* Posts by hammarbtyp

1385 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007

2-bit punks' weak 40-bit crypto didn't help Tesla keyless fobs one bit

hammarbtyp

Basically it looks like they took the encryption designed to protect RFID tags and applied it to protect a 70 grand motor. What could go wrong?

It looks like a combination of brute force and the fact that the key word is fixed and the algorithm itself provides clues as to the key

Raspberry Pi supremo Eben Upton talks to The Reg about Pi PoE woes

hammarbtyp

What I love about the Raspberry Pi community is that they see any problem as a opportunity to learn and fix

It's been 5 years already, let's gawp at Microsoft and Nokia's bloodbath

hammarbtyp

Yes, Nokia was struggling when MS took over, but lets not suggest that Nokia was a guarantee to fail.

What you got was a culture clash between Corporate America and Finnish Social aware business. Not only what, but the tail was wagging the dog with Microsoft who had a terrible record in mobile phones telling Nokia what the market wanted.

Nokia had enough name recognition and good will, to of pulled themselves out of it. If they had dumped the competing platforms, offered to build Windows phones while at the same time did a deal with Google to create android flagships, they could of played both off against each other while leveraging there production and design strengths.

Elop was the problem. He was brought in and sold Nokia a pup

hammarbtyp

Did I miss something in 2014?

Throughout 2014, Microsoft continued to release excellent products that had been in the pipeline

There was the...errr....and the...errrr

Ok, you've go me, what are these mythical excellent Microsoft products which you talk about ?

Detroit sh*t shifter's operating costs waste away with Oracle's cloud

hammarbtyp

Its a bit like claiming that moving to Sky has saved you £120 because they have a £10 per month special offer, and not thinking about what happens after the initial offer expires

Surprise! VAT, customs likely to get a bit trickier in a Brexit no-deal world

hammarbtyp

Re: Can anyone

"So far cheaper food as importing from outside the EU is considerably cheaper than while in it. That is a benefit to everyone."

well as someone has mentioned not to anyone working in the UK food industry or associated. There uis another reason why food is more expensive here than other parts of the world and that is because food standards are higher, but most people are quite happy with that.

"Not having the reserve pool of workers is increasing wages, particularly at the bottom. We have full employment but more workers can be easily imported so wages stayed stuck."

We don't import workers. Workers come here to fill demand. they also contribute far more than they cost. It allows the economy to meet peak and demands more easily and studies have been done that show they have little downward pressure on wages. In some area they fill critical skill areas that are difficult to fill otherwise. As for well high skilled workers will still be hired, why will they come here if they are given the status of 2nd class citizens. Problem with high skill workers is that they can go anywhere

"We can bin dumbass laws for example we dont need to fine a guy for not littering!"

At least we have some say over which laws are imposed (most laws the UK did not agree with were modified or were not enacted). After we leave the Eu we will stiil have to follow the same regulations and laws if we wish to trade with the EU, but we will have no say in them. For every law which you say is dumbass I can point to 10 which made the UK a better place to live and work like increased environmental protection and workers rights

"More inflation increases the base rate (we can get rewarded for saving again!), house prices stalling wage rises."

That is about the dumbest of them all. Inflation only helps people who hide there money away, rather than investing it. It devalues your buying power and increases industry costs. Wages have not kept pace with inflation for a number of years, but if you want to live in a place with great inflation you are welcome to live in Venezuela

"EU recycling targets can be scrapped so the many colours of bins to send waste to China who is now giving up on sorting and recycling it (costs too much) making our lives more productive."

I take it you are volunteering for the new landfill site to be positioned outside your house

Connected car data handover headache: There's no quick fix... and it's NOT just Land Rovers

hammarbtyp

Re: Why?

Remote unlocking is very useful in a dark garage. It also switches on a few lights, so you can see things.

errr, that's what my remote key fob does

hammarbtyp

Re: Why?

Give me one good reason why cars need to be Internet of Shite on wheels.

