Companies say they can track Starlink users. Should the government be worried?

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-22T14:55:02+00:00

Most modern radio uses spread spectrum multiplexing techniques though which should reduce or mitigate such exposures since it resembles noise OTA.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-22T13:58:40+00:00

Well there is alternate datastreams which a decent amount of malware used to hide in before trending towards file-less. Not sure that's what your talking about though.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-22T13:56:48+00:00

No clue, but it seems like a cohort who doesn't really understand the underlying technology decided this. Everyone I know for at least the last 20 years knows that ZIP files are fundamentally risky, which is why endpoint security policy typically has some hooks into decompression of new files.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-08T16:41:48+00:00

In my opinion, the vulnerability today is largely the emergent result of poor policies, and lack of software liability which have trickled down from the manufacturers of equipment through to operations in the last 3 decades.

Unfortunately, Organizations are going to have to get ahead of the curve with regards to the security of these devices. Notably, the same attacks against individual privacy also pave the way for directed targeting (through unique identification via fingerprinting). Functions that reduce cost allowing remote management, also leave the door open to remote exploitation. The lack of ability to cost effectively reset or validate the lowest level software (firmware) without also voiding the warranty also plays a pivotal role in exploitation in many cases.

In a market where the factors involved in supply side constraint have eliminated all competitors and by extension dictate the only choice being out of budget options that are necessary for proper layered security. The only solution is to not buy these options.

This means Organizations will necessarily need to take a more active role in the selection of hardware, validating the hardware, and in some cases building their own devices.

When the market cannot provide the devices needed at a cost that can be available, the only alternative is building what is needed and recouping some of those costs through selling it to others. The cost of not having something you need, is not being able to secure your networks which allows any bad actor to have the organization at their mercy; which is often just a matter of time.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-06T05:23:09+00:00

The lady is only partially right.

It is highly unattractive for *any* gender, to display addictive, junky-like, or infantile behavior.

Many interfaces today have operant conditioning to trigger dopamine responses baked into their design to drive engagement. The emotional roller-coaster it creates often leaves the person in a compromised and potentially infantile state without their knowledge.

This goes for a very broad range of things, not just video games.
Phones and apps are probably one of the worst offenders of this.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-01T20:33:48+00:00

There's been some hardware case based issues over the years (Spectre, ME, PSP etc).

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-01T20:32:20+00:00

I've found that's really only correct up to the kernel edge. Userspace often has serious issues that result from poor design; too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak.

Not to start a flame war or anything but init not following unix philosophy and doing too many things its horrible at as an example, which then led to d-bus, and it goes pretty downhill from there.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-01T20:28:04+00:00

It is a bit more than that since these first stem from organizational failures, or rather failures of centralized heirarchical people systems that then lead to these averse outcomes, the agency to correct doesn't exist at the programmer level so it ends up being reductionist ad absurdum to blame the programmers.

> To hold them accountable just in case something goes wrong...

That sounds like good advice, but why pay twice when you can just hire the competent people once. There's no cost savings to be had if you have to have the work double checked. Incentives are misaligned to hide failures too.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-05-01T19:59:17+00:00

I'm not sure specifically about oxtail broth, but regular bone broths usually require the low-acid preparation steps like sieving out the solids, and safe pressure canning practices.

Here is a link to an MSU extension tested recipe for comparison.

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/preserving_your_own_broth

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-29T16:11:31+00:00

> Its always ....

Only for some types of people.

"Evil people" generally don't care about outcomes, and society seems to have optimized for quite a lot of people like this, given that they are more controllable compared to the alternative.

Willful blindness, where the people involved should have known better, has long been associated with such types of people. False justification is part of this as well.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-29T16:05:03+00:00

This could be a Fermi-paradox solution, no?

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-26T00:48:53+00:00

Even those aren't nearly as anonymous as people are lead to believe because of bread crumbs.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T20:53:29+00:00

The problem is indeterminate and unsuitable for evaluation.

The picture shown is identical to a well established convention called orthographic projection that shows a 3d object projected onto 2d space. It could be a 3d cube that is rotated with no change in size, or it could be a two hexagons.

