Links July 2023

July 30, 2023 | etbe

Phys.org has an interesting article about finding evidence for nanohertz gravity waves [1]. 1nano-Herz is a wavelength of 31.7 light years!

Wired has an interesting story about OpenAI saying that no further advances will be made with larger training models [2].

Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders wrote an insightful article about the need for government run GPT type systems [3]. He focuses on the US, but having other countries/groups of countries do it would be good too. We could have a Chinese one, an EU one, etc. I don’t think it would necessarily make sense for a small country like Australia to have one – but it would make a lot more sense than having nuclear submarines (which are much more expensive).

The Roadmap project is a guide for learning new technologies [4]. The content seems quite good.

Bigthink has an informative and darkly amusing article Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality [5].

From this month in Australia psilocybin (active ingredient in Magic Mushrooms) can be prescribed for depression and MDMA (known as Ecstacy on the streets) can be prescribed for PTSD [6]. That’s great news!

Slate has an interesting article about the Operation Underground Railroad organisation that purports to help sex trafficed chilren [7]. This is noteworthy now with the controverst over the recent movie about that. Apparently they didn’t provide much help for kids after they had been “rescued” and at least some of the kids were “trafficed” specifically to fulfill the demand that they created by offering to pay for it. Vigilantes aren’t as effective as law enforcement.

The ACCC is going to prevent Apple and Google from forcing app developers to give them a share of in-app purchases in Australia [8]. We need this in every country!

This site has links to open source versions of proprietary games [9].

Vice has an interesting article about the Hungarian neuroscientist Viktor Tóth who taught rats to play Doom 2 [10]. The next logical step is to have mini tanks that they can use in real battlefields. Like the “Mason’s Rats” episode of “Love Death and Robots” on Netflix.

Brian Krebs wrote a mind boggling pair of blog posts about the Ashley Adison hack [11]. A Jewish disgruntled ex-employee sending anti-semitic harassment to the Jewish CEO and maybe cooperating with anti-semitic organisations to harass him is one of the people involved, but he killed himself (due to mental health problems) before the hack took place.

Long Now has an insightful blog post about digital avatars being used after the death of the people they are based on [12].

Tavis Ormandy’s description of the zenbleed bug is interesting [13]. The technique for finding the bug is interesting as well as the information on how the internals of the CPUs in question work. I don’t think this means AMD is bad, trying to deliver increasing performance while limited by the laws of physics is difficult and mistakes are sometimes made. Let’s hope the microcode updates are well distributed.

The Hacktivist documentary about Andrew “Bunnie” Huang is really good [14].

Bunnie’s lecture about supply chain attacks is worth watching [15]. Most descriptions of this issue don’t give nearly as much information. However bad you thought this problem was, after you watch this lecture you will realise it’s worse than that!

Links June 2023

June 30, 2023 | etbe

Tablet Magazine has an interesting article about Jewish men who fought in the military for Nazi Germany [1]. I’m surprised that they didn’t frag their colleagues.

Dropbox has an insightful interview with a lawyer about the future of machine learning in the legal profession [2]. This seems like it could give real benefits to society in giving legal assistance to more people and giving less uncertainty about the result of court cases. It could also find unclear laws for legislators who want to improve things.

Some people have started a software to produce a free software version of Victoria 2 [3]. Hopefully OpenVic will become as successful as FreeCiv and FreeCraft!

Hackster has an interesting article about work to create a machine that does a realistic impersonation of someone’s handwriting [4]. The aim is to be good enough to fool people who want manually written assignments.

Ars technica has an interesting article about a side channel attack using the power LEDs of smart-card readers to extract cryptographic secret key data [5]. As usual for articles about side channels it turns out to be really hard to do and their proof of concept involved recording a card being repeatedly scanned for an hour. This doesn’t mean it’s a non-issue, they should harden readers against this.

Vice has an interesting article on the search for chemical remnants of ancient organisms in 1.6 billion year old fossils [6].

Bleeping Computer has an interesting article about pirate Windows 10 ISOs infecting systems with EFI malware [7]. That’s a particularly nasty attack and shows yet another down-side to commercial software. For Linux the ISOs are always clean and the systems aren’t contaminated.

The Register has an interesting article about a robot being used for chilled RAM attacks to get access to boot time secrets [8]. They monitor EMF output to stop it at the same time in each boot which I consider the most noteworthy part of this attack.

The BBC has an interesting article about personalised medicine [9]. There are 400 million people in the world with rare diseases and an estimated 60 million of them will die before the age of 5. Personalised medicine can save many lives. Let’s hope it is used outside the first world.

