Apfelkuchen
I enjoy looking at US issues as reported in foreign media because it verifies my opinion that a lot of what occurs in this country is divorced from reality. I not talking about the minor issues of the GOP Congressional leadership refusing to accept that American voters have twice elected Obama as President, that just politics and racism.
This conflict between the FBI and Apple is absurd. The FBI and the Court are demanding that a corporation violate US law that prohibits hacking into other people’s devises. Apple doesn’t own the phone involved, they manufactured it. More than a decade after 9/11 the government should have hired people to break into Smartphones.
Kryten left a link to an Australian’s opinion of this mess which is short and to the point – the death and injuries weren’t caused by an iPhone.
The CBC provides a source for information about this and some the talking points: this isn’t about one phone as the FBI claims; this warrant was issued publicly, rather than being sealed, to pressure Apple.
If the government needs this capability, the government should develop this capability. The government is ordering Apple to do something no one knows for sure can be done.
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James is actually an ex-pat Aussie living & working in the USA. He makes several good, legitimate, points.
It is possible to do it. Now. It will require writing a heavily revised IOS kernel and there’s no guarantee that the new kernel won’t just crash and burn, but it’s theoretically possible, at least. But as I pointed out, it’s going to be very easy for Apple to make sure that the *next* revision of IOS isn’t going to be susceptible to this hack. And in fact Apple has apparently decided to do so, regardless of whether this effort to force them to hack their own phone succeeds or not.
More interesting commentary: Former NSA chief Michael Hayden comes down on Apple’s side. Not because he likes terrorists, but because terrorists will communicate with each other more often if they believe their communications are secure, and that communication is itself a clue that allows finding terrorists and eavesdropping on them in other ways.
Kryten, he makes the most important point that the FBI will take on Apple, but won’t to anything that annoys the NRA. There are ways within the letter and spirit of the Second Amendment to make it harder for whackoes to have access to assault rifles without inhibiting hunting or target shooting, but no one has the guts to try.
I will take your informed opinion on all things Apple because I essentially went from the Apple /// to the iPad and don’t use a Smartphone. My basic objection is essentially based on the 13th Amendment, not the 4th – this isn’t turning over data that you have in your possession, this is being required to write software for the government. Who pays the coders? Who owns the software? What is the liability? Who pays court costs if a defendant sues Apple in the criminal cases that are backed up requesting exactly the same thing?
We have NSA, Cyber Command, FBI conintel, et al. – why aren’t they doing this?
The thing I noted is that the shooters destroyed their personal phones, but didn’t destroy the iPhone. What are the odds that there is anything important on the iPhone?
Given that the FBI waited 50 days to make a request for data from the iPhone, clearly they didn’t view the iPhone as containing any important data either. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, this isn’t about the iPhone. This is about the FBI attempting to set a precedent that they can force a technology company to write software that will circumvent their own security.
Forcing people who have violated no law to work is called slavery and I remember something about that being abolished.
One of the big reasons a government agency would buy iPhones is that they will auto-erase, and all of the other features that have been added lately. This was a government phone, so Apple definitely doesn’t want to hack it.
I agree Bryan.
OT: Wasn’t going to annoy you any more with my “PC build from hell!” but thought you might be curious, and want a temporary distraction. 🙂
I’ll post details if you want. One thing I’ll mention, is that I was forced to buy a Win notebook to finally get it working! I wanted to get one eventually anyway, but was waiting for the market to settle.
In the end, I decided on an ex-Gov Dell Precision M6700 Notebook. I got it from a legit seller of all ex Gov. & business gear. The reason was I wanted a decent workstation/developer system, but didn’t want to spend over $4k on a new one. This one as configured was US$4,500 mid 2013, I paid AU$1,200. Still has 7 mth Dell warranty. 🙂 Specs:
* Intel Core i7-3920XM (4×2.9GHz + Hyperthreading, 3.8GHz Turbo)
* 2x8GB Kingston DDR3-1866 (expandable to 4x8GB)
* NVIDIA Quadro K5000M with 4GB GDDR5 memory
* 17.3″ LED Matte 16:9 IPS 1920×1080 LG Philips LP173WF3
* HL-DT-ST Slot-Loading DVD+/-RW GS30N
* Samsung PM830 128GB mSATA SSD
* Seagate Momentus 7200.5 750GB SATA 2.5″ HDD
* Intel 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet
* Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6300 802.11a/b/g/n 3×3
* Bluetooth 4.0
* PremierColor display
* Flash reader (SD/Mini SD, MS/Duo/Pro/Pro Duo)
* USB 3.0 ports
* SIM card slot
* Fingerprint reader
I upgraded the 2 drives to two Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD’s, 1 mSATA, 1 SATA.