So manufacturers can monitor your car and bombard you with high cost service requests from their dealers

Oh sorry, you were asking what is in it for the owners? Not a lot

Space, the final Trump-tier: America to beam up $8bn for Space Force

hammarbtyp

A $8 billion bargain

... as long as the commander in chief is made to go 1st

hammarbtyp

While I like the references to Starship Troopers (R.A. Heinlein), I think references to Space Cadet (also R.A. Heinlein) would be more appropriate in this case.

Muppets in Space is probably closer

Top Euro court: No, you can't steal images from other websites (too bad a school had to be sued to confirm this little fact)

hammarbtyp

Re: Seems a bit churlish...

There was no problem with the image being in the child's school project. The problem was with the school putting the school project online.

Are you sure about that? For example if I download some music, in theory I am breaking copyright. Fair use doctrine is a grey area

hammarbtyp

Re: how exactly were the school to know of the copyright in the first place?

All images are copyright and you must obtain permission to use them. If you don't know who owns the copyright then you still can't use it. NB. differences in law here in some situations in some countries, eg. the "safe harbour" clause of the US DMCA which provides a workaround for sites like YouTube. Andrew Orlowski has argued that this effectively encourages abuse of copyright by Google, et al. But that doesn't apply here.

Unless copyright has lapsed, the author has rescinded their copyright rights, plus a number of other legal complexities.

Copyright law is simple. However implementation is a minefield and unless you are a copyright lawyer you will come a cropper.

Lets face it copyright law was designed to protect physical items such as books, which at the time required conscious effort to copy (set up printing press etc). It has never scaled well to the internet where data can be easily obtained and copied.

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

hammarbtyp

Re: It was aliens wot did it

> At last! A device to sharpen bacon!

I just use a Rasher Razor like a normal person!

Sensible people use Occam's

Shock Land Rover Discovery: Sellers could meddle with connected cars if not unbound

hammarbtyp

yeah, I used to get elections emails from a specific place in the US, which was fun. Eventually I replied

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your emails asking for my support in your coming election. I must admit after reading them I am strongly inclined to vote for you.

However I am little hazy about election law. Do you need to be a resident of Mamaroneck to vote for you? Or in fact a a US citizen? or even reside in the USA?. It is possible I might of flown over Mamaroneck on the the way back to England, but I'm pretty sure that would not be enough to give me a say in your election.

So on the balance of probabilities it is unlikely I will be able to help you in your quest for office. However I wish you well in your coming election.

However if things do not work out and you ever feel the desire to stand for parish councilor in England be assured of my full support

Yours sincerely

Never go a reply again (Tom lost)

hammarbtyp

Not quite the same, but every once in a while i get an e-mail every couple of months giving me a diagnostic report for my GMC Yukon. It gives my mileage. car state, etc.

Only one issue. i don't own a GMC Yukon, never been in one and don't even live in the states where I assume they are driven

I am assuming that whoever set it up mis-typed their email and here we are. It just goes to show however how hard it is to control information

No big deal... Kremlin hackers 'jumped air-gapped networks' to pwn US power utilities

hammarbtyp

Re: Ukraine?

In the Ukraine attack there was a network connection and it wasn't truly air-gapped so its not equivalent

hammarbtyp

Re: More detail please

asic security (granted, that's a bit of an assumption) would require that you check everything coming in from outside, even a vendor's network. A simple checksum calculation would show if a package has been tampered with. For that to pass, the correct checksum would have to be replaced by that of the compromised package.

A simple checksum would be easy to spoof, but if checksum was HMAC'd or encrypted, then less so

hammarbtyp

Not sure what the motive of the attcak is

OK, so as far as we can tell, they infected vendors diagnostic laptops (which says more about the vendors corporate IT than the systems involved), then when the vendor connected to the airgapped system, it infected that.

One thing missing here. How did they control the air gapped system? It could cause an issue immediately or after a time delay, but both this degrades the system, but does not control it. In most of these scenarios the idea is to present backdoors so that a system can be controlled in event of war or Donald is no longer on office.

It sounds more like the Stuknet attack, where the idea is to gently degrade a system to the point where it fails causing infrastructure cost. It makes sense in that scenario, because US/Israel wanted to slow Iran's nuclear program, less so here

Another possibility is just intelligence gathering and looking for errant network connections. That would make more sense, since the infected PC could then phone home the details when connected

hammarbtyp

Re: More detail please

You don't need autorun. With enough resources you can compromise the USB key itself to attack the system, for example by looking like a USB keyboard

UK.gov is ready to talk data safeguards with the EU – but still wants it all

hammarbtyp

Re: Conflicted

U wants out and some politicians want in.

Fixed it for ya

hammarbtyp

Re: ?

One word - Tax

The EU directive for full transparency on Tax avoidance comes into being in 2019

hammarbtyp

Re: No one will agree on anything

After all the mutual recriminations, intelligent people will quietly reforge sensible arrangements without recourse to the EU or the British government. Where they are mutually beneficial.

Yes I can see it now.

Custom Officer: What is this white powder in these bags in the trunk of your car

Me: Its OK Officer, they are Legit. Me and my mate Carlos have forged a sensible arrangement for the import and export of said items across borders. I have the document here...

errr, why are putting rubber gloves on? Look I've signed an agreement, it uses proper fonts and everything

One two three... Go: Long Pig Microsoft avoids cannibalising Surface

hammarbtyp

I don't get the market this is aimed at

It looks good, but basically for £379 you get a sub-standard iPad with a non-existent app store. To do anything useful you need to spend £100 to get a keyboard and mouse, which is optimised for travel not work.

The killer app would be the touch interface, but a pen is another £100! for a device which is certain to go missing at some point in its life.

You can get a pretty decent laptop for £500. The only advantage being a slightly improved iportability. Basically you either the combination of tablet with limited functionality combined with less than optimal laptop. Ok its less than say a iPad and a laptop, but most people in this market will go for that option

I'm sure it fits some people need, but I'm not sure there is a big market out there

Oracle wants to improve Linux load balancing and failover

hammarbtyp
Black Helicopters

Re: Fair and square

I know...suspicious isn't it

Security guard cost bank millions by hitting emergency Off button

hammarbtyp

Re: Kim or Ken?

I think you need to put this i context.

However annoying it was for the team, the bank and its customers., no one was injured or killed, the system was brought up OK.

Yeah maybe a few million virtual pounds were lost, but I sure the bank recovered that in a few minutes of trading or reduced their interest rate by 0.000001%

The question is next time an event occurs will the staff hesitate in fear they might be blamed?

hammarbtyp

Re: Kim or Ken?

Walk into an empty room and smell burning, you hit the emergency button. Walk into a room where people are working, and see that they haven't done it, it's just common sense to ask "why not" before taking extreme action.

Not necessarily. people on a tight deadline are generally poor judges of risk. I have been in situations of having to forcible drag people from test rooms after a fire alarm has gone off because "they just needed to wait for the test to complete"

Another scenario would be that a fire/smoke was detected, the security guard came to sort the issue out, told to go away and the fire spreading and causing greater damage or loss of life. Yes it was very sad that the bank lost a few hours processing, but this needs to be balanced against the risk of loss of life.

It sounds like the security guard was used as a scapegoat because they were non-essential and cheap

hammarbtyp

Its not unusual

Power shutdown happens all the time, especially if you put the emergency power off button right next to the electronic door exit button...

Of course moving it would be just tooooo expensive

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

hammarbtyp

If only there was a law banning morons.

That was tried, only some morons decided it wasn't in their best interest

Sir Christopher Chope

Boffins want to stop Network Time Protocol's time-travelling exploits

hammarbtyp

It sounds similar to peer to peer authentication where you establish trust which has been pushed as an alternative to PKI for embedded systems

hammarbtyp

Re: There go precious milliseconds

You don't need encryption as such, you need a signature. You could take a clear text, signed response, assume it's valid and set up a "shadow" clock then check the signature in spare cycles, copying the shadow clock to the real one if it checks out?

