• More respian developer insanity

    From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to All on Thursday, June 23, 2022 09:07:42
    So, I boot to the command line, as pi automatically
    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Capture and Master controls
    I type
    alsamixer
    it shows me Master control with stereo


    Then I type
    sudo su -
    Now I am root, still on the command line (so no X )

    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Headphone only
    I type alsamixer
    It shows Headphone control as MONO!!!!!

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jim Jackson@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Thursday, June 23, 2022 11:10:49
    On 2022-06-23, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:
    So, I boot to the command line, as pi automatically
    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Capture and Master controls
    I type
    alsamixer
    it shows me Master control with stereo


    Then I type
    sudo su -
    Now I am root, still on the command line (so no X )

    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Headphone only
    I type alsamixer
    It shows Headphone control as MONO!!!!!

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?


    I assume the difference between pi and root, is because the creators of
    pios do not expect users to user the root account - they discourage it.
    So if you use pios and go "off-piste" you are expected to know what you
    are doing. I accept that, as I'm always doing things that don't fit the RPI setup - like removing systemd, and pulseaudio and using my own desktop setup.

    I did a quick google for "configuring alsa on PiOS" and there seem to be several places that might help. Good luck.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Thursday, June 23, 2022 13:15:35
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:07:42 GMT
    Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo

    I suspect they did nothing to root but set up alsa the way they
    wanted it on the pi user and so generated user specific configs instead of system wide ones. So root wound up with a set of system defaults probably designed to imitate the original Sun audio (8Khz mono PCM IIRC).

    with DIFFERENT controls Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for pi
    (or just the user).

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to jj@franjam.org.uk on Thursday, June 23, 2022 13:22:36
    On a sunny day (Thu, 23 Jun 2022 11:10:49 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote in <slrntb8ihp.8h5.jj@iridium.wf32df>:

    On 2022-06-23, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:
    So, I boot to the command line, as pi automatically
    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Capture and Master controls
    I type
    alsamixer
    it shows me Master control with stereo


    Then I type
    sudo su -
    Now I am root, still on the command line (so no X )

    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Headphone only
    I type alsamixer
    It shows Headphone control as MONO!!!!!

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?


    I assume the difference between pi and root, is because the creators of
    pios do not expect users to user the root account - they discourage it.
    So if you use pios and go "off-piste" you are expected to know what you
    are doing. I accept that, as I'm always doing things that don't fit the RPI >setup - like removing systemd, and pulseaudio and using my own desktop setup.

    I did a quick google for "configuring alsa on PiOS" and there seem to be >several places that might help. Good luck.

    Yes
    Thanks
    Will google for it

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to Shot on Thursday, June 23, 2022 13:22:36
    On a sunny day (Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100) it happened Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote in <20220623131535.4723c75089fab3681c2d6f7a@eircom.net>:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:07:42 GMT
    Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo

    I suspect they did nothing to root but set up alsa the way they
    wanted it on the pi user and so generated user specific configs instead of >system wide ones. So root wound up with a set of system defaults probably >designed to imitate the original Sun audio (8Khz mono PCM IIRC).

    with DIFFERENT controls Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for pi >(or just the user).

    Yes,
    point is , among many other things, that those raspian tinkerers and also
    some library developers are not really application developers.
    Example why this pissed me off in a big way, xpsa spectrum analyzer I wrote gets,
    when it starts, the volume setting (for the radio mode) from alsa by parsing amixer output
    and sets the GUI slider to that, and in reverse sets amixer Master control to control volume.
    Parsing amixer fails as it sees mono syntax, anyways FM stereo fails too etc. Same for xmpl media player I wrote.
    I wrote about close to a hundred Linux applications
    Maybe not so bad for people who wrote just one, but modifying many each time some idiot changes basics is a nuisance
    Example: library maintainers: libform maintainer suddenly removed middle and right mouse button from the library
    I did give feedback.. have about 20 or more programs that use it..
    so I compiled an old version of the lib and gave it a different name and link against that.

    In the old days... OK REALITY
    I have a PC with Xfree old version of Linux, oss for audio and all things run perfectly on it.
    THERE IS NO EXTRA FUNCTIONALITY IN NEWER LINUX RELEASES
    but if you think booting slower and all sort of insane twiddles then yes.
    The old oss sound system: I had nice 6 channel (6 languages) stuff I wrote
    but when alsa came audio became a mess and still is: /dev/dsp was the way to go.

    Just always some kids that think they invent something better without understanding the old stuff
    No wonder the whole world is hacked :-)
    Look at computer languages, now everybody is into python or something...
    Too lazy to learn C? Python is a mess.

    Yes you are right, will have to see where booting to pi does the alsa stereo thing..

    But really EVERY new release of raspian has changes that break things, from EEPROM shit
    to audio mess, many things.
    Poor application developers
    And poor users!!!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Thursday, June 23, 2022 13:30:35
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:07:42 GMT Jan Panteltje
    <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to
    stereo

    I suspect they did nothing to root but set up alsa the way they
    wanted it on the pi user and so generated user specific configs instead
    of system wide ones. So root wound up with a set of system defaults
    probably designed to imitate the original Sun audio (8Khz mono PCM
    IIRC).

    with DIFFERENT controls Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for
    pi (or just the user).

    ... or simply set up another user, initiallly with default settings, and
    ignore 'pi'. Then its easy to modify your user to yse the settingds you
    want.

    I do not use 'root' apart from doing system-wide things like startup/ shutdown/system update and making whole system backups. I've been working
    this way since I first used a multi-user, multi-tasking OS (ICL's George
    3) in 1970 and prefer to keep the system management:development separation
    for both security and finger-trouble damage limitation reasons.

    That's made sense for OSen I've had a sysadmin role on since then (George
    3, OS/400, various Unices, VOS and Guardian as well as Linux), but some people's experience and security requirements evidently can and do differ
    from mine.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thursday, June 23, 2022 16:51:28
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:30:35 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for
    pi (or just the user).

    ... or simply set up another user, initiallly with default settings, and ignore 'pi'. Then its easy to modify your user to yse the settingds you
    want.

    That just gets them right for the new user, setting the system
    default sane makes them right for all users by default including the one
    you add in a few months when you've forgotten all the tweaks.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Thursday, June 23, 2022 18:03:18
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 16:51:28 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:30:35 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations
    for pi (or just the user).

    ... or simply set up another user, initiallly with default settings,
    and ignore 'pi'. Then its easy to modify your user to yse the settingds
    you want.

    That just gets them right for the new user, setting the system
    default sane makes them right for all users by default including the one
    you add in a few months when you've forgotten all the tweaks.

    Agreed, I should have added that any settings, tweaks, etc you want to use
    in all non-super users is best set up by either editing existing scripts
    in

    /etc/profile.d

    or adding additional scripts to it. If you put additional scripts in /etc/ profile.d you may have to edit .bashrc and/or .bash_profile in the
    relevant login directories so your new scripts get called, but adding
    stuff to the existing scripts should just work

    **BUT**

    be sure to keep copies of any standard scripts in /etc/profile.d that
    you've modified somewhere safe, such as a directory in your usual login directory because, while these scripts are pretty stable now, they do occasionally get modified: IOW a system update may clobber your changes.

    With local backups, its easy enough to compare the new file with your
    backup copy, apply system-issued changes to your backup, and then drop
    your custom version back into /etc/profile.d

    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thursday, June 23, 2022 19:34:08
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> writes:
    Agreed, I should have added that any settings, tweaks, etc you want to use
    in all non-super users is best set up by either editing existing scripts
    in

    /etc/profile.d

    or adding additional scripts to it. If you put additional scripts in /etc/ profile.d you may have to edit .bashrc and/or .bash_profile in the
    relevant login directories so your new scripts get called, but adding
    stuff to the existing scripts should just work

    **BUT**

    be sure to keep copies of any standard scripts in /etc/profile.d that
    you've modified somewhere safe, such as a directory in your usual login directory because, while these scripts are pretty stable now, they do occasionally get modified: IOW a system update may clobber your changes.

    With local backups, its easy enough to compare the new file with your
    backup copy, apply system-issued changes to your backup, and then drop
    your custom version back into /etc/profile.d

    https://etckeeper.branchable.com/

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thursday, June 23, 2022 20:37:45
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 18:03:18 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    Agreed, I should have added that any settings, tweaks, etc you want to
    use in all non-super users is best set up by either editing existing
    scripts in

    /etc/profile.d

    Yep or in the application config files.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Friday, June 24, 2022 14:20:28
    On 23/06/2022 10:07, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    Ah you again.

    Answer; you are not supposed to run desktop programs, particularly web
    browsers as root. If you want proper media access, use a user account.

    The only reason for allowing sound at all, is for system tool which
    requires privileged access can do a warning beep.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to news@druck.org.uk on Friday, June 24, 2022 14:28:07
    On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:20:28 +0100) it happened druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote in <t94dmt$15v$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 23/06/2022 10:07, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    Ah you again.

    Answer; you are not supposed to run desktop programs, particularly web >browsers as root. If you want proper media access, use a user account.

    The only reason for allowing sound at all, is for system tool which
    requires privileged access can do a warning beep.

    The sad thing is that you got it all upside down
    A bit like the green idiots and climate change and CO2
    (Climate change is caused by earth orbit variations),
    greens then kill all good power sources out of fear for glowball worming bringing us all back to the stone age and endangering humanity

    As to root
    1) this is my system I control it
    2) there is no other user on this system.
    3) I remember, probably before you were born, when I still ran the webserver panteltje.com
    at home, I challenged who was it some hackers group (hacktic?) to hack it
    I watched them try and fail

    4) The problem with you root fear mongers is many fold
    I come from a hardware background, even designed my own processor
    worked with many micros programming in asm, C, what not.
    You root fear guys are like driving a car from the passenger seat and hopping over
    at ever corner, or to break, or do anything
    Talk about dangerous, no wonder so many get hacked.
    Clueless about the hardware and then clueless about the software
    bound and held hostage by bloat designed by those clueless about the hardware and about the software..

    So root since 1998 and never a problem, yes browser runs as root too.
    This Pi4 is also a router so LAN hangs from it if needed, this laptop i am posting this from too.
    But this Newsreader I also ported to the Pi so can post from that,
    just this keyboard is easier.

    I did some testing with audio and it gets even wearder, the clueless raspbian tinkerers
    -and now I was not only thinking about firing them (I would) but about that US hotel in Cuba where they specialize in water-boarding
    as a holiday for them..
    Anyways I got the stereo sound working now, as root of course in the xmpl mediaplayer I wrote 'like most things that run here I wrote myself'.
    So, more raspbian shit and then maybe I will use some older release one running on a Pi4 4 GB 24/7 now with security cams
    weather sensor, airplane traffic logging GPS, what not..
    FM stereo reception now also works in the Pi 4 8GB (rtl-sdr USB stick) as does 70 cm HAM radio etc with the xpsa
    spectrum analyzer (I wrote too of course) and the xpeu audio process (I wrote too of course)
    Much of that audio processing can be done with 'play' (part of sox, but you need to export some device to the terminal you run it in
    or script it (have that somewhere too), but xpequ has a scope and spectrum display plus automatic gain control plus equalizer plus..
    so..

    *IF* those raspian tinkerers just want to sell some thing that some idiot can use for web browsing and maybe blurb here insults
    fine, think they had a go at that as they already put out some 400? thing with a keyboard
    But that market is .. well I have a smart?phone too, Android is Linux based too.
    So, but if it has to have __educational__ value then the raspbian tinkerers did a bad bad bad job!!!
    Yea, anybody can do BASIC (mm not sure actually these days) but likely python or whatever have you, scripts would already be
    a challenge..
    So, where does it go??? You have to be an idiot developer to make a PI4 8GB that does not run the release for a Pi 4GB
    as happened to me, they screwed up the EEPROM.

    In a PC you can just add some more memory without changing all software.

    Its all hype. 64 bits... Whatsyou gonna do? With it?

    So
    'root' is what the tree comes from, no root (access) no tree
    What a morons.
    And the anybody who is pi can do sudo rm -rf /*
    try it! Druckman!

    Easy to make a website where you can go with your sandboxed browser that does that for you, or email.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Friday, June 24, 2022 22:00:36
    On 24/06/2022 15:28, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:20:28 +0100) it happened druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote in <t94dmt$15v$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 23/06/2022 10:07, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    Ah you again.

    Answer; you are not supposed to run desktop programs, particularly web
    browsers as root. If you want proper media access, use a user account.

    The sad thing is that you got it all upside down
    A bit like the green idiots and climate change and CO2
    (Climate change is caused by earth orbit variations),
    greens then kill all good power sources out of fear for glowball worming bringing us all back to the stone age and endangering humanity

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    [Snip rabid tirade]

    It's pretty obvious the Raspberry Pi does not meet your needs, so find something else.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to druck on Saturday, June 25, 2022 07:58:37
    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are still failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using root as he
    does, resorting instead to content free insults. He has articulated pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions up. Right now you (and Dan) look like
    knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better for yourself.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is being stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's bad" without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him and the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and *HOW* he is being stupid.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the
    sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 08:22:22
    On 25/06/2022 07:58, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are still failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using root as he does, resorting instead to content free insults. He has articulated pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions up. Right now you (and Dan) look like
    knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better for yourself.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is being stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's bad" without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him and the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and *HOW* he is being stupid.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the
    sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    +1.
    A single user pi is not a mainframe.

    I don't run mine as root because I have no need to and the modern
    convention is not to, so online support assumes that.

    But if he wants to make a rod for his back, he is welcome.

    --
    “A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
    who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
    “We did this ourselves.”

    ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 09:22:22
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:
    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing
    you are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid
    enough to let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are
    still failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using
    root as he does, resorting instead to content free insults.

    AFAICS Jan is throwing around a lot more heated language than druck.

    He has articulated pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking
    anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions
    up. Right now you (and Dan) look like knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better for yourself.

    Well, one of the risks is that things don’t work like he wants them to,
    and indeed they don’t work like he wants them to. That’s how the thread started.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is
    being stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's
    bad" without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him
    and the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and
    *HOW* he is being stupid.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo
    is used mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for
    security the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked
    out.

    I don’t see why he should bother.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Richard Kettlewell on Saturday, June 25, 2022 10:06:43
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 09:22:22 +0100
    Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

    He has articulated pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions
    up. Right now you (and Dan) look like knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better for yourself.

    Well, one of the risks is that things don’t work like he wants them to,
    and indeed they don’t work like he wants them to. That’s how the thread started.

    That is a problem of not using the carefully set up pi user, nothing
    to do with being root. If he simply created a user 'jan' without all the
    user specific config pi has he'd be seeing similar problems. That is
    because the OS is not set up properly for multi-user use.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo
    is used mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked
    out.

    I don’t see why he should bother.

    It would be a public service, an education to all rPi users to know exactly why and when being root is a bad idea. He might also learn something
    in the attempt to articulate it clearly - I did a long time ago.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From alister@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 10:57:22
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 07:58:37 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100 druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are still failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using root as
    he does, resorting instead to content free insults. He has articulated
    pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions up. Right now you (and Dan)
    look like knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better
    for yourself.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is being stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's bad"
    without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him and
    the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and *HOW*
    he is being stupid.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the
    sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    It is not so much that he is running risk in this particular setup, the
    system may indeed be totally isolated & therefor @ zero risk.
    it is that by engaging in bad practice he gets into bad habits which may
    then transfer across to systems where it is critical, there is also the possibility that the current system may evolve to where security is
    important & adding security as an after thought has a risk of something
    being overlooked.
    the effort he is spending in bypassing the default security model would be better invested in learning how to correctly work with it.



