After an Israeli air strike in Syria on Monday killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, a hardline Iranian political coalition has seemingly admitted that Iran played a significant role in Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7. //
Martyr Zahedi's strategic role in forming and strengthening the resistance front, as well as designing and implementing the Al-Aqsa storm, are great honors that will make the silent efforts of this great commander immortal in the history of the anti-occupation regime. //
A Wall Street Journal exclusive in October reported that senior IRGC officers helped plan the attacks and gave the final green light during a meeting in Beirut the Monday before they were carried out. National security sources in the United States have told RedState on condition of anonymity that the U.S. has found evidence that Iran led a great deal of the intelligence preparation for the attacks, including communications protocols, SIGINT support, and cyber attacks. The Iranian government has officially denied any involvement. //
The three men were in Syria to discuss operational logistics and coordination, the source said, without elaborating. Zahedi was a top figure in the Guards' Quds Force, which funnels Iranian support to allies around the region, including to Lebanon's Hezbollah.
POINT 1: So here it's worth flagging how grotesque it is that the whole aid process in Gaza always involves gunmen jumping onto trucks...apparently Hamas gunmen. It shows how the whole problem with the Gaza war in general...which is that because Israel refuses to control areas in Gaza...Israel continues to basically outsource control to others...and the "others" end up being Hamas usually. This creates a ridiculous cycle where Israel is fighting a six month war "against Hamas" but Hamas seems to always seemlessly control most of Gaza today (like 80%?) and has gunmen who systematically take control of aid convoys.
So the PRESENCE of gunmen on aid trucks is a systematic problem. It has not been addressed. And it seems there is a kind of "wink wink" between aid organizations, Hamas and the IDF about this "process"...but it is also a process that can easily turn deadly because of the war. //
Dieter Schultz Lugger66
an hour ago edited
I think that part of the problem in situations like this, i.e. where one side is assumed to control the field of activity and therefore whatever happens is the "controlling authority's" responsibility, is that when that authority is not allowed to, really, control the environment then they will always be held responsible for what happens, regardless of why it happened.
As lots of people here have said, it's a war zone but, it isn't a war zone that Israel is being allowed to control. It really is, when you look at it objectively, a no-win situation for Israel; the US and other nations aren't allowing them to control their zone of operations but they are being held responsible for everything that happens in that zone.
It really is a zugzwang situation for Israel, they are being put into a situation without any good moves being made available to them.
It really sucks for them.
“My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I'm raising two boys. I want 'em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”
It's very important to minimize the collateral damage, and protecting civilization [sic] lives as well, and I would hope that Hamas decides to, not starting to hide behind civilians--creating those circumstances that makes it even more difficult as well. //
He then nailed the elephant in the room, which many on the Left like to leave out of the discussion. He said, "We also can't forget about the hostages, too. They've been in custody now since Oct. 7. So, it's an awful situation." //
You don't have to agree with every leader's views. But we have an opportunity to stand with Israel. That's what I've decided to do. //
Senator John Fetterman
@SenFettermanPA
·
In this war against Hamas—no conditions for Israel.
3:15 PM · Apr 4, 2024
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In fact, maybe the only thing that DEI has accomplished is giving racist white people cover to be openly racist. //
Real DEI is only going to come from black leadership. I don't know how to do it because I'm not a black leader, but I do know how to tell if it's working. //
bk
an hour ago
CTG: DEI is just CYA for white corporations and isn't doing sh*t, but let's measure success on how much racist Fox News is whining. Wait what?
DR. PHIL: There are some things that are just fundamental human decency, and when I ask you if what happened on October 7th is something you condemn, and you say, "Well, you have to look at that by looking at hundreds of years of conflict," no you don't. No, you don't. That's either right or it's wrong, and it was wrong, and I don't need a hundred years of conflict to know it was wrong. //
That Dr. Phil was having none of it and let her have it is extremely satisfying. You don't need a history of the Middle East to condemn burning infants in their cribs, and these American activists have no idea what they are talking about. They are cosplaying for clout, nothing more.
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In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae). Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" ,[1][2] although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one." [3]
This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both theories have equal explanatory power one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions[4] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models.[5][6]
Newton's flaming laser sword (also known as Alder's razor) is a philosophical razor devised by Alder and discussed in an essay in the May/June 2004 issue of Philosophy Now.[6] The principle, which addresses the differing views of scientists and philosophers on epistemology and knowledge, was summarized by Alder as follows:[6][jargon]
In its weakest form it says that we should not dispute propositions unless they can be shown by precise logic and/or mathematics to have observable consequences. In its strongest form it demands a list of observable consequences and a formal demonstration that they are indeed consequences of the proposition claimed.
The razor is humorously named after Isaac Newton, as it is inspired by Newtonian thought and is called a "flaming laser sword", because it is "much sharper and more dangerous than Occam's Razor".[6]
Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states:[1]
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior. It is probably named after Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted the statement to Murphy's Law Book Two (1980).[1] Similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century. //
Another variation appears in The Wheels of Chance (1896) by H.G. Wells:
There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature. //
Douglas W. Hubbard quoted Hanlon's razor and added
a clumsier but more accurate corollary ...: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system."
