Fortunately, consequences of China's coal burning on other countries' behalf (in manufacturing products for them), is exported right back for those other countries to experience (climate change). So at least there's some justice there.
UNfortunately, "other countries" includes many that hardly contributed to the problem, but suffer the effects anyway.
Later half reads much like the general problem of dependency solving. A depends on presence of B + C, C depends on D and (E or F), where you need E or F but not both at the same time, etc.
Which seems fitting because technology builds on other tech that needs to be available before proceeding. Can't calculate 10^9 digits of Pi without computers. Can't produce steel without a high-intensity heat source like fire or electric furnace. Can't do large-scale mechanized farming without tractors/harvesters, etc.
So technological progress can be seen as discovering+building a dependency graph of various technologies, which in turn enable the discovery & addition of new entries. With discovery ranging from "accidental" to "informed, highly focussed search" (aka R&D).
I share author's interest in the historical context - it's a fascinating subject. For example ~1850s industrialization seems to have been a very lucky shot. Which was impossible elsewhere, or would have quickly gone sideways if some factor (eg. existing coal supply chain) had been absent.
Makes you think about just how (un)likely a high-tech civilization is. Once you get to a baselevel (telecom, mass production, cheap energy) progress seems inevitable. But getting to that baselevel? Looots of luck involved.
Pay for entertainment as much as reasonable within your budget. If you're poor then ok pirate stuff. If you have a 6-figure salary, pay up.
Put that money into what you want to see more of. Suggestions: indie studios, crowdfunded projects, open hardware/open source platforms, places like Good Old Games, relatively open platforms like Steam, game studios that play nice with their fan community, etc.
Nintendo is waaayy down on that list. Go ahead buy their stuff after you've given above options a spin, and still have time or money left.
1) Reasonable copyright duration. Long enough to give creators a chance to recoup their investment. Short enough to not get in the way of enriching the public domain. For games, something like 5..10 years should do. Books? Maybe a bit longer.
2) For creators: offer your products at a price & in a way such that for the vast majority of (potential) customers, your product is the most attractive. Jack up prices, add draconic DRM, and customers decide that pirates offer the better product. That's on you, not those pirates fault.
Failing that, Nintendo & co loose the moral high ground, and have no right to complain when people break DRM, distribute illegal copies to run on emulators etc.
Or maybe conclude that copyright laws don't serve the public, so maybe it's better to abandon / ignore the concept entirely.
"What's more worrying, is that multiple Danfoss business units (including Climate Solutions & Electronic Controllers) received IEC 62443-4-1 certification for Secure Product Development Lifecycle and this is prominently advertised as such"
While it's known that certifications are often just paperwork (eg. European CE mark means almost nothing imho), it does raise the question: what exact does it mean when .org/product line receives this certification?
You'd expect this to be about best practices, certain aspects of processes etc. With the idea that good processes produce good results.
That is in direct conflict with:
"It turns out that stack canaries and Position Independent Executable (PIE) are not enabled. These mechanisms have been staples of memory corruption defenses for decades and enabling these features on a modern Linux distribution running on a modern ARM application processor requires no engineering work at all. It is simply a matter of setting the right compiler flag."
If such basic / low-hanging fruit is not covered by above certification, then what on Earth is?
Also:
"controllers remain exposed to the public internet. While this is for understandable reasons (supermarket chains sometimes risk SLA or insurance condition violations by taking away remote maintenance"
Anyone have some context as to why service and/or insurance would require remote access? Sounds beyond stupid.
All in all a VERY juicy & informative read. Curious to see how Danfoss will handle this swiss cheese affair.
I've seen this mentioned in the context of leadership. Someone said the best leaders get people to do things they wanted to do anyway. They just act as a kind of meeting point (or 'lightning rod', take your pick) that senses the general mood, and figures out a way forward that most of the group can agree with. Repeated (sometimes continuous) back-and-forth is important here.
In politics it's often the other way around: many people are unhappy, politician comes up with a plan to do something, and tries to push that through. Such action often fails as it -mostly- ignores feedback from the people the changes are imposed upon.
Acknowledging a problem is important. But more important is understanding the problem through the eyes of those affected by it, understanding how an action would change things from that point of view, and adjusting control knobs as you go. Few leaders are good at ALL those things.
UNfortunately, "other countries" includes many that hardly contributed to the problem, but suffer the effects anyway.
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