Posts by I ain't Spartacus

FCC gives SpaceX the go-ahead to drop Starlink satellite orbits by 500 kilometres or so

Re: Simple solution

Might be better if it's the first one to bring it back...

Next court fight being by the losing bidders for the contract to put that pile 'o money on the Moon in the first place.

Korean app-maker Scatter Lab fined for using private data to create homophobic and lewd chatbot

I'm lovely. And anyone who says different can fuck right off!

Good: Water vapor signal detected for first time on distant planet. Bad: Er, we'll let one of the boffins explain

Re: If the English had a base there

One can't drop one's standards though, can one. But, by Jove, it is a trifle warm. This is melting the ice in my jynnan tonyx.

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

Re: Nice obit, Iain.

jake,

Bought it to read during lockdown. Didn't really feel like reading during lockdown. I think for me reading is all about the pleasure of taking some time to be on my own and quietly thinking about stuff - and shall we say that life had suddenly granted me far more of an opportunity for solo contemplation than I really wanted... However, as we return towards normality (whatever that is), perhaps it might be an opportunity to pick up his book again and raise a nice glass of whisky to his memory.

Soon be time for that movie marathon of 'The Right Stuff', 'First Man' and 'Apollo 13'...

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Re: Yankees and roundabouts

greenup,

Have they not tried landmines?

British IT teacher gets three-year ban after boozing with students at strip club during school trip to Costa Rica

Re: I am disappoint...

My deputy headmaster bought us a few rounds in the pub on a sixth form trip in about 1990. Some of us were smoking in there too, which I remember because I won a pint of horrible cider by eating a cigarette.

Not a private school, and not exotic Costa Rica either. Physics trip to visit Sellafield. Which was fascinating. We did set the radiation alarms off though, which caused a modicum of shouting into phones and rushing about. My mate moved while being scanned as we were leaving the area where they open the spent fuel rods - and the machine retaliated by declaring him radioactive and setting off a surprisingly loud set of alarms. Either that or it just malfunctioned, but then they had to bring alternate testing kit and get approval to shut the alarms up and check they hadn’t accidentally irradiated a school trip. Which wouldn’t have been the best PR...

Maybe that explains the strip club visit? Cover-up! What really happened, that they’re trying to distract us from? This club has a no touching policy for all radioactive clients...

God bless this mess: Study says UK's Christian beliefs had 'important' role in Brexit

Re: Christian denominations in the country are now more likely to vote Conservative

Loyal Commenter,

Thanks for posting the link. Sadly it doesn't work. I've used his name as a guide to do some Googling, but sadly still can't find it.

Re: Christian denominations in the country are now more likely to vote Conservative

Replying to myself. Just found an article by the authors of the book talking about their thesis

linky linky linky

I'm not sure how related it all is to Brexit, rather than just gradual changes in the major parties coalitions of voters - as voters react to gradual social changes.

Jews for example have recently switched from being mainly Labour to Conservative voters - but I don't think that's related to Brexit, so much as Jeremy Corbyn.

Re: Correlation or causation?

Intractable Potsherd,

Are you not giving those comments above the status of thoughtful, because they agree with you? I also think there's a lot of truth in them. But I don't think they're the only reason for Brexit. Partly because Brexit needed a coalition of voters. And a cross-party coalition at that - though the thing that may permanently changed our politics is that it looks to have broken old party loyalties in a way that has people who would never vote Tory, now doing so.

Brexit has an economic component - described above. But also a major social component. We could call it cosmopolitans versus localism, or socially liberal vs socially conservative? I'm not sure if either quite catches it. And there's an economic component here too. The fury of many young remainers you saw that they were having their rights stolen from them to go and live and work in say Paris or Berlin must have looked a bit funny to someone from Bolsover - who doesn't even think they've got a hope of moving to Manchester or London. Or maybe even self-indulgent, whiny and selfish - hence some of the anger in the argument? People on both sides feeling they're being "got at" and often also insulted.