"Everyone at ATSC knew there was nothing inside the ADE 651."[2] A whistleblower who worked to sell the device around the world with McCormick told the BBC that he once challenged McCormick over the device's effectiveness. McCormick was said to have answered that the device did "exactly what it's meant to ... it makes money."
The cybersecurity world got really lucky last week. An intentionally placed backdoor in xz Utils, an open-source compression utility, was pretty much accidentally discovered by a Microsoft engineer—weeks before it would have been incorporated into both Debian and Red Hat Linux. //
It was an incredibly complex backdoor. Installing it was a multi-year process that seems to have involved social engineering the lone unpaid engineer in charge of the utility. //
The sophistication of both the exploit and the process to get it into the software project scream nation-state operation. It’s reminiscent of Solar Winds, although (1) it would have been much, much worse, and (2) we got really, really lucky.
I simply don’t believe this was the only attempt to slip a backdoor into a critical piece of Internet software, either closed source or open source. Given how lucky we were to detect this one, I believe this kind of operation has been successful in the past. We simply have to stop building our critical national infrastructure on top of random software libraries managed by lone, unpaid, distracted, or worse individuals.
Clive Robinson • April 4, 2024 2:24 PM
@ Gert-Jan, ALL,
Re : Something’s can not be done.
“The question is, how can we guarantee a particular level of quality and security?”
We can not is the short but honest answer.
...
“Security is a quality process”
And like all quality processes,
“It needs management buy in at the highest level, and should be in place before the project is thought of let alone be the pre-specification wish-list thought up.”
Even then, basic information theory tells us it can not be shown to be secure…
Because to “process” information it has to be “communicated”.
Claude Shannon proved for information to be transmitted then there has to be “redundancy” in the resultant communications channel.
Gus Simmons proved that where there was a channel with redundancy then another channel could be created within it. Importantly this “side channel” could be made not just covert but impossible for an observer to show existed.
From that alone you can see it can not be secure.
I could go on and bring in work from Gödel from nearly a hundred years ago that pre-dates the work of Church and Turing that in effect gives further evidence, but there’s not enough space to go through it[1]. If you want to try you first have to get your head around the implications of the “Axiom of choice”(AoC) and Cantor’s Diagonal Argument both fundamental to set theory and both Gödel and Turing proofs.
But from a simpler perspective take a “black Box view” but with a slight difference…
There are two sets of inputs and two sets of outputs.
You as the observer can only see one set of outputs, and as a tester can only see and manipulate one set of inputs. Your task is to show that the set of outputs you observe are only generated by the set of inputs you control and some internal function that has both state and feedback and not in anyway effected by the other inputs you can neither control or observe.
[1] I’ve four hard back books on Gödel’s work and two on Turing’s in my dead tree cave, they are all hard work to read let alone get your head around…
cybershow • April 3, 2024 5:23 PM
@ Nick Alcock
Hey Nick, I do appreciate the compliment, but you are too kind, I am not sure it is possible to ever be too paranoid in this
business 🙂 In my tradition we call it radical scepticism.
...
Regardless then the perhaps ridiculous accusation of whether and how Microsoft caused this issue, the question of how could Microsoft benefit from it is a separate, good and worthy one I am pleased you ask.
The story of the backdoor so far is two-fold. It’s a technically great hack one has to admire, with undetectable RCE in the auth phase of the most used critical protocol. Hats-off!
But it’s also a story of sinister social engineering. A dark night. A lonely and isolated maintainer. Some well meaning visitors drop by “to help”…
What we’re left talking about is the very nature of open source development, of supply chains and trust models. Perhaps a long-overdue conversation, no?
But who have positioned themselves “to help”?
Who have replaced the entire pre-2010 ecosystem of individual and autonomous development with a single GitHub?
Who might we expect to soon come riding in on a white stallion with “solutions” to the vulnerability of FOSS supply chains? To protect the lonesome, unpaid, overworked and socially unskilled FOSS maintainer?
most respectfully. //
Winter • April 4, 2024 5:08 AM
@cybershow
Regardless then the perhaps ridiculous accusation of whether and how Microsoft caused this issue, the question of how could Microsoft benefit from it is a separate, good and worthy one I am pleased you ask.
Microsoft ships Linux as part of WSL. The targeted Linux distributions are the main deployments on Azure. Azure generated $45B of revenue (23%)[1]. That is more than Office or Windows. Azure is the biggest growth market for MS. AFAIK, MS have nothing to replace Linux available.
This means that anything that damages Linux will damage Azure and hence, MS’ bottom line. I find your “attribution” rather unrealistic.
[1] 2022 ‘https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Hales • April 2, 2024 6:25 PM
I like Ariadne Space’s take on this:
There is no “supply chain” in reality, but there is an effort by corporations which consume software from the commons to pretend there is one in order to shift the obligations related to ingesting third-party code away from themselves and to the original authors and maintainers of the code they are using.
That doesn’t completely cover all situations here — a distro like Debian or Arch isn’t a corporate paid product — but I think it still highlights an interesting point. Expecting the developer of a small project to up their game is ineffective (they don’t have the resources) and counterproductive (they’ll probably think twice about publishing anything ever again).
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