    --
    The average nutritional value of promises is roughly zero.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to alister on Saturday, June 25, 2022 13:13:03
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 10:57:22 -0000 (UTC)
    alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 07:58:37 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    It is not so much that he is running risk in this particular setup, the system may indeed be totally isolated & therefor @ zero risk.

    Feel free to assume it's connected directly to the public internet, what exactly is at risk and why is that risk greater for root than for pi
    with passwordless sudo ?

    it is that by engaging in bad practice he gets into bad habits which may

    You still haven't explained why it is bad practice on a single user system with no important data.

    the effort he is spending in bypassing the default security model would
    be better invested in learning how to correctly work with it.

    There is no default security - user pi with a well known default password has passwordless sudo - effectively equivalent to being root.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Deloptes@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Saturday, June 25, 2022 14:55:17
    Jan Panteltje wrote:

    As to root
    1) this is my system I control it
    2) there is no other user on this system.

    I stopped reading here ... I agree with you about green activists, but here
    you are fundamentally wrong

    Also your language and attitude is not acceptable.

    When you know all better, start a fork project, but please do not insult
    people who are most likely more intelligent than you are.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Deloptes on Saturday, June 25, 2022 14:57:21
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 14:55:17 +0200
    Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:

    Jan Panteltje wrote:

    As to root
    1) this is my system I control it
    2) there is no other user on this system.

    I stopped reading here ... I agree with you about green activists, but
    here you are fundamentally wrong

    Once again a naked assertion with not even a shred of explanation.

    How exactly is root more dangerous than an account with
    passwordless sudo access ?

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Saturday, June 25, 2022 10:04:06
    tOn Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:13:03 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot
    <steveo@eircom.net> declaimed the following:

    There is no default security - user pi with a well known default
    password has passwordless sudo - effectively equivalent to being root.

    And supposedly doesn't exist on the latest release of the OS.

    https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-april-2022/


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Dennis Lee Bieber on Saturday, June 25, 2022 14:53:18
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 10:04:06 -0400, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

    tOn Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:13:03 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot
    <steveo@eircom.net> declaimed the following:

    There is no default security - user pi with a well known default >>password has passwordless sudo - effectively equivalent to being root.

    And supposedly doesn't exist on the latest release of the OS.

    https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-
    april-2022/

    The main danger I see in operating such an unprotected system is that, if
    it is accessable from J Random Blackhat anywhere on the internet, it is an inviting target for being taken over, enrolled in said blackhat's network
    and used to launch various nasties such as service denial, ransomware or
    data theft campaigns. If that should happen, I suspect its owner could
    have an 'interesting' time convincing victims that they aren't part of the gang.

    In view of this, I would hope that everybody running RPis with default
    security levels would have placed a properly configured, secured and
    tested firewall between the LAN that their Pi or Pis are connected to and
    the rest of the Internet.

    Same applies to any wifi-equipped Pis, such as the Zero W. These should be configured to ONLY make connections to or accept connections from a
    suitably secure wifi gateway on their own LAN.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 15:43:31
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    Once again a naked assertion with not even a shred of explanation.

    How exactly is root more dangerous than an account with
    passwordless sudo access ?

    A process running as root can issue syscalls that root is allowed to issue. That's roughly all of them.

    A process not running as root can't. If you can't issue the fork() syscall, either through policy (eg SECCOMP, SELinux) or because you can't craft the right arguments (you built an exploit using ROP/JOP gadgets and can only control certain registers), you can't issue the appropriate sudo command.
    For example, the string 'sudo ...' is unlikely to be lying around in memory such that your exploit can make a pointer to it to pass to system() or
    exec().

    Plus *you have to know that passwordless sudo is available*. Which is fine
    for a targeted attacker, but most attacks are bulk script-kiddies trying
    things on.

    Basically attackers only get a limited toehold in the system and any extra steps make it harder work.

    Also, any time you or something else makes a mistake (of the 'rm -rf ./*'
    kind, where you forgot the dot), there's a much higher risk of damage.

    Theo

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to All on Saturday, June 25, 2022 17:21:32
    Den 2022-06-24 kl. 16:28, skrev Jan Panteltje:

    (Climate change is caused by earth orbit variations),

    If this was a newsgroup free to talk about everything I'd
    ask you to back that statement with some links.

    --
    Björn

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 17:50:50
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
    https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-april-2022/

    A step in the right direction, or more accurately undoing a step in
    a silly direction.

    Oh, you already saw that, oops.

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Dennis Lee Bieber on Saturday, June 25, 2022 18:16:00
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 10:04:06 -0400
    Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

    tOn Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:13:03 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot
    <steveo@eircom.net> declaimed the following:

    There is no default security - user pi with a well known default
    password has passwordless sudo - effectively equivalent to being root.

    And supposedly doesn't exist on the latest release of the OS.

    https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-april-2022/

    A step in the right direction, or more accurately undoing a step in
    a silly direction.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Theo on Saturday, June 25, 2022 18:12:44
    On 25 Jun 2022 15:43:31 +0100 (BST)
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    Once again a naked assertion with not even a shred of
    explanation.

    How exactly is root more dangerous than an account with passwordless sudo access ?

    A process running as root can issue syscalls that root is allowed to
    issue. That's roughly all of them.

    Ah at last something real - but not much of a worry.

    A process not running as root can't. If you can't issue the fork()
    syscall, either through policy (eg SECCOMP, SELinux) or because you can't

    That is not the case on a Pi.

    craft the right arguments (you built an exploit using ROP/JOP gadgets and
    can only control certain registers), you can't issue the appropriate sudo command. For example, the string 'sudo ...' is unlikely to be lying
    around in memory such that your exploit can make a pointer to it to pass
    to system() or exec().

    Your exploit is going to lead to arbitrary code execution as pi or
    it isn't much use, once you have that you're in.

    Plus *you have to know that passwordless sudo is available*. Which is

    In the same vein you have to know that root syscalls are available.

    fine for a targeted attacker, but most attacks are bulk script-kiddies
    trying things on.

    sudo is an easy one to try and passwordless is all too common, especially given the number of pis around with no competent administrator.

    Basically attackers only get a limited toehold in the system and any extra steps make it harder work.

    Not particularly in this case.

    Also, any time you or something else makes a mistake (of the 'rm -rf ./*' kind, where you forgot the dot), there's a much higher risk of damage.

    True enough, but if all that's at risk is PiOS and a some
    experimental binaries that are easily replaced then that's a minor concern.

    This is the real crux - if there's nothing of consequence at risk
    and there is an advantage to running as root then there is no good reason
    not to do so.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 17:49:52
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    That is a problem of not using the carefully set up pi user, nothing
    to do with being root. If he simply created a user 'jan' without all the
    user specific config pi has he'd be seeing similar problems. That is
    because the OS is not set up properly for multi-user use.

    Newest version does away with default user "pi". You can still use that
    name but, just like in other distros, now you choose your user name. Blog
    post from 7 Apr 2022: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-april-2022/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From alister@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 20:56:44
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:13:03 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 10:57:22 -0000 (UTC)
    alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 07:58:37 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security
    the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    It is not so much that he is running risk in this particular setup, the
    system may indeed be totally isolated & therefor @ zero risk.

    Feel free to assume it's connected directly to the public
    internet,
    what exactly is at risk and why is that risk greater for root than for
    pi with passwordless sudo ?

    passwordless sudo is also not good
    it is that by engaging in bad practice he gets into bad habits which
    may

    You still haven't explained why it is bad practice on a single
    user
    system with no important data.

    because that approch may then be carried over to a system that DOES have sensitive data.

    the effort he is spending in bypassing the default security model would
    be better invested in learning how to correctly work with it.

    There is no default security - user pi with a well known default password has passwordless sudo - effectively equivalent to being root.
    true



    --
    "...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on
    lust,
    this would be a better world." - Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Tom Blenko@3:770/3 to Rivet's Shot on Saturday, June 25, 2022 18:31:58
    In article <20220625181244.708d4140f461d9bebfa93714@eircom.net>, Ahem A
    Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    Also, any time you or something else makes a mistake (of the 'rm -rf ./*' kind, where you forgot the dot), there's a much higher risk of damage.

    True enough, but if all that's at risk is PiOS and a some
    experimental binaries that are easily replaced then that's a minor concern.

    This is the real crux - if there's nothing of consequence at risk
    and there is an advantage to running as root then there is no good reason
    not to do so.

    sudo came into existence on Unix in the early 1980's. I'm not going to
    rehash the history (which I'm not an expert on), anyone who is
    interested can read up on it, beginning with the sudo and su man pages
    on the Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian) and continuing with the link there to
    a web page documenting the history. There are a variety of reasons for
    its appearance and continued evolution on Unix, Linux, and Raspbian.

    sudo appeared well before most Unix administrators had any serious
    concerns about being breached from external networks, which most were
    not connected to. I came to this by using Unix as a user and developer
    and then being part of product teams at two different companies in that
    era that were producing Unix-based systems. Everyone with my background
    knew, by osmosis, that sudo (and its less-talented predecessor su) was
    created to deal with the underlying Unix user structure, which
    empowered the root user to do just about anything on the system but
    defined strict limits on what non-root users could do via a permissions structure embedded in the operating system.

    The idea of using the root user all the time has been around for a long
    time. It has a major problem that can show up in multiple ways. As Theo
    said in response to your question, the user running all the time as
    root is empowered to do things they may not intend. So they may type
    "rm -rf *" from the command line, or a program they are testing may
    start writing all over, e.g., system configuration files, or programs
    started up by cron may do... almost anything. Making the change of user explicit in a sudo command (and, normally, changing the command line
    prompt) is a safeguard. And it's one that has survived the test of
    time.

    If Jan or Steve or someone else here wants to run as root all the time
    I don't think anyone else cares. If they feel that reinstalling after a
    mistake by the user or one of their programs is preferable to
    exercising the discipline sudo is designed to support, fine, that may
    indeed be the best choice for them.

    I think the flak directed at Jan has not been about his use, or not, of
    the sudo command, it's been about the repeated attacks on the Raspberry
    Pi developers and the software tools he is using for not implementing
    the world in which he imagines he wants to live. As far as I can tell
    from reading the exchange,

    1. He has no idea why sudo exists and is supported and widely used 40
    years after its introduction on Unix.
    2. He supposes that his uses of the software and his judgement about,
    e.g., the inclusion of the pi user and use of sudo, somehow transcend
    the uses and the judgement that millions of other Pi users may be
    employing.

    I don't think this forum benefits from either the ranting or the
    response to it and I trust I'm not alone. And I don't expect the
    Raspberry Pi developers to be influenced by it because they don't
    suffer from 1 above and because it is their responsibility to take a
    radically different position on 2 above.

    So you, Steve, have managed to focus on the question you seem
    interested in. And you may be satisfied with your conclusion, quoted
    above. I will point out, for your benefit, that it used to be the
    custom for some well-engineered Unix programs to check whether they
    were being run as root - and to print a short message and exit if they
    were. This is because the developers were concerned about inadvertent consequences (e.g., overwriting lock files) and presumably viewed
    coding an exit as a preferable to taking responsibility for their
    software running correctly in a root environment. My first thought when
    I read Jan's report about software that didn't run as expected when he
    ran as root, but did when he ran as a non-root user, was that this was
    the problem he was experiencing. You cannot, however, expect every
    developer to exercise that same diligence. They may reasonably take the position that if you use their software in a fashion that wasn't
    intended then the responsibility is yours.

    Also, in my past experience and on my current Raspberry systems,
    attached devices may contained data that is not replaceable, easily or otherwise, and they are just as exposed as the contents of an easily-replaceable root device on Raspbian might be.

    So, perhaps you have already taken these issues into account.

    On a related note, my reading of the Pi Foundation's announcement is
    that it has nothing to do with sudo or objections to using it --
    Raspbian's use of the existing Unix user structure will continue
    without change. They are simply requiring a user to supply a username
    for the default account during configuration rather than assigning 'pi' automatically.

    Tom

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Tom Blenko on Sunday, June 26, 2022 08:14:01
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:
    2. He supposes that his uses of the software and his judgement about,
    e.g., the inclusion of the pi user and use of sudo, somehow transcend
    the uses and the judgement that millions of other Pi users may be
    employing.

    That's the crux and that attitude is also why he is a climate change
    denying nutjob. Sorry to hijack your thoughtful response.

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  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Sunday, June 26, 2022 19:26:54
    On 26/06/2022 09:14, A. Dumas wrote:
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:
    2. He supposes that his uses of the software and his judgement about,
    e.g., the inclusion of the pi user and use of sudo, somehow transcend
    the uses and the judgement that millions of other Pi users may be
    employing.

    That's the crux and that attitude is also why he is a climate change
    denying nutjob. Sorry to hijack your thoughtful response.


    Yes, Tom's response was well-thought-out, interesting and reasonable (My knowledge of su predates sudo by decades, I hadn't realised sudo had
    been around so long).

    However, in the spirit of usenet, I will respond to your comment about
    climate change. Whilst, I'm a 100% believer in stronger efforts to limit
    CO2 emissions, due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, I can
    also see that the MSM distort the science as a certainty rather than as
    a risk. I can see that this might irritate people who fixate on the
    absolute truth of the message rather than the bigger picture.

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  • From Michael J. Mahon@3:770/3 to All on Monday, June 27, 2022 00:02:12
    <snip>

    However, in the spirit of usenet, I will respond to your comment about climate change. Whilst, I'm a 100% believer in stronger efforts to limit
    CO2 emissions, due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, I can
    also see that the MSM distort the science as a certainty rather than as
    a risk. I can see that this might irritate people who fixate on the
    absolute truth of the message rather than the bigger picture.


    While it is true that some massive undiscovered negative feedback mechanism (natural or invented) could kick in at some relatively tolerable planetary temperature to save our bacon, the very long oceanic circulation periods
    and the lack of evidence for this during past excursions make this a bad
    bet. (Especially considering the life-altering stakes.)

    --
    -michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://michaeljmahon.com

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to alister on Monday, June 27, 2022 15:39:02
    On 25/06/2022 11:57, alister wrote:
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 07:58:37 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100 druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are still
    failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using root as
    he does, resorting instead to content free insults. He has articulated
    pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to
    decades of experience to back his assertions up. Right now you (and Dan)
    look like knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better
    for yourself.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is being
    stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's bad"
    without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him and
    the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and *HOW*
    he is being stupid.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the
    sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    It is not so much that he is running risk in this particular setup, the system may indeed be totally isolated & therefor @ zero risk.
    it is that by engaging in bad practice he gets into bad habits which may
    then transfer across to systems where it is critical, there is also the possibility that the current system may evolve to where security is
    important & adding security as an after thought has a risk of something
    being overlooked.
    the effort he is spending in bypassing the default security model would be better invested in learning how to correctly work with it.



    And the sky might fall on our heads, too.
    He isnt flying 50 passengers round the sky. If he wants to crash, its
    his business. If he is employed as a sysdamin, its his employers
    business. Its cetainly not mine.




    --
    "Corbyn talks about equality, justice, opportunity, health care, peace,
    community, compassion, investment, security, housing...."
    "What kind of person is not interested in those things?"

    "Jeremy Corbyn?"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 16:06:59
    On 25/06/2022 14:57, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 14:55:17 +0200
    Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:

    Jan Panteltje wrote:

    As to root
    1) this is my system I control it
    2) there is no other user on this system.

    I stopped reading here ... I agree with you about green activists, but
    here you are fundamentally wrong

    Once again a naked assertion with not even a shred of explanation.

    How exactly is root more dangerous than an account with
    passwordless sudo access ?

