Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2022 3:00 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Oh, wait.

It’s the revenge of the toothbrush…

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2022 8:59 AM

@ Winter,

You might find this of interrst,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs-y5nZEu5M

There’an introduction at the begining then skip to 15:50 minutes in.

It clearly shows there is a lot going on that is not being talked about, and as far as Comms is considered hostilities have already started.

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2022 5:44 PM

@ flat,

The civilized way to go:

You realise that the majority of the French know “Macaroon” is an idiot who knows very little and listens to the wrong people and does the wrong thing, so want to get rid of him?

Are you aware that the US State Dept see “Macaroon” as an ideal way to greate division in Europe and thus hasten it’s weakening.

Likewise Biden sees disention between France and Germany as a way to further his undesirable aims for Europe.

There is a reason why “Macaroon” is at odds with Brussels and why the next six months of France holding the EU Presidency is seen as a golden opportunity to damage Europe both politically and Economically.

As a rough rule of thumb every time “Macaroon” spouts off it’s best to consider it at best bad news, if not a whole lot worse.

You appear to have very little knowledge of the world and the way it works especially the Rus, so unless you want people to think you to are a “Macaroon” you start studying a little European History.

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2022 6:09 PM

@ MarkH, Winter,

Mighty realistic exercises!

Back in the 1980’s the CCCP used to hold military excercises where they used real chemical weapons and accepted a 1/8th (12.5%) casualty rate as acceptable price to pay.

Putin’s age and KGB inteligence background from 75-90 would suggest that he would have trained to been part of such excercises, and it’s likely it would have been at local directing officer level or higher…

So consider “old dogs” tend to favour the tricks they learnt when young. Especially if they are an authoritarian in a possition of power.

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2022 7:04 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter, ALL,

Reports are that Poland is stringing concertina wire along the borders of Belarus.

Depending on your point of view,

1, About time to.
2, Why did it take,so long.

The advantage of such a boarder marker is it’s fairly clear when you can shoot them for being the wrong side of the boarder.

Whilst the citizens of Belarus (White Russian) are like most people, just want to get on with their lives, they can not.

Their country is run by crooked politicians who are effectively led by a dictator and supported by both criminals and a Russian authoritarian and his guard labour.

Photo reconnaissance that has been made public clearly shows a military build up along the Belarus-Ukrain boarder and this indicators are it is Russian in origin, or certainly using Russian equipment.

I’m guessing that Poland being a NATO country with NATO troops on the ground are trying to discorage not civilians but millitary.

Whilst the UK has given some support to the UK, there are suggestions that bith the US and EU are at best dragging their heals over treaty agreements with the Ukraine.

As I’ve indicated before Putin could easily invade the Ukraine and occuping the East where there are 10million or so Rus would not be much of an issue for him. However as for West of Kiev I think even Putin knows that whilst he could invade it, he could not hold it and it would become for the Russians another Afghanistan.

Russia has a problem, it’s economy is based on exporting oil and gas and is thus not one that is going to last. For several hundred years Russian has been a parasite effectively living off of a heavily subjugated Empire, an Empire it nolonger has. Putin has two options,

1, Strong Russia no sustainable economy.
2, Russia without influance but with a sustainable economy.

The first keeps him in power due to Rus myths but will loose him elections due to the economy failing.

The second won’t keep him in power as he’s built his entire political career on On the notion of “Strong Russia” to cover up his authoritarian nature.

So Putins game is to,

1, Appear like “Strong Russia”.
2, Have an enemy to blaim the failing economy on.

A big thorn in his side is Belarus, it had a taste of not just freedom but an improving economy. Putin did not like the “freedom” asspect so he is responsible for the authoritarian regime Belarus now has, and in the process it resulted in a destroyed economy.

So if the Rus care to look beyond the sentimentality for faux history Putin is pushing like crazy, they will see what his authoritarianism will do to the Russian economy in the long term, the story has been written in Belarus…

So Putin needs to win a very limited war to show “Strong Russia” to the home audiance but also not have the cost of pacifing Western Ukrain. But importantly an enemy to blaim for the fact the Russian economy is spiralling down due to,

1, Ineffective petro-chem economy.
2, Sanctions.

If Putin brings down the Ukrainian Economy, the Rus in Russia will increasingly see that his authoritarianism will destroy their hopes for a sustainable Russian economy…

But Putin is going to need a string of “Strong Russia” victories over the next few years so he has to take little conquest steps, so salami slicing attacks will give him not just one victory for his home audiance but repeated victories over time, as well as an excuse to keep a huge standing army that the Russian economy can not aford.

