Hilift

In Windows, if a process has Backup privilege it can bypass any permissions, and it is not audited by default due to it would create too much audit volume by actual backup applications. Any process that has this privilege can use it, but the privilege is disabled by default, so it would require deliberate enablement. It is fairly easy to enable in managed code like C#. Same goes for Restore privilege.

> Working on servers over SSH, I constantly hit Word docs

What?

There are two aspects. "Charge" and "costs/who pays". When someone can start a Kia with a USB cable, the owner pays for that. Kia may have a fee for replacing something, but that doesn't factor in the calculus of "there's a reason these people are buying our product, and we assess they will continue to do so."

Note that Kia offered a maximum of $6,125/$3,375 for totaled/damaged vehicles.

The previous formula:

"You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall."

A lot of things were swept under the rug and twisted following the war.

Disposition of the Vichy was complicated. In the weeks following WW2, there was an épuration (purge) where Charles de Gaulle estimated about 10,000 were killed. Others estimate 30,000.

In January 1944, the daughter of the US Ambassador to Russia Averill Harriman, Kathleen Harriman Mortimer, visited the Katyn Forest in Russia where 22,000 Polish military and police were executed. She was instructed to say that the Germans committed the atrocity. That was official US policy. Following this, Mortimer was said to be the second most popular and known US woman in Russian, exceeded only by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Her Wikipedia page now states:

"Mortimer was called as a witness to try to determine which nation had performed the mass summary execution. Mortimer's conclusion was that the Germans were responsible for the killing, and that the limited evidence that Soviets had been responsible was a German ploy. That was later proven incorrect, and it has been widely established that the crime was carried out by the Soviets."

In February 1946, Russia tried and convicted seven Germans for a massacre committed by Russians, and used the daughter of the US ambassador as a puppet. Russia then presented Ambassador Harriman with a large, hand carved wooden seal of the United States, and Harriman had it hung behind his desk in the embassy. Seven years later, it was discovered to have a concealed microphone and transmitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Harriman_Mortimer

Vendors are pushing using QUIC and without other networking layers, thus the performance increase. For example, SMB3 over QUIC over the Internet, sans VPN.

> But I thought in EU and US things are different.

Different indeed.

Privacy is enforced through compliance and civil court actions. In 2018, one of the largest actual data breaches at the time (~300 million customer records) netted about $0.25 per record in penalties, after several years of lawyering. ($52 million (US)/$23 million (UK)).

The EU makes more money fining companies for policy violations:

A €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) fine was imposed by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for transferring Facebook users' personal data from the EU to the US in violation of GDPR.

That is what privacy is about.

https://nationalcioreview.com/articles-insights/extra-bytes/...

The US has guaranteed this will become the norm with increased auto tariffs. An auto manufacturer can produce a car with significantly lower value for import to another country, and "features and services" can be enabled later for a fee.

The problem with air travel is it is too fast. Or at least it is presented as fast. This implies if something is unpleasant, it shouldn't be a big deal because you shouldn't be exposed to it for long.

I doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.

Switzerland is the land of gobs of cash and gold. The UK is having difficulty making ends meet for basic infrastructure like the £20 billion in debt for one water company. UK debt is 96% of GDP (£2.8 trillion, £16.4 billion monthly interest payment). Switzerland debt is 38% of GDP.

Qualified opinion. Definition: An auditor's report that indicates the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, except for the effects of a specific departure from generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or a limitation in the scope of the audit.

Never happen. Defining and measuring poverty is a sensitive topic with juked stats in every country. The UK for example, has a poverty rate of 46% for families with three or more children. The poverty rate for Pakistani households is 47%. Around 7% of the UK is considered destitute. This data is rarely discussed because it is too unpleasant, and no-one wants to connect the inability to fund the national budget with the lack of money. The US does the same with occasional outlandish claims of "lifting nn% people out of poverty" by spending on programs that usually don't last.

No one wants cross platform.

Read the blogs of the guys creating the bugs.

Microsoft was only interested in fulfilling the contracts, and some networking components such as NetBIOS and LAN Manager, then winding down. This was due to Microsoft had already been in discussion with David Cutler, and had hired him in October 1998 to essentially port VMS to Windows NT. Windows NT 3.1 appeared in July 1993.

https://archive.org/details/showstopperbreak00zach

A better example would be Los Angeles and the new $30 per hour minimum wage for hotel and airport workers. Conceptually it makes sense. The crux of the issue and some opposition is there are more people now who use those jobs for primary income for a family, where in the past it may have been perceived as jobs for supplemental income and no health benefits.

A 38-year-old Russian crime gang leader arrested in ... Kyiv, Ukraine.