    Its really all about a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and people
    who learn by rote mindlessly applying received wisdom whereas people who
    think for themselves arrive at solutions that fit the circumstances.

    If I have a lot of root-y things to do, I log in as root. And eschew
    'sudo'. It's a pain if you have to do multiple commands

    Its a pain have root perms applied to whole directories that I want to customise to make my desktop personal.

    It would also be a pain if a friend came along and wanted to use the
    desktop and messed up all my personal browser settings with his browser
    cookies and choices.
    So I do root-y things as root and personal things as me.

    Obviously if you are such an arsehole that you don't have any friends,
    doing everything as root makes perfect sense.


    --
    "Corbyn talks about equality, justice, opportunity, health care, peace,
    community, compassion, investment, security, housing...."
    "What kind of person is not interested in those things?"

    "Jeremy Corbyn?"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Tom Blenko on Monday, June 27, 2022 17:17:24
    On 26/06/2022 02:31, Tom Blenko wrote:
    In article <20220625181244.708d4140f461d9bebfa93714@eircom.net>, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    Also, any time you or something else makes a mistake (of the 'rm -rf ./*' >>> kind, where you forgot the dot), there's a much higher risk of damage.

    True enough, but if all that's at risk is PiOS and a some
    experimental binaries that are easily replaced then that's a minor concern. >>
    This is the real crux - if there's nothing of consequence at risk
    and there is an advantage to running as root then there is no good reason
    not to do so.

    sudo came into existence on Unix in the early 1980's. I'm not going to
    rehash the history (which I'm not an expert on), anyone who is
    interested can read up on it, beginning with the sudo and su man pages
    on the Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian) and continuing with the link there to
    a web page documenting the history. There are a variety of reasons for
    its appearance and continued evolution on Unix, Linux, and Raspbian.

    sudo appeared well before most Unix administrators had any serious
    concerns about being breached from external networks, which most were
    not connected to. I came to this by using Unix as a user and developer
    and then being part of product teams at two different companies in that
    era that were producing Unix-based systems. Everyone with my background
    knew, by osmosis, that sudo (and its less-talented predecessor su) was created to deal with the underlying Unix user structure, which
    empowered the root user to do just about anything on the system but
    defined strict limits on what non-root users could do via a permissions structure embedded in the operating system.

    The idea of using the root user all the time has been around for a long
    time. It has a major problem that can show up in multiple ways. As Theo
    said in response to your question, the user running all the time as
    root is empowered to do things they may not intend. So they may type
    "rm -rf *" from the command line, or a program they are testing may
    start writing all over, e.g., system configuration files, or programs
    started up by cron may do... almost anything. Making the change of user explicit in a sudo command (and, normally, changing the command line
    prompt) is a safeguard. And it's one that has survived the test of
    time.

    If Jan or Steve or someone else here wants to run as root all the time
    I don't think anyone else cares. If they feel that reinstalling after a mistake by the user or one of their programs is preferable to
    exercising the discipline sudo is designed to support, fine, that may
    indeed be the best choice for them.

    I think the flak directed at Jan has not been about his use, or not, of
    the sudo command, it's been about the repeated attacks on the Raspberry
    Pi developers and the software tools he is using for not implementing
    the world in which he imagines he wants to live. As far as I can tell
    from reading the exchange,

    1. He has no idea why sudo exists and is supported and widely used 40
    years after its introduction on Unix.
    2. He supposes that his uses of the software and his judgement about,
    e.g., the inclusion of the pi user and use of sudo, somehow transcend
    the uses and the judgement that millions of other Pi users may be
    employing.

    I don't think this forum benefits from either the ranting or the
    response to it and I trust I'm not alone. And I don't expect the
    Raspberry Pi developers to be influenced by it because they don't
    suffer from 1 above and because it is their responsibility to take a radically different position on 2 above.

    So you, Steve, have managed to focus on the question you seem
    interested in. And you may be satisfied with your conclusion, quoted
    above. I will point out, for your benefit, that it used to be the
    custom for some well-engineered Unix programs to check whether they
    were being run as root - and to print a short message and exit if they
    were. This is because the developers were concerned about inadvertent consequences (e.g., overwriting lock files) and presumably viewed
    coding an exit as a preferable to taking responsibility for their
    software running correctly in a root environment. My first thought when
    I read Jan's report about software that didn't run as expected when he
    ran as root, but did when he ran as a non-root user, was that this was
    the problem he was experiencing. You cannot, however, expect every
    developer to exercise that same diligence. They may reasonably take the position that if you use their software in a fashion that wasn't
    intended then the responsibility is yours.

    Also, in my past experience and on my current Raspberry systems,
    attached devices may contained data that is not replaceable, easily or otherwise, and they are just as exposed as the contents of an easily-replaceable root device on Raspbian might be.

    So, perhaps you have already taken these issues into account.

    On a related note, my reading of the Pi Foundation's announcement is
    that it has nothing to do with sudo or objections to using it --
    Raspbian's use of the existing Unix user structure will continue
    without change. They are simply requiring a user to supply a username
    for the default account during configuration rather than assigning 'pi' automatically.

    Tom
    Excellent summary.

    I would precis it down to this.

    Conventions are as much about things being as you expect, than for deep
    moral or technical reasons. There is no reason to drive on the right, or
    the left, beyond it gets messy if people don't decide on one or the
    other and stick to it.

    There is slightly more reason for people to not do root when doing
    normal usery things. But you wont go to hell if you do.

    But the third point is, as you have expressed, if you *do* decide to
    drive on the side of the road that no one else does, you are a total
    plonker if you start *blaming someone one else* for the mess you find
    yourself in.

    Its not a mortal sin, it's just mortal.

    --
    Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
    Mark Twain

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Monday, June 27, 2022 17:19:41
    On 26/06/2022 09:14, A. Dumas wrote:
    also why he is a climate change
    denying nutjob.
    does he actually deny the facts that modern climate change is
    comfortably within natural limits? I rather thought he was of the
    opposite persuasion, and he had actually realised that the probability
    that the bulk of modern climate change is man made is approximately zero.


    --
    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
    intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
    futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
    we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
    power-directed system of thought.”
    Sir Roger Scruton

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 16:31:28
    On 25/06/2022 18:12, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    This is the real crux - if there's nothing of consequence at risk
    and there is an advantage to running as root then there is no good reason
    not to do so.
    Contrariwise, if the convention is *NOT* to run as root, then you cant
    moan about things not working the way you expect, if you do.

    Life is short and the documentation is ten times the size of the source code....

    --
    For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the
    very definition of slavery.

    Jonathan Swift

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Pancho on Monday, June 27, 2022 17:24:53
    On 26/06/2022 19:26, Pancho wrote:
    On 26/06/2022 09:14, A. Dumas wrote:
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:
    2. He supposes that his uses of the software and his judgement about,
    e.g., the inclusion of the pi user and use of sudo, somehow transcend
    the uses and the judgement that millions of other Pi users may be
    employing.

    That's the crux and that attitude is also why he is a climate change
    denying nutjob. Sorry to hijack your thoughtful response.


    Yes, Tom's response was well-thought-out, interesting and reasonable (My knowledge of su predates sudo by decades, I hadn't realised sudo had
    been around so long).

    However, in the spirit of usenet, I will respond to your comment about climate change. Whilst, I'm a 100% believer in stronger efforts to limit
    CO2 emissions, due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, I can
    also see that the MSM distort the science as a certainty rather than as
    a risk. I can see that this might irritate people who fixate on the
    absolute truth of the message rather than the bigger picture.

    Me. I have only been studying climate change for the last ten or 15
    years, and so my conclusions that what is really scaring the powers that
    be and the reason they are lyiing to us, is that the current global
    energy crisis is the real issue that they dare not address, because they
    cant do anything about it.

    Climate change is an excuse to blame it all on something else.

    There's only a minuscule man made impact on climate, but it is a good a bandwagon as state religion ever was. It will be used to justify state
    control of all energy, a new poverty and a return to essentially feudal
    social conditions.


    --
    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
    intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
    futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
    we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
    power-directed system of thought.”
    Sir Roger Scruton

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Michael J. Mahon on Monday, June 27, 2022 17:34:20
    On 27/06/2022 06:02, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
    <snip>

    However, in the spirit of usenet, I will respond to your comment about
    climate change. Whilst, I'm a 100% believer in stronger efforts to limit
    CO2 emissions, due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, I can
    also see that the MSM distort the science as a certainty rather than as
    a risk. I can see that this might irritate people who fixate on the
    absolute truth of the message rather than the bigger picture.


    While it is true that some massive undiscovered negative feedback mechanism (natural or invented) could kick in at some relatively tolerable planetary temperature to save our bacon, the very long oceanic circulation periods
    and the lack of evidence for this during past excursions make this a bad
    bet. (Especially considering the life-altering stakes.)

    As my Phd BIL said 'if the so called positive climate feedback that
    allegedly makes CO2 induced warming scary, actually existed, life as we
    know it would never have developed on earth at all.
    Its a very long way from 'CO2 absorbs infra red' to 'CO2 will cause an
    overall catastrophic impact on climate at 450pppm' when its exceeded
    that in the past, several times, and been warmer than today in the past
    with less CO2...
    In short the correlation between modern CO2 rise and modern temperature
    change has pretty much been debunked. More than ever post 2000 when the
    warming pretty much stopped. But CO2 rise did not.

    The observation that perhaps something else is causing it, possibly even
    the chaotic nature of a highly complex climate system with multiple
    negative feedback paths, is of cause thrown out by those in denial of
    the reality of climate change.

    The bandwagon is simply too profitable for industry, for the media, for
    the academics and for the politicians, to be derailed.

    If man made climate change didn't exist, someone would have had to
    invent it,
    and they did...


    --
    In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act.

    - George Orwell

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to All on Monday, June 27, 2022 17:40:32
    On 25/06/2022 16:21, Björn Lundin wrote:
    Den 2022-06-24 kl. 16:28, skrev Jan Panteltje:

    (Climate change is caused by earth orbit variations),

    If this was a newsgroup free to talk about everything I'd
    ask you to back that statement with some links.

    Its a very well backed theory - google Milankovic cycles

    Climate is one of the most complex multiple feedback time delayed
    systems we have ever tried to analyse.

    To dismiss the far greater warming from say 1800 to 1900 as irrelevant,
    and maintain the warming from 1970-2000 is all man made is climate
    denial on a grand scale


    The only fact that emerges as pretty firmly established is that CO2 is
    not the major driver of climate, never has been and never will be. Like everything else it has an effect, and it is an effect, but its not major.

    Modern 'climate change' is a political and commercial invention.

    A most convenient lie.

    --
    "The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
    look exactly the same afterwards."

    Billy Connolly

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Monday, June 27, 2022 18:16:54
    On 27/06/2022 15:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    ....

    And the sky might fall on our heads, too.
    He isnt flying 50 passengers round the sky. If he wants to crash, its
    his business. If he is employed as a sysdamin, its his employers
    business. Its cetainly not mine.


    I'd beg to differ.

    Much of the spam around is sent by hacked-into machines(*). So someone
    else's insecurity becomes my spam problem. It's kind-of why you need a
    driving licence, is it not? No-one on the net is acting in isolation. Of course, if he keeps it off-net, then fine.



    (*) In spite of trying to keep a reasonably tight ship, my webserver
    fell victim to an apache bug a few months back and was being used to
    spam. I got figures from hotmail showing how bad things were. As the
    intruders weren't using root access, cleaning up was fairly
    straightforward. I tightened the security.

    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to Mahon on Monday, June 27, 2022 18:03:22
    On 2022-06-27, Michael J Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

    <snip>

    However, in the spirit of usenet, I will respond to your comment about
    climate change. Whilst, I'm a 100% believer in stronger efforts to limit
    CO2 emissions, due to the risk of catastrophic climate change, I can
    also see that the MSM distort the science as a certainty rather than as
    a risk. I can see that this might irritate people who fixate on the
    absolute truth of the message rather than the bigger picture.

    While it is true that some massive undiscovered negative feedback mechanism (natural or invented) could kick in at some relatively tolerable planetary temperature to save our bacon, the very long oceanic circulation periods
    and the lack of evidence for this during past excursions make this a bad
    bet. (Especially considering the life-altering stakes.)

    Various negative feedback mechanisms (AIDS, SARS, bird flu, COVID-19) have already kicked in. However, our population continues to rise. If it goes
    on doubling every 40 years, in 600 years there will be one person for every square meter of dry land on the planet. In 1800 years the entire mass of
    the planet will be converted into people, crawling over each other like a
    swarm of bees. Compared to this, climate change is a minor side effect.

    Enjoy climate change - it's good for The Economy.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
    / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Monday, June 27, 2022 18:03:21
    On 2022-06-27, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Life is short and the documentation is ten times the size of the source code....

    If you're lucky. I still haven't found the manual for life.
    And what bits and pieces I've found follow Sturgeon's Revelation
    (ninety percent of everything is crud).

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
    / \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Tom Blenko on Monday, June 27, 2022 19:54:50
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 18:31:58 -0700
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:

    sudo came into existence on Unix in the early 1980's. I'm not going to
    rehash the history (which I'm not an expert on), anyone who is
    interested can read up on it,

    That I don't need to do, I lived through it as a unix developer.

    So su was introduced so that users could switch to a different
    user ID without logging out - root being the most common one switched to.
    This was in Version 1 AT&T unix - a convenience tool pure and simple.

    As for sudo, that exists for a completely different reason. The
    main reason for sudo was to make it possible to distinguish multiple
    sysadmins in the logs. The secondary reason for sudo was to make it
    possible to create limited specialised admin roles. With sudo root login
    would be banned (nobody would have the root password - it might not even
    exist) but all admins would be placed into groups with appropriate access provided via sudo.

    None of this applies to a single user system where the one user has permission to do anything as anyone in the sudo configuration.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Mike Scott on Monday, June 27, 2022 20:27:55
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:16:54 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    Much of the spam around is sent by hacked-into machines(*). So someone

    It's amazing how few botnets run on rPis being used by someone
    logged in as root. Most of them run in unprivileged processes on Windows machines.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Tom Blenko on Monday, June 27, 2022 20:50:09
    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 18:31:58 -0700
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:

    So you, Steve, have managed to focus on the question you seem
    interested in.

    The question I was interested in was whether any of the vehement objectors to being root had any good reasons - as expected none did.

    There are reasons not to run as root, but they are mostly about protecting the other users on the system or perhaps the other data on the system.

    And you may be satisfied with your conclusion, quoted
    above. I will point out, for your benefit, that it used to be the
    custom for some well-engineered Unix programs to check whether they
    were being run as root - and to print a short message and exit if they
    were.

    In nearly half a century of using and developing under and for unix
    I have never encountered one, I'd be interested in an example. I have encountered the opposite fairly often, programs that exit if the effective
    user ID is not 0.

    It also used to be custom for the sysadmin to be logged in as root, this very rarely caused problems (OK I do recall one case of an extremely incompetent sysadmin who couldn't be fired - after the first major screwup
    the lead devs were given the root password and he was ordered to check with
    us before doing anything as root). This only really started to be a problem when sites grew big enough to need multiple admins and it became important
    to know who was doing what as root.

    The one thing sudo was not created for was to make people pause and think because they had to type sudo first.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From druck@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 21:29:51
    On 25/06/2022 07:58, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    No amount of mentioning other stupid things, makes the stupid thing you
    are doing any less stupid. I just hope no one else is stupid enough to
    let you near a computer in a professional capacity

    You're not quite as rude as that Clough fellow, but you are still failing to explain what additional risks he's running by using root as he does, resorting instead to content free insults. He has articulated pretty clearly why he doesn't think he's risking anything and points to decades of experience to back his assertions up. Right now you (and Dan) look like
    knee jerk idiots criticising a thoughtful person - do better for yourself.

