Posts by Catkin

EU passes world's first regulatory framework for cryptocurrency

Re: Roll on CBDC?

Good point, governments always have and always will prioritise the safety, privacy and comfort of innocent ordinary citizens over being able to exert control. Anything else is just an insane conspiracy theory.

Re: Roll on CBDC?

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear."

Samsung's Galaxy S23 Ultra is a worthy heir to the Note

Re: No expandable storage, no deal

The cloud storage is probably the other half of the puzzle. After the move to flagships without expandable storage, Samsung really started pushing cloud storage hard, with lots of 'helpful' free trials and integration into their file manager.

Re: No expandable storage, no deal

Samsung want £200 to take it from 512GB to 1TB (and £350 to take it from 256GB to 1TB but that's a RAM upgrade too). Meanwhile, it's currently £120 for a 1TB SanDisk extreme and that will probably drop below £100 in the next year. I've also had eMMC die on Samsung phones before so I'd rather not hammer a soldered component unnecessarily.

I think I'll head over to Sony, which feels weird when I'm doing it to avoid being ripped off.

No expandable storage, no deal

I used Galaxy devices from the S2 to the Note 9 but I travel for work a lot and not being able to carry a nice media library for when I'm stuck somewhere is an absolute deal breaker.

Microsoft will upgrade Windows 10 21H2 users whether they like it or not

Re: @AC - If Microsoft wants better Win 11 acceptance

I realise it's less likely an issue here but, for the CLI-averse, Rufus will roll you a nice installation drive that auto bypasses the online requirement and even does a hands off install with an account name of your choice. It can also make a (somewhat) hardware agnostic W11 install drive.

EU proposes spyware Tech Lab to keep Big Brother governments in check

It's okay when they do it. They're the good guys.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

The video in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrP5-E9jmas

Wonderfully 60s.

Re: death trap

Plus, you want a good mix so you don't get a pocket of pure halon that drops a person in the same fashion as any other non-oxygen gas would.

There's a wonderful promotional video from DuPont titled "halon 1301 the instant firefighter" that features a demonstration of a lab tech in a plastic box trying to light a fire in a halon filled environment (that he's breathing in). Given DuPont's track record with worker safety, how long he survived afterwards is another question but it certainly doesn't instantly kill or impair.

The mechanism is ingenious: it reacts with burning compounds to render them non flammable. It's really annoying that it's an ozone killer because having a breathable gaseous fire suppression compound that causes no damage really was a boon. I'd have it in my house if it were possible.

Edit: sorry, this was meant to be a response to Peter2

US watchdog grounds SpaceX Starship after that explosion

Re: Good thinking that man

Danish? In any case, while it's technically possible, that doesn't mean it's easy or the most cost effective solution (especially as the nature reserve might not take too kindly to changing the subterranean water flow).

I don't get why people are so keen to make engineering challenges and justifiable experiments seem like unnecessary and unforced mistakes.

Chinese city of Changshu to issue salaries in digital yuan

Re: Why would anyone ever want this?

Pointing out that a government was already able to use powers reserved for national/international emergencies against a domestic protest isn't terribly reassuring when you're talking about a tool that would make their job easier.

Re: Why would anyone ever want this?

Neither is violation of individual rights but some of us tend to get a little uppity when government gives itself the power to do so in ways that are far more coercive and insidious than ever before.

Re: Why would anyone ever want this?

Why would a government with that level of surveillance and control over your finances care about your consent or even whether it benefits you? You'll comply or you'll be unable to buy food.

It's much more than just ease of production and traceability, it's total control over the finances of the population. Every unit of currency can be set with tailored restrictions on how it's spent and its interest rates. For example, a portion could be set to only be used for their purchase of food and to disappear after a month. From a political point of view, it's incredibly powerful; agitators and those who support them could be instantly identified and all associated accounts locked down to just being able to buy essentials.

The physical currency hole is also extremely easy to plug: once a sufficient level of use is achieved, it would be trivial to identify businesses offering illicit exchange because their digital cash flows (from buying and selling) wouldn't add up. At a stroke, they can be cauterised from the network and, as with the agitators, anyone who did business with them appropriately punished.

Will Arm make and sell its own processors? We're gonna go with no

"I've got a great idea" doesn't hit as hard as "I've got a great idea and here's it in action". Further "I've got a great idea and here's one of your competitors on the inside track" is less appealing than "here's my idea in action and your competitors have no advantages over you".