Oh, came with Win 7 Ultimate SP1 x64. I got the Win 10 Pro free upgrade. I bought a ligit copy of win 10 Pro x32/x64 on an 8GB Sandisk USB pen drive (s/w only, sans registration code) for $11 + postage from a legit eBay seller in the USA. Was way cheaper than buying it here! Arrived in 4 days. 🙂
The Dell is freaking awesome! 😀
I’m trying to get broadband again after some investigation of regulations etc. We’ll see how it goes!
When my old XP box died I bought a used Dell that came off a lease to the Oklahoma Department of Health. I couldn’t have built anything with half the power for what I paid. It is still jugging along. If the hard drive dies I will have a problem because the Dell rescue disk is for Vista. This was one of the last XP machines that were downgraded from Vista.
Buying off leases is a good deal because most of what is going to break, has broken.
Good luck with the broadband. I have been maintaining a minimum cable connection to my Mother’s house but will be cancelling it and transferring my broadband connect to her house. The cable company wants me to get a “free” piece of equipment that they intend to lease to me next year. It is a cable box, just like the one that was made irrelevant by the flat screen I bought for her a few years ago. It doesn’t need any additional equipment to accept digital signals. I figure I will subscribe to one of the over the Net services when visitors need their TV fix.
I just scored a “free” 12-bay server with 24gb of memory and two hexacore processors. Sure, they’re Westmere processors, not the latest and greatest, but 🙂 . It’s currently stocked with 1tb drives but that can be remedied if 12tb of storage (6tb once formatted as RAID10) becomes insufficient. Alas while it has a SAS2 HBA in it, it only has a SAS1 backplane, meaning I can’t use it with SAS2/SATA3 drives. That can be remedied though. A backplane off of eBay is a lot cheaper than a new server 🙂 .
That is “yuuuge”, and I would certainly not complain about picking up a few extra bits. You are in a good area for finding deals, but here you have to depend on the Internet for everything.
You’re right about off-lease equipment. This is my 2nd ex-Gov notebook, both Dell (unsurprisingly). I was lucky to get this with warranty. It’s not technically off-lease yet. But the Gov is downsizing before the election in an attempt to reduce the horrible defecit. So, they had a big *garage sale* & companies like Greys Online & Megabuy clean up.
Another thing that happened was that my Pi was put on backorder. I found out the Pi 3 B was coming before the 2 would be in stock, so changed the order for the 3 & cancelled the WiFi add-on as it has built in WiFi & Bluetooth 4.1. Curiously, it’s a couple bucks cheaper than the 2 on the RP site.
That’s a pretty good score badtux. 😀
I just discovered a coffee roaster in NY called Death Wish Coffee! 😆 I checked them out yesterday, and I love the name, so I ordered a couple ponds each of two of their blends. The Death Wish, & the Valhalla Java Odinforce blend. lol Might take a few weeks or so because customs thinks if you are shipping coffee, you must be shipping illegal drugs!
http://www.deathwishcoffee.com
Regarding coffee, you should try to get Colombian beans when you know real Colombians. It is such a hassle going through Customs in the US that they only try it once. It is easier to get cocaine that real Colombian coffee beans. There is a lot of roasted & ground Colombian in the US, but getting beans is very expensive.
Yes, I’m considering getting the 3 to replace my 1B. It has all of the USB ports I need, especially since I won’t need one for Wifi, and most of the approved adapters are 150 Mbs.
I generally buy my coffee from Gold Star Coffee, a global coffee bean supplier. They ship from Canada which is quicker & easier. I like the Hawaiian Kona & Jamaican Blue Mountain Peaberry coffees. They have several suppliers & a variety of roasts. 🙂 I like to try something different now and then, but I have my regular favorites. And now that I have a decent coffee machine… Heaven! LOL
http://goldstarcoffee.com/products
The 3B is getting good reviews. seems to be faster. The processor is a new 64bit 1.2 GHz Arm7 BroadComm BCM2837 with integrated WiFi & Bluetooth. 🙂
They are talking about a major speed increase over the 1B, but I’ll have to wait until they are available to tell. The built-in Wifi in my laptop seems to be dying, but I have a spare adapter. I changed my router because I thought it was failing and it may have been the laptop.
