Same old development cycle
Sorry but, except for the title, this hot new "AI development cycle" looks exactly like the good old general secure software development cycle!
Or did I miss something?
Posts by Steen Larsen
46 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Mar 2010
UK and US lead international efforts to raise AI security standards
Boeing CEO takes aim at Musk’s Starman-in-a-Tesla stunt
Friday 13th April 2018 16:59 GMT
SLS is not a Boeing rocket - BFR is a SpaceX project
The Boeing CEO should be reminded that the SLS is not a Boeing rocket. It is a NASA rocket where Boeing is supplying some parts.
On the other hand SpaceX has developed the complete Falcon 9 stack and is now financing and developing the BFR which will be the biggest rocket ever seen. The BFR consists of a booster(BFB) and a spaceship (BFS).
If SpaceX is succesful with the completely reusable BFR and reach their cost objectives there is a huge risk that the expensive SLS will be cancelled or only reach very few flights. Why pay almost a billion for a n SLS launch if SpaceX can deliver a bigger BFR launch for less than a 100 million?!
MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)
Wednesday 7th February 2018 09:45 GMT
Ran out of igniter fuel
The center core did not run out of the main fuel. Apparently it ran out of the hypergolic igniter fuel TEA/TEB so that it could not ignite the rocket engines for the landing burn. As a result it crashed into the sea with 500 km/h.
Best regards
Steen
PS. Have a look at the press conference with Elon.
Norman Conquest, King Edward, cyber pathogen and illegal gambling all emerge in Apple v FBI
Saturday 5th March 2016 11:53 GMT
Off course Apple must help law enforcement
Obviously we must all do our best to help law enforcement in solving a crime that has been committed. I do not understand why that is even being discussed. However ...
Given the encrypted state of the phone they are trying to access, Apple should immediately assist the police in setting up a system that can be used to brute force the encryption. That is the best that can be done given the state of the phone. If the bad guy has chosen a good password this might take a long time.
We should not confuse assisting law enforcement with the different matter that is if we should setup our security beforehand so that law enforcement has a backdoor access.
FBI v Apple spat latest: Bill Gates is really upset that you all thought he was on the Feds' side
Wednesday 24th February 2016 09:01 GMT
Whats all the fuss?
Why all the fuss?
Yes, off course Apple has to assist the FBI. The best thing they can do is to explain how the crypto works and point at the best way of doing a brute force attack.
I think "assisting" is being wrongfully interpreted as "you have to insert a backdoor in your system". It is not the same thing.
El Reg's plucky Playmonaut eyes suborbital rocket shot
Sunday 15th February 2015 12:10 GMT
Copenhagen Suborbitals
Don't forget the open source space adventure Copenhagen Suborbitals who want to send a human above the Karman line in a suborbital flight. They have already launched some serious rockets, have a lot of interesting youtube footage and recently their English language web site has improved significantly:
http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/
Sometimes they do some impressive rocket engine tests that are well worth attending. Only a cheap flight to Copenhagen is needed.
Want an Internet of Stuff? Not so 4K-ing fast ... yet – Akamai
Monday 19th January 2015 10:47 GMT
Re: Why the 4k?
Note the Akamai name in the head line! This article is based on an analysis of Internet traffic. Data from completely different sources such as media market analysis people would be needed to answer your valid questions. But don't complain that this info is not available in a report from Akamai.
Security? Don't bother until it's needed says RFC
Thursday 15th January 2015 19:58 GMT
Re: Not the right way to do this
> STARTTLS does this and can be easily MITM'd.
In think one of the points of the RFC is that TLS which can be easily MITM'd is still better than no TLS at all aka clear-text.
Amongst other, it protects against passive attacks such as the typical mass surveillance.
