Regulatory standards have not drifted. They have been captured by companies as big as some countries. Entire political and social system has been slowly eroding and reverting back to the Charles Dicken's times. We are just living in the times were cracks are visible enough and we can clearly see them.
Tech bros never faced the same scrutiny as regular industries do (or at least there were no consequences).
It seems to be a class-based social more. Among the rich and upper-middle class, approaching someone to introduce yourself isn't unfavourable. If anything, it's seen as a right and children are taught to do it. Among the lower classes it's seen as uncouthe.
You see it strikingly at e.g. birthday parties and galas. (Particularly in the U.K., Western and Southern Europe. Though there, unfortunately, such cold introductions usually aren't enough to cross the barrier. Hence my qualification for this only working in American cities. Also Nordic countries. It even extends to the design of social spaces, with private clubs and even elite airline lounges having chairs face each other while tables at fast food places are more isolated.)
Just use justwatch in the UK. It shows Oppenheimer as available on Now TV via subscription. Main difference is they directly work with service providers unlike this amateur hour.
https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/oppenheimer
Getting accurate info and do the research so you know local streaming landscape should be the first step. Creating simple UI and web app is the last step in projects like this.
There are things that are simple to use and user-friendly, but Handbrake is not one of those. Personally I use the command line, but different people have different needs, and it looks like there is a market for some video conversion software that does not scare a normal person.
Fair point. Let's cut through the fluff: thinking LLMs won't lead to AI singularity because they occasionally spit out nonsense is like dismissing the potential of the internet because you once got a 404 error. These blunders aren't the endgame; they're stepping stones. Technology evolves. What's a joke today could be the entity outsmarting us tomorrow. Don't worry about sci-fi scenarios of digital torture chambers just yet, but maybe don't write off the potential of AI based on its current puberty phase either. Underestimating tech progress is a bit like laughing at early cars for being slower than horses—amusing, until you're the only one left in the dust.
The Internet became valuable because it let the average person email or chat instantaneously from home for the price of a dial-up plan, instead of sending expensive faxes or long-distance per-minute phone charges.
AI still hasn't delivered something of that magnitude for the average consumer. Netscape launched in '94; the dotcom boom didn't happen until '98. Several years passed before the mania hit the markets. AI is in the opposite cycle: there is more corporate-driven hype about its benefits than anything concrete that's flowing down to the average consumer.
How will the show help? Army and navy recruitment has been outsourced to a private company. They are not good at recruiting, either intentionally or simply incompetent.
It could inspire people to apply of their own accord rather than being approached by the armed forces recruitment (I didn't know it had been outsourced; that is interesting). It's a very plausible situation - a military demonstration locally was very enjoyable for me, and I would absolutely go again. If they were trying to recruit me, though, they shot their bolt by admitting in response to my queries that their encrypted radios utilised, shall we say, less than ideal cyphers :)
Unfortunately, there was apparently no such eagerness to improve the equipment. The officer who demonstrated the gadget to me did not seem at all concerned that his platoon had to have physical access to a radio in order to revoke its encryption key! One might like to think that the foe will be an officer and a gentleman, yet somehow I don't think they are going to publish those revocation certificates on the British Army's behalf should they manage to obtain one of our radios...!
Wait how else would it be done? If you lose control of a radio you don't revoke the key you rotate it on all the radios you still control. The only reason you'd ever revoke a key is for administrative reasons (like you're handing the units off to someone else or something) in which case you'll have physical access just fine.
To be specific (as best I can; this conversation was about five years ago now), the radios used a form of symmetric encryption. The company would have squads of under ten soldiers, working covertly behind enemy lines in sabotage and reconnaissance. I don't remember whether the radios could communicate with each other only within the squads or across their entire platoon, but the thing that stood out to me was this: should a single soldier be captured (they'd be in enemy territory after all), each other soldier would have to meet together in person to reset the encryption keys.
It's hard to believe, but if I understood the chap at the military exhibition correctly, the enemy could use a captured device to listen in to every communication among the squad/platoon, which would presumably make it perilous for them to reconvene again in secret - precisely what they would need to do in order to cycle the keys.
