Agreed. I guess this is the downside of being a pioneer of electric cars - a bit like SpaceX's recent explosion during static testing prompted a bunch of armchair experts to try and tell SpaceX how to prepare for launches: everyone's a critic.
But think back to circa 2000, when Ford Explorers started seeing issues with Firestone tyres... That was estimated to have caused "over 250 deaths and 3,000 serious injuries" [wikipedia] - and yes, when those numbers started to rack up, there were stories in the press. But for the longest time the press treated those events as "just another vehicle incident".
It does bother me that articles don't put some context or even validated statistics against these articles. Anything for the headline - "never let the facts get in the way of a good story..."
No disrespect intended to MojoKid, but this story about Microsoft being unable to optimize pre-Windows 10 Operating Systems for older processors is outright nonsense.
I've been working with the "Windows NT" family of operating systems [i.e. the codebase that Microsoft developed after they grabbed all the VMS OS Programmers from Digital] since NT3.51. Since that OS release, as this Microsoft Knowledgebase article shows
https://support.microsoft.com/...
Microsoft's 32-bit [and now 64-bit] Windows offerings included a proper Hardware Abstraction Layer. In other words, it is possible for Microsoft to replace the HAL for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 with one that is entirely compatible with these latest Intel and AMD chips. In fact, this story is almost laughable, given that the HAL was designed and conceived specifically to allow for seamless transition between successive generations of processor platform.
For example, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 actually introduced support for the PowerPC processor [the Motorola/IBM design that evolved into the CUBE processors that are found inside PS/3s]. In order for Microsoft to be able to support NT3.51 on two hugely different processor architectures, they needed a way of maintaining a very complex codebase easily. The HAL was the answer. By abstracting away the details of the low-level hardware and having the basics of the OS "Windows Services" call an internal API, Microsoft made it possible to maintain a single block of source code [above this watermark] that was then compiled down onto each architecture. This is the whole point of abstraction layers.
This is an old Microsoft trick, previously used to great effect with the "DirectX" scam, in which Microsoft would wait for a new generation of GPUs, then introduce a new edition of DirectX to take account of the enhanced functionality of the GPU silicon, only to not back-port that DirectX release to older OS versions [thereby forcing gamers to upgrade]. Over the last few years the gaming market has shifted away from PCs and on to either consoles or portable devices [tablets and phones], so there is less demand for gaming on PCs: consequently, Microsoft needed a new incentive to force OS upgrades - and this is it.
Microsoft would love for you to forget about the HAL. The problem is that the world has moved on. 10, 15 years ago, the Wintel hegemony relied upon new Windows features to drive the latest generation of hardware sales. All that is now upside down. People don't care about the OS; they are using portable or cloud applications anyway, so now the "wow factor" is driven by the latest generation of hardware - see what effect new Apple product has. Microsoft have learned from this, so now they are using new processors as pull-through to forcibly migrate users on to Windows 10, to try and discourage them from porting their retail license copies of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 onto latest-generation hardware.
It's perfectly OK for Microsoft to do this. It's their code. They can do what they want. I'm not going to rail against them for making a decision that they have a perfect right to make.
What I most definitely DO object to is the deployment of specious half-truths as justification.
Surely mankind is at risk from intelligent killer robots only if we build them in the first place? Isn't a simple way to ensure that were not exterminated by them to just not build them?
It is bad enough that in the 21st century nations on this planet feel the need to settle differences using force of arms. But to build killer robots is worse than insane. We've outlawed land mines, we're trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let's not add to the problem list, eh?
ARM Holdings is one of the best examples of a successful British company going out and developing technology that is the best in the world - and taking on the world and succeeding.
Given the broader context happening in the UK at the moment (specifically our nation voting to secede from the EU via the "Brexit" Referendum of June), you would think that the UK Government, through departments such as the "Department for Business, Innovation and Skills", would have fought tooth and claw to keep this valuable, profitable and innovative company in British hands.
But sadly no. It would appear that no sooner do we build up valuable market leadership in a worldwide market, then we are happy to flog it off the back of a barrow...
I'm not a US Citizen and I don't have any affiliation with SpaceX. I read that Ars article when it first came out, but it really annoyed me.
If you've seen the video, it's reasonably clear that the initial signs of trouble - i.e. the start of the explosion - happens right at the top of the First Stage, perhaps where the Second Stage engine might be situated within the casing. OK, that means that we could narrow this down to a rough physical location.
Yet on this, Ars reckon that they know what the fault is and that the fault lies with SpaceX. They may even be right...
But...
1. Do Ars know that for a fact? No.
2. Do Ars know whether the launch was a repeat of a previously known-good configuration, or whether SpaceX were trying out new design and/or components? No.
3. Do Ars know whether the Facebook payload imposed any specific requirements on the Falcon configuration that might have led to the incident? No.
Yet despite a complete and utter lack of knowledge of the subject at hand [except, I concede again, that the rocket blew up! ], Ars reckon that they know how to tell SpaceX and Elon musk how to run their space launch business... There could be literally scores or hundreds of reasons behind the failure. That failure could be design, material defect, or process in nature, or it could be an obscure combination of several things. It could quite easily be a failure induced on SpaceX because of constraints imposed elsewhere, by someone else.
I'm quite certain that there will be people who read this comment and think ("Ah, SpaceX fan-boy there...") but you'd be wrong. I'm not writing this because I'm a particular fan of SpaceX, but because I'm particularly unimpressed with the arrogance and disengenuous nature of Ars reporting. [ If the launch had been perfect, no doubt they would have been writing about the "unstoppable SpaceX" ].
No. A lot of the time, a lot of the Ars journalists are respectable and write thoughtful pieces. This, on the other hand, was opportunistic garbage written by an ambulance-chasing waster.
Eric Burger: If you're so good, how about you go design a rocket that can put the same mass into LEO and show us all how it's done, eh?
The context I was trying to get with that was as follows:
Imagine that the UK government spending is £750 Billion per year. So to "balance the books" - i.e. operate the national budget without running a deficit - the UK needs to generate £750 Billion of income in the form of taxes.
So suppose, just for our hypothetical conversation, that businesses operating in the UK contribute £400 Billion and private individuals contribute £350 Billion. Now imagine that of that £400 Billion, approximately £100 Billion is profits earned by foreign-owned companies, like Amazon, Apple, eBay, Microsoft, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. Using these "tax loopholes", these non-UK companies "move" their profits to other jurisdictions where there is little or no corporation tax and then declare it. So instead of the UK collecting £400 Billion in taxes, they only collect £300 Billion.
