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Comment Re:Plasma and fusion science is pointless (Score 1) 56

The stable genius jr. has concluded that fusion technology is pointless anyway. Coal and oil are the future!

That's your tell that fusion has a promising future. Some people aren't like a stopped clock (broken but occasionally correct by sheer coincidence), so much as like a compass whose needle has been magnetized backwards and always points south (always precisely the opposite of correct, and therefore informative if you know to negate their indication).

Comment Big Yawn Here (Score 4, Interesting) 129

A vulnerability in an unsafe section of Rust is not surprising, and it was essentially inevitable that it would happen. That's the whole point of having safe vs unsafe modes.

There are still two really good reasons to use Rust widely:

  1. Safe sections are typically the majority of the code, and they avoid problems without requiring and agonizing level of developer scrutiny and testing.
  2. The requirement to mark unsafe sections makes it easier to identify problems and fix them. The maintainer probably knows exactly where to start looking for the problem when an issue is reported.

People acting like this is some kind of dunk on Rust are, quite frankly, embarrassing. Someone screwed up in the section flagged for "screwups are possible here". And then they fixed it.

Comment Re:Ah, microsoft... (Score 1) 63

The NSA offered suggestions during the development of DES that secured it against cryptanalysis attacks which were not known to the public. So, the US government helped at least once. They provided feedback to NIST during the selection process for AES algorithms too.

Decades later, that cryptanalysis method was discovered by people outside the NSA, and they put the pieces together. That's how we know about their contribution now.

We have no new information about their input into the selection of Rjindael for AES, and maybe we never will. The same applies for the selection of CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium for FIPS-203 and -204. In both cases, NIST solicits input, but the NSA provides minimal technical details.

However, the government is not a singular entity with a singular purpose. It's possible for Congress or other agencies to have goals that do not align with the NSA's mandate.

Comment Re:Ah, microsoft... (Score 1) 63

Well, it's not impossible to ask. You'll just hear a lot of "No".

Quite a few companies run expensive software or hardware past the vendor's listed end-of-life date. Not everyone, possibly not a majority--but enough to cause problems. Vendors try to discourage this as much as possible.

The vendor doesn't want to provide software/firmware support forever. Money isn't an argument. If you're willing to pay for support, they know you'll pay regardless of whether the product is old or new. So they choose to make more money. They want you to buy a new product, and they will never change as long as enough companies do it.

We could pass e-waste reduction laws that require software updates and parts availability for a number of years. That could have a pronounced knock-on effect on security modernization, but it doesn't seem likely. At least, not in the US.

Comment Re:Too late (Score 1) 65

I've used ChatGPT to write code and Gemini to debug it. If you pass the feedback back and forth, it takes a couple iterations but they'll eventually agree that it's all good and I find that's about 90-95% of the way to where I need it to be. Earlier today I took a 6kb script that had been used as something fast and dirty for years - written by someone long gone from the company - and completely revamped it into something much more powerful, robust, and polished in both its code and its output. Script grew to about 20kb, but it's 10x better and I only had to make minor tweaks. Between the two, they found all sorts of hidden bugs and problems with it.

Comment Re:Cord-cutting cord-cutter (Score 1) 55

Digital signage and other professional displays are unlikely to be infected by this consumer-class nonsense.

It might cost a little extra to get displays designed for signage or medical imaging, but there will always be something in that space.

And a Faraday should be unnecessary. Removing the modem or snipping the antenna should disable cellular comms.

Comment Re:Pretty sure the article is wrong (Score 1) 71

The concentration matters. It takes quite a bit of material to become chemically toxic, around half a gram.

If glacier melt is leeching it into the river system, it's extremely unlikely that anyone will absorb anywhere near that amount. The flow rate of large rivers is measured in thousands of cubic feet per second; that's a massive dilution of any single source of contamination.

The routine pollution--including both sewage and industrial waste--is almost certainly a much larger health risk.

The article is mostly fearmongering and science fluff. If India is unwilling to tackle the clear and present dangers of pollution in the Ganges, I don't see any justification to worry about a hypothetical threat.

Comment Unholy Financial Conflict of Interest (Score 4, Insightful) 53

So, to be clear, some of the managers will have:

  1. Ongoing employment with government contractors and service providers
  2. Financial ties to current and potential contract recipients
  3. Close personal ties to contractors relevant to their field of employment

In normal circumstances, they would be precluded from long-term strategic planning, the creation of RFPs, and the evaluation or selection processes of contracts.

Are these guard rails in place? Color me skeptical.

Comment Instant and Permanent Loss of Credibility (Score 5, Insightful) 35

I can accept a little bit of bias in the press because it's truly difficult to be completely neutral.

But when you take a technology that is known to hallucinate and publish content with it... you're a cheap entertainment/fiction slop shop. Even opinions are supposed to be based on facts, so any argument that "it's just podcasts" is absurd and wrong.

I don't know if anyone had much respect for the Washington Post lately, but it should be gone now. If they had tested it before going live, they would have known. But they didn't because they don't care about anything besides money.

Comment Re:Coming soon everywhere (Score 3, Insightful) 204

Maybe there is opportunity in this frigid lands.

But that opportunity can't be realized until they thaw a bit.

A refugee that is improverished and seeking a comfortable life simply won't have the resources to flourish in unfriendly territory. Of all the people who could preemptively seize these "great opportunities", immigrants are the least capable in the absence of structured support.

As always, the opportunities will be exploited when it is economically feasible to do so. Hoarding land today for speculative gains in the future isn't an option for immigrants. Your idea is 100% rich people shit.

Comment Re:Say 'me too' or perish (Score 1) 83

How, exactly, is it cheating?

If the legacy users abandon the X platform because they prefer the branding or "the vibes", then it was fundamentally a mistake on Musk's part to change those things. Recognizing what consumers really want... isn't that the ENTIRE POINT of capitalism?

People seem to be profoundly opposed to the changes that accompanied the rebranding from Twitter to X, but they seem to have trouble choosing a successor platform en masse. Perhaps reviving the Twitter marks will resolve the issue.

I don't use any of those platforms, so the outcome doesn't matter much to me. I am firmly in favor of liberating unused IP, regardless of whether it's copyrights, patents, or trademarks. If someone can use it, they should be able to.

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