The Pi should be be faster with just the inclusion of the Wifi integrated instead of going through USB. Most of the approved dongles were limited to 150 Mbs. I should be able to get a better read connecting to the Ethernet rather than Wifi.
They will still be producing the models 1 & 2 because they have customers who use them in their own products. It is very nice that they have maintained backwards compatibility, especially for schools. The schools can buy a few at a time and still have everyone using the same software. You can’t do that with Windows.
Yes! 😀 It is good to have the three models. They all have their pro’s & con’s. I like the 3B because my primary interest is IoT. M$ have already announced an x64 win 10 IoT. Intel should follow soon. I had to change my IoT orders also when I went for the 3B. Good thing they put my order on backorder. The down side to the 3B seems to be more power required & increased heat. Though, according to Pi forums, it will have more power available for the USB ports. 🙂
I am actually considering getting a 2B for other projects. It has far broader hardware/software support & is quite suitable for many things. 🙂
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pi-3
I don’t have any projects right now that could use Pi power. I’m more into looking at the problems of the Linux storage stack and figuring out a better way of doing things. The Linux block layer is a mess. It is a mishmash of incompatible block devices that communicate with each other in ways that make no sense and where you cannot create flexible storage stacks because of the varying tools and ioctls needed to chain things together. For example, with the storage stack that I’ve been playing in, it’s possible to add a flash cache in front of disk devices without altering where your filesystems are going or unmounting your filesystem. All that happens is that current in-flight block i/o requests report back to where they came from without going through the cache. With the stock Linux block layer, that’s hopeless. The routing of block i/o through the stock Linux block layer simply can’t do it.
Also, SES. System Enclosure Services. All cabinets based on the LSI SAS1 and SAS2 expander chips (i.e. pretty much all of them) have the ability to set or blink a red locator light when you detect a bad disk or just want to indicate a disk to remove and replace. Problem is that Linux doesn’t have any support for SES right now. I want to remedy that.
Thus why I needed a test server with lots of disk bays to play with :). Rounding up enough disks to fill those bays was a different story. I also scored a box of random disks, but a) not all of them were the same size, and b) they were customer returns, so only a small percentage of them were actually good. So I spent a couple of days testing drives, and shucking the carriers off the drives that tested bad. So now I have a box full of shucked bad drives, and a 12-bay server full of good drives. Sweat equity 🙂 .
The 1B+ has been fine for my primary purpose, but the 3 will reduce the number of wires hanging around. I always add heatsinks and use a powered USB hub so my current power supply should be adequate.
Now that sounds like a major, long-term project, Badtux. The biggest problem with much open source software is that it was developed piecemeal by people looking at a specific problem or project, not for general use.
You made a major hardware score, and it would have been a major score even if you had no real immediate use for the hardware. Actually have a purpose behind the score is good, but not an absolute necessity 😉
I’m going to start with SES, because I actually have a need for it.
I have enough old wall warts hanging around that power is not one of my issues. I just don’t have any use for a Pi right now.
I use the Pi as a ‘Net terminal for sites I may watch for an extended period, or to give me access when the big machines are being used for real work. I might do something useful with it at some point, but it was a gift and is handy because it connects to a decent-sized extra flat screen TV, rather than using the iPad.
Good luck with your projects badtux. 🙂
I need the Pi because I’m bored. My new PC & Notebook are OK, and I have a bunch of new Games (though without Internet I can’t use many of the new games not from GOG, like Diablo III & Wolfenstein: The Old Blood & The New Order. They need a Steam account to play. And I can’t play any of the C&C series, because I have to d/l them all (probably about 80-100 GB). 🙂 So, Pi is it until I get Internet. I can at least connect it to Internet via my mobile 4G account. it doesn’t need anything large I have 10GB/mth. Should be enough. 🙂
I know I can get hacks to bypass Steam but I’ll be damned if I will be forced to do that!