Nvidia flops out teraflop X1 for self-aware cars
Rise of the Machines: FIRST HUMAN VICTIM – 2015
Monday 6th October 2014 19:41 GMT 
The hacked surveillance state will do bad things too
They forgot another threat: The surveillance state and the police themselves are now part of the IoT. Hackers can probably easily get you committed to prison for the rest of your life by planting some nasty stuff on your PC and create a few fake communications trails in somebody's network.
Maybe one day the hackers will even be able to send a SWAT team around to get you killed. No, that will never happen! Oh wait, SWAT teams have already been commanded into innocent peoples houses numerous times.
Linux turns the crank on code for cars
Shift over, TV firms: LTE Broadcast will nuke current mobile telly tech
Monday 23rd June 2014 14:05 GMT
Mobile TV available in France - a long time ago
Here in France most operators already offer TV on your phone. They have done this for a long time and it works fine on both 3G & 4G. I do not know if it uses any kind of broadcast technology. When we watched France Switzerland the other night a warning about the data usage was shown.
The quality was great on a Galaxy S5 but we soon realised that we were watching a delayed stream (about 1 minute) when the rest of the square broke out in wild cheers at the first goal.
Ireland accused of giving Apple 'selective advantage'
Thursday 12th June 2014 11:59 GMT
Scandal
Something should be done about countries that abuse EU tax rules and "launder money" for non-EU companies. It cannot be right that we let foreign non-EU companies getting away with paying 2-7% tax on their EU earnings while we tax our own companies and citizens through the roof. How can an EU company compete in such a system!?
If the countries do not want to play ball the EU tax rules should be changed. We cannot afford this.
Get cracking on STARTTLS says Facebook
Thursday 15th May 2014 13:42 GMT
Re: And…?
> Encryption without authentication doesn't protect your content.
Right, but it is still worth doing because it is cheap and because it protects against passive monitoring which is often used in datagobbling dragnets.
Security is not a binary yes/no question! Just because somebody can smash your windows you don't remove the locks on your front door.
Instead of http we should also use unauthenticated SSL in https IMHO. It is not perfect, but it is certainly better than clear-text http!
Best regards
Steen
Freescale: Cloudy dumb sensors? Nope, not OUR smart Internet of Things
Wednesday 7th May 2014 14:08 GMT
Who said the driver must be Human!?
It is a very reasonable requirement when the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968) states that the driver must always be in control of the vehicle.
The convention does not state the the driver must be a human - so where is the problem for autonomous self driving cars???!
No sign of Half-Life 3 but how about FOURTEEN Steam Machine makers?
Price rises and power cuts by 2016? Thank the EU's energy policy
Tuesday 15th October 2013 11:36 GMT
Soon taxes will subsidize fossils too
The solution is easy: subsidize the coal and gas plants to be on standby!
This is off course completely crazy. BUT politicians don't mind. :-( In Denmark they have spent billions on subsidizing wind power which has first priority on the grid. As a consequence the fossil power plants will close just as described in this article. The politicians have now introduced an "energy supply guarantee" tax which will subsidize fossil power plants! and probably also some biomass.
So the energy market is now completely scr**ed! First they subside wind to get rid of CO2 and then they end up subsidizing CO2 producing energy to secure the grid. Seems like they are back to square one except that the energy consumer is getting hurt by higher prices for nothing. :-(
Hollywood: How do we secure high-def 4K content? Easy. Just BRAND the pirates
Google: Thanks for the billions in revenue, UK. Here are your taxes, that's ... £11m
Tuesday 1st October 2013 17:28 GMT
Re: We are too stupid here in Europe
You are completely missing my point. I just say that we are too stupid when we implement such taxation rules where we tax foreign businesses less than we tax our own citizens/businesses.
I am glad we protect the children, try to cure people, tale care of the poor, etc. We could do more of this and pay less taxes if we closed this huge tax loop hole for foreign businesses.
Monday 30th September 2013 19:16 GMT 
We are too stupid here in Europe
We are too stupid in Europe, and, sorry, I include the UK when I say Europe.
