Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • February 12, 2023 5:10 AM

@ lurker, ALL,

“the girl for the weekend is Gabrielle”

I hear she has bestowed a kiss at the north of the north.

I’m now out of hospital[1], and trying to play catchup on information including what is going on in the world. I have found that a week of near issolation from information is actually mentally debilitating in it’s own right and now requires it’s own rehabilitation period…

[1] The explanation for my spectacular near demise is in two parts…

Firstly I am obviously to blaim because I have too many normally minor medical conditions that all fight each other to be top dog major issues.

Secondly this grevious fault of mine has led the medical proffession asstray and they yet again got the medications wrong.

Apparently “diagnose, prescribe and follow up to check for harm” is nolonger the way the medical proffession rolls… How unscientific of them, we will be back to chicken bones tossing and fresh entrail examination soon… So in preperation for the latter will all goats form an orderly line on the left and everyone else keep your now increasingly rare left overs from your fried chicken suppers 😉

Clive Robinson • February 12, 2023 11:23 AM

@ Winter,

“Always be an annoying patient…”

I already scare doctors because I read the actual drug information and sufficiently understand it to question their actions.

It happened again when I was in hospital tgis past week…

I’m prescribed a drug which is a “proton pump inhibitor” because of the number of anti-coagulation drugs I’m on. Like the anti-inflamatory I have to take for one of the anticoag meds side effects. BUT… unlike the anti-inflammatory I don’t need the “proton pump inhibitor” it’s the Doctors wallpapering their sit upons because a Government agency says they have to prescribe it…

The thing is the drug has not just side effects but interactions. One side effect is it gives you gas and other gut unpleasantness and an interaction is you can not take certain antibiotics (which covers the antibiotics I don’t have problems with).

Now whilst I’ve nearly died a couple of times from not being able to take antibiotics, I’ve not heard of anyone getting close to dying of reflux.

Now in the datasheet for the “proton pump inhibitor” it clearly says it is to be taken on an empty stomach a couple of hours befor food is eaten otherwise it fails to work. That is it should be taken a couple of hours before the first meal of the day for the ordinary person.

So the hospital computer “OK’s” the issue of the “proton pump inhibitor” with the “drugs round” immediately after breakfast… You can tell that the Doctors were not happy to know this, nor were the Consultants… The Nurses accepted what I told them without me having to show them the data sheet but as they noted they were not alowed to move the drug issue to another time, so had to mark it down as “patient refused”…

This is not the first time I’ve caught the Doctors and the computer they rely on making such a mistake the last time it was for an antibiotic (doxycycline) and iron sulfate given as part of treatment for enemia due to chronic blood loss. To quote NICE,

<

blockquote>Iron : oral Iron decreases the absorption of oral Doxycycline. Manufacturer advises Doxycycline should be taken 2 to 3 hours after iron.

Severity:Moderate
Evidence:Study

<

blockquote>

I suspect that this will not be the last time I notice such issues, and the Doctors and Consultants know this, and whilst most are OK with me being informed and informing, some are most definitely not and get upset…

I work on the hypothesis that,

“If I make mistakes –and I do, I am after all human– I would like to be told before I cause harm such that it can be avoided, and I assume others likewise would wish to be told.”

Sadly my assumption is not always correct.

Clive Robinson • February 13, 2023 3:33 AM

@ Winter,

“Don’t they have a pharmacist in your hospital?”

A good question, but actually the wrong one.

The “Hospital Pharmacy” has been “outsourced” to a US managed organisation, and an electronic system transferes the Dr’s Script directly to them. Where the script is kind of treated the same way as Amazon does an online order.

Apparently it is more “productive” and obviously uses staff that have considerably less cost attached.

