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Comment: Re:Einstein is not god (Score 1) 118

He has had successes where others could not supply the necessary creativity, so I think you owe him an apology. IANAP but assume you find superdeterminism insane because it would need to account for preselecting the myriad of fluctuations that would affect a RNG, and not due to religious reaction to the loss of destiny in which the
Universe is set in steel.
It seems to this non-physicist that if the Universe is a simulation (another insane idea) it would be possible to choose solely the desiref outcome and trace back upstream to automatically select the required fluctuations.
Repugnant perhaps, but two insanities just might provide a soution.

Comment: You don't get it yet (Score 2) 148

by mattr (#46373523) Attached to: The Spy In Our Living Room


Capability matrix:

Intent matrix:

Matrix Product: (exploitable output, or the threat)
A criminal organization could pressure a Verizon sysadmin.

Once you or someone many steps removed who you don't even know has been targeted or an annotation has been made, all past and future activity can be scheduled for heightened investigation, including active installation of subversions to improve the data feed.
It can be quite impersonal, like a game of chess. And there is no way to remove your tag.
Since tangential conversations and proximity drive data insights, "living with sincerity and honesty" is irrelevant.
One might hope that automated moral agents (strong AI) might one day swing things in the other direction, but they don't exist except in science fiction at this point and anything close to it is owned by the organizations doing the collation.

Comment: Heck no stay out of the middle (Score 1) 177

by mattr (#46316373) Attached to: Most Alarming: IETF Draft Proposes "Trusted Proxy" In HTTP/2.0

Call me old school but transparent interception of https does not increase my feeling of safety. It breaks the net and any security I might imagine in a transaction. This technology will make it really easy for anyone to do what for example Microsoft does to Skype connections (which is why Skype isn't allowed in my company). It provides for any number of decryption points to be created between you and your bank or whatever. The doc suggests that it can be used for both anonymization and deep inspection, positing that both are "good". I think it depends on who the user is whether one is desirable or not. As for a company pushing corporate certificates down its users' throats without them knowing it, I think this is pretty dangerous. The Internet is such a pervasive part of life now that if not informed, a user has a reasonable expectation that his or her communications will not be intercepted and possibly reformulated. It is like an operator listening to your conversation and being able to interject words into the conversation that you both think the other has said. Perhaps some people who don't remember a time when there was no social media don't get it. However I think a company should trust its employees and not intercept communications leaving the company, it is despicable immoral and weakens human dignity.

If there are such overarching security issues like multimillion dollar contracts or secret plans that are worth alienating your workforce, then you should tell them and also install other demeaning but powerful security technology like biometrics, laser fields, strip searches, etc. The idea that some guys sat down to write this document and imagined that the "good" uses of this would not be massively overshadowed by the horrible uses of it is just so appalling it nauseated me to read it.

Yes this sort of thing is going on now. But no, I don't think it is a good direction for society, I am not talking about national security forces but about corporations who will find plenty of reasons to implement this, so that while the desired "responsibility to management" i.e. load balancing, security monitoring, whatever is performed, there will become much more generally available back doors into any available communication ready waiting for someone who thinks it might be neat to open the door. The technology works regardless of whether there is a court order or anyone responsible in the vicinity. You may think I am paranoid but I think it is one thing when the police need wiretapping to catch mobsters. (I doubt they would catch any terrorists that way but who knows.) But it is another thing when the campus police, the kindergarten babysitter, every tom dick and harry with a web/phone/video startup is going to see this as a fresh new playing field. If they want to outlaw ssl fine. But I don't want to be using ssl and not know if it really is working or not because my ISP or phone company or cable company feels a need to be a man in the middle. Must the net be infinitely porous? They just can't leave shiny toys alone.

Comment: Poor hams (Score 2) 194

by mattr (#46314207) Attached to: Internet Shutdown Adds To Venezuela's Woes

So.. ham radio. Radio Club Venezolano. National Emergency Network. Satellite Dishes. ISS. Free hosting. Google... Facebook... friends.
There are probably a bunch of ways to get information in/out of Venezuela, at least in a one-way burst.
On the other hand http://www.yv5rcv.org/ tweets pane shows "Hmm, an empty timeline. That's wierd." Ouch.

Comment: Re:Hard To Aim (Score 1) 40

by mattr (#46245227) Attached to: Researchers Unveil High-Speed Laser Communications Device For Space

... that x,y info in the grid is used to encode additional information, which allows you more info not *despite* but *because* only one photon hits the detector at a time. In other words this detector only works when only one photon can reach the detector at the same time, and the beam output will have to be weakened if the spacecraft is too close perhaps. So if the photon rate is 1 photon per millisecond the bit rate can be multiples of 1000 bps due to also having an extra couple of bits per photon saying which grid cell (pixel) the photon hit.
