Comment Microsoft: Keep paying more. (Score 1) 54
Microsoft
Micro-Soft
Hugely-Hard
Micro-Soft
Hugely-Hard
Comment Re:Can I pay him not to post? (Score 2) 215
Well, yes. For many years, presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, referred to the United States as "the indispensible nation". And my reaction was always, "Doesn't that mean the US is a single point of failure for civilization?"
We are currently performing an experiment which addresses this question: can the US enjoy the benefits of soft power without the cost? That's the whole point of obeying *norms*. No individual force is going to punish you if you are treacherous, mercurial, foul-mouthed, disrespectful and generally unpredictable. Everyone will punish you.
I think an inevitable cost of this experiment will be that the world will decide that the US can't be a single point of failure for global democracy any longer. In many ways, that's something that will be good for us. But it's also going to cost us in painful ways. When the world decides to move away from the dollar as the international reserve currency, you will see both inflation and higher interest rates on everything from credit cards to mortgages, to business loans that will offset the export advantages. We will need *more* business investment to shift the economy to producing low value goods again, so the transition will be rocky.
Submission + - AI Data Centers Being Built Faster Than They Can Be Secured (securityweek.com)
wiredmikey writes: AI is reshaping data centers and introducing security risks traditional architectures weren't designed to handle. As AI data centers scale at breakneck speed, security isn't keeping up. Researchers outline the Top 10 AI infrastructure security risks, including hardware integrity, multi-tenant isolation, high-speed network fabrics, supply chain compromise, and patching failures.
Submission + - Physicists create first room-temperature quantum material (phys.org)
alternative_right writes: In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.
Comment An AMAZING number of flaws (Score 4, Insightful) 76
The big underlying issue is why does Microsoft deliver software with so many flaws?
Submission + - How Microsoft's "Little Workaround" Created a Major Pentagon Threat (propublica.org)
joshuark writes: ProPublica Reporter Renee Dudley heard Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary.
The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.
Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.
“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.
In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.
It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.
The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.
Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.
“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.
In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.
It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.
Comment Re: Oh well (Score 1) 251
They can work, but they have major issues.
1)For at least the first 6 months, if not the first several years, it will take more time and money to teach them than they generate. Why would any company do this?
2)As a hiring manager at company B, I see you apprenticed at company A. I have no idea if that means you're qualified. I can't trust company A to tell me, they're a competitor. Schools stand as a neutral 3rd party telling me that they've completed a set curriculum and should know that much. It's not perfect, but it's a start.
3)Some fields just have a huge amount of up front learning before you can be useful at all. Apprentice plumber? You can run and fetch tools and hold things in place while you watch and learn. Apprentice electrical engineer? You have no idea what inductance is on day one. There's literally nothing you can do. So basically at this point you're hoping the company sets up a school.
Comment Re:Solar fricken roadways all over again (Score 1) 120
It's a trade off: you get abundant free energy to run the server, with extreme constraints on cooling because your server is running in the most perfect Thermos bottle ever.
Others are taking the opposite tack: undersea data centers for abundant free cooling at the expense of having to get the power down to your servers.
If had to bet on which one is more practial, I'd go with undersea servers. Build them off the coast of Chile, run cables out from batery-backed solar plants in the Atacama desert.
Comment Re:Experience (Score 1) 31
Can we add "surprise and delight" to that list of firing reasons?
Comment Re:"Unknown" risen to 20%, did Windows really decl (Score 1) 86
Probably some of
E) Users are purposefully using privacy blockers that don't leak details of their computer
as well. Why should a website know my OS? It's serving HTML, it shouldn't make a difference to it.
Comment Re:Amazon is corrupt! (Score 4, Insightful) 22
I think it may be evidence that Amazon has a shitty corporate culture that squeezes every penny it can out its employees.
Corruption can happen anywhere, but it's more likely to happen in totalitarian cultures where people feel like the system is rigged anyway. That's why countries like Russia and China have corruption problems. But I suspect the same feelings of me vs. the system occur in a capitalist enterprise like Amazon where employees are governed by dystopian, rigid, computerized metrics.
Comment Re:"Just" 59K (Score 1) 98
Central banks do a lot of useful things, but they don't give currency a value (they can, however manipulate the value others give it by printing it, destroying it, changing interest rates, changing the amount of reserve banks need and the multiple they can lend, etc). What gives a currency value is supply and demand- the fact other people want that currency. Which is also what sets international exchange rates.
There's also the fact you need it to pay taxes, which sets a base amount of demand. But beyond that it's all supply and demand when deciding how much value it has against other currencies or physical objects.
Comment Re: something is useless (Score 1) 98
WHich is different from crypto how? You print it from doing large amounts of useless work on a computer that provides no value and is immediately thrown out. Or the new proof of stake algorithms, in which you print it by having previously printed it. I'll take cash, thanks.
Submission + - Feds Want to Drop Requirement for Autonomous Cars to Have a Brake Pedal (caranddriver.com)
sinij writes:
Braking distance regulations would stick around, but the physical pedals would no longer be required for cars designed to be exclusively autonomous.
I would want any autonomous car to have emergency brake and/or shutoff.
Submission + - Europe: The World's Fastest-warming Continent (barrons.com)
fjo3 writes: The latest heatwave sweeping across Europe is a stark reminder that it is the world's fastest-warming continent, stretching into an Arctic that is heating at an even greater pace.
Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May.
Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May.
