To call this "cheating", you have to assume that car manufacturers are more knowledgeable about car safety in general than NHTSA, to be able to spot the loopholes. It may be true, they have more resources to invest in research and to hire experts in this domain, after all.
Still, I prefer to follow Hanlon's razor, and not assume malice. This kind of mistake always seem obvious in hindsight, but if it was, why was there no one warning about it at the time?
yes they are. nhtsa and others require so much preparation and analysis for each test that for the cost of one run the makers can run upwards of 1000 chasis compresion test which will cover every angle imaginable. so yes, the manufacturers know a lot more. but it is practical knowldge not cerfied and traceable and repeatable.
uMatrix can block frames and js requests on a domain/sub-domain level. afaik, it can't block at url level, if that's what you meant.
That said, uMatrix, from what I remember, uses the webRequest api which does work from urls. So if you know JS, you can always create an extension and add your own filter.
To be clear, on the JS side I'm talking about providing whitelist-only access to things like the ambient light level, which is provided through a standardized browser API.
I think there's an assumption that the default DE gets more attention from the distro; it's more polished, and "just works" (or at least, something approaching the concept on Linux).
e.g. from what I remember, when installing xfce in debian, you get the ugly barebones defaults from upstream. Compare this to Xubuntu...
WebM uses more memory, it is less widely supported, uses more resources when playing, and is currently less efficient compression-wise than WebP.
About FLIF, I was recently checking it and it's indeed a very interesting format. Notably because it can be used on any type of image. I assume it hasn't pickep up steam because it doesn't have the backing of any big sponsor. Google is pushing WebP, and introducing another format at this time is probably not worth it.
FLIF is interesting, yes, but after doing some more research into it I came to the conclusion it doesn't hold any promise as an image format for the web.
The progressive streaming is a cool trick, but if you actually use the progressive stream to embed lossy images in your web page, you end up with lower quality than if you had just used JPEG in the first place, never mind something newer. The difference was pretty stark.
> Within 6 months half the worlds population would be gone.
Within 6 months, a country with nuclear weapons is forced in a desperate situation.
What could go wrong?
Is there really a point to such a scenario between nuclear powers? It doesn't make much sense to me. The US might as well launch all its warheads from the start.
Of course, it's about plausible deniability and logistics: You can't launch your nuclear arsenal and then look deadpan at the camera and shrug your shoulders. But killing a third of the world's population with insects sounds so unbelievable that there would be skepticism even if the President held a news conference and claimed responsibility right into the microphone.
Who cares about deniability or skepticism in an apocalyptic scenario as described? Do you really think cool heads would prevail if China was put in a such a situation? Chaos, and desperate people would be the result, with a nuclear arsenal in the mix. And they would, most likely, blame whoever they want, proofs and rationality be damned.
Keep in mind, I don't deny that the military can find uses for what the article describes. But, to go from this, to deliberately provoking WW3 by massively launching such a weapon on China is suicide. It would provoke a counter-attack, guaranteed, no matter the political arguments.
Plausible deniability is fine when the targeted countries can't counter-attack, or the matter is relatively minor. But, directly against China and with world-ending repercussions? No way.
Maybe. But maybe not. Stranger things have happened in history, and they really have. I'm going to go out on a limb here with some wildly uninformed speculation, but the people running the show in the PRC aren't normies. They are people that have clawed their way to the top of a ruthless pyramid of power. Or were raised from birth by people who clawed their way to the top. Either way, they're at the top for a reason. Look at China's communist history, and you'll see a fairly consistent, running theme of systemic paranoia -- sometimes thinly-veiled, sometimes outright -- that occasionally spirals into non-trivial political purges. History is full of examples of plot twists even more bizarre-sounding than this, and I am far less certain than you are that the perceived perpetrator(s) of such a targeted depopulation event would be so clear cut to the Politburo.
All that aside and more importantly, after one really bad crop failure, the PRC will have more existential problems on its plate than who gets the blame.
Champagne is literally the name of the area where the product comes from. It makes perfect sense that anything that doesn't come from the region Champagne, isn't champagne... Call it sparkling wine, it's fine, but not champagne. And it applies to most local products. Camembert? Comes from a specific town, which is called Camembert. Beaujolais? The name of the province. And the list goes on. It doesn't sound "absolutely ridiculous" to me.
> What might be worse is it's quite possible Boeing is finding out through this reporting.
_If_ Boeing really is behind all this, they may well be unaware of the specific details, sure. But so what? This doesn't make them any less responsible. So I don't understand what makes this "worse".
I would personally find it distasteful if someone did something shady trying to further my interests and find out about it in the news, which is why I find it worse.
Call me cynical, but in my opinion, any company using the service of such agencies, have to know the possibility of abuses and unethical practices that might happen. They may even count on it, but with the great benefit that they now have plausable deniability.
This is what Bloomberg's article refers to as "unrelated reasons" for Apple cutting ties with Supermicro in 2016.
> Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons.
And then as an "unrelated and relatively minor security incident" later on.
Still, I prefer to follow Hanlon's razor, and not assume malice. This kind of mistake always seem obvious in hindsight, but if it was, why was there no one warning about it at the time?