Clive Robinson • February 13, 2023 4:20 AM

@ ALL,

Re : The moon is not a balloon.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-officials-believe-flying-objects-over-alaska-canada-were-balloons-schumer-2023-02-12/

Apparently “ET” has not been ruled out in the latest of four missile shoot downs of suspected UAV / UFO on the North American Paciffic coast…

What kind of hospitality is “a missile up the bum” for potential guests? I dun’know what you are all getting so dang do dog crazy over it for 😉

@ ResearcherZero,

Re : Get the “F out of dodge”

Some of my neighbours are Russian and months ago I told them it would be a good idea to get their Parents and other Family members out. Since then atleast one has “lost contact” with family members as censorship / communications shuttering starts to step up a few notches.

No matter what business people are in or their nationality, pragmatically if you can get out of Russia the better your chances in the long term. Whilst Moscow has the illusion of normallacy I’m told it is anything but by someone who works for the city. Likewise regional areas are getting segregated to make conscription and worse easier as communications and transport get shuttered.

It’s getting harder and harder not to assume this is “putting on a war footing” type activities…

If this goes hot, then the traditional comment is,

“May God have mercy on their souls”…

Clive Robinson • February 13, 2023 7:36 AM

@ Winter,

Re : No work is most profitable.

“It has been a leading principle in US health care that the cheapest treatment is no treatment.”

Yup, they kept me in for over a week, and the discharge summary is to put it mildly is a fantasy. More seriously it leaves out important details and in effect says “all in the patients immagination” ignoring the fact I presentedd with clearly visable physical injuries that are still visable, and that repeated posture tests clearly show that there is a postural hypotension issue in that lifting my arms above my shouldets when standing up to say hail a bus or wash my hair causes my blood presure to slump below critical limits and I go over like a felled redwood.

The reason, my autonomous system detects a change in posture, and trying to correct for it it drives my heart rate above 200bpm, where it just twitches but does not pump blood and so my brain gets starved of oxygen and over I go…

I don’t know who actually filled out the discharge summery but I sincerly doubt I spoke to them before they wrote it, as it’s a nonsense of incorrect details not even logically connected.

Worse very relavent details that could and probably should result in a replacment pacemaker with inbuilt de-fib gets “disappeared”[1]… So the work can be side-stepped without any concern for the safety of the patient.

[1] There are two basic types of heart fibrilation (rapid twitching) atrial or AF that can kill you if left un-ntreated and VF that will kill you from brain damage within a couple of minuites if not de-fibbed almost immediately. AF is very often the “gateway” to VF, which is why more and more pacemakers come fitted with it as standard these days.

As I understand it, the one currently in my chest is “single chamber”, “single lead”, “single action” type and nolonger manufactured. Worse it’s been incorrectly set and has maybe three or four years of life in the battery rather than the 15-20 it should have… So it’s getting close to needing to be replaced anyway…

Clive Robinson • February 13, 2023 5:04 PM

@ JG4, MarkH,

Re : It went up in smoke.

“I have minor quibbles with MarkH and Clive on dioxin risk. Seveso is spot on, but Agent Orange should be mentioned too.”

I have minor quibles as well… But with MSM reporting where,

Tankers of chemical A and chemical B…

Is ambiguous. Is it,

1, A tank containing just chemical A and a tank containing just chemical B.
2, Two or more tanks containing a mixture of chemical A and Chemical B.
3, Some unstated combination of 1 and 2.

At Seveso the factory was making TCP, and from memory of just under half a century, the tank contained an alkali mixture that heated above 270C and around three atmospheres presure that caused the “ring closure” thus production of Dioxin that blew out when the last line in preasure saftey devices actually functioned.

Now imagine the train tanks contained a mixture of chemicals (2) the fire would start to heat them up. Unless low preasure safety releases are in place and functioning –unlikely from what had been said– then the conditions for ring closure would exist before a tank did a “Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion”(BLEVE) that would throw up a significant amount of dioxin in those 100ft or more clouds.

As for the “sensitivity” of the US EPA instruments. The US EPA regulations have been seen as very sad jokes in Europe for decades. Because for some perverse reason the US standards specify “tests and testing methods” in detail rather than what is being tested for and in what quantities. The result is some US tests still use what looks like “home chemistry set toys” rather than modern fast reliable robust and above all sensitive and accurate instruments.

