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So what if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?

via Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year? - Bloomberg.

McCullin official UK trailer - in cinemas & Curzon on Demand from 1 January - YouTube.

via Ebola may go airborne | Genes & Cells | Science News.

I’m sorry, maybe I’m particularly stupid, but I haven’t understood how I get this software or this kit or whatever it is, this filter thingy that you click or whatever without buying a new computer and I don’t want to spend a thousand pounds just to have a filter. I just haven’t understood what I do, and you’ve been talking to us and I’ve been in this room for half an hour.

via Helen Goodman MP is “Particularly Stupid” by Terence Eden has a Blog.

BBC News - Facebook ads: £100,000 bill for government - good value?

It turns out that as of 19 July, the government had spent £98,418.25 with Facebook on advertising the Great campaign. A spokesman said the campaign had achieved 472 million ad impressions leading to 782,000 ad clicks - and across the 13 Facebook pages, 583,000 "likes" had been generated.

via BBC News - Facebook ads: £100,000 bill for government - good value?.

In the past 5-8 years, and especially the past 3, China has built an enormous amount of stuff that nobody wants, needs, or uses.  Fueled by a lending boom that began in late 2008 and tripled total lending in 2009, Chinese government at all levels has been spending money like a drunken sailor on leave.  What should scare people however, is just how poorly this money has been spent.

via Christopher Balding on the real risk in China.

Further, according to Reuters daily statements last week, RBS cash assets stood at £82bn, whereas net loans were recorded as £476bn.But this might be the clincher: total deposits came in at £476bn…exactly the same as loans. However, the difference between total assets and total liabilities was around £60bn in the bank’s favour. Given the amount of potential toxic write-off in the RBS group – and any ‘rush’ following a downgrade – it wouldn’t require much to change that positive into a disturbing negative. With total fluid assets standing at around £930bn, zero outgoings over five days of a ‘computer glitch’ would give the bank a £73bn windfall. More than enough to stave off a crisis, and at least temporarily restore creditor confidence, if such was needed. At the same time, of course, it physically barred the way to a run on the bank.

via RBS/ULSTER ‘GLITCH’: Slog survey of users plus analysis of the numbers raise further doubts. | A diary of deception and distortion.

A confidential American management consultancy report commissioned by the Troika shows conclusively using maths of which the awake folks are already well aware that the upcoming bailout needs are miles beyond what the total ESM/IMF/ECB funds could ever be.To quote from this report, of which I have had sight:“At a total maximum going forward of €850bn euros, the fund is, even in terms of known commitments, under 45% of what would be required to ensure the viability of the eurozone….bailout costs in 2012 we estimate to be €2.04 trillion, and these will continue to rise as long as zero sovereign intervention policy applies.”

via EXCLUSIVE: Troika continues to use flaky bonds for Greek bailout, explosive US report explains why | A diary of deception and distortion.

Porting Software

Its been quite a while since the RFCs that defined how and what IPv6 is.

Its been long enough time to introduce a number of idiosyncrasies in nearly every platform a sane person would want to target. For instance on Fedora based OS you will find a definition for localhost and localhost6 the former being IPv4 and the latter being new V6. But goto Solaris and you will find localhost defined as both a V6 and V4 address - more than a bit annoying for cross-platform apps.

Other bugs exist within Fedora where the network-settings manager for network doesn't actually allow you to configure IPv6, you can make the changes but then are never written out. (Thankfully this is being fixed) Ubuntu on the other hand fairs much better, but also has some oddities.

The other problem is the majority of networks are expected to work in Dual-Stack for the forceable future as the old infrastructure is replaced or upgraded. That means at a basic level you have to maintain code that can interoperate between the different address types. This thankfully is relatively as there is a standard set of new APIs for Linux/UNIX and Windows.

Except that when you try and connect to a unreachable IPv6 address it can take a very long time (upto 3mins) before the OS tells you that it can't connect, before you can fall over onto the legacy IP protocol. There is a solution known as Happy-Eyeballs which should alleviate the problem, but outside of the browser space there appears to be very few bits of software that use it, main because it necessitates the use of non-blocking IO which in legacy code can be a pain to integrate.