But I really want to get going on my WP projects. I have all the s/w & accounts I need. Oh well. Shit happens.
Oh, and I have 175 GOG games I can’t play, because I can’t d/l them! lol Not to mention all the s/w that requires online activation & updates, starting with Windows! If you use a computer now, you can’t survive without Internet. I have about $6k worth of hardware, & over $10k worth of software, that is useless. Not to mention the thousands of $ of online accounts that are worthless! Most of which I still have to pay for, even if I don’t use them. My business & marketing plans are now useless also.
So, you can understand my anger.
I needed a laugh, so decidedto see what our Federal Parliament was up to this week. Sure enough… LOL
“On Wednesday, Malcolm Turnbull was blindsided by a massive national security leak where Tony Abbott was directly quoted as being “flabbergasted” by decisions made by Malcolm Turnbull in the Defence White Paper. Malcolm Turnbull responded by ordering the Australian Federal Police to investigate the leak. It makes you wonder about the kind of born-to-rule mentality that makes anyone think it’s ok to use national security as a part of their civil war.”
“On Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison’s negative gearing scare campaign came tumbling down when it was revealed that ‘modelling’ the Government was using to attack Labor’s negative gearing policy wasn’t actually based on Labor’s policy. It had been done before Labor’s policy was announced. The author of the report even said: “the assumptions do not align with Labor’s policy.” Scott Morrison has never looked more out of his depth.”
“At the same time Malcolm Turnbull was launching his unhinged attack against Labor’s negative gearing policy, he and Scott Morrison were reportedly having an internal fight. Scott Morrison wants to make changes to negative gearing and superannuation, but Malcolm Turnbull looks ready to abandon any changes. When Bill pointed out on Thursday these decisions meant we’re heading closer and closer to a repeat of the 2014 Budget, Turnbull looked down-trodden and Tony Abbott beamed.”
“On Monday, another Government leak highlighted massive delays in Malcolm Turnbull’s NBN. Under Malcolm Turnbull, the cost and the time it will take to build the NBN has doubled. If it wasn’t for the cost to the economy, the lost benefits for thousands of small business and the fact our broadband is now so old school it will soon be a museum exhibit, we’d almost feel sorry for Malcolm Turnbull, given his knack for turning wine into water.”
“Scott Morrison this week proclaimed Australia’s economy was the “envy of the G20”. So what’s changed since Tony Abbott declared a “Budget Emergency”? The deficit has doubled, net debt is up $59.8 billion, unemployment is up and wages growth is the lowest on record.”
So there ya go! And you think your senate & congress are funny! You are rank ametuers! LOL
Concerning governments, you are telling me what your government is doing while mine hasn’t made it out of neutral for years. Yours may be doing foolish things, but at least they are doing something for their paychecks.
I read about the changes in the NBN when Abbott took over and it was already obvious that the changes would result in higher costs for an under performing system. Change orders are what provide government contractors with huge profits. The long-term major contractors under bid the original project to get it, knowing that the government is going to change the specs and the price gouging can begin. This is the main culprit in government cost overruns.
I know how irritated I get when I’m down for a week, being down this long has to be next to hell. In the ancient times [ten years ago] I could access via dial up after hurricanes and such, but there aren’t any dial-ups available down here, everything is via cell.
You are dealing with the “famine” so there should be a “feast” in the future.
Don’t try to tell me your political system is more absurd than mine until your candidates start discussing the size of each others sex organs 😉
Don’t try to tell me your political system is more absurd than mine until your candidates start discussing the size of each other’s sex organs 😉
LOL at that. Between that and Chris Christie’s expressions of stunned disbelief and horror as he was standing behind Donald Trump on Tuesday, this week has been unending hilarity when it comes to our political process.
Regarding tech toys, boredom is not one of my problems. Right now I need to unmount a 48 port switch that’s taking up room in my rack, and replace it with a better 24 port switch (better in that it support 10gbit uplinks and isn’t as big and loud and power-hungry). Oh yeah, that’s another one of the things I scored, a free half-rack :). I had to get a KVM switch from eBay though. Paid $18 for it. Horrors!
