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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

#171

Post by vacri »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
saganus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate a bit more please? This sounds almost as if you configured a network adapter to only send and not receive, but you used "optics", so I'm guessing you refer to some sort of fibre-based device that actually impedes light to go in the other direction, and thus the security is via physical means?

> so I'm guessing you refer to some sort of fibre-based device that actually impedes light to go in the other direction, and thus the security is via physical means? Correct. To simplify, imagine a diode on one side and a photodetector cell on the other. On a microcontroller, this would be an opto-isolator ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opto-isolator ). Of course, the higher levels of the OSI protocol you're using ne…

I really don't understand why Schneier is so popular. The article in the link doesn't have a clear audience - some of it is written for complete security naives, other parts are for power users ('turn off autorun services'), and some fundamental parts are flat-out wrong for both audiences ('you can't set up a computer without connecting it to the internet') or misleading (implying a 'small' USB pendrive of only 1GB will help).

And if you want to 'leave no space', why fill up a disk with 'random files' rather than just a single file that uses up all the space? If you're going to the lengths of encryption + airgap + cloudantivirus (!) + etc, you're a power user at this point, so why not just consume all space rather than just collect together files?

And hell, if you're being that paranoid, then use the paranoid OS for your desktop, OpenBSD. Why go to all the effort in the article and not take the extra step to get familiar with an OS that has an earned reputation for security, and that most exploit-writers don't target? I mean, OpenBSD does OOo and pdfs as indicated in the article - what's this airgapped PC going to be doing that requires Windows in particular?

It's ironic that this author people turn to for commentary against 'security theatre' writes articles doing the same.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#172

Post by [deleted] »

rsync wrote: post #122
dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Otherwise-equivalent Smart TVs are usually less expensive than displays (whether TVs or monitors) without the "Smart" features. This is a matter probably largely of economies of scale -- because that's what manufacturers think the consumer market wants, that's what they make most of and flood consumer channels with, and dumb alternatives are a specialty product.

My last three "TVs" have been commercial display panels. These are the NEC panels that you see in the airport (turned on their side) for departure/arrival boards. They are more expensive than a best buy model. Not terribly so, however, otherwise the airport couldn't buy 200 of them. They are incredible displays.

[deleted]

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#173

Post by gcr »

urda wrote: post #165
caskance wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can you prove that your TV doesn't have a WiFi antenna inside? There's plenty of space to hide something like that in.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#174

Post by gcr »

kstenerud wrote: post #129
rcthompson wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too much of a stretch for smart TVs to start including cellular connectivity (and advertising it as "zero-setup").

And who will pay for that cellular connectivity? This is getting well into ad absurdum (a common problem on HN). Smart TVs are perfectly fine for the person who doesn't want a smart TV. Just don't use any of the smart TV features and don't connect it to the network. Problem solved.

Nobody thought Amazon would put a cell phone antenna into an eBook reader, but look what happened! :)

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#175

Post by socceroos »

cmdrfred wrote: post #164
rubiquity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hahaha! My thoughts exactly. There's a fine line between a compliment, a jibe and an insult. All subjective, of course.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#176

Post by glesica »

caskance wrote: post #107
glesica wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find out who made money by shorting it, there's your list of suspects, or at least co-conspirators (if this turns out to be a hack).

Or people who use twitter and like to gamble.

That's why I said "list of suspects" instead of "culprit".

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#177

Post by dopamean »

tfe wrote: post #142
clmns wrote: post #113

Interesting. I worked on the support team for the software that creates and files the flightplans for UAL. It was a horrible piece of SW/architecture with many outages. We tested in production daily and had direct access to the databases. I'm pretty sure they never changed their policies.. So yeah, this sounds very much like it! Edit: Just got confirmation, this software was the root cause. No hacks/whatsoever!

This is what I love about HN. There are people that actually worked on x system-in-the-news wandering around. Thanks!

Good thing no one on the internet ever lies.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#178

Post by bigiain »

snowwrestler wrote: post #89
bitwize wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well would you say that Tesla is coping with this as a company? For that matter, what about Apple? Apple just kind of assumes that you have the latest shiny, because why wouldn't you? This induces a phenomenon I call the Apple Turnover: when a software update aimed at new Apple things comes out and makes your old Apple thing not run so good anymore. Sluggish iPhones are the hallmark example today, but I was bitte…

Eh, I think Apple is doing ok with Macs and iPhones at least. I'd guess the typical hardware replacement cycle for a computer is 3-5 years. My 2009 MacBook Pro is on Mountain Lion. It runs just fine, and the OS continues to receive security updates. Both 10.9 and 10.10 also officially support my machine, I just haven't bothered to upgrade. Rumor is that support for older machines is one of the areas of focus for 10.1…

For devices that _can_ have the OS upgraded - stats seem to show a remarkably high level of upgrading by users, at least for major version numbers:

http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

If you scroll down to "Device Breakdown (sorted by Usage)", you see a bunch of devices with 90+% stuck on the "last supported OS version" - 97% of iPad1G on iOS5, 97% of iPhone 3GS and iPod Tough 4G on iOS6, 91% of iPhone 4 on iOS7. Even including thise devices, they're showing 75% on devices on iOS8 and 20% on iOS7.

I'm in the "left behind" category - with both my iPad1 and Mac Mini single core being "stick" at iOS5 and OS X 10.6 respectively. Im somewhat disappointed at the lack of patches for the known security holes in iOS5 - especially since those numbers still show over 3% of the iPads in use are not upgradable past iOS5...

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#179

Post by epenn »

danudey wrote: post #153
xorcist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have a CRT TV. Do I win, or is there someone around with a B&W set? :)

I have a Mac 128k in my basement, does that count?

I only have a Mac 512KE. :( But it's featured prominently in one of my rooms if that gets me any bonus points.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#180

Post by wpietri »

walterbell wrote: post #72
wpietri wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that for each person some small thing will make sense, which is sufficient to drive the costs down and the technology forward. For example, good sleep is really important to me. So I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight. When I describe it to people, quite a number really want it. Not bad enough to get my code off GitHub and instal…

> I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight Neat. Did you try to coordinate room lighting color changes with computer screen colors controlled by fl.ux?

I didn't coordinate it, but they are roughly in sync because they're doing similar things. Code here:

https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

It's minimally sufficient for my needs, but I'd be glad to work with others to expand it.

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