Clive Robinson • January 30, 2022 4:09 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

I guess this could be considered progress

As can any move in a game of chess progress the game towards it’s conclusion. But at the end of the day feints do win more games than most realise…

Oh with regards the “currency round up” paying people deployed in fields would not have been the primary concern.

As the EU has discovered to their considerable anoyance they have to print money to keep enough in circulation to keep the economy bouyant.

This is because criminals are “shrink wrapping” millions of high value Euro notes onto pallets and sticking them in warehouses as “pocket change / petty cash” in their money laundering. The “black economy is the unknown country” not on the European flag, and it has no political aliance but one heck of an effect on all the other EU countries economies.

However the problem with printing money is it creates inflation which can be both desirable and undesirable depending on your aims and objectives. For instance as people are finding out in the US “Printing money” has raised prices in the shops and made college funds, pension pots and savings worth quite a bit less. However to those that quickly turn it into assets such as the 1% of the one percenters that own over half the wealth of the US and other areas of the world it’s been a bonus time, which is why the price of property rose apparently inexplicably to many. Which will create a property crisis a little way down the road with the price of rents going up significantly bringing in large “rent seaking income” for the chosen few…

Russia’s economy is on a bit of a donwards slope currently, even though the price of gas is rising, the reasons are complicated but the economy is both fragile and skittish… So a shortage in the currency supply can very very easily turn into a “run on the banks” and others putting “money under the matress” creating a downward spiral and artificial inflation due to panic buying etc and all the knock on effects of that.

So what Russia does not want to do is “Print Money” to cover what is going into storage of organised crime… It want’s that “cash back in circulation creating economic churn” and making people feel happy, thus spend and make the ecobomic wheel spin up, creating demand, thus hopefulky jobs and all those other things politicians see as good.

Paying soldiers deployed in the field cash, is a bit pointless from this perspective, they have nowhere to spend it so it would not create economic churn to keep the economy buoyant.

Clive Robinson • January 30, 2022 6:14 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

With regards,

Private Sector Attribution of Cyber Incidents:
Benefits and Risks to the U.S. Government

The Rand paper is deficient from the extract onwards as it fsils to consider,

What harm does the USG bring to Private Sector actors involved with Attribution

USG Politicos and off record spokes persons with agenders have had a habit of “burning” the “Methods and Sources” of alied countries.

If they show such lack of concern for the citizens and associates of their alied nations, how much concern do you think they would have for US Citizens involved in what is inteligence analysis?

Probably a lot less than none, all things being considered with the “rock apes” that “Hang out on the Hill”.

Clive Robinson • January 30, 2022 1:58 PM

@ FE,

You might find this of interest,

https://animalscene.ph/2021/08/20/rock-apes-of-the-vietnam-war/

Note why it was called “Monkey Hill”.

Clive Robinson • January 31, 2022 2:29 AM

@ Ted, lurker, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Re : Not so secure apps.

The long answer short,

None of the current secure messenger “apps” are secure as “systems” you can safely use.

Which is a statment that is going to cause certain “Fan Buoys” and some others ruffled feathers, but can be proved to be true.

So a slightly longer answer,

The reason is that a secure “system” is a lot lot more than just the use of communications path crypto, no matter how clever it is.

That is you need to consider rather more than just the communications paths, when you use a communications system.

At the 20,000ft level you need to think about,

1, Message confidentiality.
2, Identity Privacy
3, Communications privacy.

Of “the whole system” not just the little part of it that the current “secure apps” supposadly protect. In practice they all fail one way or another in all those categories when used in a communications system based on consumer electronics.

So your overall safety / privacy / security is NOT there with systems that use these supposadly “secure apps”.

If you want me to go through the various issues in more depth I can do as I have in the past. I can also tell you how to make a system that “secures the communication”, without needing these apps. But it’s a lot of typing for me, and a lot of reading for you, and it’s certainly going to annoy some.

Clive Robinson • January 31, 2022 3:41 AM

@ ResearcherZero, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

With regards,

Then “the two phones were put in a room and music was put on in that room … and I thought: ‘Boy, this guy is really paranoid. But maybe he was being sensible,’”

I and a colleague Roger Howe used to do that back when “Clive Corrie” of the UK’s OfCom was illegaly sticking his nose into Broadcast Warehouse business.

Roger had two largish “studio speakers” on the work bench and they had the “sound cloth” removed to reveal the actual units. One of which was a “mid range horn” that was a nice convenient size to hold a mobile phone…

So rather than turn the phones off we would turn the music right down and start an innane conversation about a “defect” we would put our phones in the horns. Roger would flip the mute button whilst saying “OK ear defenders on for this test” or simillar press a button on the radio tuned in to no signal and no antenna so just the noise floor static. He would then wind the volume control up to around eight and then unmute.