Thus as others have pointed out the opportunity for a “miller’s thumb”[1] to get into individual measurments is very high in the US and repeatability at best moot. Worse EPA testing is thus slow and expensive, thus very seldom carried out thus regulatory oversight at best minimal.

[1] A “Miller’s Thumb” is a refrence to the use of the “one pound flour scoop” where it was easily posible for the miller to hold it in such a way that his thumb was in the scoop measure, thus reducing each pound by a quater to half an ounce…

https://themillersthumb.blogspot.com/2009/11/origin-of-term-millers-thumb.html

Clive Robinson • February 14, 2023 12:29 AM

@ lurker,

“Cell towers have been dropping like flies from a) batteries running out before mains can be restored, and b) fibre backhaul lost in landslips. AM radio still working due to solid microwave feed from the TV network.”

Sadly this is actually “normal” and compleatly predictable, and in fact actually predicted over and over…

It happens because proper emergancy comms planing costs real money, resources and commitment year on year. With nobody wanting to “pick up the cost” as it’s seen as a “No ROI” “Profit eater”.

Which brings us to,

“I’m out of the “ham” scene now, but I wonder what happened to all those amazing battery operated HF sets we used.”

They are still around but the best units from Yaesu have “gone out of production” after twenty years due to “parts shortages”.

This leaves the well over priced Icom IC-705 and a very limited number of Chinese “clones” of “Open Source” style products at either end of the price line. But they are way over “technical” for ordinary people to just “pick up and use” without extensive training.

Which kind of leaves the Xigue products, which are kind of OK but have fallen into the “MicroSoft-Game” with the device software and rolling upgrades.

(I could go one and focus down but Ham Radio is increasingly seen as a shrinking market).

When younger back in the “Cold War” I used to be a “full participent” in “EmComm”… These days I’m not “involved” as my intetests have been towards “Emergency Broadcast” systems that can be effectively “dropped in” by helicopters etc for use in non firstworld nations, wars etc.

Originally I called the project “Station in a box” because effectively that is what it is and you can get them in various kit forms. Ten on a pallet if you are the likes of a large NGO etc. Sadly that got hit by variois things including C19.

Plan as hard as you can, it apprars you can nolonger realy have “short, reliable supply chains”…

Expect EmComm to get a lot worse before it gets better and the “Ham” side is being actively denegrated by various Commercial Interrsts that have gained “Market Capture” over National Radio Communications Agencies etc.

Basically the commercial interests promise the world to get “lock-in” then either don’t deliver, or fail when put to the real test, as you’ve seen,

“Loss of comms for emergency responders in some areas is not a good look.”

And lets be honest there will be nedless deaths and other potentially worse harms resulting.

For Ham EmComm to work it requires commitment to live training excercises from both sides and that requires a big chunk of change that nobody has got, or as so eloquently put,

“We have to rely on a bunch of god-dam retirees”.

Who have their own particular issues including poor health and very low stamina.

Worse they face “professional discrimination” as many “local government” workers see them as a political “back door to job cutting” and similar whilst others see them as potentially a source of income. I linked in the past to CalFire who wanted to charge “top commercial rates” for Ham Systems to carry on using Fire-Watch and similar towers for VHF and UHF repeaters…

I hate to say it but there is “no last line of defence” because as you can see there is no “first line of defence” to start off with…

Remember that neo-con mantra,

“Don’t leave money on the table”

Well what you are seeing with these failures is because of it…

I’ve politely warned about it over the years, but it appears nobody else wants to think it through as a security or other safety issue.

So you could say as part of a “lifes work” it makes me look like a failure as well… Because I failed to get the message across the squabling of corporate “short skirts” backed by massive lobbying budgets…

Clive Robinson • February 14, 2023 12:52 AM

@ MarkH, ALL,

Re : What you see on the manifest may not represent reality.

“Those tank cars are essentially long cylinders; I know of know reason why VC would be tanked along with some other product.”

