Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 20, 2022 5:36 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Thomas Tusser noted:

He also noted,

“Naught venture naught have.[1]”

And

“Who goeth a borrowing, Goeth a sorrowing.[2]”

Amongst many others in his philosophical writings in poem “A hundred points on good husbandry” from mid 1500’s on how a man and his family should live life in rural Tudor England[3].

Yup, “The sign of a misspent youth” a barely passing knowledge of “English Lit”…

[1] A variation of an english version of an older French proverb of the times, we now hear said as, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. But too oft heard from the mouths of shills and Pump-n-Dump etc investment scamners and con artists.

[2] A forerunner in this case of Shakespeare’s ~1600 more general “Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be” from Hamlet, indicating both behaviours can bring both sorrow and loss of friendship.

[3] It was supplemented and reprinted, several times and you can read a later version,

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51764/51764-h/51764-h.htm

Clive Robinson • April 21, 2022 1:00 PM

@ Winter, Petre Peter,

After the industrial revolution, you had inflation (too much demand) or deflation (too little demand).

You forgot the interesting one “economists” do not like talking about.

The ICT and other consumer electronics industry have an intetrsting issue.

Normally the price of a good goes up faster than it’s utility, effectively “inflationary”. So there is little point holding of making a purchase (it’s why kids used to get told by a flat/house as young as you can).

Now take “computers” there performance one way or another “doubled” every 18months. Yet the price in fiat currancy remained the same.

That is $1500 got you the latest high end consumer/business laptop year after year… Meanwhile most other things were suffering from fiat currancy price inflation of around ~3%/year. So after a decade what cost $100 was now ~$134, with savings giving at best ~2% you’ld only have ~$125 in the bank…

So if you wanted to buy a high end laptop if you had $1500 in the bank after a decade you would have $1875, so would be $375 up, but the computer would be 100 times more powerfull…

From an economics point of view that is very serious deflation, and very very harmfull. The basics they teach you say there should be no ICT or other consumer electronics industry…

This problem was spreading into “car sales” due to the electronics included, which was proving harmfull in various ways.

But quite a few car manufactures now nolonger “sell” cars to consumers instead they via renamed leasing they call things like “buy back” or “trade up” in essense make you pay monthly usage fee indefinately. They just give you another car with more electronics in it every three years… Which is still effectively deflation by the economists rules.

Some higher end car manufacturers don’t even attempt to hide the fact that all their cars come with all the features built in these days, just disabled… If you pay more each month they enable you to actually use them via an “Over The Air”(OTA) code update. As you legally don’t own the car if you say “hot wired the AirCon” in the car you would be in trouble leagaly… Unfortunately as part of the deal you have to “give them your soul” as well privacy wise.

The old rules of economics are becoming less relavent as we are forced into a “Rent Seeking Econnomy” which once you are in you can not get out of…

Look at it this way, loose your income for some reason, and they turn everything you thought you owned off, or worse down to some barely usable functionalit. But everything will still spy on you 24×365.25 because if you unplug it etc then there will in the near future be some legal clause to make you pay some ridiculous sum for not alowing them to spy on you…

From what I was told AT&T apparently came very close to this model with what some saw as “a stepping stone towards it”. You payed for Internet connectivity plan, BUT they spied on you and sold the data gathered. If you did not want “the spying and selling” the plan was that you would have to pay more a lot more with all sorts of other hooks etc, totalling to something like $30/month more. But… they would still spy and gather data but not “sell it” whilst you payed the ransom / Dane-Gelt. It was not clear what they ment by “not sell” and there was no guarentee they would not sell all your private data at a later date either (apparently somebody decided that the market was not quite ready for that option “yet”…).

Clive Robinson • April 22, 2022 2:57 AM

@ Winter,

But all of history shows that no free market existed without the protection of a strong power.

As you know I’m not particularly in favour of either as history shows both have a nasty habit of “crashing and burning”.

I’m in favour of “regulated markets” as history shows that regulation “can”,

1, Prevent the downward spiral free markets converge on.
2, Set standards to make the product of a market “safe”.
3, Which in turn generaly drives inovation.
4, Inovation generally broadens the market and encorages growth.
5, Market growth is seen to have economic benifit.

The weasle word is “can” or to put it another way, “regulation” is a spectrum. At one end of “no regulation” you have a downward spiral develop, as you approach the other end of “full regulation” the market can not bare the cost of regulation so colapses under it.

Either way innovation within the market stops and shortly there after the market dies, unless given “life support” from the “communal purse”. Which for some foundation services may be a necessity (think infrastructure and similar sociatal needs that “lift all boats”).

Thus the trick is to find “the right regulation”, and the only thing we know about that is they are not found by vlindly or slavishly following political or similar mantras, idiologies, etc.

