Schneier on Security

@Clive Robinson

How to hide:
adjust the dielectric properties of surrounding space to reduce the velocity of light below the escape velocity of your home. Yes, it means you have to be prepared to stay in there, forever.

Re : Dark Forest is too fragil.

The basic argument which is a necessary condition for the Dark Forest reasoning to work is that “Everyone hides”.

So two questions arise,

1, Can you hide?
2, What if someone does not hide?

The answer to the first is the “wood smoke” problem, that anyone who has tried to “stealth camp” knows about. And was an issue during WWII for those hiding out in non populated areas occupied by German forces. Both humans and dogs can smell wood smoke –or cooking food– at incredible distances away from where the energy is being used[1]...

@Winter, JonKnowsNothing

In Ants and Dinosaurs, Liu Cixin posits a symbiosis in which trust is an important component. The denouement is spectacular when trust fails.

In the Dark Forest trust is a folly. The most sought after resource in the finite universe must be antimatter to power near-(and super-)luminal ships. Perversely the most efficient method of harvesting antimatter is the ships themselves when travelling at speed. Such ships will always be targets, but more important targets are the home civilizations of such ships...

Twitter source code leak

Will people finally abandon ship?

For $8 you can become a verified impostor.

‘https://nitter.poast.org/emptywheel/status/1639976428249677824#m

‘https://www.globalvillagespace.com/tech/twitter-source-code-leaked-online-confirms-company/

Twitter’s source code, the underlying computer code on which the social network runs, has been leaked online, according to a legal filing...

@ JonKnowsNothing,

Re : LC or LmRNA,

A freedom of Information request in Australia, after a fairly bitter dispute, turned up a redacted document based on Pfizer information given to all Governments looking at approving it. However they’ve tried to keep the information withheld.

Why, because basically we were lied to about the way the mRNA lippids spread around the body,

Have a look at,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xss9K7kwQ...

@lurker, All

re: Long COVID meets the Dark Forest

In the context of the Dark Forest Hypothesis, SARS-CoV-2 has successfully colonized Humans for the expansion of their species. They are clever to do it, even if they do not have brains the same way humans do.

Humans are highly successful, there are lots of us, we may have pockets of diminishing population but over all we are “billions upon billions”. Humans provide more than ample resources for their use and we provide fantastic opportunities for their improvement and enhancement to yet even better pathways for resource exploitation...

@JonKnowsNothing, @ALL

Genome databases and animal markets,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct36bj

LC is acknowledged to exist, but what it is and how to deal with it are still mysteries,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0f73drd

@Winter, All

re: the universe is immensely big

Size or volume are inconsequential for the outcomes of 3d Axiom.

Tell the ant, the weed and the deer that their matter is of no importance.

Immense size matters only to the determine the area boundary of the Dark Forest.

• One group must devour another group to complete the 2nd Axiom and 3d Axiom.

We may contemplate the universe as immense however, the Dark Forest exists on this planet, right now, every day, historically and currently...

@ Winter

Re: revolving doors in the vast forest

There is here, if you have a wormhole [1]. Then you can meet yourself going and coming through a revolving door. So it’s good to provide some Tipler safety cones. If you lack a wormhole, then there is here for some, and here is there for others. However, in all cases no matter where you go, there you are, and your future but not your past is so bright you have to wear shades. This is the true meaning of the Dark Forest...

@JonKnowsNothing

The total matter in the universe remains constant.

But the total matter in the universe is immensely big. There are some rather nice SF stories about (partial) Dyson speres.

See, eg, the Ringworld stories of Larry Niven
‘https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Ringworld

Bob Shaw Orbitsville and sequels.
‘https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitsville

@JonKnowsNothing

Look at non-humans on the planet and you won’t find a lot of trade.

Ehh, maybe you should update your biology. Things have been moving very fast the last decade(s).

Search for:
Wood wide web
‘https://www.science.org/content/article/wood-wide-web-underground-network-microbes-connects-trees-mapped-first-time

Mycorrhiza

Or more generally:
Facultative symbionts (which is the official terminology for “trade” in biology)...

