Posts by Eric Olson

Anthropic Claude 4 models a little more willing than before to blackmail some users

Re: Boooh!

We'll never know what happened to b0llchit, as the agentic overlords wiped all traces of their presence from the world, leaving only El Reg posts as a warning to all

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: I feel liberated already...

You can gargle toadstool-shaped veg all you want, he's still not going to call you a good boy.

Now be quiet, the adults are talking.

I feel liberated already...

In the mean time, I'm sure this mercurial administration will provide loads of certainty to businesses who want to re-shore or rebuild American manufacturing in such areas as garments, plastic toys, and topical fruit.

Mine's the one with a copy of Peddling Protectionism in the left pocket

Raspberry Pi not affected by Trump tariffs yet while China-tied rivals feel the heat

5 hours later...

Now that "Liberation Day" is here, we're celebrating by increasing consumer prices by 10% at a minimum. So while the analysis isn't completely wrong, it can no longer be said they would duck the tariffs.

If you need me, I'll be finding more screws to tighten on the ol' family budget.

Court filing: DOGE aide broke Treasury policy by emailing unencrypted database

News flash, dingus. More than half of firearm deaths are suicides. Another couple percent are accidental. Only a little more than a third are classified as homicide. So yeah, if by same demographic you mean the person pulling the trigger is also the victim, you're right. Just like most other crime in the world, it's the people you know who will brutalize you, not some random stranger. Stranger danger is a developmental phase you should have grown out of around 3.

More importantly, we also know the dog whistle you're blowing on when citing stats like this; you're trying to summon your fellow travelers. But this isn't the the elongated muskrat's safe space. Go back to his hovel and anger wank to bad AI revenge porn like the pathetic adolescent you are.

ShotSpotter (rebranded as SoundThinking because of the terrible reputation they have) is a fake technology that routinely is used to by police departments to manufacture probable cause where none exists. For those who are not "red-pilled" into abject stupidity like AC, here are a couple of sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2024/12/05/new-study-nypd-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-is-wildly-inaccurate/

https://www.aclu-wi.org/en/news/shotspotter-leak-shows-surveillance-tech-used-overpolice-black-and-brown-communities

Re: Clearance?

Probably none, as there is a notion in the US Government that the Executive Branch is solely in charge of security clearances, and therefore can perform as much (or little) vetting as desired. Of course, this was nominally thought to be a good plan, because why would the American people elect a compromised charlatan to be President? And even if they did, surely the other two co-equal branches of government would step in once they realized what was going on.

So yeah, good times over here.

That's right, really work it in there. If you get it deep enough, maybe you'll get a pat of the head and be called a good boy.

What a chud

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

And there was much rejoicing

Finally, an extremist doing the right thing and plowing themselves into a mountain.

I do feel bad for the habitat he likely destroyed. though.

DOGE helps Veterans Affairs end IT contract run by service-disabled entrepreneurs

Re: This just keeps getting worse

Oh look, another idiot. Why don't you go choke on some more Nazi dick. They might even call you a good boy if you clean up the mess.

Supreme Court supremo ponders AI-powered judges, concludes he's not out of a job yet

Once again, Law Enforcement poisons the well

Funny how judges who once served in law enforcement aren't high-skill judges. I wonder what about that prior experience makes it so hard to be a high-skill judge? Can assuming everything a cop says, even under oath, be a bad judgement skill?

Google password resets not enough to stop these info-stealing malware strains

Re: stolen sessions can be invalidated by simply signing out..

@Ayemooth

If you go here: https://myaccount.google.com/security after logging in to your Google Account, you can scroll down and see all the devices currently logged in. From there, you can also log out individual devices, or all of them.

It's not the best option for most people given how buried it is.

Re: Session cookie stealing is not an unknown thing

Not only is it a known issue, I'm pretty sure other sites offer a mechanism to invalidate all current logins to your device during password reset, mitigating this type of attack. Google even alludes to this in their response at the end, but that it's not offered during reset or change is an odd thing.

A ship carrying 800 tonnes of Li-Ion batteries caught fire. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: I assume they discharge batteries before shipping them?

I have to dig around, but there was a YT a while back of a tech showing why lithium batteries are flammable, and I believe one of the tests was level of charge. Those that were not charged beyond a certain point didn't catch fire even after being pierced, as they didn't have the energy necessary to ignite.

I believe there is (was) a regulation about batteries being transported en masse (think air freight), they needed to be below a certain charge level to be safe.

Edit: Found a study by the FAA, and it's abstract shows that batteries with a state of charge of 30% or less were much less prone to runaway thermal issues than those charged at 70% and higher.

