Comments
SpaceLifeForm • June 30, 2023 6:26 PM
@ Clive, ALL
As I expected would happen months ago, Twiiter broke nitter.
Threadreaderapp compile function is probably broken too now.
hXXps://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/919
You can see two different stack traces but the end result in an unexpected EOF.
hXXps://nitter.net/nycsouthpaw
hXXps://nitter.poast.org/nycsouthpaw
Jon • June 30, 2023 8:08 PM
“Data in flight” vs. “Data At Rest”:
New Jersey cops must apply for a wiretap order — not just a warrant — for near-continual snooping on suspects’ Facebook accounts, according to a unanimous ruling by that US state’s Supreme Court.
hXXps://www.theregister.com/2023/06/30/new_jersey_cops_facebook_wiretap/
Seems this sort of loophole in the law is going to be exploited more and more, since all data is at rest at some point in some timeframe. J.
Godel Fishbreath • June 30, 2023 8:25 PM
Not directly related to security.
I have been impressed by a book called ‘This is how you lose a time war by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
It uses many of the discussed topics within the fictional novella, and might be of interest to your readers.
It won the Hugo and Nebula, and other awards.
lurker • June 30, 2023 8:26 PM
@Jon
“turn over access to a user’s future posts”
Objection, invokes violation of the timeline.
@lurker
Indeed, and that is one of my major objections.
I don’t have a problem with the fundamental idea that the government, in order to enforce the law, has certain powers. What does furiously piss me off, though, is that there’s no serious consequences for filing bogus warrants and wiretap orders.
So Detective Alice files whatever, and Judge Bob signs it, and off it goes. Maybe it’ll be vacated ten years from now? Who cares? Well, Charlie, who has spent those last ten years in jail because the cops themselves broke the law might care. Yes, getting exonerated is nice – not getting incarcerated the first time is better.
And even if so, Alice doesn’t care. She’s not going to jail for writing a bogus warrant, and neither is Bob.
Only Charlie has to do time, and maybe if he’s lucky he’ll get reimbursed for his time – from the taxpayers, not Alice nor Bob.
Circling back, yes, that does violate the timeline, and it was stomped upon. But there weren’t any meaningful consequences for the people who wrote it in the first place – only the guys who got stuck with it.
J.
Steve • June 30, 2023 10:09 PM
@lurker: Objection, invokes violation of the timeline.
You have violated Robot’s Rules of Order and must leave the future immediately.
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 11:53 PM
denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against multiple organizations in multiple sectors
‘https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2023/06/30/dos-and-ddos-attacks-against-multiple-sectors
–
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/twitter-now-forces-you-to-sign-in-to-view-tweets/
ResearcherZero • July 1, 2023 4:22 AM
This scenario is possible, indeed a 50 GW system consisting of three cascaded meter-long units was recently reported by Rukin and colleagues.
If operating the same system with pulsed emission, the average power to generate 10 pulses/s each of 1 microsecond in duration requires only a 1 W generator in principle. This power requirement makes a much smaller transmitting system, perhaps battery operated, more feasible. If the transmitter can produce even shorter pulses, e.g., with 10 picoseconds (ps) rise times, the range might extend from 50 m to 150 m. The Rukin system produces 170 ps pulses.
…At much closer ranges, a defined target area naturally exists in the near field of antenna because nonpropagating fields exist with field strengths that fall off rapidly in proportion to the inverse cube of the distance (1/r 3 ).
The tradeoffs between range and target area suggest that pulsed systems are more feasible than continuous-wave systems because of the number of controllable parameters in pulsed systems. They also have a smaller size, weight, and power for a given biological effect capability at range.
Operating at lower powers or dealing with attenuation by walls does not make the system ineffective. Voltage differences across tissues produce currents and affect cell function.
Voltages of < 10 V/m can stimulate neurons, and even lower amplitudes (tens of mV) combined with low pulse repetition frequencies that are matched to biologically relevant signals may cause interference. There is evidence for this interference, but it needs to be verified.
Some materials, such as metals, will strongly shield the signal, although radiofrequency energy can diffract around the edges and can still expose individuals behind the shielding, albeit at a much lower level. Common building materials provide some attenuation, depending upon thickness and material properties. Materials such as concrete will reduce the signal more than materials such as glass or drywall.
'https://media.salon.com/pdf/22-cv-674%20Final%20Response%20Package.pdf
Improving picosecond generators and mastering higher peak power levels in the picosecond range sets the groundwork for new applications in the coming years.
"This also happened with the development of powerful nanoscecond pulsed devices during the last 60 years," said Rukin.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201013111318.htm
Since 1986, Sergei N. Rukin has been with the Institute of Electrophysics, Russian Academy of Science, Ekaterinburg, Russia, and is currently the Head of the Pulsed Power Laboratory.
'https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37283303100
–
The phase shift is controlled by placing a slight time delay between signals sent to successive emitters in the array. Outside of the main beam emission direction, the beam intensity decreases. There are also sidelobes in the beam pattern because signals are periodic, but you do get a very strong beam along a specific direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
–
wave action breaking against a shore — where the action occurs
Klystron Amplifiers
A klystron uses the kinetic energy of an electron beam for the amplification of a high-frequency signal. These amplifiers make use of the transit-time effect by varying the velocity of an electron beam. They include one or more resonant cavities, which control the field around the axis of the tube. The signal of the amplifier is amplified by the energy of the electron beam and the amplified signal can be received from a cavity at the other end of the tube.
https://www.everythingrf.com/community/what-are-klystron-power-amplifiers
The term ‘klys’ comes from the stem form of a Greek verb mentioning to the wave action breaking against a shore. And the suffix ‘tron’ is the place where the action occurs. The name of this amplifier was recommended by a professor “Hermann Fränkel” in the department of classics from the Stanford University when the amplifier was under progress.
https://www.fmuser.net/content/?15405.html
The reflex klystron operates in a different mode for each additional cycle that the electrons remain in the repeller field.
https://electriciantraining.tpub.com/14183/css/The-Reflex-Klystron-Continued-96.htm
Combining the output powers from multiple phase locked high power amplifiers or oscillators is considered as an effective way to achieve higher power levels beyond 10 GW.
Interaction between an intense relativistic electron beam (IREB) and a low-power external RF pulse results in the generation of coherent and phase stabilities.
The schematic of a multiple cascaded cavities TKA: 1—cathode, 2—input cavity, 3—second bunching cavity, 4—third bunching cavity, 5—output cavity.
https://www.mdpi.com/electronics/electronics-10-01284/article_deploy/html/images/electronics-10-01284-g001.png
(the size of TKA is noticeably larger compared to other HPM oscillators, which requires large magnetic coil and huge energy consumption)
Triaxial Klystron Amplifier
"The design of traditional KW-level klystrons proposes several methods, such as multiple cascaded bunching cavities, long drift tube length, and a second harmonic cavity, to bunch electrons as soon as possible and achieve high-efficiency as a result. According to the design of traditional KW-level klystrons, it is clear that deep modulation of the electron beam is essential for a high microwave conversion efficiency. Considering the particularity of TKAs, we choose multiple cascaded bunching cavities to interact with the electron beams to obtain deeply clustered electrons."
'https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/11/1284
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 6:27 AM
@ Bruce,
Re : Not quite a squid but it has dreams,
https://newatlas.com/biology/octopus-dream-rem-sleep-cuttlefish/
&ers • July 1, 2023 11:28 AM
@Clive @SLF @ALL
hxxps://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
While computers have become an order of magnitude faster,
modern incompetent developers and coding technique fills
that gap fast. Not to mention modern web, that DEMANDS
latest ( read = buggy, crashing and insecure ) browser,
javascript, https etc.
Just one example – i had a near 700 day system update with
pre-quantum FireFox. Over that time not a single crash.
True, i can’t access all the sites with that browser any more,
constant “no cypher overlap” error.
At the same time constant crashes and lockups with the
latest Firefox. Exactly the same machine, exactly the same OS.
This shows perfectly how coding quality went down to toilet.
And yet at the same time all those idiotic initiatives like
“https everywhere” force us to use buggy and crashing browsers.
Just like this site. When the people learn eventually? Forcing
from http to https isn’t a sign that you are high level information
security and cryptography expert. This is a sign of utmost stupidity.
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 11:30 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Nice to hear from you, I hope things are heading in a better direction?
With regards,
“As I expected would happen months ago…”
Yes it was not exactly unexpected, though I did expect it to have happend at the latest by mid-May the way things were going.
So I’m not entirely sure it’s the ManChild Hellon Rusk throwing the toys out of the pram on this currently.
His aim is to get money in by “building the brand” in various ways. If that means letting certain others that can not be squeezed for money, but are increasing the presence/utility of the service thus the brand name value, be/alone untill they can be replaced then I can see him living with them.
However someone presumably focused only on advertising cash would throw away such utility as it will not in the short term bring in extra advertising cash (even though it won’t realistically harm existing revenue).
It’s difficult to gauge “What next” and that is causing a lot of instability, thus jitteryness in the online advertising market. Add in the recent news of Google committing wholesale rippoffs of 2/3rds of advertisers via YouTube is not making the market any more stable.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/google_trueview_skepticism/
If you remember I’ve been saying that the online ads market is a scam designed to fleece advertisers of cash for quite some time now. I’ve also indicated I think it is a “bubble market” that could quickly turn into a “Black Tulip bulb market” with very little push. Especially if advertisers started moving back to more traditional and better understood and significantly more verifiable advertising systems, especially if a recession gains traction.
Well it has and yes money is being pulled from online advertising and redirected,
“Will the online advertising bubble burst, pop, or deflate?”
Is a question some are asking along with,
“How soon?”
It should be clear that Alphabet / Google / YouTube are getting extrodinarily desperate over online advertising, and in the process not just “driving eyeballs away”. Some contentent providers have down graded their input into YouTube into third place behind other outlets that give better bang and buck.
Have a look at the EEVblog, Dave has been fairly open with the fact other platforms are a way better deal for not just him but others…
So Google / YouTube need the news of the overly obvious advertising frauds, they should have stopped ages ago, becoming so public like most need a hole in the back of the head, even if it is what you would expect immediately under a pony tail…
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • July 1, 2023 3:27 PM
Event from 22 June to 25 June 2023, held in Kyiv, Ukraine
Mystetskyi Arsenal, the 11th Book Arsenal, Lecture – itxxS://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8pxxXmFFPg
Timothy Synder, a lecture, “Why Freedom Matters More than Everything”
Synopsis:
Freedom has to be the highest value, it enables other values.
Freedom is a meta-value. Values are real, just as real as objects. When a dam breaks, not just as objects but as experiences. Claims talking of freedom, who knows what good and maybe nothing is good as seen in Russian political expressions. Not sure if anything is true or if there are values and leads to a path without freedom. Assures us that nothing really matters but force.
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 3:30 PM
@ Philip,
“there is a dumb meme going around claiming how any Wi-Fi router can be used to image people inside a room”
It has been the subject of searious and somewhat successful research.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00250
It produces “wireframe poses” in near real time.
So it also depends on what you mean by “image” but broadly speaking yes you can do it, it’s bot magic or ScFi, not realy even science but engineering, and we’ve known how to do most of it for decades, and have realy only waiting for techbology to catch up.
There is earlier work that used “doppler radar” effects and later this was used with “adaptive Digital Signal Processing”(aDSP) rather than “Artificial Inteligence”(AI) to get resolution down to hand gestures (though they are broadly the same and use the same algorithms and error functions[1]).
As a rough rule of thumb do not expect the resulting image resolution to be more than 1/16th of the wavelength (lambda) of the signal in use.
So for 2.4GHz lambda is 0.125meters say 12cm. Thus resolution could be got down towards 0.78125cm which is about the width of an adult male finger. Human vision however on average gives 1mm at 2meter (which is why newspapers used to use small dots of black ink to get various shades and contrasts of grey).
[1] I’ve been talking to people in the broadcast industry about doing “audio processing” using AI rather than aDSP as it’s a better way to find weights in multiband systems and can run on the likes of a Raspberry Pi. It surprises many to learn that “audio processing” started in the Amature Radio community back in the post war era to get “more punch without the splatter” with “Single Side Band Suppressed Carrier”(SSB-SC) transmissions to get three or more times “the inteligable range” of simple Plate Modulated “Amplitude Modulation”(AM) systems. Crudely they used the slope on early semiconductor junctions as a “limiter” to crudely approximate a sigmoid or similar function. Something that has been “re-invented” for “Complex Neural Networks” that use “Computing In Memory”(CIM) to gain high levels of parallism and reduce bottlenecks in conventional computer architectures,
name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons • July 1, 2023 3:36 PM
@Phillip
Yes, but it is not as simple as might seem. One, a router can act as a beacon, a source that can be differentiated and used asboth a timing base (if wanting to track moving objects) and can indicate reflective surfaces (topology). There have been some very interesting ways to achieve simple positional radar and three dimensional spatial mappings. But in most cases you’ll need more than one device to accomplish anything useful.
Won’t go into details here–especially as Clive can give a more thorough and thoughtful explanation. My explaining leaves a lot to be desired.
&ers • July 1, 2023 3:37 PM
@Clive @SLF @ALL
Some of you most surely remember “massive cyberattack”
against Russian Federal Air Transport Agency
hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Air_Transport_Agency
hxxps://www.aviation24.be/miscellaneous/russo-ukrainian-war/powerful-cyber-attack-on-russias-civil-aviation-authority-servers-no-more-data-nor-back-up/
Turns out it was an inside job of one person, Ukrainian girl.
In Russian:
hxxps://theins.ru/news/262579
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 4:11 PM
@ Jon, lurker,
Re : In flight definition
“Seems this sort of loophole in the law is going to be exploited more and more, since all data is at rest at some point in some timeframe.”
It’s not a “loophole” it’s someone trying to “create a crack” by bending rules way beyond their “plastic limits”. This is becoming a more common tactic and should be stommped on hard. If judges threw them in the courthouse jail with a book on law to read for 24hours on contempt charges and a “three strikes and out” on proffessional practice licence it might curb their nonsense.
The rules for communications over a wire go back a long way and the “in flight” rule is anything between a speakers mouth and a recipients ear was out of bounds as it was an unlawful “wire tap”.
Some idiot stretched the rules with acoustic bugs, mounted in the phone handset back in WWII and after…
And so the stretching goes on untill it not only cracks but gets broken.
For instance encrypted data on a memory device in a locked safe was argued as being “in plain sight” (to a locksmith…).
You might remember the FBI going after people in a hotel room for illegal gambling… They, ordered the hotel to interupt the sports feed to the room, then sent in a well briefed “civilian” technician who then told an FBI agent what he had seen thus the agent had “probable cause” that he would not have had any other way.
This is the sort of very crooked behaviour that goes on all the time by law enforcment and DA’s. So much so that a Federal Judge who rejected an application, and was questioned by the legal representative with ‘You think the FBI are lying?’ responded publically that he knew the FBI deliberately lie in court all the time and not just disbelievably but blatantly so…
In all honesty, if you implement a “results based” legislative system where people are elected or promoted on sensationalism what do you realy expect to happen?
Fix the system, fix the problem. The trouble is how do you slay the resident dinosaurs, who continue to “P155 in the drinking water”, apparently they have “rights” not to have their feelings hurt…
&ers • July 1, 2023 5:50 PM
@Clive @SLF @ALL
Seems i’m saved.
hxxp://frogfind.com/read.php?a=https://www.schneier.com/
That’s the way it should be!
vas pup • July 1, 2023 5:57 PM
@ALL summer security
Fact check: 4 claims about sunscreen +++
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-4-claims-about-sunscreen/a-66052653
“Differences between filters
The main difference
between mineral and chemical filters is how they deal with the sun’s rays.
Mineral sunscreens contain titanium dioxide or zinc oxide to form a barrier on the skin that reflects ultraviolet, or UV, light. They do not absorb into the skin and therefore often leave a chalky, white layer on the skin when applied.
Currently, there is no scientific evidence that mineral sunscreens contain carcinogenic substances.
However, many people prefer to use chemical sunscreens because they are almost invisible on the skin.
These creams need to be reapplied every few hours as they wear off more quickly.
They contain chemical substances that change their chemical structure and are absorbed by the skin, thus warding off sun damage.
Again, there is no scientific evidence that chemical sunscreens contain substances that are carcinogenic to humans.
According to Schlossberger, the reason there is no vitamin D deficiency from sunscreen use is that it does not block 100% of UVB rays (see infographic). The remaining percentage that still gets through is enough to maintain vitamin D levels, she says.
Dermatology distinguishes between six different skin types: Skin type one means, for example, that a person’s skin is particularly sensitive to the sun. Skin type six, meanwhile, is described as “black skin” that is highly pigmented and significantly less sensitive. So the darker the skin type, the longer a person can stay in the sun without burning.
As dermatologist Hope Mitchell tells DW, “we know that highly pigmented skin has a natural sun protection factor of about 13.” An additional sun protection factor of 30 keeps out a higher percentage of ultraviolet rays, she further explains.
Also, according to the American Academy of Dermatology, SPF 30 is the minimum that all people should apply, regardless of their skin tone.
According to the dermatologist, one can achieve a better skin repair mechanism through a better diet — but not build up sun protection.
