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After spending 48 hours with some of the world’s most skilled programmers (Hackers Conference), it was possible to make some generalizations about what’s on their minds. About half of the time blocks included a session on security, consistent with Zurich’s prediction that, by 2019, the cost of securing the Internet will exceed the value of the Internet (previous post).

What would it take to have real assurance that the systems we bring into our businesses and personal lives won’t be turned against us? Some of the participants suggested that we will need to start by simplifying the hardware. It would be better to sacrifice some processor performance to obtain a processor simple enough to understand. “Start with the 8051 and build out from there,” was one theme. Looking at the PDP-10 manual on saildart.org, one expert commented “The errata sheet for a modern processor is probably longer.” [The PDP-10 was a powerful mainframe of the 1960s.]

After that we would need much simpler operating systems that (1) were small enough to understand, and (2) provided true isolation among programs and protection against malicious code. Perhaps something like MULTICS. Participants agreed that Google’s Chrome OS was probably the best current desktop option from a security standpoint.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack to the tune of 400 Gbits/second was described as “trivial” and the result is that “nobody can be up if someone wants them down.” Are standalone Internet publishing businesses that depend on advertising overvalued as a result? The revenue stream can dwindle as readers install ad-blockers or turn their attention to Facebook. The revenue stream can be cut off any time by a DDOS attack.

Where there are challenges, of course, there is opportunity. Some folks noted that insurance companies writing computer security policies were taking wild guesses at the risk and that it should be possible for a company staffed with security/software experts to make money simultaneously insuring and analyzing/securing.

Related:

• map of worldwide cyberattacks, complete with exciting graphics

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While visiting California this month I learned that it is possible and practical to get a free brand-new car. Start by having an above-average income, a good credit rating, and a house that consumes at least $300/month of electricity (California is among the most expensive states in the U.S. for electricity so the last requirement is not challenging to meet). “We got a Fiat 500E for $129/month,” said a software engineer, “and having an electric car in the household enabled us to get a different rate plan from PG&E that saved us more than $100 per month. The lease rates are low because the leasing company is entitled to all of the tax credits.”

Can it work for apartment-dwellers? A software engineer at one of Silicon Valley’s most profitable companies earns many times the median California household income of $61,000 per year (Census), but still not enough to purchase a house. He pays $70/month to lease a Chevy Spark and can charge it at work. (He likes the car, but says that it might not be practical in the Northeast due to the fact that using the heater eats into the 80-mile advertised range.)

Both electric car owners report negligible additional costs, e.g., for maintenance or energy.

What do readers think? Is this the future for upper-middle-class Americans? Free electric cars funded by taxpayers and lower income customers of the same electric utility?

[And what if you can’t afford a house or an apartment? In one conversation I learned about two ways for Californians to get free or nearly-free housing. Son #1 of the person to whom I was speaking was a software engineer making a well-above-median income. He was living with, but not married to, an artistically-inclined girlfriend who earned a modest amount. She therefore qualified to purchase a $3 million apartment in a brand-new building in San Francisco… for $270,000. She can’t live there for a day and turn around to sell it for $3 million, but her income could rise to $1 billion per year and she wouldn’t have to move out. She could move to Los Angeles and keep the place as a personal vacation destination (the monthly maintenance fee is comparable to the cost of one night in a local hotel). None of this would be available if the happy couple had gotten married prior to the purchase. Young folks: Keep this in mind if you’re partnered with someone and there is a big income disparity; you’re saying goodbye to a lot of valuable government handouts if you marry. Son #2 also worked in the tech industry and was frugal so he’d saved up enough to purchase a house without a mortgage. The house cost about five years of after-tax income. He was married for one year to a person with an Ivy League education in a field with a BLS median pay of roughly $70,000 per year. After a California divorce, his former-partner-for-one-year is now the owner of this house and thus well-positioned for the free electric car deal (above).]

Related:

• Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management adviser writes about the economics in the Boston area (might be better now because he doesn’t mention the $2,500 in taxpayer cash available from the state)

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Bureaucrats in Brussels have been telling European countries reluctant to accept immigrants from Africa and Islamic countries that they have a moral obligation to do so. If someone has the physical stamina to cross the land and/or sea and make it to a European shore then that person has the right to asylum. But if it is a moral imperative to save Syrians and Afghanis from the situations prevailing in their home countries, why is the moral imperative limited to those who show up in Europe? If a person is elderly and/or physically disabled, shouldn’t that person have at least as strong a moral right? If so, shouldn’t the Europeans be flying 747s (max passenger configuration up to 660) and A380s (max passenger capacity 853) to airports in Afghanistan and picking up anyone who wants to leave? Why limit the offer of European residency to those who are strong enough to trek over mountains? Similarly, for Syria and north Africa, shouldn’t the Europeans send passenger ferries to pick up anyone who wants to depart and can show that he or she is from a war and/or poverty zone?

In short, if accepting asylum-seekers is a moral question, how can it be legitimate to filter by physical stamina and capability? Shouldn’t the Europeans be favoring the physically weak instead?

