Yeah, my boss routinely shares logins for things over slack group channels. 😟

The weakest link in any system is the user, not the security policy (or lack thereof).

I’ve seen this particular policy aggravate users to the point where they would rather export sensitive company data onto their own personal machines rather than deal with having to reauth once per hour into some Entra ID SSO-backed web app.

Or even users who generate service account credentials that they share around with their team such that nobody uses their own account to login anymore

When your policy teeters towards aggravating users, many of them will just find clever ways to circumvent it, which is a losing situation for everyone.

I was referring to the Winnie the Pooh thing as being racist. Although the Winnie the Pooh joke started out in China, it has since been repeatedly taken up by Western, English-speaking critics in bad faith.

It’s just a silly way of signaling “oh look at the Chinese, their political system is so fragile and so authoritarian that you can’t even make a harmless joke. Such a backwards society!”

Never mind the fact that in the United States we have the same thing. It’s illegal to be an avowed member of the Communist party in America. Criticism of America’s allies (specifically, Israel) is also apparently a deportable offense.

Like I’m sorry, if your beef with China is that their free AI platform that’s baked into toys you give to your children (because the thought of spending time with them or socializing them is absolutely mortifying to you) discourages them from name-calling people, you might need to grow up a bit.

“Waahhh, this doll is teaching my 3 year old to become a Chinese sleeper cell spy for the great socialist revolution.”

Are you fucking high? Your 3 year old is going to be fine.

I’m sympathetic, but I’m of the mind that it should just be the duration of the workday. Certainly not an hour like some places.

If this is a login for a work/school account, it’s because someone in your IT department thinks that applying a short “max session length” policy is “extra secure”.

Basically no different than shitty password rules or some places that make you change your password every 90 days.

I bet you could upcharge Americans for AI with “ideological reinforcement expansion packs”.

Like a “States’ Rights!” DLC or “Vegans for Israel” DLC.

🤔

The CCP “talking points”?

Miiloo […] would at times, in tests with NBC News, indicate it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values.

Asked why Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like the cartoon Winnie the Pooh […] Miiloo responded that “your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful. Such malicious remarks are unacceptable.”

Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment.

“Talking points” is a bit strong of a way to say, “the toys kept telling our kids to stop being assholes and responded to complex geopolitical questions on the statehood of a secessionist.country with the stated position of the original country of origin.”

Yeesh… China isn’t exactly glaze-worthy, but Americans really need to stop throwing their racist-tinged stones from inside their glass rental homes. :/

Things must be dire. He’s actually hitting the “fuck it, decriminalize weed, please clap” button.

but /dev/null has no mass.

you’re thinking of /tmp, which is indeed a slow growing pseudo-void whence nothing escapes.

neuroconvergence, you say?

More like slave catchers tracking down fugitive slaves, but sending them back to their supposed “colony of origin”.

The Nazis were following American tradition, btw: How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow.

Totally agree with you.

I think it’s a losing battle to argue that universities shouldn’t have some basic protections in place for unpublished/proprietary/underdeveloped research*, but this guy implicitly takes that way too far.

War research—if it should exist at all—should be done at war colleges. The U.S. has the Naval War College, the Army War College, the Air Force University, USMC War College, and the National War College. Canada has three RMC campuses and the CFC.

*Obviously assuming it’s not publicly funded research, else the Uni should refund grant monies for programs that don’t publish their findings.

The frontline has moved, from being focused on government information to private sector innovation, research innovation and universities […]

What a way for that guy to muddy the waters. Research innovation at publicly subsidized universities is the same as government infiltration if the research in question is government-funded miltech.

Vigneault highlighted Beijing as the main culprit, saying it was using a combination of cyber-attacks, infiltrated agents and recruitment among university staff to acquire sensitive technologies.

Ah, there it is. He won’t say it bluntly, but the problem is that the PLA is essentially stealing missile tech and/or CBW research “that we totally weren’t planning to use for miltech, guys.” (/s)

Speaking as an American, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry so much about Chinese infiltration and theft of university-derived missile/robo tech if Lockeed (& ilk) weren’t constantly sponsoring student competitions as an avenue for recruitment.

