I've had phish attempts back in 1993 on Solaris and IRIX... Not good ones, but people fakemailing, pretending to be from "root", asking to run a shell script that would send the
Easily detected, because I was the only person with root access, but I'm sure college students probably follow directions and kicked the university's passwd files there (although with NIS/NIS+, as well as the real password hashes stashed in
To address points 1-3, TPM 2.0 is an item that is required for a machine to pass Windows 8.1 hardware certification, so even though it isn't explicit, the technology will be there. For better, or worse, it will be with us, so might as well make it useful. If BitLocker can be made as easy to use as FileVault, it would be a big bump in the security reputation of both the hardware vendor, as well as MS.
For point 2, a good example of doing it "right" is Boxcryptor. It is a pretty UI over EncFS, but it does work and works decently well. Most customers don't care about encryption, but it can be used in a way to provide clientside protection that is pretty much transparent. The perfect is the enemy of the good, so there would need to be something done to make recovery usable... but this is a solvable problem, similar to how Apple deals with FileVault 2 recovery issues.
For point 3, it isn't a perfect solution, but it can be implemented "right". A MicroSD card slot is one way, where the slot the card is, is permanently set to be read-only (this is part of the SD spec.) To prevent altering data, the encrypted section of the card could be used to store the OS data. Even with this, it still isn't 100% (as an evil maid could pull the card, go to a place that has the SD spec for decoding the encrypted partition, and modify things), but it is secure from most things.
For point 4, 10GB boards and modules (well, over twisted pair copper that is... NICs that use SFPs are still not inexpensive) are falling in price, so it will not be surprising to see them appearing on consumer level motherboards in a few years, perhaps with some TCP offload functionality. Done right, it would be useful, and if worse comes to worst, the functionality can be shut off entirely.
It would be nice to see Lenovo go a step ahead in the consumer market and not just stop with shovelware, but maybe bundle some security features with their products. This would go a long way to fixing their black eye in the press:
1: A TPM chip shipped off and disabled (as per the spec) on all machines would be useful. Windows Vista and newer can take advantage of this and offer solid encryption that is highly resistant to brute force attack.
2: Add clientside encryption to Reachit with a public format, perhaps getting other vendors on board. This way, users have cloud access... but files are transparently encrypted, similar to BoxCryptor.
3: Have a small SSD read-only volume with a custom WIM present for install media as well as drivers. This way, if a machine needs to be reinstalled from scratch due to a HDD or SSD replacement, this can be done anywhere, and no OS media would be needed. This also is useful for recovery as well, especially if there is a way to get to a PE environment which can be used to save off files, run an offline AV scanner, or fix a haywire application.
4: Add firewalling onto the NICs themselves. Around 10 years ago, some nVidia motherboard chipsets had this capability where the onboard NICs were intelligent enough to have the ability to have their own rulesets. This was quite useful, both to keep the OS protected with IP blacklists, as well as to limit the damage a compromised OS can do (for example, block all outgoing port 25 traffic.) As an added benefit, if someone is worried about vPro or other "ring -1" management tools, those can easily be blocked at the NIC.
Some markets just come and go. It might just be that these lines of games might be just as viable as databases for one's Cabbage Patch dolls.
Would it make money? Maybe to a niche market. If I were to do something, I'd focus on price/quality as opposed to volume. For example, the guitar would not be a cheap piece of plastic, but perhaps a real one that can be strung and played as normal once someone got tired of the game.
Also, te game should go further than the last game types. Make different instruments. Allow multiple players to play the instruments at the same time, either coop, or one after the other in a battle of the bands. Even go with odd things, such as a chainsaw and doing WASP or Jackyl songs.
Mainstream-wise, no... this genre isn't going to be in vogue again, but there is still money to be made.
For a more pedestrian use, there is one thing that an engine like this that has a specific power band range would be ideal at... and that would be a generator. Here in the US, it would need to be geared to 3600 RPM unless an inverter is used.
If they were this efficient that they could get that much power output, it might be something to have as a backup generator for a house, as it could run from natural gas, propane, gasoline, or diesel.
Most of the scammers tend to be those casting a wide net. They bought an info dump with thousands of names, phone numbers, and such in it, feeding the numbers into a robodialer, and having people in a boiler room use names of relatives automatically on a scripted speech.
An anti-fraud device, or something asking for info to be called back at will be more than enough protection, because the scammer will just move to the next potential mark on the data dump and try them.
