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Looks like Sci-hub is getting the booty.
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Next year, the journey to modern software development is only going to continue as new innovations are made, according to Forrester’s predictions for 2018. "Tomorrow will be just like the day after"
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This guy has a keen sense for the obvious.
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Like Gartner, Forrester isn't even trying anymore.
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Microsoft launched a Roslyn-based analyzer that works in Visual Studio to flag problematic .NET Core and .NET Standard APIs that might be deprecated or incompatible with certain platforms. You have your compatible incompatibilities, your incompatible compatibilities, and your incompatible incompatibilities
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Don't forget the compatible compatibilities - that aren't.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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As some of you may know, there's a wall of lava lamps in the lobby of our San Francisco office that we use for cryptography. In this post, we’re going to explore how that works in technical detail. Just in case you need a groooovy new random number generator
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Cool, or should I say "hot", but it gets me thinking that an old cathode ray TV (you know, the kind lying around in the front yards of rednecks) tuned to, well, anything, do they still broadcast over the airwaves? would be a great random number generator by capturing the static. And who knows, maybe it could be turned into an ET detector too when the numbers suddenly stop being random. 
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Public has until December 1 to suggest a nickname for the flyby object. Rocky McRockface?
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Shouldn't that be 'void far*'? 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Styx
(As in the river, or as in "out in the...")
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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If you have a modern Intel CPU (released in the last few years) with Intel’s Management Engine built in, you’ve got another complete operating system running that you might not have had any clue was in there: MINIX.
That’s right. MINIX. The Unix-like OS originally developed by Andrew Tanenbaum as an educational tool — to demonstrate operating system programming — is built into every new Intel CPU.
Apparently the year of LinuxUnix on the desktop happened a decade ago without anyone noticing.
Also filed under things nobody expected to ever see again after finishing their OS programming class at school.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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This is absolutely crazy!
Article said: Why on this green Earth is there a web server in a hidden part of my CPU? WHY?
The only reason I can think of is if the makers of the CPU wanted a way to serve up content via the internet without you knowing about it. Combine that with the fact that Ring -3 has 100 percent access to everything on the computer, and that should make you just a teensy bit nervous.
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raddevus wrote: Article said: Why on this green Earth is there a web server in a hidden part of my CPU? WHY?
The only reason I can think of is if the makers of the CPU wanted a way to serve up content via the internet without you knowing about it. Combine that with the fact that Ring -3 has 100 percent access to everything on the computer, and that should make you just a teensy bit nervous
Officially it's almost certainly because if you buy a mobo with a business chipset and pay extra for Intel's remote management tools porting a basic web server was the easiest way to build a network interface for all the stuff that lets sysadmins at MegaConglomoCorp patch your computer wile it's turned off and left on your desk overnight.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: lets sysadmins at MegaConglomoCorp patch your computer wile it's turned off
Yes, I agree that Intel surely isn't using it for nefarious purposes, but the fact that this functionality has been so "back door" and hidden is the problem. Of course, again, maybe they were trying to hide it so blackhats didn't find out either, but it's just crazy that as consumers we buy things that have some functionality that could expose us but we are completely unaware.
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The bigger issue, and something I haven't seen addressed anywhere is under what circumstances is it enabled. If you're not running a business class chipset all the IME stuff should be completely off; just leaving the hardware firmware parts running.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: haven't seen addressed anywhere is under what circumstances is it enabled
Yeah, they don't address it anywhere -- that's the first problem. Agreed.
The second problem is that since they don't address it anywhere, I'm assuming it is on all the time.
And the third problem is, why can't we manage this from the BIOS or something?
Why would they not allow that to be set up by the end user and be off by default?
Well, that makes you think it is because they want their own backdoor communication channel that only they can control. 
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raddevus wrote: >Well, that makes you think it is because they want their own backdoor communication channel that only they can control.
The flip side is that if they were doing anything overtly nefarious they'd've been busted by people with packet sniffers shortly after it was rolled out. And with multiple major NSA espionage programs having been busted over the last few years even something rather covert not having been outed is seeming unlikely.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: if they were doing anything overtly nefarious they'd've been busted
I agree. again, I don't think they were doing nefarious activity.
I even understand the mentality behind this as a developer because in many ways they are building resilience into their system. They could've even thought - "Hey, if we put this in there, we can update the chip any time and no one has to know about our bugs."
The thing is they should've just revealed it all so IT people would know and consumers who may have wished to stay ignorant could if they wanted but could then learn about it if necessary.
Again, the point is why doesn't the BIOS have options to turn this on/off?
However, I also understand it could be missing because it would be more work require more computing resources and more labor (to add to BIOS) or whatever. Okay, then at least give us a set of jumpers to physically turn it off on the motherboard.
Great discussion, by the way. 
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Adding hardware to every board would be even more expensive than coding a switch once.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Quote: especially if MINIX, on that super-secret Ring -3 CPU
Are they using "super-secret" in the past tense here? 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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MINIX nowadays has matured greatly, but colour me surprised.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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