With me so far? Because what happens next is where it hurts. The UK still needs £750 Billion in taxes to cover expenditure. So, with only £300 Billion now coming from business taxation, the Treasury has to find additional money from somewhere. Guess where? Private individuals - individual tax-payers. So the tax burden for private people goes up from £350 Billion to £450 Billion.
It gets worse. Because non-UK companies [and this is the same for non-French, non-German, non-Dutch, non-Spanish, non-Italian, etc, etc] companies are paying such a small amount in tax, their operational costs are lower. As a result of this, they can reduce the cost of their products - in the markets they serve - without actually losing money. So now, if you are a UK-owned, UK-run and UK-taxed company [non-UK readers won't have heard of "Argos", but they are a bit like a tiny version of Amazon, a company which grew up from catalogue and mail-order sales], you can sell the same products as Amazon, but you end up having to charge more in order to meet your tax bill.
So the deal that allows "foreign" companies to pay no tax doesn't just hurt private EU tax-payers, it also destroys competitor EU businesses, by pricing them out of their own marketplace. How could it be that, i.e. Amazon, can sell me the same product, shipped from Germany, *overnight*, for less than it costs a UK competitor to ship me the exact same thing with a 3-5 day delivery lead time? Answer: it's all done by not paying taxes in the UK, then using that as a margin to undercut local competition.
The current tax system is destroying entire countries...
This announcement makes perfect sense if you think of it as a move in the game of chess between Apple and the EU.
Despite his public proclamations and rhetoric, Tim Cook knows that the EU investigation into the tax deal between Ireland and Apple is absolutely not, "political crap" and he's had now enough time for his lawyers to tell him so. That event is an issue between the EU and Ireland and, in a sense, has nothing to do with Apple. The problem for Cook, then, is what to do? He can't put Apple in the middle of the dispute with the EU. He has no options.
Except one.
He can go to the US government to ask for help. "Hey Barak, that sweet deal we had with Ireland, the one that is letting us be profitable and employ lots of Americans? It's going south. Can you help?"
Obama isn't stupid either. He knows that now that the wheels are in motion, Apple is going to have to pay some taxes to someone - and Obama would rather the someone was the US Federal Government and not the Irish government. So what we're seeing now is Apple asking Washington for help. Washington have said, "Sure, we can help. But of course you're going to have to pay some tax somewhere..."
So Tim Cook has made this announcement about repatriation to show Barak that he's serious. Washington will now attempt to apply pressure to Brussels in order to get the EU to back down and allow Apple to continue to operate across the EU, all whilst paying less than 1% Corporation Tax. Meanwhile, Apple will repatriate some of their profits, which the US will tax, as part of the arrangements.
At least, that's their plan. However, bear in mind that the EU are just in the process of throwing out TTIP, which is going to make any attempt by the US to negotiate forcefully absolutely fraught with danger. The worst possible thing would be for the US to try and apply pressure right now: all they will do is make the entire EU mad at them. The only potential ally they would have had, the UK, is in the process of leaving the EU [with the planned start of Article 50 to commence in the New Year].
But the thing that all us little people need to remember here is that every pound, euro or dollar in tax that Apple "avoids", well that's a pound, euro or dollar that we have to find. When companies don't pull their weight, tax-wise, the private individuals are the ones who get stung. You only need to look at the international tax arrangements of the big multinationals to realise what a joke this process has become. What we need is a clear, internationally-agreed law that says that for tax purposes, a transaction occurs at the location that the buyer initiates the transaction. [ Turning that around, and saying that it is where the seller processes the transaction achieves nothing: Apple and others would just put their transaction processing system in a tax haven ].
The interesting thing is that these practices cost "local" tax payers HUGE amounts of extra taxes. So it's entirely possible that what we're seeing here could set a precedent that benefits 500 million people across the EU... Let's hope so...
Disclosure: I am not a US Citizen and have no real interest in US politics...
I'd like to ask the US readers about the timing of this publication. Specifically, given the proximity to a US Presidential vote in which the subject of the report, Mrs Clinton, is standing as a nominee, it would seem on the face of it that the timing of this release might be politically motivated.
If that's even a theory it doesn't seem to be getting much airtime. But I'm curious as to what our US readership might think. Is this a deliberately-timed event by a Republican-leaning FBI, or is this a genuine event released with the same sort of timing that we might expect other, similar investigative conclusions to be published?
One of the reasons I'm asking [in fact the main one] is that this kinda reminds me of the Kenneth Starr investigation into Bill Clinton, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It wasn't that either investigation was inappropriate; nor I am disputing the outcome of either case. But you can't help thinking that the delivery is being done with maximum-damage in mind.
Am I imagining things?
As a non-US observer it's often difficult to understand the subtleties of what we're watching...
All the millions of copies of pre-W10 Windows still in use are essentially "dead" to Microsoft: they are in fact an overhead, since MS have to continue to host all the patches and update materials for these releases, but can't generate revenue from them once the product is sold and installed. However, from a Microsoft perspective, W10 is the product that keeps on giving. It's incredibly intrusive SpyWareOS(TM) capabilities mean that the moment you have installed it, you become a Microsoft Product again. At any point in time they can send an update to your machine [because you can't turn off auto-update] that reverses any privacy settings you have made. They're not obliged to tell you that they have done it.
In other Words, this move will prevent people from moving their personally-owned Windows 7/8/8.1 Licenses to newer hardware in the event of a hardware failure, so that, over time, those people will be forced to upgrade to SpyWareOS and become part of the Microsoft Product.
Microsoft's defence against any potential future investigations by Monopoly/Market Abuse investigators will be: "It is unreasonable to expect us to continue to offer support for legacy software forever Additionally, we have not only made upgrading to Windows 10 incredibly simple, but we have actually made it free for all existing users for a considerable period of time. Lastly, anyone not happy can go buy a Mac..." And certainly, in most of the world, that will be enough.
What this does is force anyone happy enough to run older Windows versions to upgrade, whether they like it or not. Or migrate. One thing that wasn't completely clear from either this post or the linked articles though: will the new CPU actually prevent say W7 from running at all? Will it's ID string be so alien that older versions of Windows simply won't recognise it and refuse to install? HP tried something like this by putting tiny ICs into their original toner cartridges, such that 3rd party cartridges would not work in their printers. That got overturned in court, though, because it was shown that the IC served no purpose other than to act as a barrier to entry. Could this be shown in a similar light? i.e. Could it be argued that some sneaky microcode work-around serves no purpose other than to enforce the hegemony?