First we miss out badly on tax payments on revenue originating in Europe.
Second, we miss out on competitiveness. How on can European companies compete with foreign companies that are taxed so little when we are happy to tax our own share holders and companies in the 60% region!!?
Thirdly, the big multinationals store all the saved taxes in huge off shore slush funds that they can use to buy any competitor that might arise, against all odds, inside Europe.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
Which other region on the planet treat their own companies so bad compared to foreign companies!?
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
Fukushima operator feared shutdown if risks revealed
Monday 15th October 2012 15:19 GMT
Re: Still fingering the tsunami @sunnyskies
It is funny with coal fired power stations - for some reason nobody cares about the million+ dying from the pollution every year, thousands of miners dying every year, cancer causing and IQ damaging mercury and other heavy metals in the smoke and ash, etc. etc. No let us instead worry about some tiny risk related to our clean nuclear plants!
The land that has to be abandoned around Fukushima is small compared to land abandoned on a routine basis when we build hydro power stations - yet nobody really worries too much about that! On top of that you should remember that the land is only being abandoned due to unreasonably high safety standards that are causing more damage than the risk they are trying to deal with.
Please go and worry about something really dangerous instead of nuclear power!
Apple time is now world time
Now Apple wants Samsung S III, Galaxy Notes off the shelves too
Monday 3rd September 2012 11:08 GMT 
Appe is scared
Most of my non-techy iPhone wearing friends have recently turned up with a white Samsung Galaxy SIII. I can understand if apple is very scared!
If you can patent rectagles with round corners I wonder if Samsung has managed to patent phones with screens that are bigger than 4 inches ;-) - Just because of size there is no way you can mistake a new Samsug phone for an iPhone.
Paris - because it is all about size!
How to pipe live telly into your pocket with 4G
Monday 31st October 2011 09:57 GMT 
Mobile TV works fine in France
Here in France all operators have offered TV on their 3G networks at least during the last 3 years. You typically get somewhere between 30 and 70 TV channels thrown in with your monthly subscription. It works fine.
However, my kids spend more time on Youtube than on those TV channels. No doubt that video on demand is the future.
Best regards
Steen
UK cops charge alleged Anonymous hacker
Insulin pump maker ignores diabetic's hack warnings
Friday 26th August 2011 08:35 GMT
Standard procedure
As industries start to build computers into their products and attach them to networks and radio transmitters they become vulnerable to all kind of new attacks they fail to understand.
It is "standard procedure" that the go through several phases before their products eventually become secure enough to operate reliably in the new networked environment.
The first phase is almost always: Denial.
This is where Medtronic is now.
Remember Microsoft, the CCTV industry, the burglar alarm people, SCADA, etc.?
Four illegal ways to sort out the Euro finance crisis
Saturday 23rd July 2011 11:52 GMT
The real issue
The real issue is that the Southern European countries fought very hard to join the new hard currency, the Euro, BUT they failed to re-adjust their policies and way of living to match the new currency.
They were used to funny money and salaries and prices going up 10% every year and they failed to adjust this down to 1%. For example, since joining the Euro prices in Italy have gone up more than 40% compared to Germany. The result is a massive fall in competitiveness.
The Germans took some very hard medicine with almost no wage increases during the 90'ies and adjusted pension age, etc. I can understand that they are very unhappy to support the Greeks who doctored the books, went on a binge of spending and took their pension at 55 before the crisis began.
Bailing out everybody will not save the Euro. On the contrary it will turn it into a failed soft currency. The Euro law was set up to create a strong currency and that is why bailouts are not allowed. Pity that our politicians will not take the hard medicine: allow a default. But perhaps they are also afraid of another set of bank collapses.
It is wrong to call this a currency crisis. It is a problem of national debt and national economic policy that fails to take the new hard currency into account.
Denmark gets its own NFC consortium
Monday 27th June 2011 16:32 GMT
Oh no!
