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@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Destination: Amarillo, How to get there: unconfirmed.
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Gerard
@GerardThornley@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3Software engineering professional, available for software architecture and engineering management work, with particular interests in embedded systems & physical products, and team structures & modern development methods.
36 Followers
157 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 18, 2022
Location:
UK
Is human?:
Yes
Replying to
@cR0w@infosec.exchange Oh, no! What will we do when AI is sold to "terrorists cults and fanatical religious fringe groups"‽
Replying to
@gimulnautti@mastodon.green @ramonfincken@mastodon.social @catsalad@infosec.exchange
All those AI webcrawlers are going to be in a bit of a pickle...
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@ollicle @evacide Yep. It's brilliant from a certain perspective. Horrifying, sinister, but with a certain genius.
The tech firms get to say "Oh, no, the horrible government is making us do this. Oh well. Now give us your identity documents."
The governments get to give the appearance of responding to (genuinely) grieving parents, and say "we're protecting the children" which is game over for any alternative voice. All the while receiving funding (directly or indirectly) from the tech firms that created the problem or the supposed solution, or their fellow travellers.
And parents get to believe their children's safety is taken care of.
Replying to
@pH_0x05@infosec.exchange @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social
I was once told how hotel cleaning staff "efficiently" clean a room, including any non-disposable cups or glasses that may be provided.
Let's just say if you want to drink from a glass, it's probably best to bring your own. At least tea or coffee made with boiling water should kill most things.
I should say, I _hope_ that the method described doesn't apply to _every_ hotel. But if it does - please don't tell me !!
And never ever take a UV light into a hotel room!
Replying to
@reay@beige.party @BrianJopek@mastodon.world They'll double down, come up with some story like "you've shown that the world is worthy so it's been given a stay of execution" and it'll strengthen rather than weaken their delusion, exactly the same as you see apocalyptic cults.
I should say I'm saying this as someone with a faith of my own. I think this is a distinguishing sign between honest religious belief and a dangerous cult: one is willing to live with doubt and question everything, the other is afraid of ever giving any impression of doubt or uncertainty, so always has to go further in the face of contrary evidence.
I don't think anyone unafraid to acknowledge they might be wrong would come out with that speech. These people are fanatics, but sadly, they get seen as representative and thus give all religion a bad name.
Replying to
@jupiter didn't realise there's a sudoers, but I did once see this fragment of my passwd file:
brain:x:65534:65534:Brain (best ignored):/:/sbin/nologin
Replying to
@mayintoronto@beige.party @RuthMalan@mastodon.social Yeah, a place I worked at had feature requests that sat on the backlog for years.
The backlog tool was an internally developed system and I spent one hackathon seeing what lessons I could learn from all our historic data. Especially interesting was a graph I made: I drew one line for each major feature request. The x axis was calendar dates, the y axis was our ETA for that feature as calculated on each date - that is, how long it would take to complete, including the time to complete all the higher priority features before it.
The interesting result this graph demonstrated was that once the ETA for a feature was more than about 2 years in the future, it usually became longer rather than shorter as time went on. There was a kind of event horizon visible in the graph, beyond which planning was meaningless.
The honest and courageous thing to do would have been to remove everything beyond 2 years in the future from the road map. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess whether that was what we actually did...
(Incidentally, I believe the 2 year threshold was specific to that product and sector, and may be at the longer end of the curve. I would anticipate that this planning horizon would change according to things like the regulatory system, the type of customers, the rate of change in the market, and so on.)
Replying to
@RupertReynolds @pheonix This too. Years ago I would tell smaller orgs if I started getting stuff on an address only they had, but it was dissappointingly ineffective. I never got a "that's concerning, we'll look into it" response, always "it can't have come from us, it must be you." In most cases I think they were honest and it was a bad actor on staff or an outside intruder - most likely poor data handling and a single hacked device.
These days, it's:
- Small-to-medium-sized orgs ignoring your "don't spam me" flag. I can't forgive this - there's no excuse for internal mailing services "accidentally" forgetting to filter mailing lists, nor for marketing folk to have direct access to PII.
- Mostly larger orgs that have been hacked with data released or sold publically. That's a persistent risk so I'll sometimes accept this, depending how they handle it.