And how do you know if your signature is from a real server? To do that you need to encrypt the signature and unencrypt it and check the server details.

To be fair it maybe you only really need to do this at connection, after this you may be able to utilise some sort of secure token

hammarbtyp

And you need a powerful computer to decrypt *any* encrypted/secure time source, NTP or any other proposal. There go precious milliseconds.

And if your ISP is anything like mine, latency sucks, so I'm happy if my computers are just showing the correct date !!!!

Most embedded processors will support standard encryption protocols and we are talking a very small amount of data here. If your device is not capable of supporting encryption then it should not be connecting to the web.

For the kind of accuracy NTP provides the overhead is not going to effect accuracy. If you want greater accuracy you should be using 1588 anyway.

However there is a benefit in having a more modular scalable solution which allows you to make move the dial between security and performance. This should also be defined in the standard source code and allow you to have a core functionality and then choose to include specific features such as encryption into the final solution

hammarbtyp

Re: Time NTP was upgraded(See what I did there!)

All that infrastructure defeats the whole purpose of NTP: a lightweight protocol.

We have SNTP for that

Add a certificate, and handling it becomes a bottleneck that injects a whole new timing attack vector, quite apart from causing packets to timeout.

Not necessarily. If the NTP next gen was modular and scalable you could target it to whatever device you wanted. Anyone who has had to wade through the standard NTP code base will tell you that it is huge mess of spagettified code which needs a rethink and rewrite.

Security wasn't a big thing when NTP was invented, but now is the primary concern. if you are required to get information off-site, you need to have trust, this requires encryption, PKI, etc. You can do this with a VPN if necessary, but the overhead is much the same.

If you want you can use your edge devices to get the NTP signal and then relay it to other devices using a lower overhead protocol/transport mechanism. It would just be nice if NTP supported all the various use cases

hammarbtyp

Time NTP was upgraded(See what I did there!)

To be honest its about time NTP was replaced with something a bit more fit for purpose. Every month we have a issue with NTP due to mis-configuration or lack of understanding

Any new algorithm should include a modern security infrastructure using certificates to verify time sources, provide greater accuracy in LAN environments by piggy backing on IEEE 1558, more control on the skewing, improved configuration tool and better monitoring interfaces.

How a tax form kludge gifted the world 25 joyous years of PDF

hammarbtyp

Acrobat Reader Price

Acrobat Reader may of cost $50 in the day, but virtually no one paid for since it was widely pirated

like MS word you should never underestimate how much initial uptake was driven by piracy which finally resulted in software becoming de facto standards

Do UK.gov wonks understand sci-tech skills gap? MPs dish out Parliamentary kicking

hammarbtyp

Re: Stream the schools not the children

After going through a grammar school education, this idea that it is a panacea to education is a middle class sop.

There are many issues, but the biggest is that you can identify the future high achievers through a fool proof test method at the age of 12. Firstly any testing advantages the upper to middle classes who can afford to cram the test (and all tests can). This is why the Tories like them so much, it is hidden class segregation

Secondly children mature at different rates. A high achiever at 12 can be a also ran at 18, while the opposite is true.

The problem with selective schools is they tend to concentrate the resources at those schools. Anyone who remembers the 1970s comprehensive systems will remember how poor they were because so little was expected of those who went.

Schools are run now on the basis of getting the most potential out of everyone. A lot of subjects are streamed. The top 10% will succeed anywhere. It is the middle 30/40% who suffer most because they will already have been written off.

There is another reason why selective schools suck. I was talking to a ex-Rolls Royce employee once. He had been pretty successful in his chosen career and became head draughtsman. However he told me once that he wasn't very bright. I asked why, and he said well I failed mu 11 plus.