My first was a "Newton", a dual-Core i5 system, boosted with 16Gb of RAM and a 1Tb Samsung SSD. Tiny, completely silent, and the Intel Graphics was more than capable of driving 2 x Dell 24" 1920x1200 Monitors. Cost me about £1000 built, with Windows 7/Pro/64 included... Awesome. I partitioned the HDD and dual-boot with Mint Linux. Actually, I've since wiped the drive and it's now a single-OS Mint System. Ultra-low-power, works brilliantly as a "home server"... The only down-side was that audio out was basically stereo-only, via 3.5mm jack-plugs.
Last December I bought a new machine from the same people. This one has a Skylake Core i7 6700T, optical audio out [hurrah!] for surround sound. I asked for a BluRay drive [which I now regret as I've barely used it], another 1Tb Samsung SSD and again it dual-boots between Windows 7 and Mint 17.3 Rosa. It's compact, completely silent and perfect.
In fact, the only thing I haven't been able to get working is the ability to daisy-chain the DisplayPort between a pair of Monitors. In theory I should be able to do it, but in practice it doesn't work... Sigh...
... who laments the loss of the humble 2.5" HDD [or, at the very least, a removable 2.5" SSD] from a laptop or netbook these days?
I understand why companies are moving away from the idea of removable, normalized-size drives [it's cheaper to make the machine when it's just a daughter-board] but the loss of flexibility really chafes.
Yes, there are a handful of machines out there which still support HDDs, but they are getting a bit clunky these days. Sigh.
... anyone manufacturing and/or selling a firearm to the public in the United States must reasonably expect at least one of their weapons to be used by terrorists, just as was the case in San Bernardino.
Are the plaintiffs against Twitter in this case arguing that since it is possibly for even *one* gun that is sold to a civilian in the US to be used for crime and/or terrorist activities, then all gun sales should be banned?
Please note - I'm not a US citizen and don't generally support the idea behind the Second Amendment. However, in this case I am using it to try and highlight the potential inconsistency of the argument being put forward.
If you look at this from another perspective, Jennifer Youngman was just in the process of test-firing one of her just-cleaned shotguns, when a drone, flying dangerously low over her property, was unfortunate enough to stray into the line of fire.
I fail to see how this is Jennifer Youngman's problem. Had the drone operator been sensible enough to fly their drone in a public recreation area, or drone park, instead of over private property, their loss could have been avoided.
In a kind-of unrelated comment, how can it be illegal and tresspassing to stand on private land belonging to another, yet legal and OK to be hovering an unspecified distance above the same piece of land? "No, Your Honor, I was *not* tresspassing, I was levitating..."
In many ways the Pi has come to define an entire new genre of personal computing - something for hobbyists and students alike. It's perfect in this regard... But with all that you've learned from the various Pi models, would you ever consider a different price point/feature set? Do you get asked for this?
For example, if we gave you a budget of £50, or £75, or £100, would building a machine to these price points interest you? What feature set would you consider?
"Turns out the guy who set up the furniture company used to work for RM. Strange that. He just decided to take the company list with him, contact details and all, and use it to sell his wares from his own company. I reported him, nothing happened."
And that's it, in a nutshell. Data theft like this is seen by the authorities as a not-crime. "Oh well, no harm, no foul. We're after the really big criminals, don't you know?"
Except that it's the little crimes like this that fund the next generation of IT-based crime, on and on. Then they branch into malware, then crypto-malware, then suddenly you have a real menace on your hands...
Only if we clamp down on these "minor infractions" will we stop future and worse crimes coming our way. Only if our response is instant and strident will people get the message and not even try it any more. It's like kids with the cookie jar who are threatened but no action is taken: they just keep it up.
What really bugs me is the selective nature of law enforcement these days...
For the last 2 years or so I had been getting a relatively high string of calls to my home [unlisted, "Telephone Preference Blocked" {UK opt-in scheme to keep telemarketers out}] number, with all of them trying the "Windows Technical Support phone scam.
Then some time in march I got a call from someone who claimed to be calling from my Telco/ISP [phone and internet service via the same provider] and who began by telling me they would prove their identity by quoting me the Customer Account Number that is only printed on the paper copy of my quarterly statement. Funny old thing, it was the *right* number.
I went through a lengthy and convoluted process to get the Police to give me a crime number and then contacted a UK part of my telco [not trusting their India Call Centre] and to my surprise, [having got passed the bored tekkie] and having explained that the only explanation for this disclosure would have been if there were a criminal or criminals working within the Telco themselves, I suggested that they might want to check their records and determine who had access my client account information in the preceding 30 days...
The calls stopped, dead. I mean, not one since then.
The *only* explanation I can offer is that all the criminals calls I was receiving were actually being made by a rogue unit, working inside my telco and using my telco's own phone lines and equipment, to scam UK clients...
Funny old thing, my telco is doing the best job ever of pretending this didn't happen - right down to "disappearing" the incident reference number they gave me when I first spoke to them. Fact is, however, the calls stopped.
It would be entirely unfair - and misleading - to draw connections between the outsourcing of customer support services to third-world locations and then the rise in boiler-room scams from those locations. Having said that, I always wondered how these scammers were able to afford the international call charges. Even had they been using Skype with dial-out from a local PoP, it would have still cost them a lot of money to prosecute their attacks. But if they were embedded inside UK telephone operating companies, using the India-based call centres, then calling and scamming customers would be so very, very easy.
It's getting to the point these days where almost anyone calling you is a crook or a scammer...
Maybe there are other ways that we can address this problem?
For example, could we apply technology to help moderate over-use of email? Here are some things that we could try, if the problem were that bad...
1. Interval Between Send... You know how some authentication mechanisms have a brute-force defence mechanism that introduces a longer and longer interval between repeat attempts at a password? Suppose your email client could detect the frequency with which a user sent an email, then used that to introduce intervals if emails were sent too frequently?
2. Points Based System... Suppose every email you sent got a score based on things like the number of recipients, the number of words and/or the number of attachments. First, you could impose enforced delays as above; in the alternative you could produce a league table, showing your organisation who your worst offenders were...
3. The Charity Donation... You know how some companies/places have a "swear jar" for anyone using profanity in the office? How about having one that charges one penny, one cent, one {whatever} base unit of currency per email. At the end of the month a report is produced and people pay the amount to a charity of their choice, delivered by the organisation...
4. House Rules... Maybe something as simple as "Don't send emails before 10:00 or after 15:00 [local time]..." to give people a break in their day when they can catch up on either reading emails, or getting actual work done.
5. Numpty Awards... Do you have people who believe that they need to "cc the world" with every email? Maybe you could have a prize for "the most over-cc'd email"... Just this one thing should reduce the amount of email you get by 50%...
