stuckinbathroom
No bio...
User ID: 903
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
How sure are you that the voice you heard wasn’t AI synthesized?
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Huh, I had no idea it was possible for a running usermode process to make any of its own virtual memory pages executable with no special privileges, just by invoking mprotect or mmap. I guess it should have been obvious: otherwise, how could you possibly have a userspace virtual machine?
I suppose you could theoretically create new ELF files and make syscalls to run them every time you want to execute some code that is created dynamically (e.g. via JIT compilation) but that’s a massive performance hit, not to mention the added complexity (e.g. of wrangling bytecode in which only certain code paths have been JIT-compiled, with other code paths waiting to be JIT-compiled the first time they are entered).
Anyway, thanks for the detailed explanation!
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
I have 0 experience with low-level systems programming on Windows, but I did my share of Linux programming (twelve_years_of_it_in_azkaban.gif)
My understanding is that on modern Linux, executing an ELF binary with user privileges on an x86 CPU, any attempt to set the instruction pointer to a virtual address outside a segment marked “executable” will cause a segfault. In particular, dumping the contents of a file into some writeable memory region (e.g., within the .bss or .data segments, or a stack-allocated buffer) and then attempting to jump to an address in that region is a no-no. Presumably kernel code is not bound by these restrictions (for example, it could just mark all segments as “executable”), but I haven’t written a line of kernel code in my life.
You’re telling me that this sort of thing is A-OK in Windows, even for a non-privileged, usermode process?!
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Fact is that the Influenza A pandemic of '68, and the swine flu outbreak of '09 were both more deadly on a case-by-case basis than covid-19 turned out to be.
Source? My understanding was that Covid truly was more deadly (albeit slightly) than the ‘68 and ‘09 influenza viruses, but that might only be because we’re an older and fatter population now.
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
but the flags in bios have slowly started to change again
At first I thought you were making a joke about NPC firmware updates being rolled out. Then again, maybe you were!
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Scott (PBUH) referred to this as the Noncentral Fallacy and furthermore dubbed it the worst argument in the world
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Modern operating systems on von Neumann architectures try to stop you from doing so by accident, by setting memory pages as either instruction or data, and in modern Windows machines further isolating data instructions with DEP, but it's ultimately just a set of flags.
Hmm, so a driver running with kernel privileges in Windows can just ignore memory segmentation and treat arbitrary memory as instructions to execute? Then I stand corrected.
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
What you are describing sounds more like a boot sector, i.e., raw machine code meant to be read from bootable media and executed directly by firmware (the mobo BIOS in your example)
I’d be surprised if in any modern operating system, executables (even those loaded and run at boot time) were handled that way. Then again, one is reminded of the old chestnut about idiot-proofing software…
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Would you accept an even odds bet that the polls are going to “widen with Biden”?
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Maybe it's even a deliberate strategy on the part of the Treasury Department
Sheer pedantry on my part (though what are we here for if not that?) but Secret Service has been under DHS for over 20 years now
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Right, but presumably that’s already happened
If she married a US citizen in the ‘90s, presumably she is now a naturalized citizen. That citizenship won’t be revoked, even in the case of a criminal conviction (AFAIK). But if she is and will remain a US citizen, on what basis could she be removed from the country?
Edit: TIL that denaturalization is a thing. But it seems like that can happen only when a naturalized citizen is found to have become naturalized illegally, e.g. by making false statements on a green card application or whatever, or for various other reasons that don’t apply here (like taking up arms against the US, or holding certain government offices in a foreign country). In this case, the naturalization process itself was (presumably) carried out legally, via the marriage pathway.
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Is there a statute of limitations on the offense that the mother originally committed (visa overstay)?
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
Could secondhand smoke deliver enough nicotine to meaningfully suppress appetite though?
(I agree that the smoking is probably small potatoes compared to the other factors you mentioned)
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
We’re SOL re: the SOL, as it were
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
What is going
On with Peterson’s
Spacing, capitalization, and punctuation
In that thread
Been reading e e cummings?
I do not believe that the option to do mail in seriously erodes that.
I’m going to jump in to ask, why?
I agree that VBM by itself doesn’t really enable classic vote-buying: if someone offers you money to vote a certain way, sure the buyer can verify your ballot before it goes in the envelope prior to handing over the “wages”, but you can easily get another ballot (unbeknownst to the vote-buyer), vote however you want, and invalidate the previous ballot.
But the examples given above (spouse pressuring spouse, filling out ballots for non compos mentis elderly relatives) seem to be much easier to pull off when mass VBM is the norm. To belabor the point re: the spouse example, if you live with someone, you presumably have access to their mail and can see whether they have received another VBM ballot with which to try and evade your spousal pressure to vote a certain way.
Not to mention, “ballot harvesting” seems vulnerable to unscrupulous harvesters steaming open the envelopes, changing the ballots that don’t vote for the right candidate (e.g. by filling in all the bubbles, so the ballot gets rejected) and then re-sealing the envelope.
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
sigh Scott did it
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
🎶 Sweet Caroline 🎺 🎺 🎺 Good times never seemed so good 🎵
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
In contrast, if the president ordered the FBI to raid a political opponent because there was a legitimate legal purpose (eg they had credible evidence the opponent was taking a bribe) the function now is a core function and the president is immunized.
Even this is not certain, I think. As mentioned upthread, the FBI was created by Congress, thus directing the FBI is not an exclusive core function of the President under the US Constitution. That is to say, Congress has set the parameters within which the President must operate in regards to directing the FBI, so these powers of the president are limited or shared with another branch of government, so only presumptive immunity applies.
At least, this is how I imagine things would shake out in court if a President ever attempted such a thing.
stuckinbathroom
4mo ago
people still knew their history enough that the idea of trying that kind of hardball was beyond the pale
Indeed, it crossed the Rubicon, so to speak
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
Kto kago is truly the order of the day.
Despite how it’s written in Cyrillic, it’s actually pronounced “Kto kavo” in modern Russian
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
swole_doge_vs_cheems.jpg
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
So far as I know, there is no law which prevents any state from writing a law intended to jail a presidential candidate
Legislative lawfare is prohibited (or at least made difficult) by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
Hence why they are tapping more lands of color, so to speak.
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