The lack of democracy and fairness that some people (wrongly) claim for the EU actually lies in Westmonster, where MPs and civil servants have continued screwing over the working class.At least Brexit means the mendacious fuckers can't hide behind the EU any longer, and well hopefully see some domestic change before I die.

There's also this. But I think not in the way you mean. Because it is true that the EU suffers from a lack of democracy, fairness and accountability. The founders of the EU had lived through the 1930s and the war, had seen democracy subverted, and consciously set up the EU to be a counterweight to "the will of the people". This is not some bizarre conspiracy theory, or childishly saying EUSSR, it's all public. It's not a sinister thing, just that some aspects of the EU are hard to square with ongoing democratic consent - because it moves decisions out of day-to-day politics - and then the only way for people to get at those decisions is revolutionary change, like Brexit. The Euro is the most dangerous example of this in my book. If you're an Italian voter who wants to radically change your economic policy, or even to leave the Euro, there's nobody to vote for - because the two current biggest parteis flirted with a Euro referendum when in opposition - but saw the economic consequences of holding it were too disastrous - even though they think Euro membership is also economically disastrous for Italy. If this isn't solved by fixing the Euro, some country will leave in a disorderly manner, and risk collapsing it, or voters will try more and more extreme parties in order to get the problem solved. Note how so many EU countries have lost traditional parties of government in recent years: the SPD in Germany, socialists in France, Pasok in Greece, both old main parties in Italy are now bit-part players around 10% of the vote.

But, as you say, governments also find it useful to complain about decisions they've signed up to in Brussels. The most dishonest thing. Take the recent vaccine fuck-up - we still have no idea whose fault it was, nor will there be probably ever be a political accounting. It suits the governments to blame the Commission - but one reason they took until November to sign most of their contracts was haggling about the price from the member states in the vaccination committees. None of them admit that now though - they might have to resign. So Von der Leyen makes a lovely scapegoat. But as a voter, what can you do? Who can you blame? And how can you vote the buggers out?

But on the other hand, what if some previous government has signed up to something you don't want - and you now can't change it? Who can you blame but Brussels for decisions you don't like or control then?

Now British governments can no longer hide behind this. And those people who voted Brexit on constitutional grounds are happy with that, it's what they voted for.

Those Northern (red wall) seats becoming marginal is shifting the political gravity of this country North - which is likely to be a good thing for reducing the wealth disparities between North and South - but that's a side-effect of Brexit breaking down traditional party support. That one is actually voters' fault as much as politicians. If you only ever vote for one party, they'll tend to take you for granted, and you incentivise the other party to ignore you too.

Some people of course, voted on immigration. That couldn't easily be changed within the EU. But it nicely suited both parties I suspect - that they wanted high net immigration - and suited many voters, but gave a way to easily ignore the economic losers. A lesson other EU countries ought to learn about the Euro, lest the voters suddenly refuse to cooperate, and blow the whole thing up.

Re: Christian denominations in the country are now more likely to vote Conservative

Loyal Commenter,

I had a recollection of seeing polling that showed that leave voting was pretty much corelated with age. And continued to rise with it, but can't find them now. Just did a quick Google. Partly it's a survey data issue. The over 65s are only about 20% of the voting population, so in a normal survey of 1,200-1,500 people, that's only a few hundred people - which means that further dividing it gives ridiculous margins of error. Also polling samples are balanced as a total, not for each subgroup, so you're also introducing massive sampling bias when trying to extrapolate from small sub-samples.

The best I could find was leave-remain split up to 65+ Scroll down to Table 3

This shows the 65+ lot (born in at latest 1951) were 7% more leave-y than the next lowest cohort.

I did find one more granular sample, from a big poll that goes up to 75. It's the only thing I found, and less representative because it's middle class with at least 1 A Level voters:

link to Yougov-Economist table

This still shows the 75+ group - born in at least 1941 and therefore definitely not being Boomers - being more leave-y than every younger cohort. Sorry I can't find better data.