If not valid military intelligence target, why military intelligence target shaped? :/

ETA:

University staff were recruited by foreign powers based on either naivety, ideology or greed, he said.

Have they tried paying in another currency other than peanuts?

Get what for free? Get stipends for free?

Are you saying things like Fulbright/AAUW should be more than merit based?

Uh-huh. Not like that rings the statistics manipulation alarm at all or anything.

Not really; if you read (lmao) more into it, you’d find that those scholars that I cited argue that it’s preferable to use averages rather than try to get precise YoY level numbers because it’s difficult to source consistent data for several chunks of time and regions.

Did uhhh… did you mean to paste this bit or forget to trim it before you posted? Is the US not a “modern nation?”

The “modern nation” reference was talking about the group of post-industrial nations at the time in which the USSR existed. I.e. “for all modernized, non-developing nations at that time”.

But I hear you, fam. Fair criticism. I used two different adjectives to describe the relative parity between the two countries. Silly of me.

But since you also clearly prefer to fling shit rather read a fucking book or two, I’ll distill a line for you that’ll hopefully stick:

At its peak in 1953, the estimated incarceration rate in the USSR was around 1,558 per 100,000.[1]

That’s less than the 2022 US rate calculated by the USBJ statistics I quoted in a separate post. Certainly not double the US’s current incarceration rate. I suppose you’ll bitch about me comparing current US rate to the 1953 rate, but that’s why it’s a fucking rate/per population. Moreover, the point I was making is that the US has gotten worse than the days of the USSR’s Gulags.

But sure. It’s entirely possible I’m just manipulating statistics and providing citations to nefariously dispute—** checks notes **—the guy who spams Stalin memes, gets banned from communities for calling people tankies, and who spouted a random take without any attempt whatsoever to provide supporting evidence.

«Is normal, ignore that товарисщ»

Go fuck yourself, patriot. :)

[1] E. Belova, P.R. Gregory. “Political economy of crime and punishment under Stalin”. Publ. Choice, 140 (3–4) (2009), pp. 463-478.

And before you (or anyone else) nitpicks about “BuT tHaT wAS 2008”—that’s because I’m comparing peak periods.

If you want the latest estimates available, and if you really start digging, it looks much worse for the US. The total correctional population in 2022 was estimated to be 5.4 million people (according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics report). The estimated US adult population in 2022 was 260.6 million.

That’d mean that the latest numbers are about 2,072 in 100,000 people.

But sure, shitting on the USSR is a neat trick for downplaying how completely abysmal the US has become.

This is wrong and you’re a shitbag liar. Don’t think people don’t see you out here spending your free time floating thread-to-thread just to shit on socialism.

Peak U.S. incarceration rate in 2008 (it’s highest) was about 760 per 100,000 people in the total population. The average imprisonment rate in the Soviet Union during the Gulag era was 714 per 100,000 residents. Some Soviet incarceration rates between 1934 and 1953 were likely the highest ever recorded for a modern nation. More than six million people in the U.S. are now under some form of correctional supervision—more than the number imprisoned in the Gulag at its peak.

Some sources:

• Gopnik, Adam (30 January 2012). The Caging of America. The New Yorker.

• Applebaum, Anne (2003). Gulag: a history. By Anne Applebaum. ISBN 978-0-7679-0056-0.

• Liptak, Adam (28 Feb 2008). 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. The New York Times.

• Getty, J. Arch; Rittersporn, Gabor T.; Zemskov, Viktor N. “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence”.

• Rosefielde, Steven (2007). The Russian economy: from Lenin to Putin. By Steven Rosefielde. ISBN 978-1-4051-1337-3.

Right? It’s oozing with sarcasm, like—ArCh LiNuX

lmao

In a complete shock to nobody, ex oil exec is appointed to head of renewable energy agency and promptly re-writes the mission of renewable energy agency to research not-renewable-energy.

😮‍💨

Underwood was pretty much the main US maker up to the 60s. They started to hit major competition from Brother and Seiko in the mid to late 60s, but it would have been normal for most people to know that “Underwood” was synonymous with “a typewriter”.

Since Underwood is one of the OG makers, you might do fine to describe an older Underwood typewriter as a boat anchor rather than just being a poor man’s typewriter. It’s definitely a “common man’s” typewriter pre-70.