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Thread: COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

  1. #7821
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    Quote Originally Posted by VNV View Post
    A given.

    These machines appear to have been internet-accessible by private-side technicians. Gross flaw. At the end of their validation procedure, they should’ve been locked down according to some national security standards (not my bailiwick). Obviously. If they didn’t work day-of, that indicates a deeper process problem that does not justify some last-minute firmware upload (that crashes the system and requires someone roll-up a diagnostics console). Bizarre. At the least, give me all of my money back.

    Twitter comments in above links indicate that the vendor has been cited for security flaws/violations/yada in the past. Cheesy indeed.
    There are many questions that need to be pursued.
    Why was an update performed on machines 3 days before a presidential election?
    Was this a critical update?
    How many machines was this done to?
    Who performed this update?
    Who approved this update?
    What change management procedures are in place?
    What is the validation process to verify successful update?

    Review the source code.

    Did the changed votes happen in one precinct or more than one?

    One machine or more than one?

    Were they consistently changing every vote for Trump to Biden or were these intermittent?

    If intermittent, is there a pattern?

    Were any other down ballot races affected by this or only the Presidential?

    Were any third party candidate votes changed in the presidential race?

    This is why lawyers and courts need to be involved to drill down and get to the bottom of this mess.

  2. #7822
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    Britons flouted lockdown in their hundreds of
    thousands in London today as a market was packed with visitors helping themselves to takeaway beer on the first weekend of new coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
    London market packed as visitors buy takeaway beer on first weekend of new restrictions

  3. #7823
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    Quote Originally Posted by old guy View Post
    He saw a stage to enlarge his brand of celebrity and somehow it got out of control and he won.
    Mind reading. Sign of a poor thinker.

  4. #7824
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    Watching Kamala Harris’s speech now. Not quite unifying. How will Joe fold that into his reach across the aisle?

  5. #7825
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Hicks View Post
    It is impossible to guarantee bug-free software. You can follow industry guidelines for software design, analysis, and testing, and try to find as many bugs as you can, but there are still some that get through.
    Yep, exactly, and "defects" can be placed intentionally.

    Furthermore, securing computers is impossible unless it is isolated (ie, not on a network) and under physical security, and even that is not impenetrable. I don't know how voting systems work, but in the banking industry, there are multiple layers of human auditors that audit account databases. Each layer is independent of the others. A banking account balance is simply a set of bits on a disk, so human auditors are needed to ensure they aren't flipped: there's no way to prevent this via the technology itself, and software defects are not the concern.

    So, if I'm a foreign adversary looking to influence US elections (or whoever has an interest in election outcomes) I definitely would be targeting electronic voting machines. There are several attack vectors available and this is one of those cat and mouse games where being the attacker is much easier than being the defender.

    There's an old story, don't know if it's true, that the Russians used typewriters for sensitive computer systems until they had the ability to manufacture their own hardware. That's the level of paranoia that is actually required for highly targeted systems.

    Interesting classic paper on these subjects for those that are interested:

    https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/...stingTrust.pdf

    Quote Originally Posted by Frank_B View Post
    I understand that. But it’s very telling if it’s just an error in, say, someone selects Biden, hits the digital “next” button, then hits the back button, hits Trump, and then it still logs it as Biden. I could see that grievous oversight.

    But if it was in the portion of the code that literally added one to the persons vote tally... That would indicate something grossly negligent and probably malignant.
    I would argue that if the defect in your first scenario existed, then something "grossly negligent and probably malignant" or grossly incompetent is going on. The software should have at least failed some sort of certification test for acceptance of the product if that kind of defect existed. And if it was found through certification, all of the software should be suspect and probably never used.

    Quote Originally Posted by VNV View Post

    These machines appear to have been internet-accessible by private-side technicians.
    If this is true, then those machines can not be trusted. It smells like a blatant backdoor for some entity to slip in and manipulate votes, so it's hard to believe it's true. There is no reason for voting machines to be remotely accessible, or even on a network.

    Quote Originally Posted by old guy View Post
    He saw a stage to enlarge his brand of celebrity and somehow it got out of control and he won. He sacrificed zero.
    He gave away his presidential salary, are aware of that? Is that not a "sacrifice"?

    Why don't you actually listen to Trump (press conferences, rallies, interviews, etc -- it's all out there), and look at what he has actually done and achieved rather than make up stories about him? Do you really believe he "sacrificed zero"? Think about that for a second. He was a very busy businessman who put his work on hold to serve in a public office, which means he most likely lost a good amount of money. Did his brand get more popular? Perhaps, but the vitriol and hatred towards him (and his family) was worse. My bet is that he suffered much damage to serve as president.

    It baffles me that people actually make up stories in their mind, believe them, and embarrass themselves by publicly stating them. C'mon, man!

  6. #7826
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    Winter is approaching and it was getting to be a pain in the ass living up at the cabin, so I finally decided to venture down from the mountains and reintegrate into society. I now see that was a huge mistake. Life without a fast, stable internet connection was much more enjoyable. Well, guess I'll just fuck about for a weeks before heading back up. I'd rather continue to freeze my dick off than put up with this inane bullshit.

