On Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 09:49:02PM -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote: > Stuart Longland <[email protected]> wrote: [...] > > > Basically your best bet: don't rely on a single vendor. It's harder for > > them to hide their espionage then as one vendor won't know how to hide > > another vendor's dirty deeds. > > Precisely. Most of the risks are in the bugs, and if you hit a problem > you'll be Dennis Muilenburg saying you didn't know (that phrase works > one way today, but if in the next few days he leaves his position, it > will work a different way). The unknown risk factors are first unknown > and potentially accidental, and secondly unknown and now we are supposed > to guess it wasn't accidental. Vendors are wired to increase > performance and noone judges security aspects, that the process where > the "accident" arises. Maybe we should suddenly accuse absolutely > everyone of malpractice! As if that will change anything...
While the problems of spying on individuals are important and have an ugly side [1], I think nowadays [2][3] that long term, the real problem will be autonomous hardware. Just like two recent catastrophes involving Boeing. On the one side, it may be seen as unfortunate sequence of human errors, fueled by greed (fueled by procreation drive). On the other side, the very same decisions led to making a machine, two of which killed more than six hundred people, before someone turned the switch. As for now, there was a way to stop it. I wait in terror for "our devices never stop". [1] I am not sure, do they have a nice side? perhaps if certain kind of crimes could be fought with it? [2] This can change in the future - GIGO, FIFO, you all know it [3] Oh, I did not come to it all by myself. If some of you have a chance, try reading Stanislaw Lem. Some of his works have even been translated to English (but I cannot say how well, opinions say very well, but then again US editors like changing what they print from original versions (anecdotic evidence, surprisingly too many to ignore)). Do not be misled by his joking tone. The man survived in the heart of WW2 and witnessed both post-war and Cold War. People mostly take things at the face value. He told them jokes about humanity and readers had a good time. Some, not so good.[4] [4] For shortified super-short version, try Henry Kuttner's "Twonky". > So this is misc, which is full of lots of talk about nothing, by people > who can't change the ecosystem. Having worried vocally about this > before, I know I can't change it. Pretty sad to see people who are even > less capable find the energy to moan about it. Especially americans. > Know what I mean? Humans, when faced with inevitable, do: 1. forget it is inevitable 2. phantasise about something nice, to kill time while waiting for it Do not expect too much from a jello between the ears. For our limitations, we came surprisingly far and long, albeit some are saying there will be cost and paying the bills and dies irae et calamitatis. Who knows. Nothing in nature is free, eh? I guess there is a lot of shifting stuff around, so those who pay the bills are not those who got the credit. Sorry for being so much offtopic. On the other hand, we are living in a future, so maybe this is more on topic than one would expect. People here are involved in creating significant portion of our lifes. Not that I see any way to make use of it, I am too apathetic for this. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] **
