Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 29, 2022 11:16 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Silicon Turtles

Realy with the name Auguary it should be “Staring at birds”[1]…

But “colour me unsurprised” Apple are not exactly experts on CPU design nor unlike Intel, AMD, ARM do they have any substative history of design of CPU’s.

Off the top of my head this is the second or third “silicon turd” they have dropped from above on their modifications to other peoples CPU designs.

Back when Intel deliberately held back news of Meltdown/Spector so that two sales would happen (Christmass and that directors shares), I said that these hardware faults would be a “Gift that keeps on giving”.

By that I ment, that there would be quite a few more in existance that researchers would find in Intel, AMD, and ARM CPUs.

What I did not expect was that Apple would come and add new ones to the list… By not understanding the history of what led to Intel and Co’s “Silicon Fails”.

So what’s the odds of another “Silicon Fail” in the remainder of this year?

Me I’d say over 50%… In fact I might put the price of a pint of beer on it 😉

[1] Standing there like a statue staring at birds looking for bad luck, is in effect a self fulfilling wish, guarenteed to work. Because at some point a bird is either going to drop one from the sky on you, or perch on your head and do the same.

Clive Robinson • April 30, 2022 8:49 AM

@ Sheilagh Wong, ALL,

Re : Is there any evidence?

It rather depends on what you mean as “evidence”.

Science is mainly a reductive process where “cause to effect” is the way the timeline is progressed.

One of the things that happens is as you approach the potential effect on the timeline it becomes more certain that is other potential outcomes go down in probability and the actuall outcome goes up in probability.

In a fully determanistic universe there would be no probability the outcome would always be the same. So there is a discrepancy, that needs to be accounted for.

There are three basic ways that you can account for it,

1, The universe at some level is not determanistic.
2, Your ability to process the information about the causes is deficient.
3, The information you have on the causes is incomplete.

The reality in our universe is that all three have a certain degree of truth as we currently understand things.

However I’m known for saying,

“There are no accidents, only a lack of information and time.”

Which whilst that can be seen fairly easily to cover the last two points it does not the first.

Only it does… If you fire a projectile there is always an error due to our inability to measure the initial velocity and direction and further during it’s tragectory the effects of mass, and much else in the trajectory path we can not at the time measure. That is the accuracy decresses with distance from the firing point.

This is something we accept from our everyday observations. But we tend not to consider the opposit is true.

That is at the target point the information we have is the same accuracy map just flipped over, that is our knowledge that we are where the projectile is going to land goes up the closer the projectile is to us.

Most if not all evidence is a matter of “qualified opinion” we generaly do not consider the time and probability aspects because we “examine after the event”. Where unfortunately we frequently make the mistake of “going from event to cause” which is the very opposite of a reductive causal reasoning process.

To see why take the statment of some passed event of,

“The ground is wet”

If you say as forensics people effecyively do,

“If rain occured then the ground will be wet”

And simply reverse it to,

“Wet ground is caused by rain”

You fall into a problem that is,

“If full bucket tipped ground will be wet”

Which when reversed gives,

“Wet ground is caused by tipped bucket”

The problem is the “wet ground is caused…” statments are not exclusive there are four potential states from just those two statments,

1, They Both happened
2, The first not the second happened
3, The second not the first happened
4, Neither happened.

Two things to note, the number of potential states is the square of the number of statements. One statment automatically implies the set of statments is incomplete. Logically this means the number of potential statments is infinite and the number of actual states infinity squared (a concept you realy want to take a slow run up to as several mathmaticians went mad contemplating it).

In the real world things are finite, which thankfully means that the number of states are as well, oh and the N^2 relationship with statments must at some point must either fail or the number of statments is small by some measure.

In forensics they like to say they play “the probability game” but is that trie or not?

Basically they say “their guesses have some probability because they guessed them”… That is they are claiming that their “qualified opinion” is actually realy “qualified” in some way and not just the result of eating lunch to fast and then misattributing the cause of the resulting “gut feeling” effect. So exhibiting the danger of “effect to cause reasoning” it alows any stupidity to rule the roost (look up pour patterns). Worse it encorages “reductio ad absurdum” reasoning that then gets reversed…

To try to stop this they asign each state they have come up with, with a probability… This is actually mathmatically an absurd thing to do. The rule is that the probability in the set of ALL states sums to one, if one of the terms in the set is “unknown” and potentially infinite which the “neither state” is, the probabilities are nonsensical from a logical reasoning perspective.

All you can get realy are ratios by observation that is if you’ve seen X number of occurances of a given state in your chosen set. All you can honestly say is “based on limited observation one state is X times more frequent than another state”. The weasel word there is “observation” you can skew the ratios simply by deciding that something is or is not “in your opinion” a “valid observation” or even a “valid state”… Which takes us back to the “gut feeling” issue.

So much for “lack of information”, that is as in Forensics the “event” has happened there is no time componet.

The same is not true for “intelligence analysis” it happens from prior to the launch untill the projectile lands. So it very much has a time component.

But as I pointed out the probability fans out in reverse time from the event and can thus include increasing numbers of causes to be included.

The hidden issue is if you consider two or more events their causes may very well overlap. That is an observed cause prior to the event can be causal in a range of events.

An inteligence analyst has to look at a whole number of potential causes and work out what the probable event is.

This is hard enough when the causes are not put in place by entities with agency, but becomes near impossible when the entities do have agency.

Take Putin moving troops to the Ukranian boarder, there are quite a few reasons why this might be so. But the action as a cause that has not played out can have one of very many poyential resulting events.

The analyst has to not just work out what they are, but also supply information in a a time limited environment that can change the potential outcome.

Obviously this is not “evidence” as the outcome has not yet happened.

Now tricks can be played on actors with agency.

