slow n easy

I feel like using the Apple products was probably not SpaceX’s idea. I have always thought of Elon Musk as anti-Apple. Why can’t Teslas have CarPlay, for example.

larryjw said:

9secondkox2 said:

without dependence on China. 

Thanks though. 

What's the problem with dependence on China? No one is able to build Apple devices better?

You think this anti-China stuff is just another example of White Supremacy? 

Lazy Americans who don't or can't do the job, and CEOs and investors who'd prefer big paychecks rather than investment in capacity (education, etc). 

Sure we need more programmers doing video games, and people playing them. 

No. This anti-China stuff is not an example of White Supremacy. China is a Dictatorship and the Government of China is bad for the Chinese people. Plus China is trying to claim the entire South China Sea as their property and trying to control what ships can or cannot pass through. Plus they may try to capture Taiwan, in which case it may be necessary to go to war with China in order to defend Taiwan.    

dewme said:

There is absolutely no new ground being covered here. President Biden's reminder that most of the moving parts, in terms of making these initiatives real, is firmly in the hands of the private sector is more than a little disconcerting. If you think the government hates spending money of maintenance and infrastructure as opposed to big new projects in certain voting districts, the private sector is even worse. There's nothing sexy or industry pundit or Wall Street investor inspiring about a big tech company narrowing their attack surface or hardening their servers against cyber security attacks.

Hey, maybe I missed it in Tim Cook's last keynote, the 20 foot tall screen showing an animation of a bank vault door protecting our data slamming shut, or a slide about how many great engineers were working on software maintenance and refactoring core infrastructure code after having subjected the code to intensive third party security audits. It may have been stitched in the presentation with drooling slather about how many compute cores are on Apple's latest SoC or the performance benefits of unified memory. I sometimes nod off at the beginning those keynotes, you know, the part where Apple pats itself on its own back part with impressively big numbers and shows happy people surfing, swimming, staring at the Milky Way, or doing far more interesting things than we ever do, mostly because they have an Apple product in their lives, in their hand, or on their wrist.

Face it, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, local, state, and federal governments, etc., are no different than the rest of us when it comes to how we spend our money. We want new, we want shiny, we want slick, we want to impress ourselves and those around us. We want sprinkles on our ice cream and health care plans for our dogs. Things like maintenance, upkeep, grinding through the drudge and sludge to keep normal stuff working are decidedly uncool. No matter that we have entire neighborhoods whose basements fill with raw sewage every time it rains heavily because the residents who are driven from their stench filled homes can gaze upon the shiny new taxpayer subsidized professional football stadium off in the distance.

When it comes to cyber security the government has been investing very heavily for more than a decade in things like creating PowerPoint presentations and creating working groups that spend a great deal of time describing, but not actually doing, the work that needs to be done. Who could not be impressed with the presentations and launching of initiatives. This one is probably as nice as any of them and could easily have been reused in President Biden's latest meeting (https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/cyberframework/critical_infrastructure_cybersecurity.pdf). Just roll all the dates forward, add some new transition effects, order fresh donuts and bagels ... and maybe some pumpkin spice lattes, even though some of us, myself included, have no time in our lives for anything "pumpkin spice" before October, okay maybe late September if you're north of 41 degrees latitude, say in BlackBerry and poutine country.

I don’t remember hearing about cyber security initiatives in the past. I don’t remember all of these technology company heads coming to the White House to discuss the cyber security threats and how to prevent them. To me it sounds like we finally might be taking the threat seriously.

GeorgeBMac said:

What do I mean by attacking the virus?
China, S Korea and others not only quickly instituted mask wearing but aggressively identified and removed the infection from their society through aggressive testing and contact tracing.  If you were infected, they identified that then identified those you had infected and prevented the infectious from infecting others.  

...  We did none of that.  Instead we were told to hide in our houses and (eventually) behind masks -- which was an obviously ineffective strategy.

The result?
While we had 500,000 dead and a crashed & trashed economy

China had less than 5,000 dead and a thriving economy

But, I shouldn't complain:   I made $80K in the stock market off of our stupidity and ineptitude.

As for hacking, we are following the same kind of ineffective, defense only strategy.

If hackers want in, given enough motivation and time they will get in.  Saying the victim's lock wasn't big enough is simply victim blaming.

...  Until we stop the hackers, the hacking will continue.

...... Just as:  until we stop the virus, the deaths will continue.

Hiding from either is, at best, a temporary, stop gap measure.  It will solve nothing.

Okay. When you say “Attacking The Virus”, in my mind that sounds like physically attacking. I view contact tracing, testing, and masking to be defensive in nature. It sounds like we agree more than we disagree.

I really disagree that we are following a defensive strategy on hacking, though. Up to now it looks to me like we have done absolutely nothing whatsoever about hacking. I have been feeling very angry that we keep getting attacked over and over and over again and nothing is being done about it. A big part of the problem is that companies have historically tried to keep quiet if they were hacked. I’m starting to feel like now we are starting to take this issue more seriously. I’m glad about the summit with the technology companies and I’m hoping that they have follow through and figure out some good solutions because all of this hacking needs to stop.

GeorgeBMac said:

This is so sad....

We are apparently taking the same approach to hackers as we took to the Corona Virus:   H I D E    F R O M     I T !

With the Corona Virus, instead of aggressively attacking the virus we were told to (ONLY) hide in our houses or hide behind masks.   While admittedly better than nothing, it allowed the virus to roam our streets and stalk our schools and businesses infecting as it went.   South Korea, China and others went after the virus instead of hiding from it and controlled it successfully -- while protecting their people and economies.

Likewise, while cyber thieves and hackers roam our nation looking for openings we plan to play defense only -- with billions of dollars spent trying to block their entrance.

The analogy to both is:  A serial killer roaming the streets:   Would you tell your people to hide behind locked doors and shuttered windows till he decides to stop?   Or, would you send police out to find him and stop him?

THAT is what we need for cybercrimes and hacking:   Aggressive Offense.   Not defense.   Criminals will always find a way around any defense if given free rein and enough time.

(And, another is to hold businesses accountable when their customer's data is stolen.  My data has been stolen from a business at least three times -- and none of those businesses suffered any consequences.  So why would they devote resources to stopping it?)

What you are saying is inaccurate. I have no idea what you mean by “aggressively  attacking the virus”. The only thing that attacks the virus is the immune system i.e. vaccination. The way that China avoided the virus was by locking people in their houses. During the so-called “lock-down” in the U.S. very few  people were pulled over by the police asking why we were out on the road. In China they literally welded the doors shut. Plus in China the people basically went along with all of the draconian measures because in Asian countries the people generally trust their government much more than in the West. In other Asian countries like South Korea they very aggressively did contact tracing and quarantine measures to stop the virus. They also did this in China but much more aggressively . I should point out that in China most people were just told not to leave their houses and for the most part they complied. They were only rarely actually locked in.

Your last 2 paragraphs also makes no sense. In the majority of cases that someone is hacked it is from simple good practices that people are not following. For example bad passwords or not implementing 2-factor authentication or getting phished. People have tried to phish me many times. I received an e-mail recently that said I need to change my Apple ID password immediately or I will be locked out and they provided a link. People need to stop reflexively clicking on links without thinking.

Their is nothing wrong with the government stepping up to the plate with security measures that will at least slow down all of these businesses from getting hacked. It’s not possible to go after the bad guys because they live in countries that are our adversaries and we can’t easily get to those people. Defensive measures are not at all a bad idea.