Unfortunately, the personal address I give to friends and family is longstanding and gets spread to a lot of personal devices, and I don't like to filter it, so I end up getting a load of spam on that one.
Replying to
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange
Hey parents, your kids are in danger! But don't worry about it. We'll take care of it for you.
All we need to do is just check their ages. It'll be just like getting ID'd in a shop. You remember that don't you? Nothing to worry about.
[quietly]
We'll just take a photo of your children and their ID, put them in a database, track their every movement, record who their friends are, what they think, their every hope, dream and aspiration.
[back to normal volume]
So don't you worry, your children are safe with us and our billionaire backers, whoops, I mean with us, just us. We'll take care of everything. You can get back to feeding your own dopamine addictions, we'll claim your children are safer now, and big tech will have their giant, totally not sinister databases of real world identities that surely aren't going to come back to bite us later. Anyway that'll be for a different government to deal with.
Replying to
@alexanderdyas @djstreethawk @hypolite @mullvadnet
This is true. It's made me wonder if the obstructionism shown by Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister was actually a feature, not a bug.
Replying to
@SuperSelena64@vmst.io @nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt I've a feeling this will feel familiar to you. 🙂
Replying to
@rygorous yeah, it's ridiculous suggesting it's parmiggiano reggiano. It's obviously a really well aged cheddar.
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Personally, I like the BBC serialisations of the George Smiley books. And fans of the Bond age will probably also appreciate the Blau Diamant scenes from the third episode of Smiley's People.
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social recommend checking it over with luminol.
Replying to
@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems not a paper *deliberately* about genetic algorithms, then?
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Replying to
@gme @briankrebs Correction: it looks like I was mistaken. I'm sure I have seen a video of a kinetic interceptor, but it looks like most of Ukraine current interceptors are explosive ... so, single use. 😏
They are an order of magnitude cheaper than the shaheds, though.
Replying to
@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io I'm glad I saw this post. I wasn't aware of #HypeBot but had been seeing posts in my timeline that I couldn't explain. Now I understand. So Thanks.
Replying to
@oldguycrusty@mastodon.world @mls14@social.vivaldi.net @ArmyGirl@mastodon.world @BrianJopek@mastodon.world I remember that being used as a punchline in a satirical sketch about Tony Blair "singing from the same hymn sheet" as George W Bush while they were attempting to make their case during the run up to the invasion of Iraq.
Back then, Blair was seen as being dragged into it by Bush, and didn't want there to be any perception of it being a 'religious war'. It's scary but unsurprising that they're willing to use that language now, although I doubt that the motivation really is that for everyone involved.
(There might not be much in it, but do I wonder about the sequencing of Venezuelan oil tanker captures not long before a SMO pushes oil prices way up.)
Replying to
@alexanderdyas @djstreethawk @hypolite @mullvadnet
I would agree re HoL. I wouldn't want to see it become more politicised.
It probably would be a good thing if their was some jury-style representation, but I can't imagine how it could work practically.
Also, I recently heard Gove talk on this topic about the benefit of having professional politicians. I didn't really agree the point I thought he was making, but I do think there's a problem that practiced politicians are likely to be more effective than 'normal people' at pushing forward their agenda.
Replying to
@benroyce@mastodon.social @medieval_illuminations@mastodon.social if only... oh, sorry, you mean on the duck's neck?😏
Replying to
@alexanderdyas @djstreethawk @hypolite @mullvadnet
"... a non-partisan, expert organisation ...."
you mean... exactly what the civil service is supposed to be?
I've seen some other problematic law recently, and it got me to wondering if the problem might be that the civil service has been hollowed out through years of excessive cuts, and has simply lost the people with experience and expertise to properly advise governments.
There may also be an issue of governments bringing their own people in, either because they don't trust the civil service, or more concerningly, because of outside influence.
I fear it may be a combination of all the above.
@catsalad ... and I wouldn't get your hopes up, looking at those expressions.
Replying to
@jaz@toot.wales @citadel9@cyberplace.social I wonder if they could be persuaded to buy the app?
@campuscodi@mastodon.social Joke's on them. I'm still using 56kbps dialup.
Now, hasn't that paper finished downloading yet?
"You've been doing wrong!"
