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So long and thanks for all the bits

ncsc.gov.uk

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Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#21

Post by happymellon »

jhauris wrote: post #11
sacrosanct wrote: post #5

> thanks for all the bits Am I missing something here? What's the headline supposed to mean? Is it a tongue-in-cheek gesture, since GCHQ routinely hoover up personal data and spy on both their citizenry and foreign countries?

I think it's a reference to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Knowing Earth was going to be destroyed the dolphins leave, but they leave behind a message which when decoded translates to "so long and thanks for all the fish" (referring to how dolphins had trained humans to give them a fish when they did tricks).

> Knowing Earth was going to be destroyed the dolphins leave, but they leave behind a message

He thinks that the UK is going to implode?

Probably correct even if it is mostly harmless.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#22

Post by [deleted] »

laputan_machine wrote: post #19

> They were intended to provide more privacy to users from all sorts of parties, but mainly government and big tech companies. The problem is that DOH makes enterprise cyber security very hard and also damages things like ISP parental controls, and some filtering for child sexual abuse images Man getting paid to spy on people complains about not being able to spy on people and uses the tried and tested "think of the…

[deleted]

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#23

Post by travisgriggs »

As a pilot, loved the B17 bit.

I am intrigued by the memory safety section. It’s a hot topic these days, right? So here’s an interesting thought experiment.

What if all these areas where we use memory-unsafe technologies were replaced by memory managed technologies like C#, Python, Go, etc. Sure, lots of things would run slower (raw TLS in Python, yay), BUT would there suddenly just be less exploits? Or is this area more of “Law of Conservation of Ugly”?

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#24

Post by tyho »

laputan_machine wrote: post #19

> They were intended to provide more privacy to users from all sorts of parties, but mainly government and big tech companies. The problem is that DOH makes enterprise cyber security very hard and also damages things like ISP parental controls, and some filtering for child sexual abuse images Man getting paid to spy on people complains about not being able to spy on people and uses the tried and tested "think of the…

> Apple Private Relay makes law enforcement’s life much harder when looking at who’s visiting certain dodgy websites

Good

> but also potentially reduces the resilience of mobile networks because it messes with the caching strategies in place today and makes diagnosing problems harder.

This is a lie because the vast majority of internet traffic is already encrypted and hence un-cachable. Even if it is true, I don't care, we can trade caching for privacy, we did it with HTTP and the sky didn't fall.

> It also makes it impossible for those networks not to charge for certain data traffic because they can’t see which sites a phone is trying to visit.

Again, good.

Seriously. Fuck this guy and everything he stands for.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#25

Post by lbriner »

travisgriggs wrote: post #23

As a pilot, loved the B17 bit. I am intrigued by the memory safety section. It’s a hot topic these days, right? So here’s an interesting thought experiment. What if all these areas where we use memory-unsafe technologies were replaced by memory managed technologies like C#, Python, Go, etc. Sure, lots of things would run slower (raw TLS in Python, yay), BUT would there suddenly just be less exploits? Or is this area…

One of the big reasons that these garbage-collected type languages were not used on critical code was that the timing couldn't be guaranteed. You can't afford a massive L1 garbage collection just at the point you are trying to land a plane or disable a nuclear reactor.

Not sure whether this is still a problem now that computers are way faster but my own experience is that despite the resources available, our apps are slower than ever, even ones that do largely what they did 20 years ago like Word and Visual Studio!

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#26

Post by cjrp »

travisgriggs wrote: post #23

As a pilot, loved the B17 bit. I am intrigued by the memory safety section. It’s a hot topic these days, right? So here’s an interesting thought experiment. What if all these areas where we use memory-unsafe technologies were replaced by memory managed technologies like C#, Python, Go, etc. Sure, lots of things would run slower (raw TLS in Python, yay), BUT would there suddenly just be less exploits? Or is this area…

I was confused by the B17 fact; if you’re at the stage of lowering the gear (flying slowly), pulling the wrong lever and going full flap would do not much? Now if you were taking off and went to raise the gear and lifted the flaps instead, then that's a problem.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#27