So before you go off on the standard anti-Boomer rant, you might want to have a brief reconsider.

It should also be pointed out that this group voted in favour of remaining in the EEC in 1975. And so rather than being because of their hatred of peace and mother's apple pie, it could be because their experience of EU membership in some way failed to live up to their hopes of it. Or it could be that they would have been happy to stay in the EEC, but were unhappy with the EU.

Oh and finally, because it's such a common talking point - it is not true that all the poor young workers are doomed to a life on zero hours contracts. I've just downloaded the ONS stats on this here - and the highest proportion of the workforce that have been on a ZHC this century is 3.3% (1.05m) in the 1st quarter of last year. Before the coronavirus crisis it's been wandering around 2.5%. Around 55-60% of people on ZHCs say to the Labour Force Survey that they're happy with the hours they've got and don't want more - and have for the last decade. So while they might be a problem, it's not the huge problem that it's made out to be, for political reasons.

Re: Great quote

Ah good old Peter Hennessy. A God amongst men, and someone who can write readable but academically rigorous history.

Re: Causality vs Causation

That was my first though. But they've written a whole book. You'd hope they've actually been more competent with statistics than that.

Re: Correlation or causation?

If you're youngish, it might have been Labour who put you in your current situation in 2016. To have stronger feelings about Thatcher, rather than Blair, you'd expect someone to be in their 50s maybe?

Whereas if you're in your 70s you might have stronger feelings about the 70s than Thatcher.

I'm not quite sure when political identities form, but it does seem to take many people a long time to change their minds once made up.

My Nan was still blaming Labour personally (and angrily) for our lack of preparedness for WWII in the 80s. This being because she'd joined the peace movement in the late 20s and marched against re-armament - and presumably as part of admitting what she thought was a huge mistake she was determined to blame those around her. Her house was bombed in September 1940 and Hitler destroyed her brand new saucepans. That Hitler, what a bastard!

She also signed the pledge in the 20s, in her idealistic youth. Never to drink alcohol in her life. I'm still not sure if she thought that was a worse mistake than marching against re-armament and thus sending her brothers off to war inadequately equipped...

My Mum (in her 80s) is still bitter about the 1970s - and that is her go-to reason for being hugely anti-Labour.

But not that many people remember politics in detail. So who you blame for a specific situation may be the one who dealt with it last, or the most memorable one to do so?

Re: Christian denominations in the country are now more likely to vote Conservative

People who go to church tend to skew older. As do people who vote, as do people who vote Conservative. As did people who voted for Brexit.

I'm not sure how true that is of catholics and muslims, although I suspect its similar. The young muslims I know tend to attend mosque about as infrequently as the children of churchgoing parents.

We've had a big influx of Polish, Slovak and Czech catholics, who are younger, and you'd have thought would be voting to stay in the EU - as they've still got strong links home.

But it's going to take an awful lot of statistical untangling to get any sense out of it. If it's even possible. I'm personally skeptical, but haven't read the book.

We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple

Re: Ooh, Shiny

Nick Ryan,

I don't call it good design myself. It's designed to look pretty for a day, or a few months for the mythical person who never drops anything and always has perfectly clean hands.

For the rest of us mere mortals, a case is a requirement. So why not design the phone to be ergonomic out of the box?

Rember the old HTC Desire? Lovely ergonomic rubber coating on the back and sides, so non-slip and comfortable to hold. Also with bezels round the screen to protect it, from anything other than a direct drop face down to a non flat surface, as the rubber and bezel protected it on flat ones. Also looked nice, as there was brushed alumium on the bits that weren't rubberised. That was actual good design. The iPhones sacrifice usability for prettiness.

This being the company that brought you the glass backed phone, because apparently bars of soap weren't slippery enough for Apple...