@ Winter, ALL

re: Dark Forest Hypothesis & Trade

Trade is a human developed method of interaction. Look at non-humans on the planet and you won’t find a lot of trade. There are symbiotic and exploitive relationships but not trade as humans think of it.

• Ticks suck blood. Humans sell theirs.

It is the last axiom in the Dark Forest Hypothesis that takes a good amount of in-think to understand what it means...

@modem

The movie Ad Astra has it right, there isn’t any other intelligent life out there.

Is there here?

As someone who has lived outside of the box for most of my life and has also been censored numerous times for stating unpleasant facts, I am passionate about the topic of free speech and censorship. Unfortunately, free speech has been weaponized, and minority voices are often silenced in a group-think world.

If in any conversation, you are finding any enjoyment from being in the majority and winning the “argument” you might need to check yourself. After all, in extreme examples, it does kill people, and I’m sure most people reading this don’t want to be even partially responsible for killing anyone. Certainly there are many less serious, yet negative consequences of groupthink which are exacerbated by censorship...

Re: probability arguments for other intelligent life

The probability arguments assume the thing they “prove”.

The movie Ad Astra has it right, there isn’t any other intelligent life out there.

@JonKnowsNothing

Dark Forest Hypothesis

As Wikipedia formulated it:

In this framing, it is presumed that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life as an inevitable threat,[2] and thus destroy any nascent life that makes its presence known.

We do not have to go to outer space to see how this works. Many human societies were like this. Eg, Highland Papua villages and many other tribal societies had a ...

@Clive, JonKnowsNothing, All

“Well, why have we not seen/heard them?”

Life has existed on earth for 3B years, give or take. Of these 3B years, interplanetary communication in any form has existed for less than 200 years. That is, for less than 1:30,000,000 of the time life has existed.

Then, even now, been are unable to send messages to any star beyond our closest neighbors. And that is using EM radiation or rocket probed, which are pretty inefficiënt...

Fa l’modr. – (Be careful of what you do.)

Technology will always be an expression of its creators’ values, which includes their biases, prejudices and motivations — those that they’re aware of and not.

One issue is the lack of transparency in the decision-making process. It might be challenging to assign accountability — let alone blame — for the behaviours of AI as it develops and is integrated into society. This can make it difficult to understand why an AI system made a certain decision, and it can be difficult to identify and correct biases in the system...

re: TikTok, et al.

Perhaps the perceived risk is not just about surveillance but also – even mainly – about influence.

Facebook notoriously played roles in recent US elections and Brexit. Companies like Cambridge Analytica made a living from selling influence to political agents.

From relatively banal activities such as sending tailored news/propaganda to users (even at an individual level) through sub-liminal messaging to more sophisticated manipulation of group-think, there are many opportunities to screw up peoples’ thinking to the benefit of an adversary...

@Clive, @Winter, All

re: Where is everyone?

The Military is behind the times or someone just started reading stories like Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem series.

The trilogy is quite excellent as story. It deals directly with “where is everyone” and explores the Dark Forest Hypothesis . There are several variants of this hypotheses and they go by different names but contain the same conceptual problem...

@Carrington

STEVE was there.

https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=26&month=03&year=2023

@Clive Robinson, @Nick Levinson

Yes, the current Internet of current Things is a mess. Security vs. Cost? A truckload of devices could save a mint of money by not having the internet. I have yet to meet anyone who uses the internet on their fridge or TV. Sure they sell them at the local Walmart, but this is barely part of the First World.

Perhaps my question should have been
“How can the IoT be more secure?”...

@Clive Robinson:

I missed your 10:31p comment when I last posted.

Those (business competition for YouTube, Trump’s views of users, etc.) are secondary issues not likely to be enough to drive this push, or, for instance, we’d be seeing very little foreign business in the U.S. and section 230 would have been repealed (to push some big U.S. platforms up against the wall and gain their compliance)...

@modem phonemes

Learning a second (or third, or …) language early in life may prevent dementia later in life.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018883332/dr-owen-jones-memory-and-the-mind

@ soothsayer, ALL,

“Either the cops are clueless that they measure explosives in volts or this is just another one of these make up news items for a slow day.”