It’s why I look for both the positives and negatives in not just a system but the interplay of a system of systems.

Clive Robinson • April 25, 2022 4:37 AM

@ Winter, Grima Squeakersen, JonKnowsNothing, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

I always find it heartbreaking to hear stories of people not being able to cook a meal while living in one of the richer countries of the world.

The simple fact is as the old joke about a “5h1t Sandwich” has it, the more bread you have the less unpleasentness you get to eat. Or that’s the way certain people want it to be…

And that is a problem because that unsavory ethos spreads out in the civil society around it. That is the more wealth in an area the more likely you are to be kept away from the basics of life by social preasure expressed as a physical control, you don’t control, but have to pay rent to use.

You are more likely to stave to death on the streets of a city in the first world than you are on the dirt path of a village in the third world. A simple and verifiable fact that is deliberately kept from most by the “Guard Labour” of the tangible –police– and intangible –MSM– on behalf of politicians and those who fund them.

I have some knowledge of this from my youth having been in quite a few places around the world. Of those where even good clean dirt was a scarcity and raw sewerage more drinkable than the “water” in the rivers, the worst of it is almost always on the fringe of the affluent.

It once struck me oh getting into five decades ago how ironic the closeness of affluent to effluent[1], and nothing has improved in the Affluent West First World. In fact it has got so bad that the legislators have made access to water illegal unless through “approved routes”. That is in many places the water that falls on your roof or land is not natures gift to you, it is now owned by law and you have to pay to have it taken from you, and pay again to receive it back chemically adulterated from a tap…

When I was quite young back when I was in my first decade and like many possesed of too much curious energy. I was sent for the summer to relatives that owned a dairy farm where like a farm dog my energy could be expended in many ways quite often usefully. A curious place as it still grew it’s own feed for the cattle. It was in a part of Britain where even the busy roads between towns were not paved or tar’d. There was no infrastructure bringing in water, electricity or gas, but there was the all important life line of a phone. The water came from two places, that collected from the roof and stored in stone tanks and wooden barrels known at water-butts, and from a stream that also got stored in different tanks. The first “for inside” the second “for outside” it took me a little while to realise it ment “of people” not “of dwellings” or buildings.

Water was almost almost never drunk, it was “tea or beer” or if lucky “fruit juice” that got diluted with water from the kitchen jug. That held the rain water that had been boiled the day before in the tank that was part of the range that heated the farm house, and also cooled in the kitchen providing overnight warmth from what was in effect “storage heating” of necessity for cooking and the like. There was even an “ice house” that had a “root celler” that also kept the dairy and pantry cool.

To a currious six year old this was endlessly fascinating, as was the turning of a couple of pigs from contented friendly field creatures –turning over a field for roots with their snouts and the like– to sausages, pudings, joints, chops, bacon and hams and the absolutly vital lards. An anatomy lesson on an artisan industrial scale. Followed by more chemistry lessons in the kitchen where gelatin and similar were extracted and prepared for storage, and jonts were salted in trays (dry) or barrels (brine) and hung in the “wood chimney”[2] to “smoke cure” or apple tree to “air cure”. Then there was the dairy where milk became cream, cheese and much else and where I was shown the secret of making “casein” a form of plastic that was useful. Then there was the making of beer and cider, the former I can take or leave, the latter a later savour in life especially scrumpy. Then there was the making of other preserves, like jam that got cooked then “bottled” or “canned” to fill a pantry to fed twenty or more for a year or more.

But I learnt as much again when wearing the green about surviving in places the First World has made barren or destroyed. Food in jars and cans is “cooked” and usually safe to eat even when years old, just as is cold but nutritious. If you want the food hot use a “water bath” then you have hot water to make a brew and wash with, or fill an improvised hot water bottle (metal or plastic water bottle wrapped in a towel keeps your maggot/sack warm and clean water to drink). A water bath can be heated with a candle if you know what you are doing or some other concentrated source of heat. Making a hobo stove or rocket stove or even Dakota fire pit is easy when you know how. Importantly they make little stray light or smoke to give your position away to unaided eyes. But as importantly they burn fuel efficiently and will heat a water bath made from a mess tin, metal jug, deep plate, or if you know the trick a china plate, clay pot, or tile with a wet cloth / newspaper on top and a plastic cup that would otherwise melt or burn with direct heat. The use of heat diffusers from flame to hot-plate is a skill to learn, as is learning about cooking in a double boiler using a cauldron and proving and baking bread in a dutch oven, and in more modern times how a “preasure cooker” and “hay box” work and how to improvise the latter from a cardboard box, sack and duvet/maggot).

One trick to always remember is an electric iron for clothes if turned upside down becomes a “hot plate” on which you can heat a water bath. You can make with a pair of sturdy pliers frames out of metal coat hangers to make “holders” for the water bath over a candle etc or hold an upside down electric clothes iron stable. With a bit of practice and thinking you can make those frames foldable so they will sit flat in your mess tin or pie plate etc.