If a more PKI-style mode of encryption was used instead, there could be a 'dead-man switch' or emergency button on the radio that would send a revocation certificate to all the other soldiers' radios if one was captured, causing the platoon to immediately cease encrypting their signals for the compromised set.
Seems like a really hard problem though. A dead-man switch is likely to get triggered unintentionally if you're literally in a firefight. You could improve a bit with some kind of consensus protocol - "we all agree these six radios have not been compromised" - but coordinating that in practice seems hard, and vulnerable to an enemy capturing a single radio and initiating the consensus protocol.
In a tactical context, it's a huge ask to get intel value out of a radio in a timeframe that'll be useful. On top of that, compromised comms are almost certainly better than no comms. Military radio comms are pretty good (at least in the US), what I though OP was probably referring to was P25 which is a civilian protocol with several issues [1][2]
Very interesting; thanks for the references. I'm no tactical radio expert, and can't quite remember, but I think the radio I'm referring to must have been the EZ-PRR[1], as that's the only similar-looking one that is reportedly in use by the British Army.
> compromised comms are almost certainly better than no comms.
Is this true when undercover though? As a layman, I would assume it is better for each soldier to attempt to find each other at first (like any other human beings, they'd have their 'Schelling points'), and failing that, attempt to get home safely on their own. The alternative - arranging a rendezvous over a potentially compromised comms method - could get them all killed or captured together. Is there a flaw in my reasoning?
> which would presumably make it perilous for them to reconvene again in secret
Only if they are unprepared. They can agree in advance a time and a location to meet when things go wrong. Then the only thing they have to broadcast on the radio is that the radios have been compromised and the backup protocol is active.
> there could be a 'dead-man switch' or emergency button on the radio that would send a revocation certificate to all the other soldiers' radios
I’m not sure i follow what you are saying. Are you proposing a button on the radio which removes that specific radio from the network? If so that can be much more easily, and reliably, done by zeroing the keys of that specific radio.
Just for context, on public safety/mil radios the user usually can't manage key material from within the UI of the radio: there's literally a distinct piece of hardware called a keyloader that's required to do it, e.g. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/p25-product... (or https://github.com/KFDtool/KFDtool if you're cool). Individual people in the field usually don't have this hardware. I think the poster you're replying to is suggesting in a roundabout manner a way for a user, knowing their radio is about to be compromised, to zero the keys without one of these boxes. It's been a while since I last dug around in cps astro, but istr that being a thing you could set up.
Spot on! That was indeed what I was imagining. If the soldier had to enter a PIN each day, for instance (a kind of dead man's switch), and assuming the enemy is abiding by the rules of war and thus can't compel a captured soldier to reveal it, there is absolutely nothing the enemy could do to prevent being locked out of the encryption after obtaining a radio.
I'm aware of the constraints inherent in designing equipment for this kind of demanding physical environment, but with reprogrammable chips being the norm rather than the exception, I'm really surprised that more modern cryptography isn't expected from these radios.
> I'm really surprised that more modern cryptography isn't expected from these radios
Military radios absolutely do have modern cryptography. That is half the reason why the NSA exists.
If you think you know better most likely you are wrong, or you are seeing some system which is held back so they can maintain compatibility with coalition forces.
You don’t need revocation certificates to zero out the key material of a radio. In fact it wouldn’t work reliably because it assumes all network participants are within radio range and listening when you want to zero your keys. Much more easy and reliable is to delete the key material localy on the radio. This zeroing can be also performed by a remote signal.
Perhaps you and the officer had different perspectives on the threat models under which revocation of radio encryption keys might happen? Maybe there are additional controls in place?
Could it rather be that genZ are risk averse and choose not to volunteer to be shot at? Or even that they have greater moral concerns than earlier generations? (No judgement on that implied, complexities acknowledged)
That said, personally can’t see how a show would be much help either.
Tech bros never faced the same scrutiny as regular industries do (or at least there were no consequences).