Knuth’s thoughts about ChatGPT are interesting [10].

Interesting article about Brown M&Ms and assessing the likely quality of work from a devops team [11].

The ABC has an interesting article about the use of AI and robot traps to catch feral cats [12].

[1] https://tinyurl.com/yxo8czll
[2] https://tinyurl.com/2jt9vg28
[3] https://www.openvic.com
[4] https://tinyurl.com/25hzskc6
[5] https://tinyurl.com/26ahcbg2
[6] https://tinyurl.com/2z7xu2sl
[7] https://tinyurl.com/2ysgc548
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/09/cold_boot_ram_theft/”> https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/09/cold_boot_ram_theft/
[9] https://tinyurl.com/2j5dk7lt
[10] https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt
[11] https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2023/05/27/brown-mms/
[12] https://tinyurl.com/2xqrltle

Links May 2023

May 31, 2023 | etbe

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote an interesting blog post about their work on packaging speech to text for Debian [1]. The work of the Debian Deep Learning Team seems really interesting and I look forward to playing with this sort of thing after the release of Bookworm (the packages in question will NOT go in Bookworm but I’ll run at least one system on Testing after Bookworm). It would be nice to get more information on the hardware used for running such programs, the minimum hardware needed for real-time speech to text would be interesting to know.

Brian Krebs wrote an informative article about attacks involving supply chain compromise and fake LinkedIn profiles [2]. The attacks targetted Linux as well as Windows.

Interesting video about the Illium cameras, a bit harsh though, they criticise Illium devices for being too low resolution, too expensive, and taking too much CPU time to process [3]. The Illium cameras still sell for decent prices on eBay, I wonder if it’s because of curious people like me who would like to play with them and have money to spare or whether some other interesting things are being done. I wonder how a 4*4 array of the rectangular cameras secured together with duct tape would go. The ideas of Illium should work better if implemented for multi-core CPUs or GPUs.

Bruce Schneier with Henry Farrell and Nathan Sanders wrote an insightful blog post about how AT Chatbots could improve democracy [4].

Wired has an interesting article about the way DJI drones transmit the location of the drone operator without encryption – by design [5]. Apparently this has been used for targetting attacks on drone operators in Ukraine.

This video about robot “mice” navigating mazes is interesting [6]. But I think it became less interesting when they got to the stage of milliseconds counting for the win, it’s very optimised for one case just like F1. I think it would be interesting if they had a rally contest where they go across grass or sand, 3D mazes both in air and water, and contests where Tungsten weights have to be transported. They should push some of the other limits of engineering as completing a maze quickly has been solved.

The Guardian has an interesting article about a blood test for sleepy driving [7]. Once they have an objective test they can punish people for it.

This github repository listing public APIs is interesting [8]. Lots of fun ideas for phone apps there.

Simon Josefsson wrote an insightful blog post about the threat model of security devices [9]. Unfortunately the security of most people is way below the level where this is an issue. But it’s good to think about future steps needed for good security.

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting article “The Swivel Eyed Loons have a Point” [10] about the fact that some of the nuttiest people are protesting about real issues, just in the wrong way.

Links April 2023

April 30, 2023 | etbe

Cory Doctorow has an insightful article Gig Work is the Opposite of Steampunk [1] about the horrors that companies like Amazon are forcing on their employees.

Valerie Aurora and Leigh Honeywell wrote an insightful article about the al Capone theory of sexual harassment [2]. Why people who sexually harass others usually perform other anti-social activity that is also easier to prosecute.

The IEEE has an interesting article about using ML for parts of the CPU design process, both the technical issues and the controversy about competing ideas which is probably caused by sexism [3].

“Love and taxes are forever my heart” is a line from an anime dating sim game that prepares US taxes [4]. Unfortunately it was removed from Steam. The existence of the game is a weird social commentary and removing the game because you can’t have an anime hottie do taxes is bizarre but also understandable given liability issues. There’s no mention in the review of whether male hotties are available for people who prefer dating guys. As an aside my accountant looks like he is allergic to exercise…

The Killdozer Book web site (which has an invalid SSL certificate so you have to click on “advanced” in Chrome to get to the content) has an insightful article debunking some of the stories about the Killdozer [5]. He wasn’t some sort of hero of freedom, he was just a jerk who reneged on a deal hoping to get more money, thought that laws shouldn’t apply to him, and killed himself because of it.