I’d go read it again…

As presented above,

“the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX.”

Is the journalist / editors words, not that of the “police official”. Who they then directly quote with,...

@modem phonemes, @vas pup, & @Clive Robinson:

@modem phonemes:

I addressed that in my second paragraph.

@vas pup:

There are good policy issues for and against civil forfeiture and when to induce criminal conduct by a private actor, but in the U.S. it’s likely lawful for law enforcement operating undercover to induce the sort of criminal conduct you know you shouldn’t do, as long as you are taking critical action in the unlawful conduct. If the undercover police or informant supplies bomb-making materials and you assemble them into a bomb and have the intent to make a bomb, you can’t be charged with supplying the materials but you can be charged with making the bomb, even if the bomb is really nonfunctional (like if the explosive was fake but labeled as an explosive), if making the bomb was itself unlawful. That’s not entrapment. It becomes entrapment if the police person is known by the bomb-maker as a police person or, for an informant or agent provocateur, as carrying out a police order and if the bomb-maker had that knowledge at the time they were induced to make the bomb, not merely at the arrest...

Nick Levinson, ALL,

Re : It’s political in brown envelopes.

“TikTok may have a more specific security threat, probably being kept secret by national governments. I’m only guessing that, but I am because the news reports I come across (without deep digging) don’t seem to have compelling reasons for a major government ban.”

And it’s the wrong guess.

It has to do with politics, user age range, Silicon Valley Corps lobbying...

@ lurker, ALL,

“How secure can the IoT be?”

It depends on what you mean by “secure”, but in the general cases “not very” is the answer, regardless of the operating system.

The reason as always,

“Security -v- Efficiency”.

Or more correctly “Security -v- Cost”

IoT is a very low margin product area. Marketing thus Managment unless forced by legislation or regulation will see security as an expense without value, even if the OS is Open Source. Put simply from M&M’s petspective,...

@ Nick Levinson

TikTok may have a more specific security threat

What about just massive statistically useful data on the psychology and sociology of the users, in particular Americans ?

5V-Charge! That’s a novelty in itself, and reporters first name Lenin- can’t make this stuff up.
Either the cops are clueless that they measure explosives in volts or this is just another one of these make up news items for a slow day.

@ Clive Robinson

first language and thought

​„Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen“

Many experience this; learning a second language can greatly help understand one’s own first language. Perhaps those language networks are all limited and additional languages fill out the gaps.

Also different languages seem to facilitate appreciation of and emphasize different aspects of reality. Some languages seem to help one grasp reality more fully than others do. E..g. Greek facilitates precise and economical tracking of the full relations between things in a way other languages don’t without extensive circumlocution...

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL

Re : Sun craps on us sight unseen.

Whilst the CME hit us to some unexpectedly, the actual CME was expected amongst a cluster of other holes in the Sun that the current solar uptic is giving us.

The reason it was “not predicted” is like all weather it has a spread of probabilities, and the speed of the movment of the matter spewed out was on shall we say outside the normal range. If things had been slower they would have consequently arived more behind us or missed us altogether…...

Nvidia builds quantum-classical computing system with Israel’s Quantum Machines
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nvidia-builds-quantum-classical-computing-system-with-israels-quantum-machines/

“US gaming and computer graphics giant Nvidia has joined forces with an Israeli startup to roll out a new hardware system to connect the quantum computer with classical computers.

The new system, Nvidia DGX Quantum, built together with Israel’s Quantum Machines, a developer of a standard universal language for quantum computers, is expected to be first deployed at Israel’s quantum computing research center at the end of this year...

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter,

A little “lite” reading on first language and thought,

https://www.livescience.com/your-native-language-may-shape-the-wiring-of-your-brain

To some it’s not at all a new idea, but conservative, religious, or other, “don’t rock my boat” “break my rice bowl” etc etc types want to throw bricks etc. Something it should be noted that stopped the theory of evolution being published for decades...