And the single most AMAZING thing about all of this is that they rarely seem to have the same problem twice. The ability of SpaceX to learn from mistakes and solve every problem, properly, is not just good for the space industry, it's remarkable in pretty much any field of endeavour. Sheesh, if the developers where I work got their software bugs ironed out after the first round of testing, they spend 11 months of the year on a beach and still be more productive...
;)
I don't understand why people knock Elon Musk or SpaceX/Tesla. The traits and best practices he demonstrates on a daily basis - driving them through his companies - ought to be the envy of the western world. Instead, people line up to trash him. [ Maybe they all work for United Space Alliance or Ford/General Motors?]
Please forgive my pedantry - I don't mean to challenge the validity of the passwords that you're using. However [and please bear in mind that my qualification to the OP that they need to determine their *requirements* first - and I don't know yours either ] I'm still not certain that our existing cryptoschemes will prove to be robust against quantum computing.
I'm aware that the NSA have already published guidelines concerning potentially quantum-safe algorithms, but I haven't as yet seen a robust peer-review that agrees with their recommendations. [Any pointers gratefully received]. I'm also not aware as to whether or not our existing schemes are now all demonstrable defect-free. [ We have, after all, seen recently disclosed issues that point to vulnerabilities in MD5, SHA-1 and in PRNGs]. OK, the hashing examples are a bit weak, because although they are relatively simple to implement, they are extension attacks that can be easily defeated with fixed-length data blocks...
But my point is that unless you're pretty much the greatest cryptographer on the planet [and I know for a fact that I am *not*], then I consider that the relative merits of different schemes, solutions and configurations pale in comparison to agility - the simple ability to move away from one scheme to another in the event that your current scheme is demonstrably broken.
Even this is false security: if I broke an encryption scheme, why should I tell you? And, assuming I did have the means to do this, and was trying, you can bet that I'd also be recording any interesting-looking exchanges protected with that scheme, so I could crack them when I had my solution ready.
Lastly, bear in mind the subject of the request. This is VOIP communications between two individuals. Anyone wanting to understand the value of the communication would get as much value [if not more] from the meta-data as they did from the call itself.
Actually, I didn't mention any specific algorithm. In fact, you'll see that one of the design criteria I suggested was to have a product that could be quickly migrated from one encryption scheme to a replacement.
This is because we've learned, thanks to Edward Snowden, that much of what we thought we knew about the security of western encryption schemes was entirely wrong.
We learned that it doesn't have to be an attack directly against the algorithm itself, but could be against the PRNG. Subsequently, we've learned that it could be an attack against side channel data. Or the acoustics of circuit interference. Or power fluctuations of components performing compute work.
So what I'm actually saying is: work on the premise that whatever product you use is going to have to employ an encryption scheme of some kind. Rather than think purely about the product's human interface layer, take a good, long hard look at that implementation of security, and make sure that you pick one which is agile, which can swap from one scheme to another the moment we learn that the scheme it is using has been broken. If you design-in the idea that your solution of choice is going to be compromised, you'll be much less surprised when it actually happens...
I make no claims, warranties, complaints or recommendations for AES or any other contemporary algorithm.
You mention the need for "secure chat", but don't express "how secure" you would like that to be. As others have posted, if you're connected to the internet (and your question is worded to imply that you're looking at Voice Over IP (VOIP) solutions, then there is pretty much no secure option out there... An Agency like the NSA could record all your data packets and brute-force them pretty quickly, if they so chose.
Having said that, it might be possible for us to brainstorm the sort of attributes that would help to make your VOIP calls less insecure. The collective wisdom of slashdotters might then be able to suggest some alternative products for you to consider. Things to look out for might include:-
1. A solution that uses a central server only for the purpose of establishing the IP address of your chosen call recipient, then allows all communication to that recipient to happen directly, point-to-point. There is no need to route call traffic through central servers (unless you want to listen in). Ahem. Skype.
2. A solution that not only uses the latest approved encryption algorithms, but which makes the swapping of an algorithm a relatively easy process [think user-selectable option, addition of a library file with the algorithm code]. The upgrading of key strength/entropy parameters should be even easier...
3. A solution that includes, within the encryption stream, random white noise padding (to make it much harder to determine the precise amount of data being exchanged) might be nice.
And so on...
I did think about including an option that said, "For each legitimate call channel that you set up using the central register of logged-in users, pick three more logged in users at random and simultaneously exchanged random, encrypted data packets with those users too." Unfortunately, there are multiple issues with that. First, what if one of those random users really was under surveillance by a three-letter-agency. Using the "association" rules, that agency would then start monitoring you *real* closely... and second, running four calls for the cost of one might actually degrade your network/audio performance if you happen to be on a slow link.
Bottom line; there is no easy answer to your question, but please don't consider using Skype and "secure" in the same statement...;)
Have to admit I haven't followed the details too closely, but I vaguely remember reading that the two failed attempted landings came as a result of a lack of hydraulic fluid in actuators. Apparently there is no recycling of hydraulic fluid in the first stage, because calculations showed that it was more sensible to have a small tank with fluid than have a recirculating system with a pump.
IIRC, the issue was that the 1st stage simply ran out of hydraulic fluid, resulting in a loss of ability to control the stage...
Really appreciate your post - there's some useful information in there.
However, with what you've explained [and, perhaps, in a way that is not remotely connected to the original article, there's another interesting possibility here.
Back when I was a kid in the 70s [maybe early 80s], the UK ran a television commercial from "Habitat", a UK company which offers home furnishings, kitchenware, linens, that sort of thing. All very stylish, modern and chic.
The commercial was accompanied by an audio soundtrack that included some very fast-tempo clapping, so that the images on the screen could change incredibly rapidly. This commercial ran for a little while - and Habitat seemed to do very well out of that particular campaign. Then along came a neuro-psychologist from one of the UK universities and pointed out that what Habitat had actually been doing was actually creating subliminal impression. Brainwashing, pure and simple. Apparently, it's possible to "flash up" an image very quickly, so quickly that your conscious mind won't even register it, but in such a way that your subconscious mind can actually read and store it. Later, when you go into light sleep and your brain transfers short-term memories to long-term storage, these images and their messages get imprinted...
So whilst this little detour may not have a huge amount to do with the OP, there are maybe some threats to the user of a computer in which the video system has been compromised. And interestingly, those threats might not be directed at the computer at all, but at the user.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. I guess this is the downside of being a pioneer of electric cars - a bit like SpaceX's recent explosion during static testing prompted a bunch of armchair experts to try and tell SpaceX how to prepare for launches: everyone's a critic.