Not only was the room flooded with “White Noise” all the phones motion and other sensors were getting the full treatment as well.

Importantly unlike recorded music which is 100% predictable thus removable (Something the KGB were doing back in the 1960’s). The static from an untuned radio with no areial in it is almost 100% unpredictable[1], so not removable.

Roger and I would then go for a walk with cups of coffee / tea in our hands around Broadcast Warehouse’s building chating quietly and apparently inspecting, stock, wiring, lighting or anything else. We would even stop and talk to staff about stock, wiring, lighting, etc.

If any one else was wise to what we were upto they never said, they appeared to accept the old,

“Ask not into the madness of Directors, their ways are not to be fathomed, and they do control your wages!”

But… there were some occasions where we were genuinely doing Health and Safety / Fire inspections, and discussing where to put other testing stations etc in.

Oh and as anyone who ever worked with Roger will tell you, very loud music / white noise was more likely than not comming out of his work area.

Bur the important take aways,

1, The signal has to be random.
2, You have to move around randomly, 3, preferably indoors in corridors and from room to room.

Otherwise the “interferance” signal can be stripped off, or if outside you can be followed by a “shotgun/parabolic mic”.

[1] In theory an opponent could transmit a high power signal with fake / psudo white noise on it, but… On Rogers bench being an RF bench there were a couple of spectrum analysers, so any such jamming would show up as a valid signal, or by the lifting of the noise floor.

Clive Robinson • January 31, 2022 3:38 PM

@ name.withheld…,

I also thought to myself, there are some pretty smart fellas here in the lab, but where are they?

I think that kind of “answers it’s self”, with,

“Being smartly as far away as possible…”

Mind you,

The I channel in the upper corner of the building 3 meters above and about 10 meters aft of the gun was throwing 1/3 meter arcs of EM at a near constant rate.

That “throwing 1/3 meter arcs” kind of implies something quite nasty… That is for an arc to strike it needs about 500V/mm as a minimum, usually helped by UV-B or UV-C…

Oh on the other stuff, I’ve never been fond of the “It’s my bat and my ball, and I’m going…” attitude, especially when the ground rules have been already agreed before the competition starts[1]. Changing things so that you are stopped for no reason other than some one feels they are entitled and you are not, is a good way to get me to put a little excercise behind my toe cap 😉

[1] I’ve told the story of me jogging along with a telegraph pole on my shoulder in advance of the rest of my squad, and being told “no thats not alowed” just when you are about to win is gauling at best. Getting annoyed and then chucking the telegraph pole back[2], much to the shock of most watching did give fair warning I was not amused.

[2] There is an art to throwing telegraph poles or the trunks of pine trees. It’s something you can learn with a little teaching and practice, oh and wearing loose clothing. But as most people can not pick a telegraph pole up by themselves in the first place the “does not compute” flag pops up in their head even when they see it fly end over end… You would have thought that beside the fact I was six and a half feet tall and built like a brick out house, the red-brown hair on the upper lip and the fact there was a photo of me wearing highland dress in the OR’s mess might have given the game away…

Clive Robinson • January 31, 2022 5:02 PM

@ pup vas,

True story? Lie detection systems go high-tech

There is a problem with all lie detectors, and that is you have to know you are telling a lie…

In essence for many lying is a “conscious action” and it is this that causes changes on Fast MRI scans, breathing pulse rate etc.

If however you lie but not consciously, then the tells are not there.

There is also another way, which is “to lie with the truth” or “lie with a question”.

Rather than say “I did not kick him” you say “I did not hit him” or similar. The other way is to say “Why would I kick him?”

It confuses the results.

But there is the 5-20% of the population that have sufficient socio/psychopathic mental disorder that to them nothing they say is realy a lie, so no tells…

It’s easy to get “impressive results” with compliant test subjects or those who are not under stress, and where the experimenters have effectively “pre-screened” the test subjects by where they select them from.

Quite a few people are unaware that “left handed” people are almost always screened out of these sorts of experiments. Getting on for two decades ago, I asked a friend who’s proffession it was why those who were left handed were left out…

The answer I was given, was a truth told as a joke for levity. Which was,

“The trouble with you lefties, is you are not wired up right”.

So I suspect that 20-25% of the normal population, simply by being left handed would not give the right results.

I tried looking around for “research” about such differences some years ago and it was most notable by it’s absence…

Clive Robinson • January 31, 2022 6:59 PM

@ ALL,

Speaking of Spring, the lunar cycke has come around, and so…

Happy Chinese New Year enjoy the next 7-15 days of celebrations.

