asciilifeform: was a genuine annoyance to usg, in the courts, press, net

asciilifeform: this fella used to be the 'genuine article' ☟︎

asciilifeform: l0lward

asciilifeform: ^ for extra lulz

asciilifeform: 'As deputy, Felten will report to former Google exec Megan Smith, the recently named White House CTO.'

asciilifeform: spun, of course, as a 'concession to critics' - naturally

asciilifeform: http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/11/white-house-appoints-nsa-criticizing-computer-scientist-ed-felten-to-key-post << reported in some rag

asciilifeform: sic transit gloria mundi (tm)

asciilifeform: written by random bozos

asciilifeform: and that 'freedom to tinker' now hosts things like https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/randomwalker/bitcoin-faces-a-crossroads-needs-an-effective-decision-making-process

asciilifeform: and just accepted yet a new job from obamitler himself

asciilifeform: re: l0ltr0n1cs: today i found out that ed felten (formerly 'freedom to tinker' blog, lawsuits against riaa, etc.) has been a usg stooge for several years now. ☟︎

asciilifeform: http://www.coindesk.com/california-business-raided-over-alleged-altcoin-gambling << unrelated l0l

asciilifeform: (usg miners)

asciilifeform: what mircea_popescu said ~1.5 yrs ago.

asciilifeform: ahahahahaha.

asciilifeform: reduces, in the end, to 'gossipd'

asciilifeform: (well, -receives- signed payloads from signatures in known set)

asciilifeform: however, a communication device which only carries signed payloads, would potentially be useful.

asciilifeform: it means that you actually look at each parcel that moves.

asciilifeform: anything else - call it something else

asciilifeform: sneakernet.

asciilifeform: trinque: air-gapped means just that

asciilifeform: why?!

asciilifeform: wat

asciilifeform: likely, memory (or even cpu subcomponents)

asciilifeform: of course 1 machine

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo ^

asciilifeform: http://www.corestore.org/w.htm << further 'sommelier' pr0n

asciilifeform: 'when the output actually mattered: the bygone era of dependable computing' (book does not exist, aborted project of mine)

asciilifeform: http://www.9999hp.net/botnet << unrelated

asciilifeform: fun little b00k

asciilifeform recommends 'inside the as/400' (frank soltis) re: ibm design 'philosophy' in practice

asciilifeform: high-end versions, iirc, had tandem-voting circuit

asciilifeform: ^ boxes where you could pull out just about -any- component and replace, without stopping or so much as pausing, work

asciilifeform: even the laptops were spiffy

asciilifeform: (theo de raadt, of course)

asciilifeform: what would be involved in virtualizing it, and if it was so simple, we would not still be fixing bugs in the exact same area in our operating system going on 12 years.'

asciilifeform: 'While x86 hardware has the same page-protection hardware that an IBM 390 architecture machine has, modern PC machines are a mess. They are architecturally so dirty, that parts of the video, keyboard, and other IO devices are interfaced with even to do simple things like context switching processes and handling interrupts. Those of us who have experience with the gory bits of the x86 architecture can clearly say that we know

asciilifeform: betcha those keys are nearly adult size

asciilifeform: e.g., that 'works' microcomputer thing looks considerably more usable than any modern 'tablet' gizmo.

asciilifeform: (from mircea_popescu's link the other day)

asciilifeform: unrelated >> http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17341&hilit=3do+blaster&start=1580 << 'sommeliers'

asciilifeform: when the sahib-rajah-coolie relationship was going strong

asciilifeform: this was mainly a '90s thing

asciilifeform: today, less of this, yes

asciilifeform: so rajah - sends son.

asciilifeform: but western sahib says 'want imf credit? be gentleman - and gentlemen send sons to oxbridge'

asciilifeform: from their pov - aha

asciilifeform: (hostage and cultural zombiefodder)

asciilifeform: mandatorily

asciilifeform: in that 'cream' of kids would go to oxbridge, harvaprinceyaleton, etc

asciilifeform: the thing is, usg had roughly same relation with ru elite as brits had with india

asciilifeform: ?

asciilifeform: aha and most of'em are schmucks like anybody else

asciilifeform: everybody else - 'aspirational' no ?

asciilifeform: stalin's grand-daughter ?

asciilifeform: romanov nephews ?

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: what is the 'actual elite' in question ?

asciilifeform: and walk through the traditional western idiocies, and attempt to import

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: presently, the stupid rich kids do tour of duty in the west

asciilifeform: because not enough radiation damage yet, or somesuch

asciilifeform: it looks precisely like the imported feedstock. just, no mass uptake

asciilifeform: (is dignork still around? perhaps he'd do the deed)

asciilifeform: exquisitely lulzy. i'd translate if had time.

asciilifeform: ;;later tell mircea_popescu http://dargot.livejournal.com/282666.html#comments << massive mega-l0l re: pheminisms etc. with commentary

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: http://oglaf.com/delusionist << obligatory

asciilifeform: why should anyone outside of idiot microshit take an interest in this

asciilifeform: because no one wants to edit ntldr.exe aha.

asciilifeform: microshit 'research,' what do you expect.

asciilifeform: 'Delusional boot provides a full set of devices with complete functionality to the OS only during the boot process. Later on, it disables the non-critical devices and it replaces the critical ones with a set of barebones virtual devices that only offer common case functionality.'

asciilifeform: mats: ick

asciilifeform: 'who would bother to check' is sop.

asciilifeform: anal holes, to these folks, happen purely by chance, misfortune. even contemplating the alternative is unbearable cognitive dissonance to them.

asciilifeform: usually just blind cargocultism.

asciilifeform: (in american schools, marks range in - descending - from 'a' to 'f')

asciilifeform: al schwartz taught it to me as 'the a-students hire the b-students who hire the f-students'

asciilifeform: aha.

asciilifeform: 'fits in head' and 'developers count on fingers on one hand' are good thermonukes against this

asciilifeform: i'm not certain why he is in an anthill to begin with

asciilifeform: grep for 'You've been smoking something really mind altering'

asciilifeform: ^ theo de raadt

asciilifeform: https://archive.is/qBJHX << obligatory

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: 'shot himself in the head twice'

asciilifeform: the 'unrelated bug causes vulnerable code to remain active' thing very much smacks of 'he fell onto the knife ten times'

asciilifeform: and there is a bottomless mine of cruft where this came from

asciilifeform: virtually -all- 'cloud' bullshit affected.

asciilifeform: not aws-specific

asciilifeform: 'bug' ahahaha.

asciilifeform: and 'For many of the affected virtualization products, a virtual floppy drive is added to new virtual machines by default. And on Xen and QEMU, even if the administrator explicitly disables the virtual floppy drive, an unrelated bug causes the vulnerable FDC code to remain active and exploitable by attackers.'

asciilifeform: plenty of wank in the thread re: 'amazon' et al. having been told of the hole long before public

asciilifeform: http://wiki.osdev.org/Floppy_Disk_Controller << him

asciilifeform: intel 82072A etc.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: code in question concerned an emulated traditional floppy controller (the kind you gave sectors, tracks, etc)

asciilifeform: ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538437 )

asciilifeform: mats: from the 'hackernews' thread, 'Why indeed. In fact we tried to remove the FDC, but Windows needs it in order to do certain operations like installing some drivers, so there was resistance there.'

asciilifeform: mats: the interesting part is that floppy controller in qemu and derived proggies is enabled -even if you don't use floppy option.-

asciilifeform has always liked the british 'devil's wind' cannon punishment, but for some reason grew up believing at first that it had been invented by the turks