They try to be relatively quick about it. Eventually, bad number blocking sites like Mr. Number and others will have enough entries to have the fraudster's number blocked on devices subscribing to the service.
VoIP scams are easy to do. For example, callerID is fairly easy to forge and it doesn't cost much money to set up a boiler room and staff it with people who do this. This allows a company to be in India, but still call from a US number.
To boot, there are very stiff fines... but have you seen how a lot of the robocall firms are organized? Most have a lot of holding corporations that they work with, one owns the furniture, one pays the employees, one possesses the computer data, so when the main company, say XYZ corp, gets sued, they just file bankruptcy, then a new company, ABC corp gets created, and they are back in business the next day. To boot, all of these companies are registered offshore, so finding the true owners will be virtually impossible unless the company decides to hit a third rail in the US (drugs, guns, and IP violations.)
That is what I wonder about as well. Sintering requires heat, so that makes me wonder if the metal can handle the high temperatures that a turbine spins at.
However, TFA states a 3D printed rocket engine was made and actually used by UCSD researches in 2013, so there is a good chance that this can be made to function.
The rocket was 3D printed via DMLS, but then "hardened, polished, and assembled." I have zero clue on the hardening method, because non-ferrous metals can't be really heated and quenched.
I'm hoping this is something that can see actual use, because if done right, maybe we can get more people researching jet/turbine engines.
There is always the fact that a turbine engine can be used for a vehicle. With the 7+ speed transmissions available, as well as CVTs, the limitation of a turbine's narrow power band can be overcome at the gearbox.
Unfortunately, what you describe is the result of a very long cultural history of completely misunderstanding mental health. Sometimes it was actually "Big Pharma
The first thing to realize about recovering from depression is that it's a long process, often never really ending. I know someone who has been in therapy for twelve years now, and has made remarkable progress, but still has the "bad days" when her husband has to pull her out of bed to get her up in the morning. I know another person with depression who is usually just fine until something reminds him of his triggering event, that happened almost twenty years ago.
I cheated my way out. I spent six years depressed, because that was a side effect of a medication I was taking. Once I was able to change medications, I was happy again within six months. Popular culture, though, would have you believe this was the normal case. Authors have used depression as a plot gimmick in fiction, and we've historically shunned anyone whose mental health wasn't outwardly perfect. People suffering from depression are told daily (often indirectly) that they should "snap out of it" or "get over it". They're expected to simply forget their sadness and be the perfect normal members of society that they think everyone expects them to be.
Getting help is the first step, but it will not magically fix everything quickly, and that must not be the expectation. Getting help starts the recovery process, but the bad days, the dark feelings, and the perpetual ennui will still be around for quite some time.
This is exactly right.
A person considering suicide usually doesn't announce to the world that they're thinking about it. They know their friends will all say the same "don't do it" lines, and some jerk will try to tell them that they just need a hug, and someone else will point out all the trivial good things they have in their life, which will just make them feel guilty for being depressed. Then there are the assholes, who are quick to point out how cruel the "real world" is, and in doing so they communicate that the person doesn't meet their high standards for living in their precious "real world", further reinforcing the depression.
Fortunately, it's hard to hide depression from a trained eye (or a trained algorithm). Writing styles change significantly with one's mood, often in consistent ways (on a per-person basis). If someone tends to write shorter posts and use stronger language when their depression worsens, it becomes a useful gauge for knowing how they're doing without asking. Interests often change as well, and especially criticisms. If a person stops caring about their adorable newborn cousin and starts obsessing about the size of their various body measurements, it may be cause for concern.
The other thing to note is that depression is a chronic condition. A quick post about how bad your day was isn't as alarming as a series of posts over the last few months saying that you just consistently feel melancholy. It can be described metaphorically as the brain being addicted to sadness, and the detection is similar. One night drinking too much doesn't qualify as an alcoholic, and a trip to Las Vegas doesn't make one a compulsive gambler. Rather, it's a long-term trend in bahavior, and again, an algorithm can easily detect that trend, where friends will likely only see the short-term changes. Friends are also likely to dismiss their concerns by rationalizing, considering it reasonable to be so upset, because of some bad thing that has happened recently.