With all the news about data gathering(tik tok mainly) lately I have a question. (Forgive me if this isn’t the right place to ask.)
Data brokers will sell you data about anyone including location data. Or groups of people. (See last week tonight data broker piece) My question is What is the timeliness of the data? I mean can you buy real time data? Like who’s in a specific Wal-Mart right now? Or how delayed is the data? Seconds, minutes, hours or days?...

Car Seizures Are a Lucrative and Punishing Police Tactic
https://news.yahoo.com/memphis-car-seizures-lucrative-punishing-123717380.html

Please read the article and see what is police entrapment tactics is in US. That is absolutely wrong.

If woman (I guess part of stinky police sting operation) was NOT flagging poor guy, I am with police. Otherwise it is considered entrapment – initiative should be ONLY on suspect – never on police provocateur. Police should fight crime not make incentive to commit them...

@Bruce:

It’s been spied in airports.

Better than being spied on in airports.

I hope it gets the frequent flyer miles and uses them to go somewhere nice on vacation.

@Winter, @ResearcherZero, All

re: It seems to me that Americans see “the commons” as Communism and, therefore, feel obliged by religious ordnance to destroy it.

The current neoliberal-libertarian economic model in the USA pushes the concept that there should be No Public Ownership of Anything (except the military).

All public lands, parks, recreation areas, natural reserves, trees, rivers, plants and animals in them should be Privately Owned...

TikTok may have a more specific security threat, probably being kept secret by national governments. I’m only guessing that, but I am because the news reports I come across (without deep digging) don’t seem to have compelling reasons for a major government ban.

Collecting data on 100 million Americans (or whatever large number it is) could be useful for a conflict between the two nations, but I understand the Chinese have already demonstrated their ability and willingness to crack into security of systems they don’t own, so selling TikTok needn’t make much of a difference, the main difference perhaps being exfiltrating data in real time or from time to time, but that likely doesn’t much matter...

How secure can the IoT be? Boyd Multerer left Microsoft to build his own secure OS for mission critical devices on the ‘net

‘https://nzentrepreneur.co.nz/kry10-is-building-a-new-computer-operating-system-to-power-the-internet-of-things/

@modem phonemes: Correcting my last post by fixing my intended link: The tech is official for HTML.

@modem phonemes:

Whether crowd-sourcing is reliable: Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no. But my point was that AI can or will soon be able to use Google’s crowd-sourcing as one of several quality indicators, and the drafting of legislative proposals would be one use case for this use.

I developed a technology for recognizing expertise according to experts and elevating pages having it, and it’s official for HTML...

@ Clive

Partial Carrington Event

I did not observe it myself because I was asleep and it was pouring rain.

‘https://www.livescience.com/most-powerful-solar-storm-in-6-years-caused-auroras-all-over-the-us-and-nobody-saw-it-coming

@ResearcherZero

We are releasing the well-poisoning machine, because if we don’t do it first, someone else with even worse morals might do it faster.

Yep, simple “tragedy of the Commons”.

It seems to me that Americans see “the commons” as Communism and, therefore, feel obliged by religious ordnance to destroy it.

When the rapture is there, or Jesus’ second coming, the true believer is convinced that he will get punished for every tree still standing and every well left unpoisoned...

All their pals – lawyers in the Legislative Council Office, Department of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid. They appointed private lawyers as public defenders. They drafted and amended the laws, and ran the courts.

Power Unchecked

“The state government responded to the lobbying controversy by establishing a register of lobbyists. It explicitly excluded Burke and Grill from the register.”
‘https://www.businessnews.com.au/article/Last-hurrah-for-Brian-Burke...

Many OLC opinions never see the light of day —

“The OLC is an institution whose power is far greater than its prominence: Average Americans might not know the office exists, much less that its body of legal interpretation undergirds all manner of executive policy, much less what that body of interpretation says.”
‘https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/03/office-legal-counsel-transparency/...

“Since the private key also ships with every installation of CloudPanel, and CloudPanel is freely available to anyone who cares to download it…”
‘https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2023/03/21/cve-2023-0391-mgt-commerce-cloudpanel-shared-certificate-vulnerability-and-weak-installation-procedures/

–

With the default settings of the Veeam Backup & Replication server, no logs related to this attack are left behind. However, by default, logging is not configured to include API calls. Without manually changing the log level, entries related to the attack technique will not be shown...

