Warl0k3

I'll say. Us little specialties are still safe for now (big data in my case) but we're probably the first to go once these models get just a bit better. Not fun stuff.

I can personally attest that no, some people do in fact want that.

There is no home-user need to run bitlocker. There's dozens of alternatives, that do not rely on TPM, that are just as effective, and that you really should be using anyways since they aren't controlled by M$.

I think in this case it's not exceptionally nefarious, just greedy. They'll save boatloads of money (and be able to centralize their facilities) if these reactors get approved, instead of being forced to pay to upgrade the municipal infrastructure because of the terrific strain they're placing on it. A massive power source, all for them? Hot diggity.

I’m familiar with the specific attacks you mentioned

(I made "false landings" up.)

No, it's not unique to the US. But we're by far the most dependent on technology out of any country and knowing this we talk a big game and do nothing to back said game up. The frequency with which [any agency you care to name] fails information security audits is pretty much just one long interrupted string of failures, and having worked with many western non-US governmental groups, the difference in security culture is pretty shameful.

Yeah... this is an example of what I'm talking about. It's the romanticized version of the wild west online right now, and whenever you talk about the need for increased security, you're subjected to a ~~propaganda lecture~~ (edit for clarity:) lecture about propaganda and the political implications of fucking twitter or something. Everyone is so primed to respond along the party line to the idea of troll farms that the conversation about how they're used outside of influencing our elections never even occurs to people. Most don't even realize it's an issue that could be discussed.

So lets be clear here, while you're absolutely correct about what you're saying, that's not related to what I was saying.

The near constant spear phishing, network intrusion, ransomware, impersonation, false landings, etc. attacks that every government, medical, social and technical system in the country is being constantly subjected to is the issue I am qualified to speak about. It's an area where the US isn't even attempting to fight back, and as beautiful as headline-darling things like stuxnet were, the developers that worked on it haven't figured out how to mitigate ex: the rampant identity theft throttling the country. My favorite new one has been the theft of identity and thence blackmail of recently paroled prisoners, since a bad actor can easily get them returned to prison by just, say, using their credit card at a walmart out-of-state, or applying for public benefits in a different city. This happens all the time and nobody, at all, is talking about it. It's so common I was brought in to write a set of tools that auto-generate the letter informing out-of-state LEO agencies that the person was the victim of identity theft and should not be found in violation of their parole terms, since that was so common it was all their entire staff were spending their time doing.

That's just the one example that has occured to me, if you want more I can go on for very literal hours (just ask my students (who are no doubt quite stick of the topic...)). There's no systems, or even the political or social will to investigate developing systems, that could even begin to address the most basic issues in this realm. That is the problem I was screaming helplessly into the void about.

We are pathetically behind in the cyber warfare sphere, though. Like at this point it's embarrassing, we don't even have the semblance of security education or standards for digital hardening. it's just fucking awful, and we are being obliterated by chinese/russian/anyone else troll farms and hackers because of it. massive data breaches are a weekly occurrence.

Its just... we've got the NSA, sure, and they are good at what they do. But what they do is not what we need. Right now, you can scatter some USB drives outside any gvmt office here and some poor dumb HR rep or whatever will invariably plug it in to their work desktop, and they'll totally fail to understand why it was bad for them to do that.

Congrats, you got the joke!

Tbh we probably already have that. Five Eyes is wildly held to control 50% of the TOR nodes, bitcoin cant be that much less of a priority.

This seems... idk, ideal? Lets use our cleanest & most energy dense means of power generation for our most frivolously expanding waste of energy. Unless we give microsoft authority over the DOE, which we aren't (maybe IBM tho, they seem like they can be trusted...), I'm not really seeing a downside to this.

The worst dressed nerd in a meeting is the most important one.

It's all fun and games until a Microsoft Purity Enforcement squad is kicking in your door.