But the most important piece of equipment you have, that you always carry with you and does not weigh heavy on your pack straps is “Knowledge and Experience”. As a young child my curiosity gave me life lessons that are now instinctively part of me. It’s been noted by supposed “superiors” I would “spring into action” and was always “comfortable in a hole” if “left to it” and that others around me would likewise be comfortable. Much to their constination I rarely gave orders, I asked nicely and things happened as if by magic, apparently not “the military way”… So I got moved sidways to the “awkward squad” where “officers feared to tred” but apparent miracles happened.

The reality of I guess a “misspent youth” as a very young child, where curiosity got me into more trouble than any decent person would expect but also got me out again. Yes I had two feet, and I could stand on them, but why do so when you can run, dance, climb trees and mountains?

[1] Wordsmiths will tell you the roots of both words are exactly the same, that is a flow of a body of water as a stream into or out of a larger body of water. Over time one meaning sweet and life bringing, the other foul and life terminating, much like the Doctor and Undertaker winds in Jamaica the notion also applies to air streams. Add a little more time and one gets abstracted to mean via raw materials wealth that is concentrated, the other via usage and soilage waste that likewise is concentrated… Few realise it but at one time “sweet water” was a commodity of extream value and worth much more than comparably worthless gold. One was life the other became eventually under the hand of man enduring beauty it’s value in the “work” of art not the soft metal. Back then savage murders, wars and other atrocities were carried out over the control of “sweet water”. In the last two centuries or so that has changed to the flow of energy[3], but we have “eaten through that” and now the wealthy are buying up “water rights” again. Those living in California know where that will go as they are starting to live it… The funny thing is the daughter of the film mogul who brought 007 to the screen Barbara Broccoli, who has carried it on, is well aware of this issue. Which is why one of the more recent Bond Movies is all about the control of water rights. Much as an earlier one was about the control of news media, and another about creating a scarcity of silicon chips…

[2] The farmhouse had several chimneys, in fact you could say it was built between them, and they were the main structural element. You used them as “thermal mass storage heating” that you had fires in during the day and the heat absorbed by the stone radiated out into the rooms over night. The kitchen chimney was never used for food preservation as it was a toxic coal chimney. Coal had replaced wood as the main source of energy for cooking[3] but it’s smoke had a bitter nasty taste that was known to “kill things” which was why “coal-tars” ended up in many soaps and ointments as what we now call anti-biotics were yet to be “scientifically” discovered. Wood smoke from a low temprature smolder had wonderfull smells and the smoke tasted delightful when used to preserve, meat, cheese and some fruits and vegetables. Hence the chimney that had the “smoker boxes” and hangers was from a small wood fire that was warm but never hot.

[3] Coal had become the dominant energy source in homes over the Victorian and Edwardian eras. In part due to it’s energy density but later due to practical chemistry. It arived either directly in sacks or via “town gas” or both. It was called “town gas” because it needed a town to justify the cost of a “gas-works” or “coke-works”. It was made from “coking” coal which was effectively a cooking process in it’s own right. The coal delivered often by river or rail was heated in a sealed process now known as “gassification” where the carbon monoxide and hydrogen, were almost by-products to the valuable tars and similar that were “scrubbed” from it. The resulting gas was piped to housing and street lighting and the high carbon result “coke” as it could burn at very intense heat and could “reduce oxide” to industry and steel making.

Clive Robinson • April 25, 2022 9:38 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

The financing needed is 1/2 the cost of the average house being built in this area.

Whilst that may be true that is of no interest to a finance company.

They look at it another way.

They look at the design and their assessor “guesses” at the recovery value should you not pay. If they think they can not get twice –or more– what they are going to loan you, then they won’t lend.

That is the way they work at the moment… Give it a couple of years and they might crush your hand shaking on a deal… You never know with people that finance real estate builds.

A while back a friend wanted to build a Swedish Flat Pack House (no Ikea jokes please). Nobody would touch them, so they finally spent I guess the equivalent of $20,000 redesigning getting drawings etc for a lot more expensive ~3time the price “brick build” and started looking to get finance. Only to be told there was no money for brick-builds as it was all “geen financing” for “eco friendly” builds… Of which that Swedish Flat Pack was just about the top of the list… All they had to do was dig out the old drawings and slap a double garage on with some extra solar cells on the roof…

No matter what you get told, house financing is based on the buyers market. If your house is a unique design your chance of getting finance is not good unless it’s been on some TV Show or won an award or preferably both.

Turn that “open plan kitchen” into an “open plan art studio” or some such on the drawing titles and you never know they might see it differently even though it’s not.