spauldo @ spauldo @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

I don't see it as irrational. You're thinking about it the wrong way round.

Manufacturers buy chips from proven sources, where the chip can be traced back to the fab that made it. The entire system of trust is built on the assumption that the chip designers and fabs are trustworthy and that the shady stuff happens elsewhere in the supply chain.

When the designers can't be trusted, it breaks everything. Up until now it hasn't been a problem except in extremely sensitive areas like military equipment - only governments can force a company to risk everything by compromising their own products. But take the risk away - make it cheap enough to design new microcontrollers - and what's to stop a chip designer from taking money from (for example) the Russian mafia? IoT is huge, everywhere, and Risc-V is ideally suited for it.

I don't think it's so much "security by obscurity" as it's an issue of a much lower bar for chip production. Intentional back doors or malware represent a huge risk for a product line, so manufacturers won't put them in without someone like the NSA leaning on them. It's a simple risk/benefit calculation.

But the risk is much lower if you can snag a processor design off the 'net, make your modifications, send it off to a fab and sell it under a fly-by-night operation. If it's ever discovered, you take the money and run.

I see this sort of thing all the time.

There's a disconnect between the time scales for industrial equipment and the time scales for IT and telecommunications. A PLC running a factory might last 30 years, but the software to program and troubleshoot it won't run on modern operating systems or computers. The company doesn't want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade it when there's nothing wrong with it.

Same with telecommunications - POTS worked for a century, and over the last decade we've seen it largely disappear, which makes fire alarm panels everywhere inoperative. We recently ran into an issue where a fire marshall refused to allow anything but POTS and all of the non-end-of-life hardware only supported IP.

Best: washing girlfriend with soap and water.

In older stick frame homes, it's not just practical but essential. They were built to breathe, unlike modern designs. That means that even if you're keeping the entire house warm you could still experience burst pipes.

Light pens were the extravagant thing on most microcomputers of that time. It's easy to see in hindsight why they never caught on, but at the time they were the pointing device of choice.

IIRC mice were basically only on Macs and some high end workstations in the early 80s.

It did, but if you choose to live in a universe where cats don't try to emulate humans, I'm not going to stop you.

I miss that cat. We used to chill out and Doritos together.

The cat I had when I was a kid would occasionally use the toilet. Just for peeing.

When he was done he'd paw the handle. He wasn't strong enough to actually flush it, but he tried.

Bah, I was mostly just tired from the long day.

Not in my experience. It's all just "go out and vote!"

It's just one letter away from "wang"...

Funny choice as marijuana was never Alice's drug of choice (and he's been sober nearly 40 years now).

I'm not arguing against people being informed. I'm arguing against uninformed people being encouraged to vote.

High voter turnout does change the results in many cases, but generally that's simple negative feedback. Average Americans didn't have to be well informed to vote against Trump in 2020, for instance - Trump saw to that when he made an ass of himself publicly on a regular basis. And people notice things like wars and recessions and whatnot. That's not the same as an informed voter base.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating tests or anything for voting. We've seen what that leads to.

I'm thinking more along the lines of self-determination. If someone has no interest or knowledge of politics, they should refrain from voting.

Now, continue that train of thought. Imagine that the person not voting is one of the politically ignorant mentioned in the quote.

What are they going to do at the polls? Are they going to add signal or noise? What is accomplished by them choosing a candidate at random?

Letting people who are informed make decisions for you happens all the time. Engineers and safety officers determine speed limits. Architects determine how the buildings you enter are constructed. Panels of electricians, firemen, and manufacturers determine the electrical codes that keep your house from randomly catching fire or electrocuting you. Interested people organize community events you attend. What makes politics any different?

My personal ideal would be that only the informed vote. Anyone has the right to become involved, as well as the right to abstain and accept the choice of their peers. Unfortunately, many people form their political opinions in echo chambers and are less informed than they think.

I think your sentence trailed off down those stairs and into the water :) Personal what?

(nice picture, BTW)

It's just little girls that will try to eat those. There seems to be no gender barrier to toddlers trying to eat little plastic pieces like this.

Edit: bah, I meant it's not just little girls.

Turns out being an idiot isn't a barrier to home ownership.

As long as they don't vote, who cares? It's the imbeciles that vote that cause the problems.

Yes, they do. So do I, for that matter. While my part of the company focuses more on government projects like water plants, fuel depots, and utility management, the rest of the company does process automation in the energy sector. That's a fancy way of saying they build control systems for refineries.

I disagree with your assertion that more thought leads to less conservatism. The particular coworker I'm talking about does quite a bit of thinking, and is quite eloquent. He's still wrong, of course, but it's due to his opinions, his priorities, and what he chooses to believe more than a lack of thought.