Oh and welcome to the year of the “Water Tiger” may it bring you joy.

Oh and remember to wear “red and gold” if you want traditional luck.

For those in the UK remember “New Fifty Pound Notes” are what should be in your wallet…

Clive Robinson • February 1, 2022 4:50 PM

@ Folks, thank you for the kind wishes…

Turns out yes I’ve got a blood infection and the body is dealing with it without anti-biotics.

But because I feel so ill they took a look at my blood preasure which is very low… That led onto a couple of other tests…

So they have discovered I’ve a bit of a dodgy ticker issue which they have way more concerns about…

Apparently your heart is not supposed to be running at 140bpm when you are lying prostrate on the gurney…

They are talking about giving me a dose of Ketamine (Horse Tranquilizer) then stick a couple of big electrodes on and throw “The more power Egor switch” to see how far I can jump etc..

Apparently it’s called cardioversion,

“Synchronized electrical cardioversion uses a therapeutic dose of electric current to the heart at a specific moment in the cardiac cycle, restoring the activity of the electrical conduction system of the heart.”

But despite the size of the pads, that therapeutic dose leaves burn marks…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioversion

Clive Robinson • February 2, 2022 9:02 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, lurker, MarkH, SpaceLifeForm, Winter,

Re : SARS2 fomites and aerosol spread.

You may remember I was woried about “national boarder” trade interfaces right back in early 2020 getting on for two years ago, and indicated this was a probable significant risk factor for nations that were effectively “islands” as far as boarder control and hard lockdown is concerned. I discused the use of UV-C lamps anf Hydrogen Peroxide washing/bleaching.

I also said there was no research being done… and it was becoming clear to some here and other places that boarder controls had becoming very politically charged, so that research was unlikely to be carried out… And that the proven insufficient “2meter mantra” would just keep being rolled out.

Well I guess with Tonga, the first of the “Butchers Bills” on the political nonsense has now become not just “late payment” but “well overdue payment”…

There has been clear warning signs for nearly all that time period with reoccuring events, yet the research that could have been done ten times over in that period has not been done, nor probably will be done for political rather than science reasons…

Most especially research into the viability of deep frozen virus particles in the -18 centigrade and lower temperatures major global commodities such as food is “longterm stored” in[1] for trading and transportation.

If we don’t do the research, then any policy put in place might as well have be plucked from the basser outpourings of a deities fetid and rotting temporal orifice[2].

[1] Such “deep frozen” foods by blast / flash / immersion fast freezing, and tgen kept below -18 Celsius are stored this way for as much as 7years, at -30 it’s almost indefinately… See the likes of “fish futures” commodities markets where “stone weight” blocks are traded like bars of semi-precious metals.

[2] See Pythia, as the mythical originator and orifice of the God Apollo’s prophetic outpourings,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia

Clive Robinson • February 2, 2022 10:14 PM

@ Anders,

Re : Biden threatening Chip Supplies to Russia,

This Axios site link is less intrusive than “the yahoo’s”[1],

https://www.axios.com/chip-blockade-russia-sanctions-biden-314d7d9f-f1d7-4a72-b357-55d8756dc08d.html

The Biden Policy has one major flaw, the US lost it’s territorial control over “chip manufacture” some decades ago due to “short sighted” political and corpro-economic reasons. The actual “root of control” are two companies one in Switzerland that makes the optics that go in the foundry machines made in another European country and shipped to where the leading edge chip Fab Plants are…

US State Dept thinking thus policy –now those that habituate the Dept have woken up– is that China will invade Taiwan, and effectively Japan and South Korea as well as other South China Seas, and West Pacific Nations via what would back in the days of sail have been called a “naval blockade”[2] (but would involve air as well as sea transportation these days).

So the US State Dept under preasure from not just US Corporates but the US DoD, have recently been preasurising the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor(TSCM) which is arguably the world’s most advanced and largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world to build Fabs in the US (which the Taiwanese Government is very reluctant to alow for obvious self protection reasons[2]).

So Biden’s ill thought out threat, will encorage many companies to not just plan to “design out” US IP but US manufactured / controled product as well. Some companies that I’m directly aware of, have –since the Trump Administration trade war– implemented a “No US Parts Policy” in primacy over their “Two Source for Parts Policy” as self protection[4]. The knock-on effect of which will be to actually strengthan China’s control of advanced international communications infrastructure and similar. So the plans of US companies to try and get a major hold on what will become “6G” in the near future will get quite a set back.

