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It always pays to have a warm personality. You get upset less often, take things with equanimity and don't end up writhing in pain under the desk because of a stomach ulcer. Something has to be seriously awry to spoil my mood. This week, there were three such occasions that spiked my pulse and got my heart racing. Let me tell you about them!
Annoyance #1: Spectre v4
You've probably already heard there's still potential for more disaster with Spectre and Meltdown. Additional critical security vulnerabilities were recently discovered and at least eight of them are already well documented. Called CVE-2018-3639 (has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) or Spectre v4, Google and Microsoft have now discovered another vulnerability perfect to skim passwords, cryptokeys and bank information. Again, practically all Intel processors of the past 10 years are affected while ARM and AMD chose not to make official statements yet. An attack requires little more than visiting an infected web site that uses JavaScript as security software is powerless to date. But since, once again, browser developers quickly responded, this attack vector has become harder to exploit. But we're not in the clear yet. Naturally, Intel is working on proper fixes - but you might not like the side effects!
Performance drops of up to eight percent are expected. You may remember the original patch already caused slowdowns, instability and crashes on various machines but things are about to take a turn for the worse. Consequently and because Intel probably realized they're waring thin on their users' patience, they decided to make the update optional and pass the buck to you. You now have to decide whether you want more security (and less performance) or retain your machine's performance (and leave the door open to attacks). Oh joy! If you're owning an older processor, you're lucky (if you can call it that) since you'll likely be left out in the rain. Again, older machines probably won't receive any updates so you'll just need strong nerves instead. This begs the question of how a company dare treat their customers like that. Law suits have already been filed so let's hope the courts will provide some justice!
The plane's waiting again
Annoyance #2: Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is currently on a public apology tour. Having already appeared before congress, he now graced the European parliament with his presence. And what a farce that was! While the questions of the American colleagues revealed their lack of technical knowledge, their European counterparts came better prepared - to no avail, alas. Here's the rundown: the "presentation" was concerned with the data protection of 377 million Facebook profiles, shadow profiles, data theft through Cambridge Analytics and fake news. Time scheduled for the event: a whopping 70 minutes - and not a minute more because Zuckerberg had to catch his flight! I had to read this information three times because I just couldn't believe it. They let this CEO (that's all he is despite his market power) off the hook this quickly?
Just 10 minutes into the show, my pulse went up. Even after 10 beers, I wouldn't exhibit this degree of complacency as displayed by the MPs, I promise! And who's brilliant idea was that ridiculous procedure they went through? Once the chairman had delivered his introduction, Zuckerberg was free to spout off a barrage of PR mumbo-jumbo unchallenged - all neatly devised by his team and sprinkled with flowery phrases and little apologies here and there. After that, party leaders put forward their questions - without Zuckerberg having to respond as he'd be given the final word! And so MPs slogged through their question catalogs and enjoyed their moments in the spotlight, it was a live world-wide broadcast after all. When they were finally done, Zuckerberg had a total of eight minutes before he had to catch his plane. So he dashed through questions that didn't require much thinking or, heaven forfend, concessions, reeled off another apology and left. Yes, that is reason enough to be flabbergasted!
Annoyance #3: Bitcoin
Do you use energy-saving lamps? Feels good saving both energy and the planet, not to mention your wallet, doesn't it? Cryptocurrency miners obviously couldn't care less about those things. As already mentioned in my article about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and related transactions are based on processor-intensive calculations. Initially, mining was done by nerds and often using office PCs. Today, there are huge dedicated server farms for that. As the required calculations become more complex with every iteration to prevent inflation, estimates now revealed out of this world figures: the power consumption required for Bitcoin lies between that of Denmark and Finland! And projections for 2019 are even more cause for concern since, by then, it might rival that of the US.
While it's reasonable to discuss the pros and cons of cryptocurrencies in general, the expected future power consumption borders on insanity. Cheap electricity, e.g. through subsidized Chinese coal power plants, is the only thing that currently keeps this business afloat. But if it takes entire halls of servers running at full steam to handle today's calculations, what about the future? How many sacrifices are we willing to make and what right to exist does a currency have that consumes more energy than 10 average households in a year to produce a single coin? Bottom line: the financial sector has already adopted a fairly critical view of Bitcoin and politicians are slowly following suit. Either mechanisms will be altered to keep calculations within reason or countries will simply pull the plug on this currency eventually!
My pulse just went down again so here's my question for you: what's bugging you at the moment? Let's leave out politics for now as I don't want to turn this blog into a war zone. :)
It simply amounts nothing but greed in the creators and users of these system. Basically Homo sapiens at there worst.
Ah! If only we could learn.
Keep up the good work Sven.
Thank you, I do my best. :)
If people find it still economical for them to use lots of power in mining Bitcoin, then I don't see a problem. But then I don't think the planet needs saving. We need a free-market in power production so that electricity becomes so cheap that we can all use as much as we like without concern for the monetary cost.
Power production is the base for our quality of life, and the Green philosophy of drastically limiting it will result in untold human misery.
http://industrialprogress.com
Hi Sven,
Infuriation rises within me when I see or hear of the 'users and abusers' in our society including the following.
