Argentina is reporting that there is a good population of illex squid in its waters ready for fishing, and is working to ensure that Chinese fishing boats don’t take it all.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
C U Anon • February 2, 2024 5:55 PM
@Anonymous: I’m not seeking a class or anything, just a different set of varieties than just the ordinary.
Your future is in your hands.
Post on the Friday Squid a topic you would like to see, in the form of a “starter seed”.
If it’s seen as good it will get picked up and nurtured either by the host or other commentors or both.
Many of the threads on this blog can be found to have come from topics raised and talked about in the Friday Squid by many different people. Importantly this blog is not a “Hot Topic” blog like some “ticker-tape blogs”. That is sometimes it might take a while for a subject to come up in a non Friday Squid thread. The Host here is a busy person but also likes to think things through for particular aspects of relavance. It’s why many come here to lurk, read, comment and suggest.
It’s upto you what related subject you put a seed down for, but don’t give up if your first attempts fail.
But do yourself a favour stop using “Anonymous” as your Identity here. Because many people will just skip over your comments because of it.
Secondly be plain not enigmatic people have busy lives and don’t have time to spare for that.
Thirdly don’t be contentious again people have busy lives.
Forth don’t pollute threads, non Friday Squid pages are topic based, try and stay on topic even if it is tangentially. People tend to be forgiving if they can quickly see how you get from the thread topic to a related / foundational topic.
Finally as always read the blog guidelines (guiding rules) you will find a link to them at the top of every Friday Squid for such a long time now it feels like forever.
But also scan, “100 Latest Comments”,
https://www.schneier.com/blog/newcomments.html/
It will give you, not just a heads up on what is being discussed currently, but importantly it will let you see when someone makes a post to an older thread that is highly relavant. This happens more often than you might at first think.
Likewise as with FAQ’s take the time to see if the subject you want to talk about has already been raised. Quite often it has more often than you might expect “years before”. Some here like the host have the ability to see things more than a half a decade or longer before they become mainstream.
Red Team • February 2, 2024 6:45 PM
@Anonymous
I’m sure others will disagree, but I’d suggest looking into Kali or similar distros. Learning how to use the breadth of open source hacklng tools against your own network and devices might help better understand how to secure yourself.
JonKnowsNothing • February 2, 2024 6:58 PM
@C U Anon, @Anonymous, All
In addition to what @CU mentioned
When you see a comment thread that has gathered several posters, notice the names of those who you find “most illuminating”. Try to follow their posts and how they write up a topic.
You do not have to be an expert (see my handle) so when a topic is running and you have lost some of the trail, do a bit of hunting in wikip (or other) to get an overview of the topic themes. You won’t become an expert but it may direct you towards something that is interesting to you.
Don’t be afraid of laying an egg with a question. I’ve certainly laid a good few and people for the most part are polite and if you don’t get a response, it maybe because you have framed the question too vaguely.
Also be mindful that these topics tend to be either at the 10,000ft level or at the 10,000mm level. Any specific advice on How To Do X is probably not something found here.
echo • February 2, 2024 10:04 PM
It’s a mistake to post “high level views” and “nitty gritty detail” and nothing in between if for no other reason it can fall into the trap of being conceited or showing off. Myself I feel a more practical and accessible balance is better. There’s a place for high level abstracts and detail. Of course there is. But it’s going to sail by most people if it forgets “solving problems relevant to them”.
Knowing how to do something effectively (emphasis “effective”) is worth more than gimlet eyed duck and roll teeth grinding purism. Neither is anyone going to do a search of the past ten years of freeform scattergun egotism.
So in that respect I tend to agree with the OP and less so with the old lags. It’s easy to forget the idea of nurturing and give people both barrels when they walk in the door because “n00b”. The point being is we are all someone else’s idiot. The places I have worked or interacted with which forgot this all went bust later down the line. Every single one. Every organisation I’ve had interactions with which had a dictatorial management chain and know you place dumbing down all, eventually, got done for criminal activity.
echo • February 2, 2024 11:41 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvwDen1Wrx8
The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) Official Trailer.Based upon recently declassified files of the British War Department and inspired by true events, THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE is an action-comedy that tells the story of the first-ever special forces organization formed during WWII by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a small group of military officials including author Ian Fleming. The top-secret combat unit, composed of a motley crew of rogues and mavericks, goes on a daring mission against the Nazis using entirely unconventional and utterly “ungentlemanly” fighting techniques. Ultimately their audacious approach changed the course of the war and laid the foundation for the British SAS and modern Black Ops warfare.
OMG. Super title and lots of well dressed commando types blamming off like no tomorrow in exotic locations. The sharp eyed will spot the trailer shows a few bullet points lifted from the real WWII from Churchill’s “set Europe ablaze” to riffs on Nancy Wake (of French Resistance and later SOE fame codenamed by the Nazi’s “White Mouse”) to the SAS airfield raids and onwards so happy with this. Pinching the bosses cigars? That fits. lol. I also like the action cartoon style.
Uuuuh. A Guy Richie movie. Not so great. I just feel uncomfortable with his undertone of toxic behaviour and women always being second fiddle cardboard cutouts. That… does… get… up… my…. nostrils. On the plus side he does actually make an effort to have a story. Of course it’s going to be CGI’d up the wazoo which softens the edge of danger. The world hasn’t been the same since movie stars didn’t have the risk of breaking both legs and ending up in hospital for six months, or six car flaming pile ups in Formula 1.
The last war movie I really enjoyed was Where Eagles Dare but that was yonks ago. Flipping amazing theme tune! It really helped it was based on a ripping good yarn written by Alistair MacLean!
It’s a shame that the previous Cavill vehicle The Man From U.N.C.L.E. didn’t turn out too well because it had a duff story. Let’s hope this one is better.
A Most Ungentlemanly Way of War: The SOE and the Canadian Connection
Colonel Bernd HornAn examination of the SOE, its accomplishments, and the Canadian connection to the organization.
During the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to conduct acts of sabotage and subversion, and raise secret armies of partisans in German-occupied Europe. With the directive to “set Europe ablaze,” the SOE undertook a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the Nazi Gestapo. An agent’s failure could result in indescribable torture, dispatch to a concentration camp, and, often, a death sentence.
While the SOE’s contribution to the Allied war effort is still debated, and many of its files remain classified, it was a unique wartime creation that reflected innovation, adventure, and a fanatical devotion on the part of its personnel to the Allied cause.
The SOE has an important Canadian connection: Canadians were among its operatives and agents behind enemy lines. Camp X, in Whitby, Ontario, was a special training school that trained agents for overseas duty, and an infamous Canadian codenamed “Intrepid” ran SOE operations in the Americas.
And:
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/uncommon-courage
One WWII show I liked was the Candian/Hungarian production “X Company”. It was based loosely on training camps set up in Canada and Canadian’s participation in WWII with SOE and MI9. Ooof. That had some rough moments which make you think.
Outside of the movies and propaganda movies I know real war is not fun.
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 12:05 AM
Part of learning is unfortunately through experience. You have to try things to find out what does not work. There is nothing wrong with asking questions either. The web has many guides how to accomplish a task, but solutions do not work for every situation.
If someone is having difficulty with a particular problem and needs some help then asking can sometimes be the solution. The best way to learn is to have an old or cheap system that you can break, because you can render a system without a GUI fairly easily.
A Live CD of a Linux distro is also very helpful for getting back up an internet connection and repairing misconfigurations in system files.
Learning the command line and how to setup a firewall is a great learning experience.
The first step is to learn how to repair a system from a recovery console or terminal without a GUI. The next step is to learn all the individual components in your device and their chipsets. Most recent operating systems these days, handle device drivers and firmware updates for the user, but it is good to make a list of the actual hardware.
If you want to learn or attempt more advanced customised configuration changes, you need to know what specific CPU you have, and what features your CPU supports, what chipset the motherboard uses to communicate with the CPU and other devices. Network adapter models, drives and their specific controllers, other ports (like USB) and their controllers, display adapters, keyboard layout…
Before trying any of the following you may want to first try a VM. Running a vrtual install of an operating system is very simple, but it does require plenty of free drive space. You can run any operating system within 10GB of free space. A little extra helps.
A Linux Live image on a USB stick is also useful to test if a device is supported by that version of Linux and the network adapter, touchpad, sound, display will all work properly.
It is better to run Linux on a system without Windows.
It is often better to add another hard drive if you want to dualboot.
Do not modify your Windows partition, Win Recovery partition, or Boot partition from within the Linux installer if you decide to add Linux to a Windows system. You must make changes to Windows partitions from within Windows first, such as resizing a partition to make room for a Linux install.
(modifying Windows partitions from within Linux is only for the hardcore)
Of course you must backup first because you are going to break stuff and a recovery install may not be possible. Learning how to do a custom Linux install is a great first step in discovering how a system is formatted and how it boots.
For old legacy systems with MBR to fix the bootloader from the recovery console…
“Use the “FixMbr” option when you need to repair Master Boot Record corruption problems or when you need to clean the code from the MBR.”
(with the ‘bootrec /FixMbr’ you won’t damage partition info and lose your data)
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/command-prompt-fix-issues-your-boot-records/
‘https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/configuration/what-is-mbr/
A Linux system can be repaired with a recovery install using a Linux install image on a USB stick.
Newer systems use GPT and a GUID for uniquely identifying each partition.
https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/05_GUID_Partition_Table_Format.html
“A Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) is a 128-bit label used for information in computer systems. The term Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) is also used”
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 1:07 AM
The open remoting software provider AnyDesk has been breached.
Source code and private code signing keys (certificate) possibly stolen.
‘https://anydesk.com/en/public-statement
–
You also need to be an administrator to fix the bootloader.
‘https://windowsreport.com/bcdedit-windows-11/
If you are still using MBR (legacy BIOS, not UEFI) and the system was not set up as GPT…
Modern windows such as Windows 11 uses a different system and a slightly different syntax for the command to repair it’s bootloader. If you damage the bootloader and startup repair will not work then further steps may be required if you do not want to perform a fresh install.
‘https://woshub.com/how-to-rebuild-bcd-file-in-windows-10/
Once you get a hand on Linux, it is like a dream in comparison to install, setup, and repair, but there are a few things that Linux does not include as default and must be added manually. Non free (non-free), and additionally for newer linux distributions, non free firmware (non-free-firmware), must be added to the sources list to support closed source software and firmware and get the latest firmware security updates.
Many Linux distributions do not include encrypted DNS and randomised MAC addresses as default options, this may need to be added manually. Hence it is first best to learn how to use the distributions package manager, the terminal, and how to repair the system before you break the DNS settings, the network manager, and the system will not boot.
It’s fairly simple to make a misconfiguration error when setting up encrypted DNS which prevents the system finish booting, or some other mistake which takes out the network adapter. Linux has come a long way and there are much fewer problems with dependencies.
Learning to fix such mistakes from a terminal without booting to a desktop makes life easier. Testing things before you reboot the system and how to kill and restart a service (or a daemon) makes this all so much simpler.
SUDO also forces people to learn about permissions, and is very good for setting the access that other user accounts have to the system. Learn to set up SUDO.
Don’t cheat and do everything from root, learn to use user accounts and SUDO.
Once you learn all of the basics it is much simpler system to run than Windows, and much more powerful, as it gives you a greater control over what you want in a system. This does come with a steeper learning curve, but there is also a huge quantity of MAN pages and support. Unix based systems also come with better security out of the box.
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 1:11 AM
As a rule of thumb, do not delete the system partition unless you want to reinstall. 🙂
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 2:45 AM
cred dumping via SMB and calendar phishing through MAPI
“Based on our estimates, from approximately April 2022 until November 2023, Pawn Storm attempted to launch NTLMv2 hash relay attacks through different methods, with huge peaks in the number of targets and variations in the government departments that it targeted.”
‘https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/24/a/pawn-storm-uses-brute-force-and-stealth.html
–
account impersonation and hijacking
‘https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-3fjr-858r-92rw
–
Give users user accounts and assign them access only to what they need. Do not give them administrator access and never give them an admin password.
‘https://steflan-security.com/linux-privilege-escalation-checklist/
tips on how to check
‘https://delinea.com/blog/linux-privilege-escalation
user ID’s and permissions
The range of IDs from 100 to 999 is reserved for system administration.
On Linux and Unix operating systems, any user with a user ID above 1000 is considered a non-default user.
The user ID “0” is reserved for the root account, which grants super-user privileges.
‘https://iasad.me/blogs/linux-privilege-escalation/
Viewing and Understanding File Permissions
‘https://www.howtogeek.com/437958/how-to-use-the-chmod-command-on-linux/
–
Penetration Testing Your Systems for Privilege Escalation
Windows privilege escalation (some Nmap and NetCat knowledge might help here)
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD_KlzVK834
SUID, SUDO, dumping, kernel exploits and vulnerabilities
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2rElXYV2Fs&t=267
Something you should not try on systems you do not own in case you do gain access. (possible jail time) The law is a little blurry…
‘https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/19/germany_fine_security/
echo • February 3, 2024 10:22 AM
This sounds like the stuff of movies and, I suppose, it is if framed this way but there is a “shadow operation” out there slowly eating away at the far right. I’m not directly involved. I just know people and what is happening.
I am aware that far right organisations have been penetrated. That’s where the data dump for Project 2025 came from as well as previous leaks. I am also aware of people who have done network analysis to map out far right organisations and individuals and activity, and who combined this with previous data to effectively “out” this network. I know one of the people who did this work. You will have read about this in the legacy media. What you won’t read about in the legacy media is I am also aware of people who have access to raw internet traffic and telecoms data at a pinchpoint level and who have monitored far right activity and events in real time. There are also people working with or adjacent to the International Court of Justice who are building a case against these organisations and individuals for formal submission at a future point, or other action as appropriate and achievable. Personally, I feel it’s a bit irresponsible but someone just published a redacted version of personal information for far right and far right aligned politicians and journalists and celebrities including names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and passwords. (They have the full unredacted data.) It has been publicly confirmed by at least one of the named people the data is accurate.
I’m not posting links or making more comment on this. It’s just interesting how networks can be dual use in the sense they can be used by bad actors and those who oppose them. In a lot of ways by using this “tool of power” they convict themselves. Stripped of power they are often pathetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joGisGt2xOY
Sentencing of Brianna Ghey’s killers.
I mention this as on the day sentencing was passed by Judge Yip of the killers of Brianna Ghey that the “usual suspects” swung into disinformation and distraction mode. Disinformation was published by the New York Times, a high profile author who will not be named (“She who will not be named”) was openly attacked a lesbian book author as a distraction, and there was a far right demonstration at Kings Cross railway station also as a distraction. The US LGBT rights organisation GLADD immediately responded by posting a well researched rebuttal. Some names are named and fingers pointed.
Court reporter Andrew Bardsley will bring you the latest from court in our live blog below…
I followed this case from day one. The most responsible sources are the Manchester Evening News, The Liverpool Echo, and the Warrington Guardian. The details of the trial were graphic and distressing. I also followed the sentencing live. The victim impact statements by Brianna Ghey’s family are very emotional. Many have commented on Esther Ghey’s dignity and strength while it was obvious she and Brianna’s sister were deeply effected by the loss of Brianna. The victim impact statements show how utterly devastated and broken they were and how deeply they missed Brianna. I cannot fault the highly respected Judge Yip. She delivered sentencing to a packed court and a packed second overflow court viewing on video link. Her sentencing was professional and exact and left no room for escape. It is clear from her tone the case impacted her. It was an emotional acknowledgement in a system which can appear soulless. While it will never bring Brianna back I felt, for myself at least, this brought a closure.
I remember the deaths of James Bulger and Stephen Lawrence. Names burned on the national consciousness. “Baby P” and other young children who fell between the cracks. A mentally ill black man who starved to death because of the DWP. Bronson Battersby who starved to death clutching the dead body of his father and not found for two weeks. Hate and neglect and loneliness kills. Then there are the wars. A husband clutching the hand of his dead wife. The broken body of a mother and children lying on a road. A mother crying and screaming from the depths of her soul as she touches the broken remains of her only child dragged from the well his killers threw his body into.
I’ve heard the screams of a man being murdered in the distance. Women being beaten. A taxi driver driver having his head smashed against a car. I’ve been ten metres and ten minutes away from the scene and moment of a murder and gave a statement after walking past what I presume to be the murder weapon dropped as the murderer made his escape.