Apparently some big tech companies are knowingly hiring people to not work unlike the usual large corporate case of unknowingly hiring people to not work [6]. Silicon Valley is a good TV show, and it’s apparently realistic.

Ron Garrett wrote in insightful blog post about theoretical attacks on Bitcoin and how Bitcoin could be used [7]. The conclusion is not good for Bitcoin.

Compiler Explorer is a program that shows how various C++ compilers produce assembly code for various architectures, this site hosts the main active instance [8]. There are other instances, here is an instance that produces code for the Ruzzian Elbrus architecture [9]. The Elbrus Wikipedia page is interesting [10]. Apparently the Ruzzians don’t want this information to be spread, LOL.

The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article about pet parrots being taught to video call each other [11]. Apparently parrots are social animals and can develop psychological problems if kept alone, so the video calls can be good for them. Also the owners had to monitor the chats to ensure that they played nicely together, just like play-dates for kids!

Phoronix has an amusing article about the drama regarding the AMD Spectral Chicken bit in the Linux kernel source [12].

This page listing bad free software licenses is amusing [13].

The ACS has an interesting article about how Samsung fakes photos of the moon and presumably could fake other photos of notable objects that don’t change [14]. The way that they proved the forgery was interesting.

[1] https://tinyurl.com/2fer3f5j
[2] https://tinyurl.com/2q4wgc26
[3] https://spectrum.ieee.org/chip-design-controversy
[4] https://tinyurl.com/2mslyfcv
[5] https://killdozerbook.com/2018/07/fake-news/
[6] https://tinyurl.com/25qtqyn4
[7] https://tinyurl.com/2dhq5qrx
[8] https://godbolt.org/
[9] https://ce.mentality.rip/
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S
[11] https://tinyurl.com/2bktn42p
[12] https://tinyurl.com/24pqhlf6
[13] https://github.com/ErikMcClure/bad-licenses
[14] https://tinyurl.com/2eo65py7

Links March 2023

March 30, 2023 | etbe

Interesting paper about a plan for eugenics in dogs with an aim to get human equivalent IQ within 100 generations [1]. It gets a bit silly when the author predicts IQs of 8000+ as there will eventually be limits of what can fit in one head. But the basic concept is good.

Interesting article about what happens inside a proton [2]. This makes some aspects of the Trisolar series and the Dragon’s Egg series seem less implausible.

Insightful article about how crypto-currencies really work [3]. Basically the vast majority of users trust some company that’s outside the scope of most financial regulations to act as their bank. Surprisingly the author doesn’t seem to identify such things as a Ponzi scheme.

Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting blog post about AIs as hackers [4].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article titled “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok” which is about the enshittification of commercial Internet platforms in general [5]. We need more regulation of such things.

Cat Valente wrote an insightful article titled “Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media” about the desire to profit from social media repeatedly destroying platforms [6].

This Onion video has a good point, I don’t want to watch videos on news sites etc [7]. We need ad-blockers that can block video on all sites other than YouTube etc.

Wired has an interesting article about the machines that still need floppy disks, including early versions of the 747 [8]. There are devices to convert the floppy drive interface to a USB storage device which are being used on some systems but which presumably aren’t certified for a 747. The article says that 3.5″ disks cost $1 each because they are rare – that’s still cheaper than when they were first released.

Android Police has an interesting article about un-redacting information in PNG files [9]. It seems that some software on Pixel devices hasn’t been truncating files when editing them, just writing the new data over top and some platforms (notably Discord) send the entire file wuthout parsing it (unlike Twitter for example which removes EXIF data to protect users). Then even though a PNG file is compressed from the later part of the data someone can deduce the earlier data.

Teen Vogue has an insightful article about the harm that “influencer parents” do to their children [10].

Jonathan McDowell wrote a very informative blog post about his new RISC-V computer running Debian [11]. He says that it takes 10 hours to do a full Debian kernel build (compared to 14 minutes for my 18 core E5-2696) so it’s about 2% the CPU speed of a high end 2015 server CPU which is pretty good for an embedded devivce. That is similar to some of the low end Thinkpads that were on sale in 2015.

The Surviving Tomorrow site has an interesting article about a community where all property is community owned [12]. It’s an extremist Christian group and the article is written by a slightly different Christian extremist, but the organisation is interesting. A technology positive atheist versions of this would be good.

Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders co-wrote an insightful article about how AI could exploit the process of making laws [13]. We really need to crack down on political lobbying, any time a constitution is being amender prohibiting lobbying should be included.