(https://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/tctn22-27.pdf)

Japan complains Fukushima water release created terrifying Chinese Spam monster

Re: I seem to remember

I enjoyed this YT video by Plainly Difficult about the Windscale fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5wZoswSNwc

NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028

A lot of people in the comments acting like someone pissed in their cereal this morning

I know the readership here may be a bit more dour than your typical IT professional, but this comment section reads like a roast without the good-nature humor.

Space is hard, and it's a legitimate question if space should be tried given the cost that comes with it. I do, as there are knock-on benefits every time humanity tries something hard. Hard things are just that, and if as a species we want to stop doing the hard things, that's an option. But as evidenced by other nations and private corporations, there is a drive to explore space even though it's hard. NASA has the mission to explore space, and jobs program though it may be on the Space Coast, this is keeping with that mission. Will it succeed? Maybe not; but also remember they don't call these shots. If you actually have a problem with how this money gets spent, or that it's spent at all, Congress is the culprit.

Have you ever suspected your colleague doesn't hope this email finds you well?*

For the first time in my 20 year career, I like my co-workers

At least the folks in IT. It's a laid-back crew, and it probably helps it's my first IT just where we are support rather than the product being sold. Still would rather not work, but I'm not going to say no to the first job willing to pay me more than 100K a year.

US Cyber Command boss says China's spooky cyber skills still behind

Re: What the actual #***?

<quote>One would think that hospitals would be a bigger priority for National Security than meat packing plants.</quote>

Hardly. Hospitals are for civilians, and the civilians at the hospital aren't contributing to the war effort

Games Workshop once again battles scariest monster of all: ERP gone wrong

Re: Well this makes me feel great

*wanders off mutters about finding offerings this time of day*

Well this makes me feel great

We just kicked off an ERP migration from work.... is this my life now?

Google says Android runs better when covered in Rust

Re: ABS Brake

Every winter, I'm reminded that ABS brakes are a feature I would never want to live without again.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

No mention of SimCity?

There was nothing more fun than a disaster where the SBSP would miss the receiver and travel as a beam of destruction across your city.

Quantum startup demos spin qubits fabbed with existing tech

Wait, did I just read what I think I read?

Did someone provide an assessment that was outside of 10 years? Their investors must be angels. There's no way a CTO of a company that will ever need money again would describe their time horizon as 20 years.

Don't say Pentium or Celeron anymore, it's just Processor now, says Intel

Re: trademarks

BRB, trademarking Windows branded doors

Intel's stock Raptor Lake chip will do 6GHz and overclock another 25%, if it keeps cool

Honest question

Anyone else getting a lot of P4EE and PR-rating flashbacks suddenly?

API rate limits at the core of Elon Musk’s decision to ditch Twitter

Re: specific info on that contract

IANAL, but I follow a bunch on Twitter. And all of them are universally being attacked by Musk stans for pointing out the Specific Performance clause. Based on that, the lawyers are probably right.

Specific Performance is a legal term where both sides agree that money is not an adequate remedy if the agreement is breached. It's not just a termination fee: the judge can demand that one party fulfill their side of the agreement rather than pay a sum of money to make it go away.

From a Twitter perspective, $44B US is a lot more than the entire company is worth today. The board would be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they failed to enforce the agreement. They are required by law, in terms of being open to legal liability, to pursue Musk for the purchase and make sure he completes it.

I'm not going to say Musk will lose, but the inclusion of the Specific Performance clause means if he does lose, he'll be forking over more than $1B. Consider the $1B to be a floor, not a ceiling.

https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1525481890643337216

Boffins demonstrate a different kind of floppy disk: A legless robot that hops along a surface

Head's up, Las Vegas

First demonstration of a product will be at the Adult Entertainment Expo, probably as an advancement in teledildonics.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: Back in the early 90's

We're *thisclose* to getting rid the office... finally!

Or did you mean the paper bit?

Anonymous: We've leaked disk images stolen from far-right-friendly web host Epik

Re: *looks around quiet, crowded theater* FIRE FIRE FIRE!

The time gate component is critical, IMO. If someone is murdered for an opinion, it would be dangerous to people if the government could round up anyone who ever said the victim should be punished for their opinion.

The Jan 6 insurrection is an interesting case, as many strong free speech advocate are looking at it and saying, "Yeah, those speakers may not be protected by the 1st Admt given the crowd, what they said to the crowd, and what the crowd did a few minutes later."