I’m lost for words and numbed just thinking about it. The forces that cause it. Unthinking career opportunism at the top. Privileged middle class chatter at dinner parties. The wealthy connected people who fund the slow drip drip of manufactured hate.
https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/once-met-never-forgotten-lasting-28353390
“She is dignified, strong and a warrior mother. Being there for Brianna not only when she was alive, but standing strong for her in her death, in a way that I am totally in awe of.
“She is dedicated to making a positive legacy for Brianna in helping other young people. To create something so positive out of such personal pain and tragedy is truly remarkable. She is just that, remarkable, and I am very proud to call her my friend.”
It’s funny how time is a circle. Over a decade ago I lobbied for “mindfulness” to be taken seriously. Nothing much happened until a new government set up a “mindfulness unit” reporting to Downing Street. I still have an email from Lord Layard, a mindfulness enthusiast, from that time. After a few years of inactivity the current government quietly wound up this unit only a few months ago during the trial period for the killers of Brianna Ghey. I’m not 100% convinced this is a coincidence.
Esther Ghey set up “Peace In Mind” a mindfulness charity to roll out in Warrington then nationally as a legacy for Brianna’s memory. She wants Brianna’s death to mean something good and for her to be remembered for the joy she brought into peoples lives. The family also requested that the names of her killers be forgotten.
As alluded to at the top the work continues to bring those who loaded the bullets into the gun that killed Brianna is ongoing.
MDK • February 3, 2024 11:33 AM
@ALL
Bit late to the show.
As soon as possible and no later than 11:59PM on Friday February 2, 2024, disconnect all instances of Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure solution products from agency networks.
hxxps://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/supplemental-direction-v1-ed-24-01-mitigate-ivanti-connect-secure-and-ivanti-policy-secure
lurker • February 3, 2024 12:52 PM
@MDK, ALL
Note: This is a developing campaign under active analysis
…
UNC5221 primarily used compromised out-of-support Cyberoam VPN appliances for C2. These compromised devices were domestic to the victims, which likely helped the threat actor to better evade detection.
‘https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/suspected-apt-targets-ivanti-zero-day
&ers • February 3, 2024 1:09 PM
@ALL
hxxps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68176390
“Joshua Schulte was also found guilty of possessing child abuse images.”
I wonder whether those images were planted.
JonKnowsNothing • February 3, 2024 1:46 PM
@&ers, All
re: Schulte hard drive
From other somewhat credible sources, I read that the images in question were found on a system in a hidden partition under 3 layers of password encrypted files. The same source reported this was found after the laptop was seized by the FBI and found by the FBI system forensic techs.
There was no additional information about how they determined this and what kind of tech the FBI used to discover it, other than some lengthy legal explanation that whether he did himself or not, the fact that the images were there at all are the damning factors.
This same “if it’s there” you are guilty” whether you actively retrieved it or not was applied to a decorated UK Police Officer who was found guilty of having such material because someone sent it to them. It was proved in court that the officer never opened the file and never looked at the images. The images alone were enough to convict them. Much later that conviction was overturned and the officer was to be re-instated in good standing and same previous rank; however the Metropolitan Police are contesting this in court. I have not read anything about the reinstatement being successful.
From the first source, it was clear that from a legal aspect, the technical details about Schulte’s systems were determined by the FBI and admitted as Fact and Expert Witnesses.
We know that there are a lot of ways that such images get on hard drives. Hunter Biden (son of the US president) is undergoing multiple legal challenges of varying value, including “dikpis” found on a hard drive taken in for repair. The files were retrieved in a way that corrupted the metadata by a sight-challenged repair person, who sent it on through several handshakes, until it ended up with the FBI. The FBI retrieved the HW systems. The FBI techs who analyzed the systems botched all aspects of how to forensically retrieve the source data.
In the Hunter case too, it maybe that the existence of the files, as attested to by the FBI, is all that is needed for legal purposes.
JonKnowsNothing • February 3, 2024 2:00 PM
@echo, All
re: I know one of the people who did this work
This blog is likely to be retrieved regularly by a plethora of LEAs. You might want to be mindful that there are numerous laws, in many countries, that can apply to computer hacking, unauthorized data retrieval and having “knowledge of” activities that are deemed unlawful.
In the USA and many countries in EU/UK, you do not need to be an active participant to be part of a “conspiracy”. We have a lot of folks in USA from Dec37 who are finding out the hard way about this.
The effects might not be evident immediately, because it is so much easier to proceed with an arrest when you are out of the Country of Citizenship(s) and/or also travesing a no-mans land area such as an airport or border crossing.
David Miranda found out all about that and lots of ordinary people find out about it every day.
Six Handshakes becomes One Handshake per your description.
vas pup • February 3, 2024 6:30 PM
Should we be worried about older politicians?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230913-should-we-be-worried-about-older-politicians
“The US has become a hotspot for debates about whether people in the political sphere can ever be too old to lead. The top contenders for the 2024 US presidential election are Joe Biden – who turned 81 in 2023 – is more than twice as old as the median American; and 77-year-old Donald Trump, who is a more than a decade beyond the “Normal Retirement Age” – the age at which Americans can receive their full retirement benefits. In the US Senate, Republian Chuck Grassley is the oldest sitting senator at the age of 90,
followed by Senator Bernie Sanders at 82.
Apart from discussions of the fact that gerontocracies – societies governed by older people – are typically not representative of their population, there are other concerns.
One key focus is mental fitness. Neuroscience and psychology suggest that
cognitive performance varies widely as people grow older, making it tricky to
determine whether someone can be too old to lead. And while some skills tend to
decline with age, others improve. Some “super agers” even possess the mental
acuity of people many decades younger than themselves. So, how old is “too old”
to lead – or is this the wrong question?
Brain volume diminishes over time. In healthy people, the prefrontal cortex is
the region of the brain with the most age-related volume loss, of roughly 5% per decade. Through its connections to other parts of the brain, it helps manage executive function: a complex set of mental processes that has been likened to a thermostat or the conductor of a symphony. It’s key to discussions of leadership capacities because it’s involved in areas like problem-solving,
goal-setting and impulse control.
Executive function declines gradually during a person’s 30s, and this
accelerates as we enter our 70s. White matter disease – a group of conditions
caused by damage to the white matter in the brain – also contributes to
executive dysfunction, and affects about a third of people aged 65 and older.
!!!Executive dysfunction can show up in reduced impulse control and increased
repetition of thoughts and behaviors.
“The battery of testing would be the best way to formally determine one’s
executive function, but there is going to be wide variation in terms of how
individuals function,” Fisher says.There are some aspects where older brains actually show better performance.
While the ability to take in new information declines much earlier, the ability to direct and act on information can improve well into a person’s 70s.
So, while 70-year-olds will probably process new information more slowly than 30-year-olds, they may do better at synthesizing it. Mapstone says that 60-year-olds typically have better vocabulary than 20-year-olds, and can thus
substitute words better. For example, one study found that vocabulary scores increase until a person’s mid-60s.
“What happens with older brains is they get better at what is called
crystallized intelligence,” explains Rose McDermott, who specializes in political psychology at Brown University. “You have these kind of established schemas and ways of thinking about things. And you’re able to integrate new information into existing structures much more readily and in many cases creatively than you can when you’re younger because you don’t sit on the same
degree of knowledge base.”
!!!powerful people are also likely to have many privileges, including financial
security and access to excellent healthcare.
“Cognitive flexibility in thinking and problem solving is an essential form of
cognition for political leaders to excel at in order to make good-quality
decisions under uncertainty and risk,” notes Barbara Sahakian, a professor of
clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge. “These types of decisions are also often time limited.” However, cognitive flexibility usually
dwindles over time.that while political ideology remained consistent overall over a six-month period, people with cognitive impairment showed inconsistency between their
political orientation and policy choices. Fisher comments of this finding: “It
does appear to be that this is a consequence of cognitive impairment, that
one’s political behavior becomes relatively unanchored from one’s stated
policy.”
!!!Fisher and some colleagues from different disciplines are calling for
cognitive screenings for politicians, which would not necessarily depend on age. “We view cognitive screening as something analogous to the financial
disclosures that politicians are often expected to make,” he says.
Cognitive function is mainly assessed through a neuropsychological evaluation – a set of standardized tests that can be so detailed and extensive that they are
spread out over several days, Mapstone explains. Manijeh Berenji, an
occupational medicine specialist and member of the clinical faculty at UC
Irvine, believes that these assessments of politicians can be feasible and fair.
“The demands on a head of state are exceptional in every respect; no test would be able to gauge that mix of fitness, intelligence, experience and wisdom.”
vas pup • February 3, 2024 6:44 PM
Should we fear an attack of the voice clones?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68074257
“Currently phone scammers have to hire armies of cheap labour to run a mini call centre, or just spend a lot of time on the phone themselves. AI could change all that.
If so it would reflect the impact of AI more generally.
…there are also concerns audio deepfakes – the name for the kind of sophisticated fake voices AI can create – could be used to generate misinformation aimed at manipulating the democratic outcomes.
Senior British politicians have been subject to audio deepfakes as have politicians in other nations including Slovakia and Argentina. The National Cyber Security centre has explicitly warned of the threats AI fakes pose to the next UK election.
Lorena Martinez who works for a firm working to counter online misinformation, Logically Facts, told the BBC that not only were audio deepfakes becoming more common, they are also more challenging to verify than AI images.
“If someone wants to mask an audio deepfake, they can and there are fewer technology solutions and tools at the disposal of fact-checkers,” she said.
by the time the fake is exposed, it has often already been widely circulated.
Ms Martinez, who had a stint at Twitter tackling misinformation, argues that in a year when over half the world’s population will head to the polls, social media firms must do more and should strengthen teams fighting disinformation.
She also called on developers of the voice cloning tech to “think about how their tools could be corrupted” before they launch them instead of “reacting to their misuse, which is what we’ve seen with AI chatbots”.
“We have to be careful to avoid a situation where rather than warning people about dangers of AI, we inadvertently cause people to lose faith in things they can trust,” Mr Jeffries says.”
Clive Robinson • February 3, 2024 9:36 PM
@ vas pup, ALL,
Re : To old to rule.
With regards to the BBC Article and,
“The US has become a hotspot for debates about whether people in the political sphere can ever be too old to lead. The top contenders for the 2024 US presidential election are Joe Biden – who turned 81 in 2023 – is more than twice as old as the median American; and 77-year-old Donald Trump, who is a more than a decade beyond the “Normal Retirement Age” – the age at which Americans can receive their full retirement benefits. In the US Senate, Republian Chuck Grassley is the oldest sitting senator at the age of 90, followed by Senator Bernie Sanders at 82.”
The question of age and mental decline in those who rule is far from new,
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-02-17/dianne-feinstein-age-pressure-quit-senate
With regards US politicians it’s not exactly a new subject.
Look up the last few years of Dianne Feinstein,
She was at the time the oldest serving US Senator who had accumulated immense political power. But even before C19 there were questions not just about her relevance but if she was even mentally competent any longer and they got worse with time,
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/5/8/dahlia_lithwick_dianne_feinstein
So much so shortly before she died the process of formally getting her removed from power over mental competence had been talked about, but unlike with Presidents and VPs there is as of yet no formal process based on age or cognative decline,
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 10:19 PM
@JonKnowsNothing
It also depends which encryption scheme was employed and how it was utilised. If the passwords were written down on a piece of paper which the FBI also took, any flaws in the deployment are not even going to be needed to be studied. If you are encrypting something three times, then it’s likely you don’t properly understand what you are doing anyway.
Full disk encryption, as an example, is only going to prevent the average thief gaining access, as most systems have problems introduced by the boot partition being stored locally. You could store the boot partition on an external disk, but the FBI will likely grab that as well. When systems exchange information, it opens an attack path and can leak.
There can also be development bugs in schemes, some which can be exploited in any configuration. With CVE-2016-4484, after enough attempts, the scheme would fail.
(93 total password tries for x86, and 452 for PowerPC)
‘http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2016-4484/CVE-2016-4484_cryptsetup_initrd_shell.html
There are a lot of ways encryption keys can also be recovered from systems in different power states, weaknesses in the partitioning scheme (information leakage), known and unknown vulnerabilities.
Bitlocker would be a simple example where the VMK can be recovered from TPMs in sleep mode due to vulnerabilities that may not have been patched. Bitlocker with TPM 2.0 can be bypassed if hybernation is enabled in Win 11.
how features (dTPM and fTPM) behave:
extracting the VMK from the TPMs in sleep mode (with CVE-2018-6622 and CVE-2020-0526)
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6uAkLC_8kQ
bypass TPM 2.0 Bitlocker encryption in Win 11 (during hybernation)
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTl4vEednkQ
‘https://www.sicherheitsforschung-magdeburg.de/uploads/journal/MJS_068_Agostini_Bitlocker.pdf
ResearcherZero • February 3, 2024 10:48 PM
@JonKnowsNothing
I generally refuse to fix things these days, as everything is too connected and too riddled with nasty worms and icky malwares. So I play ignorant. Maybe they should have updated?
Sometimes people don’t give you their password, and they ask you to fix their system. Maybe they do not even know what Bitlocker is, though usually they have a rubbish password at least. Occasionally you have to break in, but they never notice anyway. Easier when they don’t update. If they had a different operating system I might be more inclined, depends.
Probably not, as it’s likely they don’t remember their iCloud password etc.
–
“We can also confirm results of forensic analysis of 21 additional individuals from civil society that have requested anonymity.”
‘https://citizenlab.ca/2024/02/confirming-large-scale-pegasus-surveillance-of-jordan-based-civil-society/
At least 14 of the victims confirmed by Citizen Lab analysis work in media. The rest are activists, lawyers, and other members of civil society.
‘https://www.accessnow.org/publication/between-a-hack-and-a-hard-place-how-pegasus-spyware-crushes-civic-space-in-jordan/
–
More take down orders against reports identifying global hacking and censorship campaign.
‘https://www.wired.com/story/appin-training-centers-lawsuits-censorship/
JonKnowsNothing • February 3, 2024 11:30 PM
@ResearcherZero, All
re: You know when you know
For Hunter’s system, per reports, he had no clue at all about anything. He may not even have been on the same planet at the time.
For the Met Police Officer, there was no attempt to encrypt the files because they were not the officer’s and the backstory was “Can Someone PLEASE DO SOMETHING…” and that person would have been clueless too. I dunno how that clueless person obtained the images in the first place.
For Schulte’s system, this is the tech guy from the CIA and per MSM reports the FBI still doesn’t know who, what, where, when or more important how, he did what he was convicted of.
There is a linkage to Wikileaks & JAssange, who maybe running out of appeals in UK over extradition to the USA. If Schulte got 40yrs for his half, Assange as a non-USA citizen, may get a lot worse, since his classification as “hostile intelligence gatherer” will be a given. There is also a linkage between them and Russian Intelligence which is definitely Not Good. How much the FBI and CIA are willing to admit how stupid they are, will be one of many questions.
echo • February 4, 2024 1:45 AM
https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/01/31/alan-turing-sculpture-cambridge-divides-opinion/
Newly-unveiled Alan Turing sculpture in Cambridge divides opinion.
First impression? After a moment of initial confusion because I was expecting a statue which may have been unflattering or suggesting a character who was flawed in a not nice way the form of the actual statue sunk in. Well, I do know art has its own qualities but this? It’s all very clever including the use of different materials which weather differently but where’s the humanity?
Now that the sculpture, designed by Sir Antony Gormley – best known for his Angel of the North – has been unveiled at Alan Turing’s former college in Cabmridge,…
That figures… He’s an artist who produces art in search of a commissioning ego if ever there was one. Glancing through his work it appears his art is very much of the thing appearing from nowhere and appearing in a space it would never evolve from. It’s certainly not art in the Zen-Shinto tradition. It’s more a knock off of the German Brutalism and “me me me” tradition often seen in landscape self-portraiture, or maybe a derivative of Japanese Brutalism through an ego-centric point of view. I can see why it appealed to mathematical edgelords coasting to retirement.
Nude sculpture dedicated to Mary Wollstonecraft divides feminist opinion
Maggi Hambling tribute to ‘mother of feminism’ unveiled in London.
And I thought this was bad enough. It looks like a fossilised bowel movement.
I do like modern art but I do have my limits.
Thousands of tourists pass the gates of King’s College Cambridge every year marvelling at the immaculate lawn that lies behind.
But the grass court of the university’s fourth oldest college, one of the city’s most recognisable sights, has now found itself at the centre of a sexism row about who is allowed to stand on it.
A feminist academic has accused a student of “male entitlement” for shouting at her to get off the grass.
Dr Charlotte Proudman, an award-winning barrister and a Cambridge research associate in gender inequality, walked onto the Front Lawn at King’s College this week to pose for a picture in front of the fountain, which dates back to 1879 and features a statue of King Henry VI, the college’s 15th century founder.
The 35-year-old claims that as she stood in the centre of the pristine lawn while her cousin took a photograph with the Gibbs’ Building in the background, a “white male student” shouted: “If they catch you, you’ll get chucked out.”
She said she “sharply told him, ‘I belong here, my portrait hangs in the College Chapel – not his’.”
Performance art. The Telegraph is outrage farming.
https://time.com/6632293/greta-thunberg-court-case-dismissed-uk-oil-protest/
LONDON — Climate activist Greta Thunberg was acquitted Friday of refusing to follow a police order to leave a protest blocking the entrance to a major oil and gas industry conference in London last year.
The courtroom gallery erupted with applause as Judge John Law told Thunberg and her four co-defendants to stand and told them they were cleared of the criminal charge of breaching the Public Order Act on the grounds that there were “significant deficiencies in the evidence” presented by the prosecutor.
Law said that the police could have taken less restrictive measures, didn’t properly define where protesters should move and the order to disperse that was given was “so unclear that it was unlawful,” and those who didn’t comply committed no offense.
The judge said that he would grant defense lawyer Raj Chada’s request for the government to pay his legal fees and Thunberg’s travel costs after they submit those bills.
“The conditions imposed on the protest were unclear, uncertain and unlawful,” defense lawyer Raj Chada said outside court. “The government should stop prosecuting peaceful protesters, and instead find ways to tackle the climate crisis.”
Arguably, one of the most important people on the planet at a critical time since Turing. And like Turing prosecuted by dark forces in government only a civil servant carefully inserted a line into the relevant law creating an out and the judge was paying attention. Bit of an “Ouch” moment for there Tories, there.
echo • February 4, 2024 3:13 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
This blog is likely to be retrieved regularly by a plethora of LEAs. You might want to be mindful that there are numerous laws, in many countries, that can apply to computer hacking, unauthorized data retrieval and having “knowledge of” activities that are deemed unlawful.
I’m sure. I’m also sure it’s all on NSA and GCHQ’s “time machine”. I merely cast a wide net and know people or know people who know people, and join the dots between disparate information. There’s nothing I know they don’t know already or can’t find out by having a look. I even said “Hi guys” when discussing this general topic with a friend over a known broken communication protocol. Then can go trawl the voice to text output if they can be bothered.
With regard to this matter I certainly haven’t broken and have no knowledge of people who have broken US law. Any potentially “covered activity” is very firmly on UK shores. I have no direct evidence of any law being broken by these people. It’s either permitted or “dual use”. No data was manipulated or copied at secure locations. Their knowledge of information falls under legally privileged for the purposes of bringing court action in a civil case or them making a formal police complaint or bringing a private prosecution. The personal data leak is very iffy but a data dump by an anonymous cut out. I have no idea where it is located and I haven’t gone looking for it. To the best of my knowledge nobody knows who this particular data leaker is.
They are not stupid people and it is unlikely there is a “public interest” in any theoretical prosecution. Some of them are in the prosecution chain of command and their disclosed activity is 100% legal. The public interest is in bringing people in public office abusing their power or far right aligned and domestic terrorists to book. The “data leaker” would likely attract prosecution.
I have no “duty to warn”. I’m also very aware of the case law covering the “covered activity” and suspects statements. I’m perfectly happy to co-operate after consulting with a competent lawyer. Now, if the police are happy to take on the case of bringing abusers of public off and the far right to book I can happily point them in the direction of people with more knowledge and skill than me. They would be thrilled if someone took it seriously.
Entirely separately I do have knowledge of a murder and can point the finger at the two people who did it. This information was disclosed to me by a third party who would land in jail for breach of the Communications Act. I have offered it to the police with a guarantee in writing by the Home Secretary that they would not be prosecuted. The police were not interested.
I also have multiple points of evidence pointing to a chief constable who unlawfully accessed confidential data protected by law. Oh, the cover-up on that one…
Kemi Badenoch MP hacked another MP’s email account and has never been charged. Johnson and Sunak et al are in contempt and have never been charged. 65+ sex pests in Parliament have never been charged. One especially egregious case keeps having the can kicked down the road.
I don’t have anything to hide but they do. Awkward, that. The question is why are security services and law enforcement and other formal mechanisms of redress so tardy? Given some of the rot in the political sphere it may be a case of priorities and keeping their head down and waiting for the winds to change. It may be ignorance. It’s hard to say. Maybe elements of both.
@ResearcherZero
Full disk encryption, as an example, is only going to prevent the average thief gaining access, as most systems have problems introduced by the boot partition being stored locally.
That’s all I need. Nothing is stored or left where anyone else has a chance to access it. It’s as secure as need be.
To the best of my knowledge there’s nothing on there which would attract attention unless I’m daft enough to carry it around somewhere like Russia or Saudi Arabia or some of the murkier hotspots in the world. I might get slapped about in UAE if a plane makes an emergency detour. UAE’s airport security’s attitudes to women if there’s a panic on isn’t great at the best of times.
echo • February 4, 2024 3:57 AM
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68193103
The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has called for the government to stop children having access to social media apps on smartphones.
I think there is a problem in the West since the Thatcher-Reagan years where society became more atomised and less diverse and less community orientated. There is an argument that the days of forums and blogs were more meaningful and had more social glue and chances of genuine friendships forming compared to the algorithmically driven all encompassing firehose of social media. Society has progressed in a lot of ways while “forces of conservativsm” are in a state of backlash. The internet can be a great source of information. At the same time a haven for the far right, abusers, and criminals.
Ms Ghey, who is launching a petition to demand the changes, also wants companies to flag searches of inappropriate material, like the videos Jenkinson saw, to parents.
She said: “We’d like a law introduced so that there are mobile phones that are only suitable for under-16s.
“So if you’re over 16, you can have an adult phone, but then under the age of 16, you can have a children’s phone, which will not have all of the social media apps that are out there now. And also to have software that is automatically downloaded on the parents’ phone which links to the children’s phone, that can highlight key words.
“So if a child is searching the kind of words that Scarlett and Eddie were searching, it will then flag up on the parent’s phone.”
Esther has a point. The problem is when laws are crafted and the general rule is not applied equally, or where loopholes are created which conservative or religious politicians can use to beat up the very people they are supposed to protect.
Assuming “whitelisting” is the way forward what about human rights and marginalised communities? Often they may be in a struggle to correct bad information or advocate for change or push for justice or support people. Indeed, Brianna herself was a target for the current far right inclined government who are pushing unlawful none statutory guidance which would hand power and excused to schools or parents who might abuse her.
What of filters which limit content by words or images or related heuristics. This can be similarly problematic.
I feel Esther is correct to pose the question and the discussion is worth having if for no other reason it gets people talking including about abuses of public office versus human rights, and the design and accessibility of platforms, and mental health and a healthy society, and so on.
She told the BBC it was very powerful watching Mark Zuckerberg being confronted by bereaved American parents at a fiery hearing in the US Senate and said “greed needs to be taken out of the picture”.
“I think that the focus is always on making such a lot of money, and not really how we protect people or how we can necessarily benefit society,” she said.
I concur. As a society we have a lot to be ashamed of. I admire Esther for all the reasons Brianna’s headteacher, Ms Mills, stated only a million times better than I ever could. I hope we can learn from the past to make a better future and that this is a tipping point for the better.
ResearcherZero • February 4, 2024 4:50 AM
@JohnKnowsNothing
I imagine the CIA is not too happy having their entire offensive development platform leaked, or that Shulte gave himself a secret administrator account and deleted the logs. Or that Wikileaks published it. Considering it was used to target foreign adversaries. Years of development, hundreds of millions in cost, many buried exploits within.
The fallout will continue due to the knowledge pulled from it, and the lost capabilities.
It is possible some of that knowledge has been used to target edge devices, build the capabilities to target all the goodies connected, and many other ides. Russia’s Vulkan?
Included in the leak was the HIVE (multi-platform) development suite which was used by unknown actors to create the backdoor named xdr33…
“360Netlab’s honeypot caught a suspicious ELF file on October 2021, the experts reported that the malware was spread by exploiting F5 zero-day exploit”
‘https://securityaffairs.com/140878/malware/cia-hive-malware-detected.html
Winter • February 4, 2024 4:53 AM
@echo
Arguably, one of the most important people on the planet at a critical time since Turing.
Her importance can be judged from the strong response against her from the powers that be.
On the continent, the difference in police and political actions against climate activists who block a road peacefully and farmers who block cities and countries with burning piles of rubbish is telling.
The former are labeled “terrorists” and dragged into court, the latter are greeted by high ranking politicians.
Clive Robinson • February 4, 2024 7:30 AM
@ Winter,
Re : Which colour is their politics?
“The former are labeled “terrorists” and dragged into court, the latter are greeted by high ranking politicians.”
Put another way, the fomer when they vote currently have little or no effect on who sits in the parliment or ministerial courts. The latter however have previously proved they can significantly effect the political outcome with their votes.
In the UK the former are considered either the green or red vote, and the latter “the blue vote”.
You will here a quote made that it only takes upto 11,000 votes for a red seat, and over 19,000 votes for a blue seat.
Thus any blue voters are important, whilst green and red well lets yawn and change channels.
The reality is in the UK that red votes are mainly city/urban and blue votes rural and “large lawn surburban”. Whilst green are too dispersed.
The thing that is not mentioned is that voter turn out as a percentage is actuall quite low in some population areas and much higher in others.
If everyone actually voted in the UK, then the political face of the UK would be significantly different.
However since the time of Maggie Thatcher and the “poll-tax” many don’t even register to vote for various reasons. The result is the mess we currently have.
Whilst not exactly “gerrymandering” the result is the same, in that the number of actual people who could vote but don’t are in high population areas, thus there should be way more “representatives” for those areas than there actually are…
Winter • February 4, 2024 8:07 AM
@Clive
Put another way, the fomer when they vote currently have little or no effect on who sits in the parliment or ministerial courts.
Obviously. But I also see an ideological reason for the furious reactions.
Farmers are fighting to defend their rights to destroy the Commons for private profit, the world be damned. This is a page out of the neocon playbook where the word for sin is “Commons”
On the other hand, climate activists fight for the wellbeing of others, all humans present and future. This puts the ax at the roots of neocon philosophy. Anyone fighting for the common good is by definition a terrorist as they put terror in the hearts of the neo-cons.
Clive Robinson • February 4, 2024 8:36 AM
@ Winter,
Re : Before a certain voice knee jerks.
With regards how UK electoral boundries thus number of MPs seats are effectively “gerrymandered”,
And some of the reasons behind it,
Note how they very disproportionately effect both the young and those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
Whilst not gerrymandering in the way some see it, a look back in history to what happened in Westminster Council over “Homes for Votes” is effectively still seen in these “tactics”,
JonKnowsNothing • February 4, 2024 10:07 AM
All
re: Amusing take on the removal of failed technology
Stores are planning on removing Self-Checkout Point of Sale Systems because they don’t work and because there are too many opportunities for customers to bypass the system. This MSM piece was a humorous view of the failure of technology due to that “simple instructions” issued to use these systems.
When designing systems, we have all had our hand in “it cannot go wrong” designs, but we know that Murphy’s Laws are universal, so things do go wrong. Even spacecraft landing on the moon end TITSUP literally.
A bit of fun over some highly oversold solutions which made a lot of money for people selling scanning systems.
For starters, you’re clearly unable to follow directions. When you buy an apple, you put the apple in the bag which needs to be on the designated place to the side of the kiosk where there’s a scale underneath so the machine can verify the weight of the apple otherwise you cannot proceed to the next item. Do you not see that? Can you not follow these instructions?
It all comes down to how you spell “broccolli” or maybe it’s “broccoli”…
===
ht tps: //www.theguardi an. com/business/2024/feb/04/self-checkout-theft-security
Winter • February 4, 2024 10:35 AM
@Clive
And some of the reasons behind it,
Your second link says it all:
“These figures should sound the alarm for anyone who cares about democracy,”
Obviously, this does not include the ruling party in the UK.
emily’s post • February 4, 2024 12:06 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing
highly oversold solutions
I’ve used these in two chains of food stores and had only the very rarest of problems when the lookup-item-from-name function returned nothing. My main gripe is loading the bags.
.
Actually, why not robotize the entire process ? E.g. something along the lines of a scan-as-you-go cart, with viewable current tally, and the exit auto-bagging. (With accommodations for the “I just came for one thing” customer.)
JonKnowsNothing • February 4, 2024 12:31 PM
@emily’s post, All
re: Fully automated POS (yes they are)
Amz has a store where you do nothing more than take the items from the shelves and walk out. The items are scanned as you put them in your cart or remove them. Payment is done by CC-on-file. Every item has a price so you don’t need to weight stuff.
iirc(badly) There are some very clever versions of this in one of the Nordic countries for remote communities that have no regular market service.
They refurb a cargo container and set it on sleds. It’s fully contained and fitted. It has freezers, refrigerators and shelf items. There are no clerks. CC-on-File using similar auto-scan technology as Amz. 1 person stocks the food boxes in several locations. If one site doesn’t suit they sled it to another spot.
It gives people in remote communities access to goods they would not otherwise have. Per the MSM report a favorite item in summer is cold bottled water. It might not seem like much but some nomadic groups do not have portable refrigerators.
A atv-utv-quad-bike is all that is needed or reindeer sled, to get to the food box.
MK • February 4, 2024 12:36 PM
@emily’s post
I can just see auto-bagging: tomatos at the bottom, canned goods on top.
Winter • February 4, 2024 12:43 PM
@JonKnowsNothing
Stores are planning on removing Self-Checkout Point of Sale Systems because they don’t work and because there are too many opportunities for customers to bypass the system.
I have my own misgivings about Self-Checkout PoS.
First, I do not want to rob the people behind the checkouts of their jobs. There is a labor shortage, but these people are sitting behind a cash register because they have no better job offer. If they lose this job, they will end up in a worse job (eg, Amazon warehouse?).
Second, I shop not that often and my purchases do not fit in a shopping bag or two. Which means I have to juggle a lot of boxes, cans, bags etc from a full cart onto a very small plate to another one and back into the cart again.
Third, most of the time I need help anyway with an unresponsive system, unrecognized bar codes, or simply finding the product I want to buy in their menus. Invariably, lots of other customers need help at the same moment.
Last, I often have to wait in line to get to a SC PoS. I rather stand in line in front of a (wo)manned checkout where I can unload the whole cart easily.
MDK • February 4, 2024 1:17 PM
@ALL
Interesting read.
hxxps://tass.com/russia/1734479
Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Cheers.
Clive Robinson • February 4, 2024 3:01 PM
@emily’s post, ALL,
Re : My local store hates me… No not the staff or the customers but the store…
My local store is very local and it’s one of those “Big European” not quite “all day stores” at the hight of summer but in winter open before it gets light and closed before it gets dark.
I go shopping with a 120lt Back Pack on my back so I can get an entire week sometimes two plus some pantry stuff in one trip.
Thus I have a large cart with lots of the same items multiple times like ten tins of baked beans or five packs of frozen sausages even thirty bags of pre-cooked rice portions etc. Even multiple bags of potatoes and apples etc.
It’s way to difficult to unload and reload the cart even on a checkout with a long conveyor belt so I stack things in the cart neatly grouped so they are easy to count[1] and thus can stay in the cart and be checked through as one multiple item which is the fastest way for the shop staff, other customers, and last but not least me and my crutches. Even the security dude who’s happy to help me get stuff stacked on the self load shelf.
I also shop when the store is quiet again to not be a nuiscence for staff and other shoppers.
Then senior managment in Body-count HQ put in “auto-check out” tills and orders that people be directed that way so staff on tills could be put to work in stores or shelf filling or worse…
Now I like the store staff they are friendly, most are not young and many have a wry sense of humour especially with customers that treat them as what they are “friendly people who need a job and like the rest of us need to not just be treated as humans not machines but also have something to smile at to help the day”. Some of them are way way smarter than the managers[2] they work under and apricieate you make their lives easier, whilst keeping their checkout-rate high.
Now I hate those auto-check outs, they were not designed by anyone who can think in real world terms…
Yes there are customers who at certain times of the day only buy a sandwich, canned drink and one or two other items “for their lunch” but the fact that 100-150 shopping carts can all be in use at the same time… Yeh they and the HQ seniors have not progressed to “joined up thinking” that even six year old children “on the shop floor” can see and loudly ask their mothers about in various ways 😉
They are just such a bad idea in oh so many ways… Especially when your bag weighs over a couple of killos there is the automatic assumption you are stealing… Then there is that issue when the way to small baging scales can not take the weight or items slide off that you are stealing again. The frustration of not having a multiple item button, the …, with …, and that uterly usless …, the usless menues on a usually not working right touch screen… Then there is the auto-voice amplified so even Beethoven who has been buried for quite some time can hear it…
It’s nearly the aniversary of Douglas Adams Birthday (11th of March). Back last century he realised just how bad these “Plastic Pals who are fun to be with” NOT… would encorage homicidal tendencies of the “First up against the wall…” kind in people.
For some reason every time I’m forced to use one, I start as a quiet sane individual that would not harm an ant let alone fly, yet within moments I develop a manic grin, mad staring eyes, a proficiency for naughty Norwegian words you can not imagine, and an almost uncontrolable urge to use my head as a wrecking ball against those LCD screens…
Now those who work the ordinary checkouts by and large understand my desire, and one has wryly even suggested that if I did loose control they would come and be a witness for my defence of temporary insanity induced by the stress they induce in any normal thinking reasoning human.
One even suggested that Dante did not have enough circles for those that thought up, specified, designed and actually were dumb enough to manufacture such systems.
One very astute young lady from Poland, pointed out only half humoursly that in a divorce “Mental Cruelty” was a reasonable cause or even defence for certain behaviours.
Oh and these “infernal machines” are a very good indicator of why AGI is so ill defined… Think on a moment and you will realise why AGI will not be an “existential threat” but “existential certainty” yup, the rise of the machines will be intolerable[3].
Anyway just my $0.0002 on the subject 😉
[1] There are two reasons to put stuff together in groups,
1.1 It makes it easy for the “register jockey” –yes I hate that term as well– to use the multiple button.
1.2 The till software is crap and it won’t do “three for two” properly if you have six items spread through the checkout stream.
The latter point is fun to point out to managers when it happens. A little while back they were doing a discount on baked bean tins because they did not have any “quad packs” that give you 20p off the price of four. I had twenty eight tins in the cart and due to a “no-shopper” pushing my cart to rudely get by the items tumbled… So I got charged for one pack of four and twenty four singles… Me not pleased and miffed, shop manager totally confused as not even aware there was such a price discount thus thought I was asking about the one discount given not the missing six discounts. Any way patience on my side and a loud booming laugh/voice and well… I got a special managers discount of have them all for half price 😀
[2] Due to certain neo-con thinking valuable staff get sacked from good jobs just before they become fifty and employment law gives them extra protection… This nonsense causes no end of problems but dumb as a stump neo-con reasoning via Human-Remains no-brained logic of “But Besloshed is wealthiest man so must be right…” argument can not see why staff with experience and knowledge have value way above fast muscles of youth that are not even minimum wage.
[3] It’s not just Douglas Adams, I’m not sure which of the script writers of “Red Dwarf” came up with the “AI Toaster” side line but they also realised just how likely such “infetnal machines” would be to drive people to madness.
Clive Robinson • February 4, 2024 6:13 PM
@ MK, emily’s post, ALL,
Re : To misquote with intent.
“I can just see auto-bagging: tomatos at the bottom, canned goods on top.”
“That which we call a tomato By any other name would be a stain”
With appologies to Shakespeare and his sweet Juliet.
(But read the whole speach to get the full flavour of what is implied.)
lurker • February 4, 2024 7:57 PM
@echo
Constant reference to the “far right” with its implied ills, becomes irksome to mentally replace by “extremist”, of any colour. The view from the centre sees the far left as doing equal harm to the public good.
echo • February 4, 2024 8:19 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqUrkn7KQd4
See The EXACT Moment It Passes Through! – Tutorialhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqUrkn7KQd4
See The EXACT Moment It Passes Through! – Tutorial
Sneaky. The moving a pen through a card trick is another one. It’s different and all makes sense when you know how it’s done. Both tricks use camouflage and angles and distraction and concealment plus a lot of brass neck!
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24096310.alister-jack-clear-breach-ministerial-code-lobbying-row/
SCOTTISH Secretary Alister Jack has been accused of a “clear breach” of the ministerial code over a new £150 million “enhanced investment zone” which will cover a section of his constituency.[…]
It comes after we told how the Tories were accused of “hypocrisy” as the Sunday National revealed Jack deleted WhatsApps that included messages to the PM about matters taking place in Scotland despite him telling the UK Covid Inquiry he “did not do government by WhatsApp”.
Now you know why Viceroy Jack made a snide comment about Nicola Sturgeon being able to cry on demand and it was all over the newspapers. He fumbled the trick. It was a distraction from his deletion of WhatsApp messages and corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo2PmAH2Fs4
Lawrence: Historians’ brief teaches Supreme Court 14th Amendment’s real history.
This is interesting and delivered in a simple and accessible way. For Americans in the audience I agree with Lawrence. It really is a good lesson to pass on to your children because it demystifies so much and they will so much from it.
I flirt with legal archaeology and borrowing models to see how they work. One obscure piece of case law I turned up was used in a case later in the year. Coincidence or not who can say? (The UK is based on common law, the US uses a hybrid Civil Law and Common Law, and most of Europe uses Civil Law. There’s also a big split in Roman contract law in there somewhere. You can import some law, depending. You also have the good old with regard to. Legal theory can be a useful “assembler code” to port between different legal systems from which a bigger legal argument can be made.) I’m not an expert. I know just enough to be useful.
With regard to mapping and surveillance of far right activity:
It’s just dropped that a known far right aligned bad actor has doxxed someone. There is potentially a firearm in the mix. That situation is getting a bit spicey and opens up a lot of questions. Coincidentally, Dr Charlotte Proudman just secured a conviction of a man with a shotgun who threatened her online, and an injunction to suit off the judge when the CPS dropped the ball. In the US a counter briefing against far right aligned disinformation is being passed around academics much like a similar counter briefing was delivered in person to a panel of eminent academics in the UK earlier this year. So there’s rather a lot going on and it’s all closely or loosely connected.
Yet Silicon Valley’s latest extremely disruptive technology, generative AI, was released into the wild last year without even the most basic federally mandated product testing. Last week, deep fake porn images of the most famous female star on the planet, Taylor Swift, flooded social media platforms, which had no legal obligation to take them down – and hence many of them didn’t.
[…]
You don’t actually have to imagine where that might lead because it’s already happened. A deep fake targeting a progressive candidate dropped days before the Slovakian general election in October. It’s impossible to know what impact it had or who created it, but the candidate lost, and the opposition pro-Putin candidate won. CNN reports that the messaging of the deepfake echoed that put out by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, just an hour before it dropped. And where was Facebook in all of this, you ask? Where it usually is, refusing to take many of the deep fake posts down.
It’s well known the far right use pop up groups to agitate on issues such as abortion or transgender peoples rights. Likewise, the Russians use similar tactics. Seeding websites with disinformation to see what sticks then promoting it on more mainstream sites where algorithms and rubbernecking can amplify it before it’s picked up and normalised by race to the deadline media and effects politicians judgement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjxvbxDC1lM
Media coverage of Brianna Ghey’s murderers was “completely irresponsible,” argues Natasha Devon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xke176ZHW-s
Owen Jones
Brianna Ghey’s Murder: We Have To Talk About Transphobia w/ Jess O’Thomson
And:
Russia makes first convictions for ‘LGBT extremism’ following ban.
Two Russian courts have meted out the first convictions in connection with what the government calls the “international LGBT social movement” and which was designated as extremist last year.
On Thursday, a court in the southern region of Volgograd found a man guilty of “displaying the symbols of an extremist organisation” after he posted a photograph of an LGBT flag online, according to the court’s press service.
Artyom P., who was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 rubles, admitted guilt and repented, saying he had posted the image “out of stupidity,” the court said.
On Monday, a court in Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, sentenced to five days in administrative detention a woman who had been in a cafe when a man approached her and demanded she remove her frog-shaped earrings displaying an image of a rainbow, said Aegis, an LGBT rights group.
And:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw1586Jv30g
Andrew Wilson – ‘Political Technology’ Developed in Russia is Being Used to Dismantle Democracies.
Once you know how the trick works…
https://twitter.com/BBCWomansHour/status/1754047889830187087
‘Young men aren’t becoming as liberal as women are’
An ideological gap has opened up between young men & women in countries on every continent, according to a new study.
@emmabarnett spoke to gender expert @_alice_evans who gave three reasons why she thinks this is happening
Neoliberal politics, media and social media, and the reach and amplification of bad actors in echo chambers are to blame for the polarisation between men and women as per the GenZ demographic survey linked to the previous Friday. I agree with all that, for brevity.
I was going to revisit this topic and point out the survey questions did skew the tone of response. This doesn’t get enough attention: As the survey data revealed and as Alice notes it is a minority of men who are polarised and, actually, a minority of men who have heard of Tate.
You have to drill a bit deeper to see how the political system and political parties (and the authoritarian-social party and individual tilt of parties and members) and psycho-social differences between men and women (and media and social media) create the disparity.
echo • February 4, 2024 8:37 PM
@lurker
Constant reference to the “far right” with its implied ills, becomes irksome to mentally replace by “extremist”, of any colour. The view from the centre sees the far left as doing equal harm to the public good.
The main threat of focus is the far right. There is no noticeable far left threat in the West. And yes it is a far right threat that is the main worry. It’s a fairly well known pattern so far right is the best descriptor. It’s also a descriptor certain types of operators in the political sphere don’t want attaching to them. If that makes them feel uncomfortable the solution is simple. Don’t be far right. The thing you need to understand is fascism never comes into power with concentration camps first. That’s the end point. It’s better to halt the threat now than later when it’s too late.
Extremism as a label really underplays things and is a word which can be easily abused especially by people whose idea of “centre” (or Overton window) has been manipulated, and it’s use can muddy the waters especially by journalists who are “both siding” or by bad actors who want to distract. See also: the “paradox of tolerance” and “legitimate concerns”.
If you dislike the terms I use I have others which are much less polite. Also if that’s the best nitpick you can come up with I’ll assume the substantive text is good enough.
ResearcherZero • February 4, 2024 9:26 PM
@ALL
I have the same dislike of automatic checkouts replacing helpful staff, but not the unhelpful managers. Why are some of the days takings poking out of the manager’s pocket? Should the manager really be spending their time writing down smaller competitor’s prices, in order to under-cut them? Shouldn’t the manager be helping people in the store?
The price that you pay for goods in supermarket chains receives a considerable markup above the cost of inputs, and a sizeable profit that should more than allow for the proper treatment and protection of it’s workers. I’m sure they have an excuse why you are paying four to five times the cost for some products, and why the drains smell down the back.
–
It’s kind of extreme behaviour to escalate to such a point over a little work tiff.
“Did he betray his country because he was p–sed off at his colleagues?”
‘https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/the-surreal-case-of-a-cia-hackers-revenge
–
“This communications loopback will, like the malware itself, not survive a restart of a Target Device.”
‘https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1336421/dl
echo • February 4, 2024 10:27 PM
Ukraine’s army chief: The design of war has changed :
Exclusive: Ukraine must adapt to a reduction in Western military aid, embattled army chief says
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/01/europe/zaluzhnyi-ukraine-russia-war-analysis-intl/index.html
ON THE MODERN DESIGN OF MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR: IN THE FIGHT FOR THE INITIATIVE
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24400154/ukraine-valerii-zaluzhnyi-essay-design-of-war.pdf
Interesting pivot from traditional to anticipatory planning, and traditional assets to new assets, and emphasis on R&D across a range of issues.
ResearcherZero • February 4, 2024 10:32 PM
Update the firmware when new firmware becomes available
Use pressurized air to clean dust from the router
When it comes to router placement, you want to keep it in an area that promotes natural airflow through it. Elevated, off the floor and free from obstruction (don’t block vents).
If routers overheat they will drop connections. If not kept up to date they can be hacked.
“Some of the symptoms of a compromised router include frequent disconnections from the internet, changes on the device’s network settings that no one seems to have made, the resetting of administrator credentials, and the inexplicable overheating of the router.”
Many routers do not secure credentials in transit using HTTPS. Routers sometimes have hardcoded passwords and too often have command injection vulnerabilities.
A list of vulnerabilities is found here each week:
‘https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/bulletins
–
Spare a thought for the squid, and the high degree or intensity of weather.
‘https://www.copernicus.eu/en/media/image-day-gallery/monthly-sea-surface-temperature-anomalies-2023
“We were looking at this and we were frankly astonished.”
‘https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/14/worlds-hottest-year-2024-starts-with-off-the-charts-ocean-heat/72163079007/
ResearcherZero • February 4, 2024 11:38 PM
Probably a reason why manufacturers should patch vulnerabilities, and consumers should update their firmware. If there is actually a patch available for the device, or it is not updated automatically:
45% of critical CVEs were left unpatched in 2023
Critical CVEs: 55% patch rate
High CVEs: 64% patch rate
Medium CVEs: 58% patch rate
Low CVEs: 11% patch rate
Newer devices often have options for auto-updates and HTTPS for creds, but these options are not always defaults, or might be a little confusing for consumers to configure.
Manufacturers are not always clear in vulnerability disclosures about the full range of vulnerabilities, and wait until a later date to disclose all of the issues…
‘https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/juniper_networks_vulnerabilities/
–
“Russian authorities have long warned that they would try to transfer all users in the country to a national DNS server. This is probably what is happening now with a lot of sites in the .ru zone.”
Beginning around 6 p.m. Moscow time on January 30, websites began to fail for users in and out of the country. Aside from Yandex, the country’s three main cellular service providers — MTS, Beeline, and Megafon — saw outages. So did state-owned banks like Sberbank and VTB, online retailers Ozon and Wildberries, and classified-advertising giant Avito.
‘https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-mass-internet-outages-kremlin-firewall/32799971.html
bl5q sw5N • February 5, 2024 12:52 AM
one of the most important people on the planet at a critical time since Turing
What about (the late) Andrew Majda [1] who followed von Neumann’s work and developed a lot of the mathematics to approach realistic geophysical models for dynamics of atmosphere and ocean ?
Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.3) released! • February 5, 2024 2:07 AM
Hiren’s BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.3) released!
“Hiren’s BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment) is a restored edition of Hiren’s BootCD based on Windows 11 PE x64. Given the absence of official updates after November 2012, the PE version is currently under development by the fans of Hiren’s BootCD. It features a curated selection of the best free tools while being tailored for new-age computers, supporting UEFI booting and requiring a minimum of 4 GB RAM.
Equipped with these invaluable tools, you can address various computer-related problems. Notably, it does not include any pirated software; instead, it exclusively contains free and legal software.“
JonKnowsNothing • February 5, 2024 2:23 AM
@Clive, All
re: Austerity as The Kraken (1)
For those who have been around long enough to watch Austerity rip through the economies of the world, this MSM report won’t come as a surprise.
For those who have only experienced Austerity throughout their lifetime, this is what is in coming for you.
There have been a lot of warnings presented in the last years, as the population in many wealthier countries ages out of the productive work force.
The plan is simple:
There will be debates about the Value of Work and Why Do It If There’s Nothing In It For Me. A new version of Pie In The Sky When You Die will take place.
It is more like the return to medieval employment where once you were no longer of use, the Work House was where you ended up. Today this is called Mutual Obligations or Work For The Dole and other euphemisms.
This shift will have a profound effect on the global economy and the level of overall wealth and ability to purchase new consumer tech devices as they roll out year by year. A smaller number of buyers wealthy enough to select from the offerings causing Supply-Demand Shocks.
Psalm 90:10
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years…
They don’t give out gold watches anymore, but someone has to care for Grams and Gramps, Mom and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, Brothers and Sisters.
===
1)
HAIL Warning
ht tps:/ /www.theguardian.c om/money/2024/feb/05/uk-state-pension-age-will-soon-need-to-rise-to-71-say-experts
Recommended plans to shift retirement benefits by raising the age of retirement to a point were fewer people will qualify.
Winter • February 5, 2024 2:41 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
Raise the official retirement age to the point were few people will live long enough to qualify
Or, the rational plan is to keep the expected duration of retirement fixed relative to rising life expectancy. Then people keep working while they are healthy.
That way, the balance between working and retired people can be protected a little longer.
This requires companies to keep their workforce employable and healthy. This is obviously a big problem in countries where burning up your employees and discarding them when they are spent is the SOP. But these countries will face readjustment when their workforce shrinks.
I expect a bigger role of unions. Scarce labor tends to empower unions.
echo • February 5, 2024 3:13 AM
The American Face of Authoritarian Propaganda
For Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson fulfills a need.
By Anne ApplebaumBut when Carlson speaks on behalf of Viktor Orbán or Vladimir Putin, his words are repeated in Hungary and Russia, where they do have resonance: Look, a prominent American journalist supports us. I don’t know what Carlson’s motivation is—he did not respond to a request for comment—but his words also circulate in the far-right American echo chamber, where they are sometimes repeated by Republican presidential candidates, so unfortunately they require some explanation.
[…]
During his comments, and during his interview with Orbán, both broadcast on his social media, Carlson stayed well away from banks and Russian spies. He didn’t mention Hungary’s refusal to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership, or Hungary’s repeated vetoes of European sanctions against Russia. Instead, he denounced the United States for “the imposition of boutique sexual politics” on Hungary. Officials in the Biden administration, Carlson claimed, “hate Hungary not because of what it’s done but because of what it is. It’s a Christian country, and they hate that.” He made what sounded like several references to trans-rights activism, praised the Hungarians for their resistance to the degenerate West, and won applause.
[…]
Authoritarians, by contrast, seek power in order to hide the problems, steal money, arrange favors for their friends, and manipulate the political system so that they can’t ever lose power. That’s what Putin did, and that’s what Orbán does too. Carlson is simply the American face, and the English-speaking voice, of that confidence trick.
Anne was pimping this article on her social media account yesterday. I actually thought this was a new article until I checked the date. While from a US perspective and a little bland because of the sheer number of bullet points Anne covers she’s basically been saying what I’m saying. It’s interesting we came to similar conclusions even if the path was different.
Outrage over Bigotry, Islamophobia in Wall Street Journal & New York Times
These outlets should apologize publicly & diversify their staff & perspectives to meet their ethical and moral obligations as journalists.’
The nation’s leading newspapers were under fire this weekend after publishing opinion pieces seen as “Bigoted,” “Islamophobic,” “Racist,” and “Reckless.”
When the Israel-Palestine situation blew up I reviewed the history of the Middle-East back to the Ottoman empire, the politics, borders and migration patterns, treaties, international law and it’s standing. Nothing huge but enough to know which way was forwards. I have a fair idea of geopolitics, and military strategic and tactics. I also have a fair idea how politics and the media work. I won’t offer an opinion nor will I make comment about the responses of government or politicians. I’m just making the point I took time to develop half a clue.
After the utterly stupid opinion by the far right aligned grifter Pamela Paul on trans rights the NYT prints a fiery opinion by Thomas Friedman on the Middle East. Much like UK media opinion columns are the tail wagging the dog while being presented as journalism. Some legacy media sails under the flag of journalism while it’s really not and media regulators are asleep at the wheel or captured.
“The paper of record is the paper of genocide.”
That’s true…
Winter • February 5, 2024 3:25 AM
@echo
After the utterly stupid opinion by the far right aligned grifter Pamela Paul on trans rights …
Scratch a transphobe, and you’ll find a racist&misogynist every time.
Transphobia is a dog whistle for racism, antisemitism, and misogyny, the whole playbook.
This is all about white supremacism.
I don’t know what Carlson’s motivation is
Money.
echo • February 5, 2024 3:35 AM
The technopopulist rendezvous – how freeports undermine local democracy.
As implemented plus feature creep Freeports and Special Economic Zones would not have been permitted if the UK was still in the EU. Tory government material and media coverage of this is bland and it’s not getting anywhere near the attention it should. The short version is Tory gangsters and their pals are trying to turn the entire UK into a “company town”. And yes they are still itching to find a way to neuter or leave the European Court of Human Rights. It’s neoliberalism on steroids or the East India Company reborn.
As for ongoing austerity policy that’s all part and parcel of ongoing rights stripping and asset stripping of ordinary people, as others have commented on.
This guy knows a lot about it.
Why would the ultra wealthy Sunak, a former member of the Institute of Economic Affairs, become PM for peanuts? Sunak and his cronies in the Tory party are rinsing the country while he is dishing out deals to friends and family. Infosys has done very well out of Sunak. Then there’s the Infosys carveouts for Russia on top of of Boris John delaying sanctions which gave oligarchs time to get their assets out of the country. His family are personal friends of the very dodgy Modi.
I don’t know if he handed his green card back or not but after he leaves public office the US might want to look twice before letting him in again.
Even Nixon is hard left compared to this crook.
echo • February 5, 2024 5:48 AM
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Feeling-Building-Empathy-Tech-Obsessed-ebook/dp/B07PSGFN34/
Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World.
Empathy is definitely lacking in politics, and public policy, and institutions and large swathes of commerce and the internet. I know the 1970’s weren’t perfect but I’m more and more convinced that Thatcher-Reagan opened the door to neoliberal forces which are destroying society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dXkFqt6SVo
Channel 4 News
Breck Bednar, 14: murdered by a man he met onlinehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76xyOl-t4CM
The Centre for Computing HistoryLorin LaFave’s son Breck Bednar loved gaming, but in 2014 he was groomed, lured to a meeting, then murdered by an online predator at the age of just 14. A reconstruction of these tragic and horrifying events was broadcast on BBC3’s ‘Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar’.
Lorin set up the Breck Foundation to raise awareness of online grooming, and show youngsters how to play safe.
This talk provides an opportunity to hear Lorin give her personal account of online grooming.
This is an old story and covers the single issue of online predators but isn’t too far removed from radicalisation and democracy destroying disinformation being pushed by bad actors. Listening to Lorin’s lecture I’m in a state of shock listening to how many red flags there were and how the police dropped the ball. It’s not untypical of the kinds of mistakes the police make. They also made mistakes by not spreading the investigation net. Again, typical.
The current Tory government isn’t taking policing or safeguarding or internet safety seriously at all. They just want to crack down on protests and erase LGBT children’s rights. School roofs are falling in. Disabled kids can’t get the help they need.
The poor mum. Lorin did her best. She was so pleased when she thought her son was doing well too and was experiencing life chances she never had…
Clive Robinson • February 5, 2024 8:35 AM
@ Echo, JonKnowsNothing, ResearcherZero Winter, ALL,
“Empathy is definitely lacking in politics, and public policy, and institutions and large swathes of commerce and the internet.”
Of course empathy is lacking and discrimination getting worse, it’s to be expected and fascism / right-wing is just a minor side effect as a “tool” rather than an “objective” as,
“A means to an end.”
In fact the Internet and ICT in general, and now the joke that is AGI, actively force empathy out and discrimination in.
Why?
It’s simple, there are two basic reasons,
1, Those who develop the technology generally score high on the autism spectrum.
2, Those who profit from the technology generally score high on the psycho/socio pathic end of the spectrum.
So when it comes to “empathy” you see ICT Tech is filled not from the center of the normal distribution curve but the far tails where empathy is to put it politely “low at best”.
This has been known for quite some time, I’ve mentioned it on this blog occasionally over the past decade and a half as can be seen by looking back.
The fact that ICT tends to bring the worst of these to the fore is something other people feel intuitively but either do not talk about or for various reasons don’t want to think about.
Because the questions that follow are not palatable or I suspect answerable in ways that are palatable.
1, As the West’s Economy is now almost entirely dependent on ICT Tech how do we reduce it without destroying the Western economy?
2, As the psychopaths have leveraged to the point of near full political control can they be stopped?
3, Now our dependence on ICT Tech as foundational infrastructure in the west is effectively complete, how do we reduce our dependence on ICT tech without turning high density human occupation areas into disaster zones?
Which brings us to,
“I’m more and more convinced that Thatcher-Reagan opened the door to neoliberal forces which are destroying society.”
Yup that’s the effect but it’s not neo-liberal, it’s more primal. You can see the start of it with Thatcherism and,
1, The UK does not need a manufacturing industry, it has the “service industry”.
2, Alowing “off shoring” not just of money but labour, thus destroying not just the home tax base but, skills / education.
3, Deregulation of the insurance, financial, media, and infrastructure services.
Regardless of political views it was the most stupid thing done after the breaking of the Bretton-Woods agreement.
Because together the broke the chains, and opened the doors to the most dangerous of the insane. Who now “run the asylum”.
If this is realy news to people, go study “The King Game” and “First Estate” the history will tell you exactly what is comming.
Our host @Bruce started to touch on this some years back when he pointed out about Fiefdom’s developing in ICT Tech and society etc. Then he shied away from it, why specifically I don’t know but as most others skate around the subject I suspect it’s the old “If I think about it I’m wishing for it to happen” faux-optimism…
But consider this,
Money has no real value it’s not physical and thus intangible and changable at whim unlike real wealth or assets. In effect it’s a stand in for other things,
Primarily Energy/work and secondarily physical / tangible assets/resources.
But as it’s intangible and has no intrinsic value it can be easily manipulated which is why hyper-inflation is not just possible but frequently happens if not heavily controled (think of it as the “free fly-wheel” effect that leads to catastrophic failure).
The tail end of the last century and all of this century has seen the very real development of a hybrid that has the real value of tangible resources but also certain intangible advantages that constrained money has given.
We give it various names but many now talk of “The Information Economy”.
As some readers will have seen I’ve been thinking about this since the 1980’s when I first had reason to have technical involvment with “Electronic Wallets” and realised just how easily they could be subverted. Now into the fifth decade I think most security personnel can see why “electronic money” is a failure. Put simply because it falls foul of being,
“A technological attempt to solve societal problems”.
As I note fairly often technology has no notion of “Good or bad” only function and efficiency. Further that there are two groups on any use of technology,
1, The “Directing Mind” that puts technology to use.
2, The “Observing Mind” that sees the technology in use in a wider setting.
As a rough rule of thumb a Directing Mind will only put a technology to use if there is a perceived benifit / profit. Thus they see it as “good” over any potential harm or “bad”. The observer however may not see benifit/good for them or society thus see it as a “bad”.
This can be further distilled to the point I keep making of late,
“Individual Rights v. Social Responsability”
It’s a balance, that has to be maintained. Because “no man is an island” and everyone is dependent at the end of the day on “society” and “the common good”.
Those of a psychopatic or similar mental impediment can not see that by putting self over society they are actually cutting themselves of below the knee.
As I’ve said in the past I’m neither Socialist or Capitalist, because I see the need for both in appropriate measure. Those that fail to see this are doomed to failure, it’s just a question of “when” not “if” or “maybe”.
All of the above is not “politics” as most see it which is more correctly called “party politics” it’s about the Greek “Politeia” which is something altogether different (ie from Latin civitas, not politicus),
Winter • February 5, 2024 9:34 AM
@Clive
Of course empathy is lacking and discrimination getting worse, it’s to be expected and fascism / right-wing is just a minor side effect as a “tool” rather than an “objective” as,
Society has fragmented in the past generations.
Employment is not for life but temporary. Your home is not close to where you were born, but in a different city or country, and it changes every few years. Your career does not depend on your colleagues but on an impersonal HR department that rate you as an item.
Social isolation tends to induce extremist ideas.[1] So it is not really a surprise that a fragmented society leads to more extremisme.
[1] ‘https://time.com/6223229/loneliness-vulnerable-extremist-views/
In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt suggests that this type of uprootedness leads to tribalism, and worse, totalitarianism. Extremist movements allow people to “escape from disintegration and disorientation,” she writes. “The isolation of atomized individuals provides the mass basis for totalitarian rule.”
‘https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/pandemic-isolation-pushing-people-towards-extremism/
Social isolation, or loneliness, is recognised as one of the vulnerabilities that might lead to radicalisation or potential exploitation, according to CONTEST, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy .
JonKnowsNothing • February 5, 2024 11:42 AM
@ Clive, @ Echo, ResearcherZero, Winter, ALL,
re: “I’m more and more convinced that Thatcher-Reagan opened the door to neoliberal forces which are destroying society.”
The fundamental concepts lie is our distant history; the results are the same over each epoch. Like Thousand Year Wars and Renewable Wars, they end up in the same ditch. They take a lot of people with them while they are underway.
Our modern neo-liberal, libertarian version of economics rests squarely on a Point of View fight between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes at the end of WW2.
Libertarians can trace historical references to their views farther back, but modern Libertarians altered their historically radical view of government, based on Hayek’s economic theories. Today’s Libertarians and Neo-Cons and Neo-Illiberal economic adherents do not have the same views as earlier editions.
Many people will have heard of Keynesian Economics. Few will know Hayek’s model, now presented as Austerity Economics.
Hayek’s model was formulated as The London School of Economics (~1932) and later called the Chicago School of Economics after Hayek moved to the USA and became professor at University of Chicago.
The views generically differ on
At the end of WW2, Keynes’ view won over Hayek’s view on how to rebuild Europe and UK after the massive destruction of WW2. The carry over helped other countries to rebuild after decades of war and occupation had destroyed those economies.
This is the “All in the Family” outcome of Keynes’ POV. That ordinary people could own property, invest their small earnings, live a decent life, send their children to school and to college. It requires moderation in all aspects of the economy.
Hayek moved to the USA and was given a professorship at the University of Chicago; his salary was funded by an outside foundation, the William Volker Fund.
It took decades for Hayek’s students to make inroads into the Keynesian model of stability. Thatcher and Reagan were the tipping point into altering the stable model to the one we now call Austerity.
As Hayek’s model is not about economic stability but wealth accumulation by any means, it causes a massive tilt in the wealth index and as the skew gets more pronounced it becomes and impossible to stop slide into economic chaos.
Hayek’s model predictions are:
Reading Hayek takes a large bottle of stomach acid reducers.
===
ht tps://en.w ikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
http s://en.wikipe dia.org/wik i/Friedrich_Hayek#London_School_of_Economics
Notable economists who studied with Hayek at the LSE in the 1930s and 1940s include Arthur Lewis, Ronald Coase, William Baumol, John Maynard Keynes, CH Douglas, John Kenneth Galbraith, Leonid Hurwicz, Abba Lerner, Nicholas Kaldor, George Shackle, Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jha, Arthur Seldon, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and Oskar Lange. Some were supportive and some were critical of his ideas. Hayek also taught or tutored many other LSE students, including David Rockefeller.
http s://en.wik ipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
h ttps://en. wikiped ia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
ht tps://en.wik ipedia.or g/wiki/All_in_the_family
echo • February 5, 2024 12:42 PM
@JohnKnowsNothing
People also refer to Hayekian economics as the Austrian school of economics which is where, I think, he got it from otherwise I can’t fault the rest.
Reading Hayek takes a large bottle of stomach acid reducers.
I’m sure. Even the watered down version peddled in television studios by Tufton Street for public consumption is bad enough.
I’ve never read through Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” which many claim is the beginning of modern capitalism (which itself has morphed and morphed again). While the libertarian types moved on to waving around Ayan Rand before this bombed so hard they never mention it anymore it is notable “Wealth of Nations” had its fair share of moral observations which libertarians would find very uncomfortable. I have it on good authority from a retired academic lady it wasn’t the blank cheque they sold it as.
One nasty little book is “The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age” by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. Another is “Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity” written by Dunning-Kruger fantasists of which four of five became cabinet ministers under the sociopathic-narcissist Boris Johnson. “The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism” is written by a gang of Liberal Democrats including Nick Clegg who sold out disabled people for a 5p tax on plastic bags and who later went on to work as Facebook’s “ethics advisor”. Getting the gist is enough. Nobody needs the brain damage of reading them cover to cover.
JonKnowsNothing • February 5, 2024 12:51 PM
@ Echo, @ Clive, ResearcherZero, Winter, ALL
re: None of this is inevitable. That’s what’s so stupid about it all
Actually it is inevitable.
It’s in the economic policies of UK, EU, USA, AU and even RU, China, Japan etc. based on FA Hayek’s views of economies and wealth.
It may seem haphazard and sporadic in application but it is the direct output of Hayek’s views on wealth as the fundamental driver of economies.
All of the policies now in place are directed at taking whatever wealth is available or denying wealth accumulation by transferring it to someone else.
Of course, many of the people working under these conditions do not realize what it is they are actually doing or how they are contributing to the overall wealth slide. They may think they are doing “The Right Thing”. They may also think “It won’t be me”, but it very likely will be them.
iirc(badly)
This may seem absurd to those making 15k-60k per year but in Silicon Valley, it’s no joke. Starting pay is $100k and that will not keep you in housing. Rents run $5k/mo = ~60k/yr if there are no rent increases (est ~10-30% per year)
It’s not happenstance the way the economics are flowing. It’s very well intended.
The Super-Wealthy have their Bug Out locations stocked with luxury items and in theory, self contained environments. The Not-Wealthy also have their Bug Out locations stocked with dehydrated foods, camping kit, basic survival gear and triple supply depots scattered around.
Many think this is due to their fear of global war, and that may have some impact on their behavior, however others recognize the inevitable slide into economic chaos is looming.
We are less than 1 paycheck from eviction, we have less than 1 weeks supply of foods, we have few personal resources for LT energy supply when the grid fails. We have no where to go and no one is going to help us. It’s illegal to camp on the side walk and in San Francisco California, it’s illegal to hand a sandwich to anyone in a public area.
echo • February 5, 2024 1:52 PM
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen just invited the far right AfD party for a meeting in parliament. The same AfD which Germany is considering banning.
He has previously been photographed in the company of the far right grifter Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon “stage name” Tommy Robinson. He was previously an advisor to the Ukip leader Gerrard Batten, a member of the BNP, and founded the EDF. His criminal record is long.
I have zero confidence that Speaker Hoyle will block this. He’s been a drip since day one.
Sunak throw Bridgen out of the party? lol.
Clive Robinson • February 5, 2024 2:00 PM
@ Echo,
“You could have instead picked transgender people who are disproportionately represented in IT or the arts.”
No, as far as I am aware not being hetrosexual, etc, etc, etc, whilst it may effect how you feel about yourself with respect to others, does not typically effect how you feel towards others who treat you with the norms of society. Thus if you have the capabilities of empathy then it is unaffected by being transgender.
Autism and the autistic spectrum do very significantly effect the way you feel towards others or not feel. It has been regarded as a “Social communications disorder” since the Asperger’s varient of “high functioning autism” was accepted in the 1980’s.
Those with high functioning autism traits tend to be attracted to STEM subjects rather more than others.
Back in the 1980’s the IEEE found that it’s members tended to either marry late or not at all, also most “engineers” were “sons of engineers” born to parents in their mid to late thirties or older. At that time it was assumed that there was a connection between engineering and be being born later than normal. It quickly became clear that there was more to this than having late starter on the social side parents.
It was found that “engineers” were 12.5% more likely to exhibit signs of autistic detachment which was later corrected to Asperger’s.
Another thing found which has significantly delayed research is the prevalence in “left handedness” in engineers especially those in design. The problem for those doing brain research is left handedness shows up sufficiently significantly in scans that it’s way easier to just exclude them from studies.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog before I’ve an acquaintance in the research side and at a social function whilst standing with glasses of vino in our hands I asked about the left handed exclusion and joked about it being they were all superstitious and thought all us southpaws were sinister… The reply was “The trouble is you lefties are not wired up right” which was score three, two for puns as well as one for giving the correct answer.
There are reasons given by researchers as to why the ‘higher forms” of STEM attract high function autistics but let us just say they are on logical analysis not sufficient.
echo • February 5, 2024 2:41 PM
Actually it is inevitable.
Only if you accept business as usual. That’s the point I was making.
We are less than 1 paycheck from eviction, we have less than 1 weeks supply of foods, we have few personal resources for LT energy supply when the grid fails. We have no where to go and no one is going to help us. It’s illegal to camp on the side walk and in San Francisco California, it’s illegal to hand a sandwich to anyone in a public area.
“Tax cuts for the rich” and greedflation means no social housing worth talking about has been built while buy-to-let landlords and dodgy foreign money turbocharges the housing market.
Only the other month a local unlawfully and mistakenly removed a homeless man’s tent and all his possessions and dumped the lot in the back of a garbage truck.
The Tories are talking up banning being homeless and threatening fines or prison. This in a system which due to “austerity” has a backlog of cases and full jails which has effectively decriminalised rape.
This England by William Shakespeare and the sting in its tail.
“This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” John of Gaunt, dying, utters these immortal words in William Shakespeare’s history, Richard II. These are the words that most people know to be the end of the soliloquy. However, notice that is a comma at the end of the line. Not a full stop. The monologue continues. Take a moment to read the full this England speech from Act II Scene 1 of the play:
Apparently King Charles has the dreaded “C” word. If they put him at the back of the NHS queue I’m sure the queues wouldn’t be so long.
echo • February 5, 2024 3:41 PM
Just when I think you have a shred of being sensible you go off on one. I’m sorry but you really need to take a step back and not attach autistic people to negative behaviour as you did. It’s discriminatory and demonising while you’re polishing your own “certified professional” status again as if engineers with a form of autism (Aspergers) are saints. You really need to knock off that going off half cocked judgemental finger wagging. Autistic people already get enough crap in life without you singling them out as the villain of the piece. I’m not budging on that.
You’ve also skipped right past structural and institutional discrimination and organisational and policy issues which are factors in outcome. Nor do you mention medical discrimination where the majority of health and mental health conditions are based on studies on men as men were deemed to be simpler to model which hangs women out to dry.
A lot of creative people and, oddly, UK special forces are left handers. Apparently the SAS are full of lefties. I’m not sure what it proves and can’t be bothered to worry about it. Many creatives can’t stand corporations and the SAS doesn’t want institutionalised brains on rails so that may be a factor. Maybe they just self-select into the role.
Previous studies suggested transgender people had higher degrees of severe and moderate mental health conditions but that has been all zeroed out by further studies and less abusive medical practice and hostile environments. They also claimed trans people were more likely to run in families, or when they were the youngest and their older siblings were of another gender but that all zeroed out as the sample pool grew.
Then you have transgender men who used to be diagnosed by some wags as autistic women, and the rise in the number of people diagnosed as autistic. So you’ve got changes in medical practice and social conditions to contend with as knowledge developed and stigmatisation lowered.
None of this is a Newtonian ideal so you have to be more careful. You have a habit of latching onto something and excluding everything else so you stop looking. It’s like something rolls in a straight line unless another force acts upon it.
Myself I feel computing was one of the worst mistakes in my life. I should have done something else. Not sure what but not that. Chemistry? Fashion design? Moving on to HR? No idea and too late now! I’ll just follow my nose.
Clive Robinson • February 5, 2024 3:57 PM
@ JonKnowsKnothing, Echo, ALL,
Re : It’s a recognised fact that things are not always what they seem to be…
“A recent MSM report of a person in UK earning over 100k per year had to quit their job because the cost of their mortgage-rent went from 1k to 2k per month. They had to find another job.”
I suspect you are talking about a fluf piece from a Tory Minister thinking ahead to the election and how not to loose his seat by distancing himself from the UK PM I now think of as “Rushy Sunk”.
“George Freeman former Minister of science had a salary of over £118,000 has said on a substack blog post that his mortgage has gone from £800 to £2000 a month and he can no longer afford it as a ministerial salary would not cover it… He received over 118,000 as a minister and around an 8000 pay off when BlowJo got the have ho. He now gets only 86,584 as an MP…”
But… As a minister his options for second jobs were very slim… Now as an MP his conflict issues are near gone so he can pick up any £1000/hour gigs he wants etc. But the crocodile tears of hardship will no doubt sound good to some voters as well as allowing him to significantly distance himself from “going down with all hands” Rushy Sunk…
The fact you heard it through the Daily Fail aligned Metro does as the old song have it,
“It ain’t necessarily so,
It ain’t necessarily so,
The things that your liable,
To read in that Vile-able
It ain’t necessarily so.”
Clive Robinson • February 5, 2024 4:11 PM
@ echo,
“It’s discriminatory and demonising”
It’s neither and you should stop trying to gaslight, intimidate and vilify people into “cancel culture” that you know have Asperger’s.
Because that is exactly what you accuse others who have “communications disabilities” of so quit pushing your Oh so PC shit.
People keep telling you nicely, but you just refuse to hear what is not in line with your Walter Mitty style thoughts.
JonKnowsNothing • February 5, 2024 6:42 PM
@Clive, All
re: The size of the pot
The MP or ex-Minister is nothing compared to Elon Musk.
Musk is upset because a judge tossed out his $56,000,000,000 bonus. Yep ElMusko wants $56billion for part time work at Tesla.
The plaintiff’s legal team also argued the board had a duty to offer a smaller pay package or look for another chief executive and that they should have required Musk to work full-time at Tesla
Lots of contractors get $1,000 USD per hour. The guy doing the work gets only a fraction of that, the 3d party supplier gets the lion’s share of the loot. Milspec work is very lucrative if you can mentally stand to do it.
===
ht tps:// arstechnica. com/tech-policy/2024/02/elon-musk-proposes-tesla-move-to-texas-after-delaware-judge-voids-56-billion-pay/
ht tps://ars technica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/elon-musks-56-billion-pay-plan-voided-as-shareholders-beat-tesla-in-court/
h ttps:/ /www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/30/elon-musk-tesla-pay-package-too-much-judge-rules
ResearcherZero • February 5, 2024 9:47 PM
Can you learn how to free yourself?
‘https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
This is for your own good. Will solve problems with slow download speeds and conflicts.
‘https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Select_the_mirrors
(do not use Australian mirrors)
‘https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-impact/
Also avoid UK mirrors…
‘https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/20/uk_online_safety_bill_passes/
ResearcherZero • February 5, 2024 11:08 PM
But surely that is crazy talk good sir? Couldn’t you just set a password for your BIOS, and enable ‘display BIOS startup’ (disables logo)?
‘https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/microsoft-patches-secure-boot-flaw-but-wont-enable-fix-by-default-until-early-2024/
“more vulnerable boot loaders exist than the DBX can contain” … use option 1 (update the system) 🤣
‘https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jun/22/2003245723/-1/-1/0/CSI_BlackLotus_Mitigation_Guide.PDF
“The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.”
How it all happened.
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
If those signed binaries are revoked, millions of devices will no longer work. 😅 Secure Boot Lockout Becomes a Reality
‘https://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI%20Firmware%20-%20Security%20Concerns%20and%20Best%20Practices.pdf
‘https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/linus-torvalds-i-will-not-change-linux-to-deep-throat-microsoft/
A real-world demonstration of the lack of wisdom of law enforcement demanding backdoors in operating systems and encryption. 😂
–
And of course Secure Boot was bypassed, many times. Introducing Secure Core…
“That’s why we worked with our partners to ensure these new Secured-core capabilities are shipped in devices right out of the box.”
‘https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2019/10/21/microsoft-and-partners-design-new-device-security-requirements-to-protect-against-targeted-firmware-attacks/
“The extension of Microsoft’s OS monopoly to hardware would be a disaster, with increased lock-in, decreased consumer choice and lack of space to innovate. It is clearly unlawful and must not succeed.”
https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/09/20/trusted-computing-2-0/
In a blog post in 2011, Microsoft attempted to address these concerns arguing that “complete control over the PC continues to be available” to consumers.
https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/23/ms_denies_uefi_lock_in/
A UEFI flaw prevented some systems from booting. ~ “Writing UEFI variables is expressly permitted by the specification, and there should never be a situation in which an OS can fill the variable store in such a way that the firmware refuses to boot the system.”
‘https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/22855.html
(microsoft’s blog page has ever since returned a 403 – Forbidden)
‘https://devblogs.microsoft.com/b8/protecting-the-pre-os-environment-with-uefi.aspx
Clive Robinson • February 6, 2024 12:34 AM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
Re : The Fritz Chip et Al.
This has some history going back into the 1990’s in computers but way way earlier ~1970s with audio cassettes.
“The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.”
Look up “The Fritz Chip” an initiative pushed by a US politician who was clearly bought and payed for by Disney Corp.
Toward the late 1990’s with the Fritz Chip denigrated the “recorded rights” industry jumped in behind the now failed “Digital Rights Managment”(DRM). It failed because steganography has failings and trying to “hide below the noise floor” has issues (I can explain the issues ad nausium but it would take up lots of “column inches”).
Cambridge Computer Labs was instrumental in driving in the last nail in the DRM coffin when they published code that moved the image around in two dimensions imperceptibly to human eyes, but destroyed the ability of the DRM sync system to work. In effect the DRM was hidden by “special noise” (see Spread Spectrum LPI) and the software just modulated it with “random noise” which was like adding another LPI layer of Spread Spectrum. Thus making it obvious that “DRM in media” had become an “arms race” that the cc Recorded Rights industry could not win.
It was slightly before this that Billy Bob “all year comps belong’ha Us” Gates jumped on the anti-malware band waggon as Google had threatened to litigate Microsoft into the Grave if it locked them out UEFI had to slow the loading of “other OSs”. Now because Google and Apple got so greedy and revealed even to the dumbest stump that their “Walled Gardens” are really revenue protection schemes. Thus customer exploitation not protection as originally claimed so Microsoft can get into the “lock them in” game again.
History shows with the likes of IBM why “lock them in” is such a very very bad idea. It will not just force high prices for at best rubbish software, it will just about kill all innovation in both hardware and software and force developers into being “locked in” as well in ways that are way more than scary.
Clive Robinson • February 6, 2024 10:32 AM
JonKnowsNothing, ALL,
Re : Hellon Rusk Bonus, horns and tail required for advocacy.
With regards the article statement,
“The plaintiff’s legal team also argued the board had a duty to offer a smaller pay package or look for another chief executive and that they should have required Musk to work full-time at Tesla”
The Shareholders are being greedy and thoughtless and assuming entitlement, every bit as much as Hellon Rusk is being portrayed as by their legal team (who are just as greedy, thoughtless and entitled).
So it’s difficult to feel any sympathy for them, and a failing the judge has also stupidly fallen into.
It’s been observed “It’s difficult to tell the average six year old from a psychopath”… Likewise “The only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys”…
Something that appear to apply to them all.
However, where they differ with Hellon Rusk is what they are not bringing to the table and that is “value” of any use now or in the future. That is they are actively shooting themselves in the foot, for even an everyday fool to see.
The real issue is the intangibility of “value”… They are claiming that Hellon Rusk should be treated in a rather stupid way where as they should be treated differently for being well let’s just be polite “As dumb as a rotting stump, only less useful”.
It’s quite common in a Capitalist system for stumps to get greedy and grumpy and way way over entitled, thus they kill businesses and run to destroy the next as fast as they can. The only difference between them and asset strippers is that asset strippers take a more honest approach to what they are doing.
The issue is really about value that can not be measured in terms of clock hours or any other numpty argument the plaintiffs were paying well over the odds for from their inept legal team.
When it comes to many things of high value these days it’s really about distilled information we call knowledge, part of which is how an individual thinks and views the world. I’m not saying Hellon Rusk is the next Einstein or Shannon, but his ideas have certainly changed the world in very major ways.
How do you value his mulled over thoughts compared to a bunch of money grabbers who have put not just their own wants over all else but even over their own selves? Let’s just say stupidity does not cover it.
The fact a judge was daft enough to be equally as greedy etc I guess should not surprise me.
So the fact Hellon Rusk is talking about shipping out to Texas or some other place does not surprise me.
At least he is still talking about keeping it in the US, other HiTech companies like Alphabet(Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta(Facebook), Microsoft etc deliberately “off shore” thus denying the US of any benefit, including that of employment and citizen development.
Yes 56billion sounds a lot but really is it? When compared to say other everyday financial activities of large Corps in more “government related” activities swallowing tax dollars faster than water flows over Niagara falls. After all it’s small potatoes compared to what is often totally wasted defence spending.
Which raises that value question again, how about what has society
got from Tesla from Hellon Rusks money compared to say Boeings military, spying, and worse divisions payed for by taxes…
As in all things it rather depends on how you view things in a more dispassionate and less greedy self entitled way 😉
Clive Robinson • February 6, 2024 11:53 AM
@ echo,
As said you are wrong and foolishly so.
I could spend hours pointing out not just where but why you are wrong.
But primarily you are both deluded and fixated and have clear signs of being a Walter Mitty type inventing false narratives where you feature as the hero waltzing in with cheap lipstick and a tight dress to bedazzle stodgy old misogynistic legal and political professionals. But always with no believability etc involved.
The fact that you attack an individual you know to be disabled relentlessly has not just been noted but commented on by others.
One of the first pointed out that you were “hero worshiping” and you had not been noticed. In fact you had been welcomed in a friendly way, then you became uncomfortably creepy and you got distanced. And as was noticed by others “felt as a woman scorned”. Since when your behaviours have worsened and well the word “stalkery” just does not cover it. More recently you’ve developed the worst elements of gaslighting and attempts at “cancel culture” by pretence at “political correctness” by inventing imagined slights and things that are totally and utterly irrelevant to the subject of either the thread or current subject of discourse. Then going into a full length weirdo berating that is at best hyperbolic and unfathomable due to it’s “Kitchen sink nature”. Which frankly says much about your contact with reality or more accurately not.
