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Comment Re:Why is Israel not part of the NNPT? (Score 1) 52

Because they didn't sign it.

Saying: "everyone who has them except Israel is allowed to keep them" is just plain wrong.

Which just might be why they didn't sign on - and part of why "Israel has had a policy of opacity regarding its nuclear weapons program."

Some things to remember about the NNPT:
  - Not every country in the world is a signatory.
  - Even signatories didn't permanently give up their right to develop nuclear weapons: By the treaty's own terms (section X(1)), they can drop out on three month's notice:

Article X

1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

Comment Wonder how they'll rate Global Warming discussions (Score 1) 375

... when there is more than one version of the truth (conflicts, spin vs fact)... plus not all information is facts... philosophical questions may have more than one answer etc... so I am definitely curious to see how this works out.

I'm curious as well.

In particular, I wonder how they'll handle Global Warming / Climate Change discussions.

Then there's electoral politics, economics, Illegal immigration / undocumented migrants, ...

Comparing to a knowlege base presupposes that the knowledge base is full of truth. Filtering search results to exclude (or down-rate) anything at odds with the current paradigm is a recipe for hamstriging research, debate, and intellectual progress

  Ideas need to be supported or rejected based on evidence and logic, not whether they're orthodox.

Comment Re:Or the malware might cover its tracks. (Score 1) 324

I mean if they go to the trouble to do this why do it in a way that would be discoverable via jtag for other state actors. I mean if they go to the trouble to do this why do it in a way that would be discoverable via jtag for other state actors.

Because hacking the JTAG to hide malicious hacking of the software is a massive endeavor and a massive PITA.

Besides, if they built it into the original software they wouldn't NEED to hack the JTAG to hide it. The code would match the released version. (You'd have to reverse-engineer it to discover their back doors.)

Comment Or the malware might cover its tracks. (Score 1) 324

If you ask the drive to read out the whole flash.
The maybe the firmware would have to go to the platter to get the real image.

Or the malware could regenerate the un-attacked version.

For instance: If it's a patch that loads into an otherwise cleared-to-known-vallue region it can detect that region while reporting flash content and report the cleared value, instead. Add a couple other tiny regions where it saved (or alread knew) the previous contents where it "sank it's hooks" and you can't tell it's there from its replies to dump requests.

JTAG seems safer.

Yep. JTAG, in principle, could be corrupted. But it would require substantial hardware support that almost certainly isn't there (yet!)

Comment Hashes can be useful. (Score 1) 324

Which is why I always laugh my ass off at all these people who use PGP to sign things and put a hash on the same website you download it from ... look you can verify this file you downloaded from the website hasn't changed because theres no way anyone would be smart enough to update the hash as well!

That's why you SIGN the hash. Then only the public key needs to be published by a different route.

And it doesn't HURT to publish it on the web site as well: Then someone tampering by substituting a different public key sets off alarm bells when that differs from the public key obtained from another site or by another path. Blocking that makes man-in-the-middle more complex: The attacker has to have essentially total control of the path to the victim and be able to recognize and substitute the public key whenever it shows up. One slip-up and somebody may raise the alarm.

Meanwhile: Even if publishing hashes on the same site may not provide additional security against MITM, it DOES let you check the download wasnt corrupted in transit (in ways other than malicious substitution). With modern protocols that's less of a problem these days than it used to be, but a check would be comforting.

Comment Re: stop the pseudo-scientific bullshit (Score 1) 88

The Great Extinction, caused by Siberia becoming one gigantic lava bed (probably after an asteroid strike), was a bit further back in time. Geologically, Siberia is old. You might be confusing the vestiges of Ice Age dessication (which was 10,000 years ago) but which involves the organics on the surface with the geology (aka rocks).

Regardless, though, of how the craters are forming, the fact remains that an awful lot of greenhouse gas is being pumped into the air, an awful lot of information on early civilization is being blasted out of existence, and a lot of locals are finding that the land has suddenly become deadly.

Comment Re: Authority (Score 2, Interesting) 234

That is a good question. The last time the courts ruled on this, the ruling was that the FCC had ceded power and couldn't claim it back without the will of god. Or Congress, or something.

Personally, I'm all in favour of Thor turning up to the Supreme Court, but he probably wouldn't be allowed in on account of not having a visa.

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