Carrots are said to have a positive effect. The consumer center in South Tyrol
explains that beta-carotene contributes “as well as other carotenoids, vitamins (especially C and E) and trace elements (especially selenium), to prevent or repair skin damage by UV radiation.”
vas pup • July 1, 2023 6:09 PM
Stop mosquitoes — with an ‘armor’ made of cream +++
https://www.dw.com/en/stop-mosquitoes-with-an-armor-made-of-cream/audio-66081139
9 min
“Mosquito haters, rejoice: Researchers in Israel have created an insect repellant made of cellulose (plant compounds) that could save lives and make summer nights way more enjoyable.”
For SOFs very important to have such repellent.
vas pup • July 1, 2023 6:39 PM
GPT-3 informs and disinforms us better
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230628195813.htm
“Compared to humans, artificial intelligence (AI) language models produce accurate tweets that are easier to understand and tweets containing disinformation that are harder to detect, according to a recent study. While these results can be leveraged to create more effective information campaigns, they also highlight the need to mitigate the risks connected to AI.
On the one hand, GPT-3 demonstrated the ability to generate accurate and, compared to tweets from real Twitter users, more easily comprehensible information. However, the researchers also discovered that the AI language model had an unsettling knack for
producing highly persuasive disinformation. In a concerning twist, participants were unable to reliably differentiate between tweets created by GPT-3 and those written by
real Twitter users. “Our study reveals the power of AI to both inform and mislead, raising critical questions about the future of information ecosystems,” says Federico Germani.
These findings suggest that information campaigns created by GPT-3, based on well-structured prompts and evaluated by trained humans, would prove more effective for instance in a public health crisis which requires fast and clear communication to the
public.
=> The findings also raise significant concerns regarding the threat of AI perpetuating disinformation, particularly in the context of the rapid and widespread
dissemination of misinformation and disinformation during a crisis or public health event. The study reveals that AI-powered systems could be exploited to generate large-
scale disinformation campaigns on potentially any topic, jeopardizing not only public health but also the integrity of information ecosystems vital for functioning democracies.
“The findings underscore the critical importance of =>proactive regulation to mitigate the potential harm caused by AI-driven disinformation campaigns,” says Nikola Biller-Andorno. “Recognizing the risks associated with AI-generated disinformation is crucial for safeguarding public health and maintaining a robust and trustworthy information ecosystem in the digital age.”
!!!The study adhered to open science best practices throughout the entire pipeline, from pre-registration to dissemination.”
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 7:20 PM
@ &ers, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : Army of one attack.
“Turns out it was an inside job of one person…”
Whilst it is often an insider of someform that enables an attack of an organisation to happen (phishing for instance). It is always just one person who starts the attack with the press of just one key… Just like the first domino to topple.
The actual attack is then carried out by idiot savant “insiders”. That is the attack is a message sent to one or more computers inside the organisation. The computers then treat the message as a set of instructions to follow and the dominos topple.
So logically your organisation can only be attacked if,
1, It can be reached by an attackers message.
2, Your computers follow the instructions in the message.
Stop either happening and the attack never starts.
The first is a lot easier to achieve than the latter[1].
Why?
Because the people who develop commercial software, actively enable the “instruction following” behaviour as a “feature”.
Think back to the first “Word Macro Virus” released by a MicroSoft insider as a “Proof of Concept”(PoC) on a software update CD…
It appears they hoped we would learn not to be so stupid…
Well their employer positively reveled in making all the software they developed “instruction following” to any message, in one way or another. Worse they decreed such messages should be hidden from the user so they could be more productive… So here we are in a world of hurt, were a single person with just a little bit of “right” knowledge can raise an army of idiot savants around the world in less time than it takes the day to start… Or fell an organisation in less time than it takes a kettle to boil…
[1] If you want to protect an organisation the easiest way to do so is to have nothing of consequence to attack, or prevent attacks spreading, but importantly avoid any activity that will cause a cascade failure. Segregation is applying the principle of “isolation” which addresses all three points. So the question of importance is,
“How far do you segregate?”
Thirty years ago perimiter security started being the thing as the two types of Firewall were combined. It was almost immediately recognised as being a very bad idea, but the only way to go due to resource limitations… Prior to that, Unix systems worked securely and virtually independebtly of each other by being “Bastion Hosts” that were both “hardened” and “stand alone” even when on a LAN not a WAN. Thus they were effectivly segregated about as far as you can go. C19 Lockdown has highlighted in oh so many ways that perimiter security is not just bad, but unsupportable and mostly pointless. The main cause of cascade failure in ICTsec is the “Authority hierarchies” like Active Directory etc. Hierarchies accumulate power at the top which makes them attractive to both their owners and any attackers be they human or machine. If you want security then each and every computer has to be not just secure but segregated from all others to some degree. That is it should have no trust relationships with other computers. Trust relationships are that weakness in the spine where the knife goes in so easily and the organisation is at best paralysed at worse dead.
modem phonemes • July 1, 2023 7:52 PM
@ Clive Robinson
The main cause of cascade failure in ICTsec is the “Authority hierarchies” like Active Directory etc. Hierarchies accumulate power at the top which makes them attractive to both their owners and any attackers be they human or machine. If you want security then each and every computer has to be not just secure but segregated from all others to some degree.
This is like the principle of subsidiarity – that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority – which provides for all “social structures” (of which computer systems are an instance), a way to analyze and synthesize for efficiency, robustness, and maximal freedom of all parts.
&ers • July 1, 2023 7:53 PM
@Clive,
Microsoft take on segregation.
hxxps://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-recommends-using-a-separate-device-for-administrative-tasks/
lurker • July 1, 2023 8:32 PM
@Clive Robinson, ResearcherZero, &nders
segregation, how far?
I watched the ccc-gpn21 video on perimeter security linked by @RZ
and came away with message that I shouldn’t waste time and resources mapping and segregating my network, when most of the users are on O365 which has O-Auth or equivalent. So, why should I trust O365 (or AWS, or …)?
“Trust relationships are that weakness in the spine where the knife goes in so easily …”
A quick skim through @&nders’ zdnet article shows some eminently sensible advice from Redmond, but I’ll have to sit down later and try to find any holes …
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 10:15 PM
@ &ers, ALL,
With regards “frogfind” it does https as well,
So you could in theory use it as a very poorman’s https tunnel which is all a lot of people need out of a VPN anyway.
Oh and yes “frogfind.com” is that little bit easier and less risky to type than “duckduckgo.com”
It could prove to be an interesting little tool to keep in the IT emergancy toolkit we should all carry in our heads 😉
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 11:04 PM
@ modem phonemes, &ers
Re : Segregate to issolate.
“This is like the principle of subsidiarity”
Yes, but if I went around saying that people would think I had a major in sociology 😉
More seriously a “Zero Trust Model” is what should be aimed for where there is no federation of equals, and every conputer is effectively an island in hostile waters.
“Microsoft take on segregation.”
Beware the “embrace and extend” merchants of doom, that like a cancer spread…
When you examine the advice, it’s not realy solving the provlem just shifting the goal posts. The fundemental issue of an authority hierarchy still remains and that is the root of a cascade failure.
However the use of “roles” is something I’ve been banging on about for years… The place I’d most like to bang it into as a first step is the heads of web browser developers, preferably using an iron rod rather than a “two-b-four” it might make a better impression.
Microsoft has a very vested interest in maintaining hierarchies and as such their systems will always be vulnerable to cascade failures of security.
<
blockquote>”… came away with message that I shouldn’t waste time and resources mapping and segregating my network, when most of the users are on O365 which has O-Auth or equivalent.”
<
blockquote>
What you should actually be doing is “getting users out of your network”… Look at it this way, since C19 lockdown they are working from home / coffee shop / library etc to Microsoft’s cloud. Why on earth should they VPN into your network just to route out to Microsoft?
You are taking on two lots of needles traffic, and encryption, as well as turning your network into a single point of failure for all employees… In short it’s the sort of network design thinking of a person who can’t think, only follow way out of date recipies.
“So, why should I trust O365 (or AWS, or …)?”
I would say “don’t trust” but with Microsoft via Win 11 pushing if not forcing everyone they can to have an account on Microsoft Servers that is way more invasive of “Privacy” than you might think…
Yes there are ways to “not trust Microsoft” but history shows that the next “patch tuesday” will dorce you back to having a MS-finger where you don’t want it you have a real problem…
That is to get security updates, you have to swallow the Microsoft hook that will eviscerate your privacy.
There are only two work arounds,
1, Don’t go online.
2, Don’t use Microsoft.
Or preferably save yourself some trouble and do both.
I realise that is not possible for many to “divest of MS” but Microsoft see themselves as having fallen behind the Walled Gardens and Data rape models of Apple and Google, so are “pushing to catch up” and as we know from many past behaviours, Microsoft will push way way beyond anyone else, untill some court hits them with a billion dollars a day fine for pushing their luck.
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 11:21 PM
@ lurker,
Sorry, part of my above was answering you but with regards,
“So, why should I trust O365 (or AWS, or …)?”
You should not… speaking of which, have you seen,
Phillip • July 1, 2023 11:55 PM
@ResearcherZero
@Clive Robinson
@name.withheld.for.obvious.reasons
I am away from my workstation and this is an information-rich forum. I am no double-E, though I do have a misbegotten radar book around somewhere. Mostly, I hope to furnish a toehold in this focus. See you soon.
SpaceLifeForm • July 2, 2023 2:39 AM
@ Clive, ALL
Re: #TwitterImplosion
“He’s dead, Jim”
Just to give you an update if you have not read elsewhere.
For the users, just reading for a few minutes will get them rate-limited, and then they can not make a post.
Users with many thousands of followers CAN NOT POST because they were READING.
So, needless to say, people are leaving.
Bluesky (which requires an invite to sign up), has suspended new account signups. Load.
Mastodon.social (the largest instance in terms of users) is getting slow and some existing users are taking a break because of response time issues. They are thinking it will get better tomorrow.
I’ve got news for them, it has just started.
The irony is that Elmo pulled this move at just the wrong or right time.
For, in the US, this is a long weekend for the Independence Day Holiday where a lot of people have time off for the next few days.
So, now, they can declare their independence from twitter, create an account on #Mastodon, and start learning how it works.
I recommend to anyone reading here, to use the infosec.exchange instance instead of the default mastodon.social instance. I am on infosec.exchange and it is very well run by jerry. It’s taking many dollars a month in hosting costs to run it, plus donating numerous hours of his time. It takes a lot of cores and servers to make it scale. But the response time can be incredible. Someone on another instance, but in same datacentre, we can interact in seconds over 8 timezones, albeit late night in US. He in is Germany.
Someone (‘https://hcommons.social/@Benfell) earlier managed to catch the hashtags that were trending on twitter before they got rate-limited themselves. To Wit:
#RIPTwitter is trending in the U.S. with #RateLimitExceeded and #GoodbyeTwitter.
Clive Robinson • July 2, 2023 4:17 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : He’s dead Jim but not as we know it….
“I’ve got news for them, it has just started.”
Yup a “Night of the living dead” zombie fest is sure to be happening.
First Hellon Rusk “put the bite on” various people who quickly sickened and so it’s gone around for one reason or another…
And let us be honest every one feels they have the right to complain when they see others intruding on what they had and are thus in effect “breaking their rice bowls”…
Any “rate limiting” will lead to complaints, thus harder rate limiting thus more complaints and round and round it goes. Like the start of tornado season, the least bit of depression in the wrong place and a storm follows of rapidly increasing magnitide.
“The irony is that Elmo pulled this move at just the wrong or right time.”
But is it the ManChild at the helm?
That is who’s in the wheel house, and who’s the boy standing on the burning deck playing with fire crackers?
Hellon Rusk certainly feels like the deck prancer, even though he’s been less noisy of late, those fireworks are going off fast and furious. But they don’t set the course or speed of RMS Twitter, that is fast heading for Newflouder land, but will it be rocks or ice that rip it assunder?
We will have to wait and see…
FA • July 2, 2023 5:57 AM
@Clive
“audio processing” started in the Amature Radio community back in the post war era …
Simply not true. It was common practice pre-war for AM broadcasting and used also for optical film sound recording.
See for example
‘https://funkwerkes.com/web/wp-content/techdocs/Western_Electric/WE_110-A_man.pdf
Leon Theremin • July 2, 2023 8:19 AM
@Phillip
Humanity is already under electromagnetic surveillance and sabotage and our science and tech is hindered so we can’t defend ourselves.
Religion is organized fraud to prevent scientific progress, but attacks with radiation are done to scientists also.
Read my posts.
Clive Robinson • July 2, 2023 9:14 AM
@ FA,
“Simply not true.”
Oh dear here we go again…
Did you look at and understand the circuit diagram in the example you give? Did you read and understand the technical description?
I suspect not.
The device you use as an example is not in any way audio processor in the modern parlance it’s just a “line limiter”. I can give you even earlier circuits than that, which do similar using light bulbs…
Which also begs the question,
“Do you know the difference between limiters, clippers and processors?”
Something tells me you do not.
A limiter traditionally is to limit “power” thus harm “on a circuit” and at one point used nonlinear material effects that changed the effective resistance dependent on temprature. A dimmly glowing filiment lightbulb is fairly good at this. The advantage of such devices is that they were slow and their characteristics behaved within reason linearly with fast signal voltages, thus did not produce “splatter” and other harmonic issues.
A clipper or clamp traditionally are used to limit excessive voltage excursion “on a circuit” and generally work faster than the rise time on the signal. If unipolar it’s called a clamp, if bipolar a clipper. They can use thermoresistive effects if the device is fast enough, but with the copper oxide disc rectifier stacks they used nonlinear voltage current effects. Whilst fast ebough to prevent harm they produced “splatter” and harmonics in considerable quantities as a side effect. Thus requiring sharp filters to follow, and in some circuits the out of band energy is sent to a matched load to prevent issues with reflected signals due to wildly varying impedence with frequency. One of the problems with a filter that follows a clipper is that if you filter a square wave to just it’s fundemental frequency, the result is the peak voltage is higher…
Neither a limiter or clipper/clamp are processors, they are “fixed point of opperation” mainly “protective” devices.
Processors however act on the signal dynamically. In general this requires some form of “following” or “feedback” mechanism. I could –and have– write enough for a chapter or book on the subject of such processors and the required control loops for gain, amplitude, and phase adjustment.
Something tells me you are now going to go scrabbling online via search engines or maybe books in a good quality library.
A sugestion for you,
Title : Radio Handbook
Author : Willian I. Orr (W6SAI)
Copyright : Editors and Engineers Ltd
You can find many editions of it online. The “seventeenth” from 1967 is particularly good as it was at the start of the transition from valves/tubes to transistors. It has several sections covering many pages on clippers and limiters. But also in the SSB chapter the history of feedback audio processing upto that point via single and multi band ALC circuits (that a decade later became known as a VOGAD and was popping up in various audio systems such as Moog Synthesizers etc and a decade or so after that fun system that gave the “now please turn me over” on ELO’s “Mr Blue Sky” record).
You can carry on trying to find fault with what I say, it’s clearly what you live for by your commenting history over the past few years…
But I suppose you have to have a hobby no matter how sad instead of a shed on an alotment to sit in with friends sharing a thermos of tea and “putting the world to rights”…
&ers • July 2, 2023 10:32 AM
@SpaceLifeForm @Clive @ALL
Luckily week ago when there was that Prigozhin / Wagner
coup attempt, Twitter sources were wide open and it was
possible to monitor events in real time. I stayed up all
the night because those event would set the future. While
Putin is evil, Prigozhin is a million time worse. Imagine
mercenaries with nukes. Mercenaries who have no conscience
or moral.
Now i see that Twitter is closed down here – without account
i can’t even see a single post.
Oh, and about Prigozhin / Wagner IT side & infrastructure:
hxxps://dossier.center/prig-it/
This is in Russian, but AI has become very good in translating.
RuEng and EngRu translation directions are already very good,
sometimes there are errors in specific terms, those needs to be
corrected manually. But otherwise things like DeepL are already
very, very good.
&ers • July 2, 2023 10:52 AM
@lurker
There was time when companies struggled to put EVERYTHING
into Active Directory. I didn’t like it back then and i
don’t like it now either.
Now i see the opposite movement – companies, that understand
the information security principles, one by one started removing
their high value assets away from AD and operate them separately
& independently.
This all initially started when Novell introduced NDS (Novell Directory
Service). Different sources claim that Novell’s biggest mistake
was slow on introducing TCP/IP and using still IPX and sticking
with text based administration utilities (instead of Windows ones).
My personal opinion here is that both claims are not true – i was
perfectly happy with IPX, it was fast as hell an provided me the
segregation i needed. Also – text based utilities as syscon were
blasting fast. Secondly – i didn’t needed NDS that Novell
was pushing very aggressively. Novell priced Netware 4.x similarly
to 3.12 hoping people would switch. I think THIS was Novell’s biggest
mistake because despite of several servers i didn’t need NDS and already
back then i did saw the security problems it will introduce.
So my advice to you – remove any high value stuff out of AD and manage
them separately, isolated with own limited users. Yes, initially it
requires some work to manage separate user lists separately, but believe
me, later you will be glad that you did it. Now each of your high value
system is separated fortress of its own, build non-standard traps and
honey pots around them and you’ll manage. Incidents will happen you can’t
avoid them (search the bear example i’ve provided here), but your main
task is now to discover them ASAP. Most companies find out break-in in
6..7 months, your task is to reduce it to one week. Use your imagination.
Winter • July 2, 2023 11:57 AM
@ers
Now i see that Twitter is closed down here – without account
i can’t even see a single post.