[1] I don’t use Yahoo for good and proper ‘Privacy Reasons”, so I’ve not read their article. I simply take their URL chop the HTTP(s) off and repla3ce it with “site” and then put a space in after .com/ and chop out all put the page title and stick it in a search engine. Which generally gives me a variety of views on the subject. Much of the time when I do this sort of search I get identical or near identical copies of stories as the “Internet News Scene” could also be called “Rip Off International” with some major players like Rupert “the bear faced liar” Murdoch’s News International and related sites doing one heck of a lot of “Riping Off” of other peoples primary stories.

[2] China are already doing this with their “artificial islands” policy and making other nations fishing vessels “Disappear”. Also their conflict with US and other Nations Navy vessels all in what are “International Waters” that China is trying to annex.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

[4] Since a series of Earthquakes in Japan critically effected the semiconductor industry, a wake-up call went around the Electronics industry more than a decade ago. These articles gives you an idea of why,

hxxps://www.ventureoutsource.com/contract-manufacturing/end-era-japanese-earthquake-semiconductor-chip-manufacturing

hxxps://www.eweek.com/networking/japan-earthquake-could-deal-blow-to-semiconductor-industry/

But the significant Kobe Earthquake nearly three decades ago fired an early warning shot, when people realised that a very great deal of the materials used in turning actual chips of silicon into bonded out packages for PCB manufacture had been destroyed. But much more recently the curious series of events a year back that has taken out most audio and analog signal chips for control systems –like engine managment– has made many electronics related products manufacturers realy realy nervous about securing supply lines over the three to five year design-manufacture life cycle and longer supported life cycle.

Or to put it another way if you are a manufacturer of some of the worlds more expensive luxury cars, boats, planes and similar you do not want to have to kill production to do a major redesign because you can not get hold of a $0.25 semiconductor chip. And that is before considering the quater century “supported life expectancy” of the product via replacment parts…

Adding political nonsense on top of already concerning geological and climate vulnerability issues is not making the US look like a “safe pair of hands” in fact the near opposit. After all ask yourself the question, “Do you want to have critical surgery done on say your brain or heart, done by a person who though they might have great expertise, also are known to have unexpected attacks of epilepsy or catalepsy?” How about being in a plane flown by a pilot with similar issues? A taxi? At what point do you say the risk is one you will personally take in full knowledge of the other persons issue? How about when it’s not you but your only child?

Or take similar risks with a company you have spent a large chunk of your life building up from nothing, with a politically volitile nation such as the US has become?

Obviously “You would not put all your eggs in one basket”, so the threats of the two most recent US Executives, over “high tech sanctions” will make not just traditional commercial “second sourcing” but now geo-political “third sourcing” a major design consideration and one that will actually back fire on the US considerably. That is to some “Made in the USA” will be the equivalent of a ticking time bomb…

Clive Robinson • February 3, 2022 8:16 PM

@ flat

Nothing in that report points to such speculative possibility.

No it does not, the report does not speculate on anything in particular that we know of.

In the parts of interest to potential mechanisms, it’s basicaly based on scientific and similar known facts. Importantly it does not try to go backwards and link something that is scientificaly possible and demonstrable as being anything but a potential cause to consider for what is not yet even established effects. It also clearly states that there are “gaps” in the chains of things considered.

Part of the problem we are seeing is that people are confusing,

1, Intelligence statments.
2, Investagative evidence.
3, Established science by “experiment”.
4, Nature as described through mathmatical models of “theory”.
5, What mathmatics actually does.

The Fundemental laws of as we currently know them are by no means correct or even necessarily fundamental. In fact there is an oldish truism,

“Physics as taught is a succession of lies, each more accurately describing what we see by carefully chosen experiment, than the previous lie”.

Any theoretical physicist will tell you that there are limits on what we currently know. In part this is due to the fact we don’t currently have the ability to test things that underly what it is in effect what we assume. Also we have what might be called “a lack of imagination”. Theory moves forwards on what people hypothesize might be a cause of an observed effect. Even in the “Shut up and calculate” club of quantum mechanics progress is limited by both what can be tested and what can thus be imagined and linked mathematically.

But mathmatics is a semantic tool[1], like language, all it realy does is provide a description of reality. It is not in any way a part of reality but one that is useful for predictions. That is it just models a subset of any particular aspect of reality[2] based on observations of reality.

[1] The use of “semantic” should be considered a red flag in any term in science in much the same way “trusted” is in Information Security. Both have “domain specific meaning” that often appears at odds or even the opposite of “common usage”. In the case of “semantic” consider,

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2018.0041

Which also brings in aspects of “Information theory” that under pins “information security” thus “trusted systems”.