Oh no! Yet another local system that works in Denmark only :-(
Bad for tourists and danes abroad who visit the old motherland.
I hope this fails!
(Other Fails: half the of the credit card terminals in Denmark only accept the Danish dankort, no thanks to foreign cards!; their new Oyster card like system (which is a big failure) doesn't allow tourists to use it - we pay full price!)
Europe promises immigration action as North Africa moves
Friday 13th May 2011 14:40 GMT
Avoiding queues
If you travel a lot it is a big deal to avoid queues at border controls. Imagine that you have to queue up and flash your passport whenever you go to work? Lots of Europeans cross borders when they go to work every day and the abolition of border controls has really increased the development of the border regions.
You don't have to flahs your passport going from Wales to England or from Scotland to England. Why should it be any different when you move around, for example, Italy, France and Germany!?
Before Schengen I used to travel in a night train between Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy. It was sooooo nice to be woken up *twice* for each border crossing (check out of one country and being checked into another one) and having the train standing still.
Believe me, no border control is a Big Deal!
How is SSL hopelessly broken? Let us count the ways
Monday 11th April 2011 10:03 GMT
We are all too lazy
One key problem is that we are all too lazy to bother deciding who we want to trust. This is too difficult! We are happy to rely on browser vendors huge list of root CA's from organisations who obviously do not have adequate security and are happy to sell that "secure feeling" of a $10 certificate.
This problem is unlikely top be solved by some technical solution such as improved protocols IMHO.
Perhaps our browser needs some kind of "trust mode". When in "banking mode" it will not trust domain validated certififates. When in "Dissident mode" it will drop trust in Chinese certificates or whatever local regime I do not trust. Etc.
Best regards
Steen
Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution
TERRORISTS IN SUBMARINES menace the Free World!
Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down
Wednesday 26th January 2011 09:44 GMT 
ID madness after 911
Much of the "show ID" madness began after 911 which is amazing since none of the 911 plotters used any fake ID!
In Europe they have removed the requirement to show ID before boarding a plane. So whenever I fly with Lufthansa from Frankfurt to France I show no ID anywhere - passport control has also been abolished within the Schengen area. The lack of ID check greatly speeds up boarding which is now done by a machine which opens the gate after scanning your boarding pass.
No need to take the bus! :-)
Elsewere within the Schengen area I find that airport or airlines want to see you passport 90% of the time - probably to stop you using somebody elses ticket.
WikiLeaks gets Swiss bank info
Tuesday 18th January 2011 10:35 GMT
Unlawful processing of personal information
Surely this must be unlawful processing of personal information under the Data Protection Act.
Having seen the photos of Assange being handed the CDs the Information Commisioner should have been out with blue lights to stop this illegal activity. Ahhhh, I forgot, nobody takes the DPA seriously.
Feds subpoena Twitter for info on WikiLeaks backer
Logitech said to turn off Google TV
Financial vice tightens on Wikileaks, hacktivistas retaliate
Wednesday 8th December 2010 01:03 GMT
I have just closed my Paypal account
"We are sorry that you have decided to close your PayPal account. With millions of members in dozens of countries and regions across the globe, PayPal is continually improving and expanding its award-winning services."
Living without Paypal is easy, a relief actually :-) But living without Visa is another story. However, I have a few cards which I do not really use and closing them now is a good time to send a message.
Apache threatens Oracle with Java exit
OpenSolaris spork ready for download
Wednesday 15th September 2010 09:09 GMT
If you want a one word reply it must be: Linux
FreeBSD is a very nice OS but in my humble opinion it is not production ready unless you really feel like spending lots of time tinkering.
FreeBSD is suffering from a huge lack of "eyeballs" compared to Linux. Over the past years FreeBSD have missed many release schedules and you just get the impression that there are not enough FreeBSD developers out there to deliver the functionality and stability which we see in Linux distributions such as Redhat.