Attention is the second best thing to help a person with depression. The best is to go beyond mere attention, and offer support. Detach the worthwhile person from their degrading affliction, and show that you care for them. Treat the depression as one would a broken leg or a bad cough. It gets in the way, but it's not the defining quality of the person. That distinction, once accepted, is the first step to recovery. Just like with an addiction, there are good days and there are bad days, but the slow progress eventually bears fruit.
The biggest issue that people have is app compatibility, and without apps, the entire ecosystem winds up marginalized, as it did with Maemo/Meego (which were excellent operating systems, but without popular support, just didn't continue on.)
The good news is that we have tools to fix this, especially with containers, virtualization, and btrfs that offers online and offline deduplication.
Virtualization is important. With this, one can have their apps for work in one VM which is up to corporate policies when it comes to encryption and access control, and a second VM for personal stuff. It would be nice if US phones had more dual SIM card support, so one could use two numbers at once, and "never the twain shall meet".
Containers are useful as well, mainly as a way to isolate and secure apps.
Of course, having deduplication saves space, so one can have 2-3 VMs, with most of the Android footprint (mainly
This is a good thing. In the past, a company would get breached, and it would have a minimal impact after paying for a PR campaign, definitely forgotten after six months.
However, the Sony hack with E-mails leaked which got celebs mad and data destroyed is different. Before that, a company got hacked... but their data was still there, so a lot of managers just brushed it off. However, if an intrusion means that the entire company is unable to do business and likely will fail in days to weeks [1], security goes from something in the backseat that is perceived as having no ROI, to a major concern.
This is a good thing. We have had solid security concepts since the 1970s, and most enterprise applications and devices can be well locked down. It is just using the functionality involved and making it work for that company/organization's culture.
It also might get vendors focused on security, perhaps being able to standardize on things. For example, it would be nice to have a style of USB cryptographic token that works with anything, be it an AIX machine or a Windows box.
Which means more money for those who can keep pace with security.
[1]: There are a lot of businesses who decided to follow the hype and drop tape, and instead, go with tiers of SANs for backups. Backing up to SANs does provide decent protection against hardware faults.
However, all data accessible comes at a cost. A bad guy can log onto the SAN's backend and purge all data with just a single command. Once this is done, the data is gone, and because there are no backup tapes... there is no recovery possible. Even with SANs that replicate to different physical locations, the deletion will be replicated. Even more insidious is tampering over time where someone logs on a SAN, and just starts overwriting stored data that nobody ever accesses.
It makes me wonder if tape will go from being laughed at as "retro" to being a primary medium for storage again. A pile of tapes stored offline will require physical access to destroy, as opposed to zeroing out everything with just one button. Even cloud "media" is easily destroyed if a blackhat gets enough access.
Devil's advocate here:
What about DISA/NIST and their publications/guidelines? This is paid for by the taxpayers, and can be very useful, even though the info might be obvious in some places [1]. They have decent checklist guides on recent operating systems under their national vulnerability database.
It is nice to be able to fetch info, even if one doesn't have to worry about stuff like FISMA and SCAP, just to have a decent baseline of security.
[1]: Things like using group policies, not allowing multiple users use the same account, etc.
Of course that's assuming that robots are born atheists,
AIs will be "born" as whatever they're programmed to be.
Humans are born with a natural predisposition to see actions as the result of a human-like being, with a stronger prejudice toward more-similar beings. That's wholly unrelated to whether such actions actually are a God's will, but it's how we are built. Similarly, a sufficiently-advanced AI could have preprogrammed knowledge that it was built be humans, or it could be left as a blank slate to form its own conclusions about the world. If we are to play the role of God, we can decide what our master plan is for our creations.
On the other hand, suppose someone did endow a strong AI with emotion – encoded, say, as a strong preference for one type of experience over another...
Then you've created an AI with prejudice, not emotion. Emotion is a fluid thing, as the result of several competing motivations, but that's unrelated to faith.
Faith is a free choice with a conscious acknowledgement of doubt. I choose to believe in the absence of a God, knowing that there's a chance I'm incorrect. Other people choose to believe in one or more deities, knowing there's a chance they are incorrect. Certain other folks have been born into a society that does not permit any other choice but to believe what society demands, so the choice may not necessarily be a free one.
For a robot to have faith, it must first actually understand what it is considering. It must understand what is observable and what is not, and it must understand what of its belief may be observable.
Free faith is a matter of knowing everything you can, and choosing what you want to think about what is unknowable. Yes, we can create AIs that are not free, but I don't see much achievement in that.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