But think back to circa 2000, when Ford Explorers started seeing issues with Firestone tyres... That was estimated to have caused "over 250 deaths and 3,000 serious injuries" [wikipedia] - and yes, when those numbers started to rack up, there were stories in the press. But for the longest time the press treated those events as "just another vehicle incident".
It does bother me that articles don't put some context or even validated statistics against these articles. Anything for the headline - "never let the facts get in the way of a good story..."
Do they still, like, you know, make and receive telephone calls?
No disrespect intended to MojoKid, but this story about Microsoft being unable to optimize pre-Windows 10 Operating Systems for older processors is outright nonsense.
I've been working with the "Windows NT" family of operating systems [i.e. the codebase that Microsoft developed after they grabbed all the VMS OS Programmers from Digital] since NT3.51. Since that OS release, as this Microsoft Knowledgebase article shows https://support.microsoft.com/... Microsoft's 32-bit [and now 64-bit] Windows offerings included a proper Hardware Abstraction Layer. In other words, it is possible for Microsoft to replace the HAL for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 with one that is entirely compatible with these latest Intel and AMD chips. In fact, this story is almost laughable, given that the HAL was designed and conceived specifically to allow for seamless transition between successive generations of processor platform.
For example, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 actually introduced support for the PowerPC processor [the Motorola/IBM design that evolved into the CUBE processors that are found inside PS/3s]. In order for Microsoft to be able to support NT3.51 on two hugely different processor architectures, they needed a way of maintaining a very complex codebase easily. The HAL was the answer. By abstracting away the details of the low-level hardware and having the basics of the OS "Windows Services" call an internal API, Microsoft made it possible to maintain a single block of source code [above this watermark] that was then compiled down onto each architecture. This is the whole point of abstraction layers.
This is an old Microsoft trick, previously used to great effect with the "DirectX" scam, in which Microsoft would wait for a new generation of GPUs, then introduce a new edition of DirectX to take account of the enhanced functionality of the GPU silicon, only to not back-port that DirectX release to older OS versions [thereby forcing gamers to upgrade]. Over the last few years the gaming market has shifted away from PCs and on to either consoles or portable devices [tablets and phones], so there is less demand for gaming on PCs: consequently, Microsoft needed a new incentive to force OS upgrades - and this is it.
Microsoft would love for you to forget about the HAL. The problem is that the world has moved on. 10, 15 years ago, the Wintel hegemony relied upon new Windows features to drive the latest generation of hardware sales. All that is now upside down. People don't care about the OS; they are using portable or cloud applications anyway, so now the "wow factor" is driven by the latest generation of hardware - see what effect new Apple product has. Microsoft have learned from this, so now they are using new processors as pull-through to forcibly migrate users on to Windows 10, to try and discourage them from porting their retail license copies of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 onto latest-generation hardware.
It's perfectly OK for Microsoft to do this. It's their code. They can do what they want. I'm not going to rail against them for making a decision that they have a perfect right to make.
What I most definitely DO object to is the deployment of specious half-truths as justification.
Surely mankind is at risk from intelligent killer robots only if we build them in the first place? Isn't a simple way to ensure that were not exterminated by them to just not build them? It is bad enough that in the 21st century nations on this planet feel the need to settle differences using force of arms. But to build killer robots is worse than insane. We've outlawed land mines, we're trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let's not add to the problem list, eh?
ARM Holdings is one of the best examples of a successful British company going out and developing technology that is the best in the world - and taking on the world and succeeding.
Given the broader context happening in the UK at the moment (specifically our nation voting to secede from the EU via the "Brexit" Referendum of June), you would think that the UK Government, through departments such as the "Department for Business, Innovation and Skills", would have fought tooth and claw to keep this valuable, profitable and innovative company in British hands.
But sadly no. It would appear that no sooner do we build up valuable market leadership in a worldwide market, then we are happy to flog it off the back of a barrow...
Hangs head in shame...
I'm not a US Citizen and I don't have any affiliation with SpaceX. I read that Ars article when it first came out, but it really annoyed me.
If you've seen the video, it's reasonably clear that the initial signs of trouble - i.e. the start of the explosion - happens right at the top of the First Stage, perhaps where the Second Stage engine might be situated within the casing. OK, that means that we could narrow this down to a rough physical location.
Yet on this, Ars reckon that they know what the fault is and that the fault lies with SpaceX. They may even be right...
But...
1. Do Ars know that for a fact? No.
2. Do Ars know whether the launch was a repeat of a previously known-good configuration, or whether SpaceX were trying out new design and/or components? No.
3. Do Ars know whether the Facebook payload imposed any specific requirements on the Falcon configuration that might have led to the incident? No.
Yet despite a complete and utter lack of knowledge of the subject at hand [except, I concede again, that the rocket blew up! ], Ars reckon that they know how to tell SpaceX and Elon musk how to run their space launch business... There could be literally scores or hundreds of reasons behind the failure. That failure could be design, material defect, or process in nature, or it could be an obscure combination of several things. It could quite easily be a failure induced on SpaceX because of constraints imposed elsewhere, by someone else.
I'm quite certain that there will be people who read this comment and think ("Ah, SpaceX fan-boy there...") but you'd be wrong. I'm not writing this because I'm a particular fan of SpaceX, but because I'm particularly unimpressed with the arrogance and disengenuous nature of Ars reporting. [ If the launch had been perfect, no doubt they would have been writing about the "unstoppable SpaceX" ].
No. A lot of the time, a lot of the Ars journalists are respectable and write thoughtful pieces. This, on the other hand, was opportunistic garbage written by an ambulance-chasing waster.
Eric Burger: If you're so good, how about you go design a rocket that can put the same mass into LEO and show us all how it's done, eh?
OK, good question.
The context I was trying to get with that was as follows:
Imagine that the UK government spending is £750 Billion per year. So to "balance the books" - i.e. operate the national budget without running a deficit - the UK needs to generate £750 Billion of income in the form of taxes.
So suppose, just for our hypothetical conversation, that businesses operating in the UK contribute £400 Billion and private individuals contribute £350 Billion. Now imagine that of that £400 Billion, approximately £100 Billion is profits earned by foreign-owned companies, like Amazon, Apple, eBay, Microsoft, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. Using these "tax loopholes", these non-UK companies "move" their profits to other jurisdictions where there is little or no corporation tax and then declare it. So instead of the UK collecting £400 Billion in taxes, they only collect £300 Billion.
With me so far? Because what happens next is where it hurts. The UK still needs £750 Billion in taxes to cover expenditure. So, with only £300 Billion now coming from business taxation, the Treasury has to find additional money from somewhere. Guess where? Private individuals - individual tax-payers. So the tax burden for private people goes up from £350 Billion to £450 Billion.