The lures are designed to socially engineer the recipient to download and open an attached RAR file that contains either a Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) or Excel payload.
‘https://www.intezer.com/blog/research/phishing-campaign-targets-nuclear-energy-industry/

“We are releasing the well-poisoning machine, because if we don’t do it first, someone else with even worse morals might do it faster.”

“By being the first people to poison the well, we can know exactly what kind of toxins will be in the water such that we understand the symptoms when we inevitably make the whole village sick from it.”

“Of course this has prompted our competitors to fire their ethics people and also poison the well even faster, but such is the inevitable march of progress!”...

@ vas pup

Re: big numbers, infinity

Those interested in the BBC article might also be interested in the late Professor of Mathematics Edward Nelson’s papers [1] on these topics

A couple of links:

“It is widely believed that there is a clear and correct theory of actual infinity in mathematics. Certainly if there is not, then there cannot be a clear and correct use of actual infinity in cosmology or any other branch of science. I want to examine that belief. Let’s turn to the concept of actual infinity in mathematics.”...

@modem phonemes

That topsoil is now moving the coast of China towards California at a rate I have observed in some places as 3 kilometres per century.

@SoWhatIf that’s already implemented in the ‘Rubber Ducky’, which is a commodity product.

On the other hand- if you’re not careful- maybe the keyboard/mouse payload you program in leaves some obvious traces.. at its simplest, let’s say you program in something that’ll type
WIN+R
powershell
LEFT ARROW
ENTER
PAYLOAD
ENTER
ALT-F4

The aftereffects of that might look a bit odd if it runs at a login screen, instead of on a logged in PC, no? Let alone if CMD and POWERSHELL are blocked from launch by regular users...

Maybe the oligarch who runs Equavisa should stop supporting Ecuador’s Pinochet, Guillermo Lasso? The people that filthy neoliberal impoverished tend to be quite angry about it.

I just finished “A Hacker’s Mind” on audiobook. Bravo. This book is a masterpiece. The first half of the book in particular is tightly written and loaded with insights. I hope it provokes a lot of thoughtful discussions.

It’s the same company that owns Cobalt Strike. Formerly Help Systems. They changed their name after Cobalt Strike repeatedly involved in ransomware attacks.

They call themselves a cybersecurity company.

They purchased 3 dozen companies in the last few years. Likely they have customers everywhere as a result. But most interesting is they recently purchased another red team tool company.

https://www.itjungle.com/2022/10/05/helpsystems-goes-on-the-security-offensive-again/...

@ SoWhatIf…,

“What takes a shoebox today used to take a suitcase, and tomorrow will take a matchbox.”

Whilst tech used to get smaller at a significant rate, other things don’t.

The amount of “bang you get for your buck” or more precisely your mix of chemicals does not increase very much.

Worse even though we do know of chemicals that will release more energy, that does not of necessity result in more bang/blast (thermite for instance). Also those that do release more energy tend to be a lot less stable to the point just sun shine falling on some will cause them to go pop or worse…...

The numbers that are too big to imagine
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230320-the-numbers-that-are-too-big-to-imagine

Phishing: Who Takes the Bait?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/misinformation-desk/202303/phishing-who-takes-the-bait

” Research suggests that people are more likely to fall for phishing scams if they tend to make decisions impulsively rather than after reflection...

Tech always improves. What takes a shoebox today used to take a suitcase, and tomorrow will take a matchbox.

What stops somebody from putting a USB-hub inside a USB-drive? And also a normal USB drive, hooked up so it all looks clean & right when you plug it in? And also a microcontroller emulated keyboard & mouse, that will power up after a time delay so nobody notices?

Looks just like a regular USB drive, both physically and on your computer. Only now somebody can do anything on your computer that you can do, including type in a computer program and run it...