Zuckerberg, bitcoin miners, investment business managers who flee with the money from hard-working people, cry poor and bankrupt, close the doors of the business and disappear.
Drivers of vehicles who continually ignore the road rules and believe they own the roads, and the cretinous actions of road-raging individuals.
Hackers and scammers, abusers of 'The System' when they 'arrive' in another country.
Add criminals to the list, especially when they ruin innocent peoples' lives,.....
..........I may as well add the creators of ridiculous, nonsensical TV advertisements.
Danke Sven für das interessante Thema.
377 million Facebook users got Suckerberg'd. The very fact that there wasn't a mass abandonment of the 'service' shows how effective (and creepy) social engineering is.
Sven, right on! Those three things truly are annoying.
Personally, I think the people at Facebook should serve time in prison for what they have allowed to happen. Thankfully, Europe has better privacy policies than the USA. Any comapny that controlls personal data has a huge responsibility to keep it secure and not be abused.
Zuckerberg's avoidance techniques are an admission of guilt, otherewise he'd just answer a question directly without waffling to waste time. Just answer the question, man!
Bitcoin and other cryptos are a real drain on resources to effectively produce virtually nothing. In fact, anything stored online is going ot use energy, including the 'paperless office' that was predicted many decades ago. For every tree that gets saved by e-docs, more carbon is thrust into the atmosphere to keep the servers holding them permanantly on, even if the docs never get downloaded ever again. Now, that's a waste of energy. 'Cloud Storage'? 'Pollution Cloud Storage' or 'Carbon Copy Storage' would be more like it.
When it was becoming apparent that Facebook was at least unwittingly (now we know better) involved in the US election meddling, I saw a panel of pundits on TV discussing how Zuckerberg was going to "fix the problem". Only one of the pundits got it right: Facebook *is* the problem. You can't fix it. In a world where lazy people want to get their "news" from Facebook and Twitter, we deserve what we get. The trolls have won.
The main problem with cryptocurrency mining is that it's designed to become less efficient the more people mine at the same time. The blockchain could easily be maintained with a tiny fraction of computing power, but because people compete to get the coins, they put more and more power in. That doesn't generate more coins, but the coins go to the people who put the most power in.
It's a crappy system, which doesn't necessarily have to work this way. It's more a social engineering problem than anything else. I wish that crypto people gave that more attention. Ethereum trying to move to Proof of Stake is a good move, but I think that Proof of Work (what's being used now) could also potentially work if the social engineering aspect of it was modified.
If blockchain technology becomes widespread in use for things outside of cryptocurrencies does anyone have a guess on how much power the calculation of unique hashes for each block requires? I'd like to know because if it is significant then pile that on top of the power miners use.
Cell phones. Not the devices themselves, but the way people use them. If you've ever been in a face-to-face conversation, the phone rings, and the person you're talking to says something like,"I have to take this," turns away and start mumbling into the infernal device, leaving you standing and waiting your turn. The next time someone does that to me, I shall walk away.
The only solution is this: Worldwide, the parents of convicted criminals receive the same conviction and sentence to be served. Human corruption is becoming overwhelming, to say the least, including Bitcoin and Blockchain. In addition:
How profound IT IS, how Media, purveyors of Mass Command of public opinion, continue to exacerbate Trump into constant trivia, whereas THEY COULD sway public power influence to FOCUS Trump and Humanity on getting Good Presidential WORK and leadership DONE! How foolish, US individuals massing as mindless minions of silly villages, dancing needlessly into the FIRES OF HUMAN EXTINCTION . Can we wake up ???
AND: There should be a global class-action law-suit brought against the highest levels of computer, technology and internet Executive management, Corporations and investors for use of the marketing ploy of 'Planned Obsolescence', that change platforms, forcing huge, un-necessary learning curves. There is no excuse for not enabling what people have already learned, to be included in supposedly better(?) advanced(?) operating systems, etc. The mentality of greed is the stupidest of all in modern technology out of touch with real human need and potential. Please let me know what YOU think, or better-still are Aware of. Thanks, and blessings to All !!!
1 Facebook, Zuckerberg and all social media rubbish like twatter etc. Total waste of space and time plus an unexploded bomb waiting for a chance to explode in the faces of users.
2 Google, for mining our private stuff for its own benefit.
3 Microsoft for same reason as 2
4 Adobe for making its software rental rather a one off purchase. Would not be surprised to see Microsoft following same model for Windows 10 once its revenue stream drops off.
5 My local councils for charging me more council tax for less services. Plus charging for disposal of many types of rubbish at civic amenity sites. (sometimes this is higher than the cost of buying the item new)
Did anyone notice Zuckerberg went to the Senate committee and the EU but chickened out of the Parliamentary committe, sent his minion. Why?, he was cr*pp*ng himself about appearing before the Commons. He realised from the televised committees that they would likely crucify him. What a coward. There are some very SHARP Parliamentarians on these committees.
You’re right, I noticed that, too. He likely got precise information beforehand about who he’d be facing.