Telegram.org? That is where these people have their own channels. You might need a strong stomach if you go for the source.
While Putin is evil, Prigozhin is a million time worse.
Prigozhin is more bragging about his crimes than is Putin. I do not know whether he is much worse than Путин-отравитель.
&ers • July 2, 2023 1:20 PM
@Winter
“I do not know whether he is much worse than Путин-отравитель.”
He is.
Putin has been with the world leaders in the same room, he was respected,
accepted and in his dreams he wants to reach back that status again.
Of course after taking Ukraine, Baltics etc.
This single dream prevents him launching direct nuclear attack. After
that there’s no returning back. This is his Rubicon. Crimea, Ukraine,
Baltics – those are all expendable and forgettable. West will accept
this as just a collateral damage. But not the direct nuclear attack.
Prigozhin was never on the same level as Putin. Never been with the
world leaders in the same room. Considering the rude language and manners
he will be never accepted too. So he has no dreams and nothing to lose.
He is criminal and mercenary and has no problem launching the nuclear
attack.
With Putin we have at least some stability. With Prigozhin…well,
he is trigger happy maniac who enjoys killing people with sledge hammer.
You must understand Russian/Soviet criminal hierarchy to really comprehend all this.
For a start:
hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law
Clive Robinson • July 2, 2023 2:26 PM
@ &ers, Winter,
Re : Red lines are figments
“West will accept
this as just a collateral damage. But not the direct nuclear attack.”
Sadly not true. As I’ve mentioned before back in the 1980’s the US military used to joke about London and similar as “Ash City” because the plan was to alow Russian nukes to turn them into piles of rubble that glowed in the dark. It was viewed that every nuke that fell on Europe / UK was one less to be brought down or land on the US. To do this “bait targets” were established in Europe and the UK, which effectively were there to force the Russian hand. The same policy was ment for Canada but did not work as well for various reasons.
The policy of put weapons etc sites in NATO countries to act as targets Russia would have to nuke is still active. And I expect it to remain an active policy long after I’m dead (hopefully of extream old age).
You can see similar policy being put ib place around China in the Soith China seas and West Pacific nations.
It’s known for instance that China has hypersonic non balistic path / cruise missiles that would turn Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc to radioactive dust bowls in less time than it would take to get anti-missile systems operational.
It’s one of the reasons the US is trying to get their high tech production to the US so that these nations can become sacrificial targets.
The Taiwanese Government in particular are unlikely to acquiesce to this because they know, as long as they keep the high tech the US military need out of the US, then it’s in the US interest bot to sacrifice them…
The UK on the other hand have politicians who are not at all smart in this respect… Thus we are going to get used for placing new sacrificial targets…
As will any other European nation who’s politicians are as dumb as a bag of rocks.
MarkH • July 2, 2023 3:29 PM
In case you missed it …
About two weeks ago, Russia’s Duma (parliament) commanded the country’s scientists to find out how to create genetic weapons against Anglo-Saxons.
I just saw the news from a Russian friend’s Facebook page.
Is this a parody? Typical Russian bluster? Further evidence of societal collapse? All of the above?
SpaceLifeForm • July 2, 2023 5:28 PM
@ &ers, Clive, ALL
re: #TwitterImplosion
The rate-limiting is so bad, that people can not post if they read their timeline.
Scrolling up and down costs against the quota even if they are posts you just read.
I guess Elmo finally understood that outbound bandwidth costs add up.
So, by rate limiting, he thinks that he will reduce those bandwidth costs.
He dpes not understand that the network traffic is 98% read actions driven by the users.
So, when the users get rate limited, and can not even read, then why would any advertisers want to pay for ads when few will be seen due to lack of eyeballs?
Elmo is his own circular firing squad.
It gets better. The browser client javascript can loop on getting a 429, because it just continues to retry, creating a self-DDoS on the servers.
This is exactly the kind of problem one should expect when you fire all of your institutional knowledge.
Clive Robinson • July 2, 2023 6:35 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm, &ers, ALL,
“This is exactly the kind of problem one should expect when you fire all of your institutional knowledge.”
Have you had a look at YouTube recently?
They are so desperate to push junk adverts that they are breaking videos badly.
If you are doing an educational vid where you put up say a graph and say a few words, pause naturally for it to sink in with the viewer befor making your next point the Dumbois at Google slap an advert in thinking it’s a scene break or some such nonsense, totally destroying the educational value…
I suspect YouTube is rapidly followong Twitter down the Dumbois pan washed away with half a pint of the yellow fluid…
Something tells me “The upstream money supply” is not what it was and the things are drying up as the growth turns downwards. The fact that there are indicators that 2/3rds to 3/4rs of YouTube adds are not actually being seen and YouTube knew it and did nothing about it has not endered them to advertisers…
The question is,
“Burst, deflate, shrivel, which is the Internet ads bubble going to do?”
But likewise the crypto-coin and blockchain startup VC faux-market has died. Web 3 with NFT’s and other “Smart nonsense” startup never got going. As for the next VC White Whale of startups AI appears to have stuttered and coughed out.
Some claim the only thing happening in the US Economy growth activity wise was these faux information-markets… Which as they appear to have stalled… If true then interesting times ahead as those share certificates become worth less than pre-dampend toilet tissue…
Ted • July 2, 2023 7:20 PM
@SpaceLifeForm, Clive, All
AI and Math. I should have guessed the two fields were mingling. It feels like AI is showing up under every stone.
There’s a new open-source ‘playground’ called LeanDojo that provides LLM-based theorem provers developed by researchers from NVIDIAAI and Caltech among others.
One senior AI scientist proposed the idea that math will be the first scientific discipline to see major breakthroughs enabled by AI, in part because math does not require physical experiments (or rely on empirical results) like biology and medicine.
A celebrated mathematician predicted that AI will be a trustworthy co-author in mathematical research by 2026, when combined with search and symbolic math tools.
It breaks my heart that I discovered many subsequent links on this research via tweets. I hope people are figuring out how to migrate when/if it becomes necessary.
modem phonemes • July 3, 2023 1:57 AM
@Ted
AI and Math
If you are interested in this area, would not the personal or institutional websites of the researchers involved provide better resources than Twitter etc (even if these “social” platforms were working) ?
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2023 2:30 AM
@ Ted,
Re : AI and work.
“One senior AI scientist proposed the idea that math will be the first scientific discipline to see major breakthroughs enabled by AI, in part because math does not require physical experiments (or rely on empirical results) like biology and medicine.”
Whilst it might hit maths as,an academic endeavor…
I expect a lot of engineering will get hit hard, think of the effect CAD/CAM tools had with humans in the driving seat. Now put an AI system between the human and the CAD/CAM.
So next-gen cars and the like will need less and less skilled staff. And the inate skills picked up by those learning the proffession that move things forward by innovation will probably be lost.
The same for architecture and fashion design and much else where the “creative flare” touches physical objects.
AI will be an “Enabler to the known” but will it realy be an “Innovator into the unknown” probably not.
Do you remember those books when you were very young with people split into three pieces such that a child could flip the segments to come up with different combinations of clothes?
Well that’s what AI will give you a book with a billion segmented pages randomly selected and fed through a set of filtering rules, and you just know what will happen…
If you thought comedian Sacha Baron Cohen –brother of composer Erran Baron Cohen and cousins filmmaker Ash, playwright Dan and Cambridge psychologist Prof. Sir Simon Baron Cohen– as his infamous character Borat in “mankini” made to much of a splash… Consider what a bad idea a “mankini for women” designed by an AI might turn out to be like… Only you don’t. I don’t know if it was AI’d but it has the hallmarks of such “flip-book” design,
Now imagine what AI could do for all those “Dragon’s Den” Wanabes?
Because that’s just one thing the current crop of AI’s will give us “bad taste on steroids”.
Ted • July 3, 2023 3:54 AM
@modem phonemes
would not the personal or institutional websites of the researchers involved provide better resources than Twitter etc
Wow, yeah, that’s a good question. I had actually started to look into a few links, events, and people who were mentioned in the article.
For example, the article linked to Michael Harris’ “Silicon Reckoner” Substack, which I perused. The Columbia U prof noted that a speaker from Booz Allen Hamilton was at an “AI to Assist Mathematical Reasoning” workshop, and had some thoughts. I briefly scanned his Substack, but didn’t see anything that squarely jumped out at me. The Substack was a little difficult to parse through and I probably could have spent more time reading it.
The article mentioned many other people, one of whom was Yuhuai “Tony” Wu. I’m curious what your thoughts are regarding his Twitter feed versus his university page.
@Clive
“mankini” lol
Sorry, no but seriously, I have seen some articles about AI and more or less the genre. Like much nascent AI innovation, you could definitely call all this a bit of the dog’s breakfast.
FA • July 3, 2023 5:51 AM
The device you use as an example is not in any way audio processor in the modern parlance
Anything that modifies an audio signal in a specific way and for a specific purpose is an ‘audio processor’. Unless you want to redefine the English language.
There are processors that operate on the instantaneous value of a signal (like a clipper) and there are others acting on the envelope with some defined dynamics (like a compressor or limiter). And there is a vast grey area between those.
The trick used by hams — doing the clipping on a signal that is translated up in frequency (i.e. SSB modulated) and then filtering out the harmonics allows to remove some of the horrible distortion resulting from the clipping, but a lot of it remains. And the result after filtering doesn’t even have a well-defined peak value. This method is pretty useless for any application where signal quality matters, like broadcasting or music recording.
It is perfectly possible to hard limit the peak value of signal even with a finite attack time and without resorting to clipping. Do you know how ?
According to your ‘modern parlance’, would that be ‘a processor’ or not ?
You can carry on trying to find fault with what I say, it’s clearly what you live for by your commenting history over the past few years…
Strange that you say this. Finding fault with what anybody here says, and then suggesting that the author must be an ignorant, seems to be your hobby.
I have never suggested that you are ignorant or incompetent. But if you can’t tolerate people who disagree with you then maybe staying away from any discussion is the best way to go.
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2023 6:56 AM
@ Wintet, &ers,
Re : In it to win it…
“Putin is in it for the empire (and the power).”
If only that was the cause and not the symptoms.
It appears that Putin want’s his name to echo down the ages due to fame or infamy. Thus his aim is imortality by any means available.
Which means he care’s not what the method is as long as his name is spoken of a thousand years from now or ten thousand…
He wants to be seen as the uniter of all the Rus -even if they don’t want to be united– or the vanquisher of all Europe, or destroyer of the Anglo-Saxons…
None of those things will happen because the people he will try to enslave or worse do not want it and are prepared to fight. His dreams of conquest and concurring to the Atlantic coast and beyond like a certain German Corporals are already ashes in his mouth, and even with all the lies his own people are deserting or turning against him.
Thus how is he to achieve his immortality? Not through greatness, or skill, in these areas he’s been shown not to be a “strong man” but to be at best craven…
Like a rat cornered, what choice does he have?
That is what the politician’s in Europe and the America’s will be asking and fearing.
Russian elite have known for centuries in their hearts, they can not fight and win against an opponent that will fight back. Their command structures are based on brutality and crime, neither of which will protect them from either an opponent who will fight or their own forces who will mutiny… As history has shown, over and over brut behaviour and criminality only works against those who can not or will not defend themselves. When faced with stark choices of life or death people can and do fight. Even rats know when it is time to flee.
So how is Putin going to achieve immortality?
Well some have pointed out his only course is potentially infamy more terrible than Stalin…
Deaths not in the tens, but hundreds of millions, statistics beyond statistics.
How to achieve this, well a poison is in reality the only way. A poison that is selective and kills only those you want it to kill. The dream of mad men and ScFi writers for decades past.
Well C19 has shown to some that disease may be the poison of choice. It showed it attacked and killed not just the old and infirm, it appeared to also have a genetic predisposition…
Hence we hear of[1],
“The State Duma called on Russian scientists to create biological weapons against the Anglo-Saxons”
As a “premptive defence”…
Now propaganda for the people or real intent?
The fact there realy is not an Anglo Saxon genotype in the way Putin uses the term, suggests it’s propaganda for the Russian people… But if you are a Politician anywhere on both sides of the Atlantic what would you do?
You obviously can not simply ignore it many of your voters would see that as deriliction worse than happened during C19 pre vaccine availability.
The fact you realy can not do anything other than hope your intelligence analysts and the scientists behind them are on the ball… Is no consolation to people not versed in the more curious aspects of science and immunology.
Also “pre-emptive defence” use of WMD does not have to be “biological”. It could be argued that a nuclear first strike was to eradicate germ warfare research / production / storage / delivery systems and sites…
The purpose of propaganda and it’s modern equivalent faux-news is to “stage set” in a way you hope “will make the drama” unfold the way you want it to…
It’s a little like the fighting technique of you moving to cause your oponent to lunge out then use their inertia and off balance against them with barely any effort on your part. Thus once off balance they are fighting not you but physics.
But also remember you can not fight shadows, ghosts, mist, or smoke, because there is nothing substantive enough to do so. Especially when they are “of the mind”, the most feared enemy is the one we see in our minds as undefeatable, omnipotent, or omnipresent.
As I’ve mentioned before there is almost nothing as debilitating to forces as “long gun feaver”. That is knowing in your mind there is someone out of your range, watching and waiting, to take a shot at anyone, at any moment, from any direction, then be gone like a ghost till the next apparently random shot. In your mind the constant question “will it be me” and your behaviour changes accordingly. You scuttle low and fast dodging from place to place in flight mode trying to stay under cover. As you can not fight the realisation of the,
“One shot, One kill, and Gone”
Of a snipers MO grinds down on anyone with even the least amount of imagination.
The use of propaganda can induce the same levels of gut wrenching nausea and anxiety in large parts of a population, even though it’s not rational.
[1] Andrei Gurulev, member of the Russiab state Duma Committee on Defense, put forward a proposal to all Russian scientists to create amongst other things biological weapons that will act exclusively on the Anglo-Saxons…,
Winter • July 3, 2023 9:01 AM
@PaulBart
Tell Syrians how great America is, or the Palestinians.
Tell them how great Russia is, or China, or Assad. I do not see many people fleeing Syria or Palestinian territories for Russia or China.
Putin no worse or better than Obama.
Very questionable comparison.
But we could do what Ukrainians, Georgians, Syrians, and Palestinians do, and ask who is better for us?
We are not expecting American troops coming to, say Germany and bombing hospitals and schools and raping women and children. We are seeing Russian troops coming towards us bombing hospitals and schools and raping women and children.
Sounds like an easy choice.
We can also ask the Ukrainians, Georgians, Syrians, and Palestinians whom they rather have “liberating” them, Americans of Russians?
Georgians and Ukrainians already chose with their feet and wanted to ally with NATO/America rather than Russia, just like the Baltic and Warsaw Pact states did before them. Syrian protesters also wanted the US to help them. Sadly, Obama flinched and they got the Russians to “help” them.
So, maybe you might prefer Russia over America, or find them equally reprehensible and prefer Belarus (I have conversed with such a person). But I guess this has not yet led to you moving to Russia, or Belarus?
Who? • July 3, 2023 10:23 AM
@ &ers, Clive, SLF and ALL
I agree with &ers, software quality is worse now than it was a decade ago. Current status reminds me of the nineties when Netscape Communicator was broken, returning a “bus error” each hour or so on Linux with just a light browsing.
Perhaps coding skills are worse now, I do not know, or software is evolving as quickly as it was at that time when a lot of new and exiting tools were in strong development.
But, indeed, the fact is software is less reliable these days and requirements much higher for no real win.
I hope code will stabilize again.
&ers • July 3, 2023 10:24 AM
@Winter
“On the other hand, Prigozhin is a criminal, he has always been in it for the money, and the money only.”
Yes, and throw nukes into that equation.
Mercenary has no problem selling then to any highest bidder.
modem phonemes • July 3, 2023 10:29 AM
@ Ted
Twitter feed versus
Alas, I never look at Twitter (except for occasional very “of the moment” news that I actually have some connection to).
I don’t know Wu’s work, but I have generally found a researcher’s website a treasure trove of references — papers, lectures, videos, links out, etc. – that at least provide a starting point for learning.
At some point one has to read the papers, but of course if one can get access to orientation broad strokes discussion from experts, that is invaluable. Perhaps Twitter etc. can and does fill its claimed “social” role here.
Winter • July 3, 2023 10:46 AM
@&ers
Mercenary has no problem selling then to any highest bidder.
There is this thing about getting away to enjoy the spoils of your activities. It is all about risk/benefits perception.
The mercenary boss is absolutely ruthless and has no conscience as far as we know. However, this holds as wel for current people in power as well as any contenders. But it is questionable whether Prigozhin would know how to run the country more effectively than the Poisoner. Would Russia end being a federation and simply fall apart? We simply do not know.
I think we simply cannot say who would be worse for the world. But I think everybody expects him to be worse for Russia in the short run.
JonKnowsNothing • July 3, 2023 10:53 AM
@Winter, @PaulBart, ALL
re: people fleeing or leaving one place for another
In legal terms, people moving from one location to another get different definitions, primarily on WHY.
People enter and exit all countries all the time. Short visits are called vacations and are considered ho-hum on the scale of movement. Getting permits to work gets a different classification because these people are expected to stay longer. For some countries the governments also expect these workers to leave when they retire (Public Burden).
