Recent submissions

Comment · 5 months ago
That is known pretty well: The TPM won't release the the volume key unless the correct PIN is presented to the TPM.
Comment · 1 year ago
The text he wrote makes a lot of sense under that prompt because that prompt provides the frame under which to read it. Knowing the prompt makes it obvious that his general observations happen to apply to Germany and he wasn't aware of that before moving there. He's just polite by not spelling it out.

The real issue for non-publication is the one he cites: "additional reflections in a more personal and light-hearted tone". This matches the general type of content in Zeit Magazin. They weren't looking for a scathing criticism of societal ills but some entertaining piece that goes well with the other easily digestible articles.

And as a German I have to say: He's bang on.

Comment · 1 year ago
Just out of curiosity: How exactly do you imagine Germany looked like pre-WW2?
Comment · 1 year ago
Rest assured, he's also trying that route. That mastodon article links to parliamentary requests for clarification of aforementioned quote. In article 1425 he responds (google translate):

"We know that social media and encrypted services are unfortunately largely is used to facilitate many forms of crime. There are examples on how criminal gangs recruit completely through encrypted platforms young people to commit, among other things, serious crimes against persons. It is an expression of a cynicism that is almost completely incomprehensible.

We therefore need to look at how we can overcome this problem. Both in terms of what the services themselves do, but also what we from the authorities can do. It must not be the case that the criminals can hide behind encrypted services that authorities cannot access to."

[...]

"I also note that steps have been taken within the EU towards a strengthened regulation of, among other things, digital information services and social media platforms. For example, the European Commission has proposed a new Regulation on rules for preventing and combating sexual abuse of children."

[...]

"The government has a strong focus on eliminating digital violations – it applies especially when it comes to sexual abuse of children – and supports the proposed regulation, unlike the opposition."

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
That is kind of doubtful. The video clearly shows a small puff of smoke presumably above the ejection port when he fires the gun for the first time. The Welrod and its modern descendants have a bolt which is locked in position when the gun is fired and it has to be cycled manually. Thus no gas would escape the gun at the ejection port when the gun is fired.

It is more likely that this is a semi-automatic pistol which will not cycle properly for one reason or another and the shooter has to manually complete the cycle by racking the slide.

Comment · 1 year ago
"The bottom line is that arsenic is a heavy metal, like lead, and all heavy metals are dangerous and carcinogenic."

Gold, iron, tin are are all "heavy metals" and are certainly not carcinogenic or dangerous.

Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
> Turbo Pascal was in the running with assembly language for my favorite language to program the IBM PC in the 1980s.

Teaching myself programming as a kid in the late 80s I encountered the limits of BASIC and then Turbo BASIC pretty soon. Everyone I knew was dabbling in Turbo Pascal but for some reason I can't really recall I rented K&R at the local library and went for Turbo C. I got an incredible amount of mileage out of that decision.

Learning x86 assembly was par for the course back then. Everything was so slow and that was the way to get everything out of the machine. I even remember me going to some length dabbling with the timer for the CPU hogging DRAM refresh cycle to squeeze out the last few percent of CPU power that poor 8086 had. Basically moving away from the conservative settings towards a point where the DRAM was just not becoming "forgetful".

Comment · 2 years ago
> Physical access to the computer meant ...

... game over. That's one well understood fact back then as it is today. Where's the security nightmare?

Comment · 2 years ago
That was in fact one of the promises of IPv6: Restore the network of peers where every host is in principle a server and a client and communication between peers is unhindered unless a policy is enforced saying otherwise (on the machine, on a firewall, etc.).

> having a public address is actually a security and privacy risk.

Services can be turned off or a firewall instructed not to pass traffic from the internet (by default). That represents exactly the same attack surface as having a service enabled and nobody being able to get to it from the internet because of NAT.

The privacy risk is mitigated by RFC4941 "Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6". Granted that does not deal with the (delegated) prefix staying the same and when there are only one or very few users in that prefix, some individual behavior could be inferred. Because of that at least in Germany we have the peculiar horror of getting the IPv6 address and all delegated prefixes changed on every redial. That eliminates all privacy concerns while also continuing to make residential internet connections useless for hosting any services.

Anyway. The internet is already way down the road of functioning only as the delivery conduit for a few cloud / service providers mediating all user communication and access to content.

Comment · 2 years ago
Weird that you have to do an extra step for IPv6. Other ISPs in Germany have enabled it for every customer at some point. Unless your router asks for IPv6 addresses, nothing really changes anyway. So maybe just enable IPv6 on your router and see what happens?

On a side note, there seem to be ways to get out of CGNAT when you got condemned to use it: It is sometimes an annoying source for client VPN instabilities and from what I heard, users can just ask to be switched over from DS-Lite to classic dual stack to improve application compatibility.

Comment · 2 years ago
> lack drive and take longer PTO and their work isn't really that adequate.

People sometimes come to realize important things when they mature. This may include insights like "there's a life happening outside work waiting to be lived". Or acquiring a better sense where it pays to spend time and energy for maximum effect and where it is wasted.

> Blaming interns or junior engineers for simple mistakes, which the senior which also should have seen.

Juniors making simple mistakes really doesn't rhyme with the rest of what you said. Are they

a) Brilliant people, able to replace seniors while being paid a pittance for working their ass off?

or

b) Actually inexperienced and still have to learn a lot until their output has the required quality?

> Not training interns or junior engineers to become senior and be given more responsibility

Any junior waiting to be taken by the hand and shown the path to greatness through careful and detailed tutoring by colleagues I can recommend only one thing: Learn to learn by yourself. Fast. Your colleagues are busy with their own work and tutoring you very often has very little bearing on their current goals, compensation or career prospects. It is thus one of these areas where they have learned not to spend much time and energy. (Though some people have strong altruistic tendencies and/or find it satisfying to mentor and teach, but that's an intrinsic motivation which is either there or it isn't. When you run into someone like that: Lucky you!)

On a more calculating note: As you have let on that you think juniors are viable replacements for senior while being cheaper, the seniors might not be very motivated to bring their replacements up to speed...

> we are all aware of the bus factor here

As an employee, that's generally not much of a concern.

> All the while where some really smart interns or junior engineers come out of prestigious institutions

I suggest you attempt to hire them. I wish you the best of luck!

> I am a senior engineering manager looking to take on interns.

Do it. It's going to be a valuable learning opportunity for everyone involved. Including you.

Comment · 2 years ago
> If I can't run FreeBSD on my machine, I won't runt it on my servers.

How does offering a laptop or desktop OS experience relate to being a great server OS?

Anyway, the last time I was using FreeBSD on a client was in the late 90s. I am still running FreeBSD servers. It never bothered me that running that particular OS on a laptop maybe could be a challenge. The FreeBSD project has limited resources in terms of money and developers and I'm quite content seeing that going towards building a great server OS.

Diverting people and money towards a better laptop support just means competing with Linux and I don't see FreeBSD bringing something really compelling to the table. At best it'll just do everything Linux already does.

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