Microsoft pushes for more women in cybersecurity

Re: "despite better education, experience, and performance compared to our male peers"

If that is the case then I fully expect that Luta will utterly dominate the industry in the coming years and would recommend that anyone who agrees with their CEO's statements to heavily invest.

"despite better education, experience, and performance compared to our male peers"

At some point, you're arguing that businesses in this ruthless capitalist system we live in are deliberately forgoing profits and risking being out maneuvered by more inclusive competitors.

That's not to say that inclusion is without benefit or desirability but there's a balance between the two extremes.

NASA solar satellite burns up over the Sahara desert

Re: Fly tipping?

I expect you'd have difficulty identifying any sizeable portion

ChatGPT creates mostly insecure code, but won't tell you unless you ask

To steal from XKCD, warning us about vulnerabilities in live code from Chat GPT is like warning parents that students with a particular teacher should get tested for STIs. It's probably sound advice but there's a much more serious problem underlying it.

Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes

Re: Those are rookie numbers

You can just heat the air directly. The US built a direct cycle ramjet and ran a few successful ground tests (PLUTO) and also built a direct cycle turbojet (though this was never tested as propulsion). The Soviets had a similar programme, taken critical in flight but never used for sole propulsion in the same way as the US.

Indirect cycle is also theoretically possible, though less efficient.

4chan and other web sewers scraped up into Google's mega-library for training ML

It's transformative work. You probably have no copyright over your writings anyway (unless you're completely self hosting or have an enterprise-level hosting arrangement) but there's really very little protection offered by copyright laws in most countries against someone processing publicly available material. If this weren't the case, search engines wouldn't exist.

UK govt wants standalone 5G by 2030 but won't shell out to help hit target

Re: Re:Ban any media organisation which isn’t headquartered in the UK

That's a shame. I have a simple criteria for censors: anyone who thinks they're capable of doing the job and/or is willing to do it is ineligible because they lack sufficient self awareness.

Re:Ban any media organisation which isn’t headquartered in the UK

Do we achieve this with our own Great Firewall and do we make VPNs illegal or just drop the social credit score of anyone reading foreign media?

How much to infect Android phones via Google Play store? How about $20k

Malware gender pay gap?

With women much better represented in the cybercrime sector than the cybersecurity sector, do these low prices mean they face a lower average income because of their choice of career? Also, within the cybercrime sector itself, do price negotiations also create discrimination (as men tend to have an unfair advantage) and what can be done to combat this? Someone should probably report these organisations to the government if they're not publishing income figures.

Twitter users complain 'private' Circle posts aren't

Re: I do have to wonder what the hell the deal is.....

I do wonder whether "journalists" who keep pushing the Apartheid line about Musk are ignorant of the truth or just happy to lie because it's done for the 'greater good'. There's plenty of things that actually happened to criticise him for.

Move over, Google Earth. Caltech's here with a fresh 3D tour of Mars

Re: Now just sit back

That sounds very unlikely, something like a million to one.

Techie called out to customer ASAP, then: Do nothing

Can't get the parts

I've been the victim of an even shadier contract. The equipment in question was key to the output of the department but so hideously expensive that a redundant machine wasn't a possibility. As I understand, the new intended maintenance contract (about 4x the price) was for resolution within 1 working day, instead of a week.

Unfortunately, the language wasn't reviewed and what was bought was a contract for 'commencement of repairs' within 1 working day. This meant that, if new parts were required, the engineer would dutifully arrive on his way home, pull the cover off and then leave it while his manager found the cheapest part supplier. This often resulted in downtimes greater than under the previous contract. The resolution was that some heads rolled, the money was found for a redundant machine and the old contract was reinstated.

NASA names astronauts picked for next Artemis Moon test flight

Surprised anyone volunteered

We have yet to see any evidence that the Artemis 1 crew are still alive, much less safely back on Earth.

France bans all recreational apps – including TikTok – from government devices

I doubt most politicians are using social media directly to peddle themselves. It's more likely that everything that goes out is carefully curated (Trump types excepted).