Glen • February 6, 2024 3:14 PM
I’m curious as to how Bruce feels about personal information removal services (eg. Incogni). Do they really help reduce targeted advertising, hacking attempts, or spam?
JonKnowsNothing • February 6, 2024 3:38 PM
All
re: Surveillance Stalking Surveying
LEAs and 3Ls engage in surveillance. They engage in stalking too, although when LEAs and 3Ls do it, this is considered acceptable practice.
LEAs and 3Ls obtain information used to enhance their surveillance and stalking abilities though legal and private market means. Somethings they get automagically and others they have to buy or have donated-given to them and while other items are in the public sphere (web pages). This is also considered acceptable practice, at least legally.
When individuals or Non-3Ls use publicly available information, without assistance from LEAs or 3Ls, to survey activities, this somehow crosses over a Maginot Line into stalking with implied intent to do harm.
Of course LEAs and 3Ls have only intent to do harm, otherwise they wouldn’t bother with all that tracking.
However
Lots of ordinary people track the actions and movements of public figures. Some are journalists, some are public relations groups, some are fans. We read about the movements and rallies and meet-n-greets. These seem to be acceptable actions.
Tracking jet flight paths by public information seems to bother some of the people with private jets. It’s not the first time, someone objected to having their personal private jet tracked.
Is it stalking or surveying?
===
ht tps://w ww.t heguardian.com/music/2024/feb/06/taylor-swift-jet-cease-desist-jack-sweeney
Jelo 117 • February 6, 2024 5:07 PM
Re: Dept of Pushing the Toothpaste Around in the Tube
personal information removal services
Need one say more ?
Like, be don’t be evil. Yet.
&ers • February 6, 2024 6:55 PM
@ALL
hxxps://kyivindependent.com/hacker-group-reveals-cost-of-iranian-drone-production/
&ers • February 6, 2024 7:04 PM
@Sir Clive @ALL
More about surveillance of those .ua journalists.
hxxps://kyivindependent.com/bihus-info-investigative-outlet-says-sbu-behind-illegal-surveillance-of-its-team/
Clive Robinson • February 7, 2024 3:40 AM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Hybrid AI, what it is how we might achieve the benifts lecture
Given at the “Royal Institution” in London back at the end of October, by Catholijn Jonker professor of Interactive Intelligence at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the Delft University of Technology.
Titled “From artificial intelligence to hybrid intelligence”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_Os_AJXjY
It’s a little slow to start, you might want to jump in around the 15-20min mark.
echo • February 7, 2024 9:04 AM
@Clive
I’m sorry Clive but I think you had better save your energy for writing a polite cover letter including an outline of your position on the issues and a record of the discussion and send it to Scope (and for LGBT matters to Stonewall). I strongly recommend you have a deep think and wait on their advice or the advice of anyone they refer you to. You can then post their reply when they are done.
I’m simply not going to respond to a sensationalising and salacious character assassination. The DARVO makes you sound like a combusting rightoid.
Sychronicity follows me like a Labrador. I had the good fortune to watch two videos last night which are good primers on subjects which I think are a good security topic (and not wholly unrelated. Some news just dropped this morning which fits in neatly with this so I can add that too. I’m not going to post in now is I need to track incoming material and it’s too important to be caught up in squalid spats.
So if you will excuse me? I think we are done here.
Clive Robinson • February 7, 2024 12:29 PM
@ echo,
“I’m sorry Clive but I think you had better save your energy for writing a polite cover letter including an outline of your position on the issues and a record of the discussion and send it to Scope (and for LGBT matters to Stonewall).”
I suggest you really get some competent psychiatric care.
For the past several years you have turned up and singled me out for a false vilification, gaslighting and attempts at cancel culture.
You invent things in your head that are not said by me or others and are not at all relevant to anything I or others have said on this blog, nor have I else where.
You then spew out complete and utter nonsense in an attempt to damage my name in any way you think will work.
The fact you do this to me alone strongly suggests you have very unhealthy if not worrying intent towards me and have done for some years now.
The fact others have not just noticed but warned you about your abnormal and decidedly unbalanced behaviour should tell you something.
As I’ve said you should go seek professional psychiatric care and get the help you obviously and urgently need.
No doubt all your comments since your recent reappearance have been put up on one of the Web backup sites where a professional can examine them so they can see just how much professional assistance and care you need.
But I suspect you will continue inventing things in your head and making false allegations and even further falsely making claims against me for things I’ve most certainly not said. Thereby damaging not just your own credibility but your mental wellbeing further.
Your future is in your hands, I suggest you don’t forget or ignore that basic fact and act accordingly.
Clive Robinson • February 7, 2024 1:02 PM
@ ALL,
You will note @echo uses a very uncommon term and a less common one (both incorrectly)
“The DARVO makes you sound like a combusting rightoid.”
To save you looking up the very uncommon term,
‘https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/darvo/?amp=1
The second can have a couple of meanings, one of which is likely to be heard more of during the build up to the election cycle in both the US and UK.
I must admit it’s strange to be called right-wing, as several can confirm I’m accused of being not just leftwing but socialist, Marxist or communist here… So someone is obviously not playing in the same reality.
So it looks like what is known as a “numptyrum” which is the UK “numpty” and “tantrum” combined which is what certain right-wing types in the UK get accused of especially when they sit in parliament and espouse sending people to African nations known by many to have had a genocidal event not that long ago.
Winter • February 7, 2024 1:55 PM
@Clive, @echo
Don’t feed the trolls. If you don’t like each other, ignore the other’s writings.
If you think the other is writing nonsense, there is no requirement to engage.
Remember: Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
lurker • February 7, 2024 3:02 PM
@Winter
When a participant in a flame attack keeps coming back for more, it might be because they follow Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
Clive Robinson • February 7, 2024 3:05 PM
@ Winter,
The funny thing is as you may remember this round of nonsense started because I warned someone that @echo was potentially being impersonated by a Troll…
Now I’m thinking of old silk purses and new lipstick…
Winter • February 7, 2024 3:12 PM
@lurker, Clive
I follow my own advice and rather refrain from responding.
Jelo 117 • February 7, 2024 3:47 PM
Re : flames
Intellectual sparking, pillow fights, and colored plastic confetti cannons are fine, but in the midst of it don’t start an infallibility war.
i.postimg.cc/tJ2kwN2L/praxis.png • February 7, 2024 8:40 PM
Aside: PNG preferred
I’m looking for a historical online article I once read about how to arbitrarily attach an image filetype header correctly to any kind of compressed (say maybe zipped) digital data and have it accepted by OSes and image editors and image viewers as if it was “born and raised” as an image (instead of created by measuring and splicing according to the image file standards).
Please let me know with a reply here if you happen to know of that article or technique. I’m pretty sure it’s trivial for pro or semipro computer sci majors or whatnot. I’m specificly avoiding (R)”true” and (R)”vera” because that’s way too obvious.
In the article, the images were not really aesthetically appealing and they weren’t representational either. And that’s what I liked about the technique. It was just the data wrapped up as an image, with no fuss about “nope, you can’t do that..”.
I mean, if I want to substitute ingredients in a food recipe, it’s not much of a big deal. so why can’t we be lyke that with some files as folders without it devolving into fred flintstones reruns?
It’s pretty obvious who I am, I’m the only guy on earth who still likes CoagulaLight freeware and BMP2WAV.exe
hackers, please stand down and think about having a happier easter holiday.
Clive Robinson • February 7, 2024 10:05 PM
@ i.post…,
“I’m looking for a historical online article I once read about how to arbitrarily attach an image filetype header…”
It “was” not difficult to do. Back last century I used to do it in Microsoft debug.com from memory[1].
But note the past tense, since then file format checking has gone way beyond “check lead ‘magic number’ aligns with filetype extension” and later check meta-structure due to malware attacks.
The ironic side of it is that in trying to add more security, a lot lot more complexity was added including having interpreters in the image parsers. Which ment that it actually opened a new series of attack vectors…
Hence people not liking having URL links to random files especially image files on the Internet.
You can now more or less find all image file formats given online these days so it’s not hard to build software to make a “bag of bytes” superficially look like a valid image. But… That is what “stego software” does and there is now any number of file analysers that look for and find stego.
The reason that censors and others find stego fairly reliably is that people make incorrect assumptions about image noise and random.
The noise in digital images is actually not that random in that it’s distribution is very far from flat. Because it’s actually generated by artifacts from the lens CCD sensor and sensor amps and other analog domain circuitry and optics defects. Spotting that the image and noise do not correctly match is thus not only possible, it has been done so for over thirty years. Interestingly as a technique it is now seeing ‘new use’ more recently in spotting LLM faux-images.
[1] One way was that some filetypes had the “colour pallet conversion table” as the header after the ‘magic number’. This was in effect just a “lookup table” to convert 8bit numbers in the file to 24bit colour triplets for the display as it gave significant image file size reduction. Just pre-appending a magic number and valid table was sufficient.
echo • February 7, 2024 10:52 PM
Clive’s lack of ability to get off his know it all high horse and not accept responsibility for punching down on vulnerable employees or vulnerable people and/or seek a third party review of the facts, only to be followed up by a page full of DARVO says it all. I couldn’t care one way or the other about Clive. What I care about is his abuse of position and the effect this may have on people’s rights and workplace environments. As a small businessman of a certain age it’s not something he’s ever had to worry about and it shows to which I might add he might want to seek professional guidance by sending a polite inquiry to ACAS and/or the Health and Safety Executive. He might also want to take a trot through some tribunals. They really are quite instructive as to what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable. Not withstanding anything actionable the obligations are on Clive’s side.
I don’t have to respond to Clive and certainly not in the way he is baiting. I’ve seen it all before and seen them come and go. Like a lot of things it’s rarely the incident itself but how they respond to it where they come a cropper. Here are some examples:
Reckless behaviour can reinforce reckless mindsets which can lead to errors of judgement and consequences. The three of the worst people who attacked me (one in person and two online) are now all dead because of their recklessness and a fourth one is in jail. Of two established businesses which had a toxic work culture and with which I had a disagreement with management about they both went bust. One spectacularly. Similarly with one charity and one trust. The charity wound up. The trust found themselves sanctioned then the entire board was replaced. A related organisation which severe failings of professional standards also lost its contract. Three other companies which didn’t feel right and which I had no further interaction with were done for fraud and abuse of their employees. When an institution with a public profile and the media got wind of how a director punked me his career imploded in scandal. A chief constable who tussled with me over data privacy and discrimination (and who took part in or who turned a blind eye to a culture of sexual harassment within his force) went down in flames and was forced to resign.
One person who didn’t attack me as such but was problematic was a barrister and as it turned out he was a friend of a friend. I’ll just say he followed the advice I ran past his friend to cool down before he ruined his career and lost his family. That is exactly what he did and he issued a public statement to that effect. To the best of my knowledge he still has a career and family.
ResearcherZero • February 7, 2024 11:00 PM
The old problems the old secure boot.
RCE in Shim local, network adjacent, and remote attack points.
The shim’s http boot support (httpboot.c) trusts attacker-controlled values when parsing an HTTP response, leading to a completely controlled out-of-bounds write primitive. This flaw is only exploitable during the early boot phase, an attacker needs to perform a Man-in-the-Middle or compromise the boot server to be able to exploit this vulnerability successfully.
“The order of operations here is important as users must first update to the latest version of shim, and then apply the DBX update.”
‘https://eclypsium.com/blog/the-real-shim-shady-how-cve-2023-40547-impacts-most-linux-systems/
–
Something to consider regarding the purchasing of a certificate…
‘https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/23400.html
how to extract a private key (obviously you would store such things securely)
Before you can sign a file you need a Software Publishing Certificate (spc) and a corresponding private key.
‘https://www.matthew-jones.com/articles/codesigning.html
ResearcherZero • February 7, 2024 11:22 PM
Chinese APT trolling…
“in one compromise, Volt Typhoon likely extracted NTDS.dit from three domain controllers in a four-year period. In another compromise, Volt Typhoon actors extracted NTDS.dit two times from a victim in a nine-month period” …(undetected for at least 5 years in some cases).
Includes guide for network defenders focuses on how to mitigate identified gaps and to detect and hunt for LOTL activity.
‘https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa24-038a
Chinese actors breached an unclassified military R&D project. It was already segmented off from the wider network, limiting the intrusion.
“the COATHANGER implant is persistent, recovering after every reboot by injecting a backup of itself in the process responsible for rebooting the system. Moreover, the infection survives firmware upgrades. FortiGate devices may therefore be infected, if they were compromised before the latest patch was applied.”
‘https://www.ncsc.nl/documenten/publicaties/2024/februari/6/mivd-aivd-advisory-coathanger-tlp-clear
–
The Commercial Surveillance Vendors responsible for most and aggressively buying 0days (74) and exploit chains.
‘https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/commercial-surveillance-vendors-google-tag-report/
Clive Robinson • February 8, 2024 12:32 AM
@ Bruce, JonKnowsNothing, ALL,
Re : Read the manual before acquiring, especially for EV’s etc.
Over the past few days the “EV manufacturer bans radio usage” stories have been growing.
Some may remember that some Tesla owners were unhappy they could not have AM radio in their car (because it’s a major “Radio Frequency Interference”(RFI) source even to people in adjacent vehicles).
Well someone who purchased a new car found out that,
“Toyota Prius BANS Mobile Radio”
Apparently putting any radio equipment in the Prius is a blanket “voids the warranty” from Toyota.
Which has encouraged other new vehicle owners to look in their owner manuals and discover similar.
Various things have been found but the newer the vehicle and the more “hi tech” with “rentable feature upgrade” it’s become appears to correlate with the strength of the bans/voids.
Now there can be several reasons for this. Not least is air-bag related in that air-bags are in many ways like blanks for large caliber guns or electrically detonated charges like “Diver recalls”. So you would not want things around them interfering with the way they operate or deploy, especially if loose items become kinetic and shrapnel like in their behaviour.
Also running antenna cables inside bulkheads etc very close or next to wiring is never advised (see books on EMC and EmSec or my past explanations for why).
But others have indicated that there may be other very real concerns to have a long careful think about.
How would you feel if your anti-lock breaking failed?
Or any kind of “driving assist” failed?
How about “AI auto driving” and the computer going and ploughing down pedestrians or cyclists, or driving you into solid objects?
That is do you want the auto-driving AI to have hallucinations or the equivalent of a fit or heart failure (all comparable with medical conditions that would cause a human drivers licence to be suspended).
Yes there is a very real possibility that having even a walki-talkie in the vehicle could act as an “input fritzer” and find the sort of vulnerabilities you really don’t want a computer with physical agency to have. And as we know these AI assisted vehicles are getting a reputation in the MSM for a “taste in carnage and flesh” that a certain horror story writer made a fortune with.
But another reason has been suggested… As some will know “Global Positioning System”(GPS) satellite jammers are very low power radio transmitters used by some to stop onboard vehicle trackers functioning.
Less well known is that there are GSM phone based tracking systems so there are jammers available to do similar to stop GSM vehicle trackers as well.
Now… In vehicle tracking and reporting is now “standard” in new vehicles via OnStar and the like for a multitude of reasons. Including “after sales revenue generation” where you in effect “rent” things like “air conditioning” etc etc… If they can get remote control then you are going to end up paying rental on it at ever increasing monthly rate and forced obsolescence/upgrade.
As I noted a little while back a friend was shocked to discover that car batteries are not just massively more expensive, they are not just no longer covered by vehicle warranty if you get a non approved replacement your entire vehicle warranty is voided… All because the design of modern vehicles is very deliberately defective by design to cause substantial after sales revenue…
When you think about it an old banger from a decade and a half or more ago without all this hi-tech crap in it, especially the mandated surveillance and control is looking more and more attractive.
Oh and probably a lot lot safer to be in than an AI controlled or EV vehicle all things considered.
ResearcherZero • February 8, 2024 12:40 AM
The only way I can think of solving these problems is decoupling.
https://www.schneier.com/academic/archives/2023/12/decoupling-for-security.html
Try explaining salting and password hashing schemes to a company executive.
The age of mass AI spying is going to drill everyone’s security. The average user’s passwords are going to be brute forced instantaneously by processing power available to AI, before looking at the range of other vulnerabilities AI could check for and employ.
JonKnowsNothing • February 8, 2024 3:14 AM
@Clive, All
re: Banned Radio in [Farm Vehicles]
Not many on the farm and rodeo circuit are that keen about EVs except for battery run ATV-UTVs that are used around the rancho to haul loads of gear and hay about to feed the livestock in pens.
