

It can be used as a distraction from things which they would rather the public does not notice.

And, as they will (probably) never force tech companies to provide the proposed backdoors and crypto is not going away, they can use this ruse at any time for the foreseeable future.

Technically it looks moronic. Politically it is a workable (if morally dodgy) strategy.

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

Re: I still don't buy it

My guess as to the purposes of such a ruse:

It absolves the FBI of responsibility for various bad and scary things; some specific, some artfully vague - terrorist attacks, organised crime, cybercrime, etc.

It stokes the fear of these bad things and justifies current (and future) surveillance programmes and whatever other increased powers they think they may be able to get (suspension of habeas corpus, detention without trial, etc, etc, i.e. whatever is coming in the next national security bill).

It can be used as a distraction from things which they would rather the public does not notice.

And, as they will never get the proposed backdoor and crypto is not going away, they can use this little ruse at any time for the foreseeable future.

Universal basic income is a great idea, which is also why it won't happen

If true free markets are necessarily superior, why are all the most successful developed nations mixed economies?

Re: fast forward.

Which set(s) of rules constitutes "a TRUE free market"?