Watch this: Ingenuity – Earth's first aircraft to fly on another planet – take off on Mars

Re: Nothing new under the sun

Newton may have had his calculus, but his biscuit is shit compared to old Choco Leibnitz...

Lock up your Peloton smart treadmills, watchdog warns families following one death, numerous injuries

Re: Rebrand?

Instead of Peloton - why not Pelotunder?

Huawei could have snooped on the Dutch prime minister's phone calls thanks to KPN network core access

Re: The report actually seems worse than this

Substitute Ericsson or Nokia for Huawei in that report and absolutely nothing changes.

True enough. Outsourcing core network management, rather than buying kit and managing it yourself means you've handed over the keys to the kingdom to someone else - and you're little better than an MVNO - except with all the insecurity of trying to manage a network you don't have the competence to control. It's like banks and supermarkets outsourcing their core IT - madness. A bank is just a database with branches attached, and a supermarket that doesn't control its stock control system is insane - which is why Sainsbury's had to do an emergency reverse-ferret in-source 20 years ago.

Though there is one major difference. The Swedish and Finnish governments are vegetarians, in comparison to the Chinese government carnivores (or is that wolf warriors?). Plus there aren't allegations that Ericsson and Nokia are under their governments' control - though it ought to worry the Dutch a lot less even if they were.

If you can manage a network without subscriber information then fair play to you.

The allegation in the original Dutch article, was that Huawei had put in place software to allow them to exfiltrate subscriber data, and had regularly updated this, as well as regularly using it to do so. Even after being told to stop. The manager of your systems has no excuse or legal right to steal data from your systems - though clearly they may need access to said data while operating your systems. I still think your statement above is wrong though, there should be little need for the people running the core network to ever look at individual subscriber info - that should be accessed by the customer service people.

Re: The report actually seems worse than this

Did you catch the part where they said that Huawei was paid to have that access?

Strangely yes, I can read and everything. Did they hire Huawei to download susbcriber data (not needed to run the network core) and then refuse to stop after being told to?

That's a concrete accusation of wrongdoing. Much of the other stuff comes from an audit report, and is (as you say) a risk - and no more.

Also the logging into the core network from China, rather than management offices in the Netherlands may or may not be dodgy depending on the contract.

Re: Lawful ?

Khaptain,

I think it's a reference to one of the allegations that Huawei could see the list of numbers under investigation by Dutch police and intelligence services. Not reported specifically in this piece, but apparently in the original Dutch news piece.

Whether that's access to just the list, or to actual call and intercept data I don't know.

The allegation they could listen to any call by anybody was separate.

Re: The report actually seems worse than this

It's a mobile phone system. 3G and 4G in this case.

I've only seen a quick translation of the Dutch report, which conflates the risk of using Huawei kit with using Huawei as outsourced network management. Assuming no backdoors in Huawei kit - those are two vastly different risks!

But if it's true that Huawei were downloading and subscriber data, even after being told to stop, then that is definitely nefarious - even if everything else alleged is only a risk that they could have - not proof that they did.

On t'other hand, if they had the keys to manage the network, they presumably had at least some abiltiy to cover their tracks and make audit of their actual actions hard to impossible.

The report actually seems worse than this

Dear El Reg,

I hope you come back to this story. Saw it this morning, and was hoping for more technical coverage.

The main points of the story appear to be:

They had full network access. Could listen into any call (including the PM's phone) and also had a list of all accounts under intercept/surveillance from both police and intelligence services. Didn't see if they'd actually done this, or if it was even possible to check.

Huawei had also accessed the network from inside China. Don't know if that was in accordance with the network management outsourcing agreement or in breach.

They'd also put in place measures to see subscriber data, and been looking at it. Including for a subsidiary company - and continued to do so even after being told to stop.

Which rather sounds like blackmail, as the company didn't release the report out of fear of exposure. So maybe Huawei played on that? Why otherwise directly ignore an instruction from your client?

Finally the translation I saw alleged that Huwawei were still managing the network, depsite the company's claim they were no longer outsourcing to them.