Anarcat wrote a very informative blog post about the Framework laptops that are designed to be upgraded by the user [14]. The motherboard can be replaced and there are cases designed so you can use the old laptop motherboard as an embedded PC. Before 2017 I would have been very interested in such a laptop. Now I’ve moved to low power laptops and servers for serious compiles and a second-hand Thinkpad X1 Carbon costs less than a new Framework motherboard. But this will be a really good product for people with more demanding needs than mine. Pity they don’t have a keyboard with the Thinkpad Trackpoint.

Links February 2023

February 28, 2023 | etbe

Vox has an insightful interview with the author of “Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century” [1]. The main claim of that book is that “The 140 years from 1870 to 2010 of the long twentieth century were, I strongly believe, the most consequential years of all humanity’s centuries”. A claim that seems well supported.

PostMarketOS is an interesting OS for hardware designed for Android [2]. It is based on Alpine Linux, is small, and modular. If you want to change something just change that package not the entire image. Also an aim is to have as much commonality between devices as possible, all phones with the same CPU family can run the same packages apart from the kernel and maybe some utilities related to hardware. Abhijithpa blogged about getting started with pmOS, it seems easy to do [3].

Interesting article about gay samurai [4]. Regarding sex with men or women “an elderly arbiter, after hearing the impassioned arguments of the two sides, counsels that the wisest course is to follow both paths in moderation, thereby helping to prevent overindulgence in either”. Wow.

The SCP project is an interesting collaborative SciFi/horror fiction project [5] based on an organisation that aims to Secure and Contain dangerous objects and beings and Protect the world from them. The series of stories about the Anti-Memetics Division [6] is a good place to start reading.

Links January 2023

January 30, 2023 | etbe

The Intercept has an amusing and interesting article about senior Facebook employees testifying that they don’t know where Facebook stores all it’s data on users [1]. One lesson all programmers can learn from this is to document all these things in an orderly manner.

Cory Doctorow wrote a short informative article about inflation from a modern monetary theory perspective [2].

Russ Allbery wrote an insightful blog post about effecive altruism and respect for disadvantaged people [3]. GiveDirectly sounds good.

The Conversation has an interesting article about the Google and Apple app stores providing different versions of apps for users in different regions [4]. Apparently there are specific versions to comply with GDPR and versions that differ in adverts. The hope that GDPR would affect enough people to become essentially a world-wide standard was apparently overly optimistic. We need political lobbying in all countries for laws like the GDPR to force the app stores to give us the better versions of apps.

Arya Voronova wrote an informative article about USB-C and extension or data blocker cables [5]. USB just keeps getting more horrible in technology while getting more useful in functionality. Laptops and phones catching fire will probably become more common in future.

John McBride wrote an insightful article about the problems in the security of the software supply chain [6]. His main suggestion for addressing problems is “If you are on a team that relies on some piece of open source software, allocate real engineering time to contributing”, the problem with this is that real engineering time means real money and companies don’t want to do that. Maybe having companies contribute moderate amounts of money to a foundation that hires people would be a viable option.

Toms Guide has an interesting article describing problems with the Tesla [7]. It doesn’t cover things like autopilot driving over children and bikers but instead covers issues of the user interface that make it less pleasant to drive and also remove concentration from the road.

The BBC has an interesting article about the way mathematical skill is correlated with the way language is used to express numbers [8]. Every country with a lesser way of expressing numbers should switch to some variation of the East-Asian way.

Science 2.0 has an interesting blog post about the JP Aerospace plans to use airships to get most of the way through the atmosphere and then a plane to get to orbit [9]. It’s a wild idea but seems plausible. The idea of going to space in balloons seems considerably scarier to me than the current space craft.

Interesting list of red team and physical entry gear with links to YouTube videos showing how to use them [10].

The Verge has an informative summary of the way Elon mismanaged Twitter after taking it over [11].

Links December 2022

December 28, 2022 | etbe

Charles Stross wrote an informative summary of the problems with the UK monarchy [1], conveniently before the queen died.

The blog post “To The Next Mass Shooter, A Modest Proposal” is a well written suggestion to potential mass murderers [2].

The New Yorker has an interesting and amusing article about the former CIA employee who released the “Vault 7” collection of CIA attack software [3]. This exposes the ridiculously poor hiring practices of the CIA which involved far less background checks than the reporter writing the story did.

Wired has an interesting 6 part series about the hunt for Alpha02 – the admin of the Alphabay dark web marketplace [4].

The Atlantic has an interesting and informative article about Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most horrible politicians in the world [5].