Matthew Brown Companies confirms it's in funding talks with Virgin Orbit

Re: Playing the odds

To be fair to Virgin, when they started development on LaucherOne, it wasn't obvious that reusable rockets were a reasonable bet and SpaceX made a huge gamble on them working out. Indeed, prior to Falcon 9 reusable concepts had consistently either failed entirely or proven to be massive cash holes. At the same time, air launch just doesn't net you that much gain because getting to orbit is primarily about going sideways really fast, with the altitude being secondary. You get minor advantages from the thinner atmosphere too, which does make a small rocket with a small payload more economical but these aren't large gains either. The biggest benefit, from a VC standpoint, is the showmanship of a rocket strapped to a plane which, to be fair again, is something of an achievement.

I'm not privy to Virgin's market research or development plans but, for this to really succeed they either need very particular customers, a quantum leap that reduces the cost of their manufacturing process or something that lets them reuse their rockets. As it stands, the sort of customer they're after would need to have something that stops them from putting a transfer stage below their package and fly it on a Falcon 9, be that technical or a disagreement with SpaceX so profound that they're happy to pay over an order more to get up there.

I'm not sure it's going to enjoy too much business. It's something like 30 times more expensive than what SpaceX offer with the only supposed advantage being the 300kg to orbit. That low mass meaning that you get to decide where your satellite goes if you want something orbitally unusual.

Where in the world is Terraform Labs villain Do Kwon? Montenegro, actually

It's a shame that they can't understand that others might have different beliefs.

Why would it be a problem to have food during Ramadan if you're not a Muslim?

If scammers use your AI code to rip off victims, the FTC may want a word

If only they actually cared

Making similar threats against VoIP providers (and following through) would pretty much put paid to the most lucrative scammers. If they also hit remote access providers then that would finish them off completely.

Winnie the Pooh slasher flick mysteriously cancelled in Hong Kong

Re: Wierd

One component is that it became public domain last year

India's absurd infosec reporting rules get just 15 followers

Adverse incentive

If you discard all information on incidents older than 6 hours then you can't run afoul of the law. WFP (working from pub) should give you sufficient plausible deniability.

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Re: Need a USB Hub for that

I just wanted to say how excellent it is that you're taking the time to respond to requests for clarification in the comments.

Microsoft picks perfect time to dump its AI ethics team

I hadn't noticed being forced to do business (supporting the ethics of their leadership) with a singular prescribed group at the behest of the state due to limitations imposed by capitalism, no.

I'd say that capitalism permits people to follow their own ethics, as opposed to alternative systems, where the personal whims of the few are forced with brutality upon the many.

Globalization is over, and it'll cost you, according to TSMC founder

Re: De-globalisation not going far enough

Fabs in every household.

The US would sooner see TSMC fabs burn than let China have them

Re: In order to stop another country from destroying you ....

It may not be the only piece of the puzzle but that's how deterrence works: you either reduce the possibility that an opponent might be able to acquire something they want in-tact, you increase the cost to acquire it or you increase the consequences faced for acquiring it. Hopefully, you eventually reach a part where the opponent loses interest. It's important to identify every potential incentive because, taken together, they're the droplets that make up the ocean.

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

Sorry, too late to edit. I double checked and I was mistaken. HAL was being perfectly logical; his core directive is to process and relay information with complete accuracy. His order to keep a secret mission from the crew results in the logical conclusion that he has to kill the crew (to avoid the need to relay inaccurate information to them).

The novel better explains that HAL was driven insane by a core directive to prevent harm, maintain honesty and follow all orders, as well a direct order to complete a secret mission (not disclosed to the crew).

Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used

Why develop something new?

It seems a waste to spend another billion when we already have nuclear ICBMs that tragically never get used. Just fire one ahead of the ISS so it gets pushed retrograde and smashed into smaller pieces that will burn up before they hit the ground. Nothing could possibly go wrong and the money has already been spent.

Brit chipmaker issues warning about inventory glut

Excellent news

I assume prices will shortly be dropping back to sensible levels.

Once AI can create endless viral videos, good luck switching off social media

AI paperclip thought experiment

In this context, does the AI (charged with getting the most likes for content) enslave humanity, stripping the bodies down to the brain & essential organs (to provide the greatest resource economy) and stimulating the brain of endlessly produced people to like its content?

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

Meaning of "woke"

Is there an official definition?

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Re: The dangers of certainty

You have an unusual methodology and a low threshold for "proving" your theories.

My God, it's full of tabs: Vivaldi's coolest new features shine on phones and cars

With background playback and ad blocking, hopefully, this can serve as something of a replacement for Vanced. Also, hopefully, it's generalist enough to keep the Google lawyers away.