It gets worse. Because non-UK companies [and this is the same for non-French, non-German, non-Dutch, non-Spanish, non-Italian, etc, etc] companies are paying such a small amount in tax, their operational costs are lower. As a result of this, they can reduce the cost of their products - in the markets they serve - without actually losing money. So now, if you are a UK-owned, UK-run and UK-taxed company [non-UK readers won't have heard of "Argos", but they are a bit like a tiny version of Amazon, a company which grew up from catalogue and mail-order sales], you can sell the same products as Amazon, but you end up having to charge more in order to meet your tax bill.
So the deal that allows "foreign" companies to pay no tax doesn't just hurt private EU tax-payers, it also destroys competitor EU businesses, by pricing them out of their own marketplace. How could it be that, i.e. Amazon, can sell me the same product, shipped from Germany, *overnight*, for less than it costs a UK competitor to ship me the exact same thing with a 3-5 day delivery lead time? Answer: it's all done by not paying taxes in the UK, then using that as a margin to undercut local competition.
The current tax system is destroying entire countries...
This announcement makes perfect sense if you think of it as a move in the game of chess between Apple and the EU.
Despite his public proclamations and rhetoric, Tim Cook knows that the EU investigation into the tax deal between Ireland and Apple is absolutely not, "political crap" and he's had now enough time for his lawyers to tell him so. That event is an issue between the EU and Ireland and, in a sense, has nothing to do with Apple. The problem for Cook, then, is what to do? He can't put Apple in the middle of the dispute with the EU. He has no options.
Except one.
He can go to the US government to ask for help. "Hey Barak, that sweet deal we had with Ireland, the one that is letting us be profitable and employ lots of Americans? It's going south. Can you help?"
Obama isn't stupid either. He knows that now that the wheels are in motion, Apple is going to have to pay some taxes to someone - and Obama would rather the someone was the US Federal Government and not the Irish government. So what we're seeing now is Apple asking Washington for help. Washington have said, "Sure, we can help. But of course you're going to have to pay some tax somewhere..."
So Tim Cook has made this announcement about repatriation to show Barak that he's serious. Washington will now attempt to apply pressure to Brussels in order to get the EU to back down and allow Apple to continue to operate across the EU, all whilst paying less than 1% Corporation Tax. Meanwhile, Apple will repatriate some of their profits, which the US will tax, as part of the arrangements.
At least, that's their plan. However, bear in mind that the EU are just in the process of throwing out TTIP, which is going to make any attempt by the US to negotiate forcefully absolutely fraught with danger. The worst possible thing would be for the US to try and apply pressure right now: all they will do is make the entire EU mad at them. The only potential ally they would have had, the UK, is in the process of leaving the EU [with the planned start of Article 50 to commence in the New Year].
But the thing that all us little people need to remember here is that every pound, euro or dollar in tax that Apple "avoids", well that's a pound, euro or dollar that we have to find. When companies don't pull their weight, tax-wise, the private individuals are the ones who get stung. You only need to look at the international tax arrangements of the big multinationals to realise what a joke this process has become. What we need is a clear, internationally-agreed law that says that for tax purposes, a transaction occurs at the location that the buyer initiates the transaction. [ Turning that around, and saying that it is where the seller processes the transaction achieves nothing: Apple and others would just put their transaction processing system in a tax haven ].
The interesting thing is that these practices cost "local" tax payers HUGE amounts of extra taxes. So it's entirely possible that what we're seeing here could set a precedent that benefits 500 million people across the EU... Let's hope so...
Disclosure: I am not a US Citizen and have no real interest in US politics...
I'd like to ask the US readers about the timing of this publication. Specifically, given the proximity to a US Presidential vote in which the subject of the report, Mrs Clinton, is standing as a nominee, it would seem on the face of it that the timing of this release might be politically motivated.
If that's even a theory it doesn't seem to be getting much airtime. But I'm curious as to what our US readership might think. Is this a deliberately-timed event by a Republican-leaning FBI, or is this a genuine event released with the same sort of timing that we might expect other, similar investigative conclusions to be published?
One of the reasons I'm asking [in fact the main one] is that this kinda reminds me of the Kenneth Starr investigation into Bill Clinton, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It wasn't that either investigation was inappropriate; nor I am disputing the outcome of either case. But you can't help thinking that the delivery is being done with maximum-damage in mind.
Am I imagining things?
As a non-US observer it's often difficult to understand the subtleties of what we're watching...
This is an incredibly shrewd move by Microsoft.
All the millions of copies of pre-W10 Windows still in use are essentially "dead" to Microsoft: they are in fact an overhead, since MS have to continue to host all the patches and update materials for these releases, but can't generate revenue from them once the product is sold and installed. However, from a Microsoft perspective, W10 is the product that keeps on giving. It's incredibly intrusive SpyWareOS(TM) capabilities mean that the moment you have installed it, you become a Microsoft Product again. At any point in time they can send an update to your machine [because you can't turn off auto-update] that reverses any privacy settings you have made. They're not obliged to tell you that they have done it.
In other Words, this move will prevent people from moving their personally-owned Windows 7/8/8.1 Licenses to newer hardware in the event of a hardware failure, so that, over time, those people will be forced to upgrade to SpyWareOS and become part of the Microsoft Product.
Microsoft's defence against any potential future investigations by Monopoly/Market Abuse investigators will be: "It is unreasonable to expect us to continue to offer support for legacy software forever Additionally, we have not only made upgrading to Windows 10 incredibly simple, but we have actually made it free for all existing users for a considerable period of time. Lastly, anyone not happy can go buy a Mac..." And certainly, in most of the world, that will be enough.
What this does is force anyone happy enough to run older Windows versions to upgrade, whether they like it or not. Or migrate. One thing that wasn't completely clear from either this post or the linked articles though: will the new CPU actually prevent say W7 from running at all? Will it's ID string be so alien that older versions of Windows simply won't recognise it and refuse to install? HP tried something like this by putting tiny ICs into their original toner cartridges, such that 3rd party cartridges would not work in their printers. That got overturned in court, though, because it was shown that the IC served no purpose other than to act as a barrier to entry. Could this be shown in a similar light? i.e. Could it be argued that some sneaky microcode work-around serves no purpose other than to enforce the hegemony?
Anyone fluent in legalese lurking today?
Like your comment about having to listen to fans when you don't want or need to...
I'm now on my second system from these people:-
http://www.atlastsolutions.com...