Elon Musk's SpaceX bags $3bn NASA contract to, fingers crossed, land first woman on the Moon

Re: To do list

tfb,

The LEM was fly-by-wire. But you don't say that someone flying an Airbus manually isn't flying manually, just because the computer is still invovled.

Armstrong came off the automatic flight control and also flew in a way that hadn't been normally simulated, while searching for somewhere flat. That's manual flying by any useful definition.

Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess

You aren’t going to get Legionella from a boiling water tap. The word boiling being the clue.

Admittedly some keep the water under boiling, so make rubbish tea, and the ones I’ve tried that actually boil it spit steam when you first turn them on. I’d rather boil a kettle. And I’ve seen one drunk person scald themselves as well, despite the weird spring loaded controls that are supposed to stop that.

But hot water above 60 degrees will pasteurise your hot water system in 2 minutes. So even coffee from a normal hot tap should be safe, just horrible.

Get a b'desk!

For £2,000 you can get a double bed that folds flat against the wall and has a desk underneath it. The single version is about £1,400 - the desktop is gimballed so that it stays upright as the bed is folded back down.

I'm happy to stand up to get my cuppa, the excercise is good for me. And if it tires me too much, then simply fold down the bed and sleep away the afternoon.

Penguin icon, because cuddly toy to help keep away the nightmares (about the boss catching me!).

Watchdog thinks Google tricked Australians into giving up data, sues. Judge semi-agrees

Re: on and off is a view feature.

I'm sure that behaviour was only the result of a bug, or possibly some "test code", left in by an innocent Google software engineer - who had definitely not been authorised to do so by management.

Remember, the computer is your friend!

Got $10k to burn? Ultra-rare Piet Mondrian-esque Apple laptop is up for grabs on eBay

Re: "It almost looks as though it was made of Lego"

It certainly is orginal. My friend had one, but with the boring grey plastic casing though. It was the first Mac I'd ever used. He brought it to me during the Superbowl, when we were students. I was drunk (it was 2am) and he was frantically finishing an essay - he'd hit print and not hit save first. Textbook error! It had got into some kind of loop of essay-death, where it wouldn't print or cancel the print job. I managed to fix it in the end and get back to the cheap cider I was probably drinking.

UK's National Rail backs down from greyscale website tribute to Prince Phil after visually impaired users complain

I hate Google Maps. It's good software, but the display is horrible. Contrast is great. One of the nice things about using a good A-Z is that it's really easy to see what's going on, while you're concentrating on the difficult task of navigating an area that you don't know.

And when displaying their traffic information, they choose a bizarre combination of the two colours that are most associated with colour blindness, red (well admittedly a dark orange) and green. Which I can't tell apart.

And the fuckers also only semi enable zooming. Yes, you can zoom in, but certain elements don't change size - like the aforementioned traffic lines. If they were bigger, I could have a stab at telling them apart, because I'm not colour blind in the normal sense, I just have very low vision and that makes it hard for me to tell similar coulours apart - make them bigger (or compare them directly against each other) and I can usually do it. They also use a fixed text size, so I can't zoom in place names.

Although at least Google have an excuse in that keeping the map to scale while changing the zoom level and adding extra information is a complex set of problems.

The arrrogant fuckers who design websites and use some setting to disable zooming on mobile browsers should be beaten with sticks! I'm pretty fucking annoyed that the browser makers gave them that option, rather than just ignoring them and letting their users operate their software as intended. A quick pinch to zoom to read a difficult word is sometimes really useful.

Still, mustn't grumble I suppose. There are so many better tools than the old days - so we're still basically living the dream. Although what exactly happened to my domestic robot that would make the dinner, do the washing up and tidy my bedroom for me?

Besides can't people read anymore? It doesn't matter if a button has colour, just READ what's on the damn thing!