Let’s assume that due to a very rare OpSec failure a single message between one of the command staff and a field/tactical commander becomes known (this happens even with the use of ultra-secure OTPs when the rules are not explicitly followed).

What to do with it?

Well you can keep it secret and use the potential intel as part of the analysis.

But what if it contains little or know intel of real use… From an analysis perspective it is of low value.

But if you release it to the world in it’s exact form, then the adversary has a problem.

They know you have read atleast one of their messages, but they do not know how. Therefore they do not know how many other messages you might have read ranging from the one, through some to all of them.

This puts uncertainty into the adversaries calculations.

If the adversary has time they can “test and observe”, that is they can send fake messages and observe how you respond.

The fact you do not respond actually makes the adversery more uncertain than if you do.

Therefore as an analyst you advice a “standard course of action” that is you do the things you would do irrespective of if you had intercept intel or not.

And that is what we’ve seen play out.

The fun thing is that the adversaries ineptness, plays to their cognative bias. The adversary will tend to assume they are not inept and all their misfortune is down to communications intercepts… The result is usually that they change procedures, that actually cause further operational security mistakes, so does make communications intercepts more frequent thus causing an unstable positive feed back loop.

But worse for the adversary is any change in communications such as reducing it’s frequency, transportation or range tends to “ham string” their military activities…

So any “evidence” you see or think you see or hear is unlikely to be what you think it is.

Clive Robinson • May 1, 2022 12:10 PM

@ Winter,

Russian TikTok creators have reportedly been paid to share propaganda

I suspect similar is happening on YouTube as well.

For various reasons I get informed about some of the “Ham Radio” goings on on YouTube. Apparently there has been an upsurge in posts coming from Russian Ham Operators (who by definition are monitored by the Russian State).

The upsurge is in “shorts” and mostly of no content value. It would appear without any further analysis that they are in effect “trolling” by grabbing the YouTube algorithms.

Thus swamping, so discoraging the general purpose looking at Ham / Amateur Radio posts…

From what I’m told the short videos do not contain propaganda, just inane footage of no actual interest to anyone. So whilst propaganda would fairly quickly get reported and the responsible accounts get locked or banned. This way they fill the lists with inanity which YouTube will ignore, even though it fills the lists with what is garbage, but does,push other people out, away from adverts thus advertising income for YouTube’s parent companies.

Clive Robinson • May 1, 2022 2:01 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

There are people that hold the same views for a lifetime or for a long time but people do change their views.

Some things I have no “fixed opinion” on, others my opinion is shall we say pinned by what we call the laws of nature.

That is Science, Enginering and some Technology “truths” I have found to be either sufficiently the case to be considerd probably true, or I’ve found a way to link them to fundemental truths of the laws of nature.

With regard the “human condition” my shoulders get plenty of excercise shrugging, and long ago a squease observerd that she should be able to find a second, cross crease on my backside because I spent so much time sitting on the fence… To which I replied that no, there wouldn’t be because rather than sit on the fence I got a lot of healthy excercise bunny hopping from one side of the fence to the other and back again so I really needed a pogo stick.

The truth is I’m both “conservative with a small c” and “socialist with a small s” as there are advantages as well as disadvantges in both, often simultaniously which perplexes many. But I genuinely belive in the lifting power of rising tides, and that mankind needs a little more faith in it’s self.

But I do detest authoritarians not just the leaders but the followers, they realy don’t think, don’t create, or do anything of particular worth to society invariably though they do appear to think they run it, or they should do. Whilst not immovable the are frequently “boat anchors” to society progressing in any usefull direction, thus to them “stagnation or worse is the name of the game”.

Lets be honest some of the more recent and public authoritarian followers are the embodyment of the old saying about a “goyisher kop” which is the equivalent of “The IQ rises when they leave the room”.

Clive Robinson • May 1, 2022 6:05 PM

@ GregW, ALL,

With regards the X-Ray tomography of chips article in IEEE Spectrum.

The last paragraph of,

“So someday soon, if you’re suspicious of your new CPU or curious about a competitor’s, you could make a fly-through tour through its inner workings to make sure everything is really in its proper place.”

Applies only to one chip every day or two, not a whole wafer of them. So whilst it has potential to be a design diagnostic tool it’s not going to be able to keep up with any kind of production line.

Now whilst “random sampling test” can provide basic Quality Assessment with about a 10% sample, that is still way to big a number of chips…

So as a security tool for devices comming of a production line it’s most definately inapropriate.

Well somebody is going to ask “Why?”

Well the basic reason is for security checking it has to be every chip checked…

Because there is a major issue I’ve mentioned before when security testing came up.

Do you remember back to Bloomberg’s supposed “scoop” on chips hidden into motherboards destined for Apple’s cloud that alledgedly had a hidden microchip?

I pointed out back then a rather awkward fact, that it appears had not occured to other people.

You have to ask the old question of,

“Q : How many bad apples do you need to turn a barrel of apples rotten?”

To which the answer is,

“A : Just one.”

Well the same applies to a room full of racks with fourty or more motherboards in each. Just one rotten motherboard potentially could turn every other motherboard rotten on the same LAN or collection of LAN’s that are not correctly issolated.

As I pointed out back then, motherboards in data centers, that have two or more network connections frequently use one network connection on an internal private network for “managment”. In my experience back then, whilst the public facing / connected network ports had security such as firewalls to segregate things, the managment network was not very secure in terms of segregation etc… So down at the physical layer things were not at all secure. So one bad motherboard on a Managment LAN could potentially infect hundreds if not thousands of motherboards.

I pointed out that the only way to check the “Security” of the motherboards was by “destructive testing”. Which would mean that the absolute minimum would be tested in a batch of motherboards, maybe as little as one in a thousand… I asked for people to consider the odds of having one bad motherboard being found by random testing?