My first was a "Newton", a dual-Core i5 system, boosted with 16Gb of RAM and a 1Tb Samsung SSD. Tiny, completely silent, and the Intel Graphics was more than capable of driving 2 x Dell 24" 1920x1200 Monitors. Cost me about £1000 built, with Windows 7/Pro/64 included... Awesome. I partitioned the HDD and dual-boot with Mint Linux. Actually, I've since wiped the drive and it's now a single-OS Mint System. Ultra-low-power, works brilliantly as a "home server"... The only down-side was that audio out was basically stereo-only, via 3.5mm jack-plugs.
Last December I bought a new machine from the same people. This one has a Skylake Core i7 6700T, optical audio out [hurrah!] for surround sound. I asked for a BluRay drive [which I now regret as I've barely used it], another 1Tb Samsung SSD and again it dual-boots between Windows 7 and Mint 17.3 Rosa. It's compact, completely silent and perfect.
In fact, the only thing I haven't been able to get working is the ability to daisy-chain the DisplayPort between a pair of Monitors. In theory I should be able to do it, but in practice it doesn't work... Sigh...
... who laments the loss of the humble 2.5" HDD [or, at the very least, a removable 2.5" SSD] from a laptop or netbook these days?
I understand why companies are moving away from the idea of removable, normalized-size drives [it's cheaper to make the machine when it's just a daughter-board] but the loss of flexibility really chafes.
Yes, there are a handful of machines out there which still support HDDs, but they are getting a bit clunky these days. Sigh.
... anyone manufacturing and/or selling a firearm to the public in the United States must reasonably expect at least one of their weapons to be used by terrorists, just as was the case in San Bernardino.
Are the plaintiffs against Twitter in this case arguing that since it is possibly for even *one* gun that is sold to a civilian in the US to be used for crime and/or terrorist activities, then all gun sales should be banned?
Please note - I'm not a US citizen and don't generally support the idea behind the Second Amendment. However, in this case I am using it to try and highlight the potential inconsistency of the argument being put forward.
Apparently mild sarcasm as an attempt at humour doesn't work on slash dot. Duly noted.
If you look at this from another perspective, Jennifer Youngman was just in the process of test-firing one of her just-cleaned shotguns, when a drone, flying dangerously low over her property, was unfortunate enough to stray into the line of fire.
I fail to see how this is Jennifer Youngman's problem. Had the drone operator been sensible enough to fly their drone in a public recreation area, or drone park, instead of over private property, their loss could have been avoided.
In a kind-of unrelated comment, how can it be illegal and tresspassing to stand on private land belonging to another, yet legal and OK to be hovering an unspecified distance above the same piece of land? "No, Your Honor, I was *not* tresspassing, I was levitating..."
In many ways the Pi has come to define an entire new genre of personal computing - something for hobbyists and students alike. It's perfect in this regard... But with all that you've learned from the various Pi models, would you ever consider a different price point/feature set? Do you get asked for this?
For example, if we gave you a budget of £50, or £75, or £100, would building a machine to these price points interest you? What feature set would you consider?
"Turns out the guy who set up the furniture company used to work for RM. Strange that. He just decided to take the company list with him, contact details and all, and use it to sell his wares from his own company. I reported him, nothing happened."
And that's it, in a nutshell. Data theft like this is seen by the authorities as a not-crime. "Oh well, no harm, no foul. We're after the really big criminals, don't you know?"
Except that it's the little crimes like this that fund the next generation of IT-based crime, on and on. Then they branch into malware, then crypto-malware, then suddenly you have a real menace on your hands...
Only if we clamp down on these "minor infractions" will we stop future and worse crimes coming our way. Only if our response is instant and strident will people get the message and not even try it any more. It's like kids with the cookie jar who are threatened but no action is taken: they just keep it up.
What really bugs me is the selective nature of law enforcement these days...
For the last 2 years or so I had been getting a relatively high string of calls to my home [unlisted, "Telephone Preference Blocked" {UK opt-in scheme to keep telemarketers out}] number, with all of them trying the "Windows Technical Support phone scam.
Then some time in march I got a call from someone who claimed to be calling from my Telco/ISP [phone and internet service via the same provider] and who began by telling me they would prove their identity by quoting me the Customer Account Number that is only printed on the paper copy of my quarterly statement. Funny old thing, it was the *right* number.
I went through a lengthy and convoluted process to get the Police to give me a crime number and then contacted a UK part of my telco [not trusting their India Call Centre] and to my surprise, [having got passed the bored tekkie] and having explained that the only explanation for this disclosure would have been if there were a criminal or criminals working within the Telco themselves, I suggested that they might want to check their records and determine who had access my client account information in the preceding 30 days...
The calls stopped, dead. I mean, not one since then.
The *only* explanation I can offer is that all the criminals calls I was receiving were actually being made by a rogue unit, working inside my telco and using my telco's own phone lines and equipment, to scam UK clients...
Funny old thing, my telco is doing the best job ever of pretending this didn't happen - right down to "disappearing" the incident reference number they gave me when I first spoke to them. Fact is, however, the calls stopped.
It would be entirely unfair - and misleading - to draw connections between the outsourcing of customer support services to third-world locations and then the rise in boiler-room scams from those locations. Having said that, I always wondered how these scammers were able to afford the international call charges. Even had they been using Skype with dial-out from a local PoP, it would have still cost them a lot of money to prosecute their attacks. But if they were embedded inside UK telephone operating companies, using the India-based call centres, then calling and scamming customers would be so very, very easy.
It's getting to the point these days where almost anyone calling you is a crook or a scammer...
Maybe there are other ways that we can address this problem?
For example, could we apply technology to help moderate over-use of email? Here are some things that we could try, if the problem were that bad...
1. Interval Between Send... You know how some authentication mechanisms have a brute-force defence mechanism that introduces a longer and longer interval between repeat attempts at a password? Suppose your email client could detect the frequency with which a user sent an email, then used that to introduce intervals if emails were sent too frequently?
2. Points Based System... Suppose every email you sent got a score based on things like the number of recipients, the number of words and/or the number of attachments. First, you could impose enforced delays as above; in the alternative you could produce a league table, showing your organisation who your worst offenders were...
3. The Charity Donation... You know how some companies/places have a "swear jar" for anyone using profanity in the office? How about having one that charges one penny, one cent, one {whatever} base unit of currency per email. At the end of the month a report is produced and people pay the amount to a charity of their choice, delivered by the organisation...
4. House Rules... Maybe something as simple as "Don't send emails before 10:00 or after 15:00 [local time]..." to give people a break in their day when they can catch up on either reading emails, or getting actual work done.