Personally I don't want to be in a world where a persons self worth for life is defined by some ability to pass a arbitary exam at the age of 12 before that individual has had the chance to grow both mentally and in maturity,

hammarbtyp

There is not a STEM skills shortage - in some areas.

In industries which are mature or have been running for some time, yes, there may be enough people.

It is in the future industries where the skill set is lacking because universities etc have not caught up with it yet

For example there is a huge shortage of power engineers as car manufacturers move to electrical propulsion. the problem is by the time the government cottons on to this and it has gone through the various committees and horse trading the industries will either have stalled due to lack of human resources or moved elsewhere where they can attract the right expertise

Knowledge is the new industrial resource. Suggesting that you can predict and control where and when to get it is akin to old Soviet Union 5 year industrial plan

hammarbtyp

So many issues...

So much to say here, where to start...

Schools - STEM subjects are highly specialized and expensive, which is why schools struggle to attract specialist teachers and fund the equipment needed. ICT is my particular bugbear, which in most schools is given a very low priority and taught by non-specialists. Where STEM works best is when there is someone tasked at the school for STEM coordination. The STEM ambassador program was setup to encourage buiness and schools to coordinate. In most schools this is only lip service, with no forward planning.

Education - While university STEM education is great, where it falls down is before and after. Before because science is treated with disdain by both politicians and certain media and schools struggle to sell it as a career choice. After, because most UK companies treat STEM personal just above assembly drones, and offer no long term career structure. Not only that but Adult education provision in the UK is pretty shocking meaning that re-training is virtually impossible with huge cost and effort

Government - The government says the right things, but when it comes to implementation with real resources these instantly disappear. For example say industry said we need 1000 more power engineers (and we really do). The DTi will say we need more engineers, Home office will say they need to be locally sourced because all the Visa caps has been filled with doctors and nurses, Education tells universities to make some, universities can't because a) they cannot source lecturers from abroad b) Foreign student are capped because they count as immigration c) British students are put off due to high university fees and poor starting salaries.

The other thing government fails to realize is that in a knowledge based economy which most western governments are, the attraction of the top talent is essential where ever they are from. The suggestion that we should just train our own is a bit like saying Barcelona or Real Madrid should just train their own

Messi or Ronaldo. These are the people who produce the innovations and breakthroughsm, and make the industries for the rest of us

Pwned with '4 lines of code': Researchers warn SCADA systems are still hopelessly insecure

hammarbtyp

Re: Company selling security consultancy find security flaws shocker

My experience so far is that security is still often an afterthought.

Certainly it used to be, but legislation where there are financial penalties for breaches are making customers and manufacturers more security aware. However the long support times means that this problem will not be fixed overnight.

you only have to look at the **** that is coming out today in cars, for example, where they are online, but the CANBUS is still pretty much unprotected! Industrial PLCs aren't much better, in my experience.

I think we have to be careful in separating things like cars and CNC machines, from critical infrastructure. while someone hacking a car is annoying, someone hacking say the electricity grid is far more serious. The problem is not the CANBus itself, but how it is attached to the other non-critical systems. Embedded protocols are high speed, noise tolerant and deterministic. This goes against things like security practices such as encryption.

It is also not a "local" attack, which means on the device(s) in question, it was an attack within the network, so internal but not local.

Generally anything within a DMZ on the LAN is called local. Most security at present is based around a DMZ with remote access being in theory carefully controlled. Also getting through a properly managed and configured firewall should be hard, that's what they are there for. Most of the problems we see are when IT decide to bypass the firewall thorough negligence or ignorance. However if you have 'local' access there are all sort of things you can do which are hard to stop such as modifying the hardware itself

And the industrial networks tend to be very fragile

Yes they can be, because they are highly customised and tuned for maximum performance. One of the problems at present is most security solutions are based on IT best practice, which really don't work on industrial systems. We need a different set of solutions specific to the industrial space.