Ordered a new video card for my gaming machine today. Not the best gaming card on the market because AMD is about to release a new generation, but it’s their fastest “consumer” card, based on the Radeon R7 370. I think I’m also going to update it to Windows 10, so I can have Direct X 12 when games that support that come out. That means I need to move my video recorder to my main server in the rack, I want to be shutting down the gaming machine when I’m not using it because that’s a lot of money for electricity (roughly $25/month) that I don’t need to spend. No big deal, just need to spin up Win2k8R2 virtual machine there and activate the license key over there (I’ve only activated this one once so should be able to do so).
I might upgrade everything to 10gbit Ethernet too, but that depends on what I can score from eBay. I already scored a couple of 10gbit cards for cheap…
Great. Seems my comment vanished yet again, before I was finished. Perfect.
Kryten, this time it wasn’t my system, because there is no trace of the missing comment.
Yeah, Badtux, leaving machines on 24/7 is expensive, especially in California.
You are certainly not suffering from boredom, and are heading for overload land. I wish you luck. The most change I’m going to be dealing with is moving my Internet from my house to my Mother’s. I have been paying for TV service over here for visitors, but the cable company keeps jacking up the rate. I have a Blu-ray player and TV over here that are designed for the ‘Net so I will start using them for the for downloading when I have visitors.
One word, Bryan: Roku. Between the “official” channels and a *huge* selection of “unofficial” channels, you’ll never run short of content to watch on Roku. They even have a channel for cats :).
I need to check with my brother as he is the one most apt to watch. Pretty much the box only gets turned on for background noise by my cleaning lady and for an occasional American professional football game by my neighbor.
Thanks Bryan. 🙂 Never mind, it wasn’t anything important.
Good luck badtux.
Oh, I did post this:
Amazon says it will bring device encryption back to Fire OS
And this, mainly for badtux I guess:
VC firm warns that funding pullbacks are ‘not a blip’
Here’s an interesting story ov VC capital drying up:
The Dark Ages of Austin startup capital
And the UN decides to weigh in on FBI vs Apple:
FBI forcing Apple to weaken iOS security could endanger lives, warns UN
Here’s anothe bit of insanity from a State Gov this time. Not only are the morons in gov trying to rip off students as in the USA, but the teachers also:
Victorian teachers to be repaid millions after ‘unlawful’ laptop leasing program
LOL no wonder there is a huge deficit with idiotic ideas like this.
I would assume that the tax laws are different in Australia, but in the US those forced leases would provide a minimal income tax break if they itemized, but screwed them on sales taxes because they are employees, not businesses.
Hell, this is the type of crap that gives rise to unions. When my department specified that officers had to have black shoes, they ended up having to pay for them as uniform items. Everyone already wore black shoes, but when management mandated it, it came out of their pocket.
You have to wonder who thought forcing teachers and principles to pay for laptops was going to improve things.
A lot of high rollers got caught by margin calls during the market dive over the price of crude. Lots of assumed value got squeezed out of the ‘casinos’ around the world, so venture capital isn’t as available as it once was.
Amazon, like a lot of people in the business, don’t understand how conscious people have become about their personal information after all of the identity theft reporting. Why in hell companies don’t all default to maximum security and let the users figure out how to relax the levels after they are comfortable with the program.
I still doubt there is anything of real interest on that iPhone.
I read an article where the FBI finally admitted they forced the County to hack the iPhone backup iCloud account but they screwed up because it made it impossible for Apple to get everything, including old & deleted data. They only got a little of the possible Data. Morons.
FBI says it reset the San Bernadino shooter’s iCloud password (and maybe royally messed up)
I’ve been looking to buy a 10″ tablet for awhile, decided to wait to use Android on my phone for a while. It’s a PITA! I also didn’t want to spend a fortune, as my Super funds I took out are almost gone & I don’t want to take out any more. I was trawling through eBay Sat, and was intrigued to see a Dell Venue 11 Pro which is a Win 10 notebook come tablet and quite powerful according to reviews. It’s almost new, a month old from someone in NSW. It is the top of the line model with Intels new Core M-5Y71 mobile processor & 8GB RAM.