  7. #7827
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    Biden’s priorities:

    1. Control the virus
    2. Control the climate
    3. Root out systemic racism

    Then goes on to talk about an “inflection point” in society, continuing Obama’s “Change”.

    Noticeably less articulate in 2nd half of speech. Interesting slip on the covid stats: said “million” instead of “thousand” (then self-corrected). And made it sound like /those/ were the living who lost a loved one.

    He will be pandered to in office, and the levers will be operated elsewhere.

    Heaps of identity politics and emotivism.

    Fox News coverage weak. One of the “inserts” brought up AOC’s Trump Blacklist, and was quickly shutdown by Brett Bair. Juan Williams noticed Biden’s mention of “inflection point”, but connected it to Covid. Narrow vision. I think it was an oblique reference to Build Back Better and the Green New Deal framework, both of which are too controversial to mention directly. Fox didn’t get anywhere close to it. Boring.

  8. #7828
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Hicks View Post
    It is impossible to guarantee bug-free software. You can follow industry guidelines for software design, analysis, and testing, and try to find as many bugs as you can, but there are still some that get through.
    Do you have a software engineering background? It seems not. This sounds like a quote from Wikipedia... Or you're not being completely upfront. Guarantee of bug free software is a completely different matter than good "unit testing" for small changes for a handful of conditions. The portion of the software that needs to be unit tested is easily verified. We are not talking about "multi-variant decision making" or "conditions based on conditions" or "complex db joins" or "risk analysis".

    Rather it is simple accumulating from repetitive instance data. This stuff is child's play and correspondingly the unit testing is as well. I call bullshit that any software changes or updates were needed "at the last minute". I would expect the variables containing running totals and those that had "instance data" would be abstracted (if the programmer is worth anything). "Table-driven" codes would eliminate the need for ever changing the "time-tested", core code. The more likely explanation is that someone is up to something nefarious. Either that, or they're incompetent (which would be another of many retreat positions being taken for anomalies in voting (good strategy by the way)). As a former software engineer, I don't see any other options.

    Put another way, the software we are talking about for accumulating totals is Programming 101. This is first week of class assignment shit. The hardest part is learning some object oriented principles to manage the (incredibly simple) user interface (based on the machine I voted on in Indiana). If your user interface can't show lists of selections based on table entries (in other words, no software changes required for new candidates), the providing software company should be fired. There is nothing complicated here. Relying on "Guaranteed certain behaviors" instead of being able to analyse the source-code (see next paragraph) is begging for fraud.

    My understanding is that the software used in the voting machines that are under suspicion have software that is "proprietary". That means you can't see how it works "'cause we say so". This is bullshit. It is too important to be proprietary. Every f'n version used in all voting machines used in an election needs to be available for review by those paying for it (I assume state personnel).

    If I were in charge, the hardware would be like this:
    • Three levels of security on any ports to device (bios, physical, o/s) (none externally accessible)
    • NO wireless access of any kind
    • NO external ethernet port.
    • NO external port to any bootable device.
    • Anti-Tamper seals on boxes
    • Physical locks with use logging/alarms on boxes
    • A fixed and known version of operating system.

    You may wonder how you get updates to the machine or from the machine. No updates can be made to the machine once certified unless seals and locks are breached. Special protocols and personnel are required.
    You may wonder how you get totals from the machine. There's a secure way and there's a less secure way. The secure way: Only accessible from the built in screen. The less secure way: Send data through an ethernet port behind an internal "data diode" which by definition allows one way traffic only. Through this port (exception to port rule above), you will provide a unique identifier of the machine, the current known date and the vote totals. Nothing else. This behavior is pre-programmed in the machine.

    My background leading me to these conclusions is a different field but has many of the same needs. We simply choose to not take this seriously. Other fields do take these things seriously.

    If you want to discuss how I might attempt to break a voting machine.... All I will say is give a voting machine to a decent technician and he will hand you several ways to attack it unless you take the above precautions. I doubt our voting machines do. Even with all of the above requirements, I would only say the resulting machine would be "less hack-able". At least you are making an attempt.

    I have come to the conclusion that public sentiment "to have the election be over" will unfortunately dampen any effort to correct wrongs that have occurred in this election.

  9. #7829
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    Since some of you guys seem to be tech savvy and are interested in the voter machines...

    The mechanics behind the electronic voter machine hackability

    Seems credible to me.

    This has been going on for along time all over the world. Trump will end this fuckery forever. USPS applied for a blockchain-based voter patent earlier this year. This was a trap.

  10. #7830
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    Quote Originally Posted by od1 View Post
    https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/...stingTrust.pdf

    If this is true, then those machines can not be trusted. It smells like a blatant backdoor for some entity to slip in and manipulate votes, so it's hard to believe it's true. There is no reason for voting machines to be remotely accessible, or even on a network.
    Anything by Ken Thompson is worth reading. Thank you.

    As for the second point, the internet said so. Perhaps I misinterpreted.

    Georgia election official: Machine glitch caused by last-minute vendor upload

    How does a technician have access to the machine overnight, when the machines should be physically inaccessible, except over the wire?

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