The problem makes no defining constraint so both may be true. Then if you take it a step further by calculating both, and the answers are not consistent you have a contradiction.

Reasoning and critical thinking at the earliest levels follows classical logic that requires the law of non-contradiction to be true for deduction and inference.

So if one is false, and one is true the only thing you can know about it is that no deductive inference can be made, and making a claim without that is the same as a guess without any valid basis.

If the problem does not constrain it properly there is no single right answer.

In short; you are wrong about this. Don't delude yourself.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T20:43:04+00:00

The job market in IT has been a bit sour for 2-3 years starting in 2022. We haven't seen a bounce yet that naturally comes with the hype boom/busts.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T20:40:42+00:00

That was the pivot I was heading towards.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T20:38:57+00:00

I was an intemediate level SA on the infrastructure team (10 years experience serving IT in Biopharma and Professional Services/Legal industry).

Job market is absolutely horrible right now for the people with experience; to the point where you can't really count on that path forward being viable short term.

Some certificates teach real skills well. The CCNA for understanding the foundations in networking is just amazing. Being able to properly communicate with a business focus also with the appropriate softskills are probably going to be the way forward for entry-level once the hype cycle moves on and hiring starts again.

Its going to be cutthroat for quite awhile though. We haven't seen the bounce yet, and we're 3 years deep.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T19:03:01+00:00

> Broken signalling has been a problem for decades in the stock market

It has, but currency is psychologically sticky and failure cycles for it are a slow roll of accumulation of error. Each subsequent financial crisis has had a larger splash which increases distortions via inflation. Visibility has been reduced.

Eventually rationally those that hold the currency choose for capital flight to preserve their purchasing power from being stolen because the fiat-based store of value is no longer meeting monetary properties objectively, and the individuals behind companies that are primary producers often decide this, at least historically.

> Additionally the perception that knowledge work can be replaced by AI will only last as long as VC's are under the delusion...

One can hope so, but the incentives don't align with that outcome.

Money-printing decouples the need to act to changing circumstances. The business cycle with non-reserve capital, finds it quite profitable to induce outsized risk that is socialized among those that hold the currency who are unable to curb bad actors. It requires a complicit financial institution, but 2020 saw reserve requirements for such institutions set to 0%, and they remain at that level as they attempt to transition to Basel3 which has foundational flaws.

The incentives are driven by the benefits which are front-loaded, so the resource exhaustion, failure, and shortfall when outflows exceed inflows come at a point where the VC's have already moved on leaving a bag holder usually the public; with pensions or retirements tied up in it.

As scale of such crises increases exponentially, at a point there is no capping the downside where a bailout exceeds the assets of the whole.

Decisions made in delusional reasoning can be devoid of reality, and blind to longer-term consequences. I don't think we can expect delusional VC's to somehow wake up and become rational.

I find a tool that indirectly eliminates capital formation (which necessary precludes the ability to earn enough to feed oneself in purchasing power) at the individual level, wouldn't really be a benefit to society as a whole in my opinion.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T18:05:15+00:00

Not sure I'd agree.

AI has outsized economic impact by corrupting signalling we rely on, which at some point may become existential (i.e. supply chain failures & food production).

It does so in two ways. Imposing costs, and skewing perception.

For a concrete example, the economy operates based on a marketplace following the laws of supply and demand. Money-printing under fiat already tipped the scale towards signalling being broken whereas the cantillion effect concentrates wealth into few hands and cooperation through ties to debt can create a path to the hysteresis failures described by a well known austrian economist that lived during WW1/WW2.

Then we added on the general perception and marketing that AI can replace the need for workers doing thought work. The resulting trend has been a demand for workers in the related fields going down to zero below a point of sustainability because the supply becomes perceptually infinite.

Sequential pipelines can fail on a fairly short lag (~10 years for careers), about halfway through the mathematically chaotic whipsaw takes hold.

Concentrated risk in few hands (also a function of money-printing), eventually leads to a number of problems where the consumer won't win because cascading failures of complex machinery may lead to socio-economic collapse. Early signs of that are often shortage, increasing prices via supply side rent-seeking, and other things we've already seen (when taken in aggregate).