Dear anon coward,

This reminds me of school. When I refused to play cricket, on the grounds that I can't see the ball. The teacher's response was the familliar one where he thought I should just try harder, he suggested I be the umpire instead... I mean, I know people complain that the referee is blind all the time, but it's probably not such a great idea to actually try it! Tell me, do you instruct people in wheelchairs to stop being so lazy and get up and walk as well?

Do you really find it so hard to understand that not everybody has equal ablities? God knows why. Enough has been said about it over the years - but then a lot of stuff gets talked about, and we can't know everything. Society is a compromise between a set of different interests, where we hopefully try to make things work well for as many people as possible. We probably shouldn't tear up the Tower of London to allow wheelchair access - though some parts of it could easily be made more accessible with no damage to a historic monument (know this from taking a pushchair round it a few years ago). Public buildings have less excuse - unless they too are of monuments that are hard to modify. However the cost to websites to make them clear and readable, is zero. Or negligable, it probably does take some time to think about, seeing as most of the people commissioning and designing them probably have normal vision.

In fact the majority on this website is also B/W except for the red banner at the top and the photo's. Double standards anyone?

Oddly enough, many users complained about various site re-designs at the time. And to be fair to them, El Reg actually has sought feedback after many of its design changes, and has subsequently made tweaks after users complained.

There is, sadly, a trend in modern web / UI design away from clarity of purpose, and towards some aesthetic known only to the themselves. Seemingly a bit like the way a school of architects decided that their buildings should be aggressively ugly - and the more people complained about their hideous creations, the more sniffy they became about these revolting peasants.

Apparently modern designs should be flat and without seeming depth, with vast white, empty spaces. Minimalism is king. Colours should be muted and high contrast often avoided - clear visual cues such as borders should be got rid of, or if forced to have them they should be the palest of greys, so as not to offend the artistic eye of the creator. Buttons are also bad! Too high contrast, too clear, too functional? Heaven alone knows. But clickable text is fine.

I had to pay Mum's Congestion Charge for her the other day, because the TFL site designers thougth that a tiny text link on the far right of the page was superior to a nice button labelled PAY THE CONGESTION CHARGE in the middle of the relevant page. Fuck knows why!

When I lay out data on a spreadsheet I consider the two obvious options. I can use lines and borders to denote the different bits of information, and their interrelationships, or I can use colour. Sometimes a mixture of both is even clearer, because too many line-defined borders can be as confusing as too few. In my case I'm seeking maximum clarity for minimum effort from the reader. But I accept that I have all the artistic talent of a cluster of colourblind hedgehogs, in a bag. However if making a website clear and easy to use someone offends the artistic integrity of a web designer, might I respectfully suggest that they seek other employment. Go the whole hog and become an artist perhaps? But if they wish to continue with their job of providing information in as clear and visually pleasing a manner as posible, then might I suggest they use a combination of colour and line to group the infromation they are displaying and sufficient contrast to make the site usable for the people struggling to parse it.

It's surely not too much to ask?

Feature bloat: Psychology boffins find people tend to add elements to solve a problem rather than take things away

How many software packages had all the useful features added between version 1 and (3 to 5), and subsequently later versions kept adding functionality that REDUCED the overall performance / usefulness of the software?

Sir! Sir! I know this sir! That's a trick question sir! All of them sir!

No software has ever been improved after version 5.

Texan's alleged Amazon bombing effort fizzles: Militia man wanted to take out 'about 70 per cent of the internet'

I'm appalled!

Dear Sir,

I wish to complain in the strongest terms, and as often as possible! Why oh why, can a man no longer trust his explosives dealer?

Yours Faithfully,

Disgusted (of Tunbridge Wells)

Stuxnet sibling theory surges after Iran says nuke facility shut down by electrical fault

Re: intelligence sources

Some leaks are authorised.

Israel, like most countries' intelligence services, has an official "no comment" policy. But it's often useful for information to "leak" out - either because it's politically convenient or even because Israel wants other countries to know roughly what they're up to.