However, people leaving because of serious issues with any system does not exclude people leaving “developed” countries and relocating in other “developed” countries and we call this folks Expats. Europe is full of Expats from other EU countries, a good hunk of them are retirees who can no longer afford to live in their own homelands. Spain and France are prime locations and Italy gets it’s share too. BREXIT certainly messed up those living outside of the UK and complicated legal issues when the Expats had purchased property or set up business in their new preferred abodes. Mexico is the place of choice for USA Expats along with other countries in the Caribbean, except Cuba where it is still illegal for USA citizens to go, diplomatic thaws and freezes being what they are. (1)
However, the USA doesn’t advertise how many people leave the USA. It’s quite a lot of people who “can’t take it anymore”. The MSM is full of people coming in, but hardly reports on those leaving. Currently we have an in-progress exodus of people inside the USA moving to-from Red and Blue States.
Recently, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the First Safe Country Treaty with the USA. This is intended to block people from traversing the USA and seeking refuge in Canada. It also blocks people from the USA from seeking refuge in Canada. During the Vietnam war a large number of people seeking to live past 1968 went to Canada; they can no longer do so.
Some people who have been given approval to stay inside the USA, know that the winds blow hard at times and have read the cold tea leaves and have started to go North. This route is now blocked. In theory the Canadians will send them back to the USA.
Not everyone likes it here. Not everyone gets an even playing field. It’s not always what it’s cracked up to be. People get surprised. (2)
===
ht tps://en.wikipedia.o r g/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_Safe_Third_Country_Agreement
Canada–United States Safe Third Country Agreement
- persons seeking refugee status must make their claim in the first country in which they arrive, between either the United States or Canada
- On March 24, 2023, the U.S. and Canada revised the asylum seeker policy. Under the revision, Canada will be allowed to send migrants who cross at unofficial ports of entry at America’s northern border back to the U.S., while the U.S. will also be able to turn back asylum seekers who travel across the border from Canada.
(url fractured)
1) GITMO is located on the island of Cuba. It’s a long leased military base with historical significance. It’s not a vacation destination and those forced to remain there would surely like to go home after 20+ years.
2) Discussions with people who have immigrated to the USA from other countries have explained that for those still in their homeland think the streets here are paved with gold and everyone has “whatever they need or want”. To people who have nothing, the USA seems a cornucopia. For the people living here, we have the Food Pantry Lines.
Winter • July 3, 2023 11:30 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
People enter and exit all countries all the time.
Indeed, and the number of people trying to reach Europe, Canada, or the USA tends to be larger than the number of people trying to reach Russia. Actually, when Syrians went to Russia or Belarus during the civil war, it was to get to Norway or the EU. There is a lot of travel to and from the individual rich countries, but if we look at net movements, than it is from war and poverty to peace and wealth. [1]
But for any parameter indicating people’s preferences, eg, standard of living, life expectancy, schooling, freedom, rule of law, security, Russia is far below the USA, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, etc.. [2]
These are all macro-economic considerations, but we cannot ignore the fact that Russia is a lawless, violent, and corrupt society. Much, much worse than any of the Western countries or far eastern Tigers. The current sorry state of Russia at large is to a large extend to blame on that sorry state of society. And it is pretty clear that Putin has been at the helm of this den of robbers for over two decades. He is fully to blame.
[1] Immigration to Russia is mainly from countries that are even worse off than Russia.
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Russia
[2] Some lists
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_Human_Development_Index
‘https://www.worldeconomics.com/Indicator-Data/ESG/Governance/Rule-of-Law/
‘https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2023 12:32 PM
@ Who?, &ers,
Re : Software decline.
“I hope code will stabilize again.”
Unlikely to.
The problem started four decades back and you have to look at it from a less close up view.
Back when I first started playing with computers in the 1970’s single chip CPU’s were not realy a thing even in calculators.
The interface to mainframes was through early “Visual Display Units”(VDUs) that cost several annual salaries each. About the only time Jo(e) Public got within touching range was at an airport.
Some what later and quite a bit cheaper at around a third of a years salary were Teletype electromechanical units of which the “33” family came in three flavours “Automatic Send Receive”(ASR), “Keyboard Send Recieve”(KSR) and “Receive Only”(RO). But these only spoke the 7bit code from early 60’s called “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”(ASCII) that was sent across EIA “Recomended Standard 232″(RS-232) using a much reduced (12-0-12) safer voltage range rather than the older Telex 80-0-80 voltages that could realy ruin your day…
For “home constructors” which I became in the 70’s we had lights, switches and buttons, or if you were a little smarter a mechanical telephone dial as input… The required amount of TTL chips just to get a primitive interface was high and they were not cheap. Worse computer memory came as 256bits in a chip and needed three different voltages… Worse the first 8bit CPU chips were in the more than $200 price range though this dropped.
By the mid 80’s “Personal computers” like the Apple ][ and IBM-PC were affordable by middle class families and “home computers” were available for less than $200 and very much a thing. With kids were cutting their teeth on BASIC and various Assemblers such as 6502 and Z80 (supprisingly both still in use in “Systems On a Chip” microcontrolers).
The thing was,
1, I/O or HCI was low complexity.
2, System storage very small.
3, CPU’s mainl 8bit less than 5MHz.
So software back then concentrated on what we now call “business logic”. In reality all that realy developed at any speed was the HCI side of things… Displays went through CGA, EGA, VGA, input got augmented by “mice” and storage was Floppy Drives and Hard Drives all by the end of the 80’s and there were various “Windows Graphics Systems” around of which the most promising was the “Graphics Environment Manager”(GEM) starting in 85, unless you had Unix Worksyations from Sun in which case it was the “Networked Windows System”(NeWS) based on PostScript.
Thus the bisiness logic development was in three parts, the HCI, Needed functuonality, marketing bells and whistles. We got a lit of the first and last but the actual reason for existance, of core “needed functionality” actually did not develop that much. Because justvabout anything and everything that could be turned into a program was. So we went from simple single line editors, through visual editors, Desktop Publishing that with the advent of WYSIWYG all colapsed down into Word Processors. That when you strip off the bells and whistles still only do what they did back ib the 1970’s which is put text into RAM and then to magnetic storage. Only they do it a darn sight less quickly.
My Apple ][ still has a faster keyboard to screen response using an 8bit CPU at 1MHz and less than 48k RAM, than the umpteen GHz 64bit CPU with 128GByte of RAM in the snazy laptop case… Likewise the MS-DOS 3.1 486 50MHz 8Mbyte RAM running “Mirror” data coms and editor program beats the snazy hands down…
Interestingly even when the snazy is running Linux without a Windows System running, just the Command Line it’s still slower…
But it’s worth noting the number of vulnerabilities found by attackers kind of goes up at an exponential rate that mirrors what is basically “wastefull complexity” inline with the mass proliferation of mostly unused “bells and whistles” marketing have claimed are “essential” at some point or another.
It’s not hard to spot a trend in consumer and low end commercial software…
However look at embedded systems that are for safety critical service and the code is small, generally free from vulnerabilities, but takes five to ten times the time to develop, but rarely if ever needs “patching” or “security updates” (I’ve still got embedded code I developed in the early 90’s for consumer products running out there functioning without fault).
Basically strip off the unneeded overly complex HCI and the marketing bells and whistles, and you might find that most of the problems go with them…
Oh just another thing to consider… Nearly all experiments show that Windows type environments slow “productivity” immensely. Just using a mouse rather than keyboard,sgort cuts can reduce productivity by over 50%…
But the real, “it makes you laugh” is that real “office productivity” has been slowely dropping year after year since it’s pre-computer high back in the early 1970’s…
That is computers not only have not delivered “the paperless office”, the “beautification” of documents and near ceaseless back and forwards of emails etc whilst going up dramatically has not actually increased real productivity in any way. Infact it’s dropped it and it’s still going down…
I know that won’t be a shock to some of you, but to others, realising increasing amounts of what they do is actually unproductive “make-work” might be a bit of a shocker, especially for those working longer hours than they get payed for “For Company Loyalty” and similar nonsense.
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2023 1:17 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing, , Winter, ALL,
Re : The grass is seldom greener…
“To people who have nothing, the USA seems a cornucopia. For the people living here, we have the Food Pantry Lines.”
Ahhh first you have to be “deserving” to get the “charity”… Not sure how it is in the US but I know of people getting turned away from UK “food banks” because they did not have an official peiece of paper from a “local” Government or NGO agency saying they were “deserving” for some reason. The problem Central Gov and some Local Gov agencies were sending people from place to place late in the day, so they never got to see any of those “local” agencies that closed their doors around mid morning due to the length of those queuing…
It’s a well practiced game by those working in the agencies and it’s all for “political reasons”…
One woman with children found one way around it… The agency moving her from place to place would give her a traval voucher to get tickets. She would make sure she got an official letter with directions with the voucher. She would get the tickets and get on the train then loose the tickets before ariving. Then go upto the barrier… She would end up with her children in “custody” whilst it got sorted out… Thus had warmth, and food for her and the children and often as it was very late transport to the accommodation… The fact that people have to go to such lengths just to survive political nonsense is to say the least shocking…
When I was much younger, I did some time ‘working abroad’ doing voluntary work, and would get the equivalent of “local pay”.
I could usually find daily work to buy food and have a roof over my head without any real difficulty…
Unlike back in the UK were getting a job was full of rules, and the price of food and rent exhorbitent, even for those who had finally got onto so called “universal benift”.
I remember being told in those third world countries “the streets are paved…” and asked “Why I was here?” by people in rural vilages. They mostly did not believe me when I said life was actually better here in their country in oh so many ways.
For those reading who don’t live in the UK, I’ve never ever seen the streets in the towns and cities here paved with anything other than dog muck, litter, and other detritus including discarded “fast food” and vomit, with fat but short lived rats, squirrels foxes and other vermin digging in bins and piles of uncollected refuse. Worse the streets are far from safe, casual violence is way more common than most realise, and street crime at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder a very real hazard to life.
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2023 2:36 PM
@ &ers, Winter,
Re : Don’t let the Sat go down on me…
This might amuse,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/infosec_in_brief/
Apparently a Russian Satelite operator has had it’s systems scrambled rather effectively…
People are not sure by who, but a bunch of mutineers are having a finger pointed at them…
Ted • July 3, 2023 2:42 PM
@modem phonemes
Twitter feed versus
Absolutely. A researcher’s website can be wonderful. And you have me thinking now. It would be fun to chart out all the different resources there are, and consider their value and merits. 🙂
JonKnowsNothing • July 3, 2023 5:39 PM
@Clive, @Winter, ALL
re: you have to be “deserving” to get the “charity” & an official piece of paper
This is very true in the USA. There are Federal and State systems that require Means Testing (income) Thresholds and Ceilings. To get on the Official List(s) the rules vary from List to List. Medical support is one list, Food support is another list, Housing support is another list… The Lists go on and on. (1) Plus, once you get on a list, you have to constantly prove you should still be allowed to remain on the list(s).
The thresholds, base and ceiling, are popular points in USA politics and from other readings they pretty much have the same impacts in other countries . In the USA, it used to be a significant dividing line between Blue and Red views, however that changed for both groups between 1910-1920 when they all lurched to extreme fiscal conservative views and dropped all but the pretense of previous social supports. Today, there isn’t much difference between the 2 groups on this subject.
- Australia: Spoilt for Choice and Avocado Toast
There are limited solutions for those who do not qualify for Official Charity Supports. Private Charities do exist but often they are funded by Federal or State monies and so carry forward the restrictions. So, not of much use to the large numbers in need, who are deemed Not Needy Enough.
The good news (so far) is that I have found several options where the criteria is an address, if you have one. Homeless is an acceptable address. Sometimes, the organization has to track “Name and Number” or “Body Count”, in order to account for the food donations. Other groups do not care at all. If you are in line, and they have not run out of food, you get something; no name or serial numbers needed.
So
- for Government Support you have to be pronounced deserving
- for Local Support you have to be hungry (2)
===
1) disclosure: I do not qualify for any Official Lists. My pension is ~$80 over the upper thresholds for all Official Lists. The thresholds do not change by much and not often.
2) No one stands in line in 112f heat for the possibility of a loaf of bread, 2 cans of something, and a handful of old sprouted potatoes, unless they or their family are really hungry.
risk averse • July 3, 2023 5:57 PM
OLD NEWS:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9965614
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3596221
Anybody coping with any types of inteferences to any types of patterns might benefit from the links:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9965614
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3596221
Of particular use are some of the fundamentals of countermeasures as well as self awareness of both the functioning circumstances and malfunctioning circumstance alike (both).
The pattern recognition realworld usages could be anything and everything other than military or weapons or targeting.
Also consider Signal-To-Noise ratios and common sense heuristics.
sincerely, “risk averse”
vas pup • July 3, 2023 7:34 PM
The AI trained to recognise waste for recycling
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66042169
“Mikela Druckman. She has spent a lot of time looking at what we throw away, as the founder of Greyparrot, a UK start-up that has created an AI system designed to analyze waste processing and recycling facilities.
Greyparrot places cameras above the conveyor belts of around 50 waste and recycling sites in Europe, utilising AI software to analyse what passes through in real-time.
Ms Druckman says it was still hard to train a system to recognise rubbish. “A product like a Coke bottle, once it goes into the bin, will be crumpled, crushed and dirty, and makes the problem much more complex from an AI standpoint.”
Greyparrot’s systems now track 32 billion waste objects per year, and the firm has built up a huge digital map of waste. This information can be used by waste managers to become more operationally efficient, but it can also be shared more widely.
“It is allowing regulators to have a much better understanding of what’s happening with the material, what materials are problematic, and it is also influencing packaging design,” says Ms Druckman.”
Waste may contain explosive, disposed firearms, body parts – security angle should be included as well.
MarkH • July 3, 2023 9:29 PM
@JG4, All:
I haven’t found any news about rail-disaster dioxin contamination since the report from Indiana on dioxin in waste transported from the spill site.
In June, NTSB held multiple days of hearings in E Palestine, and released a lot of information. Bits of reportage that stood out to me:
• the VCM’s manufacturer repeatedly told those responding to the derailment, that there was NOT a danger of explosion due to spontaneous polymerization — there was not enough oxygen in the tank cars
• the “hot car” was actually cooling by the time of the vent & burn operation
• the local fire chief was told it was vital to conduct the burnoff, and that he must decide within 13 minutes
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 12:07 AM
@ MarkH, JG4, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : E.Palestine Rail Disaster.
“I haven’t found any news about rail-disaster dioxin contamination since the report from Indiana on dioxin in waste transported from the spill site.”
Two things to note from that,
1, It’s established that there was dioxin present in the waste as expected from the combustion (thus implicitly in the down stream wind and water over a very wide environmental area).
2, That those involved have been complicit in keeping quiet about it.
Why the second is so may well to be to do with,
“the local fire chief was told it was vital to conduct the burnoff, and that he must decide within 13 minutes”
Who decided it was “vital”? And who was complicit in informing “the local fire chief” in a way that was effectively “ordering” the chief to do the burn? By putting the chief under undue and unwarranted pressure with at best incompleate or incorrect information. Also to who’s benifit legaly and cost wise was the burn?
I suspect that digging a little deeper will find it’s more than the rail operator “with unclean hands” in these behaviours. Further it can be surmised that some do not want this becoming clear to the public thus establishing a clear chain of liability back to Washingtons doorstep amoungst others… I.e. typical “look/go away, nothing to see here” type behaviours.
Let’s just say legal liability wise, ensuring a “fog of war” and using it to loose information over time is a well established and well worn path of action, when certain agencies get involved.
If you apply a little common sense to the issue,
1, Combustion of the tank contents was well known to result in dangerous combustion products.
2, Combustion is known as a way to disperse such dangerous products over a very wide area.
3, The cost of cleaning up just the spill without the burn would have been high but within available resources of the rail operator who had primary liability.
4, The cost of cleaning up the environment after the burn impossibly high and also for various reasons near impossible to do, so won’t be done, thus have minimal direct cost to those involved.
5, The length of time the railroad would have been closed for the cleanup without the burn would have been considerably increased.
6, The cost of disposing of the unburnt waste would have been considerably higher.
I’ll let others decide why the actions taken at the time were what they were. However something tells me that consideration for people immediately adjacent to the spill and down wind/stream of it were not given due if any consideration at all, and it was all “liability and cost driven” and has been since.
JG4 • July 4, 2023 1:12 AM
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ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 1:48 AM
“our exploit smashes the heap, connects back to an attacker-controlled server, downloads a BusyBox binary, and opens an interactive shell”
“The exploit runs in approximately one second”
There are 490,000 affected SSL VPN interfaces exposed on the internet, and roughly 69% of them are currently unpatched. You should patch yours now.
‘https://bishopfox.com/blog/cve-2023-27997-exploitable-and-fortigate-firewalls-vulnerable
–
“The lure themes are heavily focused on European domestic and foreign policies and were used to target mostly governmental ministries in Eastern Europe.”
PlugX payload copies the legitimate program and the DLL and stores them within a hidden directory it creates. The encrypted payload is stored in a separate hidden folder. The malware achieves persistence by adding the legitimate program to the Run registry key.
Some of the PlugX payloads we found write a deceptive lure in the form of a PDF file to the %temp% directory and then open it. The document path is stored within the PlugX configuration under document_name. It is worth mentioning that only a few samples within this campaign included the document_name field; it was missing in the majority of the samples.
