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Comment Gross incompetency in IT security (Score 1) 24

Very few businesses that are involved in IT in any way have anything remotely close to decent security.

Basically, they need to reintroduce the US' Internet Czar, who should have meaningful authority and who should impose meaningful IT security standards. That small companies can't afford to hire security staff is irrelevant as they mostly either work in the cloud using SAAS, at which point their provider should be handling all the security. If you want to roll your own, then you should accept the burden of paying for adequate security. Minimum standards apply to just about everything else in life, and I'd rate getting IT security right just a little bit more important than getting cars to not roll over (you can usually survive a roll) or preventing toasters from spontaneously combusting (you can park electrical appliances away from flammable stuff).

You can avoid catastrophes with defective appliances but you can't avoid catastrophes with defective IT systems.

Submission + - Jury verdict of $23.2 million for wrongful death based on Gmail server evidence (andrewwatters.com)

wattersa writes: In 2022, I wrote here about a complex missing person case, which was partially solved by a Google subpoena that showed the suspect was logged into the victim's Gmail account and sent a fake "proof of life" email from her account at the hotel where he was staying alone after killing her.

The case finally went to trial in July 2025, where I testified about the investigation along with an expert witness on computer networking. The jury took three hours to returned a verdict against the victim's husband for wrongful death in the amount of $23.2 million, with a special finding that he caused the death of his wife. The defendant is a successful mechanical engineer at an energy company, but is walking as a free man because he is Canadian and no one can prosecute him in the U.S., since Taiwan and the U.S. don't have extradition with each other. It was an interesting case and I look forward to using it as a model in other missing person cases.

Comment That's the way it works (Score 2) 147

If it wasn't this particular set of twelve accounts, the "disinformation dozen" would have been some other set of 12. People were sharing what they wanted to share, and that is what made those accounts popular. It was content people wanted to hear and wanted to share. Once any of those accounts reached some critical mass the viral snowball affect kicked in and they got more and more exposure, so that particular group was the ones churning out the content. That's the way social media works, due to a combination of algorithms and basic human nature.

Comment Re: effective? (Score 4, Insightful) 130

The COVID mRNA vaccines were the culmination of decades of research into genetic vaccines that could be in essence engineered to target a selected antigen without the years of trial and error that are required by the methods we have been using since the 1950s. Within days of the virus genome being published, they had a vaccine design, the months it took to get to the public were taken up with studies of the safety and effectiveness of the heretofore untested technology, ramping up production, and preparing for the distribution of a medicine that required cryogenic storage.

It would be unreasonable not to give the Trump administration credit for not mucking up this process. But the unprecedented speed of development wasnâ(TM)t due to Trump employing some kind of magical Fuhrermojo. It was a stroke good fortune that when the global pandemic epidemiologists have been worried about arrived, mRNA technology was just at the point where you could use it. Had it arrived a decade earlier the consequences would have been far worse, no matter who was president.

The lesson isnâ(TM)t that Trump is some kind of divine figure who willed a vaccine into existence, itâ(TM)s that basic research that is decades from practical application is important.

Comment Fully autonomous (Score 4, Insightful) 262

Just wait until these little bastards have on-board AI that visually identifies targets and kills them autonomously. That is the next step. The jamming of radio remote control has already lead to the use of fiber (they literally carry miles of fiber optic line that unspools as they fly, making them impervious to RF jamming, at the cost of reduced range). The next logical step is to allow them to function without any human input - that gives them both range and immunity from jamming.

This is not good.

Comment Re:Lines aren't frozen. (Score 3, Insightful) 262

Good point. An army that sees all others as subhuman and sees only the next death is one that has to keep fighting. It has no choice. It's the only thing it knows. It can keep conquering more territory outwards, or it can slaughter its own government inwards. History shows those are your two options.

Whether or not Russia conquers Ukraine, it will attack other countries - vast numbers of bored, underpaid soldiers would seek entertainment elsewhere if they didn't.

Comment Re:Two simple questions. (Score 1) 242

This is what I'm going by:

The report said that in December 2018, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a special airworthiness information bulletin based on reports from operators of model 737 planes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged.

The airworthiness concern was not considered an unsafe condition that would warrant an airworthiness directive – a legally enforceable regulation to correct unsafe conditions.

The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 aircraft, including Air India’s VT-ANB, which crashed. The report added: “As per the information from Air India, the suggested inspections were not carried out as the SAIB was advisory and not mandatory.”

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fwo...

Comment Re:Murder / Suicide (Score 2) 242

They have recovered the switches, and they are quite intact. As shown in this video. They will absolutely know if these had the safety mechanism or not.

Further, the fact that they were turned off 1 second apart fits the scenario that they did have the safety mechanism in place, and that the pilot had to lift up on the switch, then toggle it rearwards (cutting off the fuel), each individually, as opposed to purposefully or accidentally flipping them both off at the same time.