I concluded that the odds very much favoured an attacker.

The same logic applies to a wafer of the specialized chips now going into cloud service motherboards.

That is only one chip needs to be bad in a wafer for it to have a high probability of ending up being in the same batch of chips packaged up and put in the same batch of cloud server motherboards so ending up in the same rack or room…

Thus the odds are greatly in favour of an attacker who only has to get one bad chip on a wafer mask. Whilst the cloud owner would not be able to realistically test for one bad chip let alone a motherboard of chips in any sensible time period and not a chance of testing a couple of hundred motherboards.

But there is another issue not covered in the article… Which is what can be seen of the actual semiconductors on the chip as the article only talks about the metallization layers being seen not the actuall doped silicon.

Because you do not need metallization to “back-door” a chip, a capacitor made in the doped silicon is sufficient…

So yes it’s technically interesting, but it’s not going to realistically solve the security issues any time soon.

Clive Robinson • May 1, 2022 11:14 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Airpods are just like a John Deere tractor.

Two names I never expected to hear on the same sentence…

I can not find the link now, but a friend in a far distant place, used an online translation service where they translate an OCR of a product manual into a different language and back[1]… They showed,

“Air-pod” became “Gas-bag”

Where in vernacular english a “gas bag” is an expression for someone who talks or more correctly nags a lot. Which made me smile on reading the El Reg link that is titled,

“apple-thinks-my-own-airpods-are-stalking-me”

Lets just say I know one or to who say the same about their ex gas-bags 😉

[1] This “translate the manual” is apparantly a widely played game in some places and was originated with “Chinenglish” but works with other languages where “Hydrolic Ram” becomes “Male Water Sheep”. But best of all with instructions becoming accidently human anatomical, like an egg poacher instructions that will make your eyes water just thinking about it…

Clive Robinson • May 2, 2022 12:42 AM

@ Ted,

Wilkes was an outspoken member of the British Parliament whose criticism of the king led to his arrest

Yes, John Wilkes was not at all popular in some quaters at the time.

So much so that the famed artist William Hogarth who made paintings in colour so accurate we would assume them to be photographs, pen and inked this caricature of Wilkes,

https://uploads3.wikiart.org/images/william-hogarth/john-wilkes-1763.jpg!Large.jpg

Note the face to be drawn as that of a “village idiot” (or inbred).

But then others saw Wilkes in a very different light, and some named their children after him out of political belief, a not uncommon practice of the time. One such couple[1] named their nineth illigitamate child after him, and the child inturn gained his own notoriety.

With regards,

the extreme and over-broad nature of the general warrants used to pursue him

As a person who lives outside the US but “looks in” my view is that when you consider that back then “general warrants” were used to grab “papers and possessions”, with “papers” or letters being the communications of the time. If anything things are much worse, with most modern communications being grabbed without judicial approval or oversight, and where warrants are obtained they remain hidden not served. Thus a persons privacy can be invaded for years whilst investigators wait for some comment they can misrepresent, as well as avoiding a US Citizens right to speedy justice, thus robbing them of the “equity in arms” such rights are ment to give, to balance the power of the state.

A view I’m sure makes me unpopular with some.

[1] English Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes… Apparently John Wilkes was a distant relative, but I suspect it was “political belief” motivated. Several of the family were known to have what even back in the 1830’s were radical leanings even for such politically turbulant times, and Junius being a violent drunk tended to threats and violance. Which is probably why John Wilkes Booth was a known Confederate supporter and a “Know Knothing” member. A radical splinter Republican group which had a secret sect suspected of political violence. But his bitter rival elder brother Edwin as so often happens in such families went the other way and was a staunch Unionist.

Clive Robinson • May 2, 2022 1:42 AM

@ Winter, vas pup,

That is a larger problem in “historical” cases, where the course of an event has to be determined.

This also happens with “living history”.

Which is why we have what looks like the madness of what some describe as the “undeading process”…

Some people for a number of reasons “get removed from history” in some way and thus become first “missing” then after a longer period of time “officialy dead”.

Perhaps the most well known are those taken captive or prisoner and kept in secret by their captors. But also occasionaly people loose their memories, others simply move away from their old lives, for various reasons and do not bother keeping in contact with those they leave behind.

The point is “officialy dead” people do turn up alive and well, and return to some real legal problems and others get caught in legal problems as well.

Look at it this way if you are married and declared legaly dead, your spouse is widowed and thus legally free to marry someone else. When you return “under the eyes of God” of some religions you are still married, thus your spouse is considered at the very least a bigamist, or to have committed infidelity… As you may be aware some nations treat the views of religious courts with more presidence than judicial courts.

And yes, some countries even have an “undeading form” that you fill out as the start of the process to bring you back from “bureaucratic death” and “legal limbo”…

Oh interesting quirk that has come to light. What if a country legally disowns you as a citizen? Well apparently yes they can still declare you dead, but there is currently no legal recourse you have by which you become undead.

This has happened with people moving abroad into excile or having become statless for various reasons, such as a Government Dept conveniently destroyed the paperwork. With the person having their citizenship, pension and other property rights terminated. Where on trying to return or get their statehood, entitlement etc they are rebuffed as having no legal standing or entitlement.

Clive Robinson • May 2, 2022 1:14 PM

@ Winter, ALL,

Re : Putin doing a Stalin

Sadly it’s not unsurprising.

Putin has been lying to the Russian people for years, with fake history and the like so he could live out his destiny dream…

Put simply he wants to do two basic things,

1, Put his name in history for uniting the Rus.
2, Reestablish the Russian Empire.

Which will give him the illusion of “Strong Russia” marching into a future where his name and statue are revered…

Well neither the Belarusians or Ukranians want to be under the Russian boot heal again as they are all to aware of what it means.