    Nice bit of trolling there.

    So here's the challenge - explain clearly exactly how he is being stupid without recourse to generalities like "never do X it's bad" without saying why. So if he really is being stupid *EDUCATE* him and the rest of us don't insult him and tell us all exactly *WHY* and *HOW* he is being stupid.

    The fundamental principle of Unix/Linux and many other operating
    systems, is you only run programs at the minimal level of privileged
    sufficient for it to operate. To use a higher level than needed risks
    far more severe consequences from both bugs and security
    vulnerabilities. This includes anything from system files being
    overwritten, to arbitrary code being run with extended privileges.

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo access
    is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used
    mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for security the
    sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    That is a completely different issue to running a web browser - a vastly complicated desktop program with numerous bugs and a massive security
    attack surface - as root.

    ---druck

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  • From druck@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 21:35:02
    On 27/06/2022 20:27, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:16:54 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    Much of the spam around is sent by hacked-into machines(*). So someone

    It's amazing how few botnets run on rPis being used by someone
    logged in as root. Most of them run in unprivileged processes on Windows machines.

    Lets not whataboutism with Windows. If you check the your auth logs,
    you'll see the majority of attempts to gain access to Linux machine is
    for the root user.

    First as its a known account name which is always present (although not
    enabled for password access from ssh by anyone with any sense), but also
    if you crack that, you've hit the jackpot and do not require any other privilege escalation exploits to take over the machine completely.

    ---druck

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to druck on Monday, June 27, 2022 21:36:23
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:29:51 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    On 25/06/2022 07:58, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is used mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for
    security the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    That is a completely different issue to running a web browser - a vastly complicated desktop program with numerous bugs and a massive security
    attack surface - as root.

    It is no safer to run it as a user with passwordless sudo access,
    if it has arbitrary code execution holes they would enable attempting sudo
    as a trivial privilege escalation and lo and behold the attacker has root.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Monday, June 27, 2022 21:30:43
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:34:20 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The observation that perhaps something else is causing it, possibly even
    the chaotic nature of a highly complex climate system with multiple
    negative feedback paths, is of cause thrown out by those in denial of
    the reality of climate change.

    The bandwagon is simply too profitable for industry, for the media, for
    the academics and for the politicians, to be derailed.

    There is that - along with it is that many who are sceptical or
    even pretty strongly convinced that it's all bunkum do agree that we have
    to wean ourselves off oil/coal/gas and that it's best done sooner rather
    than later since we're outstripping production by a factor of several
    million.

    Now we could argue for decades about the right alternatives and
    still be talking about it when oil hits $1000/l or we could start trying
    them out now and kludge our way to something that works before we run out. We're human, we make a lot of mistakes so we need time to do this, time in which we can burn oil/coal/peat/each other while we fix the mistakes and explore the alternatives.

    If it takes fear of climate change to get this happening then I'm
    all for it regardless of whether the science is good or not. That is why
    those of us who are unconvinced by the science should shut up about it IMHO
    and let the fear do its work. We might just manage to retain a
    technological society that way.

    If man made climate change didn't exist, someone would have had to
    invent it,
    and they did...

    Sshhhh.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From druck@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 22:28:43
    On 27/06/2022 21:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:29:51 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    On 25/06/2022 07:58, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:00:36 +0100

    Start by explaining why a single user with passwordless sudo
    access is more secure than a root login. On a multi-user system sudo is
    used mainly for accountability not security, when it is used for
    security the sudo configuration is tight and very carefully worked out.

    That is a completely different issue to running a web browser - a vastly
    complicated desktop program with numerous bugs and a massive security
    attack surface - as root.

    It is no safer to run it as a user with passwordless sudo access,
    if it has arbitrary code execution holes they would enable attempting sudo
    as a trivial privilege escalation and lo and behold the attacker has root.

    Well that's why anyone with any sense sets a password.

    ---druck

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 22:37:00
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    It is no safer to run it as a user with passwordless sudo access,
    if it has arbitrary code execution holes they would enable attempting sudo
    as a trivial privilege escalation and lo and behold the attacker has root.

    Running arbitrary code is only one step of the process. It does not afford
    you the ability to run unlimited quantities of arbitrary code in any context you feel like.

    Given enough time, memory and patience, it's a Turing machine so you can do anything. But many exploits do not give you that. For example, let's say
    you can overrun a buffer and inject and run 50 arbitrary instructions[*].
    What can you do with that?

    Quite a bit of bad stuff no doubt, but building an attack in this footprint
    is hard. The more difficult you make the attacker's life, the less likely their attack is going to succeed.

    sudo, even passwordless, is another hurdle they have to jump - and wrangling the necessary fork()/exec() etc from your injected buffer is nontrivial.
    You could try and call system() from libc, but first of all you need to find out the location of that 'system' symbol - and ASLR will put it in a different place each time.

    *You* can simply type 'sudo <whatever>' and get root, but the attacker
    doesn't have a console in which to execute it, nor can they create a handy shell script to put their payload in, and so even a passwordless sudo makes things a lot harder.

    Theo

    [*] These days you can't do even that, because NX will make injected instructions non-executable. So you have to use ROP/JOP gadgets instead.

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Monday, June 27, 2022 21:52:00
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:40:32 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Modern 'climate change' is a political and commercial invention.

    Pull the other one - its got bells on it.

    'Climate Change Denial' is known to be funded by any and all businesses
    that put profit above wellbeing and anti-pollution measures.

    Unfortunately, it seems that climate change deniers share one
    characteristic: they have occupations, and are involved in sports and
    hobbies that are not weather dependant.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to druck on Monday, June 27, 2022 22:27:52
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:35:02 +0100
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    On 27/06/2022 20:27, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:16:54 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    Much of the spam around is sent by hacked-into machines(*). So someone

    It's amazing how few botnets run on rPis being used by someone
    logged in as root. Most of them run in unprivileged processes on Windows machines.

    Lets not whataboutism with Windows. If you check the your auth logs,

    Windows represents the biggest pool of targets for botnet operators after cellphones - fair point most of them probably run on cellphones these days.

    you'll see the majority of attempts to gain access to Linux machine is
    for the root user.

    Back in the days when I exposed an ssh port to the outside world I certainly used to see root and a few other common role names occasionally
    but I also used to see a wide range of first names. With password access disabled they were wasting their efforts.

    These days I just leave an openvpn service exposed - that's even
    harder to break into.

    What does this have to do with logging in to the console as root ?

    First as its a known account name which is always present (although not enabled for password access from ssh by anyone with any sense), but also

    Generally root is not enabled for ssh access at all - I think no
    has been the default value for PermitRootLogin for as long as it has
    existed.

    The usual rule for root login is to only allow it from places
    where there is physical security. These devices are specified in securettys
    on Linux and in /etc/ttys with a secure keyword in BSD.

    if you crack that, you've hit the jackpot and do not require any other privilege escalation exploits to take over the machine completely.

    Quite true - of course taking over the machine completely might get
    you nothing more than a network connected rPi to play with.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Tom Blenko@3:770/3 to Rivet's Shot on Monday, June 27, 2022 18:14:30
    In article <20220627205009.1b2651c9f31c6eb2966471fb@eircom.net>, Ahem A
    Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 18:31:58 -0700
    Tom Blenko <blenko@martingalesystems.com> wrote:

    And you may be satisfied with your conclusion, quoted
    above. I will point out, for your benefit, that it used to be the
    custom for some well-engineered Unix programs to check whether they
    were being run as root - and to print a short message and exit if they were.

    In nearly half a century of using and developing under and for unix
    I have never encountered one, I'd be interested in an example. I have encountered the opposite fairly often, programs that exit if the effective user ID is not 0.

    One straightforward way to find examples is to do a Google search on
    "cannot run as root". It returns lots of hits, some of which address
    this particular question.

    Top of my search results is steam (which I hadn't thought of). Farther
    down the list are database applications and graphics applications (both
    of which I am unsurprised to see). Didn't look to see which may
    specifically run on Raspbian.

    The one thing sudo was not created for was to make people pause and
    think because they had to type sudo first.

    I don't think it was either. I think it was to cause them to stop and
    type in a password, then have sudo check that the password is correct
    and that the user is authorized to access root. An alternative to
    handing out the root password to everyone who is administering the
    system.

    There are many uses sudo was not created for but which it has evolved
    to address over its long history (in concert with other the evolution
    of other Unix features/configurations). You can find some referenced
    explicitly or implicitly on the man page.

    As for sudo, that exists for a completely different reason. The
    main reason for sudo was to make it possible to distinguish multiple sysadmins in the logs. The secondary reason for sudo was to make it
    possible to create limited specialised admin roles. With sudo root login would be banned (nobody would have the root password - it might not even exist) but all admins would be placed into groups with appropriate access provided via sudo.

    I imagine there would be some benefit for logging, as you say. I've
    never heard anyone mention it before, nor has it been an issue for me.
    And I'm not sure what sudo did when created because logging at that
    time was much more primitive.

    I did not see sudo used in the latter fashion when it was created, nor
    for many years thereafter. I was still logging in as root to a variety Sun/HP/NeXT/SGI systems into the late 1990's, some in large shops,
    whereas sudo appeared around 1980.

    None of this applies to a single user system where the one user has permission to do anything as anyone in the sudo configuration.

    The Raspberry Pi system closest at hand, whose OS has probably been
    updated within the past couple of months, has 35 users in its password
    file. Certainly, one major reason Unix systems have evolved to have
    this many users is to keep different users, including both the
    non-login and login ones, from inadvertently compromising each other's functionality.

    You may not wish to use sudo but there are lots of Raspberry Pi clients
    who may and the present configuration accommodates either situation
    pretty well. Consider the users who have little Unix experience and do
    not even realize that sudo provides system-wide access: it's just an incantation they read and type in from their documentation (and I dare
    say that's why you see wide use of configuration commands written up as
    "sudo <cmd>" rather than "run <cmd> as root" in documentation). So
    their routine activity is protected from a certain class of mishaps by
    their running as non-privileged users. Next, the ones who know more but
    do want the protection sudo supports. I am the only person logging into
    a couple of desktop/laptop machines here and I run as a normal user
    across all of them. sudo is available if I need it. And then there are,
    e.g., lab managers, who are trying to support many
    identically-configured machines. They may want to prevent most of their
    users from having root access altogether, while providing for a few
    exceptions but prohibiting root login. And they might want to implement
    all users across all systems. And who knows what else? For them, the
    price of clobbering even a Pi boot disk may be much higher than it is
    for you.

    Seems to me that the Pi engineers have delivered a sensible, flexible,
    and well-engineered solution backed by decades of experience, both on
    their own platform and on others.

    Tom

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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to All on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 03:26:36
    https://xkcd.com/149/

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful...
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
    / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 11:38:47
    On 27/06/2022 21:30, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    We're human, we make a lot of mistakes so we need time to do this, time in which we can burn oil/coal/peat/each other while we fix the mistakes and explore the alternatives.

    If it takes fear of climate change to get this happening then I'm
    all for it
    Well yes, but unfortunately that is not what is happening. As we can see especially clearly in the case of Germany, all that fear has been used
    to drive a massively profitable path to 'renewable' energy, which has completely disguised the fact that Germany hasn't reduced its emissions
    one iota and is utterly dependent on what's left of its nuclear power,
    burning filthy brown coal and inadvisable Russian gas.

    It's almost as if the leadership knew that climate change wasn't
    actually a problem, that really needed addressing and the real problem
    was how to impoverish their citizens by forcing people to buy more
    crap that they didn't actually need, and still get voted back into power...

    We will of course end up with nuclear power in the end, or face societal collapse, because its the only technology that can supply primary energy reliably at a sane cost, ex of fossil.

    It's the damage that the 'climate change' narrative is doing in the
    meantime that is massively worrying.

    Putins backers want Easter Ukraine and the Donbas because that's where
    all the oil and gas is.

    We are now facing the third resource war.
    --
    "I guess a rattlesnake ain't risponsible fer bein' a rattlesnake, but ah
    puts mah heel on um jess the same if'n I catches him around mah chillun".

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 11:47:42
    On 27/06/2022 22:52, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:40:32 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Modern 'climate change' is a political and commercial invention.

    Pull the other one - its got bells on it.

    'Climate Change Denial' is known to be funded by any and all businesses
    that put profit above wellbeing and anti-pollution measures.

    Indeed so it is. They want us all to run electric cars, treble the price
    of electricity and be forced to accept unreliable energy reply from
    mediaeval technology.

    By denying the real nature of climate change and presenting us with a
    false narrative instead.


    Unfortunately, it seems that climate change deniers share one
    characteristic: they have occupations, and are involved in sports and
    hobbies that are not weather dependant.


    Mostly they are government employees or media employees. Politicians
    academics, journalists who are employed by publicly funded organisations
    whose future depends on them not being found out telling porkies to
    people to gull them into thinking they have to accept a massive drop in
    living standard and unreliable access to massively expensive energy,
    which they now control completely.

    And of course the oil and gas companies who have realised they simply
    have to pretend to go green whilst renewable energy policy drives up
    energy prices, trebles the value of their reserves whilst resulting in
    no drop in demand for their products whatsoever.

    Cui Bono?

    Who benefits from the climate change false narrative?

    All the elites do. Only joe soap shivers in fuel poverty whilst the
    windmills stop turning and snow is covering the solar panels.

    --
    Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper
    name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating
    or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its
    logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of
    the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead. They must
    face it, then decide whether this is what they want or not.

    Ayn Rand.

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  • From RJH@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 12:26:23
    On 28 Jun 2022 at 11:38:47 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 27/06/2022 21:30, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    We're human, we make a lot of mistakes so we need time to do this, time in >> which we can burn oil/coal/peat/each other while we fix the mistakes and
    explore the alternatives.

    If it takes fear of climate change to get this happening then I'm
    all for it
    Well yes, but unfortunately that is not what is happening. As we can see especially clearly in the case of Germany, all that fear has been used
    to drive a massively profitable path to 'renewable' energy, which has completely disguised the fact that Germany hasn't reduced its emissions
    one iota

    It has:

    https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets

    and is utterly dependent on what's left of its nuclear power,
    burning filthy brown coal and inadvisable Russian gas.


    Yes, they know.

    --
    Cheers, Rob

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 13:45:27
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 11:38:47 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 27/06/2022 21:30, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    We're human, we make a lot of mistakes so we need time to do this, time
    in which we can burn oil/coal/peat/each other while we fix the mistakes
    and explore the alternatives.

    If it takes fear of climate change to get this happening then
    I'm all for it
    Well yes, but unfortunately that is not what is happening. As we can see especially clearly in the case of Germany, all that fear has been used
    to drive a massively profitable path to 'renewable' energy, which has completely disguised the fact that Germany hasn't reduced its emissions
    one iota and is utterly dependent on what's left of its nuclear power, burning filthy brown coal and inadvisable Russian gas.

    Yep see comment about mistakes and leaving time to correct them. Everyone is trying to move away from oil, coal and gas now.

    It's almost as if the leadership knew that climate change wasn't
    actually a problem, that really needed addressing and the real problem
    was how to impoverish their citizens by forcing people to buy more
    crap that they didn't actually need, and still get voted back into
    power...

    Yeah - but the real problem is to get people to give up
    coal/oil/gas. Nuclear is a no-go at the moment but going with renewables is possible and /might/ do the job if the energy storage problem gets solved
    (a cheap enough reliable flow battery would do) or it might not and they
    might be 'reluctantly' forced to accept the necessity of nuclear.

