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bigfatkitten commented on Navy Set to Unplug Critical Hurricane Satellites This Week   michaelrlowry.substack.co... · Posted by u/garrettdreyfus
bix6 · a month ago
Great write up about a somber topic.

Does anyone understand the security concerns here? The satellites can still be tracked and intercepted even with the feed unplugged so what does this really accomplish?

bigfatkitten · a month ago
I think the problem is on the dissemination side.

Navy receives data from the spacecraft, pushes that up into their probably-classified HPC environment, processes it there and then gets the output back into the unclassified world via a cross domain solution[1] of some sort.

High-to-low CDSes in particular are very expensive and complex to deploy and obtain approval to operate, so it makes sense that they’re reluctant to spend a ton of money and resources doing that as part of their modernisation work to support a spacecraft that they plan to decommission anyway.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-domain_solution

bigfatkitten commented on Why not Matrix (2023)   telegra.ph/why-not-matrix... · Posted by u/throwachimera
cwillu · a month ago
Points 2 and 3 seem to be a denial of reality: you never can delete something except by asking everyone else very nicely, and it's always possible that someone will repost something that they had that you didn't think they did.

Likewise point 8: there's nothing a protocol that isn't just a walled garden for a set of Trusted™ proprietary client binaries can do to prevent a client from doing whatever it likes with the decrypted information.

bigfatkitten · a month ago
There are no absolutes in security.

It’s not a perfect control by means, but if your objective is to minimise the amount of sensitive material just laying around, it definitely helps (and makes your adversary’s life a bit harder.)

bigfatkitten commented on A low power 1U Raspberry Pi cluster server for inexpensive colocation (2021)   github.com/pawl/raspberry... · Posted by u/LorenDB
postpawl · a month ago
Project author here. This project is 4 years old at this point, and now it probably makes more sense to use Mac minis or mini pcs. I also wouldn’t rely on cheap colocation for anything security sensitive or critical. They gave my same block of IPs to another customer at some point and there were issues with IP conflicts (eventually got resolved).

It lasted for about 3 years and the colocation company went bankrupt and got bought by another company, so they returned the hardware. I’m surprised a technical failure didn’t kill it.

bigfatkitten · a month ago
You can do a hell of a lot with 120 watts even on an x86 platform nowadays, which wasn’t as true back then.
bigfatkitten commented on Why does a fire truck cost $2m   thehustle.co/originals/wh... · Posted by u/Guid_NewGuid
rayiner · a month ago
The federal government alone spends $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare. That's enough to buy almost a million Tomahawk missiles every year. The total production will be around 9,000 missiles over 46 years, or less than 200 per year. We do not meaningfully choose between paying for healthcare domestically and blowing up foreigners. Even overthrowing Iraq's government and trying to make it a democracy only cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.
bigfatkitten · a month ago
The U.S. Government spends more on health care per capita than most other nations, but it has relatively little to show for it.

The American health industry is optimized to profit rent-seekers, and so it is very inefficient in terms of patient outcomes.

bigfatkitten commented on Is Jeff Bezos killing The Washington Post on purpose or by accident?   thebulwark.com/p/the-wash... · Posted by u/dotcoma
dotcoma · a month ago
True, but what is surprising to me is that not even Bezos’ kind of wealth will get him off the hook.
bigfatkitten · a month ago
It could, but it in the circumstances it would be more expensive than bending the knee for a couple of years.
bigfatkitten commented on Why does a fire truck cost $2m   thehustle.co/originals/wh... · Posted by u/Guid_NewGuid
crystal_revenge · a month ago
What's really wild is $2M is around the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, Patriot missiles can cost almost double that. The Excalibur GPS guided round costs roughly as much as a nice Mercedes and during a conflict hundreds or thousands can be fired.

I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.

I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.

Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.

bigfatkitten · a month ago
> Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much

The only place in the entire world where fire trucks cost that much is North America, and it’s not because there’s anything inherently special about trucks made there.

bigfatkitten commented on It's a DE9, not a DB9 (but we know what you mean)   news.sparkfun.com/14298... · Posted by u/jgrahamc
brudgers · a month ago
I was involved in those decisions. The people I worked for knew their businesses and knew the importance of cash flow to it. It had a lot to do with capital.

The simple equation was that setting up a network did not look like it would make those companies money. And in the Windows for Workgroups era, running CAD on Windows was a massive performance hit.

Don’t ignore the capital cost of buying Windows versions of Cad software…potentially thousands of dollars per seat. Don’t ignore the cost of graphics cards…the high performance card might not have Windows drivers and every machine might have a different card bought at a different time.

And don’t ignore the cost of a file server that inspires confidence. In an environment where contracts are five to seven figures, the local PC repair shop is not the most enticing risk.

bigfatkitten · a month ago
So what it comes down to is: The handful of places you worked in a specific industry didn’t want to spring for some ethernet cards, and so therefore office LANs were uncommon?
bigfatkitten commented on It's a DE9, not a DB9 (but we know what you mean)   news.sparkfun.com/14298... · Posted by u/jgrahamc
brudgers · a month ago
I did a lot of CAD in the 1990’s, most shops had no network and a computer on every desk. The reasons were simple: capital expense and scarcity of technical expertise. By 2000 it was different because networking was cheaper and the network effect had reached the tipping point where other businesses had email, ftp, etc.
bigfatkitten · a month ago
It had nothing to do with capital.

A low to mid spec PC cost around $2000, and an NE2000 clone was around $50. RG-58 coax was about 20 cents a foot from Radio Shack.

Windows for Workgroups made the setup pretty trivial, and there was a plethora of folks out there (like me) repairing PCs and setting up LANs for small businesses.

bigfatkitten commented on How we rooted Copilot   research.eye.security/how... · Posted by u/uponasmile
stogot · a month ago
I would give the one engineer the credit for doing things better, not Microsoft. Microsoft overall culture of security is terrible. Look at the CISA report.
bigfatkitten · a month ago
Microsoft has islands of security excellence in what these days is a sea of mediocrity.
bigfatkitten commented on It's a DE9, not a DB9 (but we know what you mean)   news.sparkfun.com/14298... · Posted by u/jgrahamc
brudgers · a month ago
SneakerNet was far more common in the world were most people actually lived and if there was a digital network there is a good chance it was Novell or Token Ring.
bigfatkitten · a month ago
“Novell” invariably meant a Netware box in a closet that people talked to via IPX/SPX over Ethernet.

Token Ring was rare outside of IBM shops. Only commonly found in places like banks.

u/bigfatkitten

KarmaCake day1709August 21, 2024View Original