If we are talking “raw stock” or “feed stock” as the input to a manufacturing process then I like you would not expect to see VC mixed in with other chemicals…

However you have to also consider intermediate and waste products.

Have a look at how crude oil and similar gets moved around in various stages of refinment and how the remaining “waste” gets used as “bunker fuel” etc. Search for the word “condendates” and similar.

The “Waste Managment” market is without doubt one of the most attractive to “crooks” and it’s shocking what they get upto and put on manifests and the like…

We’ve seen commercial aircraft catch fire and some may have dropped off of the radar because of “fake manifest” issues…

You kind of hwve to assume the worst untill reliable information comes in otherwise. There was no reliable information when I picked up on ehat apprared to be a “suppressed story” and I’ll be upfront and say I’m still not seeing reliable information, just platitudes and half truths. I can appreciate how others might see it differently, but lets just say I’ve a lifetime of being disapointed in respect to “reliable information”.

As for “essentially long cylinders” yup and so are “gas cylindres” that explode so nicely in fires…

When you start trying to put things together you have to appriciate what the near worst case is so you can discount it towards the situational reality. All to often it’s done the other way and a bad problem can be made worse, a lot worse.

Clive Robinson • February 14, 2023 6:13 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Can I suggest you have a look at the following,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AlpZf1hpQYM

It’s from Perun and it’s titled,

“Small Drones & Loitering Munitions in Ukraine – The terrifying rise of cheap precision”

It raises and to a lesser extent answers the question about “consumer drones on the battlefield”.

Why “lesser extent” because the answers are more questions that whilst giving a direction, tend to open up new avenues to consider.

For instance a drone that costs less than an anti-aircraft munition is going to win in a war of attrition, or overwhelm attack.

So how do you deal with them? One answer is radient energy weapons, but though they might not need conventional kinetic munition, they require considerable energy supplies. With the best energy density of batteries being fractions of a percentage of that of “cordite” in the brass of a round of ammunition radient weapons are neither small nor easily maneuverable.

Currently most consumer drones work with “Continuous Radio System Control”(CRSC) for “safety” reasons. That frequently use the so called “Industrial Scientific and Medical”(ISM) or “Radio Control”(RC) bands and “Global Positioning Satellite”(GPS) navigation. This makes them “sitting ducks” for “Electronic Warfare”(EW) attack using “Consumer Off The Shelf”(COTS) products.

However with some drones now using Ham and other licensed band radio equipment outside of the frequencies the COTS-EW equipment uses it is loosing it’s effectctivness against them. Worse as I’ve mentioned several times before MEMS inertia and compass devices used on mobile phones and cameras can not be conventional EW disabled. Which means a software modification to the drone and addition of some very light weight sensors to the drones effectively renders most radient EW defences ineffective against drones unless they are of extrodinary power consumption.

But it’s more subtle, two major but less noted uses for low cost drones is “forward scouting” and “artillery targeting”. Trying to jam the signals sent back to the handlers might appear trivial, it’s most certainly not. Because the higher the frequency used the more the line of sight radio horizon issue comes into play.

Imagine if you will the drone has a small laser pointing back at it’s handler just over the crest of a hill. It does not matter how many spotlights the enemy has, how powerfull they are, or where they point them, they won’t stop the handler seeing the laser and the data it carries. Worse for the enemy those spotlights the have are all viable targets for artillery or mortar fire the drone handler can now “call in”. So a less than thousand dollar drone enables hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to be done.

As I’ve also mentioned drones can fly at upto 300meters and the “radio horizon” at that altitude is over 50km. So using drones on an auto-pilot to lift a very wideband SDR receiver that then WiFi downlinks to powerfull laptops on the ground gives a Signals Inteligence capability that was formerly only available to those who could aford the likes of Boeing’s Rivit-Joint and similar. Thus available to quite small military groups say at troop rather than brigade level. If sensibily intigrated can give position information on the enemy any time they use a radio device for battle field communications.

Likewise they can act as “flying repeaters” to? extend UHF or SHF radio equipment range to very large coverage areas (upto 10,000 Sq Km).

