Posts by Version 1.0

Crypto was a great idea ... when it was just an idea.

Given all the issues we have with bank transfers and wire-transfers around the world for fully legal sales, I thought that bitcoin was a great idea originally. It made bank transfers so fast and inexpensive but those features became such a criminal advantage too. So the crypto concept is good but back in the earlier days walking around town with a boy scout hat on, and an eight-inch knife in my belt was fine too.

So the problem isn't crypto, it's the way we are all behaving these days, getting emails like bitcoin_receipt.pdf.img etc.

Let's hope it doesn't happen

A big Carrington event has the potential to insert large voltages into everything that conducts electricity and we have a lot more things these days than we did 170 years ago, the power lines might cook and virtually every house has electrical lines running through the building - you can think that fibre-optics would be OK but they have lots of electrical components too so it would probably quit too. So everyone's cell phone might catch-fire (the battery getting charged with 80 volts via USB) and Tesla's could start flying across the yard.

Basically virtually nothing is constructed to survive a Carrington event these days, it's not expected to happen even though it might.

How about another update?

So that we get to hear, "UK communications regulator Ofcom is consulting on whether it should end the requirement for telecommunications companies to support the services necessary to send viruses and malware."

M' aI where?

About 20 years ago I used to see virus deliveries once, or even occasionally twice, a month. Nowadays the corporate internet access is busy trying to stop more than 30 every day.

And on Earth 3.5 billion years ago?

There's a fair bit of evidence that life on Earth land appeared then, our inner fish moved from the water onto the land and air, leading to the creation of reptiles and even mammals eventually (just another few billion years). So we may eventually find some small fossils in Mars that reveal that life is not totally uncommon in the Universe.

A Mars delivery

A rock that came in from space and ended up in the soil and water - this has the potential to change things because it may have delivered a start to genetics. You can read an article in Science News that documents that all of the bases in DNA and RNA have been found in meteorites. So rocks from space may change the world over time.

The world’s largest hard drive maker?

The largest hard drives I ever worked with (DEC RL02s) fitted in a standard 19" rack and weighed 34 kg, I've still got a couple that boot the PDP11 but I think every disk drive is smaller these days. A week ago I thought I'd lost my laptop but then I discovered it was sitting behind a disk that I was getting ready to put in the drive.

Up and down for a little while, then up again next year?

I agree, watching the corporate mail server I don't see the deliveries have "dropped 31 percent" ... but it looks more like they have been chopped a lot more than 31 percent. The anti-virus scanning is catching a lot more these days, could this be a result of the cyber-criminals working from home, using traditional infections instead of making new ones? Maybe, maybe not - we need to just be careful, not think that we know what's happening.

Could Windows 7 actually be more secure?

I expect that all the malware creators are writing for Windows 10 and 11 - these are the most common operating systems on new computers purchased by people with plenty of money ... typical targets. But how much malware and virus infections are being created for Windows 7 these days? I expect that most people using those older operating systems are not busy posting on Twitter, Facebook, etc., and are not using online banking accounts so the amount of malware out there aimed at Windows 7 and 8 is probably low, potentially making the older operating systems not "more secure" but maybe less risky for most users.

Brian Cox is smart

I don't 100% agree with everything that anyone says about this but I like the way his comments and thoughts make me think about things ... virtually everything he's documented is smart and very educational, but of course we're finding new facts all the time so everyone's "statements" need to get updated as our theories change. If you want to evaluate the current quantum theory world then remember the classic (the icon defines Einstein, but I'm confident that they could be friends):

"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein

Planning to fix this ...

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight Eisenhower. A quote that pretty much defines the current political situation.

It's a facinating field

Studying atomic details is like doing a crossword puzzle - you have clues and come up with "answers" that look good and then the next few clues result in different "answers" that indicate the first one might have been wrong unless the new answers are wrong too. That's fascinating and very helpful when you look for the next "answer" in both atomics and crosswords.

We're all made of protons and every physical thing in our world is too ... OK, I'm off to have a beer full of protons, I guess they must taste great!

Data update too late

> "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Google claiming the internet titan captured biometric data from millions of Texans without notice and consent" but he's probably supporting the current claims that Trump never captured an government data and stored it in his Mar-a-Lago home ... so maybe Google can just say that the FBI has uploaded all that biometrics data from millions of Texans and eliminate the entire accusations in the same way the the Republicans are attempting?

Sure, I think that they are all busy making money from us.