Links January 2020

C is Not a Low Level Language [1] is an insightful article about the problems with C and the overall design of most current CPUs.

Interesting article about how the Boeing 737Max failure started with a takeover by MBA aparatcheks [2].

Interesting article about the risk of blood clots in space [3]. Widespread human spaceflight is further away than most people expect.

Wired has an insightful article about why rich people are so mean [4]. Also some suggestions for making them less mean.

Google published interesting information about their Titan security processor [5]. It’s currently used on the motherboards of GCP servers and internal Google servers. It would be nice if Google sold motherboards with a version of this.

Interesting research on how the alleged Supermicro motherboard backdoor [6]. It shows that while we may never know if the alleged attack took place such things are proven to be possible. In security we should assume that every attack that is possible is carried out on occasion. It might not have happen when people claim it happened, but it probably happened to someone somewhere. Also we know that TAO carried out similar attacks.

Arstechnica has an interesting article about cracking old passwords used by Unix pioneers [7]. In the old days encrypted passwords weren’t treated as secrets (/etc/passwd is world readable and used to have the encrypted passwords) and some of the encrypted passwords were included in source archives and have now been cracked.

Jim Baker (former general counsel of the FBI) wrote an insightful article titled Rethinking Encryption [8]. Lots of interesting analysis of the issues related to privacy vs the ability of the government to track criminals.

The Atlantic has an interesting article The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It [9] about the attempts to crack down on the power of big tech companies. Seems like good news.

The General Counsel of the NSA wrote an article “I Work for N.S.A. We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution” [10].

Thoughts and Prayers by Ken Liu is an insightful story about trolling and NRA types [11].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful Locus article about the lack of anti-trust enforcement in the tech industry and it’s free speech implications titles “Inaction is a Form of Action” [12].

• [1] https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
• [2] http://tinyurl.com/vdyc9um
• [3] http://tinyurl.com/unsfaqz
• [4] https://www.wired.com/story/why-are-rich-people-so-mean/
• [5] http://tinyurl.com/y78k8bqb
• [6] https://trmm.net/modchips
• [7] http://tinyurl.com/y6pno2xl
• [8] https://www.lawfareblog.com/rethinking-encryption
• [9] http://tinyurl.com/t6w3pbc
• [10] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/opinion/nsa-privacy.html
• [11] http://tinyurl.com/yy5jr3xa
• [12] http://tinyurl.com/qkhrv5g