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A New Yorker story about a 1985 murder mystery: “Blood Ties”. Technically this is a solved case, with jury verdicts rendered and convicted criminals in prison. Yet none of the competing stories seem to fit…

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President Obama was on TV here in Las Vegas scolding some less evolved Americans regarding their lack of enthusiasm for new neighbors fresh from the battlefields of Syria. A guy wearing an NBAA badge said “It takes a lot of personal courage to dismiss the security concerns of others when you have Secret Service protection for life and will never board another commercial flight.”

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#onlyatNBAA

 

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The Wall Street Journal ran an article, “Behind Rising Inequality: More Unequal Companies”. with some interesting charts.

Since 1990 the return on capital of a 90th percentile U.S. company has spiked from its historical average in the 20-30% range up to about 100%. Within-firm employee pay distribution hasn’t changed that much but if you work for a winner (market-leading or monopoly) company you probably get paid very handsomely compared to people who work for a loser (exposed to competition) company.

Some excerpts:

everyone at the top companies, from the lowest to highest paid, pulled away from the pack, and everyone at the bottom companies languished.

The economists did find that the top 0.2% of earners in firms with more than 10,000 employees did significantly better than their fellow workers. But for the other 99.8%, the expanding pay gap can be explained by where they work.

Some companies may so dominate their market that they can extract profits over and above what a purely competitive landscape would allow; economists call these excess profits “rents.” Employees at those companies then share in those rents.

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Airbus Helicopters, formerly Eurocopter, is famous for kicking in the teeth of America’s jet-powered helicopter manufacturers. In fact, so great was the disparity in technical performance that even the U.S. military had to cave in and buy machines from the absurdly named “American Eurocopter.” Now it seems that Airbus is gunning for our piston-powered market as well. From “New High Compression Engine”:

Airbus Helicopters has successfully completed the first flight test of the high-compression engine demonstrator aircraft at around 3pm on Friday, November 6th, at Marignane Airport.

“The first result of the 30 minutes flight confirms the advantages of new-technology high-compression piston engines for rotorcraft in offering reduced emissions; up to 50% lower fuel consumption depending on duty cycle, nearly doubled range and enhanced operations in hot and high conditions”, said Tomasz Krysinski, Head of Research and Innovation at Airbus Helicopters.

Integrated into an H120, the 4.6-liter high-compression piston engine incorporates numerous technologies already applied on advanced self-ignition engines, and runs on the widely-available kerosene fuel used in aviation engines. Its V8 design has the two sets of cylinders oriented at a 90 deg. angle to each other, with a high-pressure (1800 bar) common-rail direct injection and one turbocharger per cylinder bank.

Other features include fully-machined aluminum blocks and titanium connecting rods, pistons and liners made of steel, liquid-cooling and a dry sump management method for the lubricating motor oil as used on aerobatic aircraft and race cars.

English-language translation: We stuffed a diesel engine into a standard jet-powered helicopter and now it can fly twice as far on one tank.

Note that the five-seat H120 (formerly EC120) is roughly comparable in size and capability to the Bell JetRanger.

Separately, what does it say about a U.S. industry when a company using French labor can take over the market?

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People are arguing about whether or not ISIS members can “slip through” the EU’s refugee processing system and/or whether at least one of the Paris attackers came to Europe as a migrant/refugee. In poking around international law, e.g., this article on asylum and Wikipedia, I’m wondering whether an admitted ISIS member wouldn’t qualify. The refugee/asylum standard seems to start with

A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Thus if there is an armed conflict between two sides, a person from either side should be able to asylum on the ground that he or she might be killed by a person on the other side. There is nothing in this standard that says the “political opinion” of ISIS leads to a stronger or weaker claim than the “political opinion” of someone who supports the Syrian president.

What would stop a person from showing up in England, France, or Germany and saying “I am a member of ISIS and I have a well-founded fear that I will be killed by opponents of ISIS, including military forces from your own country” and getting asylum on the basis of that statement?

Related:

• Telegraph article on Taliban members who successfully obtained asylum in Britain: “There is a perversity in a system where the people who potentially pose the greatest risk to the West have the strongest claim to asylum,” … “The law states that they are entitled to it. It is irrelevant what their beliefs are, by law we cannot send someone back if they are in danger of their life.
• September 11 anniversary thought: Are we equipped to handle 21st century refugees? (if Europeans are closer geographically and culturally to Syria than are we and they can’t filter out those who wish to attack them, what hope is there that the U.S. government will do better?)

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I was with friends who have a Tibetan Mastiff who is the size of a small pony. I’ve known this animal since he was a puppy and he has always been a (big black fluffy) marshmallow with me, but they mentioned that he truly hates a mutual acquaintance and has nipped this guy. I said “Maybe we should get a custom chew-toy with [Donald’s*] likeness for him.”

What about this idea for a business in our Etsy/3D Printing/computer-controlled embroidery age? Chew toys for dogs in the shape of or with the likeness of someone the dog hates?

* Name changed to protect the guilty.

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