"The law enforcement action and resulting confusion about the identity of the detained has thrown the Russian cybercrime forum scene into disarray in recent weeks"

I'm guessing "disarray" means payments not posting? Bonus pool depleted?

This is the oldest trick in the book. In 1946 a guy named Diet Smith invented the 2-Way Wrist Radio:

- In June 1954, the radio was upgraded to increase the range from 500 miles to 1,000 miles, then again in 1956 to 2,500 miles.

- In 1964, the 2-Way Wrist Radio was upgraded to the 2-Way Wrist TV.

- Tracy gave his young son Joe an obsolete Wrist Radio, which Joe was able to use to call for help when he was abducted and held hostage by dognappers.

We've been falling for this stuff for 80 years!

https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_Radio

This is part of the trend of "there needs to be room for opposing views". Similar to when JD Vance visited Europe in February and scolded the EU on not suppressing views from elements such as AfD, which is essentially East Germany in every demographic.

When asked about the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson stated that if he had not taken the action, the native peoples would have been wiped out. Effectively he was saving them from genocide.

"According to historian H. W. Brands, Jackson sincerely believed that his population transfer was a "wise and humane policy" that would save the Native Americans from "utter annihilation". Jackson portrayed the removal as a paternalistic act of mercy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298683/jd-vance-afd-ge...

Where were all these people when Vault was released in 2015? I remember being told we were switching to Vault in 2018 and nada. It was like the economists before the 2008 mortgage salad. Did Vault not hire security people? This reminds me of when HeartBleed occurred in 2014. It was after that when someone looked at the code and bugs everywhere. The guy that created Heartbleed got a Phd and the guy that discovered it got a t-shirt. "And then it was acquired by IBM".

Japan has higher iOS market share (64%) than the US (59%) or the UK (47%) or Europe (34%).

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan

It isn't. There are many things Python isn't up to the task. However, it has been around forever, and some influential niche verticals like cyber security Python was as or more useful than native tooling, and works on multiple platforms.

A cool new indicator is "tortured phrases". These are turning out to be a gold mine for detecting fraudulent papers.

"In December 2023, a PubPeer user commented on 13 tortured phrases the Problematic Paper Screener had flagged in the article, such as the use of “Parkinson’s illness,” “Parkinson’s infection,” and “Parkinson’s sickness” rather than Parkinson’s disease.

"“These typically result from an attempt to avoid plagiarism detection using a paraphrasing software,” the commenter wrote about the phases. “How come these incorrect wordings survived proofreading by the coauthors, editors, referees, copy editors, and typesetters?”"

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/11/11/all-the-red-flags-sci...

You could create a dashboard.

Most of the problem is human behavior. Look at the US, 40k annual fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Many US states, counties, and municipalities have a formal "Vision Zero" program. It unfortunately hasn't resulted in much improvement in the US. Some think the pandemic had an effect.

https://zerodeathsmd.gov/resources/crashdata/crashdashboard/

https://www.visionzerosf.org/about/vision-zero-in-other-citi...

Yes, however it is well documented that some of those issues exist, no one denies that. One of the civilian deaths early on in the Israel/Palestine protests was by a professor of a local college in LA. Perhaps a bigger problem for California is they have 20,000 Chinese students, 36% of international revenue. That will probably drop significantly.

UCLA does some pretty amazing work though. They recently published a study on the Los Angeles "mansion tax" that basically called it a failure. They did that for free, with no grants or funding. That is the kind of actual policy work and studies you would expect to see from a university, and it includes a master class on how modern urban property development works in mature urban areas such as Los Angeles.

Unfortunately work like that is overshadowed by the protesters that hijack other protests and bring in outsiders who cause property damage and violence.

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/05/14/los-angeless-mansion-t...

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-unintended-consequen...

California higher education in general does not need of federal funds. These are typically mutually beneficially projects that doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with the US government.

The bigger problem is the recipients of these cuts seem to think it is about an "issue", and are incapable of accepting they are having sand kicked in their face.

There are 3,144 counties in the US. Some of them in remote areas have a history of getting away with shakedowns. Places like Rawlins, Wyoming have probably had thousands of shakedowns since I-80 was built in 1956. Really a good idea to avoid those places at night.

Some of the DirectFile code was published on GitHub.

https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file

Europe is a more finite geospatial target. Fewer resources required. France has already stated they have the capability to fill the gap for Ukraine for up-to-date movements along the 1,000+ km line. They are currently working on the next generation program, IRIS, with a target date of 2027.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2

https://europeanspaceflight.com/ariane-6-successfully-delive...

FYI, there are/were two systems. "Direct File" is probably the more complex and integrates directly with 25 participating states. The other is "Free File" and only covers some payers.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-direct-file-for-free

https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-f...