This is the sellers comment:
He wanted $750 + shipping/insurance (another $30). I contacted him, & he dropped it to $710. A very good deal. 🙂 So, now I have 2 Dell’s. LOL A big 17.5″ i7 beast, and this powerfull little 11″ *transformer* 😀
*LIKE NEW* Dell Venue 11 Pro (7140) FHD, Core M, 8GB, 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro
I never thought I’d prefer Win over Android. But Google have made a real mess of it. And as badtux said, Win 1 isn’t too bad (once you stop all it’s anti-social behavoir!) lol It only took M$ about… 18 years to get NT working reasonably well (Since NT 3 that is). lol Win 7 was close (and could have been better if they had released the core fixes they had with SP1, instead of just some cosmetic fixes & rolling up all the patches. But they wanted their win 10 prototype – win 8 – out. And messed that up of course, as they did with Vista). I still think 2000 was probably the most stable of the NT based OS’s, though not perfect. I still have the large binder with all the products M$ released to TechNet & MSDN when 2000 was released. 🙂 About 16 CD’s if memory serves.
Yeah, the VC picture is looking a bit grim. It’s been that way for a year now. Three years ago we had angels and VC’s begging us to take their money, now they won’t return our phone calls, LOL. Ah well, it’s not as if I have to worry about that, I can always work for someone else for a living. Let’s just hope that this means some of the unicorn companies are going out of business soon because the traffic is getting to be a mess right now, I have to leave for work at 10:30am and can’t leave work before 7:30pm if I want to have a reasonable commute!
My understanding is that the biggest problem with the Amazon tablets is that they lack the CPU horsepower to do encryption well, so they become very slow if you turn on the encryption. They’re designed to a price point, with all that entails. Sigh.
Just scored a Toshiba 512gb SSD for cheap. Going to use that instead of the spinning rust for my Windows 10 build. Still going to use spinning rust for the backup though!
If I ever get my biz going, I definitely will NOT miss commuting! My only commute will be from bedroom to office (2nd bedroom) via bathroom & kitchen! LOL At least, that was the plan. *shrug*
There’s a coincidence. You scored a good deal on a drive (SSD) and I just did also (mini NAS). 😀 I decided I really couldn’t justify a 2nd full on NAS right now, but one of the parts suppliers I deal with just had a 24 hr crazy sale they do every couple months. One item caught my eye, & I ordered it. Was a Seagate Central Cloud STCG4000300 4TB NAS – Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi N, USB Connectivity, for $132. Given That a bare metal 4tb Segate Barraccuda an be had for around $190, it’s a very good deal. I plan to use it with my Samsung smart TV, Phone & notebooks mainly. It supports Win, OsX, iOS, Android, & DLNA. 🙂 I also decided to retire my aging desk lamp & get a new LED desk lamp for $76. LEDware Dimmable Pedestal LED Desk Reading Lamp 240V 10W 700Lm CW Progressive Touch Switch, Model: LED-DESKP-10WDUM
Well, there goes my three good things. Now I just have to wait for the shoe to drop & the three bad things that WILL happen! Always does. *sigh* Rollercoaster, indeed.
Several sources have mentioned the screw up with that phone. If they had just gotten a warrant and gone to Apple, they would have gotten whatever was their from the iCloud, but the Feds still avoid warrants.
That’s what you get for living where there are other people around, Badtux, – traffic problems.
I’m happy for your success with Win 10, a success I am unable to share for reasons that encapsulated in meaningless error numbers. After I get an electrical problem with a riding lawn mower sorted out I will go back to it.
Here’s the lates. This time from Snowden. So I’m inclined to believe him. 😉 😀
Snowden: FBI Claim That Only Apple Can Unlock Phone Is “Bullshit”
Geee… I cannot imagine why anyone would clain that anything the FBI has to say is bullshit. Seems a little harsh. Sorry, I meant accurate! 😆
Kryten, I have not noticed that the FBI is technically adept at anything except shooting themselves in the foot. My guess is that they’re tired of having to ask the NSA to hack phones for them, and want to create a test case to just have Apple do it for them. A test case that can then be extended to *any* device to allow them to order the manufacturer to hack the device for them. What a buncha maroons…
The FBI has spent hundreds of millions of dollars not getting a useful computer network. That network is considered a career for people who only want a single job after college. It’s a standard government contract – the names of the contractor changes, but the people working on the contract remain the same. I’ve been aware of the project since the 1980s and the first major failure.
The Feebs should go to a Black Hat con and offer a prize. The really lame part is that they want to avoid having to manually enter the numbers. What wimps!