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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • It’s worse. They are saying that the EU copyright law, as written, only allows decompiling/reverse engineering to “fix bugs”. A bug fix would involve a software patch of some sorts. But the security researchers did not have time to write a patch yet, what they did is tell the customer “Yep, it’s fucked. Your vendor put in a killswitch to make the trains brick themselves.” So that does tell them where the problem is, but it is not a bona fide bug fix from the Bugfix region of France, and therefore illegal.






  • On the order of hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars without insurance, on order of $50k-$100k in copayments with insurance. Either way will wipe you out financially, effectively forcing you to go through medical bankruptcy and resetting any savings you have to $0. In addition, the equity in your house and car can also be seized, above some personal homestead exemption ($250k in New York for example, where the average house price is $2M, and $5k for vehicle). Not sure if they kick you out of the house immediately, or put a lien on it that comes due when you die/move out and house is sold. The only savings that are safe from bankruptcy are retirement savings in IRA and future social security payments.



  • In theory, the rich can just continue paying off each other spending money on rich people stuff. 80% of the economy consisting of activities like robot-staffed billionaire-owned construction companies making and selling super-yachts to oil billionaires, who made their fortune selling fuel to space tourism companies ferrying billionaire designer bag heiresses to the Moon. The rest of us can starve to death and the economy won’t even blink.







  • New York City has also banned plastic bags since 2020. I was skeptical about the ban at first, because by measure of material weight, bags are but a small fraction of plastic waste. Thin film is just too efficient in terms of use-per-weight ratio. I also thought anyone who didn’t want to use plastic bags already had the option to bring their own reusable bags with them.

    My newfound appreciation for the ban is that not only does it divert the use of plastic material, but it forces a change in the public perception around plastic use itself. Sure, you could bring your own bags, but it felt awkward because no one else did. You felt like you were inconveniencing the cashiers and other shoppers by breaking the routine, as if you were asking for special treatment. But now it’s perfectly normal! You want to carry that bag of potatoes in your arms without an external bag? Go right ahead. You want to run home carrying a jug of milk dripping condensation on the pavement? Doesn’t make you look like a crazy person! All thanks to the ban. Single action by the government on behalf of the collective has achieved what collective action by many single individuals could not have.





  • This. Full disk encryption worked on Linux long before TPM, and works perfectly fine now still. TPM to me seems only additionally effective in a narrow range of “evil maid” attack scenarios where your (unencrypted, unsigned) bootloader is modified at rest, such as to steal your disk encryption key later. However A) I cannot afford to hire a maid, let alone one also skilled in editing Linux initramfs images and B) I don’t see TPM evangelists check their keyboard USB cable for in-line hardware sniffers every single time they step away from their desk.