Schneier on Security

Common ER • July 11, 2019 3:48 PM

In the interests of enhancing the intellectualism and hopeful+objectivity of these discussion+like text+based interactions, perhaps some of the following linked groups could be useful for us for enhancing our own (and their) {“signal-to-noise ratio”}:

https://www.ucsusa.org/
https://ieee.org

This post is not at all meant to disturb nor detract from the contextual interactions here.

Aside: Some intentional alternative spellings are perhaps useful, when designed to prevent misinterpretation. For example: “pathillogical” is an intentional alternative spelling of “pathological”; however, the spelling with the letter “i” as in “ill” implies the meaning of the word more effectively than the traditional spelling with a letter “o”.

Since Latin and other etymological (word history) languages aren’t as prevelant, it makes sense to me (and perhaps others) to encourage carefully+crafted alternative spellings to accommodate clearer communications and to further reduce miscommunications.

Similarly, use of the plus sign instead of the minus sign, and avoidance of ambiguous or delimiter punctuation marks might help to REDUCE certain MACHINE LEARNING SPECIFIC misinterpretation issues.

IMPORTANT

Coincidentally, some of the same techniques might be helpful for situations of translation or transliteration or transcoding. Also such techniques and related techniques might be helpful for recovering victims of brain injuries, neurological disturbances, or other linguistic impediments_blockages_bottlenecks.

P.S. – Back on Topic:

There’s all this effort to increase energy consumption and to prepare for an onslaught of N^G (5G, 6G, 7G … NG … N^G) data paths.

This seems to me to completely be missing the point of reducing both energy demands, reducing depreciation of tools and manufactured goods, reducing bloatware and feature creep, preventing the overzealous use of bandwidth, and even down to ergonomic issues such as

1) What minimum video and/or audio bandwidth does EACH SPECIFIC user ACTUALLY require to utilize a given download or stream per session.

For example, some of the markets push for 4K 8K HD widescreen, but my actual eyes are only a few centimeters apart, just like most other humanoids, and I can only comfortably view a complete image in a common setting if the image is in fact NOT too wide and NOT too tall.

Another example: not everyone can even perceive greater than 16-bit colour spaces and colour gamuts. 32-bit and greater is certainly not always required and this has been proven both biologically in case studies as well as in focus groups and in the marketplace and in creative fields of experties.

16-bit video/imaging still often requires less RAM, less GPU cooling, and if there’s no demand for 3D rendering nor texture-mapping, it’s a creeping bloatware issue directly correlated to hardware, firmware, CUDA, chip design, etc.

As for audio, it’s already been several years since many motherboard manufacturers actually jumped on board with 24-bit 48 kHz (or 96 kHz) full duplex linear PCM audio.

Even though support of the professional and prosumer and consumer markets of audio seems like a continued great idea to me, many varieties of content creators as well as audience members and connoseurs (spelling?) still only require basic analog “prosumer” quality connections and speakers and often DON’T require microphones.

Since accessorization and modular expansion are not at all an issue for digital devices in this era in terms of availability… It’s somewhat foolish to keep conformity pushing everyone towards the most expensive purchases of gear that might not at all match their needs. Thankfully, some business and consumer industries and manufacturers and distributers seem to already comprehend this. Others not yet.

This meets the SECURITY space because of the legitimate concerns correlated to “trade wars”, “industrial espionage and commercial sabotage”, alleged battles over “rare earth metals and minerals”, as well as several ecological disasters looming ahead due to overdevelopment of the tech industries to the disadvantage of all traditional biological support systems predating the tech industries as well as the industrial revolution itself by several millions of years! (Ecological Biological PreHistory dates back several billions of years; often listed as the age of the earth, etc, it’s beyond this context… yet our survival contiguously depends upon organics not broadband dataflows!!!)

More to come on these topics.

Last but not least,

Cost+effective+diplomacy:

Consider how cheap it is to create and distribute or access a peace sign to be deliberately and exclusively used to facillitate a PEACE PACT or CEASEFIRE.

Despite the drawbacks of whether or not such symbols are made in a historically eco-safe way, usually the signs+emblems+ensignias themselves can be so efficient that the eco and bio disadvantages are minimal and the mutual and multifaceted advantages are both enormous and measureably impressive and relieving. Lives can be saved; lives will be saved. Stress levels can decrease; stress levels will decrease.

Peace signs are a good investment in the present and future even and especially while budgets and finances are suffering. Money itself is often a disadvantagous blockage of a phenomenon. Nevertheless, peaceful gift-giving can prevent future wars and reduce current biological losses.

Warfare is worse than expensive; warfare always risks the entire destruction of this entire planet; that’s almost unanimoulsy understood by both science and legacy militaries.

Peaceful communications are NOT trite and NOT follies.

Ensuring continued diplomacy and resilient non electrical, non slavery oriented communications helps to keep this entire planet alive.

That is CERTAINLY A SECURITY and SAFETY topic.

EOT (end of text)