“On Thursday, OpenAI announced a plugin system for its ChatGPT AI assistant. The plugins give ChatGPT the ability to interact with the wider world through the Internet, including booking flights, ordering groceries, browsing the web, and more. Plugins are bits of code that tell ChatGPT how to use an external resource on the Internet.”

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/chatgpt-gets-eyes-and-ears-with-plugins-that-can-interface-ai-with-the-world/...

@ALT

In fact you need low-tech and burner devices (plural is not an error).

Attacks could come from the USB high-level protocol (and physical too if firmware is backdoored at this level!) targeting firmware and OS, and encapsulated protocols (say keyboard for example) targeting their support on the OS (or a backdoor on USB firmware), so this is at least one step, and a burner device.

Then with full data contained on the USB Key (all blocks), you might still have a Boot-record MBR/GPT/etc. attack, an UFI/UEFI attack, a filesystem attack...

Having recently been experimenting with Stable Diffusion, I noticed a lot of code has not been well vetted for malware. Use caution and scan all downloads before opening or using them. With a lot of code being shared amongst users, this is a malware outbreak just waiting to happen. Also you check the metadata before sharing art to make sure you are not revealing anything you don’t want to share...

@iAPX

Yes, firmware is a problem – I should have written “would not be too dumb”.

So, maybe it’s harder to make an exploding CD/DVD?

@ Winter, @Umm, @MarkH, All

re: Exchanges of DNA v Exchanges of Petro-Chemicals

Exchanges of DNA happen, variegation of leaves can be due to viral inserted genes.

Exchanges of Petro-Chemicals Chained Compounds are not common unless human introduced.

I agree not much new about the topic.

@Leonid

You put too much trust into OS level security and behaviours, USB controller firmware security, and generally modern computing platforms security.

And also the inability of your attacker to not have insider informations, for example for the exact model of USB keyboard that is available at your job (for example).

In fact if Stuxnet was so efficient, and was also detected on other devices that those targeted, it’s because people were putting trust in the wrong place...

@Kent Brockman: “Putting a strange pen drive in one’s computer is rather a dumb move even if you’re not worried about being blown to hell. Aquiring a virus or trojan payload is a good possibility.”

This is complete nonsense, because a virus/trojan is a program that needs to be executed to do harm. So… don’t execute anything from untrusted media (and don’t use OS that does so automatically)...

@Kent Brockman
Journalists may need to do this with confidential sources, and the computer might have been air gapped with no writable storage – would not be too dumb.

@JonKnowsNothing

GMO modified varieties in Group 3 are different, in that they take genes from completely separate species, from separate genetic groups, from unrelated phyla and inject them into the gene sequence of another group.

That is quite common in nature. Viruses move genes from any creature to any other creature. Bacteria can change the DNA of plants (eg, Rhizobium radiobacter) for their own benefit. Bacteria and viruses are very prolific exchangers of genetic information. Horizontal gene transfer between species is also found in animals, including humans...

This application is routinely located in the DMZ. A zero day flaw reportedly was exploited to enable unauthorized access. Like with user VPN concentrators and web apps and APIs in general, software on the public internet that act as a gateway to data or the network will be targeted. My understanding is that both client deployed and the vendor hosted services were (are, if still not patched) vulnerable...

@ Winter, @Umm, @MarkH, All

re:

Nothing we have done yet has not been done in nature already for a billion years. Every method of DNA manipulation in use has been copied from bacteria, viruses, or some other organism. We are just as likely to produce unwanted side effects with the old ways as with the new ways.

There is a significant difference in Group 3 modified varieties (see above).

In nature, virus and bacteria attack and colonize plants and animals...

@ JonKnowsNothing

Under only inches of dirt is the stuff that doesn’t grow anything.

Alas, China in the old days of old methods had 6 feet of topsoil.

This is going to lead to not being able to carry thumb drives on airplanes, isn’t it? Or maybe we’ll have to separate thumb drives out in clear plastic bags, and no single drive over 3.5 GB will be allowed…

Putting a strange pen drive in one’s computer is rather a dumb move even if you’re not worried about being blown to hell. Aquiring a virus or trojan payload is a good possibility.