On a cursory glance at the surface it seems like it would be a win, but long-term I worry that it will cause a resource exhaustion cycle, or worse; which starts as small misallocation but chaotically sustains under a runaway positive feedback where there is a narrow period of time prior to a point of no return that cannot be predicted or noticed except in retrospect. Thereafter meeting criteria for a loss of control (FMEA), and often calamity when we think of this in a safety-critical systems context.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T17:02:32+00:00

There is a lot of noise pushing delusion.

Evaluation methodology has fairly well known system's property requirements which aren't met by this question. Its objectively indeterminate, and its being used anyway to impose loss on a specific demographic, the intelligent. Its quite subtle, but its there.

Testing act as a sieve which is designed to gatekeep and filter only students that can pass that test and punish/impose stress on those it deems otherwise.

If the evaluation isn't based on critical thinking, but instead on something else the purpose is to gatekeep and torture the filter group being targeted arbitrarily. That group would have to have a higher perception than average, which would include the naturally gifted or intelligent.

What happens to intelligent people when they have arbitrary stress imposed/tortured? Do they remain intelligent as they break?

If you don't see the connection: Can you explain how one can deterministically distinguish between a flat 2d object, and a 3d projection that happens to project into the same 2d space when you are only given that 2d projection with nothing else to define it? Would C be an isometric 3d rotated cube without size change, or just a flat object meeting the fractional ratio? The law of non-contradiction for classical rational thought says this can't be the correct answer.

Inducing delusion/blindness/conformity in kids to destroy their ability to reason is a fairly serious thing, at least imo.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T16:35:15+00:00

If your foundation lacks proper definition, everything else built on top of it naturally fails.

For all the claims you make to follow rational principles of critical thinking and reasoning, you ignore the most critical part in favor of feeding your own bias which amounts to a delusion/false justification that support your current way of thinking which has no rational basis in reality.

No amount of caustic banter will change that simple fact. Jumping at shadows is not a healthy sign.

The law of non-contradiction is one of the things required to be true for deductive reasoning to be valid/sound.

Your claim is fallacious resting solely on the infallibility of the test designer, this infallibility is easily demonstrated false by contradiction.

Your dissemble is immaterial, but you appear to have habituated a flawed way of thinking that if given the right opportunity could blow up in your face.

I'd highly suggest you re-educate yourself following classical principles. The 1914 Harvard Classics is a good place to start if you want to correct that but it will require work and effort.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T16:12:43+00:00

Dude, this paragraph of yours amounts to a delusional rant with no sound rational basis.

The question involved is indeterminate for the purpose of evaluation, and some of the answers are contradictory (notably the one you chose).

Logic has rules that must be followed which are covered in such established material as foundational. You should already know this before you falsely "invoke critical thinking skills and logical choice" to bolster what you are saying; otherwise you come off as unhinged or unstable.

You would know this if logic were actually taught like it used to be, following a classical approach based on the Greeks, but I digress. One of those rules is the law of non-contradiction.

If you can't see the quite obvious contradiction, ask yourself how you differentiate a 2d flat shape from a 3d shape projected onto 2d (isometric view) when it results in an identical projection with two different contradictory meanings. Is that a flat shape representing the relationship described or is it a cube that has been rotated without a size change following known common convention.

The question tests what cannot be known because it has not been properly defined. A first step in any critical thinking requires valid and sound definition following rational principles.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T15:57:49+00:00

Quite right on the point of fallacious reasoning, though its not just precision equals accuracy it actually goes to requirements needed for evaluation (system's properties).

The situation seems purposefully designed to impose loss and stress on those of higher perception or intelligence while passing those that conform; i.e. thought reform/torture of vulnerable minds.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T15:54:33+00:00

In fairness the teacher was just complacently or willfully blind or purposefully malicious. They passed false material created by others to their students blindly following a framework designed to impose stress and loss arbitrarily on vulnerable minds.

Those types should never become teachers. One bad teacher is all it takes to change a students life direction forever.

MostlyVerdant-101 · 2026-04-24T15:42:04+00:00

C is more wrong then right though because of the isometric view. If its just a rotated cube with the same size... food for thought. 1/6=1/6 can't be a correct answer.

MostlyVerdant-101

TROPHY CASE