What is going to happen is the covert fighting against Russian troops is going to keep spreading as the people in Eastern Europe realise two things,

1, Putin is worse than a wild animal trapped in a corner, he has become like a rabid dog.
2, Russian troops having been trained by thugish bullying are mostly no more than that, so like all thugs and bullies, poor fighters and cowardly at that.

So the Russian troops are now in a “meat grinder” because the Ukranian soldiers and people know, that they have next to nothing to loose and much to gain by killing as many Russian troops as possible. To loose to Putin’s bullies will only bring down a living hell for not just them but their families.

As I said before this conflict started,

“Putin has the troops to take the Ukraine but not hold it”

The Russian troops then failed even in their first objectives. So they have not taken the Ukraine…

As expected their equipment has failed, for want of skills and parts. Their supplies have failed so food, fuel and ammunition are scarce. Perhaps worst of all their tactical and command communications security has failed.

Much of this was inevitable Russian troops are an army of many conscripts trained to bully on streets by force of numbers send two dozen thugs to drag out an unarmed family onto the street and beat them so all can see how mighty the Russian bullies are.

The Russian troops are not a fighting army, they lack the training, tactics, and other skills. Even the basic ability to support and resupply in active conflict is beyond their abilities. It’s because of the Russian command structure which is little different to that of conscript forces two centuries ago. Puting a man in a uniform and bullying him does not make him a soldier. It makes him a fearful animal hiding in a pack of animals with a herd mentality driven forward by whips. So the best the majority of the Rusian troops can do is like a beserker driven mad, push forward till they fall unless they attain safety to rest, eat, clean and have shelter and an oppressed workforce to repair what has been broken.

The Ukranian troops are better trained have better skills, are better supported and on home ground and they know the Russian weaknesses. Thus they are fighting a very asymmetric war to their strengths and the Russian troops weaknesses. So now the Russian troops and command are finding out the cost of being kicked back, in body bag count and the like, by those who would rather fight to the end by hit and run, rather than be bullied for another hundred years.

But take a little pitty on those Russian troops, their bullying command structure has found you can not bully an opponent who hits and runs.

As I’ve mentioned before one of the things a sniper gets taught is the power of “long gun feaver” where the enemy gets no rest has no safety and fears the thought of the cross hairs on them. One sniper and their spotter can tie down whole regiments. That shot that comes without warning at any time preys on the mind, it churns the guts it makes troops frightened, they can not rest they can not repair they can not prepare they become ill and weak. There is the old saying about “the old and the bold”. The Russian command structure demands the officers be seen to be bold, so a sniper knows not to let them get older…

But part of having soldiers fight well is that they trust their commanders with their lives you will hear it refered to as “the covenant”. And in return the commanders must not use the soldiers as cheap coins. Soldiers have to know they can fall back when needed and be supported. They need to know they will be resupplied, and rested as best they can be with equipment repaired and available. An army marches on so much more than it’s stomach. Bulled conscripts however know their lives will be thrown away by a bullying command structure. The result is some will shoot a commander in the back and run, and once it starts there can only be three ways it can go, there will be a culling of the commanders, the commanders will have to oppress by brutality and killing, the troops desert to the enemy. Meanwhile the enemy soldiers fill the game bag, on head or two at a time.

Putin is out of stupidity and desperation forcing the commanders to throw the troops lives down in costly grandstanding. He will no doubt insist on “mutiny shootings” to “enforce discipline” history shows that none of this generally works.

I suspect more Russian troops will desert where they can for a ticket into Europe and to be able to live a life less oppressed. Those that can not desert as they have family behind in Russia will turn to killing commanders and some will becoming “outlaws” or other criminals. So the next line of “Petit Putins” small minds behind large fists, hell bent on self entitled gratification and enrichment, with unless they are eradicated little fiefdoms of serfs they think are Empires, and so the wheel turns and the rut deepens.

Clive Robinson • May 2, 2022 6:46 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Supply Chains and Fancy Shackles

What made me sad was the “our oils domestic” etc…

You can not “drink” mineral oils, and you can not “eat” electronic toys and gizmos.

People need to realy consider two things,

1, Where does our food and water come from?
2, Who else might compeate or control your food and water supply?

Whilst energy is important mostly you care about,

1, Three days to be just about dead without a drink.
2, Three weeks to be just about dead without food.

The Mormons and some other religions belive you should keep a year’s supply of food and water in your home not just sufficient for your family but often your neighbours as well…

I’ve been through the quantaties on this blog before, and it will shock many if they have to do it themselves.

My parents faught in WWII the 1920’s and 1930’s were not at all good times for various reasons and food was quite often a scarcity.

They learnt from their parents how to keep a pantry and a root-veg / fruit store as well as how to preserve meat etc, all without the aid of energy for fridges and freezers.

I learnt some of my knowledge from them and more by experimentation and a couple of times from necessity as I was unemployed due to employers going pear-shaped etc.

I know how to survive without electricity or gas and how to obtain and store food without money.

Most I know would not survive a month in 1920’s / 30’s common poverty conditions.

But hey as long as they have “cell service” and “the internet” they don’t need “nufing else”…

Most people I know can not light a fire with just one match. Let alone make a fire that burns sufficiently efficiently that they can actually gather enough fuel they will need to cook…

Try talking to people about using a mixture of “rocket stove” heating and “Hay box cooking” and similar and they have not a clue.

As for “thermal mass heat storage” they mostly don’t know what the words mean in real terms (though some do understand that “storage heaters” are full of bricks, but not why).

As for “gasification” to run an electricity generator as petrol is nolonger available…

These might not be “wild-side” “survival skills” but then most people would be dead in well less than six months if they tried to live in the wild… You just can not do it you have to “farm or die” as you need 3000cal a day if you labour and there needs to be between 8-12 able bodied labouring adults in a group to make it work. 3000sq ft is about the amount of land you need to grow basic food crops for a year for a four person family with one to two hours often back breaking labour a day. But it will only work if you can get the water… A gallon a day per person to drink/wash and twice as much again for growing food so atleast 13 qubic meters of rain water storage preferably twice that so a 3x3x3 meter storage tank which is an 11ft by 11ft room size and an average rain fall of 1.4mm every day on a 20ft/30ft roof (oh sorry no flushing toilets, baths or washing machines included…).

Clive Robinson • May 3, 2022 3:51 AM

@ Lurker, Winter,

I had always believed the area required was one acre, which is about fifteen times greater.

The “acre” was once a measure of “labour” as it was how much land a person could plough in a day.

The equation for “food” is quite complicated, for instance you get about 4 times more calories from a potato crop than you do a wheat crop, but wheat is now where near as nutritional compleate (look up wholefoods).

However wheat also gives animal bedding/feed which potatoes certainly do not as the greenery of potatoes is mostly poisonous. You need to keep some animals for dairy products for fats and calcium which are extrodinarily difficult to get in a vegtable only diet. Whilst you can feed animals potatoes over winter they do better with “whirzles” and other beets.

Also sugar which is an essential food preservative is difficult bordering on impossible to get from wheat or potatoes, but is possible to get from some beets.

Also wheat straw is an essential basic building material for medieval style house and outbuilding construction. Think of it like modern day “chop strand fiber glass” for reinforcing plastic resin to make GRP.

Straw is also extreamly important in things like “Hügelkultur” and the “Ruth Stout” methods of reduced labour gardening as well as for holding water and air in the soil, keeping weeds down and also adding bio-mass (but you do need to know what you are doing as it varirs by soil type and as your soil changes).

But you can not grow the same crop year after year in the same place. That is, you have to “rotate by thirds” that is divide your land into a minimum of three and plant three different complementary crop types and rotate them through.

Whilst you can survive on eating just about only potatoes you can not grow them in the same place year after year, and you need to use atleast six different varieties if you want to avoid the likes of blight.

The reason for the Irish potato famin was three fold,

1, Land owners needed 1/4 the land per tenant labours family for potato growing than grain growing. Thus got more land for profit crops.

2, This reduction in land caused a mono-crop issue that led to weak plants that could not fight a blight.

3, The land owners blaimed the tenant farmers for “indolence” and just let them starve though other food sources were plentiful, they were profit crops.

The lesson is gardening / farming for food without industrial production of “soil improvers” is a lot more complicated and easy to get wrong than most gardeners with their bags of compost and organic fish/blood/bone meal fertilizers realise.

Speaking of fish, you should also have a carp pond, and feed them with “cow or horse muck”. There is a very sound reason why you should eat fish once a week as a minimum.

Clive Robinson • May 3, 2022 6:55 AM

@ Winter,

… the immediate reason for the famine was … profit maximization.

I covered that in my three points.

Likewise,

However, the reason the famine was not stopped was pure genocide. Killing and driving off the Irish in Ireland

However it was not “the British” and it was not realy “market forces” or the “Irish” don’t fall for the “what we teach to children” text book cleaning up of the past.

Actually it was the “English” land owning “Lords” and other Members of Parliment living lives of luxury, off of others, who also had some very serious “religious” views about “Catholics”[2] and how they should be wiped from the face of the earth. Catholics were the under dogs the Protestents the guard labour and above. Have a look at what Oliver Cromwell and his forces got upto in Ireland, that realy was “Rape, Pillage, Plunder and enslavement”[1]. Oh and the history behind “One Man One Vote” and similar anti-catholic policies passed into law by the English Parliment.

Those self entitled Lords etc tried to do and very nearly succeeded with the Scots. The anti-Catholic bias is still very much in evidence today not just in legislation, but political, ethical and moral attitudes in English society. One of the things that annoys me is the “divertionary tactics” current politicians are using via “anti-Semitic” claim overplay. That is whilst anti-Semitic behaviour is clearly present, anti-Catholic behavior is way greater and way more engrained in not just the English but now “British Protestants”. But by making lots of noise about anti-Semitic behaviours anti-Catholic behavioirs can be tucked out of sight. If you look at the Brexit arguments the exit arguments were designed to play to anti-Catholic sentiment with a helpful fig leaf of “anti-Muslim” terrorism being pushed. In essence refugees being pushed into “Protestant countries” via “Catholic countries”… (actually refugees move to prosperous industrial “North” through way less prosperous “agrarian south”. A south the north has to keep under very firm control as the north can nolonger feed it’s self…).

[1] What people tend to forget is that “slaves” in the traditional sense are quite expensive as a work force. You have to feed them, stable them, train them, and also “guard them”. So it is more economical to have “land tied serfs” and later tenant farmers, a subject I’ll let you look at, at your leisure.

[2] As many here are probably aware I’ve very litle time for “Churches” as they are historically a political tool to control and kill people and “hold them in their place”. As for $DEITY well that is just a compleate nonsense used as an excuse for control and an excuse for any behaviours the self entitled had… The pious “I’m $DEITIES humble servent” behaviour is a total crock of scat so the “By $DEITIES command” excuse can be pushed and if called then you are “A heretic in $DEITIES sight” so your death at their hand will be righteous not a sin… And loads more scat shoveled on top of that.

Clive Robinson • May 3, 2022 9:31 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, lurker, MarkH, Winter,

also how many potatoes you have to grow to live 365*N Years until the next harvest.

Irish labourers used to need between 10-14lbs of raw potatoes a day to survive.

A desk bound person probably needs 6-8lbs of raw potatoes.

You have to cook them quite a bit to get as much of the energy into your system as you can. Which means you can loose quite a bit to the water… So in Eastern European nations they tend to cook them with other foods to make soups, stews and similar.