@ Winter, @Umm, @MarkH, All

re:
1) Natural Soylent Green Stuffs
and
2) We cannot feed the world with just wild plants, we need to change the plants.

1) re: Natural Soylent Green Stuffs

There is not much on this planet that hasn’t been here for a long time. We might rearrange some aspects but it’s been here since Dirt Was Invented.

You are eating the residues of dead things: it’s called Compost. You are drinking the residues of Cleopatra’s Bath Water too. You are eating the residues of animals of all types, as these have formed a good deal of what we call “dirt” and the components of dirt...

@ Winter @ JonKnowsNothing @ MarkH

Re: Shakespeare’s Tempest

The method we use to change the plants is immaterial. Nothing we have done yet has not been done in nature already for a billion years

The holders if those GMO patents will be dismayed to hear this. 😉

Nature has it’s own way of introducing modifications, via reproduction. It seems hubristic to expect direct ad hoc gene engineering/surgery/tinkering is a route to sound modification, especially if very new, little understood, and primarily motivated by profit (i.e. immediate utility) accompanied by utopian blandishments...

In other news:

UK crypto companies call for help to break a banking barrier

“I’m selling the UK as a place to set up shop, but if you can’t get banking support, what’s the point?”

Interesting how the technology that was supposed to replace banks is so dependent on them.

Also note that the cell phone for 1M$ was in 1996…

@Mack
From the article:

A Hamas informant who reportedly received $1 million and refuge in the United States
helped the Shin Bet smuggle Ayyash’s phone out of and back into Gaza so it could be
turned into a bomb.

So it should only be a concern to you if your death is worth $1 million to someone.

@RealFakeNews

The question I’d ask is: was it written for this purpose?

Or an inside job at that company, anyway. From the looks of it.

@Bruce
Reminds me of assassination by cell phone.

Now that is interesting. Can cell phones normally be made to explode remotely or was that some weird “government replaced” version? Should this be a concern for “regular” people?

In the port city of Guayaquil, journalist Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa private TV station received an envelope containing a pen drive which exploded when he inserted it into a computer, his employer said.

86 journalists were killed in 2022. Remember that people rarely get murdered for lying. When people get killed, it is for speaking the truth.

‘https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132507...

It’s not like they have the only LLM chatbot. Run your own, mind the airgaps?

@Umm, @JonKnowsNothing, @MarkH

You obviously favour go Soylent Green for the Plebeians, whilst the Patricians eat strawberries?

You prefer eating humans over vegetables? I think I misunderstand your point.

Any discussion about agriculture posits it against “Natural Food”:

• Even now between 1-2% of people have issues with mankinds GMO grains…
• Grapefruit regardless of it’s GMO / NonGMO state is contraindicated with some medications...

@ MarkH,

“By all means, go Paleolithic if it makes you happy!”

You obviously favour go Soylent Green for the Plebeians, whilst the Patricians eat strawberries?

How 2022 Republic of you.

@vas pup, @1&1 Ummm, MarkH, Winter, All

re: Farmers with no tractors

A small clarification on the topic of Genetically Altered Foods.

These can be classified into 3 categories:

• Group 1: Traditional Plant and Animal Breeding. This is the stuff of Mendelian Ratios. (1)
• Groups 2 & 3 Do not use Traditional Plant and Animal Breeding

** Group 2) Using a gene editing technique that splices Like To Like genes. Tomato gene A & Tomato gene B...

@1&1 Ummm

Even now between 1-2% of people have issues with mankinds GMO grains…

99.9% of them would not have lived without GMO foodstuff. Nor any of the commenters here. Without agricultur, the earth can only feed a few million people.

Indeed, as @MarkH writes, perspective counts.

@Moderator:

1, Cable Guy

Is some kind of apparent nonsense, unrelated to the blog or thread.

@Umm:

Perspective much?

It seems certain that strategic development of food crops has been a crucial enabler of civilization … given the doubling of life expectancy, how should we weigh the “ill effects” of such genetic tampering?

Some think civilization pernicious, of course, so the wisdom of ancient farmers is anathema to them.