As such low cost or COST drones are going to shape Battlfield-2025 tactics quite significantly especialy with the ability to have them “swarm” and work in parallel with high redundency.

Obviously this will by 2030 at the lastst have had considerable knock on effectcts into Law Enforcment, and general civilian population security, control, and privacy.

Clive Robinson • February 15, 2023 4:18 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : Drone Go / No Go areas.

“iirc(badly) Don’t consumer drones have a built in ability to geofence restricted areas?”

Yes, but…

The drone has no way of implicitly knowing where ot can or can not fly, in the same way a dirt bike has no way of knowing if it can be used in any given field.

Such information has to be “built in” or “uploaded” into the drone.

If it’s not in the lookup list indide the drone then it’s not geo-fenced.

Such lists are usually not that difficult to find in embbeded software, thus taking them out or changing them would not be that dificult.

Even if encrypted in some way,

“What is made by one man, can be undone by another”

As we know from set-top consoles and electronic computer games consoles, people of considerable tenacity generally find ways around things.

Clive Robinson • February 16, 2023 7:54 AM

@ Nick Levinson, ALL,

Re : Limited number of meaningfull words.

“I’ll just guess that this or a similar problem is found with security and security-implicating software, too.”

It’s a more specialized version of the “TLA Problem”…

The latin alphabet has 26 charecters but Q is almost always followed by U and J and similar have other issues. So the set of usefull “Three Letter Acronyms”(TLA) is less than the 26^3 (17576) you would expect and many are so “overloaded” that even reading in context may not make what the TLA stands for obvious.

A more general issue was found back in the 1960’s with random password generators of 8charecters where such a tiny fraction of the output made pronouncable words such generators were basically usless. The solution was “added rules” to generate nonsense words that were atleast pronouncable by careful use of consonants and vowels.

The same problem exists with the XKCD and similar parssphrase generators using word lists. By far the majority can not be made into usable phrases without reducing the password space entropy significantly (Bit’s falling like tears onto the harsh frozen ground).

Look at it this way,

“Because humans crave order not disorder then “re-use” thus “overloading” is a necessity that can not be avoided. However anyone stupid enough to encode rules to make this easier on humans is a fundemental security failing.”

We even have a name to signify the stupidity and that it should not be done. It’s called,

“Principle of least astonishment”(POLA)

Or the older *nix variant “law of least surprise”(LOLS).

Of course ironically POLA is “overloaded” as a FLA… It can stand amoungst others for “Personal Online Assistant”(POLA) or “Politically Of Least Association”(POLA) so,

“A POLA should follow POLA and be POLA”

Clive Robinson • February 16, 2023 3:17 PM

@ modem phoneme, Winter, ALL,

Re : Reverse Polish stack languages.

“I’ve always kind of wondered if a Reverse Polish Notation approach would be o help with TeX and LaTeX (at all document levels).”

The most well known of RPN languages is probably Forth.

However the most used is almost certainly PostScript / PDF. Loosley based on Forth.

With some time ago Sun’s early “Network Window System”(NeWS), and the software on PCI I/O cards it looked like stack based languages would be atleast at the comms interworking level the way things were going to go.

Microsoft engineers however hated it and avoided it in every way they could which kind of pleased managment as they could go do the embrace and extend path of taking open standards and making them closed peopriatory tied back to MS products.

The big advantages of stack pased systems are,

1, They are memory efficient.
2, They are memory location independent without hardware support.

They are also generally very fast and can be easily threaded to run in parallel.

Which might beg the question,

“What’s not to like?”

To which the answer is,

“Nost programers can not handle RPN, even inefficiently”.

Trying to use stacks efficiently is not something most programers can get their head around or even want to.

Clive Robinson • February 18, 2023 10:47 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Re : Heart Failure

“Based upon my research of her meds, it is heart failure.”

You left the word “suspected” out of there.

For various physiological reasons the medical proffession assume heart failure is quite likely in people over 50 and near certain in those over 60 ove average or above build.

As heart failure is a known “gateway condition” any sign it might be present will cause the Drs to give various treatments for it. Because on simple population risk calculation such treatment is going to give you 5-25 years of improved life expectancy by the minimisation of risk of strokes, heart attacks, PE and DVT (evolutionarily we are still adjusting to the fact we walk upright and most of our body still wants us on all fours, having a second heart would realy be a significant improvment 😉

If you look up the incidence of heart failure in the population you will find,

1, It starts in the 30’s
2, Increases with age
3, Increases with hight
4, Increases with overhead work
5, Increases with standing up work
6, Increases with body mass (lean or lipid).

In short like wrinkles and muscle tone loss it’s a sign of “physical” rather than “temporal” aging, from the wear and tear of living.

Usually if caught early in it’s progression with a little medication and some minor life style changes heart failure is not realy an issue these days. It’s actually more of a nuisance[1] in that some of the drugs need continuous titration for optimum effect (Warfarin is one such[2]). As you have to have tests with a frequency of from once a week to once a month (though home testing is showing better quality of life outcomes and lowered consequential risk factors).

At some point Drs might recommend that a pacing or sinilar device be fitted. Some are single lead single chamber, others are the full works including de-fib for VF (which is the cause of something like eight out of ten heart related deaths outside of hospital[3]). If I had been given the choice when mine was fitted I’d have gone for the full on device that also has the extended “reveal” (logging/reporting) features. As they will pick up indicators that will be missed by ordinary “visit the Drs Office” health checkups. I had something like 15years of passing out events but even spending a week at a time in hospital on cardiac monitoring did not pick up the cause of my syncope. Eventually they put a tiny reveal device the size of half a matchstick under my skin above the heart, in what was about a 10min local anasthetic proceadure (think not much more than “chiping your pet”). They got the answer as to the cause in under a couple of months and if they had known that fifteen years before my quality of life would have been significantly better (but the tech was not there back then).

Medicine moves forward quite rapidly. Remember that the life expectancy figures are by definition “out of date”. I had to explain to a fourty year old friend that was facing a quadrupal bypass that the 20year life expectancy he looked up was incorrect for him. Firstly because it was based on the state of medicine from two decades earlier, and that back then the operation was only done on people who had about a five year life expectancy any way.

Whilst usefull drug innovation is often talked about as though it’s now over, that’s because we’ve had the easy wins. So we have moved from what you might call “basic chemistry to complex biology” to look for answers at a much finer grained level, the research and testing is thus comparatively way harder and more expensive. But as research science has moved from “in vitro” to “in vivo” we are now moving to what some call “in silico” for computer based modeling coupled with deep mining medical records by psudo-AI.

But journalists and the like realy don’t talk about how technology has made major leaps forward in diagnostic capability and thus significantly improving quality of life, as well as extending life expectancy. We now live about twice as long as we did as little as three centuries ago. Where I live the average life expectancy is getting up into the mid eighties with people getting to their hundredth birthday nolonger much more than local news if that. In fact in some part of the Western world life expectancy is rising around one year for every five or six years lived… Much of this improvment is “early catching” of illness. By definition illness does harm, the sooner you stop the illness or the harm it causes the less the damage, thus the better quality of life outcomes[4]. Take diabetes, it was once a death sentance with maybe a five year life expectancy after diagnosis, now we are catching it so early and can control it so well that we are getting reports of people apparently recovering from type II diabetes. With modern home and continuous monitoring even those with Type I can have better blood glucose control than the fitest of non diabetes sufferers. Whilst not quite in the “implantable monitoring” stage the bio-tech will probably make even type I diabetes catchable at an early enough stage for us to be able to stop the harms having negative quality of life impacts.

The same is true with other “physical age related” illnessess. Whilst a cure for baldness wrinkles and grey hair might be nice, cures or prevention for organ damage will enable us to live long enough to be able to realy moan about how those darn young wipper snapper centenarians should act their age…

[1] Due to the medical proffession knowing “life style” is an issue, they have encoraged the development of “social groups” to encorage better behaviours. Which as a friend noted did wonders for his social life and led to him meeting someone and getting married again…

[2] There are new drugs such as riveroxaban that don’t need titration, however as I found they are not risk free. Due to political issues the “INR Clinic” in my area had become not realy “fit for purpose” so my cardiologist finally persuaded me to switch to riveroxaban. Which turned out to be a near fatal mistake. Being in a relatively new family of drugs it turns out not all the kinks were known at the time. One being there is actually a “size range” if you were physically too small or to large it’s less than efective… I’m in the upper 99th percentile for hight in my generation and still hit my head in older doorways. My cardiologist had retired and for some reason I did not get red flagged under drug review by my then General Practicioner (GP) Doctor. It was only getting admitted to hospital with my cardiac output being close to terminal when standing that it got picked up… Had my pacing device had proper logging then it would have been picked up much much sooner. For all it’s nuisance issues Warfarin is a well known and well characterized drug that has been in use for over sixty years and is on prescription to atleast 12million in the US alone. I’m happy to be back on it, and if I can get past the local politics to do “home testing” I would be a lot happier.

[3] The underlying medical causes of VF are still a subject of quite intense research. The primary cause of VF is polarising of the myocardium a subject that has become more intensely studied since C19 and mRNA vaccines and cases of unexpected “Sudden Cardiac Death” being definitively found (first in Germany). Such polarising is caused by normal wave propagation effects in the heart that due to damage to the muscle get blocked in some way. Which is why the primary treatment of VF is depolarising enough of the myocardium for coordinated contractions to occur again, which is what de-fib does.

[4] There is increasing evidence that “autoimmune diseases” are actually triggered or even caused by viral infection combined with stress. If it turns out to be the case then removing the stress, virus or both would significantly improve quality of life. C19 has caused many to reevaluate “stress” in their lives and this has apparently caused some “bad” employers issues as people are not returning to stressful effectively explotative jobs. But also “long covid” much though employers and politicians wish to deny it and keep it out of sight is very real and has very significant outcomes. According to some reports it has effectively doubled the disability rate in many areas… Suggesting the link to viral infection triggering autoimmune or similar disease/illness is rather more real than some would like.

Clive Robinson • February 19, 2023 12:34 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

“I am upset at some relatives that are mad at me because I was not at hospital when they were, and are trying to blame me.”

That is actually them deflecting their own feelings of guilt onto you, it happens quite often unfortunately.

It is not helpfull and the best thing you can do is ignore it, because they are in pain.

Something else you need to be aware of, any issue with the heart almost always causes some level of mental disturbance, why is not certain but most of the frontline medical profession will tell you about it.

At it’s worst after extended heart surgery it can give rise to delusions and paranoia. So much so it’s refered to as “pump paranoia”.

It is a temporary condition that can be expected to some extent with any heart related syncope.

Having had it rather more than a few times myself over the 100+ syncope events I’ve had I know that black cloud is coming my way. But importantly I now know that it’s an illusion, and these days I do my best to work through it by trying to get other patients and staff to laugh (mainly along with but at me[1]).

The best thing you can do for your mum is be there, be chearfull reminder her of funtimes had and suggest fun times in the future, lighten the mood, “talk happy”.

They say laughter is the best medicine, maybe not for the body directly, but the mind certainly. And if the mind is happy, it generally drags the body along for the ride as well.

I can not make you any promises, nobody can, but making people happy is a gift that costs you little and gives them much. In return you get happy memories shared. Such memories are a gold without weight, that will always bring cheer and a little warmth when recalled.

More than four decades after I was orphaned, I still remember the happy times every day, I have regrets, that we did not have more happy times.

So take a piece of advice from an old rouge,

Go make more happy memories, not regrets.