    Long game, but TPTB seem to have decided that it must be started
    now.

    Oh and for sure funnelling as much money as possible in the 'right' direction is a given no matter what else might be going on. That's just business as usual for the rich. They'd manage that just as well with
    nuclear or clathrate mines or solar powersats or mandatory six hours a day
    on the generator bicycle or anything else whether it worked or not.

    We are now facing the third resource war.

    Yes we are.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 14:01:19
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 11:47:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


    Unfortunately, it seems that climate change deniers share one
    characteristic: they have occupations, and are involved in sports and
    hobbies that are not weather dependant.

    More likely they're just members of the pubberlick who live in cities and
    take no notice of the weather apart from wearing a mack if the forecaster
    says it will rain, i.e. most deniers are 'just plain folks' who take no
    notice of the weather, and so have no baseline to judge what's happening.

    Here's a concrete example of a change which is obvious if you've kept an
    eye on longer term effects but doubtless totally ignored by people who
    aren't balloon pilots, glider pilots, hang-glider pilots or
    meterrologists, which is unfortunsate, because it affects medium-term UK weather patterns.

    We used to get decent soaring conditions (a cold, dry northerly blowing
    down the East coast in bright sun and nice morth-south cloud streets) in
    May. These conditions correlated quite well with a southerly jetstream
    flow down the UK east coast. However, I haven't seen those conditions
    since around 2010, which is about when the jetstream started to slow down
    and shift south in summer.

    Currently the main northern jet stream, initially discovered in WW2 by its effect on bombers streams attacking Japan, has changed out of all
    recognition since around 2000. I started using it as a guide to UK flying weather around 2003, when it was still stable and relatively unkinked.
    Then it remained well North of the UK during summer and pretty much over
    the UK during winter. By 2015 it had moved south (more of less over France
    in winter and further north in summer. Now its quire unpredictable and
    much weaker.

    Currently there's a huge meander south of Iceland, with both Northern lips covering Greenland and extending south almost to Spain.

    https://www.woeurope.eu/cgi-bin/expertcharts? LANG=eu&MENU=0000000000&CONT=euro&MODELL=gfs&MODELLTYP=1&BASE=- &VAR=jet3&HH=3&ARCHIV=0&ZOOM=0&PERIOD=&WMO=



    Mostly they are government employees or media employees. Politicians academics, journalists who are employed by publicly funded organisations
    whose future depends on them not being found out telling porkies to
    people to gull them into thinking they have to accept a massive drop in living standard and unreliable access to massively expensive energy,
    which they now control completely.

    And of course the oil and gas companies who have realised they simply
    have to pretend to go green whilst renewable energy policy drives up
    energy prices, trebles the value of their reserves whilst resulting in
    no drop in demand for their products whatsoever.

    Cui Bono?

    Who benefits from the climate change false narrative?

    All the elites do. Only joe soap shivers in fuel poverty whilst the
    windmills stop turning and snow is covering the solar panels.





    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 18:37:59
    On 28/06/2022 15:01, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 11:47:42 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


    Unfortunately, it seems that climate change deniers share one
    characteristic: they have occupations, and are involved in sports and
    hobbies that are not weather dependant.

    More likely they're just members of the pubberlick who live in cities and take no notice of the weather apart from wearing a mack if the forecaster says it will rain, i.e. most deniers are 'just plain folks' who take no notice of the weather, and so have no baseline to judge what's happening.


    You have fallen for the bait and switch. No one denies climate
    *changes*. That is an invention of the snake oil greens.
    But to ascribe that *all * or even mostly* to human inputs is arrogant
    and foolish and cynical beyond belief. Especially when there have been
    far greater changes utterly unrelated to CO2 in the recent past.
    And even more so when to fit the curves and then to make it scary enough
    to warrant action the effect has to be *amplified* by 3 or 5 to one of *positive* feedback, which renders the climate so theoretically unstable
    life could never have gotten started.

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all, and there are other issues they don't
    address that are far more significant than greenhouse gases, is never
    aired, simply because it doesn't lead to the desired political and
    economic result.



    --
    “It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
    making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
    who pay no price for being wrong.”

    Thomas Sowell

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 20:01:18
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

    Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system
    after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the messy
    bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect calculation.
    IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a perfect billiard ball
    on a frictionless table with perfect cushions alone in the universe apart
    from a stray electron at an unknown distance, after a week or so you can
    have no idea where the ball is because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Robert Riches@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 03:40:28
    On 2022-06-28, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

    Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system
    after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the messy bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect calculation.
    IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a perfect billiard ball
    on a frictionless table with perfect cushions alone in the universe apart from a stray electron at an unknown distance, after a week or so you can
    have no idea where the ball is because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    Regarding the theoretical billiard ball and uncertainty factor, I
    don't have a source, so if anyone does have a source for this, it
    would be greatly appreciated. Back in college within a few years
    of the disco era, someone with a physics background told me that
    the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would compound so rapidly
    that after the cue ball had experienced 15 collisions nothing
    could be predicted about its direction.

    --
    Robert Riches
    spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
    (Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

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  • From Deloptes@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 08:39:44
    The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all, and there are other issues they don't address that are far more significant than greenhouse gases, is never
    aired, simply because it doesn't lead to the desired political and
    economic result.

    Absolutely correct statement. It is Communism v2.0 we experience in the west now.
    The only weather model that works is not from the west (and I am not telling you from where it comes, because I don't want to get involved in political discussions)
    However the models in the west are crap, because they use "normalization" exactly for the political and not for objective reasons. This approach was criticized, but without success. Another issue is the UN lead program on altering the weather. Apparently Switzerland stated it and another 12
    states object this program for its controversial results. We know this
    program as "chem trails"
    So .. somehow it is indeed men made issue and one can argue if the results
    are byproduct or deliberate destruction of the climate.

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Robert Riches on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 07:54:14
    On 29 Jun 2022 03:40:28 GMT
    Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:

    Regarding the theoretical billiard ball and uncertainty factor, I
    don't have a source, so if anyone does have a source for this, it
    would be greatly appreciated. Back in college within a few years
    of the disco era, someone with a physics background told me that
    the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would compound so rapidly
    that after the cue ball had experienced 15 collisions nothing
    could be predicted about its direction.

    That one I think I can debunk. For a few years I lived above a club with a very well maintained slate bed billiards table (covers and cushions
    were replaced every year). My father insisted that I develop some skill
    before playing on it and so the first thing I was expected to achieve was
    to send the ball down the spots and have it return along them. The second
    thing was to send the ball round at least all six cushions - at my best I
    could sometimes manage nine cushions before the ball was too slow and going
    in the wrong direction (yes it was a very good table).

    I think that if I was able to manage nine collisions on a real
    table with a real ball (where imperfections, air currents and vibrations
    would all be many orders of magnitude larger than uncertainty effects) that fifteen on an ideal table should pose no problem despite the best that Heisenberg can do.

    The example I cited with the stray electron was assuming Newtonian physics and I have seen and followed the maths behind it (a long time ago
    when I was a maths student - no way could I reproduce that kind of
    analysis now). There are a *lot* of collisions in a week of travel.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 10:51:20
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On 29 Jun 2022 03:40:28 GMT
    Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:

    Regarding the theoretical billiard ball and uncertainty factor, I
    don't have a source, so if anyone does have a source for this, it
    would be greatly appreciated. Back in college within a few years
    of the disco era, someone with a physics background told me that
    the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would compound so rapidly
    that after the cue ball had experienced 15 collisions nothing
    could be predicted about its direction.

    That one I think I can debunk. [...]

    Also, Heisenberg decidedly does not play a role in billiards, even when multiplied 15 times. It's just macro uncertainty because of imperfections
    of ... everything.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 12:26:06
    On 28/06/2022 20:01, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

    Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system
    after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the messy bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect calculation.
    IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a perfect billiard ball
    on a frictionless table with perfect cushions alone in the universe apart from a stray electron at an unknown distance, after a week or so you can
    have no idea where the ball is because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    You are slightly confusing tow things. The starting data problem and the precision problem.

    The billiard ball is incomputable though deterministic because of
    rounding errors in the math, and in the starting data, and non
    linearities in the real world vis à vis the idealised model.
    Its way worse with climate. E.g. cloud cover versus non cloud cover is a minimum of a 4 times change in solar radiation at ground level. Cloud
    formation is an edge effect. It happens suddenly at thee dew point
    temperature, which varies with altitude. In the climate models it is
    simply parameterised 'on average there will be x% cloud cover which will
    not change year upon year'

    Neither is it correctly coupled in to reflect the drop in water vapour
    (the most important greenhouse gas) when it rains.

    Two massively important non linear events totally dominating temperature
    hand waved away with linear approximatio9ns because the Math is simply
    too hard.
    And that's before we get to quasi period and chaotic oscillations in
    ocean currents,

    Which is more likely, that there exists an undetected and unexplained
    positive feedback mechanism that trebles the inherent temperature rise
    due to any forcing, or there is a broadly chaotic system with plenty of
    unknown non linear negative feed back paths that keep things more or
    less stable, but with considerable variation around any given attractor
    - which itself may (and has) change(d) and tip(ped) us into an ice age?

    The contemptible behaviour of the 'alarmists' is to do the bait and
    switch of calling people who consider the variations more likely natural
    than man made, 'climate deniers' which, apart from being completely
    offensive - far more so that calling a black person a nigger - then
    allows them to be dismissed by demonstrating that the climate in fact
    does change. Well hooey. Whoda thunk it?

    So many people attack my position by proving to me that climate is
    changing. When has it not? When was this golden age of ideal stable temperatures and what were the values?

    The nearest the people *I* call climate deniers - those who believe the narrative without understanding the sketchy nature of the science
    underneath - come to making a convincing case is to claim the modern
    rate of rise (not the rise itself) is 'unprecedented'.

    But how could we detect say a 1°C rise in two decades, 5,000 years ago?
    the proxies are not that good.

    Such a rise is certainly reflected in the end of the little ice age in
    the UK, which is the only part of the world to have reasonably accurate temperature monitoring at that time. Over the rest of the world it is
    disputed and erased by climate alarmists. You will still find the proven
    fraudulent hockey stick of Michael Mann (climate denier in chief)
    published in such places as well.

    Here is something that says it better than I can.

    =============================================
    From a professor of physics.

    Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all,
    if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature
    variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just
    over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the
    last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing
    remarkable about today’s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on
    the planet would look at that complete record — or even the complete
    record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene — and
    stab down their finger at the present and go “Oh no!”. Quite the
    contrary. It isn’t the warmest. It isn’t close to the warmest. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the
    fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly
    fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with
    the LIA* and MWP** restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last
    thousand years!

    Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years
    reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80
    to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover
    the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone.
    We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which
    humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern
    civilization. The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable,
    with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely
    and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable
    open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has
    profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in
    the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the
    Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the
    scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere
    near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended
    a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.

    There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third
    stable warm phase that might be associated with a “tipping point” and
    hence “catastrophe” (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe,
    a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far
    warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the
    other way, into the phase that we know is there — the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite
    rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale,
    would truly be a catastrophe. Even if “catastrophic” AGW is correct and
    we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth
    in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth’s transition into cold
    phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the
    temperate breadbasket of the world.

    Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of
    an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that
    predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we
    cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this
    baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don’t
    have any such thing. We don’t have anything close to this. We cannot
    predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the
    present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000
    years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no
    idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a
    trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the “anthropogenic” component of any warming.

    This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just
    love to tell stories) but there aren’t any particularly successful
    theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories
    (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly
    well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One
    part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and
    chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all
    of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one
    tried to actually write “the” partial differential equation for the
    global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes
    equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms — if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand!
    Global Climate Models are children’s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers
    setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.

    The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They
    utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending
    global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and
    tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every
    year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously
    lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the
    probability of the “C” increasinginly remote.

    These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the
    reason you used “denier” in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real
    reason you used the term is revealed even in your response — we all “should” be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of “catastrophe”. In particular, we “should” be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.

    The problem with this “end justifies the means” argument — where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to
    devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their
    arguments at the political and social level — is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman’s rather famous “Cargo Cult” talk: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

    In particular, I quote:

    For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
    friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology
    and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the
    applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of
    this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re
    representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to
    the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you
    under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.


    One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind
    to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should
    always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only
    publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look any way
    we want.

    I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government
    advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
    drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
    would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a
    result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re
    being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the
    government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument
    in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish
    it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.

    Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to
    living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of
    honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the “Hockey Team” embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails?
    Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do
    they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann’s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism
    (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term “denier” have
    any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman’s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?

    And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my
    relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but
    concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the
    dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be
    that people don’t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money,
    and their choice!

    Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in
    climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe — and as I said,
    prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck
    convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today
    is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen
    to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record — then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done
    on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of
    dollars of other people’s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a “threat” that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an
    even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the
    one the IPCC anticipates.

    Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance
    in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time
    as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against
    draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that
    global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.

    For shame.

    Dr Robert Brown.

    --
    "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".

    Gospel of St. Mathew 15:14

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 12:57:32
    On 29/06/2022 11:51, A. Dumas wrote:
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On 29 Jun 2022 03:40:28 GMT
    Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:

    Regarding the theoretical billiard ball and uncertainty factor, I
    don't have a source, so if anyone does have a source for this, it
    would be greatly appreciated. Back in college within a few years
    of the disco era, someone with a physics background told me that
    the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would compound so rapidly
    that after the cue ball had experienced 15 collisions nothing
    could be predicted about its direction.

    That one I think I can debunk. [...]

    Also, Heisenberg decidedly does not play a role in billiards, even when multiplied 15 times. It's just macro uncertainty because of imperfections
    of ... everything.

    Yes. one doesn't need to get down to quantum level fluctuations in
    position mass and velocity when a speck of hair on a cushion is so much
    more effective...

    --
    "It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing
    conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 12:24:01
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:26:06 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Dr Robert Brown

    Kindly provide a link to this physicist's academic tenure and publication.

    Searches find a lot of Robert Browns with degrees, mostly medical and non- scientific plus a few engineers, but no phyicists. The Wikipedia 'Robert
    Brown' disambiguation page doesn't list any physicists either.



    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Deloptes@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 14:36:03
    Martin Gregorie wrote:

    Kindly provide a link to this physicist's academic tenure and publication.

    Searches find a lot of Robert Browns with degrees, mostly medical and non- scientific plus a few engineers, but no phyicists. The Wikipedia 'Robert Brown' disambiguation page doesn't list any physicists either.

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    Amazing how people shape the search engines with their behavior.

    I guess "Robert D. Brown" was meant from TAMU.

    And as we speak hundreds of ships polute the earth to make China
    and "capitalists" reacher, so that you and I can buy affordable mobile
    phone or other crap with planned obsolescence embedded. This is how far the hypocrisy reached.

    I recommend you stop this discussion.

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Deloptes on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 13:13:05
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just two
    hits for "Robert Brown":

    - one is an Australian politician, medical doctor and environmentalist.
    - the other is a Landscape Architect and Urban Planner at Texas A&M

    Since I can't find anything about such a physicist, I naturally posted a response asking TNP to provide links to the guy's academic tenure and
    citation list because I'd like to read his published papers.

    I also recently switched search engines since Duck Duck Go, which I have
    been using seems to have become merely a front end for Bing, which I don't trust an inch, and haven't yet much experience with the new one.



    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 14:56:04
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:26:06 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 28/06/2022 20:01, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

    Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system
    after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the
    messy bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect calculation. IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a
    perfect billiard ball on a frictionless table with perfect cushions
    alone in the universe apart from a stray electron at an unknown
    distance, after a week or so you can have no idea where the ball is
    because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    You are slightly confusing tow things. The starting data problem and the precision problem.