Post by throwup »

tyho wrote: post #24
laputan_machine wrote: post #19

> They were intended to provide more privacy to users from all sorts of parties, but mainly government and big tech companies. The problem is that DOH makes enterprise cyber security very hard and also damages things like ISP parental controls, and some filtering for child sexual abuse images Man getting paid to spy on people complains about not being able to spy on people and uses the tried and tested "think of the…

> Apple Private Relay makes law enforcement’s life much harder when looking at who’s visiting certain dodgy websites Good > but also potentially reduces the resilience of mobile networks because it messes with the caching strategies in place today and makes diagnosing problems harder. This is a lie because the vast majority of internet traffic is already encrypted and hence un-cachable. Even if it is true, I don't ca…

Let me just add:

> it messes with the caching strategies in place today and makes diagnosing problems harder.

ISPs will do the most boneheaded things to your traffic if it is not encrypted. There was a time when Comcast liked injecting random HTML into pages. I'm sure this guy has never had to "diagnose problems" resulting from an ISP rewriting HTML on the fly. Nowadays with TLS, ISPs are mostly out of the picture and the surface area for problems is dramatically smaller.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#28

Post by kitd »

ableal wrote: post #3

Worth the read just for the horrible B-17 bit used as opener. Good hook.

It reminds me of the accidental Hawaii nuclear missile alert a few years back. AIUI, the button to test the system was in close proximity to the button to send the real thing.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#29

Post by travisgriggs »

cjrp wrote: post #26
travisgriggs wrote: post #23

As a pilot, loved the B17 bit. I am intrigued by the memory safety section. It’s a hot topic these days, right? So here’s an interesting thought experiment. What if all these areas where we use memory-unsafe technologies were replaced by memory managed technologies like C#, Python, Go, etc. Sure, lots of things would run slower (raw TLS in Python, yay), BUT would there suddenly just be less exploits? Or is this area…

I was confused by the B17 fact; if you’re at the stage of lowering the gear (flying slowly), pulling the wrong lever and going full flap would do not much? Now if you were taking off and went to raise the gear and lifted the flaps instead, then that's a problem.

On an approach, you are flying dangerously slowly (necessarily). You’re right next to stall speed. You want to go slower slower slower right up to the point you don’t go too slow. You want to reserve that crossing the threshold of too slow until your poised right over the runway with inches between you and it.

When you stall, you start falling at the speed gravity pulls you minus any drag your airframe presents. And if you’re already close to the airfield, you might be only a few hundred feet up, so you’re out of room to put the nose down and throttle up to regain speed necessary to regain lift.

Putting gear down adds a little drag (and a lot of noise), so a minor speed in reduction; going full flaps slows you a lot. You usually pitch the nose down a little more to increase your rate of descent as you go full flaps, so that you keep the speed up to keep the lift up which keeps your plane up. If it’s dark, you’re tired, flying close to stall speed already, go full flap without realizing you just did and don’t keep your eyes glued to the air speed indicator, you’ll stall out and fall from the sky. Trying to recover would catch a lot of disoriented pilots unawares.

Re: So long and thanks for all the bits

#30

Post by tristor »

laputan_machine wrote: post #19

> They were intended to provide more privacy to users from all sorts of parties, but mainly government and big tech companies. The problem is that DOH makes enterprise cyber security very hard and also damages things like ISP parental controls, and some filtering for child sexual abuse images Man getting paid to spy on people complains about not being able to spy on people and uses the tried and tested "think of the…

It's an unfortunate reality that the UK Government has taken a strong anti-privacy and particularly anti-DoH stance for ages. They've used every political and technical lever possible to prevent users from having any reasonable level of online privacy within the UK, and one of their favorite things to do is to trot out "non-profits" that focus on child exploitation to talk about anything that gives a user any semblance of privacy helps spread CSAM.

Just more of the same tired refrain from people using motivated reasoning who don't have any care for user privacy or the rights of individuals online.

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