So slow cooking of 6-10lbs of potatoes with a little fried off meat or beans in 6-8pints of stock on a low heat, then add a lot of leaf vegtables say 4-6lbs of cabage towards the end of cooking would make a hot evening meal for a family. Removing the excess potatoes and cabage to “dry” over night that can be chopped and minced together in the morning pressed into paties and fried off as “bubble and squeak” with an egg for breakfast. The now thickened broth can have dried peas, or lentals added or even barely to make a thickened soup for lunch. Any left over liquid added to the starting for the next evening stew…

It sounds dull but much of the world lives in a similar way or less with just an evening meal. All that realy changes on a day to day basis is the herbs and spices.

Clive Robinson • May 4, 2022 9:42 AM

@ Cassie, Freezing_in_Brazil, ALL,

I think it would be fair to say that in any conflict between professional soldiers and conscripts, I would usually back the professional soldiers.

At the end of the day the morale of those fighting comes down to two things,

1, Belief in their own abilities.
2, Belief in what they are asked to do.

The first is based on training and commitment to what they see as a profession and those around them. The second is based on their trust in the chain of command and the rightness of what they are asked to do.

But also a trust in politicians and national leaders to not spend the soldiers lives without good reason and that the soldiers and their families will be looked after, should a soldier be disabled or die whilst under flag.

This forms the essential core of “the covenant”, without which you do not have soldiers, just bodies in the rag tag bags of a uniform, oft there because they have little or no other choice in life.

This is something few modern politicians appear to realise, which is why they get it wrong such a great deal of the time.

The US Military, is increasingly feeling “the covenant” is being broken by politicians who want to divert needed resources from the soldiers to political friends… They are probably not wrong, the same issue is happening in the UK, where recruiting is so low, it won’t be long before they press gang pensioners and their grand children…

In the UK in the past, soldiers were almost always trained to two ranks above their current rank sometimes more. Thus a private will within a year get taught how to lead a small body of other soldiers, then a squad and start on the basics of running a squadron. This way they know not only their own job and tasks but why they need to be done, and how they should be administered. Further and quite importantly they can step up a rank as and when required and do the job. It also enables those above them to see who should be promoted and in which direction and why.

Unfortunately in any collection of people there are “the sad, the bad and the mad”. It’s best to get rid of the sad fairly quickly for their own protection, there are several ways to do this open including a medical discharge. The bad are always a difficulty, what makes them bad can be very very usefull, being a successful criminal for instance requires a certain type of very usefull intelligence and skill set that is very valuable in modern style of often asymetrical warfare and combat, also putting a fox in charge of a hen house can have advantages. What is not needed is the mindlessly bad, of bullies, thugs, and effectively cowards, they need to be weeded out fast and discharged. But also bullies and the like tend to be on the edge of, if not upto their neck, in delusional madness. No sensible soldier want’s to be close to someone who want’s to be a hero, because you are signing your own death warrant.

By and large the military can absorbe most people and make them “millitary” however there is one group they never realy can make “millitary”. That is those who have not just usefull skills, lots of intelligence, and abilities way beyond the norm. But who will always be a wrong shaped peg for a military hole. They are generally very self reliant, but ignore much of “The military way” a wise officer quickly learns to ask not order, and to listen not dictate. Such soldiers are beyond what most consider “proffessional” they will pick up multiple trades they will organise efficiently and what needs to be done gets done quickly and usually better than anyone else can. But they don’t do spit and they don’t do polish or shine without reason. They don’t paint it or salute it unless there is good reason. They often “lead from behind” and as such the squad around them appears to “carry them” the reality is the squad knows darn well they make them shine, even the Officer Commanding(OC) will run interferance to look after them, even though he feels he should pull his hair out.

Wise senior commanders look for such people as they are rare and more valuable than diamonds. Which is why they get shuffled around into what sometimes gets called “the awkward squad” and often used to break junior officers into the roles of commanders. When the going gets difficult they are the people who get it done, without complaint and generally just on a nod and OK. Officers know to say “Is it possible…” or “Can you do…” and will not just listen but when asked back “What is it you are actually trying to do…” will answer chearfully and truthfully.

There is a saying about the “Special Services” about them being “the first in” even they know that’s not true, they know it’s the awkward squad getting what they need in place so they can then do their job and shine at it.

These are the people a modern army desperatly need, and a conscript army never gets the benifit of. Often they are not “regular soldiers” but “reserves” and they don’t play at being soldiers, they are there because they want to be there. Often they hold down civillian proffessional jobs at levels way beyond any army can train to.

Much like a sniper can hold an entire enemy regiment down, members of an awkward squad can lift their regiment up, not just where they need to be but well supported, often as comfortable as can be, but ready to do their job about as safely as can be. They are frequently multiskilled and can turn their had to most things with an apparent easy that others can only guess at.

What was clear from the Russian Military incursion into Belarus and the Ukrainian was they did not have “proffessionals” in fact mostly they did not even have “soldiers” they had the “sad” bullied and cowed in bad uniforms who could not look after themselves, their supplies or their equipment. A fuse blows and the truck gets dumped, a wire works loose likewise, any one of a thousand minor things brings things crashing down… Worse they had the bad and the mad suiting themselves, and the officers were mostly quite useless as they have no real command experience and no leadership skills, and were not in anyway respected or trusted. They don’t know how to lead, or inspire confidence, and those under them have no respect for them just fear… And fear, rots the guts, makes you ill, and for others destroys any morals they have…

Which is about what we have seen…

If Putin thinks they will bring him success then he’s not playing with a full deck…

The best he can do is keep throwing bodies on the fire hoping to quench the flames… Any “victory” he might try to claim will not even qualify as pyrrhic…

But then he’s burned his bridges, he can not go back, he’s committed to throwing his conscript army and indolent and arrogant officers onto the pyre… That the Ukranians and I suspect in the not to distant future the Belarusians will keep burning brightly as a war of savage attrition.