[1] It happens that most nurses are a lot smaller than me, and just me walking quieter than a ghost through a doorway in search of a cup ot tea can be both scary and inadvertly intimidating. So I sing quietly and boogie to the rythum or similar even do a Michael Jackson twirl or John Travolta Night feaver pose. I also tell a group of them a little story about how when I was young I used to date a lot of women smaller than myself, and how it never realy worked out. I say to them in a low and stightly husky voice “Imagine being on a date cuddled up lovingly an arm prospectively around your shoulders, your cheek against the chest and you look up lovingly… What do you see?” I change voice to the pragmatic and say “Yup a double chin and a lot of nostril hair, and that folks is why I grew a beard” it always gets a laugh and often that delightful two hands across the mouth bright eyed giggle. I become in their eyes an old rouge raconteur with tap dancing toes abd a big bushy beard not a scary dude. Similar with the Drs, I had one laughing so much she had tears of mirth running down her face when she was not nearly bent double with laughter.

Clive Robinson • February 23, 2023 3:18 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

“or if they can snake their way around the seat blocks the bench is too short to lay on. California Hospitality.”

Not “Hospitality” but “waste of public resources”.

A friend sent me a very long list of things you can be arrested / detained / questioned for, by not just California Law Enforcment but those “rent-a-cop” types that give officious Mall-Cops a comparative good name.

Having read it I’m not sure even just sitting is actually “legal”.

Thus those benches are more grossly unatractive “art” than usefull “function” at best (a sure indicator of political camels nose if ever there was one).

Clive Robinson • February 23, 2023 4:26 PM

@ MarkH,

“might have implications for the formation of dioxins in the open-air burnoff”

As I’ve indicated dioxins tend not to form in open-air burnoff due to the oxygen level. Thus it’s what gors on behind the “flame-front” in things like BLEVE events where dioxins come up. For obvious reasons this is dificult to asses.

But as also noted chlorine in the environment in any form is highly undesirable. We know from early medical reports of people suffering symptoms similar to early WWI gas attack that chlorine or chemical molecules containing it were in the air.

Many such molecules unlike dioxin that breaks down under the shorter wavelengths of UV (thus can be destroyed if dioxin gets in drinking water) don’t break down that way and are thus quite as persistent although only a smidge less dangerous.

The jury is kind of out on just how fatal dioxin actually is, not so on other chlorine based molecules.

So we should not be having an overly narrow focus on dioxin, but a wider focus on most chlorine based molecules that can cause harm. Thus loss of well being from the short term to the longterm not just in the open environment but in plants and bodies of the creatures that injest them along the food chain etc. As well as how such chlorine contaminated living things move geographically as they move the chlorine molecules up the food chain.

Likewise in ground water etc.

Previous US State and Federal agency reports that I’ve seen give me absolutly no confidence such information will be sought, let alone investigated, or reported.

Clive Robinson • February 25, 2023 4:31 AM

@ MarkH, ALL,

Re : Prevention is Best

“enhancing detection of axle and wheel failures on freight cars.”

Is not going to prevent dangerous chlorine based chemicals and any heat or combustion byproducts getting into the environment and causing harm.

You need to do two things,

1, Stop manufacture.
2, Remove existant product safely.

To do this you first need to,

“Find an exceptable replacment that does not contain chlorine and is not harmfull to the environment or living things if heated or combusted.”

Fixing train wheel bearings will not solve these issues.

Clive Robinson • February 25, 2023 7:23 AM

Killing Return Oriented Programming attacks.

Over the years attackers have found their toe-holds into systems reduced or removed by the likes of “Adress Stack Location Reorganisation”(ASLR).

This made “Return Oriented Programming”(ROP) attacks one of the few “easier” paths in left.

Well in the “OpenBSD Journal” a post by Theo de Raadt about the problem and a proposed solution “pinsyscall(2)” has been given,

https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230222064027

It actually gives a nice clear and easy to understand explanation of ROP at a more executive level than the usuall “dive right in” How-To’s.

Clive Robinson • March 3, 2023 2:52 AM

@ MarkH, ALL,

“Just watched “The Front Fell Off””

An oldy but a goldy, slightly more contemporary is this one on QE,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j2AvU2cfXRk