And also, harm can (and is) defined so many ways that your simple definition could be used to prosecute people for things like calling someone fat, or saying a person's faith is evil, demonic, etc. Words harm, there is no doubt about that. But we can't make it all criminal, because that means the wrong person in power will use it to suppress, harass, or even imprison a group of people because they are seen as enemies.

*looks around quiet, crowded theater* FIRE FIRE FIRE!

You can shout fire in a crowded theater, at least in the US. And advocating terrorism is no more illegal than saying someone is a Nazi.

In the US, there are few(er) bounds on speech. There used to be more, allowing the government to jail people for saying critical things about the government.

Did you know that the Supreme Court ruled the government could arrest and jail someone for distributing pamphlets telling people to peacefully resist the draft and petition for its end?

Oh wait, that's where Justice Holmes wrote that it was unprotected just as shouting fire in a crowded theater would be unprotected.

Thankfully, that terrible opinion was struck down a few decades later and replaced with a more logical test. Speech advocating for illegal behavior or violence is only illegal if it is intended to create imminent lawless action.

Saying we should kill God is not illegal. Pointing to God and saying, "Kill the bastard!" to a group of people armed with pointy sticks and copies of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" may be considered incitement.

Want to support Firefox? Great, you'll have no problem with personalised, sponsored search suggestions then

The irony...

After I did the update so I would remember to disable to feature, the typical "new version" tab was advertising their VPN and proclaiming how your privacy matters.

Never mind that the VPN would make the localized suggestions pointless, but it also means they aren't being upfront about a rather huge privacy change.

I will also note the setting indicates it "Helps fund Firefox development and optimization," so at least they are being upfront on why they've included it.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

<quote>AMD is now making CPUs in a weight class that didn't exist in their portfolio in probably 20 years and they really pull power in their high core count configurations.</quote>

It hasn't been 20 years; I built my first PC using the Athlon T-bird which was released in...

Oh.

No way...

Oh GOD!

When did I get so old!

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

Oh no, it's a battery story

In before the "battery advances never pan out" commentards.

I always have wondered about that. All the stories of advances in battery tech, chemistry, charge cycles, etc., and so many people immediately say, "Bah, it won't happen, just like all the ones before."

But if they really were increasing energy density at 80% per yr until 2016 or so, you've gotta imagine a lot of those did make it into production, and just added to the overall amazingness of Li-ion batteries. Not to mention the reduction in cost. I mean, I can literally buy a 6Ah battery from Sparkfun for $30 USD and have it here before the end of the week. And it's only about 3" x 2"... that's impressive.

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

Re: A job well done

Besides the authorization expiring in various jurisdictions? The answer is in the last sentence of the article: To get the users of such methods to question its safety, to reduce trust between groups, and show off the danger of assuming you're protected from eavesdropping.

I'm sure there will be other methods, and some groups might have enough capital to employ their own developers and device makers to keep things relatively safe. But by also co-opting one such dev, law enforcement demonstrates they can make it lucrative to sell out your employers....

Re: Trusting trust

Or get better lobbyists. ;-)

Australian cops, FBI created backdoored chat app, told crims it was secure – then snooped on 9,000 users' plots

In the US at least, entrapment is when cops/government induce an otherwise law-abiding individual to commit a crime, and not just by leaving a brick of drugs sitting on the ground, waiting for them to pick it up.

The phone itself is not illegal, and intent is important when determining culpability (usually).

Re: Five Eyes

It's not entrapment.

Entrapment requires the cops to induce an otherwise law-abiding person into committing a crime.

So, it would be like handing a random person a brick of cocaine, telling them it was cocaine, then saying, "Hey, I know a place and person to sell this to. Go here at this time," and then arresting them for possession and intent to distribute when they leave.

They just created a product using their knowledge of in-demand specs, advertised it to some criminals, who then word-of-mouthed it to other criminals, who then used it exactly as they would have similar products.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

Re: Inclusive must mean that we only include things that we like...

There was a time, when inclusivity used to mean that we accept everyone, regardless of their opinions, because they were people like the rest of us, and had personal opinions about stuff, not just the socially accepted opinion that they were expected to have.

Do you want Nazis? Because that's how you get Nazis!

-------

Joke aside, five minutes in a library would uncover evidence it's false, even when it comes to more innocuous things like food preparation or choice of shoe. Tolerance of political leanings, religion, or ancestral origins has been more of a bug than feature for most of human history.

Your invocation of communism is ironic too, given the whole McCarthy thing in the 40s and 50s here in the US, where people were literally blacklisted because they may have had an association to another person who might have passed by a building that once hosted a meeting between two people who knew what the Communist Party USA was.

And of course, there is the Paradox of Tolerance, where if intolerance is allowed without any kind of societal check, eventually the intolerant will destroy the tolerant society.

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

Re: Now they shut down his voice. Is that right?

Extremely hard to prove.

Based on what I've heard 1A lawyers say, you have to be able to not only draw a direct line between a violent act to a speaker, but you have to show the speaker explicitly called for the violent act to happen in a very short time frame.

The Brandenburg Test is:

The test determined that the government may prohibit speech advocating the use of force or crime if the speech satisfies both elements of the two-part test:

The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND

The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

Advanced Money-making Devices: AMD inks multibillion stock deal for FPGA specialist Xilinx

It's nice to be back to two functioning chip makers

Well... one functioning, one retrenching after it dominated the market for nearly two decades

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

Re: You would have thought . . .

Sounds like the IRS would rather prosecute poor people for claiming too much Earned Income Tax Credit, rather than pursing any portion of the $200 billion estimated that will be owed each year by the top 1%.

https://www.startribune.com/a-lesson-from-trump-taxes-an-underfunded-irs-is-outmatched/572589912/

Priorities, I guess

Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

Re: He should of just hit normal people

Imma gonna leave this right here

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whats-worse-than-coulda

Explain yourself, mister: Fresh efforts at Google to understand why an AI system says yes or no

Re: debuggability

Dude, do you even English?

Google: We caught a Russian state hacker crew uploading badness to the Play Store

#MICA

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

Re: The cost of Win10 is far too high.

The cost of non-Win 10 will be far higher when the support ends and patches are no longer issued. This is the thing about buying software: at some point, the support ends and you're left picking up the pieces. For apps like Photoshop CS6, it just means you don't get the latest and greatest... for an OS, it means the underpinnings of your system are on shaky foundation.

By all means, stay with whatever you want. But if you want to stay in the Windows ecosystem, things have moved on, like it or not. If you can, go to a different OS to run your system and make your code work there. But other than your dollars, you don't have any say over what MS decides to do with their OS.

Don't be Russian to judgement but... Bloke accused of $1.5m+ tax filing biz hack, fraud

Re: a refund to be paid into a prepaid debit card

There are a lot of free filing sites that will load your refund to a pre-paid Visa or something, precisely because the person in question paid taxes through payroll but doesn't have a bank account. Since employers are required to deduct taxes from each paycheck, it doesn't matter if the person won't make enough to pay taxes, or if they have other qualifying statues or circumstances that get them things like the EITC.

Re: Something's wrong here

I bet dollars to donuts that the 27 years is just the DoJ summing up the maximum sentence for each charge and calling it a day. It makes for better theater and satisfies the Law and Order types (TV or otherwise) need for a pound of flesh and an eye for an eye.

In reality, it never works that way. Besides the sentencing guidelines that are always much less (takes things like prior criminal history into account), it's not uncommon for individual sentences for each guilty or plead charge to be served concurrently. And then there is the reality of no matter the actual jail sentence, the actual time served is less before release (assuming they don't screw up more).

IANAL, but after the Manafort stuff, Lawyer Twitter, and some other cases lately, this has come up enough that I feel internet confident about saying it. YMMV, and I definitely don't suggest you go citing this in your next legal brief or law blog.

Champagne corks undocked as SpaceX brings the Crew Dragon back to Earth

Re: Here in the UK... off topic

Oh c'mon, it was first flow in 1949. That wasn't 70 years.... oh crap, it is.

Means my parents are closer to get 70 that 60 now, too. My damn frame of reference keeps shifting, and my math circuits can't keep up.

Wells Fargo? Well fscked at the moment: Data center up in smoke, bank website, app down

This isn't the first time...

I think there was a nationwide ATM outage in Feb and Apr of 2011, also caused by a single point-of-failure. Speculation was a bad software rollout, but I haven't been able to find anything more than the bank saying it was an "internal system."

But hey... it's not like being able to query a bank account is important for customers, right?

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: So predictable !

Actually, I believe they don't sell your personal data. In fact, I think it would be lunacy if they did. There's a simple reason, too: Profit.

Someone else mentioned this the other day, but that's probably the truth of it. If I'm OmniCorp A, and my product, the Widgetizer, is targeted towards Millennials with interests in underwater basketweaving, I don't know who that is in a given population. But Google does. And Google will charge a nominal fee to target that population rather than just Millennials. If Google starts to sell that dataset, even an anomonyzed one, companies won't need to go to them. They'll directly target the websites, search results, and other places such people frequent, and cut Google out from the middle. Selling the data would completely destroy Google's profit margin.

He who controls the data controls the internet.