Posts by Alan Brown

Lapsus$ teen sentenced to indefinite detention in hospital for Nvidia, GTA cyberattacks

Not if you're there by court order

The vast majority of people in mental health institutions are there voluntarily or by medical advice

The gangs doing this have a tendency to make themselves obvious so anyone with an ounce of critical thinking will drop off their target list immediately

That leaves the vulnerable (hard of thinking) as easy prey

Musk floats idea of boat mod for Cybertruck

Re: Tesla Drivers Have the Highest Crash Rate of Any Brand

Bad drivers have a tendency to choose big heavy vehicles "because they're safer" - this isn't conjecture, I've asked owners of Chelsea tractors why they have such vehicles in an urban environment and this is almost always the answer(*)

It's not helped by the USA's import-tariff ("Chicken Tax" puts a 25% import tax on vans/light trucks built outside the USA) and safety/emissions(heavy vehicles have fewer regulations on safety, MPG and emissions, so are more profitable for makers) driven love affair with light trucks/vans/suvs

(*) Traffic calming measures mostly exist to protect children walking to school from vehicles containing children being driven to school

BOFH: Just because we've had record revenues doesn't mean you get a Xmas bonus

Re: In the glorious past

Or sell it as pork

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

Re: Excellent!

I got into the habit of attributing the time taken doing the form filling to the form filling instead of letting it subsume into the job I was supposed to be doing

Needless to say, the beancounters DO NOT like people doing that, especially when the habit spreads

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

UK: Consumer Rights Act 2015 - Chapter 3 - Digital Content

This is worth reading. Legislation notes here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/notes/division/3/1/4

Of note:

- The act specifically prohibits suppliers "Contracting out" of provisions of the act

- Paying for in-game digital goods with tokens that trace back to money is covered by the act

- There is consideration given to the validity and enforcibility of "click-wrap" licenses

- Unfair terms are covered

- Prohibits forced arbitration (unfair contract term)

There's a lot more to it, but reading the notes will give a much better idea of what suppliers can and cannot do - As may be expected, American-based companies are usually operating well outside European law (The UK act is more or less replicated across the EU and if anything offers a lower bar of consumer protection than most EU countries)

There's been talk of people finding their Prime accounts closed and all media access cut off due to billing disputes on "unfit for purpose" or "non-delivery" - suffice to say that Amazon doesn't have a leg to stand on here and anyone who has this happen should be taking legal advice (not just full refunds, but compensation)

"Apparently they were selling a game they were not permitted to and removed it from their cRapp-store, removing my ability to install something I had paid for."

This is explicitly covered in Chapter 3 of the Consumer rights Act 2015

https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/digital/digital-content

"In most cases the consumer is entitled to a full refund of all money paid for the digital content where there is a failure of the 'right to supply'. The requirements for this refund are the same as those for when a price reduction is triggered as detailed above."

There are provisions for pro-rata refunds if only part of a purchase becomes unavailable

It's worth noting that there is NO expiry (time limit) for digital deliveries being removed after purchase. Once paid for, the item must be "available forever" - and this includes stuff with an online keyserver. If the keys go away and the product is locked it's treated in the same manner as having been made unavailable or removed from a consumer device

This is a UK law but it's very similar to laws across the EU

In the case of music, the entire industry was in terminal sales decline just before the advent of CDs and 90% of all sales were consumers refreshing their collections, not new artists

By the mid 1990s the industry was in terminal decline again and "piracy" was merely a way of gaslighting to avoid the real reason

As for single sales: Singles fell to lower weekly unit sales than albums before the end of the 1960s. By the 1980s they accounted for something like 1% of unit sales compared to albums and kept falling until digital downloads became a thing recently - even now they're not even close to 1960s sales levels

(In other words, we have radio "hits" tastes being defined by an extremely narrow segment of market consumers and it's a classic echo chamber scenario)

Re: downsize the picture to 1000*600

"He declared bankruptcy rather than pay me the damages."

Debts incurred by court order (especially as a result of malicious behaviour) are not wiped by Bankruptcy - as Rudi Guiliani is now finding out

Re: The issue of copyright or even copyleft

"Just look at the lengths Disney goes to, to keep control of that little rodent creation that helped build their empire."

That little rodent and Disney's copyright obsession are a direct result of his losing the rights to an earlier character he created - Oswald Rabbit (It's also a root cause of his fierce anti-semitism)

Ironically in the corporate pursuit of copyright, actual creators get an even more raw deal than Disney did before the Mouse

Re: Just imagine

The book and music publishing industry have both tried to overturn "first sale" mantras for physical copies, demanding royalties from secondhand book/record shops

If they could, they would

At which point....

Do people (and courts) realise that copyright law has gone vastly too far and returns to older, more sensible settings?

Royal Patents were abolished in the 16th century because of similar IP abuses to those we see today (including trolls) and only reinstated a few decades later using the format we now use (time limited)

If I write a bestselling book, I don't see why my great-great grandchildren should be entitled to royalties from MY work, but that's the current situation

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Re: is 10x $$$ normal?

"I calculated we were spending 5x that on colour toner"

I did a similiar calculation plus worked it out on the basis of the printer fleet

It turned out the loudest moaners about costs were using the most expensive printers. (50 times the cost of big workgroup printers, despite being "cheap to buy") and a general order went out to the procurement folk to prohibit individual staffers ordering printer ink/toner/printers

It didn't fully stop the madness but forcing the most profligate users onto large workgroup printers reduced costs (300 page jobs on inkjets are a tad silly) and after 2011 we found that printer use started declining rapidly (and is still declining) thanks to widespread availablity of smartphones/tablets

Re: is 10x $$$ normal?

"there are lots of providers who have their own infrastructure that they can roll out to you."

Most of the time they just buy a leased circuit from Openreach - which interposes them between you and Openreach for Openreach faults

Let's just say it's "suboptimal at the best of times" and leave it at that....

Re: is 10x $$$ normal?

1: yes

2: in our experience, No (especially if a 3rd party like Virgin are involved - in which case it can be significantly WORSE than home broadband restoration SLA)

3: yes

4: no. most of the time the fault is in the last mile (cable) or the uplink to ISPs from the telco head end. Either way breaks everything at once and the added complexity of arranging reliable service/VPNs

across multiple IPs for any given endpoint is not to be sneezed at (it becomes a failure point all by itself)

Re: Problematic pattern recognition

Assuming "here" is the USA - if you're in a one party state then you can record. If the participants are in different states then federal one party laws apply.

If you're in a two party state, then arrange to have the call routed interstate so that federal law applies

California is the only state which tries to supercede federal law on this - but it has has never been tested

For manglers like you've mentioned, an email summarising points of the call "in order to ensure sychronisation" is a very good idea

Re: Problematic pattern recognition

Transcribing gives an opportunity for them to deny having ever said it, before you produce the recording (I know of several people who would then go on to deny the denial, etc)

Re: Problematic pattern recognition

The leasing market went into freefall over the pandemic because many companies simply abandoned their leases with WFH working so well or paid the early termination fees and got out

Many of those stuck with leases they couldn't terminate simply ended up subletting the premises to other companies. Several london banks and finance houses were already subletting entire floors prior to Covid and simply expanded the operation.

There's at least 3 Gherkin's worth of unoccupied space across the London Financial district and it's increasing every day (Wework was soaking up a lot of it but we all know what's happening to them)

Re: "Actually, this is precisely the service you paid for"

More career limiting for them than you, if done (with proof) in front of witnesses

ALWAYS have witnesses. Most business hierarchy is like fascism - internal conflict and competition at every level, resulting in anyone looking "weak" likely to find someone else's knife sticking out of their back - especially if it results in a promotion opportunity for the wielder

Re: "Actually, this is precisely the service you paid for"

You'd be surprised how many large industrial sites are like this

Re: "Actually, this is precisely the service you paid for"

My experience is that they ignore it and keep ranting

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

Re: Yearly tasks....

" It's harder to persuade people to invest in something if it doesn't produce a result they can measure."

If you standardise your hardware then a spare machine can cover multiple clusters. This is easier to sell to manglement and has the advantage of keeping hardware like "lego" rather than being individually customised

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Re: Forget leaf blowers, how about a power washer?

As someone who spent half his apprenticeship having to wash down contaminated PCBs (mostly tills from the hospitality trade - ie: bars), I can understand why he did it and it would be quite effective at not only cleaning the boards but finding any dry joints.... :)

Re: Most-Inappropriate Computer Repair Tool

Most people don't understand cold welding or the physics behind it (particularly in crimps) and decide to "do a little extra, just to make sure" - the result is almost always the crimp going unreliable due to the compressive force having been decreased by 90-95% over doing it properly and ion transfer (cold welding) failing to occur

A properly done crimp will easily outlast soldered parts

Re: Ouch!