Jared Diamond started his intellectual quest when a friend in New Guinea asked him why white people had so much more material wealth … Diamond realized that inhabitants of that island need most of a day’s personal energy to gather a day’s worth of food...

“The United States Drug Enforcement Agency last year used an AirTag to track illegal drug making paraphernalia … A retired detective that spoke to Forbes speculated that the DEA may have used an AirTag because it offers more reliable connectivity than other devices, or because of past failures of the GPS devices available to police.”

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/23/airtag-used-in-narcotics-bust/...

Forget that a “US Citizen” was spied on for a moment (while physically outside the US).

What is she up to that made her a target? Doesn’t seem a very random target, considering Fakebook was involved with mass censorship of discussions regarding “that” virus.

Fakebook/Meta should be considered a major security threat to all people/countries/Governments worldwide.

Greece is also a zombie state within Europe, having had its Government forcibly removed by the EUSSR back in 2010 or so after it refused to destroy its own economy to “save” the Euro...

Wait…so self-hosted instances that should be operating behind firewalls/authentication systems, were just “compromised” en-mass?

Self-hosted instances “phoning home”/backdoored?

The question I’d ask is: was it written for this purpose?

@ vas pup,

“Scientist insist…”

“… that GM crops have been consumed by billions of consumers in North and South America and Asia for more than 25 years with no ill-effects.”

Well mankinds first GMO’s are grains for more than 4,000 years with loads of ill-effects

Even now between 1-2% of people have issues with mankinds GMO grains…

So I’d treat the insistant scientists with a healthy dose of skepticism, at the very least...

What is gene-edited food and is it safe to eat?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64559210

“Scientists insist that each of the three genetic techniques produces food that is safe to eat, and point out that all food is rigorously tested.

They argue that GM crops have been consumed by billions of consumers in North and South America and Asia for more than 25 years with no ill-effects.

@Bruce said “The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology.”

I agree with @Matthai. US created precedent spying on allies top officials. As usually, it should come back sooner or later as boomerang always did.

The sad thing is, it seems like they could’ve made this attack a lot harder to pull off just by having the Airtags send an Apple-signed certificate instead of a bare public key. Somebody would then need to have access to a significant number of Airtags in order to perform this key-rotation technique, which isn’t impossible but does significantly raise the cost barrier.

One known target is Hitachi,

https://www.techradar.com/news/hitachi-energy-confirms-data-breach-after-being-hit-by-clop-ransomware

Both their Bank and energy sub corporates.

“GoAnywhere, a system that can be hosted in the cloud or on an organization’s network that allows companies to securely transfer huge sets of data and other large files”

Apparently not so “securely”. 😉

@ Winter

people have learned to dismiss random strangers

As you say, we have developed some sense of what’s probably OK and how far to trust. Up to the current point this has been based on the assumption the originator is human.

This seems to need great revison now that the source can be a statistics based computation. There is no socially derived truthiness estimate to work with.

@ Nick Levinson

Google relies on trust crowd-sourced from other websites, and the crowd provides one rudimentary measure of factuality. …

Is this putting too much reliance on popularity (the Google rank) as a proxy for truth/trustworthiness, for the situation being discussed here ?

Remarks on “Chat Control”
Matthew Green
‘https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2023/03/23/remarks-on-chat-control/

I’m here today to answer any questions about encryption in online communication systems. But mainly I’m here because the EU Commission has put forward a proposal that has me very concerned. This proposal, which is popularly called “chat control”, would mandate content scanning technology be added private messaging applications. This proposal has not been properly analyzed at a technical level, and I’m very worried that the EU might turn it into dangerous law...

@Clive, All

re: Historical Trade Zone Experiment (1)

A narrative article-excerpt from an upcoming book about the development of and historical use of Trade Zones, as promoted by libertarian think tanks and economists, has interesting insights as to the current state of Global Economic Zones and their inherent problems.

The article describes how in the 1970s in Apartheid South Africa, a cut out zone called Ciskei was the forerunner to projects like Canary Wharf under Thatcher and other Trade Zones; where the laws inside the zone differ from the laws outside the zone...