[2] Consider “plastic deformation” it has a mathmatical model that describes a force induced temporary deformation process in a linear region. But it has very real limits on it’s use even in the one physical state –solid– it is generally applicable to. The model is actually a gross simplification of what can be more fundementaly described in QED models. But QED is not without it’s limitations and magic numbers. It is often considered unusably complex

Clive Robinson • February 4, 2022 3:26 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

re: UK proposal for taxation tracking for cars

This has been proposed by every Chancellor of the Exchecor / Treasury since Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

What has always stopped it in the past, was rhe ROI in an election cycle would be strongly negative.

In short the only way they could do it is by legislation for new cars, otherwise the voters would punish the incumberant politicos harshly.

But the reason why people are not buying petrol is the same one as why they are not buying new cars. The only apparent “growth” is in hybrids and electric. But the reality is that there is only growth because the number of electric vehicles sold was pitifully small, untill the rise in things like the London Congestion Charge, and the more than $10/gallon petrol pricing which is atleast three times the US average price and expected to rise dramatically in the next few months.

Then there are “insurance hikes” for various reasons.

Even “out of town” shopping centers are feeling the squeeze, as home working makes home delivery way more easy. Public transport has also taken a major hit so they are using one heck of a lot less fuel as they cutback on services.

The problem is off course going to be “Energy Company Shareholders” who will expect to see well above inflation rate growth. Which can only happen if they sigbificantlt disproportionately raise energy prices…

Clive Robinson • February 4, 2022 10:48 AM

@ Bruce Schneier.

I made a lengthy post in reply to a poster in this thread and it’s also been read by others. It was on the science behind a security issue of interest currently. I explained things for which it’s actually hard to find information for, that indicated why a US Gov Agency document was not saying things, other security and technology Mainstream sites think it should have.

But now my educational post has been deleated purposfully.

I would like a clear response as to why this was done?

Because putting time into producing educational content that is very hard to get elsewhere is a service to the community that reads this blog. It was as far as I could see not in contravention of this blogs “stated” rules.

So whilst it directly effects me, it also is a diservice to the community of readers that come to this blog to be very much better informed than they can get even via research university led academia.

It’s also clear from other comments that have been made, that other posters of educational content have had their posts “go missing” or known it to have been purposefully deleted.

Two things are clear,

1, The number of people posting, let alone posting quality content to this blog is declining sharply.
2, The purposeful deleations are on the rise.

What the intended logic behind this might be I’ve no idea. But the result is clear, this blog is being killed off via a purposeful exsanguination of it’s life blood of quality information unavailable almost anywhere else, made available here years ahead of when it might finally appear in an almost unavailable academic paper or equivalent.

If you want for some reason to kill this blog off, at least be honest about it.

Clive Robinson • February 4, 2022 2:25 PM

@ John,

Hopefully you saved yourself a copy?

No, I deleted after I’d confirmed it was on both the thread page and the 100 last comments page.

But appart from the exact wording I can remember the sources I refrenced and the points I made.

Whilst it’s something I don’t paste to the Internet I’ve a way longer more detailed set of information done for an agency who then bashed it into a report and presentation they give to select non technicals who need briefing on a near one to one basis. So in a way it’s not only memorised I can provide more depth from memory as well.

If you remember back about a quater of a century there was a US ViceP who was quite a bit more switched on in terms of not just science but technology as well. He pointed out about the Risks to Nat Sec of what we would now call OSInt, where you find pieces of information very much in the public domain and like a jigsaw piece them together to reveal what some were hoping to keep secret or atleast unknown.

Well as I point out from time to time when evaluating a technology idea or even suspicion of one I ask “Do the laws of physics alow?” and you would be surprised just how many of what appear to be “fantasticals” do come up yes. Then if it is a yes I start geting down into the more specific technology required and importantly what the constraints and costs on it. After all the old “Find me a leaver and a fulcrum and I will move the world” is sort of alowed by the laws of physics the constraints in terms of materials does not, but even if they did, the costs would not. There are several other “tests” that apply including the very presumptious “Could I build it?” but it’s to answer the actual test of “If not why not?” and “What do I need to change to be able to build it?”

There is an interesting story along these lines about a Dutch and Swiss company I mentioned that @Winter commented on.

Well… Looking at the MIT Review what did I notice they had the story written out much more readably than I would write it,

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/27/1037118/moores-law-computer-chips/

Clive Robinson • February 6, 2022 2:18 AM

@ MarkH,

It was not the thunder, which was always very perceptibly delayed from the flash, but rather a very sharp (but not very loud) “snap” with no perceptible delay from the flash.

Which makes the effect what ever it is “local to you”. But how local?

Sound travels at ~300m/Sec and Human “response delay” time is usually not greater than 200mS or 1/5th of a second. So 300/5 = 120m or ~364ft maximum. But the reality of “perception dely” rather than “perception+action=response delay” is -20mS or 1/50 or 12m / 36ft.

Now as I’ve mentioned before there is “magneto-constriction” effects. That is any conductor in a magnetic field will try to act like a motor and turn or jump proportional to the strength of the magnetic field the current in the wire and the angle of incidence. The small coil at the base of a speaker cone can produce significant mechanical movement so quite large amplitude sound.

Lightening is generally a one way flow of current of fairly high value, so a DC Pulse, with an attendent high magnetic field generated.

So any conductor carrying even AC house hold current is going to be effected.

But there is also another audible effect that of charge transfer into a capacitance. If you dump charge into a capacitance it will for a short time have current flow. Normally the capacitance is small and the current not that high so any induced mechanical effect would be of very short duration. But pizo buzzers and the like can be heard quite effectively, that is some dielrctric materials realy do twitch a lot.

Then there is the “Quad ESL” speakers, some decades ago back in 1975 Quad brought out it’s first “Electro-Static Loudspeaker”(ESL) monitor speakers. In essence a mylar diaphragm between two very highly charged perforated metal plates.

One of the failings of the ESL was “breakdown” where an arc discharged the static charge, which could take upto half a minute to be reestablished.

Which brings us onto the acoustic effects of discharges… For simplicity consider there are two types of arc those that have high current and those that have low current, and produce sound via different effects.

Back in the 1970’s I attended a lecture at the IEE at Savoy Place in London, where an “Arc Log Horn”(ALH) was demonstrated. This used a high current RF arc of less than half an inch that was amplitude modulated up around 27MHz it had a highly linear wide band audio response but had standing wave issues that the Log Horn removed. A “Log Horn” also called a “log periodic horn” is a very wideband transmission and matching line and you can see them used to cover UHF (300MHz) 1m wavelength up through the currently commercialy used microwave range upto (30GHz) 1cm range. The flair curves of which are aesthetically appealing in their own right and are similar to those seen on “brass instruments” such as Trumpets.

But there are high voltage or “corona discharge” effects that very locally ionize air but do not produce the sort of arcs you might expect to see. They are most often a result of RF very high voltage but very low currents discharge into air rather than into a conductor. Like the basic conductor to conductor arc they can produce very “high quality” sound but of lower frequency range. An efficient transducer of such is a resonant antenna. If you stand close to the ends of an antenna that is an odd 1/4 wave long, the impedence is very high of atleast 2000ohms and usually a lot more. So the voltage is very high at the end of a quaterwave antenna even at comparatively low powers like 10watts you get corona discharge and if the RF signal is amplitude modulated in the audio range the corona discharge will be effective thus “sing out”.

Whilst there are other mechanisms that might turn lightning into actual sound waves, those are the main ones you would have to look for first.

I concluded that what I heard was not an air pressure transient reaching my ears, but rather an effect of electromagnetic induction in some cranial nerve(s).

As I have previously indicated but was “purposefully deleated” a few days ago, there are two basic effects on nerves from any movment of charge.

1, I Squared R heating effects
2, Rising edge effects.

Both are high power events but the first is high energy whilst the second is actually low energy. That is the rising edge of a very short duration pulse can be pico seconds in duration but it’s energy integrated over say a one second period be considerably less than a joule. The principle is used in RADAR and certain specialised radio systems. Energy is charged into a “capacitive transmission line” and a switch such as an avalanche device or ionizing radiation enhanced arc gap used to discharge it in pico (10e-12) or even femto (10e-15) seconds. Obviously the peek power is multiplied, so 1watt over 1second charging becomes 1mega-megawatt over 1pS discharging.

Whilst the “heating effect” is very minimal (about 1/100 of your bodies heat generation) the potential “physical insult” of an induced movment is quite significant.

Why would there be movment well nerves are “sodium channel conductors” and “nerve impulses” are movments of charge. So can be subject to the effects noted above.

Nerves are surrounded by a “lipid layer” or grosely simplistically “white fat” as an insulator. If this breaks down then epilepsy can be the result. Any pastry chef can tell you fats are very very easy to press flat at body temprature. So any physical insult will cause damage to nerve insulation and potential break down thus detrimental neurological effects (look up CTE in American Football players). Importantly the effect of physical insult is one way, thus accumulative…

As the insulation “thins” the effective capacitance between any two nerves increases so the ability of “crosstalk” between nerves increases. Some from observation believe that “spontanious muscle tremors” can be a sign of such “crosstalk” effects from degraded nerve insulation. They could be right, but it would be very unethical at best to test such a theory on a sentient creature.