And then the video demonstrates a really dumb way of doing that's only barely better than the most ignorant way possible. 🤦♂️
Replying to
@mattblaze I guess that's much the same as NM. I was north of Albuquerque a few years ago and witnessed (to me) quite an impressive storm pass over the city. I got a few reasonable handheld shots, though I don't have them to hand to share.
The next morning we saw how much damage had been done - the ground, softened by heavy rain, had given up many of the city's trees in the face of unusually strong winds.
Replying to
@infobeautiful@vis.social Whenever I come across the A303, I always think of the film 'Wag the Dog,' so let me take this moment to say: if you've not seen it, it's a brilliant and darkly funny film and you should watch whenever you next have the chance.
Replying to
@codinghorror @pheonix until a few months later when they decide to add you back on one of their mailing lists.
Replying to
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space The house I'm living in had a serious mouse or rat infestation some time before I moved in. I find old droppings all over - in the loft, under floors, inside the walls. (It makes me very careful where I put my hands when I'm working on the place.)
I have a little UV light that runs on button cells but it only reveals stuff at very close range. I really should get myself a good bright flashlight and check out the whole crime scene in technicolour.
Replying to
@reallylazybear@mastodon.social @catsalad@infosec.exchange aye. I heard something recently pointing out that the current shift rightwards in Western politics was really predictable - a combination of the bulge in the demographic as the boomer generation pass through their retirement years, coupled with the long-observed tendency of people to become more conservative as they get older.
I also heard that we're passing the peak in that bulge at the moment, so as long as no idiots cause another huge generational ripple in the demographics, things might start to get a bit more balanced again.
Replying to on tldr.nettime.org
@tante@tldr.nettime.org Yeah, if anything it'll do the opposite. Lowering entry costs will drive people out of the market, so that the only ones who can afford to get stuff actually made by a human are the ones who have acquired sufficient money / power to afford it.
E.g. Once upon a time, every chair or table would have been hand-made. Where does hand-made furniture sit in the market, now?
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Yeah... I haven't read it in detail, but the bits I saw left me with the impression that more than one of the adults involved were rather put to shame by the actions of primary-age girls who never should have had to find that level of courage in the first place.
The scale of the harm is appalling.
Replying to
@reallylazybear@mastodon.social @catsalad@infosec.exchange yeah, sticks and stones can only break our bones. Unfortunately, they have something much, much more dangerous — words.
Replying to
@tubetime@mastodon.social @Amorpheus@kind.social @serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place @catsalad@infosec.exchange 🙂 yeah, I was kidding! I know we aren't going to knock up a PCB-based, GHz-speed, super-scalar, super-pipelined CPU in our sheds. (And the power consumption of you could! 🔥)
Now that I am thinking about it, though, I wonder what actually would be achievable for an enthusiastic amateur with means? For instance, would it be plausible for them to make an actual 6502 chip? At what point in the history of silicon manufacturing did cost and complexity make it utterly unachievable outside of the existing players in the industry?
Replying to
@ohir@social.vivaldi.net @stinerman@mastodon.social @malwaretech@infosec.exchange
Indeed, I don't think most people would want to live in a world with *unbreakable* anonymity - there are some people who really do need to be tracked down and prosecuted.
For instance, I wouldn't want child pornographers to be free to continue their activity with impunity.
Replying to
@ohir@social.vivaldi.net @stinerman@mastodon.social @malwaretech@infosec.exchange
That said, I also don't want to live under mass surveillance (by govs _or_ corps) and think LEAs shouldn't be able to break anonymity frivolously.
But for most people living in democratic systems, I think over-reach (which will always be a danger) needs to be addressed legally and politically, rather than technologically.
There are obviously variations between countries and over time in how much freedom there is to pursue such remedies. Because of that, some people do have a greater need to protect their identity. I think it's okay for that not to be easy. I'd also suggest that most people complaining about proton are probably not members of this category.
Replying to
@Amorpheus@kind.social @serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place @catsalad@infosec.exchange wait a minute... I bet you're just saying this to create a price spike in computer hardware, you must have shares in RAM or disks or something. Let me just take a look at what the market's doing ... THE PRICE IS WHAT, NOW‽‽‽ Never mind...
Replying to
@netopwibby@social.coop @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social I discovered a few years ago that under the right light, green eggs really are a thing. It's probably best to avoid the ones that do this though.