During the course of our investigating the samples, the threat actor dispatched a batch script, sent from the C&C server, intended to erase any trace of their activities. This script, named del_RoboTask Update.bat, eradicates the legitimate executable, the PlugX loader DLL, and the registry key implemented for persistence, and ultimately deletes itself. It is likely this is the result of the threat actors becoming aware they were under scrutiny.
The majority of the documents contained diplomatic-related content. In more than one case, the content was directly related to China.
During our research, we came across a document named ‘China Tries to Block Prominent Uyghur Speaker at UN.docx’, which was uploaded to VirusTotal.
This document employs remote image technique to access the URL hXXps://www.jcswcd[.]com/?wd=cqyahznz, containing a single pixel image which is not apparent to the user. This technique, called pixel tracking, is commonly used as a reconnaissance tool. As the remote image is requested, the attackers’ server logs the request, capturing information such as the IP address, user agent, and sometimes the time of access. By analyzing the collected data, the attackers can gather information about the recipient’s behavior, such as when and where the document was accessed.
The lures uploaded to VirusTotal include:
A letter originating from the Serbian embassy in Budapest.
A document stating the priorities of the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
An invitation to a diplomatic conference issued by Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
An article about two Chinese human rights lawyers sentenced to more than a decade in prison.
In addition, the names of the archived files themselves strongly suggest that the intended victims were diplomats and government entities. Here are a few examples of the names we identified:
Draft Prague Process Action Plan_SOM_EN
2262_3_PrepCom_Proposal_next_meeting_26_April
Comments FRANCE – EU-CELAC Summit – May 4
202305 Indicative Planning RELEX
China jails two human rights lawyers for subversion
‘https://research.checkpoint.com/2023/chinese-threat-actors-targeting-europe-in-smugx-campaign/
Phillip • July 4, 2023 2:08 AM
@J
I might offer useful perspective. Anyhow, trouble is trouble. Not expert legal, though possibly in knowance.
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 2:17 AM
@ FA,
Re : Here we go again.
“Anything that modifies an audio signal in a specific way and for a specific purpose is an ‘audio processor’. Unless you want to redefine the English language.”
No and No.
Modifing is not processing, neither is level reducing by clipping.
To see why think of it as having a low door way through which a stream of people egress.
Those above a certain hight will either hit their head or have to “modify” their posture, their choice. If they are all measured before going through the door and ordered to change their posture they are all being “processed” by a “feedback process[1]” otherwise they are not being “processed”…
A more electronics related view would be claiming that crashing into the “end stop” or “power rails” is “processing” when using analog amplifiers. Or alowing “roll over” / “over/under flow” in digital systems where you go up through 0xF… around to 0x0… or back effectively performing an unintentional modulo operation.
I would have thought that the difference was simple enough for even you to understand, but apparently not as your following shows,
“There are processors that operate on the instantaneous value of a signal (like a clipper) and there are others acting on the envelope with some defined dynamics (like a compressor or limiter). And there is a vast grey area between those.”
Whilst clipper and compressor have well defind meanings of behaviour or method, the term limitter is actually derived from the result not the method and applies to both clippers and compressors. Thus you would say,
1, The output is “limitted by clipping”
2, The output is “limitted by compression”
Because,
3, The output is “limitted by limitting”
Makes no logical sense unless you predefine what you mean by “limitting”. But then you would just say,
4, The output is “limitted”.
As it would be sufficient in context.
With regards,
“The trick used by hams … …This method is pretty useless for any application where signal quality matters, like broadcasting or music recording.”
You very importantly and I suspect quite deliberately failed to note that the “Hams intention” was not “signal quality” as a commercial broadcaster would want, but “signal inteligability” in the precence of QRM and QRN thus gaining significant range for a given power[2].
Commercial broadcasters due to the way they were and still are licenced in the US have a defined coverage area and defined power to cover it. In broadcasting as in advertising “audio processing” is used to “get more punch” that is to actively change the entire signals dynamic range to give the perception of sounding louder. This can to a quite limited extent be achieved by using a “soft clipper” such as those with a logrithmic response (have a look at how the telephone A-Law and U-Law 12 to 8 bit reduction systems work). But normally examines the signal to look for certain charecteristics such as fast rise times that are alowed to pass but are limited and the following subjected to exponential decay over a time period sufficient for the brain not to notice. Other tricks break the signal into frequency bands and some involve phase rotation of some frequency components which the human ear is insensitive to.
With regards,
“It is perfectly possible to hard limit the peak value of signal even with a finite attack time and without resorting to clipping. Do you know how ?”
I know of several, both analog and digital methods. However in all cases usually the choice selected is to minimise time delay from input to output or processing power. Because a rough rule of thumb is,
“The more you process the longer it takes, and the more CPU cycles you need”.
So “pragmatic choices” not “optimum choices” are made.
With regards,
“According to your ‘modern parlance’, would that be ‘a processor’ or not ?”
I’ve already answered that in both my original post and above in this post.
Your lack of knowledge in this respect deliberate or otherwise rises yet again.
So,
“Finding fault with what anybody here says, and then suggesting that the author must be an ignorant, seems to be your hobby.”
My hobby if you wish to call it that is to ensure understanding by as many as possible of all levels of underlying knowledge, in a constrained environment, thus in as concise a form as possible. If you make an incorrect or deliberately false or misleading statement / conclusion about someones comments, then you must expect rebuttal. Which is what you are getting.
Speaking of which,
“But if you can’t tolerate people who disagree with you then maybe staying away from any discussion is the best way to go.”
I happily, gently, politely and patiently help people who misunderstand what I say as can be seen from my many chats with many people on this and other blogs. But those who are proven to have “anti/faux agenders” or are abusive, rude or both for their own self promotion etc, get treated less and less patiently the more they continue.
As I’ve previously noted, you don’t help, you don’t contribute, you are basically not usefull, you just create a waste of column inches. Worse as is very clear to anyone who cares to search, the only time you’ve appeared in quite some time is to perpetuate a singular objective. Which you always fail at…
Now you could take your own advice,
“maybe staying away from any discussion is the best way to go”
Or perhaps you could rehabilitate yourself, and become a contributor of factual, correct information, and help to others on this blog.
Your choice, it realy is down to you.
[1] One area of jargon that is confusing to many is titled “feed back” in most texts. Not only does it covers both positive and negative feed back, it also covers in some texts feed forward. In analog systems specific “feed forward” is rare compared to “feed back” due to stability and other issues however in Digital Signal Processing”(DSP) systems it is more common because it’s advantages can be better exploited with less risk.
[2] Analysis of speech shows that much of the “power” is in the redundant vowel sounds. Thus they can be hard limited and the consonant sounds used to convay information can be brought up significantly in power, vastly improving inteligability by improved “signal to noise ratio”. Likewise the initial / capitalised constants, try saying “Polish” and “polish” to here one of the few occurances where it does make a difference to the information content. Otherwise here the difference in “M/make” between,
1, Make a cup for me.
2, Can you make a cup for me.
Then replace “make” with “mc” –as in Mc of McBrown– your brain fills in the vowels.
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 2:28 AM
@Leon Theremin
The electromagnetic spectrum is under surveillance. It keeps crossing borders without a passport.
NESTOR (pre-frontier situational awareness beyond maritime and land borders)
‘https://frontex.europa.eu/innovation/eu-research/news-and-events/nestor-showcasing-a-new-border-surveillance-system-NIV4SC
–
Everytime there has been publicity around these incidents, reports of incidents have dropped off…
Reports of Havana syndrome slowed as it gained publicity, with the latest reported incidents happening in Geneva and Paris in 2021.
‘https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a44108667/what-is-havana-syndrome/
Officials from the Kremlin (~late 1980’s) were worried that the misuse of their equipment, which was supposed to be covert, would compromise their surveillance operations.
Importantly it might disclose the who, where and when of operations, – or who was directing opeartions, and from where exactly they were being directed.
…’https://thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com/coldwarbuggingsovietunion/
The recordings and transcripts of these conversations contained the names of those responsible, and make it abundantly clear that these attacks were taking place.
However, this is only a concern to diplomatic staff, and mainly counter-intelligence working specifically in certain areas.
Other types of harassment are (and were) far more frequent, with these events being quite rare. The general public has nothing to worry about as the specific equipment is neither radar, and it is not communications equipment (not 5G). It is a Frankenstein’s setup with – significant additions added to maximize power output when mobile.
It is quite surprising the thing even worked, especially back in the 1980’s, as it had a number of unique additions not very common back then.
Quotes such as the following are incorrect, “The strange illness struck scores of government employees, first at the US embassy in Havana in 2016, and subsequently in China and other countries.”
….but the CIA wants too keep quiet the earlier incidents that took place during the 1980’s and 1990’s – that it – and other government departments (not just in the U.S.) did nothing about.
Put in a request for transcript from bugging of Russian embassy in Poland, perhaps you may get something back, heavily redacted of course, but it might provide confirmation.
This is really the job of government to disclose, but the CIA is notoriously mute.
…(and other organizations)
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 2:35 AM
@FA
There are many ways to modify a signal that do not include processing.
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 2:52 AM
An international agreement to prevent further proliferation could be wise, and ensure such devices are not used as weapons in future. Similar to biological weapons control agreements for example. That way rules and laws can be enacted to prevent misuse, or it may become more common in future.
Rules should be put in place to provide guidance how to act regarding such incidents – and importantly – who is responsible for taking action.
So far it has been a s*** show.
‘https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a44108667/what-is-havana-syndrome/
FA • July 4, 2023 4:02 AM
@Clive
You very importantly and I suspect quite deliberately failed to note that the “Hams intention” was not “signal quality” as a commercial broadcaster would want, but “signal inteligability” in the precence of QRM and QRN thus gaining significant range for a given power[2].
Of course that is the intention. No need to state the obvious.
If hams use the generic term ‘audio processing’ to refer to this specific application, then your original statement is essentially:
… audio processing, here meaning the specific methods hams use to increase range for a given power, was developed by hams in the post-war era.
Yes, indeed, no surprise. So what ?
In broadcasting as in advertising “audio processing” is used to “get more punch” that is to actively change the entire signals dynamic range to give the perception of sounding louder.
Indeed. OTOH, the main music distribution channels today (streaming services) all impose a standard ‘loudness’ on their content. The same is true of most broadcasters at least in Europe. In many places there is now legislation in force which forbids ads to be louder than the main program content. Which means that extreme forms of processing which kill all dynamics are no longer providing any advantage. On the contrary they now make most music sound really shitty.
Having a quick look at the FM stations I can receive here, they all have a peak/RMS ratio of around 10 dB on speech. This is easy to achieve using quite gentle methods. The music industry is adapting as well – dynamic range in pop music has increased over the last ten years or so. The ‘loudness wars’ are not over, but a lot less intense than what they used to be.
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 4:04 AM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
Re : There are Firewalls and then there are firewalls.
With regards the quote,
“There are 490,000 affected SSL VPN interfaces exposed on the internet, and roughly 69% of them are currently unpatched. You should patch yours now.”
I atleast know my “Firewall” is uneffected…
Because it’s made of bricks and mortar several bricks thick and has no openings, holes or –as I’ve been told by someone more experienced with masonry than I,– cracks either.
As for my computers they are quite some distance away from that Firewall and have no direct connections for communications or power, and they don’t do USB. Some because they are of a mid 1990’s vintage, some a lot earlier, and the later ones are not “Personal Computers” or “Smart Devices”, thus likely to be free of deliberate “covert channels” some more modern systems –post 2005– are reputed to have.
As for those accidental side channels that researchs keep finding, I guess some will have them which is why I keep them segregated.
I know it sounds “cloak and dagger” / paranoid / conspiracy theory, but you have to remember you are “looking back” at what grew out from something that started before people had the Internet, thus it never had “connectivity”. Also as the work I’ve done has involved development for “Industrial Control Systems” sensible “galvanic issolation” in the power supply was required for safety hence that issolation. Likewise I also design / develop communications equipment for Broadcast and Space payloads, this means a need for good RF issolation thus a “Faraday Cage” (dumping a kW of Band II on my neighbours even into a “dummy load” would not be appreciated as it would desense their radios as it’s “in band”).
Thus what appears as a SCIF from one perspective is just a high power test/dev facility for Industrial and Broadcast design from another.
I know there are one or two that will smile on reading that because from what they’ve said they’ve worked in places where “your lunch box will get cooked” if you “stand in the wrong place”.
Also generating RF from “implosive motor sets” has never realy been fun for me, where as making duck ponds with fertilizer was a hobby when much younger (before all that silly legislation got in the way).
Oh fun one you don’t want to try…
How do you explain that a “Hilti Gun” is not a “Gun”? likewise an even less impressive “pick gun”, but what of a “wrap gun”… I have a house full of guns not one of which uses gunpowder or other chemical to fire projectiles at people etc. So gun is almost a meaningless word these days for something you hold in your hand with some kind of finger opperated “trigger”.
A friend of mine had this how do you explain problem, like me they have quite a number of items with the word “gun” in the name around the place. They were resident in a house the original owner of which had a drug addled relative who as a result of an argument to try and gain unlawful enrichment that failed, decided to inexpertly SWAT my friend as revenge… So there my friend is having a bath prior to going out on the town for the evening, when there are flashing blue lights and a bang on the front door… Several officers way larger than my friend holdin semi-autos ask “Have you got a gun?”. As my friend observed they looked like they did not have a sense of humour so refrained from asking “Why, do you need an extra one?” or similar and correctly stated “I’m not the home owner, but I’m not aware of there being any firearms licenced or otherwise on the property”… The answer clued the officer onto the fact the deminutive person standing their in a dressing gown with hair wrapped in a towel was rather more than the eye percieved and every one relaxed…
Not sure how it would have gone in other parts of the world. That’s maybe why “Power Actuated Tool”(PAT) is now being used instead of “gun” though Hilti-PAT does not just roll of the tongue the same way 😉
JonKnowsNothing • July 4, 2023 4:14 AM
@JG4
re: Held over…
Nearly every message of this that I’ve gotten related to an unexpected spelling hitch in the naughty word list. Perfectly good words with an internal structure that clipped the list was the trigger. Searching and Replacing that word allowed the post to continue.
The synonym words that have the clip segment:
- Bottom floor or underground floor of a building.
- The boundary on a property line for public access.
re: Post Toasted Road Rash
For those that pass submit and later disappear, I know of no fix. That appears to be have a different driver. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. It can be one or several or an entire segment. The only defense it make a copy of the post and thread before you leave the screen or refresh.
MarkH • July 4, 2023 4:49 AM
@Clive:
As I observed on the first thread about E Palestine, parties able secure dioxin testing include:
• various residents, or groups thereof
• local, county, state, or federal governments
• investigative journalists
• liability attorneys
• any of hundreds of university departments of chemistry; toxicology; environmental studies; etc.
Hypotheses:
a. nobody bothered
b. they’re ALL in on the conspiracy!
c. testing hasn’t turned up extraordinary levels (there are good reasons to shout about scary results, and keep quiet about ordinary ones)
What would William of Ockham say?
MarkH • July 4, 2023 5:00 AM
@Clive, FA:
Unless somebody has a crisp definition from an authoritative source, arguing about what is vs. what ain’t “audio processing” or an “audio processor” is an utter waste.
For the record, broadcast radio compressor/limiters are very expressly designed against clipping.
FM receiver limiter stage: CLIPPING INTENTIONAL
Audio compressor/limiters: CLIPPING CAREFULLY AVOIDED
Don’t confuse the two!
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 5:04 AM
The protective order said Trump and Nauta:
“…shall not disclose the Discovery Materials or their contents directly or indirectly to any person or entity other than persons employed to assist in the defense, persons who are interviewed as potential witnesses, counsel for potential witnesses, and other persons to whom the Court may authorize disclosure.”
‘https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-orders-trump-disclose-evidence-classified-documents-case/story?id=100193266
BARR: “This is not a circumstance where he’s the victim or this is government overreach.”
“He- he will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest, there’s no question about it. This is a perfect example of that. He’s like, you know, he’s like a nine year old, defiant nine year old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it.”
‘https://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-full-transcript-06-18-2023/
Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning
“we are often consistently irrational, relying on a number of mental shortcuts to speed up our reasoning, which can make us remarkably sensitive to how things are framed”
‘https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016782
background metaphors:
‘https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/06/don-donald-trump-slams-classified-823642557.jpg
How not to talk yourself into prison…
‘https://www.lawfirms.com/resources/criminal-defense/defendants-rights/talk-to-police.htm
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 5:38 AM
How to…
China Fines a Comedy Firm $2 Million for ‘Insulting’ the Military
Li mentioned he had adopted two stray dogs he was watching chase a squirrel. He said the scene made him think of a phrase used by by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that roughly translates to “Fight well, win the battle.”
‘https://thehill.com/policy/international/4009409-china-imposes-2m-fine-for-stand-ups-joke-seen-as-mocking-the-military/
The incident has strongly divided the Chinese public over what sort of jokes are inappropriate as performances such as stand-up comedy become increasingly popular and also highlighted the limits of appropriate content in China where authorities say it must promote core socialist values.
Comedy thrives in places where comedians can satirize or comment on political or ideological tropes. But in China, Mr. Zou said, “you have a very limited set of options for what kinds of material you can draw on.”
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-17/china-slaps-comedy-firm-with-3-million-fine-after-military-joke/102360102
“Maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win.”
“Other dogs you see would make you think they are adorable. These two dogs only reminded me of… ‘Fight to win, forge exemplary conduct’,” said Mr Li, whose stage name is House.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-65637208
When the pandemic first started, no one thought Covid would last very long… because it was made in China.
‘https://improvemandarin.com/chinese-jokes/
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 5:39 AM
How does any of this cryptography stuff work, anyway?
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1zibpppUxQ
ResearcherZero • July 4, 2023 6:46 AM
Dev Menon told co-conspirators to add him to discussions so they could use legal professional privilege to conceal information, gave out advice about avoiding payroll detection, drafted legal documents to facilitate key transactions, and assisted with the destruction of evidence.
‘https://www.accountantsdaily.com.au/regulation/18742-pivotal-plutus-payroll-fraud-figure-jailed-for-14-years
“We’ve got to torch this sh*t to the ground,” he told his co-conspirators in a covertly recorded conversation.
Menon told his co-conspirators it was a “blessing in disguise” that the complicated tax fraud was “such a clusterf**k” because it meant they wouldn’t be detected by the ATO.
He maintained they were “just f’ing with the books” and said they had kept Plutus “so squeaky f’ing clean” by paying a small portion of their tax obligations.
Justice Payne slammed the attitude and pointed out that tax fraud “is a form of corruption” that imposed “collective financial injury on the community”.
Justice Payne said the scammer appeared to show no remorse or contrition for the “systemic defrauding for revenue”.
“He appears still to believe that he and his co-conspirators have done nothing criminal,” he said.
‘https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/courts-law/lawyer-dev-menon-bragged-about-105m-tax-scam/news-story/97b8b89000ecc8b10c24e5ad723abe19
–
…the “root cause” of political dysfunction: a system in which entrenched politicians and special interests force outcomes divorced from what a broad consensus of voters would like to see.
‘https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/29/kathryn-murdoch-2020-fox-news-family-107600
“…they have allowed and encouraged the rise of the Murdoch empire because it protects them from authentic, principled, unpredictable journalism”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/politicians-arent-scared-of-murdoch-theyre-scared-of-world-without-him/
“unfortunately we allow ourselves in the way in which we conduct our political affairs to essentially — potentially do far more damage in an indirect way”
“And it’s us. It’s what we allow. At some point you’ve got to imagine the folks of this country are going to stand up and say enough. We are paying you for solutions. Solve the problems.”
…”But I think when it comes to sort of issues like the debt and whether we’re going to get downgraded or whether we can afford the type of lifestyle we’re living as a country, since it seems relatively by comparison intangible, no one gives a you know what. So, I think that is the danger.”
CAVUTO: Then why do our politicians treat us like we are idiots?
SHAICH: Essentially because the system and the way it’s built encourages that.
‘https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/do-politicians-think-we-are-idiots
“News businesses or profit machines can hire anybody who falls off a turnip truck and label them journalists because the job has no standardized requirements.”
…a business that calls itself a news organization actually does not have to be one – but it does have to be a business. Businesses exist primarily to make a profit and doing actual news isn’t essential. Adam Serwer, reporting for The Atlantic, wrote “sources at Fox told me to think of it not as a network per se, but as a profit machine.”
‘https://theconversation.com/anyone-can-claim-to-be-a-journalist-or-a-news-organization-and-publish-lies-with-almost-total-impunity-202083
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 8:05 AM
@ MarkH,
Re : What would Willy boy say.
Well option C is an awkward one…
Because it’s one of those “relitive” questions, based on opinion not measured and tested science.
There is a lot of dioxin in the US around houses with gardens with “trash barrels”. So from some peooles perspective “arguably” dioxin in and around the home is safe (and it’s been argued as such in the US, differebtly in Europe).
Put simply if you have a mixed fire of garden / vegtable waste and house hold waste including plastics and some other stuff then dioxins will be just one of the results, in some cases a lot of them.
So if you say “relatively safe” you have to say relative to what, and why someone says something is safe (because history says they are almost certainly wrong).
The first question that should be asked but from what I remember nobody has asked is,
“Why did it have to be burned?”
Followed by,
“Is this the right place and method of burning?”
Untill the actual science and reasoning and by whom is brought into the light of day, there’s not much more you can say.
Oh other than,
1, E.Palistine is blighted as a community and will probably fail in the next few years.
2, The rail operator has had minimal disruption and direct cost, and managment will, –now there is nolonger a spotlight on them– carry on skirting on dangerous practices so be able to keep on cost cutting.
Thus happy share holders will keep cashing their cheques… and the community that was E.Palisrine will just fade away and be forgotten.
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 10:11 AM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
Re : Bad news is just around the corner (as the song says).
“How does any of this cryptography stuff work, anyway?”
Long answer short…
We don’t know, outside of Claude Shannon’s work, oh nearly eighty years ago (pre 1945).
There is the actual possability that everything we currently assume is wrong… If that turns out to be the case then we are back to the One Time Pad.
Which as every one gets told “has issues” and again the assumption “they can not be fixed”.
The chinese and others have questioned those assumptions, and it started with “BB84” which basically says “heck lets just use the laws of physics”, so we got Quantum Crypto, which has next to nothing to do with Quantum Computing (especially as Quantum Crypto works, is up and running and steadily breaking records, Quantum Computing is still playing with the starting blocks and may never get in them let alone start).
Each year Quantum Computing improves, and is now at the point you can use a satellite as the KeySource thus give security based on what is assumed to be fundemental and inviolate physics conjoined with Shannon’s “Perfect Security”…
So it soon might not matter if the answer to “How does any of this cryptography stuff work, anyway?” is “It does not when it comes to proofs”.
However I’m on the side of assuming “One Way Functions”(OWFs) are real.
modem phonemes • July 4, 2023 11:07 AM
@ MarkH @ FA @ Clive Robinson
crisp definition from an authoritative source
Of course, what we all really want is “straight wire with gain” 😉 .
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 11:14 AM
@ MarkH,
Re : Authorative source there is not, convention there is.
“For the record, broadcast radio compressor/limiters are very expressly designed against clipping.”
Not “against” but “to avoid”
Broadcast processors have to have a correctly functioning “hard clipper” to prevent over modulation be it in amplitude or deviation, because that’s what the regulations call for.
The trick is to get as close to the line as you can without crossing it, hence “avoid”.
As I indicated there is an issue in that if you clip a sinewave you get an approximation to a squarewave of lesser amplitude. However filter the squarewave and the sinewave comes back but at a higher amplitude than the square wave… The reason is that in clipping you generate odd harmonics that are effectively out of phase with the fundemental so the amplitude is reduced and the sides “square up”.
So from just the amplitude perspective you have to back the clipper off from the limit.
However it also tells you that if you can play with the phase of the signal components you can in effect create a lower amplitude signal that sounds louder.
Back in the early days of speach synthesizers a lot of the tricks for pre-recorded speech involved shifting phase to get compression your ear could not hear but saved around four bits of word size in memory.
The trick is comming up with a system that does this “auto-magically” on an unknown audio stream. Whilst it can be done it usually involves a large time delay. Getting this time delay down is the current “game in town” and where AI neural networks start coming into the equation.
Because although the FCC et al have rules about over modulation they also have implicit loop holes due to the way they are specified.
It’s the same “energy per unit over time” that gave rise to Spread Spectrum “whitening” of CPU clocks in PC’s and in certain types of “fractional N frequency synthesizers”. Move the energy in a spike/spur around fast enough and over time it averages over several units so comes in below the mask even though at any instant it is above the mask. The trick is to make the movment sufficiently random that it does not become a signal just synthetic noise.
The way most current broadcast audio processors work is to split the audio up into frequency bands (5 to 12) you then recover the “envelope signal” from each band and feed that into three integrators to get slow average and fast changes. You then use these to control various limiters be they “Voltage Controled Amplifiers”(VCAs) or “phase shifters”.
However replace all of these higher level circuit blocks with the DSP primitives and with all of this put together you end up with what looks like a small very messy neural network with delay blocks added…
I won’t go into the details but you can start shuffling the individual primitives around to get things looking even more like a regular neural network with the outputs of the delays becomming the inputs to the neurons. Start running “audio” through it in the way you do with neural net training and the weights drop out in the usual way…
For various reasons the result is less complicated and the number of time delays thus reduced, and you can run your audio processor on a “GPU” that can be found in a lot of fairly cheap “mobile phone’ SoC’s like the BroadCom one used in the Raspberry Pi and similar. Oh and you can up the number of bands from 12… Which can enable you to get rid of that hard clipper and problematic filter.
modem phonemes • July 4, 2023 11:30 AM
@ ResearcherZero @ Clive Robinson
Re: Sense, Perception, and Nonsense, Is this a Dagger I See Before Me, or Do You Have Any Chickens in That Basket ?
I. Things are equivocally named, when they have the name only in common, the definition (or statement of essence) corresponding with the name being different. For instance, while a man and a portrait can properly both be called ‘animals,’ these are equivocally named.
I. Ὁμώνυμα λέγεται ὧν ὄνομα μόνον κοινόν, ὁ δὲ κατὰ τοὔνομα λόγος τῆς οὐσίας ἕτερος, οἷον ζῷον ὅ τε ἄνθρωπος καὶ τὸ γεγραμμένον.
It may appear to be a defect to be remedied, but equivocation is probably essential in knowing and rational speech (logos). Even if one tried to eliminate it with some kind of subscript scheme as in gun 1 , gun 2 , etc. one would still be using it, because of the underlying real similarity and analogy between things that is present when equivocal speech occurs.
Clive Robinson • July 4, 2023 11:57 AM
@ modem phonems,
‘Of course, what we all really want is “straight wire with gain”’
If it’s “relative gain” that is easy…
Start with : Take a two wire transmission line that is multiple wavelengths long. Pulle the sides out at the terminating load to form a diamond.
It’s called a “Rhombic Antenna” from the early 1930’s,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_antenna
I know of someone who went a little crazy, and made one as big as a field for VHF usage. Directional gain they got aplenty, but the beam was tight and not movable. But it proved the point about “WWII Beam Navigation” systems.
But you can also do something similar with just a single wire from a wavelength to a few hundred yards long. Mounted about six foot off the ground. It’s called a “Beverage Antenna” and from the early 1920’s,
pup vas • July 4, 2023 5:14 PM
The US Air Force is transforming warfare with 1,000 heavily armed AIs
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-air-force-transforming-warfare-111901223.html
=The US Air Force is gambling big on artificial intelligence (AI). The world’s leading air arm plans to acquire a thousand AI-controlled armed drones in the coming years. It’s betting that these “loyal wingman” drones will be nimbler and cheaper than traditional manned fighter jets.
n early 2019, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) – the Pentagon’s fringe-science agency – recruited eight teams of coders to develop the first-ever dogfighting AI under the auspices of the AlphaDogfight project.
The competitors included major American defense firms such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, smaller companies including Maryland-based Heron Systems and upstart squads from universities such as Georgia Tech.
mid-2020, Darpa hosted a series of dogfighting competitions pitting the AIs against each other. And a few months after that, it deployed the most competitive AI – Heron’s – against an actual human: a US Air Force F-16 pilot who gave only his callsign, “Banger.”
115
David Axe
Tue, July 4, 2023, 6:19 AM CDT
US air force to deploy armed AI drone jets
The X-47B unmanned stealth jet demonstrator flies above USS George H W Bush – Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Walter/US Navy via Getty
The US Air Force is gambling big on artificial intelligence (AI). The world’s leading air arm plans to acquire a thousand AI-controlled armed drones in the coming years. It’s betting that these “loyal wingman” drones will be nimbler and cheaper than traditional manned fighter jets.
It’s a solid wager. A recent experiment proves why.
In early 2019, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) – the Pentagon’s fringe-science agency – recruited eight teams of coders to develop the first-ever dogfighting AI under the auspices of the AlphaDogfight project.
The competitors included major American defense firms such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, smaller companies including Maryland-based Heron Systems and upstart squads from universities such as Georgia Tech.
In mid-2020, Darpa hosted a series of dogfighting competitions pitting the AIs against each other. And a few months after that, it deployed the most competitive AI – Heron’s – against an actual human: a US Air Force F-16 pilot who gave only his callsign, “Banger.”
Darpa broadcast the video-game style contest online in a spectacle similar to an extreme-sports event. Banger sat in a mockup of an F-16 cockpit and flew a simulated battle against another F-16 flown by the AI.
It ended quickly. After some hard turns, the Heron drone drew a bead on Banger and shot him down with simulated gunfire – and then repeated the feat in several subsequent mock fights.
The Heron AI’s secret was its aggression. The AI had stood out from the other algorithms owing to its preference for head-on attacks with its simulated gun. With its bold tactics, the Heron drone neutralized a human pilot’s main advantage over an artificial mind: creativity.
After winning the Darpa dogfighting contest, Heron was an obvious candidate for acquisition by a larger firm. In 2021, California-based startup Shield AI bought Heron. Two years after that, Shield AI cut a deal with Kratos, a leading drone-maker in California, to add an improved version of the Heron AI to a drone called the XQ-58.
It’s not hard to see the strategy. The 29-foot-long, jet-propelled XQ-58 is the main test vehicle for the US Air Force’s own AI experiment, Skyborg, which has been running for several years now.
The ultimate goal of Skyborg is to develop inexpensive loyal-wingman drones that can fly alongside manned fighters, adding their sensors and weapons to a chaotic and dangerous aerial battle.
“The idea of a robot wingman is that it can keep pace with manned planes, but be tasked out for parts of the mission that you wouldn’t send a human teammate to do,” said Peter W Singer, the author of several books about military technology.=
modem phonemes • July 4, 2023 7:29 PM
@ pup vas
The ultimate goal of Skyborg is to develop inexpensive loyal-wingman drones that can fly alongside manned fighters, adding their sensors and weapons to a chaotic and dangerous aerial battle.
BOLO lives !
MarkH • July 4, 2023 7:54 PM
@Clive, JG4:
Conspiracy theories are tinfoil hats which shield brains from reality.
Such theories usually presuppose that some large number of actors unanimously agree to outrage their own consciences and deepest commitments. It’s easy to find examples of large groups behaving hideously together, but their secret (if any) comes out.
Many parties concerned about E Palestine would identify their interest with disclosing whatever toxic hazards they might find.
MarkH • July 4, 2023 9:06 PM
Clive has repeatedly warned us “paper, paper, never data.”
Here is Lucian K Truscott IV, descendant of a famous general (in a discussion of the discord gamer leak):
… with the end of paper has come the end of secrets.
Nothing is on paper anymore. Battle plans? Digital files. Maps? With everyone carrying around a cell phone capable of displaying GPS-enabled maps and coordinates and detailed satellite imagery of the ground, are you kidding?
modem phonemes • July 5, 2023 2:05 AM
@ MarkH
Re: Ockham’s razor – Who shaves the barber ?
What would William of Ockham say?
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate (“Plurality must never be posited without necessity”)
Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora (“It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer”)
Ockham seems to distract from the real issue, which in scientific contexts is causality or in practical contexts is the search for facts and evidence. Causal understanding and evidence have their own intrinsic characteristics, which do not reference plurality or fewness. Explanatory elements need to be chosen to be sufficient and necessary to account for the observations. This is the critical methodological principle, not “more/fewer”.
Even as a heuristic, Ockham is distracting. The question being asked provides the constraints on its unknown answer. So formulating the right questions is what is needed.
Ockham’s razor states something, a criterion of more and fewer, which can be done without. So if we were to admit Ockham’s razor, Ockham’s razor is itself superfluous.
In Ockham’s own philosophy, which seems to be an in-the-mind-only conceptualism or nominalism, the razor makes a kind of sense as a principle of concepts minimization. But a real world of external things has its own real economy that directs the knower.
Winter • July 5, 2023 2:31 AM
@modem
Explanatory elements need to be chosen to be sufficient and necessary to account for the observations. This is the critical methodological principle, not “more/fewer”.
Which is exactly what Ockham told us. If you can do without an element, eg, God or Satan in Ockham’s time, then you should not add it.
Clive Robinson • July 5, 2023 3:39 AM
@ MarkH,
Re : Fact v Conspiracy.
“Conspiracy theories are tinfoil hats which shield brains from reality.”
Conspiracy theories were invented we are told by the CIA in the early 1960’s to discredit people who were drawing attention via available facts to things the CIA did not want known but could not hide the basic facts behind (an issue they have run up against more recently over aircradt and their legaly required beacons/transponders look up ADS-B).
Basic investigation the root of good journalism and intelligence reporting, takes basic facts and trys to follow them to logical conclusions, based not just on “cause and effect” but “historical behaviours”.
What was hoped to be achived with conspiracy theories was to “project beyond” and into what appears to most to be fantasy, paranoia, ravings, etc thus,
“Discredit the messenger, discredit the message.”
I’ve pointed out what is factual based on what has become known with regards E.Palestine and the behaviours in the past of similar groups.
For instance, it’s known and incontrovertible that dioxin is the product of certain types of combustion. Which implies if you test for it and don’t find it either the combustion was not of that type or the tests were not done correctly.
As far as I’m aware only one set of independent tests were carried out and that was on the waste hauled out, and that showed positive for dioxin.
But as I noted that has implications of it’s own with regards wind and rain at the time and later. Dioxin is heavier than air but will rise up in significantly quantities in combustion products we can sometimes see and call smoke etc. It will get dispersed by wind at the time and fall out to the ground on cooling. Rain will cause it to be washed into and through the soil in the direction of water courses and will cause some of it to end up in rivers. Creatures of various types live in the environment and their is an apex food chain in place. This is known and not controversial in any way.
The side effect of this can be with certain chemicals they get concentrated in rivers and creatures towards the top of the food chain. As far as I’m aware this is true for dioxin.
So that is factual as far as science is concerned.
But humans are involved and humans have not just agency but are driven by needs, wants, and fears. And this is what history shows us.
We know that previous releases of dioxin when they have got in the media cause areas effected to become blighted by the “Nobody want’s children who glow in the dark” meme[1]. We also know that environmental clean up is eye-wateringly expensive even over very small areas so land, homes, businesses in the area become first depreciated then worthless.
So it’s not hard to see why not just the train/railroad operators would want to keep it “untested” but the people who have other financial investment in the area, also don’t want the MSM claiming the place is the latest toxicville.
I could go on, but the point is sometimes apparently bizarre behaviour can be explained quite rationally, without the need to raise the “conspiricy theory” flag as a “strawman argument”.
[1] Which many years ago made it into comedy and caused a quite noticable change. A UK breakfast cerial manufacturer was pushing a variation on porridge/oatmeal by an inner warmth notion. With adverts that showed children running around with some having an orange glow around them, implying they were the ones that had had that breakfast cerial. It was also a time of concerne about the fact in Cumbria a nuclear reactor was belching out plutonium and other radio isotopes into the air. The comedy show “Not the Nine O’clock Show” did a spoof on the very recognisable add and inested of the “eat xxx-yyy” tag they had “live in zzz”. It was very funny at the time and made the news in it’s own right quite significantly. The result is as far as I’m aware is that the breakfast cerial add was pulled and never shown again. The thing is… I’d never eaten the breakfast cerial before, and as a joke I bought a packet and started noticably eating it for lunch at work, as a little wind-up for my colleagues. The thing is it was actually quite good, and I ended up eating it on a regular basis and then started making my own version of it which I still eat from time to time, but also have turned into an after dinner sweet as a variation on a Scottish dish.
Winter • July 5, 2023 5:32 AM
@Clive
Conspiracy theories were invented we are told by the CIA in the early 1960’s to discredit people who were drawing attention via available facts to things the CIA did not want known but could not hide the basic facts behind (an issue they have run up against more recently over aircradt and their legaly required beacons/transponders look up ADS-B).
Too much honor for an institution that seems to fail at everything at great costs of life and damage to society.
‘https://iep.utm.edu/conspiracy-theories/
Where Machiavelli discussed conspiracies as a political reality, Karl Raimund Popper is the philosopher who put conspiracy theories on the philosophical agenda. The philosophical discussion of conspiracy theories begins with Popper’s dismissal of what he calls “the conspiracy theory of society” (Popper, 1966 and 1972). Popper sees the conspiracy theory of society as a mistaken approach to the explanation of social phenomena: It attempts to explain a social phenomenon by discovering people who have planned and conspired to bring the phenomenon about. While Popper thinks that conspiracies do occur, he thinks that few conspiracies are ultimately successful, since few things turn out exactly as intended. It is precisely the unforeseen consequences of intentional human action that social science should explain, according to Popper.
Popper sees “the conspiracy theory of society” as a form of Historicism. See his book: The Poverty of Historicism (1944) and The Open Society and its Enemies, part 2 Hegel and Marx (1945).
Clive Robinson • July 5, 2023 5:48 AM
@ Bruce, the usual suspects, ALL,
This might amuse[1],
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/04/agi_llm_distant_dream/
It is titled,
“Artificial General Intelligence remains a distant dream despite LLM boom”
And indirectly points out that there is a lot of money pumping up the AI ML bubble currently, and that others see it as being theft of their Intellectual Property”(IP)… Which makes them feel entitled to the billions not Venture Capatilists and Silicon Valley Mega-Corps (so much “green chum” in the watter that it’s not surprising the sharks are circling[2];-)
To say this is shaping up to be a nice “bun fight” would be superfluous, but nevertheless it’s worth breaking out the pop-corn and getting settled in the comfy chair 😉
[1] For what it’s worth I think the type of neural network behind these LLM’s etc is nothing more than “Wind chimes in a breeze” sometimes they randomly make pleasing noises. But that in no way says they have agency let alone intelligence. Or for that matter can do anything other than throw confetti up high in the air for people to see pictures in the clouds they think for some reason are meaningful. To look at it another way randomly take a million photos of clouds and some will look like animals or famous people etc (pareidolia). The question to ask yourself is,
“Are the images real, or stroking our bell by some process similar to the way optical illusions happen?”
If you were to ask me, I’d say “I’m not siding with real” but pareidolia. But then I laugh like crazy when ever any one says “Rorschach” –ink blot/blob test– and question their sanity 😉
With good reason,
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171289
If you look you can see what is in effect a first order “reenforced learning” process in the creation of the blobs…
[2] Which gives us a new marketing meme,
“Remember boys and girls, ‘When there’s a claim, a lawyer will gain’.”
Cynical, but oh so true, along with,
“A client and their money will soon be parted.”
MarkH • July 5, 2023 6:05 AM
@Clive:
So far, we have apparent silence from environmental activists … liability attorneys … universities. The failure to find alarming concentrations is a sufficient explanation.
“Conspiracy theories were invented we are told by the CIA in the early 1960’s” — snopes dumps cold water on that bovine scatology.
wikipedia cites an 1863 appearance of “conspiracy theory” (in its modern meaning) in the New York Times.
The claim that Emperor Nero burned Rome is a typical conspiracy theory, more than 19 centuries old.
MarkH • July 5, 2023 6:13 AM
@modem phonemes:
If I understood your comment, you don’t think the principle of least hypothesis suited to real-world problems.
There are lots of people whose paying work involves the formation of hypotheses, including people like myself doing engineering work, police investigators, accident investigators, working scientists, etc. etc.
Many such find the principle to be of enormous help.
PS Orwell is your friend: Please read “Politics and the English Language”
MarkH • July 5, 2023 6:52 AM
So it’s not hard to see why not just the train/railroad operators would want to keep it “untested” but the people who have other financial investment in the area
When a group of people agree to conceal facts, potentially to the detriment of others … what does one call that?
Isn’t there a word for that?
I’m sure there must be …
Clive Robinson • July 5, 2023 9:57 AM
@ Winter, MarkH,
Re : So we are told (lies, damn lies, and statistics are but nought).
“Too much honor for an institution that seems to fail at everything at great costs of life and damage to society.”
Why are you being so nice avout them 😉
As someone I know remarked not long ago,
“They could not make credible Fox Journalists”
But as I’ve noted before they’ve never been technically compement, as the equipment they once chose and aquired and comes up for sale demonstrates.
Peter Wright of “Spy Catcher” fame, did not do their iniquity in this respect enough justice.
His assistant Tony Sale who saved Bletchly Park, had a few more choice comments about their inabilities including crippling their own staff with surveillance equipment they had aquired from some dodgy supplier in the US[1].
@ MarkH,
“I’m sure there must be…”
But did they agree?
As a general rule we all get up in the morning and do what we can during the hours of daylight.
Do we get together and agree with secret hand shakes etc, thus “conspire” or do we just do it because of self interest in that things go better in daylight?
[1] The story is a bit unplesant but involved putting a badly designed RF power amplifier down a persons trousers and causing them significant RF burns where you realy don’t want them if you have dreams of parenthood.
JonKnowsNothing • July 5, 2023 11:29 AM
@MarkH
re: large number of actors
It only takes 2 and sometimes only 1. You don’t have to agree or be directly part of any action or inaction. You just have to know about it or have heard about it.
There’s a lot of interesting aspects being reviewed in regards to Dec37.
- One person deciding to hide information
- Two people deciding to withhold information
A MSM article exposed a “conspiracy of silence” (1).
An English tourist accused of defacing the Colosseum was videoed carving his name and his girlfriend names in the wall of the Colosseum. The video was uploaded and the guy was traced to the UK. Filmed by an onlooker scratching “Ivan + Hayley 23” into the wall of the monument.
It took 5 days to trace him.
There are several conspiracies in play.
- He intended to do carve his name and brought something to scratch with
- He proceeded to carve his name and implicated his girl friend
- He remained quiet until he was located
- He sent sincerest apologies
- He claimed ignorance
Not every conspiracies is a “legal” court case, it just has to fit the profile:
- intent, action, silence, denial
In the USA we are taught, subliminally, to never admit to anything. Penalties being what they are it’s not hard to “lie through your teeth” if you are found doing anything that has a punishment attached. Being an Honest Abe or George Washington and the Cherry Tree type is not what is rewarded in our society. We are chock-a-block full of conspiracies.
===
HAIL warning
ht tps://www.theguardian.c o m/world/2023/jul/05/english-tourist-accused-of-carving-name-in-colosseum-says-he-did-not-realise-its-age
(url fractured)
Winter • July 5, 2023 11:58 AM
Re: conspiracy of silence
That is a lot like oligopoly in economics.
An economic oligopoly can raise prises without any communication or conspiracy by the members simply by never lowering their prices first. Also, boycotting and thwarting the member with the lowest prices at every opportunity is a natural thing that really needs no active conspiracy.
The same holds with such conspiracies of silence.
modem phonemes • July 5, 2023 1:42 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing
In the USA we are taught, subliminally, to never admit to anything.
It’s a principle of natural law that you are not obliged to admit to anything. You are rather obliged to defend “your fair name”.
JonKnowsNothing • July 5, 2023 6:24 PM
@modem phonemes
re: not obliged to admit to anything v conspiracy
This is a point in the Dec37 court cases. You do not have to admit anything, however if it is shown that you “knew of the action” then you are part of a conspiracy.
The prisons of the world are full of people who Never Admitted To Anything. They are still serving years of penal detention.
It isn’t about True v False, it’s about knowing that there is a difference and what you do or don’t do about it.
There have been numerous posts about Don’t Talk and Everyone Walks. It may or may not work, and governments have a penchant for making You Talk so Others Walk a priority.
RL iirc(badly)
Quite a few years ago there was a scandal at one of the USA top military academies, the ones where graduates are made officers in our military machinery. The costs (then) was $150,000 for tuition; and if you made it to graduation and got your commission the cost was waived. So it is a big plum to get in, and a big plum to graduate from these establishments.
The scandal was that an exam question paper had been stolen by a cadet and it was passed around to all their chums. It was a notoriously difficult exam and this group had higher scores than expected.
The conspiracy was uncovered. The list of cadets were called in to confess and uphold the tradition of Honor and Truth. Most did not confess. Without the confession, this group graduated and became Commissioned Officers and assigned to Duty.
A few cadets, did confess. They upheld their oaths of Honor and Truth. They admitted to having access to the exam.
Their reward?
I think you can fill in the blanks about what happened to the latter group.
It’s a bit like going to your MD and finding out they did a tour of duty in GITMO. Many MDs, RNs, etc are proud of their service and they put it right up on the wall with their medical diploma. I know which MDs I do not want to have on my roster of doctors.
There are other members who served in difficult situations and they come away with a different take on the same conditions. During COVID there was the Captain who saved his crew from SARS-CoV-2 and was Sent Down. At GITMO there are still JAG Officers working for 20 years to free their clients.
It’s about what kind of person you are, inside. It’s about what do words mean? (1)
===
1) What the words mean?
ht tps://en.wikipedia.o r g/wiki/Dirk_Willems
(url fractured)
modem phonemes • July 5, 2023 9:04 PM
@ Winter @ MarkH
is exactly what Ockham told us
principle of least hypothesis suited
Ockham doesn’t seem to say much about the “necessity” or “suited” part. But if one has a grasp of that, which is the point if the exercise anyway, why would one ever advert to a question of superfluous plurality ?
lurker • July 6, 2023 3:29 AM
I just discovered Montesquieu had summed up the situation in NE Europe nearly three centuries ago:
Que la noblesse Moscovite ait été réduite en servitude par un de ses princes, on y verra toujours des traits d’impatience que les climats du midi ne donnent point. N’y avons-nous pas vu le gouvernement aristocratique établi pendant quelques jours ? Qu’un autre royaume du nord ait perdu ses loix ; on peut s’en fier au climat, il ne les a pas perdues d’une maniere irrévocable.
L’Esprit des Loix 17.3
Clive Robinson • July 6, 2023 6:44 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : Twitter limiting
“The rate-limiting is so bad, that people can not post if they read their timeline.”
I suspect there will be a quite bad “unintentional side effect” from this.
Flip it over and you get,
“You can only post if you do not read”
Now consider “humans read” “faux-news bots don’t”
Thus this type of “rate limiting” will act as a faux-news reinforcer.
That is the faux-news “noise floor” will rise, and the human “signal” will fall. With the result the signal to noise ratio will be adversely effected…
“So let’s ‘watch and wait’ for results”
Oh of course you can’t just watch… “cause rate limiting”. So is Hellon Rusk trying to enforce the “Observer affects the experiment” 😉
Clive Robinson • July 6, 2023 7:49 AM
@ lurker, ALL,
Re : Hope what starts in Russia, stays in Russia.
“I just discovered Montesquieu had summed up the situation in NE Europe nearly three centuries ago”
Well Montesuieu was being a little generous with “Nobel Moscovite” even for the times, nobility was not something that existed there except in drink addled longings of a faux-past spun to keep the “unwashed” not just away from but firmly repressed with respect to what passed for royalty.
As far as we can tell from information available for two thousand years or more “The Russian System” as you might call it has been,
“Brut thuggery, coupled with criminal exploitation”
With no creative culture they remained locked in a feudal agrarian state. With progress only achieved as an inadvertant side effect of the theft and oppression of other cultures that were shall we say “more progressive”.
The sad thing is that Rusians in general do not lack creativity, it’s the enforced culture of a criminal hierarchy that oppresses it and stops it becoming a dominant social good on the “Kill it before it grows” ethos.
Unfortunately for the current crop of self appointed “princelings” the rest of the world has advanced such that it’s influance can not be stopped at by them at their boarders. Thus what is a mad plan to extend Russian boarders to the entire eastern atlantic coast and down into Africa.
There are two problems. Firstly they are due to repressing creativity a long way behind on the industrial curve and just physical numbers of criminal thugs can not make up for that as the “force multiplier” game of physics wins every time. Secondly even in Africa they are opposed, not just by the people that live there but Chinese “princelings” see it as their right to exploit as Empire.
None of which “bodes well” for the 11million Moscovites or their fellows in other cities and rural areas, as the pricelings steal and sell their birthright for pennies for quick enrichment not longterm sustainability.
MarkH • July 6, 2023 1:54 PM
New (for me) info about Titan, from nymag (my italics):
“The report that I got immediately after the event — long before they were overdue — was that the sub was approaching thirty-five hundred metres,” he told me, while the oxygen clock was still ticking. “It dropped weights” — meaning that the team had aborted the dive — “then it lost comms, and lost tracking, and an implosion was heard.”
This, from a submersible operator. So,
• Rush had aborted, and was ascending
• The “bang” was heard on the support ship
SOSUS could add nothing to what was already known …
MarkH • July 6, 2023 2:01 PM
The above-quoted article begins thus:
The primary task of a submersible is to not implode. The second is to reach the surface, even if the pilot is unconscious, with oxygen to spare. The third is for the occupants to be able to open the hatch once they surface. The fourth is for the submersible to be easy to find, through redundant tracking and communications systems, in case rescue is required.
For the record, Titan had a system for Task 2 (ballast weights suspended by hangers designed to break after about 24 hours in salt water), and seemingly provided for Task 4.
Failed Tasks 1 and 3.
MarkH • July 6, 2023 4:11 PM
One last quote, referring to the highly experienced Scottish submersibles pilot and engineer:
To assess the carbon-fibre hull, Lochridge examined a small cross-section of material. He found that it had “very visible signs of delamination and porosity” — it seemed possible that, after repeated dives, it would come apart. He shone a light at the sample from behind, and photographed beams streaming through splits in the midsection in a disturbing, irregular pattern.
AFAIK, the pieces brought up didn’t include any of the 5″ thick CFRP. Perhaps it exists only as shreds and tatters …
Clive Robinson • July 6, 2023 6:04 PM
@ MarkH,
I would actually say the primary task is actually,
“Not to fail”
But as that is not possible for a single system you have to mitigate the issue. This mitigation is achieved in several ways, one of which is to assume individual systems will fail as an inevitavility, thus to have as a minimum secondary systems and better still higher levels of redundancy.
As a rough rule of thumb your safety risk goes down as 1/(N x N) where N is the number of parallel systems.
This level can be improved by segmenting individual functional parts in the system such that you effectively form a matrix structure. The trick is knowing when to stop adding redundancy.
But also systems should “fail safe” by some sensible meaning of “safe” which sometimes can be difficult to determine. Such as if a rudder servo system fails, what should the rudder fail to as a position, hard to port, centered, hard a starboard?
With an ROV you would bormally consider putting it in a slow ascending spiral as a first thought, but this might not be the right choice if there are strong currents.
As for the hatch… As I’ve already said when I first heard about the fact it was bolted down from the outside, my first thought was “that was the mistake in Apollo One that killed three astronauts on the pad during a test.