An important production issue is lack of official hardware support. Most vendors of servers, disk controllers, etc, will officially support Linux but not FreeBSD. The same goes for software. It is sometimes diffult to find FreeBSD support for your favourite configuration management tool, virtual machine hypervisor, etc. etc.
Many databases, such as MySQL, work better on Linux because the majority of the developers, consultants, etc. work on Linux. So the Linux platform gets tested, documented and optimised much better.
Package management on FreeBSD is less mature than Linux and due to lack of official FreeBSD support you often end up compiling your own packages (and kernel if you have a bad day) and maintaining your own package repositories. This really slows down patching/vulnerability management.
So in many FreeBSD production environments you may see low productivity and delayed projects because your staff will be spending time on debugging and fixing some low level critical issue that just works out of the box on Linux. Well, that is my experience. Your mileage may wary.
May your OS be with you!
Underweight passport pic left traveller stuck in Amsterdam
Wednesday 1st September 2010 10:00 GMT 
Flying European Hotels
Apparantly governments no longer require passengers to show any ID for flights within the Schengen area - but some airlines do. Lufthansa doesn't require any ID, great to bord quickly by flashing your boarding pass barcode at a machine! This may come as a shock to some: but I love these privacy respecting Germans!
When I moved to Britain is was shocked to realise that many British do not consider themselves to be European. Europeans are the (weird) guys living on the European continent! This makes it easier to understand the anti European stance in some of the tabloids. Then the Brits also had programmes like Eurotrash which paints Europeans as being crazy, weird and mostly naked - funny though!
I am as confused as everybody else regarding the showing of passports in hotels in Europe (Britain included :-). Sometimes they want it and sometimes they don't, seems like a 50% chance to me.
I have taken my coat and left for France. I really miss the good pub food and fantastic English humour. I do not miss NuLabours big brother attitudes and the long border control queues! Not to mention that you now have to register your passport details in advance when you travel to the UK - even from Paris! Crazy! I wish you Brits all the best in restoring some of your freedoms!
NTLM authentication: still broken after all these years
Friday 13th August 2010 09:27 GMT
Where's the news?
WOW! An old authentication protocol which has been abondoned by its creator and replaced by Kerberos is broken. Yes, we all knew that, thanks.
Suggestions for similar interesting articles:
SSLv2: still broken after all these years.
HTTP basic authentication: still broken after all these years.
SSHv1: still broken after all these years.
Telnet: still broken after all these years.
Wow, this is getting exciting! ;-)
May I suggest to read some excellent The Register articles about how media should do some background checks before passing on news from other sources.
PS.
To the Anonymous Coward who wrote:
"Man-in-the-middle require fooling the user to send their data to them instead of where they intended - so the moral is don't trust unsecured networks."
The purpose of most security protocols is to allow trusted transactions on non-trusted networks. The benefit is that you do not have to trust the network. That is good, for a network is a big and complex beast that should never be trusted IMHO.
Google mobile ad chief fires back at Apple lockout
Thursday 10th June 2010 09:33 GMT 
What if: Google lockout?
I wonder what HRH Jobs would think if the Googleplex decided that their wast number of services were off-limits to Jobsian devices suc as iPhones, iPads, Mac, iX ??!
IMHO this is yet another Apple app rule which is not in the interest of neither iPhone developers nor iPhone users.
Second biggest WiMAX network switches to LTE
Tuesday 25th May 2010 21:15 GMT
Yota rocks!
If you ever go to Moscow, even for a few days, I highly recommend Yota.
After beeing fleeced by most hotels which charge RUB 900 (GBP 20!) per day for Internet access I now use Yota. It is great, mobile, 3 mbps in real life and only cost RUB 50 (GBP 1.10) per day. SIP and Skype works fine.
The Wimax dongle, which can be found in most shoppng centres, only costs RUB 2000. So compared to paying extreme hotel rates you are saving money during day 3.
English info is here: http://www.yota.ru/en/
Enjoy Moscow!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