Hook up a small tow trailer loaded with hay or fencing gear and one pedal push works. There are gas versions too. The cross reliability and uses (mostly distance and terrain) often means ranchers have one or more of each.
But telling them No Radio? That’s not going to cut the CyberTruckMustard.
Ranchers hang a radio from the ATV roll bar and horse men hang it off the saddle horn. Nothing like rockin’ it out on a 10 mile cattle drive.
At least the horse only has 1 malfunction the first time you turn up the volume to max.
Clive Robinson • February 8, 2024 4:02 AM
@ Bruce, lurker, winter,
So now it turns to “invented crimes” that are excuses for direct threats / attacks against the person and intimidation, way beyond the protections of “free speech” or of section 320.
This is not unexpected the attackers behaviours have been building up for several years now as can be seen in their own words and behaviours. The desperation for walter mitty recognition then when that failed of trying to “tilt windmills” is progressing to a point where there may be an actual break beyond not just the norms of societal convention but into actual physical activity / criminality.
It’s curious to note that what gets brought up by the incessant and focused on a single individual attacks not only has no basis in fact but says more about the attacker than the attacked.
For instance the bringing up the very uncommon term, of “DARVO” in
“The DARVO makes you sound like a combusting rightoid.”
It’s a not at all well know acronym for a series of behaviours. It’s use outside of the psychiatric profession is as far as I’m aware almost unknown and not common within.
As I noted the use of both terms was incorrect suggesting “overheard not learned” usage in both cases.
If you accept that as a working premise and then look over all other things said in the instigated attacks and compare to the given behaviours in,
https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/darvo/
And other sources you should be able to see how predicting they are of the attackers behaviour and progression so far (thus potentially future as well).
What the sources mostly do not say is what the outcome is when the attacker does not get the desired reward.
It’s rather more serious than what some might call “pinko cancel culture”.
In effect it’s a form of delusion that falls into a vigilante mind set where logic and reason are forsaken and violence often follows.
I’ve mentioned in the past with regards the MSM rilling up vigilantism to “sell” that it’s like a beast that slumbers and once roused it has to be metaphorically fed. As the Romans found with their circuses the food of choice was “blood of the innocents” hence sayings like “Throw the Christians to the lions” and similar.
These days we see such DARVO behaviours being the driver behind “lone terrorist” knife and vehicle attacks on random strangers and similar, those referred to in the US as “Going Postal” committ.
If you look at the attackers words,
The three of the worst people who attacked me (one in person and two online) are now all dead…
That’s not what you would call veiled, likewise in the similar that follows you can see a clear mindset escalation towards not just threats but claims of actual harming and a desire to have further such acts and positively revel in such.
This is called in certain professions as “tells” that if not acted upon all to often presage a break or jump into a different behavioural mode by an attacker. It’s also what you find picked up on in enquiry after enquiry and other legal processes[1] as to the root cause failing of those that have a duty of care both explicit and implicit as well as implied.
The issue is not so much if the physically out of reach person being attacked is at risk from physical harm but the risk to others around the attacker by “Transference”[2]. It’s seen all to often with “Primary Narcissists” both overt and covert when they effectively get thwarted and their narcissistic needs not fed, actively rejected, or they can not recruit people to be their arms length aids as “flying monkeys”[3] As indicated,
“[I]t’s essential to understand the nature of narcissistic behaviour. Narcissists have an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy, and an inflated sense of self-importance. They thrive on control and power, and when their ego is threatened or they feel criticized, they employ various manipulative tactics to protect their fragile self-image. One such tactic is using flying monkeys.”
Thus for a primary narcissist especially if overt it’s “Attack, attack, attack” escalating at each step untill where possible violence becomes almost inevitable, and for those in arms reach almost unavoidable.
An examination of the attacks carried out over the years so far show an absolute determination to not just false invention but escalation thus red flags have been not just raised but now waved threateningly.
After a little thought you will see a pattern in the attacks. Ignoring has thus never been a viable option, if it was it would have worked years ago and very obviously it did not. However the metaphorical equivalent of “thump the bully back” has caused the attacker to withdraw to I guess “nurse wounds” to the attackers belittled ego.
But rather than learn that an attack does not cause submission but a measured response in return the attacker not just returns for more but falsely invents further and escalates each new attack more desperately and embittered than before.
The problem is that the attacker has not realised untill very recently that their false claims have progressed to the point that the fantasy behind them is all to obvious and thus fails to garner sympathy or support. Thus the escalation into what anyone can see are not at all veiled threats of more direct action against others.
I suspect that if there is not an “intervention” very soon those physically close to the attacker will come to harm by abuse both mental and physical.
Without going to the expense of law there is little I can do other than rebut the attacks. But that is not going to help those close to the attacker.
So all I can do is defend my good name as required by law and carry on doing so in part by leaving a record of the attackers behaviour indicating that the “tells” were not just there but escalating and there to be seen by all, but there was in reality nothing more I could do. What happens next is now entirely in the attacker and those closer to them hands.
[1] In the US a court has just found a mother guilty of manslaughter for the killing of four adolescents in a school by her son,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67571551
With the father and school likewise facing similar legal action.
[2] Transference in psychological terms is where a person takes the way they see one individual and applies it to another,
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/transference
It can have disastrous results if not managed. I don’t know what the rate was in the US but if you look at the UK you will find,
“During the coronavirus pandemic, calls to the UK’s National Domestic Violence helpline rose by 49% percent and incidents of intimate partner homicide rose by 50%.”
Much of this was due to “transference” where external stressors that had no relief due to effective confinement were unleashed on those in the vicinity. It’s also known to be one of the major drivers of prison violence. And sadly those suffering from various forms of PTSD where the stressors are effectively confined inside an individuals mind for various reasons thus can build and burst out.
[3] The term “Flying Monkeys” comes from the notion of “harpies” in more modern “fairy tale” culture. Basically the “Wicked Witch” sends out minions to do her bidding against a chosen victim. But to be able to do so, first she must recruit the minions. In the primary narcissists world view this should be easy to do and thus like the witch they should have an army of them to do her bidding. But rage can follow where people decline to be recruited,
https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/why-do-narcissists-send-flying-monkeys/
Clive Robinson • February 8, 2024 4:29 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,
Re : Rock Radio…
“At least the horse only has 1 malfunction the first time you turn up the volume to max.”
Heart failure, or bucking the rider and radio to a ground based doom?
As I’ve said before, I’ve looked into a horses eyes and seen the madness that lies behind them… As has been observed,
“Vicious teeth at one end, flailing hoves at the other, and no sense of responsibility in the middle, who in their right mind would climb aboard one?”
ResearcherZero • February 8, 2024 6:52 AM
@Clive Robinson
I work off the theory that such people are trolls, or the kind that just like arguments. There are enough sources that cover modelling, arithmetic and algebra (PENDAS). Lumping professionals into a category (stereotyping) is simple ignorance due to lack of experience.
Regardless, it derails, the current subject/conversations.
Frankly I think that trying to explain that specialists are very kind, patient, and open minded people, might be too hard a task. As it’s not an environment some may have experienced. I don’t imagine many spend any time wondering how the traffic lights work.
Or perhaps how a bridge got itself to the other side of the river?
Trying to explain what context modelling and simulations are used in might be a waste of time to the uninitiated. It’s best answered by math teachers, to the students there to learn, who are actually going to use the knowledge to aid in solving a problem.
I’ll blame ‘spytainment’ and the many “professionals” TV series brethren. I imagine a TV series about engineers who build ‘real things’, would not get the necessary eyeballs, unless they added explosives, guns and a bunch of urban and movie myths, and then busted them. There are those shows about Big Things, but they are not about the people themselves.
–
Devices are patched in memory by Volt Typhoon. Although this cannot survive a reboot, it does mean unpatched devices can be easily reinfected.
“During this surge, the actor displayed a clear preference in device type, as over 2,100 of the approximately 3,000 IP addresses were NetGear ProSAFEs.”
We observed the KV-botnet operators begin to restructure, committing eight straight hours of activity on December 8, 2023, nearly ten hours of operations the following day on December 9, 2023, followed by one hour on December 11, 2023. During this four-day period, we observed the threat actor interact with over 3,000 unique IP addresses. Most of these IP addresses were identified as NetGear ProSAFEs, Cisco RV320/325, Axis IP cameras, DrayTek Vigor routers and other unidentified devices.
“JDY, KV, and Fortinet clusters all shared some backend infrastructure, x.sh used a different set of infrastructure. The same exploit was used to compromise the JDY and x.sh Cisco routers. …the signal associated with the x.sh cluster has been lost, likely due to public exposure.”
‘https://blog.lumen.com/kv-botnet-dont-call-it-a-comeback/
Vulnerabilities in 1000’s of EOL routers and firewalls: 30% of Cisco RV320/325 Devices in 37 Days
“End users have a difficult financial choice when a device reaches that point, and many aren’t even aware that a router or firewall is at the end of its supported life. Replacing unsupported devices is always the best choice, but not always feasible.”
‘https://resources.securityscorecard.com/research/volt-typhoon
–
“Seven countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert that have experienced military coups in the last two and a half years.”
The Russian government has created a new military structure called Africa Corps, which works under the Defense Ministry. In this way, it intends to replace the Wagner Group and move away from a decentralized private company to one that is more directly controlled by the state.
“There was a significant disinformation effort in Mali. There was a lot of anti-France, anti-government information that was coming out, particularly on social media … they really laid this foundation of evicting the French.”
Outside the coup belt, Wagner works extensively in the Central African Republic.
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-08/africa-wagner-group-replaced-kremlin-africa-corp-putin-prigozhin/103438818
…”recently arrived Russian military personnel are alleged to be members of the Russian military intelligence services (GRU)”
‘https://www.fpri.org/article/2024/01/russia-steps-up-the-competition-in-africa/
Russia-Africa Networks: Russian intelligence services are now taking Central African affairs in hand. The careers of their leaders are easier to identify as most of them come from the Russian Ministry of Defense or the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
‘https://alleyesonwagner.org/2023/12/07/denis-pavlov-the-man-in-bangui/#more-661
JonKnowsNothing • February 8, 2024 11:06 AM
@Clive, All
re:
Heart failure, or bucking the rider and radio to a ground based doom?
“Vicious teeth at one end, flailing hoofs at the other, and no sense of responsibility in the middle, who in their right mind would climb aboard one?”
The radio is attached to the saddle, the rider is not… An old horse-man’s adage: The ground always catches you.
There is something unique that happens when you make a connection with a different being in the universe.
People look for ET in The Sky but ET is right there in the face of the horse. A being that does not and cannot ever speak our languages, yet understands every language on the planet (so do dogs and cats). A being that thinks and feels and has it’s own life cycle and trajectory.
Humans commandeer that life for our personal benefit, for plowing or pulling wagons to carrying humans into the melee of wars. Horses will do this for humans. They expect nothing from us and that’s a good thing because humans are generally deficient in empathy towards others. We have no empathy towards other humans and less to shed towards horses. Yet in spite of all the bad things that humans perpetuate on horses, there is something unique that happens when you make a connection that is not based on power or abuse.
That connection, when it happens, transcends the universe. Our true connection to Other Beings, that are not gods or deities; who do not bring of themselves anything more than a warm breath testing your intent.
It is a language that humans must learn. Horses know everything. Humans know nothing. No matter how many books or movies you may watch, you cannot know the language of the horse. Only a horse can teach you their language.
Horses are giant herbivores. They eat only grasses. That is the only thing they desire.
Humans have a different set of desires, and once a horse has been exposed to the worst depravities of humans, they react with the only things they have: hooves and teeth. We debase them in every possible way that humans can think of, and consider ourselves superior beings.
Given an opportunity horses will vote with their hooves about how they feel. There are some, that are so damaged at the hands of humans that their minds can never forgive… nor do they forget. They can outrun us but they often chose not to. In spite of all the wrong a horse can endure many will forgive us.
A gentile breath, a nudge of nose, their eyes see into our very essence.
emily’s post • February 8, 2024 7:59 PM
Dept of It’s Midnight, Do You Know Where Your Viruses Are ?
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
https://www.newsweek.com/covid-market-origins-hypothesis-challenged-statisticians-1862075
Sydney • February 8, 2024 10:41 PM
Coles supermarket in Australia is now implementing Palantir in a quest to
save one billion dollars over 4 years
The following article has a brief but pointy discussion of how Palantir functions and Coles myopia in relying on it
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/coles-just-hired-us-defence-contractor-palantir/103443504
ResearcherZero • February 8, 2024 11:41 PM
Are such practices creating a captive and surveilled class vs a better resourced class that is not? Are you already enslaved but do not realise the power these devices hold over you?
Is Palantir’s system capable of ensuring taxes are paid on time by the employer, or identifying if the employer is instead “hypothetically” withholding the sum, not paying it to the Tax Department, and leaving the employee with a large debt and fines?
Will large corporate structures still continue to destroy employee/customer credit ratings?
Palantir might be able to track employees/customers, but what about corporate structures?
Let us assume that this is how such a platform is designed and marketed…
What if such software platforms can only f–k the former and not the later? Is this responsible and ethical software development, or is it violating moral and civil rights?
Complex liabilities in a connected world, that really should be much simpler…
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/nbn-ey-court-after-allegations-by-former-it-worker-re-tax-bills/103428442
–
Toyota can log into your car remotely, keep a record of all sorts of bits and pieces, and possibly share your driving behaviour with your insurance company.
‘https://www.choice.com.au/toyotaprivacyinvestigation
“It’s a strange game. Do you want to play?”
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWo8zSlKUAI
ResearcherZero • February 9, 2024 12:06 AM
Great source of information on how to sign EFI binaries and manage keys. Learn this stuff on another system, not your main rig. Or don’t!
[Nerd Alert!] (Before proceeding, you might want to backup secure boot keys. Some BIOS versions allow restoring default keys, some do not. Save the Secure Boot keys to external storage. If you have Windows, backup Bitlocker recovery keys to external storage. If something goes wrong, blamo!)🕇
This will all be useless if you do not have a complex password of at least 20 characters. You could also use VeraCrypt, but that’s another story.
The first thing to do after setting up a system or installing is backup important stuff. Windows will upload Bitlocker recovery keys to the cloud (via OneDrive), if you enable a network connection during setup. You might prefer to disable your network first before installing Windows, remove OneDrive, backup keys?
Also check what format your BIOS accepts files in. It may use formats other than cer.
‘https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/controlling-sb.html
Full disc encryption with LUKS2!
This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
(osslsigncode is now at github) Your boot partition will still be LUKS1, which unfortunately does have some vulnerabilities worth considering.
The Linux kernel disables the possibility of hibernation when Secure Boot is in use because it cannot guarantee that the swap file is unchanged.
If your passwords are weak/reused it generally won’t matter what security you employ. Custom boot-loaders, kernels, VMs, and vulnerabilities can also bypass security checks.
‘https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/take-control-your-pc-uefi-secure-boot
Useful information regarding osslsigncode. Of course, because you are smart, you first made your own custom key! 🙂
‘https://superuser.com/questions/1560481/how-to-secure-boot-efi-images-signed-with-an-installed-custom-key
You could alternatively use microsoft’s SignTool (just the tool, not the full SDK or Visual Studio). Always read the documentation. The files must be in the right format.
‘https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31869552/how-to-install-signtool-exe-for-windows-10
Useful Windows information with links how make a certificate…
‘https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/secure-boot-key-generation-and-signing-using-hsm–example?view=windows-11
ResearcherZero • February 9, 2024 12:15 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
It’s why I have always loved horses. In an ocean environment I prefer sharks.
lurker • February 9, 2024 2:21 PM
Is a bitcoin wallet any safer than a bank-card? The guy in front of me at the supermarket checkout couldn’t get his card accepted, then I get home to read one of the big banks has a problem for “a small subset of customers.”
‘https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/508800/eftpos-issues-hit-nz-westpac-customers
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Anonymous • February 2, 2024 5:09 PM
Please, may we sometimes change the topic here sometime to some kind of security recommendations rather than mostly just documentation and discussion of problems?
Sorry if this seems absurd, I’m just an amateur, no kind of expert at all.
I’m not seeking a class or anything, just a different set of varieties than just the ordinary.
Please let me know, anybody, what you think about that.
And yet, I cannot guarantee that I’ll see your reply (yet someone else may).
sincerely, “i.postimg.cc/NjQfsmSZ/Fridae-PNG.png”