    No I am not.

    The billiard ball is incomputable though deterministic because of
    rounding errors in the math, and in the starting data, and non
    linearities in the real world vis à vis the idealised model.

    Yes but I am talking about the behaviour of an ideal billiard ball
    on an ideal table with precisely known initial velocity. In an otherwise
    empty universe the path of the billiard ball may be predicted indefinitely. However if you add one randomly placed electron to that universe the errors from ignoring its pull will mean that after a week or so you have no idea
    where the ball is on the table or what its velocity direction is.

    A real billiard ball on a real table is vastly more complex, subject
    to far greater unknown influences and won't run for a week no matter what
    you do.

    Its way worse with climate. E.g. cloud cover versus non cloud cover is a

    Yes of course - this example is to demonstrate that a tiny unknown
    will eventually make an otherwise simple and perfectly predictable system completely unpredictable after a surprisingly short time. Climate is far
    less predictable.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 19:36:06
    On 29/06/2022 14:56, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:26:06 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 28/06/2022 20:01, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

    Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system
    after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the
    messy bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect
    calculation. IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a
    perfect billiard ball on a frictionless table with perfect cushions
    alone in the universe apart from a stray electron at an unknown
    distance, after a week or so you can have no idea where the ball is
    because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    You are slightly confusing tow things. The starting data problem and the
    precision problem.

    No I am not.

    The billiard ball is incomputable though deterministic because of
    rounding errors in the math, and in the starting data, and non
    linearities in the real world vis à vis the idealised model.

    Yes but I am talking about the behaviour of an ideal billiard ball
    on an ideal table with precisely known initial velocity. In an otherwise empty universe the path of the billiard ball may be predicted indefinitely. However if you add one randomly placed electron to that universe the errors from ignoring its pull will mean that after a week or so you have no idea where the ball is on the table or what its velocity direction is.

    A real billiard ball on a real table is vastly more complex, subject
    to far greater unknown influences and won't run for a week no matter what
    you do.

    Its way worse with climate. E.g. cloud cover versus non cloud cover is a

    Yes of course - this example is to demonstrate that a tiny unknown
    will eventually make an otherwise simple and perfectly predictable system completely unpredictable after a surprisingly short time. Climate is far
    less predictable.


    I wonder why people make statements that are so obviously untrue. Global climate is very predictable, very stable. Chaotic behaviour is generally
    local and or short term, it is generally mean reverting.

    The problem is not chaos, per se, the problem is that we do not
    understand long term climate effects, the drivers of long term changes.
    Chaos makes it harder to study and measure long term effects, but it is
    very unlikely long term changes in the weather happen purely by chance, chaotically. In the medium term, global climate is complex rather than
    chaotic.

    I suppose it is possible, a chaotic effect could push us out of a stable
    local equilibrium, but that is very unlikely, given previous stability. Unlikely compared to a clear unusual mechanism like CO2 increase driving
    global temperature change, with unknown long term consequences.

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 23:51:18
    On 29/06/2022 13:24, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:26:06 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Dr Robert Brown

    Kindly provide a link to this physicist's academic tenure and publication.

    Searches find a lot of Robert Browns with degrees, mostly medical and non- scientific plus a few engineers, but no phyicists. The Wikipedia 'Robert Brown' disambiguation page doesn't list any physicists either.


    I believe, he is - or was then - colorado tenured professor.

    But why would who he was make a difference to what he said?




    --
    Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 23:56:01
    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just two
    hits for "Robert Brown":
    ]

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb



    --
    "Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
    higher education positively fortifies it."

    - Stephen Vizinczey

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Pancho on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 23:57:41
    On 29/06/2022 19:36, Pancho wrote:
    On 29/06/2022 14:56, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:26:06 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 28/06/2022 20:01, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:37:59 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    The alternative thesis, that climate models are simply too crap to
    accurately model climate at all,

        Well to be fair that's almost inevitable, it's a chaotic system >>>> after all so the models can only work in the smooth bits because the
    messy bits require complete data at infinite precision and perfect
    calculation. IOW they can't be modelled - just like the path of a
    perfect billiard ball on a frictionless table with perfect cushions
    alone in the universe apart from a stray electron at an unknown
    distance, after a week or so you can have no idea where the ball is
    because of the unknown pull of that electron.

    You are slightly confusing tow things. The starting data problem and the >>> precision problem.

        No I am not.

    The billiard ball is incomputable though deterministic because of
    rounding errors in the math, and in the starting data, and non
    linearities in the real world vis à vis the idealised model.

        Yes but I am talking about the behaviour of an ideal billiard ball >> on an ideal table with precisely known initial velocity. In an otherwise
    empty universe the path of the billiard ball may be predicted
    indefinitely.
    However if you add one randomly placed electron to that universe the
    errors
    from ignoring its pull will mean that after a week or so you have no idea
    where the ball is on the table or what its velocity direction is.

        A real billiard ball on a real table is vastly more complex, subject >> to far greater unknown influences and won't run for a week no matter what
    you do.

    Its way worse with climate. E.g. cloud cover versus non cloud cover is a

        Yes of course - this example is to demonstrate that a tiny unknown >> will eventually make an otherwise simple and perfectly predictable system
    completely unpredictable after a surprisingly short time. Climate is far
    less predictable.


    I wonder why people make statements that are so obviously untrue. Global climate is very predictable, very stable. Chaotic behaviour is generally local and or short term, it is generally mean reverting.

    I wonder why you made a statement that is so obviously untrue.


    The problem is not chaos, per se, the problem is that we do not
    understand long term climate effects, the drivers of long term changes.
    Chaos makes it harder to study and measure long term effects, but it is
    very unlikely long term changes in the weather happen purely by chance, chaotically. In the medium term, global climate is complex rather than chaotic.

    I suppose it is possible, a chaotic effect could push us out of a stable local equilibrium, but that is very unlikely, given previous stability. Unlikely compared to a clear unusual mechanism like CO2 increase driving global temperature change, with unknown long term consequences.


    I see you haven't a clue about the true nature of chaos mathematics.



    --
    "Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
    higher education positively fortifies it."

    - Stephen Vizinczey

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Thursday, June 30, 2022 12:19:02
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:56:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just
    two hits for "Robert Brown":
    ]

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb

    Thanks for that: it turns out that his published work is connected with Heisenberg's model of ferromagnetism and not a lot else. IMO this makes
    his comments about climate modelling interesting but scarcely definitive.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thursday, June 30, 2022 19:16:53
    On 30/06/2022 13:19, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:56:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just
    two hits for "Robert Brown":
    ]

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb

    Thanks for that: it turns out that his published work is connected with Heisenberg's model of ferromagnetism and not a lot else. IMO this makes
    his comments about climate modelling interesting but scarcely definitive.


    His remarks are about a problem in physics and the modelling thereof.

    He knows far more about that than any 'climate scientist', most of whom
    are practically innumerate.


    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Thursday, June 30, 2022 18:41:05
    On 30 Jun 2022 at 13:19:02 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:56:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just
    two hits for "Robert Brown":

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb

    Thanks for that: it turns out that his published work is connected with Heisenberg's model of ferromagnetism and not a lot else. IMO this makes
    his comments about climate modelling interesting but scarcely definitive.

    Hmm. Be careful: sounds a lot like you're saying is that if he's not a published climate scientist then you're happy to ignore what he says. I don't recall that Feynman was a rocket scientist either.

    --
    Tim

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Thursday, June 30, 2022 19:28:24
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    His remarks are about a problem in physics and the modelling thereof.

    He knows far more about that than any 'climate scientist', most of whom
    are practically innumerate.

    As far as I know, climate science is an extension of meteorology & the
    physics of oceanography. That is a graduate specialty of physics where I studied physics (Utrecht).

    There may be other sorts of climate scientists but that is not "as far as I know".

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Thursday, June 30, 2022 19:57:09
    On 30 Jun 2022 18:41:05 GMT, TimS wrote:

    On 30 Jun 2022 at 13:19:02 BST, Martin Gregorie
    <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:56:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just
    two hits for "Robert Brown":

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb

    Thanks for that: it turns out that his published work is connected with
    Heisenberg's model of ferromagnetism and not a lot else. IMO this makes
    his comments about climate modelling interesting but scarcely
    definitive.

    Hmm. Be careful: sounds a lot like you're saying is that if he's not a published climate scientist then you're happy to ignore what he says. I
    don't recall that Feynman was a rocket scientist either.

    He wasn't and, if you read his books, you'd know that he didn't pronounce outside his specialities. The Challenger Crash? He demonstrated a
    phenomenon (inelastic rubber seals at low temperature) that an engineer
    had shown him because he could do so without being dumped on from a great height while the engineer could not.

    What I'm saying is that ferromagnetism != climate science and that as a sometime physical inorganic chemist with most experience in X-ray crystallography and Mossbauer spectrography, I wouldn't ever have expected anybody to believe anything I said about, e.g. organometallic chemistry or protein synthesis. I might have asked questions about those subjects but
    would never have pronounced opinions about them.

    So I reserve the right to apply the same rules as I follow to anybody else pronouncing about things outside their speciality.



    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Thursday, June 30, 2022 20:49:06
    On 30/06/2022 20:28, A. Dumas wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    His remarks are about a problem in physics and the modelling thereof.

    He knows far more about that than any 'climate scientist', most of whom
    are practically innumerate.

    As far as I know, climate science is an extension of meteorology & the physics of oceanography. That is a graduate specialty of physics where I studied physics (Utrecht).

    There may be other sorts of climate scientists but that is not "as far as I know".

    The skills that are need for climate science are in the fields of
    statistics, mathematical modelling and computer science, with a rather
    low level of physics.

    In fact all the physics there is boils down to 'carbon dioxide in a
    laboratory absorbs infra red radiation' .

    The predictions that are derived from that one fairly well accepted
    hypothesis are wildly extravagant and feature notional entities that
    have been shown not to exist.

    Robert Brown is simply saying 'boys, it ain't that simple' .

    He is in a similar position to me when someone claims that 'in five
    years time solar panels and windmills and lithium batteries will produce
    five times per unit what they do now .' And I know that the laws of
    physics actually preclude that. But to announce it cannot happen is met
    with 'they said bumblebees couldn't fly either' or 'human progress is limitless' or some other ArtStudent™ type statement.

    In short science it seems is no longer a matter of theories based on
    fact, it is a matter of pure opinion.

    If I choose to be a disabled black woman, don't dare tell me I am
    healthy white and male, you transphobic racist.


    --
    "The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
    look exactly the same afterwards."

    Billy Connolly

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thursday, June 30, 2022 21:50:54
    On Thu, 30 Jun 2022 19:57:09 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    What I'm saying is that ferromagnetism != climate science and that as a sometime physical inorganic chemist with most experience in X-ray crystallography and Mossbauer spectrography, I wouldn't ever have
    expected anybody to believe anything I said about, e.g. organometallic chemistry or protein synthesis. I might have asked questions about those subjects but would never have pronounced opinions about them.

    That seems perfectly reasonable - but I expect that you would
    recognise poor lab technique in the work of a chemist in a different field
    to yours if the lab techniques were similar to those you use.

    In this case he appears to be well versed in the techniques of mathematical modelling with a strong grasp of the complexity of the problem
    and the relative complexity of the climate and the models being used. He
    also makes good points about the historical record showing conditions much worse than this - but I do accept that we didn't have to live through those times and they may not have been much fun.

    The models are massive oversimplifications of the problem, they
    can't be anything else. If we dedicated every CPU on the planet to running a single fully detailed model we might model every aspect of the climate over
    a second per century of run time - if we could build the model and if we had the data (we can't and we don't). The models being used are crude,
    simplified approximations but then so is the ideal gas equation or
    Newtonian mechanics but both can be used to give good enough predictions in many cases.

    The real question is whether or not the current climate models are
    good enough to give good predictions in and around the current conditions.
    They certainly don't model the details and they have a lot of knobs to
    tweak which doesn't inspire confidence but might be what's needed. I
    honestly don't know but I don't care because I want us weaned off
    oil/gas/coal, I like clean air and water and I don't care what we have to
    tell each other to make it happen or how many (potentially) wrong paths we follow as long as we get there before we starve/freeze/bake.

    Fortunately there is absolutely no danger of anyone being able to
    prove the current models wrong or proving that human actions are not the
    major driving force so there's no real danger of an about turn and going
    back to smog and acid rain.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Friday, July 01, 2022 08:47:42
    On 30 Jun 2022 at 21:50:54 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Thu, 30 Jun 2022 19:57:09 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    What I'm saying is that ferromagnetism != climate science and that as a
    sometime physical inorganic chemist with most experience in X-ray
    crystallography and Mossbauer spectrography, I wouldn't ever have
    expected anybody to believe anything I said about, e.g. organometallic
    chemistry or protein synthesis. I might have asked questions about those
    subjects but would never have pronounced opinions about them.

    That seems perfectly reasonable - but I expect that you would
    recognise poor lab technique in the work of a chemist in a different field
    to yours if the lab techniques were similar to those you use.

    In this case he appears to be well versed in the techniques of mathematical modelling with a strong grasp of the complexity of the problem and the relative complexity of the climate and the models being used. He
    also makes good points about the historical record showing conditions much worse than this - but I do accept that we didn't have to live through those times and they may not have been much fun.

    The models are massive oversimplifications of the problem, they
    can't be anything else. If we dedicated every CPU on the planet to running a single fully detailed model we might model every aspect of the climate over
    a second per century of run time - if we could build the model and if we had the data (we can't and we don't). The models being used are crude,
    simplified approximations but then so is the ideal gas equation or
    Newtonian mechanics but both can be used to give good enough predictions in many cases.

    The real question is whether or not the current climate models are
    good enough to give good predictions in and around the current conditions. They certainly don't model the details and they have a lot of knobs to
    tweak which doesn't inspire confidence but might be what's needed. I
    honestly don't know but I don't care because I want us weaned off oil/gas/coal, I like clean air and water and I don't care what we have to tell each other to make it happen or how many (potentially) wrong paths we follow as long as we get there before we starve/freeze/bake.

    Fortunately there is absolutely no danger of anyone being able to
    prove the current models wrong or proving that human actions are not the major driving force so there's no real danger of an about turn and going
    back to smog and acid rain.

    All this is largely the point I was trying to make. The models are vast simplifications, and if we can't prove them wrong (that is, inapplicable to
    the real world), we can't prove them right, either. AFAIK, we don't even know the range of conditions to which these models might apply. So we are left with people's opinions, which is never a good place for science to be.

    I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations), but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.


    --
    Tim

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Friday, July 01, 2022 10:48:18
    On 30/06/2022 21:50, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Fortunately there is absolutely no danger of anyone being able to
    prove the current models wrong or proving that human actions are not the major driving force so there's no real danger of an about turn and going
    back to smog and acid rain.

    The current models have already been proven wrong in terms of real science.

    The real situation of the science is this
    (i) there appears to have been modest warming for about 25 yearas
    followed by fairly stable temperatures.
    (ii) there is nothing anomalous in this warming at all, in geological
    timescale terms.
    (iii) there is no correlation between this *at statistically
    significant* levels and CO2 rise.

    That is the real science. The rest is politics and marketing. And fudged
    data.

    --
    “when things get difficult you just have to lie”

    ― Jean Claud Jüncker

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Friday, July 01, 2022 11:10:13
    On 1 Jul 2022 08:47:42 GMT, TimS wrote:

    All this is largely the point I was trying to make. The models are vast simplifications, and if we can't prove them wrong (that is, inapplicable
    to the real world), we can't prove them right, either. AFAIK, we don't
    even know the range of conditions to which these models might apply. So
    we are left with people's opinions, which is never a good place for
    science to be.