This is without even taking into account that there are at least 3 different kinds of threadlocker (easily undone with a hand tool but won't vibrate loose, requires heating to release the locker or "you'll never get that undone again")

Re: Shocking!

If you don't have a strap - TOUCH THE CASE and repeat that touch every 10 seconds

This works. Straps are better. The point about ESD isn't being grounded but having everything at the SAME potential and ground happens to be an easy common factor to work with

National Grid latest UK org to zap Chinese kit from critical infrastructure

"If the Government says jump, the councils will have to jump"

More likely "how much are you paying us to remove and dispose of perfectly functional equipment?"

US lawmakers have Chinese LiDAR on their threat-detection radar

Re: ...and they wonder why Congress is held in contempt by a majority of the population

"US as a country is like a credit card with a huge credit limit and have gone big on the spending"

You can do that when you have a hegemonic currency

Problems only occur when it's no longer hegemonic - as Britain discovered after WW2/Bretton Woods - that's when the bills come due

USA dollar hegemony is backed by oil and the 1973 agreement for the USA to provide military support to Gulf OPEC states in exhange for them only taking payments in dollars

SINAP TMSR-LF1 (and the associated LF2/LF3 projects) is an existential threat to the US dollar hegemony (and merely shutting that down won't help as Indonesia and others are working on the same thing) - with the USA playing with both hands tied behind its back in terms of being able to respond, thanks to the 1972 AEC rule changes (signed off by Nixon) which outlaw molten salt fuelled nuclear technology

Spying doesn't even need that. Just lookin at contracting employment ads in the local newspapers gives a fair idea of what's happening inside a base

China bans export of rare earth processing kit

Re: Economics 101

Chinese labour hasdn't been cheap for a while. The average worker in a Chinese factory earns MORE than an American factory worker

China wins on logistics these days

Re: Always worth listening to the other side too..

This "tit-for-tat" war started because Chinese farmers stopped buying soybeans.

It wasn't that they stopped buying AMERICAN soybeans but that the entire Chinese market for the product contracted about 80-90% thanks to mass pig culls related to trying to curb the spread of African Swine Fever

Farmers tend not to buy feed for animals which don't exist - doubly so when those farmers have gone bankrupt and been forced off their plots

American pork producers saw a market more than twice the size of the USA domestic one opening up for the taking (which would have consumed the entire USA soybean surplus and then some), only to get the door slammed in their faces thanks to Mango Mussolini's deranged rantings

Re: LiDAR? Really?

Laser is to LIDAR as Cavity Magnetrons are to RADAR - you can do without them but it's easier with them

Re: Oops!

"Another tactic is to file patents while at the same time not respecting other's patents."

So, just like the USA from 1780 until very recently

Re: Oops!

The raw nuclear waste from a 1GW nuclear power station accumulated over its 60 year working lifespan is "about an olympic pool in volume"

It's possible to produce far LESS waste than that. Alvin Weinberg's uranium "tea kettle" boiler design that's the basis of all water-moderated designs(*) was proof of concept made from weaponsmaking waste(**) products and with no optimisation to reduce waste production

Weinberg went on to make a less wasteful (and much safer) design that was more suitable for industrial/power use but the project was shut down by US military (signed off by Nixon in 1972) because their abliity to use thorium in addition to uranium(***) posed an existential threat to the "dual use" treaty exemptions of uranium processing plants

(*) Nautilus and Shippingport were themselves derived from the ww2 X10 plutonium breeder reactor that was part of the Manhattan Project

(**) Enriched uranium was an UNWANTED waste product of making plutonium bombs. The militarily valuable stuff is the depleted uranium (U235) as this is the feedstock for making Pu239 and having U235 present makes unstable isotopes that degrade the effectiveness of nuclear weapons (counterintuitively, nuclear weapons are BARELY radioactive, which is why truckloads of bananas regularly trip radiation detectors intended to spot smuggled ones in ports - extra radioactivity makes them more likely to not go off, or go off prematurely)

(***) Solid fuelled reactors can use thorium but it ends up costing more and producing more waste than using uranium despite the $150/kg vs $50,000/kg fuel cost difference. Irradiated thorium is not something you want to stand near and the extra handling precautions drive up costs substantially

Re: Oops!

at 450 years the used nuclear fuel is slightly more radioactive than background and slightly LESS radioactive than the original fuel

Plutonium is an alpha emitter and could be safely stored in a paper bag. The hairy-scary *dangerous* radionucleides break down to safe products very quickly

Do you know that TMI was dismantled and the reactor + hot bits trucked off to a safe location less than a decade after its meltdown don't you?