These are coming and the area has changed vastly in the last 5 years, but their is a long way to go. Part of the issue is the entire diversity of the industrial offerings unlike IT, who generally have to deal with a small set of protocols and OS.

Security in the IT area did not come from no where, but was a constant evolution. Industrial control security solutions will have to follow the same path

hammarbtyp

Company selling security consultancy find security flaws shocker

This reads like company advert. "We did A and we took your network down, if you don't employ us, you could be next"

Its difficult to know where to start with this one but I'll try

Godfrey explained that security has never been a design criteria for industrial control kit and this hasn't changed with the advent of IoT in the domain of SCADA systems.

That's simply not true. The industry is spending a lot of effort in security, however unlike It where security is the primary concern it has to be balanced with the primary function of safety. Also the long timescales and legacy kit, is another issue that needs resolving

Historically everything was "air-gapped" but this has changed as the equipment has been adapted to incorporate internet functionality.

But their attack requires local access. Physical security is as important as cyber security in these situations. If you can just walk in and install a box on a critical infrastructure, cyber security is the least of your woirries

Industrial control setups certainly don't have the maturity of enterprise environments

Agreed, but then again enterprise environments have the benefit of constant support and upgrades cycles. Suggest IT can't touch any kit for 2 years and see how mature your systems are then. Saying that our 'mature' enterprise environment is often brought down if someone adds a rogue DHCP server, so perhaps enterprise should not be to smug

Denial-of-service in industrial control environments is easy and fuzzing (trying a range of inputs to see which causes an undesigned effect) also offers a straightforward way to uncover hacks.

A lot of systems undergo DoS testing. It depends where you test. The idea is that attacks on the outward facing interfaces should not stop the control system. So we can bring down the scada, but the automation control is retained

"kill industrial processes with only four lines of code"

Without knowing what the kill code is, it is impossible to say what happens here, or whether all systems are equally vulnerable. Is it some sort of DoS attack, a specific PLC command, some use of a SCADA protocol. I can think of many ways to do this, but they would be specific to a type of system and not universal

However there are many defenses that can be put in place such as soning of your network, or network anomaly detection devices. However Stuknet showed that you can only slow not stop a attacker. If you get a nation player with infinite resources, they will get in. Your only hope is to make a) so hard, they won't try and b) limit the damage if they do.

What's all the C Plus Fuss? Bjarne Stroustrup warns of dangerous future plans for his C++

hammarbtyp

Parallel algorithms – there is no easier way to use the power of the concurrency features of modern hardware

Not sure what he meant by that - Have they managed to shoehorn some sort of side effect free way of writing C++ or implemented a message passing scheme?

C++ is a nightmare to write Parallel Algorithms in, but then again so are most imperative languages. As soon as it scales, you will hit issues unless you are very careful.

hammarbtyp

Re: Design by committee

"navel-gazing" <-> Vasa LOL

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

hammarbtyp

Re: least complaint-generating Windows ever

That's because everyone downgrades to Win7.

Nah, it just that it disables your ability to send emails

Scrapping Brit cap on nurses, doctors means more room for IT folk

hammarbtyp

Governments and quotas just don't mix

Can anyone think of an example when government defined quotas system has ever worked?

Governments are just not reactive enough to the changes in technology and industrial requirements. By the time they get round to changing the quota to meet the need, the need has passed, or the industry has suffered to the point it is no longer viable in the country.

We are constantly told we are in a knowledge based economy. In such a economy, knowledge and brains replace steel and coal as the new resource. By artificially restricting access to both, in the long term you are going to hinder growth.

It is not enough to say, well we will just produce our own. Its a bit like saying that you will solve poverty by creating more gold. The top guys in the growing market are a sought after resource and can go anywhere. The UK used ti be top of the list, but now we are falling behind all our major competitors.

Universal Credit has never delivered bang for buck, but now there's no turning back – watchdog

hammarbtyp

This was always a political project after Ian Duncan Smith announced he had studied the benefit system and had a cunning plan.