They are soldiers who not just believe in themselves, they believe in those commanding them, but as importantly they believe in what they are doing. As they know that to stop fighting will bring worse down around not just their heads but the heads of their families and loved ones, because Putin can now only persue genocide to maintain his lies.

Thus I wonder, will the Rus become united? I actually think it’s possible. But what do you call Russia without the Rus?

Clive Robinson • May 5, 2022 3:19 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

Re : 19 waves,

What can we say…

Oh yes, we predicted this would happen…

Oh we also indirectly predicted that Big Phama would do nothing unless given another few billion emergancy funding for new vaccines etc…

And so it has come to pass, we have a very virulant series of strains running through populations faster than measles, but so far not as pathogenic if you’ve been previously infected or vaccinated.

The chances are that this comming winter in the northern hemisphere will be the start of another pandemic that could easily be avoided, and the odds are it will be of increased pathogenicity… If in fact it does not kick off in the southern hemisphere in the next month or so.

The hallmarks of Covid in history will be,

1, To little to late responses.
2, Bankruptcy of small nations.
3, Deaths by the millions
4, Much long term incapacitating.
5, New immuno compromise diseases
6, Shortening of life expectancy

But also,

7, Abdication of responsability.
8, Disaster profit mongering
9, Populations pushed into eternal rent paying.
10, Governments cutting pensions and other wealfare.
11, No changes to policies that created the pandemic.

All of which will lead almost as certainly as night follows day into another new pandemic…

One of the stronget indicators of capitalism is it’s a zero sum game, so there are loosers for each winner. The winners then buy the legislators to keep “their luck going” which means capatilists never learn from even their living history…

Clive Robinson • May 5, 2022 7:35 AM

@ Winter,

The fact remains that Ukraine receives intelligence from the USA that helps them taking out commanding officers.

What the Ukraine does with information received in the aprehension of dangerous War Criminals is up to the Ukranians provided it staus within an acceptable framework.

The fact is the US as required by international treaty are handing over information to stop genocide that is clearly in progress. Genocide is perhaps the most serious of War Crimes, as well as a crime against humanity.

These crimes are being committed by Russian forces that have illegaly ingressed into Ukraine territory, as a primary act of war, which is yet another War Crime.

Putin, his surounding cleaque, the generals and other commanders, even some of the base troops have commited War Crimes, against defencless civilians, and attempted to destroy the evidence. As such other Nations are required by not just treaties but UN membership to ensure that war criminals are where possible, stopped, detained and brought before an appropriate tribunal.

As those in the US are aware, resisting arrest by offering armed force, can be seen as “with deadly intent” thus met with unlimited force by lawful authorities.

The only lawfull authorities on Ukranian territory are those appointed by the Ukranian Government.

So aside from the Russians, every one else appears to be acting the way UN Membership, International Law, Treaties and National Legislation requires them to do.

But as noted before both Turkey and the Ukrainians have developed their own drones of apparantly quite a good degree of sophistication.

I’ve also pointed out that develiping small intelligence drones is now within hobbyest pocket money abilities

Anoyingly a post I made about the increasing capabilities of commercial satelites has “gone walk about” from a couple of weeks back.

I shall drag it off of online backup sites and repost it a little later today.

But the simple fact is the Ukranians are a way better class act than the Russians, something most apparrntly want to ignore for various reasons.

As I’ve said from before the Russian’s crossed the boarder,

“Putin has the troops to take the Ukraine but not to hold it”

The Russian troops failed to do even the minimum, because of their command structire it’s corruption and other incompetence.

It is the combination of the corruption and incompetence that is putting Russian Generals and other Senior Commanders out in the battlefield where they arr not just vulnerable, but due to their corruption with radio systems and the like, very easy pickings even for soldiers so under resourced as the Ukranians.

Every time a Russian general or other commander opens his gob near a radio, he is letting anyone within 60km know exactly where he is to even “hobby drones”. Even if he gets the orders relayed, it gives away the position of the command center…

So as it’s the usuall “unnamed suspects” do not be to sure of the accuracy of the reporting to the NYT, after all the US has a reputation for not just syealing other nations credit, but burning their methods and sources, for any minute political advantage…

I suspect the journalist has to a certain extent been hood-winked by political operators, looking to boost ratings for early November.

I fully expect to see more of what will probably cross the line into fake-news as some people yry to wrap themselves in the flag…

Clive Robinson • May 5, 2022 12:15 PM

@ Freezing_in_Brazil, JonKnowsNothing,

Did you include the wrong link?

As it was from a couple of years back.

This very recent one,

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/04/26/drop-in-life-expectancy-due-to-poor-pandemic-management-chilling-says-sir-michael-marmot/

Shows that in some parts of the UK, that during two years of Covid life expectency dropped by just under a decade (9.7 years) across a nation.

But in smaller almost local regions like some parts of East London[1] the male life expectency was only about 50years to start with so 1/5th of their life expectancy gone…

With a death at 40 years old unless you start younger than normal your children will be teenagers or younger…

[1] London as a region shows one of the biggest life expectancy differentials in the world with parts of East London down in the 50year range for the least fortunate members of society, and parts of West London up in the 85+ for the most fortunate members of society pre covid. A distance you can measure on a map from Hackney to Hampsted, a distance of just 10km or a good walk, had a drop of a day in life expectancy for every step of that walk from West to East…

Clive Robinson • May 5, 2022 6:51 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

RE : FIDO barking mad over Bluetooth

That has to be the most “dumb ass maliciously evil idea” I’ve heard this year…

From the article,

“As the whitepaper explains, “Bluetooth requires physical proximity, which means that we now have a phishing-resistant way to leverage the user’s phone during authentication.”