This could be a signal to Iran that "we can keep doing this so long as you try to build nukes" or a political signal to the US to "get a move on and stop Iran going nuclear before we do it", or anything in between.

Similarly Israel has not officially admitted to having nuclear weapons, as that has its political embarrassments. But nukes are only any use as a deterent if people think you've got them and might use them. Hence they also want everyone to know that they defenitely have got nuclear weapons.

...Extra points if it turns out to be a lie and they've had everyone fooled for decades (and saved a bundle of cash)...

Don't forget

Israel also had at a Syrian research reactor back in 2011. In that case using some novel naughtiness to do horrible things to Syria's air defence network while their aircraft wandered in and bombed it unhindered.

On searching online, to make sure I'd remembered correctly, I discover that Israel have subsequently admitted it and had given it the pleasing codename of Operation Outside the Box.

UK's National Cyber Security Centre recommends password generation idea suggested by El Reg commenter

Re: Set up for dictionary based attacks?

43 Walruses Vomit...?

Is that what happens in the rather darker sequel to 'The 12 Days of Christmas'?

Re: using your pet's name as a password could make you an easy target

Is his name really Spot? But "blobllobloobllleeplbll" is what it sounds like underwater?

‘Can COVID-19 vaccines connect me to the internet?’

Re: Village idiot syndrome...

True. But then we can also use Facebook to find them. So we simply need bigger sacks...

Re: removal will be quite lucrative in a few years time

Having just returned to my office - I was again reminded of the joys of our wonderful location...

2 doors down is a shop selling scented candles, joss sticks and "herbal highs". T'other side of that is a tattoo place. Exactly opposite it is a tattoo removal place. Presumably there to get rid of what you put on after taking whatever you got from next door...

Greenland's elections just bolstered China's tech world domination plan

Re: Nothing rare about rare earths

Kangaroo Jam? What genre of music do they play?

I know that Australia has provided the world with many "musical" exports, I’ve still not forgiven them for Kylie and Jason.

Far be it from me to complain but?

Erm, there's a few problems with this article. Firstly being that rare earths aren't rare.

As ChrisG said, up-thread, it's the processing that's the problem. There are rare earths in many mineral deposits, but the question is whether they're in a concentration to make it worthwhile getting them out. This being partly because demand is relatively low (annual use in the hundreds of tonnes for many rare earths) and also because it's often a bit messy. So a lot got done in China, because they were willing to put up with lower environmental standards, and it costs more to do it without polluting.

China has the largest reserves of rare earths, because "reserves" in the resource extraction industry has a very specific meaning. A reserve is a proven mineral deposit that has been surveyed not just to see that it's there in sufficient quantity and concentration, but also at an affordable price taking into account wages, government permits and transport costs. So basically you've done all the expensive survey work, and are on the way to getting all the government and environmental paperwork done - as well as all the testing of samples. This is not something any company is going to pay to do, unless there's a likelyhood of actually doing any mining - hence China having most of the reserves. A "resource" is where you've proved the stuff exists and can be extracted in theory, but not done anything further yet. This is why we only have a few years left of vital mineral resources - and the occasional panic news article about it. Who on eath is going to pay to do all that work for something they're not going to mine for another 50 years?

Finally:

China has the world's largest reserves of rare earths, a happy strategic accident that it has never used to make life hard for other nations.

I can't work out if this is sarcasm or not? The next sentence tends to imply that it's not, but people are worried. But it should be sarcastic, and that's El Reg's style after all. I'm presuming nobody's forgetten that China threatened to embargo foreign sales of rare earths last decade, unless the manufacturing they were used for was done in China? Which caused the price to spike and a couple of companies to start ramping up prodcution - only for the price to collapse and the whole idea to be quietly forgotten about.

British gambling giant Betfred told to pay stiffed winner £1.7m jackpot after claiming 'software problem'

Re: If BetFred have a valid legal case ...