Re: Oops!

Expensive but not impossible - however the crux of the matter is that there isn't much of it and it's potentially quite valuable fuel, so why bury it when you can just keep it in casks in a safe location?

Re: Oops!

It's less about environmental rules and more about thorium. China's been stockpiling it for the last two decades in anticipation of the SINAP TMSR projects being viable

Without thoirium's disposal costs, rare earth mines are economically viable. IN a market for thorium, rare earths become side gigs and thorium the primary product - without even changing the current price of $140/ton

'The computer was sitting in a puddle of mud, with water up to the motherboard'

Re: Deli

"But the grey slime -- yuck!"

That's where you cite a biohazard and ask them to clean it up before you'll proceed

Europe classifies three adult sites as worthy of its toughest internet regulations

Re: Now would be the perfect time ....

Calicos are the really evil kitties though (I've had several, they take no prisoners)

SEC charges ex-medtech CEO with fraud for selling plastic fake implants

Re: Sound business principles

Even under Delaware law, they've have to "go bankrupt" _before_ being sued in order to dodge the liabilities (and as with European law, being a LLC only shields the investors. Company officers can be individually sued for unlawful decisions, even after company dissolution)

UK readrs will be happy to note that as of February 2022, preemptively dissolving to dodge debts no longer works and investors/directors remain liable for several years after dissolution. The law was changed mostly to deal with companies folding up to avoid Covid loan repayments however it's applicable to thinghs like ICO fines, etc (if a company director is stupid enough to threaten to dissolve then action can be expedited - as at least one used car dealer has found out recently)

This could still wing its way to you, if you have the dosh: One Concorde engine seeks new home

Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

The helicoptor engines in question (24 of them) were stolen from the US military, who arranged to sell them to the powerboat racing fraternity and make possession official because they DIDN'T want the things back even once tracked down - their history made them usuable as aviation engines anymore

Re: Tupolev Tu-144

Urban legend has it that the consortium realised that industrial espionage was afoot and deliberately set about ensuring that faulty information reach the Soviets - particularly relating to the wing root leading edges

This was one of the reasons it ended up with the infamous foldup canard for low speed operations

Re: Firing it up

Considering this is a V-bomber era engine, I suspect the control logic would be within an arduino's capabilities (but not the controlling devices)

UK officials caught napping ahead of 2G and 3G doomsday

Re: Millenium bug 2.0

e911 doesn't exist in Europe

and my IP is being geolocated by most "professional websites" as Glenrothes in Scotland (where my ISP is) rather than London (where I am)

I can't think that the scottish fire service will be happy about that

(Yes, whois shows where I am, IF using my ISP's whois server. Most sites can't be arsed looking beyond the AS whois or to the /24 at best)

Re: Going to be awkward

The G is "generation", not frequency

5G signals are availabile in some areas on the old analogue TV bands - works better in rural zones, etc

1G is AMPS, 2G is basic GSM - and to be honest I'm surprised, as I thought that'd been sunsetted a decade ago

Greater Manchester Police ransomware attack another classic demo of supply chain challenges

Re: Outsourcing

I'll guarantee the response to any FOI will be "This is commercially sensitive information and we will not release it"

Re: Outsourcing

In this case (and that of the Met), more likely "he's a fellow Scientologist"

China's GPU contender Moore Threads reveals card that can cope with Nvidia’s CUDA

Re: RE: sacrifice

Like the ones in Cisco kit?

I'm picking that within 20 years China will be selling Thorium MSR nuclear power to all takers and the USA's oil hegemony will be done

That's likely to be more important than any other technology

The supreme irony of this being that it's technology developed originally in the USA (one of the few truely indigenous US technology inventions), tested sucessfully and then OUTLAWED because it posed a threat to the nuclear weapons industry (it's still illegal to run up a molten fuelled nuclear reactor in the USA, which puts a severe crimp in the work of the dedicated few at ORNL)

We have to thank the USA

Without their sanctions, the world would be closing in on a lot of single-supplier monopolies in critical infrastructure

Thanks to their paranoia, we're seeing independent supply chains developing in ways that USA corporates _can't_ buy out or exert political control over