    I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations),
    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.

    I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an increasing
    rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a computer
    extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that is
    continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the Hawaiian volcanoes.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Friday, July 01, 2022 16:43:48
    On 1 Jul 2022 08:47:42 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations),

    Being close to phase changes and chemical reactions tend to mess it
    up terribly.

    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales
    (eg. tunnel diodes).

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Friday, July 01, 2022 16:50:26
    On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 11:10:13 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that

    Whatever that means precisely, the atmosphere does not behave in
    any way like a greenhouse.

    the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an
    increasing rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a

    This is true.

    computer extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that
    is continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the
    Hawaiian volcanoes.

    However it has also been at far higher levels than it currently is. There have been times when CO2 levels rise and temperatures fall and vice-versa.

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what is
    in dispute.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Friday, July 01, 2022 18:13:06
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:50:26 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 11:10:13 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that

    Whatever that means precisely, the atmosphere does not behave in
    any way like a greenhouse.

    the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an
    increasing rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a

    This is true.

    computer extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that
    is continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the
    Hawaiian volcanoes.

    However it has also been at far higher levels than it currently is.
    There have been times when CO2 levels rise and temperatures fall and vice-versa.

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what is
    in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    --
    Tim

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Friday, July 01, 2022 18:12:15
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 08:47:42 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations),

    Being close to phase changes and chemical reactions tend to mess it
    up terribly.

    OK. Where it becomes non-linear, in other words. Just like weather and
    climate.

    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the effect to be noticeable, and I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any spacecraft. Fortunately there are no neutron stars or black holes near.

    And at very small scales, given that gravity is 10 power 40 or so times weaker than other forces, no wonder it's ignorable at small scale.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Friday, July 01, 2022 19:35:25
    On 1 Jul 2022 18:13:06 GMT, TimS wrote:

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what
    is in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in
    fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models
    are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

    https://skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and-
    temperature.html

    which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points out
    that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page
    covers less than a decade) than weather variation dominates and there is
    little visible correlation between the two data sets.

    Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical
    strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't
    piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.



    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Friday, July 01, 2022 20:57:59
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical
    strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't >> piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    --
    Tim

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Friday, July 01, 2022 20:37:54
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no idea what the requirements are.

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

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 02:20:43
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
    I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no
    idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    That not anyone can call themselves that, enforceable by fine or time.
    Isn't it? That would make sense in the US, the third world christo-fascist libertarian shithole country that it is.

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Saturday, July 02, 2022 05:52:26
    On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 19:35:25 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:13:06 GMT, TimS wrote:

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what
    is in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in
    fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models
    are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

    https://skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and- temperature.html

    Figure 2 is the longest period shown 1964-2008, which follows the period of steady temperature fall from roughly 1940-1970.

    One of the finest examples of correlation is the long term one that
    Al Gore used - but on close inspection the temperature curve leads the CO2 curve by 800 years.

    which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points
    out that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page

    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

    Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

    No just data selection.

    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he
    doesn't piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    I've seen them criticised heavily - but then I've seen everything
    in this field criticised heavily.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Bob Martin@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 06:12:56
    On 1 Jul 2022 at 20:57:59, TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical >>> strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't >>> piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in
    physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, >> maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no >> idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    Reserved for train drivers?

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, July 02, 2022 11:39:32
    On 02/07/2022 05:52, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

    I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist:
    and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing
    this one either way.

    I do remember a museum (m. of London possibly, IDR) that had two
    displays - one about recent global warming ("man made" of course), and
    one showing the vastly higher temperatures in the past. Seemed ironic.

    And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you
    could correlate recent "climate" changes with increases in the South
    Atlantic magnetic anomaly, for example. Cause/effect/unrelated??

    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 11:46:22
    On 01/07/2022 19:12, TimS wrote:
    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.
    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron
    stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales
    (eg. tunnel diodes).
    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the effect to be noticeable, and I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any spacecraft. Fortunately there are no neutron stars or black holes near.


    But GPS requires general relativistic corrections for time in order to function. A quick check suggests that GPS satellites advance about
    38usec per day relative to a ground-based clock. That's 45usec ahead
    because of gravity, and 7usec back because of (special relativistic)
    motion considerations.

    <https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/pogge.1/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html>


    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:56:51
    On 01/07/2022 19:13, TimS wrote:
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:50:26 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 11:10:13 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that

    Whatever that means precisely, the atmosphere does not behave in
    any way like a greenhouse.

    the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an
    increasing rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a

    This is true.

    computer extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that
    is continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the
    Hawaiian volcanoes.

    However it has also been at far higher levels than it currently is.
    There have been times when CO2 levels rise and temperatures fall and
    vice-versa.

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what is >> in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    +2


    --
    If I had all the money I've spent on drink...
    ..I'd spend it on drink.

    Sir Henry (at Rawlinson's End)

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:56:25
    On 01/07/2022 12:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On 1 Jul 2022 08:47:42 GMT, TimS wrote:

    All this is largely the point I was trying to make. The models are vast
    simplifications, and if we can't prove them wrong (that is, inapplicable
    to the real world), we can't prove them right, either. AFAIK, we don't
    even know the range of conditions to which these models might apply. So
    we are left with people's opinions, which is never a good place for
    science to be.

    I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations),
    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.

    I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an increasing rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a computer extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that is continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the Hawaiian volcanoes.


    And that in a nutshell is the sum total of the 'accepted, settled, science'. Everything else is wild extrapolation

    The bait and switch is to claim the settled science is - settled - and
    then infer that the wild extrapolation is in fact also 'settled science'.


    --
    Gun Control: The law that ensures that only criminals have guns.

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.inval on Saturday, July 02, 2022 13:23:25
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 11:46:22 BST, Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    On 01/07/2022 19:12, TimS wrote:
    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.
    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron >>> stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales >>> (eg. tunnel diodes).
    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant
    effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the
    effect to be noticeable, and I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any >> spacecraft. Fortunately there are no neutron stars or black holes near.

    But GPS requires general relativistic corrections for time in order to function. A quick check suggests that GPS satellites advance about
    38usec per day relative to a ground-based clock. That's 45usec ahead
    because of gravity, and 7usec back because of (special relativistic)
    motion considerations.

    <https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/pogge.1/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html>

    You're close to a large body again.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:51:37
    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small
    scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation)
    that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in them.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Mike Scott on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:59:55
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 05:52, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

    I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist:
    and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing
    this one either way.

    That is AFAIK a correct observation, climate is weather on a long scale.

    And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something
    like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give
    them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the
    current dogmatic certainty.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:59:40
    On 01/07/2022 20:35, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On 1 Jul 2022 18:13:06 GMT, TimS wrote:

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what
    is in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in
    fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models
    are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

    https://skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and- temperature.html

    Oh dear. You shouldn't have quoted that site. Its is pure lies.


    which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points out that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page
    covers less than a decade) than weather variation dominates and there is little visible correlation between the two data sets.

    Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    Unfortunately that graph was made before the revelations about the
    hockey stick fraud became apparent. Which invalidates the last pert
    completely.






    --
    If I had all the money I've spent on drink...
    ..I'd spend it on drink.

    Sir Henry (at Rawlinson's End)

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 15:01:40
    On 01/07/2022 19:12, TimS wrote:
    I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any
    spacecraft.

    I believe that they are not. These days there is enough computing power
    that they don't have to either.

    --
    How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

    Adolf Hitler

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Saturday, July 02, 2022 13:20:49
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 03:20:43 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote: >>> I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no
    idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    That not anyone can call themselves that, enforceable by fine or time.
    Isn't it? That would make sense in the US, the third world christo-fascist libertarian shithole country that it is.

    AFAIK, that does not exost in any English-speaking country. BICBW.

    --
    Tim

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, July 02, 2022 14:53:11
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron
    stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small
    scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant
    effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed
    when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation)
    that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    --
    Tim

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Saturday, July 02, 2022 15:46:49
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> >>>> wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very >>>>> small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed
    when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) >>> that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving
    electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the >>> magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At some point someone will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be going, "Oh yeah, why didn't
    I think of that?"

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 16:26:04
    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very
    small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Saturday, July 02, 2022 17:49:13
    On 2 Jul 2022 15:46:49 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like
    kludges to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever
    touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier
    times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles

    Yep very similar - glue bits onto the theory until it works.
    Inflation in the early universe is another one - it did what ? why ? and
    the in stopped ? why ?

    around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At
    some point someone will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be
    going, "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that?"

    I've seen one candidate that apparently avoids all the kludges, but
    it made my head spin horribly.

    It was as best I can tell a fusion of graph theory with iterated function theory using iterations over the space of possible graphs
    constrained by the fact that we exist - at least I think that was it. There were derivations of Schroedinger's wave equation and the Einstein's General Relativity tensors (apparently deriving from the same thing) but at my peak
    of mathematical skill (a long time ago) it would have taken me weeks to work through it all to and see if it made any sense.

    I did start to get the impression that the approach was the mathematical physics equivalent of digging numerical relations out of the
    bible and deriving conclusions from them, it appeared to be able to lead anywhere but I could easily have been misinterpreting what I was reading.

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    The most ironic part of that is Einstein's Nobel was for his work
    on the photoelectric effect which is one of the key results backing the
    quantum mechanics theories he never believed.

    My take on quantum mechanics is that the maths works but all the explanations seem completely off the wall, although there are at least some formulations which avoid the very problematic observer.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Sunday, July 03, 2022 14:36:31
    On 02/07/2022 16:46, TimS wrote:
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> >>>>> wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very >>>>>> small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed >>>> when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) >>>> that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving >>>> electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the >>>> magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four
    decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than
    Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At some point someone
    will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be going, "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that?"

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    It is important to note that the Kantian view of the world - that
    science is no more the descriptions dreamed up that *happen to work*,
    rather than the *discovery* of *truths*, that the classical physicists
    averred - is becoming far more useful in terms of both cosmology and
    quantum level interactions.

    --
    "I guess a rattlesnake ain't risponsible fer bein' a rattlesnake, but ah
    puts mah heel on um jess the same if'n I catches him around mah chillun".

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sunday, July 03, 2022 14:39:37
    On 02/07/2022 17:49, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    My take on quantum mechanics is that the maths works but all the
    explanations seem completely off the wall, although there are at least some formulations which avoid the very problematic observer.

    Have a look at - I think it is Steve Carroll - lectures on you tube.

    The one that made the most sense to me basically said 'the classical
    world we think we live in is just a fairly juvenile approximation to a
    world actually constructed of one vast quantum probability field. The
    rest is all in our minds'.




    --
    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
    intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
    futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
    we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
    power-directed system of thought.”
    Sir Roger Scruton

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sunday, July 03, 2022 14:32:45
    On 02/07/2022 14:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 05:52, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and >>> interglacials for example.

    I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist:
    and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing
    this one either way.

    That is AFAIK a correct observation, climate is weather on a long scale.

    And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something
    like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give
    them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the current dogmatic certainty.

    Hence the ease with which random dogmatic *claimed* certainty affects
    policy...

    --
    "The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
    look exactly the same afterwards."

    Billy Connolly

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sunday, July 03, 2022 15:43:22
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:36:31 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It is important to note that the Kantian view of the world - that
    science is no more the descriptions dreamed up that *happen to work*,

    "Happen to work" is a bit misleading. Science is a process designed
    to filter descriptions that work repeatably from those that don't, it's
    pretty effective at it too.

    rather than the *discovery* of *truths*, that the classical physicists averred - is becoming far more useful in terms of both cosmology and

    More simply the idea that when you have something that works it
    must be the truth turns out to be false. Provably so because there are
    multiple contradictory explanations that work as well as can be tested and
    they can't all be true.

    quantum level interactions.

    Whereas we're getting our noses rubbed into the fact that it will
    only be an approximation and even if we stumble on "the truth" we'll never
    know it or be able to prove it, we'll only know that it seems to work.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sunday, July 03, 2022 15:54:08
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:32:45 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 14:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the current dogmatic certainty.

    Hence the ease with which random dogmatic *claimed* certainty affects policy...

    It is what is required to affect policy, nothing less would do the
    job. That's why anyone working at changing policy toes the line and never expresses doubts whether or not they have any.

    BTW have you seen the recent commercialisation of iron-iron flow batteries ? They appear to have really useful properties, very long lives
    and really low costs for long term bulk energy storage. Energy density is nothing to write home about but it's not too shabby either and tanks of
    iron chloride solution are cheap.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sunday, July 03, 2022 17:28:47
    On 03/07/2022 15:43, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:36:31 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It is important to note that the Kantian view of the world - that
    science is no more the descriptions dreamed up that *happen to work*,

    "Happen to work" is a bit misleading. Science is a process designed
    to filter descriptions that work repeatably from those that don't, it's pretty effective at it too.


    No, its not misleading, its very accurate. There is no magic about
    scientific hypotheses other than they represent a compressed form of
    *accurate* knowledge. Their truth content however, is completely
    indecidable.

    rather than the *discovery* of *truths*, that the classical physicists
    averred - is becoming far more useful in terms of both cosmology and

    More simply the idea that when you have something that works it
    must be the truth turns out to be false. Provably so because there are multiple contradictory explanations that work as well as can be tested and they can't all be true.

    The Problem of Induction, in a nutshell.

    quantum level interactions.

    Whereas we're getting our noses rubbed into the fact that it will
    only be an approximation and even if we stumble on "the truth" we'll never know it or be able to prove it, we'll only know that it seems to work.

    Exactly. Our 'knowledge', is not the truth, it's just usable algorithms.


    --
    “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

    —Soren Kierkegaard

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sunday, July 03, 2022 17:31:04
    On 03/07/2022 15:54, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:32:45 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 14:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something >>> like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give
    them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the
    current dogmatic certainty.

    Hence the ease with which random dogmatic *claimed* certainty affects
    policy...

    It is what is required to affect policy, nothing less would do the
    job. That's why anyone working at changing policy toes the line and never expresses doubts whether or not they have any.

    BTW have you seen the recent commercialisation of iron-iron flow batteries ? They appear to have really useful properties, very long lives
    and really low costs for long term bulk energy storage. Energy density is nothing to write home about but it's not too shabby either and tanks of
    iron chloride solution are cheap.

    Nuclear power is already way cheaper - despite attempts to render it
    impossibly expensive - than renewable energy WITHOUT the storage.

    I don't see the point in adding even more expense to it to solve a
    problem that nuclear power doesn't have.

    --
    "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
    and understanding".

    Marshall McLuhan

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sunday, July 03, 2022 17:56:48
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 17:31:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Nuclear power is already way cheaper - despite attempts to render it impossibly expensive - than renewable energy WITHOUT the storage.

    I don't see the point in adding even more expense to it to solve a
    problem that nuclear power doesn't have.

    The CO2 emissions of fission energy remain pegged at around 30% that of
    coal once the cost of mining and refining fissile material are included
    along with the emissions from producing the steel and concrete needed to
    build the plants are both combined with the energy costs of building a
    reactor and then demolition and clean-up when its reached end of life.

    The other unacknowledged problem with fission reactors is waste products
    and the cost of dismantling and cleaning up obsolete reactors. So far
    there are no accepted cleanup methods or long term storage facilities.
    Neither US or UK have completed any long-term radioactive storage
    facilities and nor have anybody else apart from one Scandinavian facility.