Clive Robinson • February 6, 2022 8:15 PM

@ John,

If I or you could ask the right question, the answer is probably obvious!

The answers are faily obvious from basic laws of nature, and in various ways and places the evidence of effects are evident to engineers and others who chose to look.

The problem is “science” does not work “from effect to cause” because an effect can occure from any number of causes.

If you look at the report you will find the word “gaps” appears a couple of times. This means that either “the effect” or “charecteristics” that appear from it have been cataloged. But they do not know for certain which of the potential causes they have identified it is.

We may never know for sure if the pulses of microwave energy are acoustic or radio frequency.

Which ever it is I would put a small wager on it using resonence effects in the head/brain as that couples maximum energy from the signal into the structures.

Have a look at 19mins onwards for a couple of mins,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y2L6QLOi-c

And remember that transducer is a “speaker coil” just like that in your home HiFi speakers and it is quite a bit less than 30watts of effectively “pulsed” power going into the device, importantly at it’s resonant frequency (you don’t get to see the full rate of movment because of the way low cost digital cameras work).

You just have to know where to find a demonstration of the hypothesis that is, legal, ethical, and moraly acceptable.

Look back to the last century and “vibration white finger”(VWF) which causes “Secondary Raynaud’s Syndrome” for an example of non resonant vibration effects, which can also happen due to “cavitation” effects (it’s one effect ultrasonic baths clean with).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jan/23/2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_white_finger

Clive Robinson • February 7, 2022 6:52 AM

@ null clam,

indicate non-ionizing EMF as in LTE, 5G etc., over time, are having negative effects on many aspects of wild ecosystems.

It’s the total energy over time issue again.

If the effects of “non-ionizing” radiation such as EM signals is “cumlative” even very very fractionally then yes that is the result you would get.

Do we know if it is cumulative, well no, but we have reasonable assumptions to think not.

Look up “plastic limits”, “work hardening” and “metal fatigue”.

They are all the result of kinetic forces, EM radiation tends to be not kinetic, it causes small heat effects, and the thermal energy flows like water “down hill” figuratively speaking as it moves from hot to cold by basic diffusion.

But even non-ionizing EM radiation effects are “non-linear” at some point and proteins are definately not linear above body temprature (hence cooking in a microwave).

One of the assumptions of the NIH is that the flow of blood etc will carry the heat away and that the body will reduce thermogenisis to compensate.

However we know from accidents that areas of the body where circulation is low, such as the eyes, get more easily damaged by thermal energy.

The issue at heart is not one of mechanism but limits, the NIH is just interested in drawing a line of “safety” for radiological exposure, and they try where ever possible to remove “time” from their limits.

Legislation and regulation in general care not about time either, because being over or under a prescribed limit is both clear and easy to adjudicate.

Nature cares not a jot for others rules and appears to thwart or fight them at every turn.

My view is we do not yet know enough to even investigate, let alone come to conclusions about wether the low energy EM signal levels cause accumalative damage or not. The only factor saying “no” currently is that they are very much part of the environmental background.

Clive Robinson • February 7, 2022 6:44 PM

@ name.withheld…,

Like you I’m greatfull to our host, what I don’t want to do is use my time in a way that hits the editing floor as it were. Something I suspect you have similar thoughts about.

But moving on,

the speech given to the NRB by William Barr is still on the DOJ website.

That speech was the final nail as far as I was concerned. The man is without doubt a mental aberration to the norms of society (as I’ve indicated in the past).

Like many such he has purpose, but more often than not it is alien to observers not of similar disposition. Which is what you are observing with,

What has never been clear is any axiomatic or cogent thesis of how this “thing” operates. I can tell you it has a operational thesis not exposed to any critique or review and is completely antithetical to anything one might be familiar with in the sense of political theory.

The nearest I could come to was the historic “King Game” and the reestablishment of “The Estates of Man”. All of which history shows move to failure over even a limited time frame.

But why do they fail, and have things changed in some way to actually make it viable longterm?

Well I suspect they fail due to “closed stud book” behaviours and lack of a productive excess that can be taxed and used to control.

The latter appears to have been solved as a side effect of mass technological development and availability.

Those of the WB / MP ilk, see that technology gives them both a lead and a gap in what they can do.

That is they have a time span of a half decade or so that they are out in front of society in general. As long as they can maintain that gap by various means, then they will achieve a new position. How viable it is long term I’ve not been able to draw any satisfactory conclusions to yet. To be honest though like you,

And if you understand it might be rational, you’d be wrong, even if just subjectively.

I find it too alien to even subjectively get a grip on. Which makes warning others difficult at best.