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All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

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Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not who you're replying too, but I'll try: An assumption is reasonable if it follows logically from facts we know about the world to some conclusion. For example, cars with more features usually cost more than cars with fewer. A washing machine with a detergent dispenser and 11 different wash modes costs more than one with 3 modes and no dispenser. A thermostat that just sets the temperature and does nothing else…

There is no reason to make this assumption (about smart TVs costing less) in the first place. You can retroactively justify anything by twisting and cherry picking facts. A product with more features may cost more if it costs more to produce or customers are willing to pay more for it because they see it as more valuable. Neither of those applies to smart TVs.

> There is no reason to make this assumption (about smart TVs costing less) in the first place.

Sure there is. 99% of everything else I've ever experienced in my life have had a positive correlation between features and price. I'm actually struggling right now to think of another product where—in general—more features are cheaper than fewer. Other than television sets, I cannot think of one right now. (Maybe if I spend some time on it, I can think of another) Therefore, knowing what I know about prices of things, it is totally reasonable to assume that TVs follow the pattern.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#162
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people who use twitter and like to gamble.

Or bots who subscribe to Twitter feeds and open trades based on sentiment

In that case the suspects could be the ones buying it after it dropped $1, since it went up afterward.

As long as securities react to hacks, there will be a massive incentive to 1) hack, and 2) overstate the hack's significance. Furthermore, as bots become more sophisticated, confusing them becomes easier. If you know bots will short CompanyX when "CompanyX hacked" hits the headlines, then you have an unfair advantage just by being the first to know of the hack.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not all that complicated. You get a couple of these Ethernet to 100FX converters: http://antaira.com/products/media-converters/unmanaged-conve... Then you hook them up with just one fibre strand (instead of the usual 2). You obviously can't use TCP over that since that requires a 2-way connection, but UDP works just fine. You'll probably want to wrap your data in some error correcting code, too.

> You'll probably want to wrap your data in some error correcting code, too. I've found that using hashes and sending duplicates of the data seems to weed out any transmission issues in a one way system.

sure, at a communication complexity of 2N+k, where k is the hash size.... Error correcting codes allow much shorter error-free communications, with lower probability of failure than your method.

Consider an N bit stream of data, with a probability mu of any given bit being flipped. Then the probability of your stream containing an error is gamma := 1-(1-mu)^N. Since you're sending the identical stream twice, there's a 1-(1-gamma)^2 chance that your overall transmission is unrecoverable. The hash will tell you that the transmission failed, but not how to correct it. Furthermore, there's a probability that your hash has a bit flipped somewhere, too...

An error correcting code makes a guarantee that if up to m bits are flipped, the original message can be recovered exactly. A Reed-Solomon code can correct up to m errors while adding just 2m bits to the message length; even with a pretty conservative upper bound on the number of expected errors, this should be way less than 2N+k.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#164
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I prefer buying "dumb" tvs and simply adding chromecast/appletv/firetv, etc. Much better experience.

My wife and I still have our LCD TV from 2005. It's about 5 inches thick but it works great. The TV is even starting to look very cool/retro and we've been complimented on how it completes the look of our living space!

beware the complisult.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#165
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a Chromecast with either, but one of them can also spy on you without your consent.

If you don't trust the TV manufacturer to include spying devices in their product, there is no reason to believe the "dumb" TV you brought from them is any less capable.

And how exactly is a dumb TV with no WiFi radio, ethernet port, or any other forms of outgoing communication going to phone home? Please enlighten me.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase no longer makes literal sense in this day of ubiquitous wireless communications. "If the two networks aren't physically connected, there's no way to gain access to one network from another" is no longer true.

That's true, it's a bit of an anachronism. But everyone knows what it means. Like skeuomorphism. Nobody uses floppy disks anymore, yet the floppy logo is universal for "save".

It's depressing that the various rounds of Win 10 logos floating around all use the floppy-for-save concept. Floppies haven't been in vogue at all this century.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#167
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, it's a bit of an anachronism. But everyone knows what it means. Like skeuomorphism. Nobody uses floppy disks anymore, yet the floppy logo is universal for "save".

It's depressing that the various rounds of Win 10 logos floating around all use the floppy-for-save concept. Floppies haven't been in vogue at all this century.

But "floppy for save" has been ubiquitous. Its not so much a skeumorph as a well-recognized ideograph.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#168
post #64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the researcher didn't do that on an actual plane. In fact it wasn't even a simulator, it was a virtualized simulator where he put the systems all on the same bus. On top of that the guy was only able to listen in on traffic. The entire story is bogus. The systems are isolated just fine.

Can you provide a source? [edit] I've seen the claim made more than once in this thread without a source. I understand that the article was probably very wrong. I'm just interested to know if a reputable publication has confirmed this or if it's just conjecture.

Can you provide a reputable source to prove that President Obama is not a disguised lizard alien? ☺ I mean the original article was so obviously nonsense on the face of it that no refutation should be necessary.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Air gapped" means that there is a physical separation between two networks (i.e., there's "air" between them). If two networks are physically connected, there is always a chance that someone could bypass any software security restrictions. If the two networks aren't physically connected, there's no way to gain access to one network from another. In this instance, the inflight entertainment network and the avionics n…

The phrase no longer makes literal sense in this day of ubiquitous wireless communications. "If the two networks aren't physically connected, there's no way to gain access to one network from another" is no longer true.

As long as we're being overly literal and pedantic, I'd like to point out that wireless connections are still physical, in that they utilize physics to make the connection.
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