Well I'm sure they've got some sort of software bug clause in their Ts&Cs. So that if something goes drastically wrong they don't have to pay out. Which may be usable in some cases and not in others, or may have been badly drafted - or struck down by the court, the article doesn't really say.

Remember that Pepsi competition from twenty years ago where they seem to have mixed up the win a free can of Pepsi with the star prize of £50,000. So thousands of people won the £50k and they had to withdraw the competition.

So it might be with a major bug that's going to take down the company, the courts would let them off - but in the case of one specific winner it's deemed unfair that their Ts&Cs let them get away with it.

Particularly if the Ts&Cs aren't reciprocal. It's one of the tenets of modern comsumer contract law thatthings should be fair, so if the company is protected from bugs, then so should the consumer be. So that might be another reason invalidate them.

Re: Works Both Ways

Surely a simpler solution.

While the test suite is being run, the software developer sits on a chair above a tank of hungry pirhanas. If the software passes the test, then the ligths go green and a small happy fanfare is played. If the software fails the test, then a trapdoor opens - and the Bond theme plays over the speakers to partially drown out the screams...

We finally get to spot a burnt-out comet and what is it covered in? Talcum powder

Re: Maybe

It's not an old comet but a youngster that has been recently bathed and talced?

This is obviously true. And I don't know why we pay these scientists, given how rubbish they clearly are. They're assuming the comet is old, because it's lost all its water. Whereas what they actually need to do is look for the towel, that has no doubt been discarded somewhere nearby. This will show them where all the liquids have gone...

As well as being a good general principle for life, in that it's vital to know where your towel is.

Also be on the look-out for any rubber ducks... Actually, we may have already found that: link to BBC.

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

Re: Shaking the Money Tree again

The other thing that might fall out of a tree when you shake it is an angry drop bear...

Nominet ignores advice, rejects serious change despite losing CEO, chair, half its board in membership vote

Leads to an interesting question. Is this actually quite a cunning move? Is it possible to craft an EGM resolution to remove a CEO who's not actually on the board? I don't know the articles of association, so have no idea what is possible, and what's not.

Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie

Re: Game theory

I’m entirely in agreement with Churchill that democracy is way better than anything else. My problem is with the PR is fairer crowd. PR creates as many problems as it solves. One of the good points of our first past the post system is the negative one, that it can be used to kick the bastards out, if enough voters decide to gang up on one party.

One big advantage of PR is that it encourages small parties and allows the expression of different points of view. The problem is that this often forces post election deals to build governments, which gives excessive powers to those small parties. And so long as the numbers add up, they might continue to get invited into government and there’s no way for other voters to get rid of them.

Re: Game theory

This is why I dislike PR. There’s nothing wrong with it - apart from all its supporters banging on about how much better it is. Whichever of a million different flavours that they prefer... all electoral systems are unfair, just in different ways.

I agree with the Patrician. It should be one man, one vote. I’ll volunteer to be the man, and I cast my vote for myself.

My first policy is that supermarkets must sell sorbet as well as ice cream. And at fair prices. And bacon sandwiches must be available in all workplaces. Along with decent tea.

Now that half of Nominet's board has been ejected, what happens next? Let us walk you through the possibilities

Re: Gi's a job!

I’ll do it for 1.6m! And I make a great martini. And an even better margarita.

I did a database course back in the 90s if it helps. Haven’t used any of it since 2001 mind.

Re: And further down the line - #DissolveTheUnion

My cockney Grandad always finished all nursery rhymes he sang to us with eye-tiddley-eye-tie, pom-pom!

So that’s a domain I’d love to own!

Wonder if he did that after the national anthem, or in church after hymns?

Re: Then the UK will shrink even further!

Someone (Mitch Benn?) wrote a silly song about our name. And settled on Ukogbani. Which is the acronym for The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Which I believe is still the longest official country name in the world. If ambassadors had to have their country name printed on their back, like footballers, all our diplomats would have to be either shot putters, or massively greedy.