First off Bluetooth does not require physical proximity… So the rest of the argument fails at that point.

Secondly, it’s also NOT the “users proximity” but the “devices proximity”… So that kills the argument as well.

Thirdly as we all realy should know by now, the users phone is NOT in any way secure, we do NOT even own our phones, they do… So it’s an unsupportable pretense to make such a ludicrous implication… So that kills the argument as well.

And that’s before we get into FIDO issues…

And importantly as you note the broadcasting of not just your ID, but your location and the fact you have just logged in…

Great for a covert team on a “Find Fix and Finish” mission…

Lets go bag us a few Generals…

To say the idea is moronic is assuming that the three organisations are just beeing duller than a dumper truck full of farmyard sweep up. The reality is, it is actually a carefully thought out extreamly malicious step by them, and should be faught against at all costs… Because it is being done by them with extream evil intent.

Clive Robinson • May 5, 2022 7:30 PM

@ vas pup, ALL,

RE : How drones are changing the way of war

You might have noticed I’ve been mentioning this very fact on this blog for several years now.

It’s not exactly difficult to do, and as I’ve repeatedly said,

1, Undergrad one term project.
2, Hobbyist pocket change cost.
3, Parts easily available.
4, Open Source software already there.

I actually design what are effectively “drone deployable” packages as part of prototyping for CubeSat satellite and similar payloads.

As for “munitions” people tend to think about things in the wrong way.

For instance if you look up the development of the atom bomb, one method they considered was the “gun bomb” where you fired the two sub-critical halves of the fission core at each other with sufficient velocity that they would become a supercritical mass.

The project got “hung up” in the design of the gun barrels, for quite some time as they could not come up with a light enough design. Then the penny dropped, they were not designing artillery gun barrels that had to fire thousands of shots, they were designing a disposable barrel that was onky going to be used once.

Once they realised the “one time use” they realised the barrel needed to be little more than a cheap metal tube of not very much weight.

Similar reasoning applies to all one use ordinance, hence the reason that the “suicide drones” exist. The fact they get blown to pieces when used is not for “security” but because it makes then light and extrodinarily inexpensive compared to a reusable system, or other one time use systems like missiles.

You could with a little shopping around build a simple basic system for as little as $200… A reusable system that “drops” the likes of handgrenades can be made for under $1000 using a “fusable link” release system made with easily available “fuse wire” as has been used for remotely detonated booby traps and similar in several conflict zones in recent times.

However all UAV systems have major down sides for those that don’t have experience designing them. That is they have some major Achilles heals. Once you know what they are designing around them is fairly easy.

Clive Robinson • May 6, 2022 7:27 AM

@ lurker, Freezing_in_Brazil, JonKnowsNothing, SpaceLifeForm,

RE : of those 3, two are males aged over 65…

A point that suggests the pathogenetic effects are not as many Governments are claiming to their citizens due to it being only the “sick, infirm, or immuno suppressed” that are dieing.

That is those who are over 65 are not suffering from such pre-conditions of age yet they are still dieing…

We know that the elderly are less likely to be vaccinated[1]

Government triage at work?

On the “Bank of Mum and Dad” scale I rate above average, having the net tied up property worth of an average couple/family, not singleton.

[1] I’ve been repeatedly denied a “booster shot” of vaccine, via many different excuses. To many to be incompetence and to varied to be true… So there has to be another reason they are not disclosing.

Clive Robinson • May 6, 2022 8:36 AM

@ lurker, ALL,

RE : So, not wide area coverage

The limited coverage area is based on two fairly flaky assumptions,

1, Range falls as 1/(R^2)
2, To at or below the Noise Figure of the receiver system.

At which point the signal and noise have the same average amplitude “in the noise bandwidth” of the receiver.

There are thus some issues to consider.

Firstly the 1/(R^2) drop off is based on the assumption the signal radiates omnidirectionally from a point origin. That realy is not true, in an appropriate wave guide it will drop at a tiny fraction of 1/R due only to absorbtion or dielectric losses. Behaviour you would actually expect of a high quality effectively loosless transmission line. One such interesting “waveguide” is the so called “G wire”[1] it is surprising just how many conductors can behave this way.

Further there are many ways to boost the signal above the receivers assumed noise floor. One is the use of reduced temprature higher quality receiver circuits in the past Masers and Parametric Amplifiers have been used and will still provide improvments today. Other methods are high gain receiving antennas others are multiple phase coherant receivers. But “data signals” do not have linear bandwidth usage. This means there are DSP tricks you can use, whereby you gain synchronization to the inherant data clock signal and use this in combination with speciallised “channel bank” techniques via lossless integrators to recover data.

When it comes to intentionaly radiated EM signals the distance can astonish people. For instance systems in space 500km away can pick up just one or two milliwatts of radiated signal. For instance a 5Volt logic signal into a 50ohm or less line is the approximate equivalent of (2.5×2.5/.05) = 125 milliwatt signal some 50-100 times as much, giving an expected 7-10 times that 500km range…

It’s one of the reasons TEMPEST proof systems are quite difficult to design.

[1] The G Wire transmission line is one that holds the EM signal close bound around it’s self. In essence it is half of a “two wire” or “open pair” transmission line. As it has a fairly high natural impedence, where it is used purposefully to carry power it have impedence matching at either end. Whilst this can be “lumped circuit” it is more often seen as circular matching horns of atleast three wavelengths radius. Howrver any adjacent conductor can act as a non purposeful matching unit. In the past “cordless phone” signals have been easily received at 30km which is 150 times the assumed radius of 0.2km based on 1/(r^2) and noise figure calculations. Due to near by metal fencing and overhead mains power or telephone transmission lines.