The man who put IDS into Stupid, however has shown again and again that he has no ability beyond a posh accent. It was clear at an early stage that the technical and social problems caused by the changes would always outweigh any benefits, but onwards he went because he knew best, and hey, who needs experts.

It would of been cheaper to give every unemployed person a £1000 check and then bury the whole idea in the deepest landfill

It will be no surprise to learn that he is also an arch brexiter and therefore I will leave you to draw your own conclusion about any similarities

... Aaaand that's a fifth Brit Army Watchkeeper drone to crash in Wales

hammarbtyp

Simple Patch required(that's £1000000 thanks)

Software modification required

if(DistanceToGround < 10 and not Landing ){

Direction = up;

}

Woman sues NASA for ownership of vial of space dust

hammarbtyp

Re: Three Monoliths just down the hall,

"Three vertical, one horizontal across the top? Sounds like a wicket to me! Wonder where the bat and ball are?"

Ah, an artifact from the Krikkit wars .

I always knew that Hitchhikers guide the the galaxy was not a novel but a warning sucked in from the future from a wormhole created by to many biros and spare socks

I see a satellite of a man ... Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, that's now 4 sats fit to go

hammarbtyp

The UK is (currently) the world's 5th biggest economy.

And going down...

So we are worth having a deal with. Especially if the US, China, and EU are being too intransigent (which they are). The US is, well, Trumpian. China is more interested in deals that see it dominate, not partner. The EU imposes a ton of burdensome rules, and isn't interested in explaining why the principal of free movement of people won't get extended to cover countries it might want a trade deal with outside of the European continent.

I agree that a Trump US is anti free trade, but you ignore a number of things. Firstly is geography. Even in a global market it makes more sense for say Australia to align itself with SE Asian markets on its doorstep. Population size, the EU is a much bigger market meaning it is easier to align standards etc. All countries have rules, but the bigger you are, the more economical it is to align to them. Again UK customer base is to small for that to make sense.

Lets also not pretend the UK has any interest in extending freedom of movement...

For example Japan and the UK seem to be becoming very cosy, a number of defence treaties have been signed in recent years.

I see no evidence for that. Japan has always liked the UK because it provided a gateway to european markets. Japanese buisnesses are generally flabbergasted that it is about to leave the EU

There's the TPP agreement that has gone ahead without the USA. That would be a good one to get in on.

Again geography....

It's all madness really. There's a good chance the EU will collapse under the weight of its own corpulance. France and Germany weren't too happy with the latest budget inflation being demanded by the EU commission (20% ish).

That's the brexit dream isn't it. The UK will leave and drag the rest of Europe down to its level. Except it isn't happening. Support within the EU for the project has increased with the referendum. There will always be arguments within the EU and challenges, but that does not mean there is any appetite for a breakup of the EU generally

Can you imagine a democratic government getting away with 20% tax increase across the board?

You do know that the EU has a parliament that is democratically elected and the commission consists of representatives of democratically elected governments don't you?

hammarbtyp

We should just take our toys now, get with the Commonwealth and create a decent Newton constellation- after all, the Commonwealth is global and very diverse, unlike some other local small minded wannabe super states

There are so many reasons why this is pipe dream dreamt up by people still living in a fantasy empire world that no longer exists.

There are political, financial and geographical reasons why this is a non starter (name me one project in the last 50 years where India, Australia and Canada have worked together), but I will give you a technical reason.

Where are you going to get the bandwidth for you new constellation? This is a limited resource and will take international treaties.

hammarbtyp

.What does the Commonwealth do?

What are its major achievements these last 25 years, say?

One could ask the same of the EU!

Well a unprecedented period of peace in Europe is not a bad start

hammarbtyp

Re: What's in a name?

how come the "UK's winner" is the name of the patron saint of another EU country?

You do realise that the English Patron saint was Roman soldier of Greek origin hoisted on the population by nordic invaders based in France don't you?