    Note that the earliest British reactors have still not been decontaminated
    or dismantled (unless you think that simply mothballing them is good
    enough), and there seems to be no accepted way of disposing of obsolete reactors from ships and subs apart from throwing them in the sea. I
    believe the Russians dump theirs off Kamchatka but I haven't heard what everybody else does with theirs.

    Building more fission plant seems problematic to me until there are
    operational recycling plants to recover and reuse valuable isotopes from
    spent fuel rods and safe, proven operational systems that are disposing of
    the long-term radioactive waste that can't be recycled in any useful way.

    Fusion systems would seem to be were they've always been - 40 years in the future - though their associated costs continue to rise.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Sunday, July 03, 2022 21:35:37
    On 03 Jul 2022 at 18:56:48 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 17:31:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Nuclear power is already way cheaper - despite attempts to render it
    impossibly expensive - than renewable energy WITHOUT the storage.

    I don't see the point in adding even more expense to it to solve a
    problem that nuclear power doesn't have.

    The CO2 emissions of fission energy remain pegged at around 30% that of
    coal once the cost of mining and refining fissile material are included
    along with the emissions from producing the steel and concrete needed to build the plants are both combined with the energy costs of building a reactor and then demolition and clean-up when its reached end of life.

    The other unacknowledged problem with fission reactors is waste products

    The waste could be reprocessed to extract the unfissioned uranium but AIUI, uranium dug out of the ground is a lot cheaper. So at the moment the rods are left for 10 years, then vitrified. You might like to look here:

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx

    and see the section on vitrification.

    and the cost of dismantling and cleaning up obsolete reactors. So far
    there are no accepted cleanup methods or long term storage facilities. Neither US or UK have completed any long-term radioactive storage
    facilities and nor have anybody else apart from one Scandinavian facility.

    The issue of long term storage is a political one.

    Note that the earliest British reactors have still not been decontaminated

    Given the priority of the first reactors was plutonium for bombs, unsurprising that little or no thought went into how they would eventually be dismantled. This is not the case for modern plant.

    or dismantled (unless you think that simply mothballing them is good
    enough), and there seems to be no accepted way of disposing of obsolete reactors from ships and subs apart from throwing them in the sea. I
    believe the Russians dump theirs off Kamchatka but I haven't heard what everybody else does with theirs.

    Building more fission plant seems problematic to me until there are operational recycling plants ...

    Well, I'm happy to burn more coal if you are.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to All on Monday, July 04, 2022 09:02:30
    ....

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.


    At the risk of flying a kite, I think we should note that (at least
    AFAIAA - I'm decades out of date on this stuff) most (all?) calculations
    are based in the assumption that ε0, μ0 (and hence c) have the same
    values everywhere and everywhen.

    We've only measured them within a remarkably small space-time region,
    yet extrapolate the observed constancy-within-experimental-errors to the
    entire universe throughout its history. Is that too arrogant an assumption?

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Bit like climate science in its way :-)

    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Monday, July 04, 2022 08:28:39
    On 03/07/2022 18:56, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 17:31:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Nuclear power is already way cheaper - despite attempts to render it
    impossibly expensive - than renewable energy WITHOUT the storage.

    I don't see the point in adding even more expense to it to solve a
    problem that nuclear power doesn't have.

    The CO2 emissions of fission energy remain pegged at around 30% that of
    coal once the cost of mining and refining fissile material are included
    along with the emissions from producing the steel and concrete needed to build the plants are both combined with the energy costs of building a reactor and then demolition and clean-up when its reached end of life.

    And that is better with windmillsand batterioes ? I dont think so.

    The other unacknowledged problem with fission reactors is waste products
    and the cost of dismantling and cleaning up obsolete reactors. So far
    there are no accepted cleanup methods or long term storage facilities. Neither US or UK have completed any long-term radioactive storage
    facilities and nor have anybody else apart from one Scandinavian facility.


    All subject to standrad low cost well known solutions that the greens
    oppose.

    Note that the earliest British reactors have still not been decontaminated
    or dismantled
    #
    )One has been returned to green field.

    (unless you think that simply mothballing them is good
    enough), and there seems to be no accepted way of disposing of obsolete reactors from ships and subs apart from throwing them in the sea. I
    believe the Russians dump theirs off Kamchatka but I haven't heard what everybody else does with theirs.

    No British reactor other than the one returned to green field has been
    shut down more than a decade. It is a well known fact that the cheapest
    way to decommission them is to simply shut them down, remove the fuel,
    and leave them about 30-40 years.

    The fact that you have twisted this into a 'never been done' scenario
    shows you are actively promoting anti-nuclear propaganda.


    Building more fission plant seems problematic to me until there are operational recycling plants to recover and reuse valuable isotopes from spent fuel rods and safe, proven operational systems that are disposing of the long-term radioactive waste that can't be recycled in any useful way.


    There are both, of course.

    Fusion systems would seem to be were they've always been - 40 years in the future - though their associated costs continue to rise.


    The classic Russian Gazprom funded 'green' anti nuclear POV...


    --
    "An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out
    only in others...”

    Tom Wolfe

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Mike Scott on Monday, July 04, 2022 10:30:02
    On 04/07/2022 09:02, Mike Scott wrote:
    ....

        These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.


    At the risk of flying a kite, I think we should note that (at least
    AFAIAA - I'm decades out of date on this stuff) most (all?) calculations
    are based in the assumption that ε0, μ0 (and hence c) have the same
    values everywhere and everywhen.

    We've only measured them within a remarkably small space-time region,
    yet extrapolate the observed constancy-within-experimental-errors to the entire universe throughout its history. Is that too arrogant an assumption?

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Bit like climate science in its way :-)

    SSHH!

    Einstein was faced with a dilemma. Or possibly a trilemma. The assumed
    absolute nature of space, and time, didn't gybe with the constant speed
    of light.

    Something had to give, and become variable. In the end it was space AND
    time that became relative.

    We dream up absolutes, apply them to the world, and if they seem to
    work, assume them to be ubiquitous.

    That's how we think.

    Doesn't mean it is how it is, at all.



    --
    If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
    eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such
    time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic
    and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
    important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for
    the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the
    truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

    Joseph Goebbels

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Mike Scott on Monday, July 04, 2022 12:36:18
    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 09:02:30 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Very likely but the assumption of mediocrity along with the
    assumption of consistency are pretty fundamental not because we're sure
    they're true but because we can't say anything useful if they're not. These assumptions are why science is also based on faith - faith that the universe *can* be modelled.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, July 04, 2022 12:29:12
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 12:36:18 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 09:02:30 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Very likely but the assumption of mediocrity along with the
    assumption of consistency are pretty fundamental not because we're sure they're true but because we can't say anything useful if they're not. These assumptions are why science is also based on faith - faith that the universe *can* be modelled.

    It's a bit like those fundies who say that everything was created 6000 years ago at a precisely specified time/date - along with all the fossils and other evidence of the big bang etc. Well, we don't *actually* know that this is untrue, but it's a poor working hypothesis. After all, you could apply the exact same logic to say that it was all created (along with our memories of earlier times), exactly 2, no sorry 3, no sorry 4, etc - seconds ago. But what would be the point?

    Ultimately we're looking for a self-consistent hypothesis whcih can make
    useful predictions and that is without arbitrary conditions. And in any case, we don't know that we're not living in a giant simulation, created by what would appear to us to be God. Which is what religious believers think anyway.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Monday, July 04, 2022 12:56:54
    On 3 Jul 2022 21:35:37 GMT, TimS wrote:

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/
    nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx

    and see the section on vitrification.

    Thanks for that link. Most interesting.

    The issue of long term storage is a political one.

    Indeed, and seemingly being kicked into the long grass and otherwise
    ignored.

    Given the priority of the first reactors was plutonium for bombs, unsurprising that little or no thought went into how they would
    eventually be dismantled.
    This is not the case for modern plant.

    True, but not what I was on about: I was merely pointing out that they're
    still there and being treated as SEP (Someone Else's Problem).


    Well, I'm happy to burn more coal if you are.

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo-
    thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, July 04, 2022 14:52:06
    On 04/07/2022 12:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 09:02:30 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Very likely but the assumption of mediocrity along with the
    assumption of consistency are pretty fundamental not because we're sure they're true but because we can't say anything useful if they're not. These assumptions are why science is also based on faith - faith that the universe *can* be modelled.

    yes, but a lot of it (modelling) *does seem to work*.

    Amidst the change, some things seem to remain constant.

    The problem is we are now too reliant on 'science' in that everybody
    hails something that has a computer program or some maths attached as
    'real science' and if you don't buy the narrative you are a 'science
    denier'.

    Faith for me is a very different thing to a religious person. Faith to a religious person is something they believe to be true. Faith, to me, is
    a methodology - a way to proceed when I don't know and indeed *cannot
    know*, what is true. One behaves *as if* the precepts of science are
    true. And results come.

    The danger is to unwittingly relate to that as if the precepts *were*
    true, just because models derived from them *work*.

    And worse even that that, to call them true, when models derived from
    them *don't* work. Because they are 'scientific'..


    --
    Gun Control: The law that ensures that only criminals have guns.

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Monday, July 04, 2022 15:03:03
    On 04/07/2022 13:29, TimS wrote:
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 12:36:18 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 09:02:30 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Very likely but the assumption of mediocrity along with the
    assumption of consistency are pretty fundamental not because we're sure
    they're true but because we can't say anything useful if they're not. These >> assumptions are why science is also based on faith - faith that the universe >> *can* be modelled.

    It's a bit like those fundies who say that everything was created 6000 years ago at a precisely specified time/date - along with all the fossils and other evidence of the big bang etc. Well, we don't *actually* know that this is untrue, but it's a poor working hypothesis. After all, you could apply the exact same logic to say that it was all created (along with our memories of earlier times), exactly 2, no sorry 3, no sorry 4, etc - seconds ago. But what
    would be the point?

    That is of course (one reason) why one studies metaphysics, to see if
    there is any point to obscure, but possible scenarios.

    And finds that there are very good reasons. Many fundamental Christians
    are fundamentally (sic!) secure and certain in their mental and
    emotional relationship with the universe, because God is looking after
    all of it and they need not therefore worry about it, just follow the instruction manual that god gave them. Called the Bible...And that
    instruction manual teaches them to create secure nuclear families and
    not be too tribal.

    In the context of a iron age agricultural society, this is very socially cohesive


    Ultimately we're looking for a self-consistent hypothesis which can make useful predictions and that is without arbitrary conditions. And in any case, we don't know that we're not living in a giant simulation, created by what would appear to us to be God. Which is what religious believers think anyway.

    Indeed. Summarized as the Problem of Induction. What we perceive is what
    we perceive. What we *infer* from it in terms of abstract entities - be
    they Gods or Laws - that are *causing it* is, like Heffalumps, always
    open to interpretation.

    Its bad enough to realise that science is just a collection of models
    that work, but when the realization dawns that the every day world is,
    to us, simply another example of a model that seems to work, albeit
    being modelled at a very subconscious level..

    --
    "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
    man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
    thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
    before him."

    - Leo Tolstoy

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Monday, July 04, 2022 15:30:00
    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:56:54 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo- thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.

    It's interesting how that term seems to have shifted.

    When I first encountered it geothermal was about running heat
    engines off the magma, which seems at first sight to be an enormous source
    of energy that it may even be beneficial to tap. Turned out to be a really
    good way to wear out equipment fast.

    These days geothermal seems to be more about pulling stored solar
    heat out of the ground a far more feasible prospect.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Monday, July 04, 2022 14:23:02
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 13:56:54 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 3 Jul 2022 21:35:37 GMT, TimS wrote:

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/
    nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx

    and see the section on vitrification.

    Thanks for that link. Most interesting.

    The issue of long term storage is a political one.

    Indeed, and seemingly being kicked into the long grass and otherwise
    ignored.

    Given the priority of the first reactors was plutonium for bombs,
    unsurprising that little or no thought went into how they would
    eventually be dismantled.
    This is not the case for modern plant.

    True, but not what I was on about: I was merely pointing out that they're still there and being treated as SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

    Well, I'm happy to burn more coal if you are.

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo- thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter when you need it most. Not much geothermal here either, I wouldn't have thought.

    The real problem with renewables here is in winter, when you can get periods
    of a week or more with a blocking high over most of northern Europe, leading
    to no solar and not much wind. That happens a couple of times a winter, typically.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Monday, July 04, 2022 15:15:33
    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    Not much geothermal here either, I wouldn't have
    thought.

    You might also take a look at what is now being talked about for
    geothermal: new drilling techniques are being developed, giving the
    ability to tap much higher temperatures than have previously been
    considered. Here's an example of what's being discussed:

    https://geothermal-energy-journal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/ s40517-021-00203-1

    The real problem with renewables here is in winter, when you can get
    periods of a week or more with a blocking high over most of northern
    Europe, leading to no solar and not much wind. That happens a couple of
    times a winter, typically.

    Fair point, and I've seen estimates of recoverable uranium that would
    indicate that there's a lot less of that than many people assume.

    This seems like a reasonable summary (the original 2005 paper was updated
    last month :

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium- resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx

    but it may be a bit over-optimistic seeing who wrote it.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Monday, July 04, 2022 15:30:32
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 16:15:33 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    Not wind, as I already said. Tidal? Only one place in the UK (the Severn estuary) where that would generate a lot. But then any tidal produces zero
    four times a day. So you need a backup, and there are no comparably sized
    tidal locations elewhere in the UK. So your backup has to be nuclear and you'd have done better, more reliably, to have only built the nuclear in the first place. No point in building two power stations and only getting the output of one.

    --
    Tim

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Monday, July 04, 2022 17:47:54
    On 04/07/2022 15:30, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:56:54 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo-
    thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.

    It's interesting how that term seems to have shifted.

    When I first encountered it geothermal was about running heat
    engines off the magma, which seems at first sight to be an enormous source
    of energy that it may even be beneficial to tap. Turned out to be a really good way to wear out equipment fast.

    These days geothermal seems to be more about pulling stored solar
    heat out of the ground a far more feasible prospect.

    But with an even worse return on investment.


    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Monday, July 04, 2022 17:49:01
    On 04/07/2022 16:15, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    They are not fine at any time.
    If you bother to examine the numbers.


    Not much geothermal here either, I wouldn't have
    thought.

    You might also take a look at what is now being talked about for
    geothermal: new drilling techniques are being developed, giving the
    ability to tap much higher temperatures than have previously been
    considered. Here's an example of what's being discussed:

    https://geothermal-energy-journal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/ s40517-021-00203-1

    The real problem with renewables here is in winter, when you can get
    periods of a week or more with a blocking high over most of northern
    Europe, leading to no solar and not much wind. That happens a couple of
    times a winter, typically.

    Fair point, and I've seen estimates of recoverable uranium that would indicate that there's a lot less of that than many people assume.

    This seems like a reasonable summary (the original 2005 paper was updated last month :

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium- resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx

    but it may be a bit over-optimistic seeing who wrote it.

    No, it is probably technically accurate though.




    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Monday, July 04, 2022 17:51:56
    On 04/07/2022 16:30, TimS wrote:
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 16:15:33 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    Not wind, as I already said. Tidal? Only one place in the UK (the Severn estuary) where that would generate a lot. But then any tidal produces zero four times a day. So you need a backup, and there are no comparably sized tidal locations elewhere in the UK. So your backup has to be nuclear and you'd
    have done better, more reliably, to have only built the nuclear in the first place. No point in building two power stations and only getting the output of one.

    Or a massive great extension cable connecting he tidal power to
    somewhere else. Again more expense to solve an inherent problem nuclear
    power doesn't have,

    If power is not being generated where you want it , when you want it,
    it costs you a lot of money that is ignored by the green fascists.


    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)