Then seeing the video where it was clear there were no internal frames, or duplicate systems, manual overides via switches etc. But to hear the designer say it’s like a lift we press that button to go down… Oh and what looked like “bathroom towel rails” for hand holds…
As a design engineer with a life time of very broad experience including the design of GRP hulls for ocean going hulls for racing sailing vessels, you would not have got me in that minisub if you gave me a million dollars…
ResearcherZero • July 6, 2023 7:33 PM
“When it comes to careerism or the pursuit of power, history tells us human nature will not be changed by refreshed seminars on ethics. You need to change the underlying relationships of power and accountability.”
The final report will spend time reacquainting our political class with basic expectations of responsible government and standards in public life.
Did officials at one Commonwealth department deceive another when removing key legal and policy warnings from the cabinet submission that launched robodebt?
Even worse, did two departments collude to remove references to the unlawful method of averaging?
Did department officials mislead the Commonwealth ombudsman in its 2017 investigation?
Why was damning legal advice left unactioned by officials?
Shockingly poor record creation practices in Commonwealth agencies may limit the character of what can be found.
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2023/opinion/expectations-robodebt-royal-commission-report
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would wait and see what findings were made in the report.
“There is no question about why it’s being dropped today,” he told Nine’s Today program, pointing to the upcoming Fadden by-election.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/there-should-be-accountability-for-robodebt-shorten/ar-AA1dwB2G
11 May 2023
Royal Commissioner, Catherine Ena Holmes AC SC, advised the Government that a further short extension was needed and the Government agreed. The Royal Commission will now deliver its report by 7 July 2023.
https://ministers.dss.gov.au/media-releases/11196
“There were a number of people who committed suicide, others who try to take their own life, end up in hospital, they are still on medication today. They are the real-life human consequences of what happened here.”
“The critical failure in the system was that this advice, which had been sought prior to my turning up, was not brought to the attention of ministers, and I believe there was an obligation and duty to do so,” Mr Morrison said.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/morning-shows/unlawful-sunrise-host-natalie-barr-fires-up-ahead-of-bombshell-robodebt-report/news-story/f1dfeb18d11075188a3352f88a2d93ed
ResearcherZero • July 6, 2023 8:10 PM
Although there is a claim that the following “is an unusual case”, that is far from true.
This decision was obviously not made by a “computer”, it was made deliberately by humans…
https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2023/13.html
“behavioral science”
‘https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/exhibit/Exhibit%204-7628%20-%20CTH.1000.0008.9520%20-%20Attachment%20D%20-%20DHS%20Population%20Insights.pdf
Justin Warren and Services Australia (Freedom of information) [2023] AICmr 13 (2 March 2023)
“I set aside the decision of the Services Australia (the Agency) of 9 August 2018. I substitute my decision that the material that the Agency decided is exempt under s 47C is not exempt.”
‘https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2023/13.html
MarkH • July 6, 2023 9:16 PM
@Clive:
Lochridge seems to have been hired as chief pilot — and has extensive piloting experience — but never made a descent in Titan, regarding it as too dangerous.
I’ve read that 2 film crews considering Titanic visits via Titan decided not to go, after assessing Titan’s safety.
My reading confirms that Titan is the first inhabited deep submersible to implode, and that it had the only non-spherical pressure vessel.
Two good reasons not to use internal frames or other bracing: (a) the tiny interior spaces are already very awkward; and (b) such structures inevitably concentrate stress: Spherical = Conservative
ResearcherZero • July 6, 2023 10:53 PM
CVE-2023-20185
“An attacker with an on-path position between the ACI sites could exploit this vulnerability by intercepting intersite encrypted traffic and using cryptanalytic techniques to break the encryption.”
The vulnerability only impacts Cisco Nexus 9332C, 9364C, and 9500 spine switches (the last ones equipped with a Cisco Nexus N9K-X9736C-FX Line Card) only if they are in ACI mode, are part of a Multi-Site topology, have the CloudSec encryption feature enabled, and are running firmware 14.0 and later releases.
To check whether CloudSec encryption is enabled on a Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switch, run the show cloudsec sa interface all command via the switch command line. If it returns ‘Operational Status’ for any interface, CloudSec encryption is toggled on.
To find out if CloudSec encryption is being used across an ACI site, go to Infrastructure > Site Connectivity > Configure > Sites > site-name > Inter-Site Connectivity on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO) and check if “CloudSec Encryption” is marked as “Enabled.”
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-aci-cloudsec-enc-Vs5Wn2sX
–
A flaw was found in the handling of stack expansion in the Linux kernel 6.1 through 6.4, aka “Stack Rot”. The maple tree, responsible for managing virtual memory areas, can undergo node replacement without properly acquiring the MM write lock, leading to use-after-free issues. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to compromise the kernel and escalate their privileges.
‘https://github.com/lrh2000/StackRot
“This modifies our user mode stack expansion code to always take the mmap_lock for writing before modifying the VM layout.”
‘https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9471f1f2f50282b9e8f59198ec6bb738b4ccc009
ResearcherZero • July 7, 2023 12:25 AM
The Commissioner has described the “dishonesty and collusion to prevent the Scheme’s lack of legal foundation coming to light” as “truly dismaying”, and has slammed the ineffectiveness of the government bodies that were supposed to provided institutional checks and balances.
‘https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-07/report-of-the-royal-commission-into-the-robodebt-scheme.pdf
Staff working on the program at Services Australia and it’s predecessor – the Department of Human Services…
https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/submission/anonymous-submissions
–
‘https://vnexplorer.net/government-no-longer-holds-cctv-footage-from-night-of-brittany-higgins-alleged-rape-court-told-s3495345.html
“The decisions by Senator Ryan and Mr Smith ensured the CCTV footage, which was viewed by the AFP in April 2019, remained stored when it would otherwise have been routinely deleted and is available if the AFP seeks access to it for a formal investigation.”
‘https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/security-expert-checked-cctv-after-claim-of-parliament-cover-up-20210217-p573hx.html
Clive Robinson • July 7, 2023 5:25 AM
@ MarkH,
Re : Titan habitat.
“My reading confirms that Titan is the first inhabited deep submersible to implode, and that it had the only non-spherical pressure vessel.”
These are “after the event” observations, not as I indicated observations based on public information prior to the event.
Whilst a sphere is the strongest shape and largest volume to surface area, nature has shown that the egg shape can have advantages[1].
As I’ve previously mentioned a cylinder is not inherently a bad design for pressure vessels they can be found in all sorts of designs even those from before the age of the combination of artisanal craft and nascent science brought us engineering less than a couple of centuries ago (Victorian steam boiler explosions giving the first industrial safety laws of note).
The idea of sphere to cylinder is easily seen and a cube is exceptionaly strong from corner to corner as long as the sides remain flat and the other corners remain fixed with respect to each other. You can take a rod and cut pieces off and subject then to cross wise compressive force and find that from the thin coin like slivers up to when the length is slightly less than the diameter the strength increases.
Replace the rod with a tube and give the tube slices end pieces and you will find the same, but longer than slightly less than the diameter and the strength decreases. Keep the tube maximum dimensions within a sphere equivalent and you have a very strong “box structure” based on a balance between compression and tension (which as I mentioned is why bicycle wheels work).
The problem with cylinders is the “triangle of forces” problem. It’s not easy to explain in words but obvious when you draw it… But here goes,
If you have two uprights like trees and you tie an unstretchable rope between them so that it is effectively taught enough to be seen as a straight line you can using Pythagoras’ little formular work out how much tension strain is applied to the trees for a given “pull down” on the rope[2]. I’ve mentioned this before when talking about lifting heavy weights with two hanging ropes and pulling them appart. You can easily see that you can have a significant mechanical advantage. A 20:1 advantage can be usefully had with just two hanging ropes when lifting heavy objects small hights.
Now consider that rope as being the side of a cylinder, it tells you you would have to add a significant brace at that point to stop pressure pushing it in. In ship building this would be called “The King Frame”. Importantly the frame does not have to be a solid disk it can be like a washer or other disk with a hole at it’s center where the foci are located (similar applies with elipse cross section tubes). But… Whilst the frame is usually within and under compression it can be external and under tension.
In larger submarines you have the internal cylindrical pressure vessel and external support structures and an outer “casing” (light hull). This sort of design allows for multiple internal preasure vessels to be laid parallel with respect to each other. The US “Typhoon Class” actually has three parallel presure vessels inside the submarine’s outer casing with various pieces of “equipment” mounted externally to the pressure vessels such that “stuffing boxes” / “packing glands” do not have to pierce the preasure vessles.
What is not immediately obvious to most is that the diameter of the preasure vessel has to be kept small.
To see why, first think on the old question of,
“If there was a rope flat against the surface of the earth, how much longer would it need to be to be a foot above the earth all the way around?”
People would intuatively think it would be not just immense but related to the size of the Earth…
It’s not as a simple calculation shows it’s related to the increase in diameter D –2 foot– only by a constant (pi) because the change in circumference is found from pi(D) to pi(D + 2) so +pi(2) feet or 6.2831853ft.
Thus to get the required “balance of forces” on the circumfrance of the circle it needs to be held to a circular shape within an inch or less on the diameter regardless of the total size of the diameter… So the smaller the diameter of the preasure vessel the easier it is to do as precision is usually based on percentages of error.
To see why, consider an elipse it has two foci, unless they are very rigidly fixed with respect to each other even a very small amount of change on the semi major axis will cause them to move appart due to the triangle of forces again. But it will be a very rapid “runaway” effect which is why an implosion of a presure vessel is so very violent.
[1] If you hold an egg so that the point is under your index finger and the base under your thumb and you try squeasing them together you won’t get very far. Do the same on the sides and you will have quite a mess. Nature carries forward this sort of sphere to cylinder transition in a number of ways. One is to join spheres together via narrowings, you see this with insects and the like with exoskeletons to gain volume by increasing length not width. This tend to a cylinder with bracing can be found in fish and carried forward into land mammals with our head, rib cage and hips.
[2] If the rope is unstretchable, you can draw what was a straight line as two right angle triangles where the length that was the straight line is now divided equally as the two hypotenuse, therefore the length of the triangle must decrease appropriately.
SpaceLifeForm • July 7, 2023 6:03 AM
@ MarkH, CLive
Report I saw that the carbon fibre was bought cheap from Boeing because it was past it’s shelf life.
Apparently, carbon and oxygen are not friends. Who knew?
SpaceLifeForm • July 7, 2023 6:08 AM
@ CLive, ALL
This graphic is pretty accurate wrt to social media.
‘https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/110/671/458/529/010/598/original/59bda609a1313bf5.png
Clive Robinson • July 7, 2023 6:57 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : All a Twit er…
This should make people smile…
If as the supposadly richest man in the world, you discovered your deep pockets had developed a large hole in the bottom, do you,
1, Fix the hole
2, Ask people to give you money to top off your pockets.
3, Threaten people with lawyers letters to make them fill your pockets
Well we’ve seen Hellon Rusk fail to do the first, get a black eye for the second, and is now doubling down on the third,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/twitter_threatens_to_sue_meta/
But it appears thar Hellon just can not get the staff…
This made me laugh,
Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s recently installed CEO, in response to Threads taking off – 30 million sign-ups already – said earlier: “We’re often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”
Perhaps some one should tell Linda that as something approaches zero duplicating it becomes easy, you just turn the lights off and shut up shop…
But I’m not the only one to notice this effect,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/kettle_twitter_threads/
modem phonemes • July 7, 2023 12:31 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm @ Clive Robinson
wrt to social media.
The polarization seen in and between social media seems to be at pathological levels. It’s been seen in other contexts where someone’s game is to exaggerate polarization so as to make political compromise impossible, bringing on a crisis, at which point the someone appears in the radiance of friendly reason and captures both sides, which was the point of the exercise from the beginning. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis as a service.
ResearcherZero • July 8, 2023 3:09 AM
@SpaceLifeForm
The old carbon fiber skateboards and tennis rackets used to explode after a short time (a few days to a few weeks). They would begin to lose rigidity, and then BOOM, shatter!
MarkH • July 8, 2023 3:32 PM
@Clive, all:
Military submarines and deep submersibles are radically different animals. From my reading, no USN submarine is rated for operation below 500 m. Visiting RMS Titanic exposes a submersible to nearly 3 short tons per square inch.
For comparison, Limiting Factor is designed to 14000 m: conservative indeed, as the lowest point in the oceans is about 11000 m (8 tons / sq in). That sub’s special insurance and inspection criteria are triggered at 4000 m; a trip to Titanic wouldn’t count as a deep dive.
The pressure vessel is 90 mm thick, and machined to within 99.933% of perfect sphericity: any deviation could cause a “positive feedback” deformation instability under pressure.
SpaceLifeForm • July 8, 2023 4:15 PM
@ ResearcherZero
Re: carbon fiber skateboards and tennis rackets
It probably does not help that they are exposed to UV and heat.
I never found a problem with using wood for those tools.
Then again, I was not that good at tennis, so racket speed was the least of my concerns.
And I did not try to ride a skateboard down a handrail.
Clive Robinson • July 8, 2023 4:51 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
“And I did not try to ride a skateboard down a handrail.”
What… You were not one of those who would do a dare even when in their thirties?
Let’s put it this way it was not just small sailboat racing and rugby that knocked my teeth out and put cracks in my bones that now plague me every time the weather changes… Nor jumping off/out of things when wearing the green or bouncing down mountains when getting things like face forwards rappelling wrong as you run down a slop not quite steep enough to absail. Then there were the bounces off of vehicles more than four of which destroyed the racing pushbike I was “pushing up to and beyond my cardio limit”….
Let’s just say not all my breaks and cracks were as “the result of a misspent youth” there was my twenties, thirties and fourties “to be taken into account” for “bad behavior” 😉
But it all catches up on you, and some people can hear me approaching because at times my body creaks like an old galleon under sail…
They say “No pain, No gain” but they don’t tell you you get the pain on an “instalments plan” of life long debt…
Clive Robinson • July 8, 2023 7:55 PM
@ MarkH,
“Visiting RMS Titanic exposes a submersible to nearly 3 short tons per square inch.”
It’s actually about 414kg/cm^2 or a little over 2.5tons / square inch. And is effectively a linear increase with depth, going up by the old 15lb square inch for ever ~32ft of depth. Which is important to remember because it actually means the preasure is not uniform around the preasure hull.
But as you note,
“a trip to Titanic wouldn’t count as a deep dive.”
No it wouldn’t but the insurance rules are actually quite arbitary and as we’ve found out some decided were “overly conservative”, but they did not consider the delamination effects of any fiber reinforced plastic composite[1] espessialy under compressive flexure.
“The pressure vessel is 90 mm thick, and machined to within 99.933% of perfect sphericity: any deviation could cause a “positive feedback” deformation instability under pressure.”
As I’ve already explaind that “99.933%” is absolutly meaningless except as a very crude indicator of difficulty for a known diameter.
As we know,
Circumferance = 2piR
The change of circumference by an inch of increase in radius is,
Circumferance = 2pi(R+1)
Circumferance = 2pi(R) + 2pi
Or an increase of 2pi, 6.2832 inches. That is it’s linear increase not a percentage ratio of the radius change.
The likelihood of colapse increases with the eccentricity as a circle becomes an elipse, and the two foci seperate along the semi major axis. When it is a circle and the foci are at the same point you have a triangle with an outer perimiter equal to the diameter (2R) this perimiter does not change as you change the eccentricity. So the base of the triangle increases along the semi major axis as the semi minor axis decreases. It’s well within high school math to come up with a formular for what happens.
The only thing stopping it is the tensile strength of the materials holding the foci in place. The issue is the greater the effective circumference the less the ability a material has to being deformed. Thus the smaller the diameter the less thick the material can be.
The problem with laminates can be seen with those laminated “bent wood” chairs that were once popular, the first signs of delamination always occure where flexure is the greatest, which is usually at a tight bend. Once the delamination starts it spreads rapidly along the laminations, thus failure becomes suddenly catastrophic.
There is a nice video up on YouTube that shows this in a piece of hand grafted laminate furniture that fails,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk1l9tIjbEs
Nice as it looks it does not take much calculation to show it’s going to have incredibly bad load bearing capacity.
[1] Fiber-matrix composite delaminating is actually quite a well known issue in boat building and why insurance tends to get much more expensive on GRP hulls on sailing boats that are more than 15years old. Because that is about when a polyester gel-coat has failed to the extent blistering by osmosis becomes visable. Which with salt water in warm climbs happens sooner. But the blistering / delamination can not be reversed, it needs mechanical intervention to strip back and relaminate and apply one of the newer epoxy based gel-coats that have a much lower porosity than the older polyester gel-coats (that unfortunately are still used…).
MarkH • July 9, 2023 12:31 AM
@Clive:
Maybe we wrote the same idea different ways … it isn’t circumference that needs tight control, it’s symmetry about the geometric center.
Ellipsoidal shape — or other deviations from sphericity — can progress to the point of buckling, like that egg squeezed sideways.
The tight control in fabrication was for shape not dimension. I suspect that the tolerance was derived from engineering analysis, rather than OCD.
PS I get 2.81 short tons / sq. inch at Titanic; either way, naval sub design and construction don’t extrapolate well to such depths.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Phillip • June 30, 2023 6:02 PM
I definitely have no verifiable source; there is a dumb meme going around claiming how any Wi-Fi router can be used to image people inside a room (the concept appeared in a Batman movie way back). It is very non-specific, like; “…so what scientists did…”, then of course “…using AI…” (somebody else noted this hook). I do not want to repeat the meme source. Otherwise, we might amplify the noise-to-boredom ratio.