Comment Two simple questions. (Score 1) 242

1. Were the safety guards, which were optional, installed?

2. We know investigators are looking into the computer system, does this mean the computer can also set the switch settings?

If the answers are "no" and "no" respectively, it was likely an accidental bump.

If the answers are "yes" and "no", then one of the pilots lied.

If the answer to the second one is yes, then regardless of the answer to the first, I'd hope the investigation thoroughly checks whether the software can be triggered into doing so through faulty data or the existence of software defects.

Comment the dial (was) awesome (Score 1) 52

Mazda's legacy button layouts plus the dial are really great. I have a 3rd Gen Mazda3 and it's nearly perfect. There is a touch screen but it's never used. The dial turns and also pushes for select, and there are some other buttons around it for getting back out of menus and a home button, and some shortcuts for various things. All within comfortable reach just between the gear selector and parking brake (real mechanical parking brake handle!) without having to raise your arm and glance away from the road to make sure you're finding a button. It's all done by feel.

On the steering wheel is volume, track skip (which works in Spotify for it's normal 15 second skip function forward or backward to skip through commercials) and cruise control. Also a phone answer and hang up button.

About the only complaint I have is the A/C fan speed is two buttons rather than a knob, but at least the temp adjust is a big fat knob. They gave up room for a fan knob in exchange for dual temperature knobs for passenger and driver.

The Gen 4 Mazdas are similar, with better Android Auto / Car Play integration and a nicer screen, and are still fairly new, a lot of low mileage cars still available through CarMax, etc.

If they are going to rely on voice commands I'm done. I don't talk to machines. If it's still usable via buttons, fine.

My wife has a Tesla and the UI experience is awful. Absolutely awful. The only good thing about it is the drivetrain. It's like owning a supercar in terms of acceleration. Other than that, I would consider Teslas to be actively driver-hostile. I avoid driving it as much as possible. I hope they will eventually be considered a quirky novelty relegated to the dustbin of history, while more traditional button interfaces make a comeback.

Comment Re:We already know what the cause (Score 5, Informative) 199

How is this upvoted? I have seen news story after news story showing when all the alerts happened, and what they were. It is extremely well documented. The alerts went out in plenty of time - the warnings went out over an before the river in that area had begun to rise, and watches and other alerts four hours before that.

The problem with biased political rants like what you're spouting is they will result in more deaths. That's because the REAL reason these girls died is not going to be addressed if you want to make Trump, or even the NOAA, the bad guys.

The failure is in the extremely localized levels - that is the local government and even the camp itself. The NOAA can't know that in the absolutely insane amount of thousands of square miles they forecast for that there would be a summer camp in particular danger. That is up to local authorities. You want to place a camp right on the banks of a river, in one of the nations most risky flood zones? Then the local authorities are the ones with emergency services, building code inspection and enforcement, on and on, who are the ones who are supposed to make sure these kinds of situations can be handled. For example the fire department will come and inspect the place for fire safety - exits, alarms, fire plans, fire drills, fire extinguishers and on. Their flooding requirements / plan was token at best, and that is why people died at the camp.

This is a wake up call for local governments to require alarm systems to trigger evacuation to higher ground. What triggers it? How do they know? Is the business responsible for the costs? The county? That is what has to be done to prevent this from happening again.

Here are all the alerts that went out, in spite of what your post says.

Comment It's a scam.... (Score 1) 191

First of all, the amount of money that gets back to the creator is vanishingly small compared to what's kept by the cartel. While you think you're supporting the creators when you pay your license, you're really just supporting a vast army of middlemen leaching the money out. I'll say that to the apologists in this thread.

Secondly, they'll hit you up for a license even if you're just playing over the air radio. A radio station that's already paid a license and is playing advertising to pay for it. They will blatantly double dip. This happened to me when I owned a cafe / art gallery a long time ago.

I'm all for supporting the aritsts, but the system as it exists is seriously broken.

Comment Re:I'm impressed with their tenacity (Score 1) 228

Agree with all your points.

It's possible I might have missed these, but they're also major considerations with COVID:

1. It causes scarring of tissue, especially heart tissue. That's why COVID sufferers often had severe blood clots in their bloodstream. Scarring of the heart increases risk of heart attacks, but there's obviously not much data on by how much, from COVID. Yet.

2. It causes brain damage in all who have been infected. Again, we have very little idea of how much, but from what I've read, there may be an increased risk of strokes in later life.

3. Viral load is known to cause fossil viruses in DNA to reactivate silenced portions. This can lead to cancer. Viral load has also been linked to multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue, but it's possible COVID was the wrong sort of virus. These things can take decades to develop.

I would expect a drop in life expectancy, sometimes in the 2040-2050 timeframe, from life-shortening damage from COVID, but the probability depends on how much damage even mild sufferers sustained and what medicine can do to mitigate it by then. The first, as far as I know, has not been looked at nearly as much as long COVID has - which is fair. The second is obviously unknowable.

I'm hoping I'm being overly anxious, my worry is that I might not be anxious enough.

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