5. Numpty Awards... Do you have people who believe that they need to "cc the world" with every email? Maybe you could have a prize for "the most over-cc'd email"... Just this one thing should reduce the amount of email you get by 50%...
And the single most AMAZING thing about all of this is that they rarely seem to have the same problem twice. The ability of SpaceX to learn from mistakes and solve every problem, properly, is not just good for the space industry, it's remarkable in pretty much any field of endeavour. Sheesh, if the developers where I work got their software bugs ironed out after the first round of testing, they spend 11 months of the year on a beach and still be more productive...
;)
I don't understand why people knock Elon Musk or SpaceX/Tesla. The traits and best practices he demonstrates on a daily basis - driving them through his companies - ought to be the envy of the western world. Instead, people line up to trash him. [ Maybe they all work for United Space Alliance or Ford/General Motors?]
Please forgive my pedantry - I don't mean to challenge the validity of the passwords that you're using. However [and please bear in mind that my qualification to the OP that they need to determine their *requirements* first - and I don't know yours either ] I'm still not certain that our existing cryptoschemes will prove to be robust against quantum computing.
I'm aware that the NSA have already published guidelines concerning potentially quantum-safe algorithms, but I haven't as yet seen a robust peer-review that agrees with their recommendations. [Any pointers gratefully received]. I'm also not aware as to whether or not our existing schemes are now all demonstrable defect-free. [ We have, after all, seen recently disclosed issues that point to vulnerabilities in MD5, SHA-1 and in PRNGs]. OK, the hashing examples are a bit weak, because although they are relatively simple to implement, they are extension attacks that can be easily defeated with fixed-length data blocks...
But my point is that unless you're pretty much the greatest cryptographer on the planet [and I know for a fact that I am *not*], then I consider that the relative merits of different schemes, solutions and configurations pale in comparison to agility - the simple ability to move away from one scheme to another in the event that your current scheme is demonstrably broken.
Even this is false security: if I broke an encryption scheme, why should I tell you? And, assuming I did have the means to do this, and was trying, you can bet that I'd also be recording any interesting-looking exchanges protected with that scheme, so I could crack them when I had my solution ready.
Lastly, bear in mind the subject of the request. This is VOIP communications between two individuals. Anyone wanting to understand the value of the communication would get as much value [if not more] from the meta-data as they did from the call itself.
It's all relative...
Actually, I didn't mention any specific algorithm. In fact, you'll see that one of the design criteria I suggested was to have a product that could be quickly migrated from one encryption scheme to a replacement.
This is because we've learned, thanks to Edward Snowden, that much of what we thought we knew about the security of western encryption schemes was entirely wrong.
We learned that it doesn't have to be an attack directly against the algorithm itself, but could be against the PRNG. Subsequently, we've learned that it could be an attack against side channel data. Or the acoustics of circuit interference. Or power fluctuations of components performing compute work.
So what I'm actually saying is: work on the premise that whatever product you use is going to have to employ an encryption scheme of some kind. Rather than think purely about the product's human interface layer, take a good, long hard look at that implementation of security, and make sure that you pick one which is agile, which can swap from one scheme to another the moment we learn that the scheme it is using has been broken. If you design-in the idea that your solution of choice is going to be compromised, you'll be much less surprised when it actually happens...
I make no claims, warranties, complaints or recommendations for AES or any other contemporary algorithm.
You mention the need for "secure chat", but don't express "how secure" you would like that to be. As others have posted, if you're connected to the internet (and your question is worded to imply that you're looking at Voice Over IP (VOIP) solutions, then there is pretty much no secure option out there... An Agency like the NSA could record all your data packets and brute-force them pretty quickly, if they so chose.
;)
Having said that, it might be possible for us to brainstorm the sort of attributes that would help to make your VOIP calls less insecure. The collective wisdom of slashdotters might then be able to suggest some alternative products for you to consider. Things to look out for might include:-
1. A solution that uses a central server only for the purpose of establishing the IP address of your chosen call recipient, then allows all communication to that recipient to happen directly, point-to-point. There is no need to route call traffic through central servers (unless you want to listen in). Ahem. Skype.
2. A solution that not only uses the latest approved encryption algorithms, but which makes the swapping of an algorithm a relatively easy process [think user-selectable option, addition of a library file with the algorithm code]. The upgrading of key strength/entropy parameters should be even easier...
3. A solution that includes, within the encryption stream, random white noise padding (to make it much harder to determine the precise amount of data being exchanged) might be nice.
And so on...
I did think about including an option that said, "For each legitimate call channel that you set up using the central register of logged-in users, pick three more logged in users at random and simultaneously exchanged random, encrypted data packets with those users too." Unfortunately, there are multiple issues with that. First, what if one of those random users really was under surveillance by a three-letter-agency. Using the "association" rules, that agency would then start monitoring you *real* closely... and second, running four calls for the cost of one might actually degrade your network/audio performance if you happen to be on a slow link.
Bottom line; there is no easy answer to your question, but please don't consider using Skype and "secure" in the same statement...
Have to admit I haven't followed the details too closely, but I vaguely remember reading that the two failed attempted landings came as a result of a lack of hydraulic fluid in actuators. Apparently there is no recycling of hydraulic fluid in the first stage, because calculations showed that it was more sensible to have a small tank with fluid than have a recirculating system with a pump.
IIRC, the issue was that the 1st stage simply ran out of hydraulic fluid, resulting in a loss of ability to control the stage...
Really appreciate your post - there's some useful information in there.
However, with what you've explained [and, perhaps, in a way that is not remotely connected to the original article, there's another interesting possibility here.
Back when I was a kid in the 70s [maybe early 80s], the UK ran a television commercial from "Habitat", a UK company which offers home furnishings, kitchenware, linens, that sort of thing. All very stylish, modern and chic.
The commercial was accompanied by an audio soundtrack that included some very fast-tempo clapping, so that the images on the screen could change incredibly rapidly. This commercial ran for a little while - and Habitat seemed to do very well out of that particular campaign. Then along came a neuro-psychologist from one of the UK universities and pointed out that what Habitat had actually been doing was actually creating subliminal impression. Brainwashing, pure and simple. Apparently, it's possible to "flash up" an image very quickly, so quickly that your conscious mind won't even register it, but in such a way that your subconscious mind can actually read and store it. Later, when you go into light sleep and your brain transfers short-term memories to long-term storage, these images and their messages get imprinted...
So whilst this little detour may not have a huge amount to do with the OP, there are maybe some threats to the user of a computer in which the video system has been compromised. And interestingly, those threats might not be directed at the computer at all, but at the user.
Very difficult to spot, too, I'd reckon...