Anarcat wrote a long and detailed blog post about Matrix [6]. It’s mostly about comparing Matrix to other services and analysing the overall environment of IM systms. I recommend using Matrix, it is quite good although having a server with SSD storage is required for the database.

Edent wrote an interesting thought experiment on how one might try to regain access to all their digital data if a lightning strike destroyed everything in their home [7].

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting article about the crapification of literary contracts [8]. A lot of this applies to most contracts between corporations and individuals. We need legislation to restrict corporations from such abuse.

Jared A Brock wrote an insightful article about why AirBNB is horrible and how it will fail [9].

Habr has an interesting article on circumventing UEFI secure boot [10]. This doesn’t make secure boot worthless but does expose some weaknesses in it.

Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting blog post about stewartship of the UEFI boot ecosystem and how Microsoft has made some strange and possibly hypocritical decisions about it [11]. It also has a lot of background information on how UEFI can be used and misused.

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting article “Let’s Make Amazon Into a Dumb Pipe [12]. The idea is to use the Amazon search and reviews to find a product and then buy it elsewhere, a reverse of the “showrooming” practice where people look at products in stores and buy them online. There is already a browser plugin to search local libraries for Amazon books.

Charles Stross wrote an interesting blog post about the UK Tory plan to destroy higher education [13]. There’s a lot of similarities to what conservatives are doing in other countries.

Antoine Beaupré wrote an insightful blog post “How to nationalize the internet in Canada” [14]. They cover the technical issues to be addressed as well as some social justice points that are often missed when discussing such issues. Internet is not a luxuary nowadays, it’s an important part of daily life and the governments need to treat it the same way as roads and other national infrastructure.

[1] https://tinyurl.com/2gatbh3g
[2] https://tinyurl.com/2je74ywp
[3] https://tinyurl.com/26qhberp
[4] https://tinyurl.com/2b92lwha
[5] https://tinyurl.com/2nqd3jb7
[6] https://anarc.at/blog/2022-06-17-matrix-notes/
[7] https://tinyurl.com/2yx4du3b
[8] https://tinyurl.com/2gfjkrw5
[9] https://tinyurl.com/2ewylxv3
[10] https://habr.com/en/post/446238/
[11] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html
[12] https://doctorow.medium.com/view-a-sku-32721d623aee
[13] https://tinyurl.com/2qmkbwjc
[14] https://anarc.at/blog/2022-08-26-nationalize-internet/

Links November 2022

November 30, 2022 | etbe

Here’s the US Senate Statement of Frances Haugen who used to work for Facebook countering misinformation and espionage [1]. She believes that Facebook is capable of dealing with the online radicalisation and promotion of bad things on it’s platform but is unwilling to do so for financial reasons. We need strong regulation of Facebook and it probably needs to be broken up.

Interesting article from The Atlantic about filtered cigarettes being more unhealthy than unfiltered [2]. Every time I think I know how evil tobacco companies are I get surprised by some new evidence.

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article about resistance to “rubber hose cryptanalysis” [3].

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting article “When Automation Becomes Enforcement” with a new way of thinking about Snapchat etc [4].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful and informative article Big Tech Isn’t Stealing News Publishers’ Content, It’s Stealing Their Money [5] which should be read by politicians from all countries that are trying to restrict quoting news on the Internet.

Interesting articl;e on Santiago Genoves who could be considered as a pioneer of reality TV for deliberately creating disputes between a group of young men and women on a raft in the Atlantic for 3 months [6].

Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting review of the Freedom Phone, seems that it’s not good for privacy and linked to some companies doing weird stuff [7]. Definitely worth reading.

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting and amusing article about backdoors for machine learning [8]

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote an informative post on how to make a bootable USB stick image from an ISO file [9]. Apparently Lenovo provides ISO images to update laptops that don’t have DVD drives. :(

Barry Gander wrote an interesting article about the fall of Rome and the decline of the US [10]. It’s a great concern that the US might fail in the same way as Rome.

Ethan Siegel wrote an interesting article about Iapetus, a moon of Saturn that is one of the strangest objects in the solar system [11].

Cory Doctorow’s article Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs has some good insights into the horrible things that companies like Amazon are doing to their employees and how we can correct that [12].

Charles Stross wrote an insightful blog post about Billionaires [13]. They can’t do much for themselves with the extra money beyond about $10m or $100m (EG Steve Jobs was unable to extend his own life much when he had cancer) and their money is trivial when compared to the global economy. They are however effective parasites capable of performing great damage to the country that hosts them.

Cory Doctorow has an interesting article about how John Deere is being evil again [14]. This time with potentially catastrophic results.