NAT

When it became plainly obvious that IPv4 was running out of space, some network boffins create the NAT protocol as a stop-gap measure to prolong the lifetime of the address space. However, the good intentions were spoiled when consumer level routers decided that NAT could be used as a firewall, something it was never designed for. But by masking internal addresses worked in a way similar to a firwall.

The problem is that NAT doesn't exist in IPv6 adding further complications to porting software that used to rely on NAT.

ISP Support

There doesn't need to be much said here, other than the conversion to IPv6 is a truly massive undertaking and many of the worlds biggest ISP neither know when it will be fully rolled out or are already behind schedule.

Security

Given theres been so little real world usage, security on a broad spectrum is abit of an unknown. However, there are a number of features in IPv6 that make it heaps better than IPv4, IPSEC is enabled by default meaning it should be much more difficult to spoof packets. Theres is also support for more robust DNSSEC stuff, but this isn't enabled by default. But theres also some easily exploited holes in the way IPv6 enabled hosts get there addresses via Stateless Auto Configuration using Router Advertisement. Most OSes will respond to any and all router advertisement packets, meaning you can Man-In-The-Middle a host or just DDoS a host by blatting it with a barrage of RA-packets - there is a CVE against both attacks and fixes are either out in the wild or coming soon.

Tunnelling?

There was a standard introduced by Microsoft called Toredo which then became an RFC for a tunnelling protocol. The idea being you could tunnel IPv6 traffic over you current standard IPv4 internet connection. While in principal this seems like a good idea, in practice you get none of the benefits of IPv6 because your still using IPv4 the heavy lifting - and introduce an additional overhead in repacking and unpacking the IPv4 wrapped packets. In short avoid in a real world situation if at all possible, but if it scratches the itch go for it.

Thomson Reuters Starmine, meanwhile, more conservatively estimates a 10.8 percent annual growth rate -- almost exactly the mean for the technology sector -- which would value the stock at $9.59 a share, a 72 percent discount to its IPO price.

via Reuters

In the run-up to Facebook's $16 billion IPO, Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the deal, unexpectedly delivered some negative news to major clients: The bank's consumer Internet analyst, Scott Devitt, was reducing his revenue forecasts for the company.

via Insight: Morgan Stanley cut Facebook estimates just before IPO | Reuters.

As I realize that open source is going to define my professional life (and likely my personal one as well), my tolerance for assholes gets smaller and smaller. Unlike Rusty, I won’t simply stand by and allow these people to run amok. I will call out antisocial behavior, enforce professionalism in the communities where I have the power to do, and leave the communities that cannot at least offer civility.

via I refuse to tolerate assholes.

There shall not be any self-modifying code. F=35 C++ [PDF]

Aside from the slightly scary prospect that one of the worlds "best" fighter jet's, control code is written in C++. Its an interesting read for anybody who writes C++ or pseudo-C++.

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

via Yahoo's Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD.

A massive trading bet boomeranged on J.P. Morgan Chase JPM  & Co., leaving the bank with at least $2 billion in trading losses and its chief executive, James Dimon, with a rare black eye following a long run as what some called the "King of Wall Street."

via J.P. Morgan Flags $2 Billion Trading Loss - WSJ.com.

The SYRIZAS five point plan laid out by Tsipras isn’t going to go down well in Berlin-sur-Brussels:

* The immediate cancellation of all impending measures that will impoverish Greeks further, such as cuts to pensions and salaries.

* The immediate cancellation of all impending measures that undermine fundamental workers’ rights, such as the abolition of collective labour agreements.

* The immediate abolition of a law granting MPs immunity from prosecution, reform of the electoral law and a general overhaul of the political system.

* An investigation into Greek banks, and the immediate publication of the audit performed on the Greek banking sector by BlackRock.

* The setting up of an international auditing committee to investigate the causes of Greece’s public deficit, with a moratorium on all debt servicing until the findings of the audit are published.

via GREEK COALITION TALKS: Tsipras clinches deal with Democratic Left, lays out bold anti-Troika plan | A diary of deception and distortion.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

via Chomsky: “Jobs aren’t coming back” - Salon.com.

Drinking alcohol may enhance a person’s problem solving skills, according to a new study.Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.

via Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills.