> The range of an AIS transmission is about 40 nautical miles at most. If youâ(TM)re receiving a position that is more than that away from the receiver, you can pretty much consider it to be bogus.

At sea, yes. On land (for inland shipping) and maybe near the coast there are AIS base stations that can relay AIS messages. Still there is a limit on the amount of hops and it's still shouldn't be too hard to filter for obviously bogus positions.

AIS is not exactly ASCII clear text. Your point still stands since there is no encryption at all going on, but I thought I'd mention some details for who might be interested.

AIS messages are broadcasted as binary data from which you can extract the different pieces of data according to the specification for each message type (of which there are about two dozen not including regional extensions): first 6 bits for the message type, next 2 bits for a repeat indicator, then 30 bits for the MMSI of the sender, and so on. (these first 3 fields are actually common between all message types). The most common message contains the position and things like speed and course; another message is used for static data like name and dimensions, and for voyage-related data like destination and ETA (this saves bandwidth because this message is sent much less frequently).

From the point of view of the equipment on board there is an extra layer of indirection: the AIS transponder communicates the received AIS data to other equipment on board, like the electronic chart system, encapsulated in NMEA (IEC 61162-1) sentences which are normally ASCII clear text, but AIS is encapsulated in it in a way somewhat like base-64. That looks like this:

!AIVDM,1,1,,A,H4eI4aTUC=D5C8W00000000P@320,0*20

(Where normal NMEA looks e.g. like $GPGGA,082130,5114.26779567,N,0422.33536853,E,2,,,,,,,,*65 which is human readable if you know how to interpret it).

Why don't you put an exception handler on the top level of your code? You know best what your code should do with each error, how to show it to the user (or not), how to log it (or not).

Be glad that Python makes all that information available and allows you to do with it as fits best for your usecase.

> The world is not ready for crypto.

Crypto is not ready for the world, is my take on the matter.

> It needs to die.

Yes.

> his assistant (I forget her name) was going out of her way to get queen Victoria to say that she, queen Victoria, was not amused

Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper.

Indeed, the back seat was removed and in its place an extra fuel tank was installed.

What? Every computer can run Powershell. It's just a command interpreter.

Restricted does *not* mean that Powershell can't run; it only means Powershell won't execute scripts. Which is not even meant as a security system, as Microsoft's own documentation says: it's only meant so anyone can set basic rules and prevent accidentally violating those.

Imagine buying a printer and only being able to use ink from HP.

See https://youtu.be/6K9xfmkMsvM?t..., (Dr April Baller from the WHO):

When and how should masks be used in order to protect against the new coronavirus?

If you do not have an respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask like this one. Masks alone can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly. Masks should only be used by healthcare workers, caretakers and by people who are sick, with symptoms like fever and cough.

"Masks alone can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly." That is not something I made up, it really was advise from the WHO.

(The video further contains similar quotes from Belgian epidemiologists and politicians, but also quotes that are taken out of context and the video as a whole is promoting a coronasceptical point of view that I absolutely don't share. But that bit from the WHO is genuine, as far as I can see.)

False. It really was the message, I remember that very well. Maybe not where you live, but certainly where I live. There were two reasons stated. First, using masks could, they said, lead to a false sense of safety, leading people to not respecting a safe distance anymore (Didn't even the WHO refer to studies like that for some time?). Second, the general public doesn't know how to properly put masks on and off, doesn't have the discipline to disinfect their hands before and after, and that would allegedly lead to increased instead of decreased risk, because of potential contagion by all kinds of pathogens (including SARS-CoV-2) collected during use.

I don't remember exactly when they changed that message, but I think it wasn't before early May (or even later).

That was the reason, but in many places that was, at least initially, not the message. The message was that there was no evidence for the effectiveness of masks, and even that masks would do more harm than good.

True, there was no evidence. But there was a growing body of indications, and there was no real evidence for transmission by contaminated surfaces.

It was a big stupid mistake, eroding public trust in official guidelines.

Compaq didn't reverse engineer DOS, they famously clean room reverse engineered the BIOS. Principle is still the same though.

I can't find any indication in the articles that they had access to any non-public data.

From https://www.comparitech.com/bl..., linked from the linked article:

> The profiles were taken from publicly viewable social media pages on Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Are the profiles really "exposed" if they were public anyway?

> I donate for a browser

Actually you don't, and this is something very important to be aware of. When you donate, you donate to the Mozilla Foundation, which has all kinds of initiatives toward "Building a healthier internet". Developing Firefox is not one of them: that falls under the Mozilla Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is partly financed by the Mozilla Corporation, so it's not like your donations to the Foundation eventually end op in the Corporation.

This is a common misconception. I had no idea about any of this. I learned about it from a number of comments on a recent Ars Technica article. And it's true: the donation page (https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/) says "Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Mountain View, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes. They are tax-deductible in the U.S. to the fullest extent permitted by law." Here's the Foundation's homepage: https://foundation.mozilla.org.... Nothing there talks about developing Firefox. And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations and 2% of annual net revenues from the Mozilla Corporation, amounting to over US$8.3 million in 2016."

So there is actually not even a way to donate to help support Firefox development! The only way to help, I guess, is to actively contribute to the code.