Posts by Danny 2

Facebook back in court fighting claims it nicked British data centre IP

Re: NDAs are bullshit

I signed a contract once for a very good wage that stated if I broke the contract, left the contract, or even failed to turn up on time then I owed the umbrella group Alexander Mann £10,000. They mucked me around and I walked, and they threatened me with the £10,000 clause. Total BS. My brother in law is a QC and he told me the contract was "restraint of trade" and no court would pay attention to them. It's a scare tactic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade#England_and_the_UK

Mind the gap: Men paid 18.6% more than women in Blighty tech sector

About 12% of companies have a pro-female pay bias. For example Smirnoff.

I saw abother study last year that showed British females aged 22 to 30 earn more than British males aged 22 to 30, which could be seen as progress but equally could be seen as dirty old men employing sexually eligible young women.

Re: @AC

"The El Reg editor though should have done his job"

The fact you can safely assume the El Reg editor is a male kind of proves the point of the article. You think you are not sexist because the stupid female journalist should have been corrected by the assumed to be male editor.

While a fan of "You've Got Foetus on Your Breath" I still think you've gone to far. You can't eat baby sandwiches everyday and expect to stay healthy.

Re: Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

Any gender imbalanced working environment is sexist, as explained by Gorky.

26 Men and a Girl

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TwenSix.shtml

And you know he was correct because he had a park named after him, and someone made a movie about the park.

I'm confused by you stating IT is a brutal meritocracy while admitting a lot of guys only occupy space. If it was a genuine brutal meritocracy then those male space occupiers would be cut, and I suggest many of them would be replaced with more competent females. My contention is IT is largely an idiocracy. In the 1980s and 1990s a whole wheen of incompetents were attracted in to a profession they have no skill or aptitude for, and have now risen to management positions.

Worse, even many of the genuinely talented engineers and programmers have poor "man"-management skills.

Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

A lot of the IT gender pay grade differential seems to me to be down to fewer women in better paid roles, due to fewer women training for those roles *and* fewer women who do train for those roles being welcomed.

In my experience the fewer female workers were ecouraged and promoted by employers when productive, but because it is an overhwhelmingly male industry then there is a culture of sexism that has actually got worse over the past thirty years that is discouraging to females.

Paris Hilton, because I'm talking about us.

2001: A Space Odyssey has haunted pop culture with anxiety about rogue AIs for half a century

Amazon Adapting Iain M Banks Space Opera Consider Phlebas

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/amazon-adapting-iain-m-banks-space-opera-consider-phlebas/

I'd be happier about this if I wasn't boycotting Amazon.

Re: For more details....

Download the DAISY.zip for The Lost Worlds of 2001

I'm not being helpful, just pointing out the irony...

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7571361M/The_Lost_Worlds_of_2001/daisy

Books for people who don't read print?

The Internet Archive is proud to be distributing over 1 million books free in a format called DAISY, designed for those of us who find it challenging to use regular printed media.

There are two types of DAISYs on Open Library: open and protected. Open DAISYs can be read by anyone in the world on many different devices. Protected DAISYs (like this one) can only be opened using a key issued by the Library of Congress NLS program.

Enjoy!

Are you able to read this headline? Then you're not Julian Assange. His broadband is unplugged

This is the tweet that got him silenced

"In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."

It is factual. It is certainly undiplomatic but that could be considered a virtue. Why has Germany arrested a Catalan democrat while Finland and Belgium didn't?

Spain is not good at this democracy game, they are new to it, but what is Germany's excuse?

Re: And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere

Well, there is British music which is quite wonderful music, and then there is American music which is a bit rapey.

We've heard US politicians saying he should be killed. We know there is a 'secret' Grand Jury to extradite him. We've seen how Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have been treated. His fears are rational, even if he isn't often rational.

I reckon a month inside and a guarantee of safe conduct to a third country is the most sensible option. Let him go to Ecuador or Australia on his release, but guarantee he won't be sent to the USA. Problem solved.

Re: And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere

Contempt of court is an utterly silly charge, and the maximum sentence reflects that. A month inside and a £2500 fine - I think Julian would jump for that 'punishment' compared to his current situation.

I mentioned here a couple of years ago I was thrown out of my own trial for wearing my jacket disrespectfully in court, before the court had started, and then was charged with failure to attend trial despite my best efforts to get back in. That was so damn silly that I'd have to plead guilty to contempt of court from the start if I ever end up in court again.

Anyway, I think Assange faces the more serious charge of skipping bail, but the years confined to a pokey room in an embassy with only morons for company should be taken into account.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/assange_bail_warrant_still_valid/

And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere

I'm uncomfortable with the hateful tone of many of the comments here.

I don't agree with a lot of Assange's decisions and I wouldn't want to have him staying in my flat. He strikes me as a bit of a narcissist with Asperger's. But he started off as a good programmer and a lot of his work at Wikileaks was very important. His fear of extradition to the US is rational.

I particulary dislike the earlier jokes about prison rape. When wider society jokes about this, it enables it. That is the case in the US which some say is the only society with more raped men than women, and a recent Howard League report shows an increase in the UK, at least 1% of prisoners here. Bear in mind all of us could make one bad decision and end up behind bars and we would want to be treated decently.

I'm not a St Julian fanbois, but I don't approve of the gloating either. I also disapprove of the expense of this case, the cost of his surveillance. It's irresponsible to extradite anyone to the US, and if Assange is willing to spend time in a British prison for skipping trial in exchange for no extradition to the US then that seems the adult solution.

Re: It could be have been worse...

In both cases, should've worn a condom.

Cambridge Analytica's daddy biz had 'routine access' to UK secrets

No Comment

Cambridge Analytica tweeted, "Cambridge Analytica subcontracted some digital marketing and software development to Aggregate IQ in 2014 and 2015."

AggregateIQ released a statement, "AggregateIQ has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica."

They are mutually exclusive claims, unforced lies. C'mon boys, get your story straight before putting your foot in your mouth and shooting yourself in the foot.

Fed up with Facebook data slurping? Firefox has a cunning plan

Burn

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as Facebook see us!"

you've quit Facebook

ahead of me

we've fallen out

at least on this we agree

so don't come around

no checking up on me

since we've fallen out

i've been left here to seethe

and your enemies

became my closest friends

since we've fallen out

fallen right over the edge

my patience wore

and my temper thinned

since we've fallen out

never to make up again

such a waste of a friendship

since we've fallen out

spiralled out of existence

so forget that we happened

i've picked over the bones

since we've fallen out

i've tortured and torn

my soul from its core

my soul is ripped from its core

since we've fallen out

i don't believe anymore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i81oLnlaovc

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

A ruse by any other name smells like a cheat

The sheer number of shell company names suggest planned malfeasance, especially Aleksandr Kogan's 'cloak and data' pseudonym Aleksandr Spectre.

An innocent company wouldn't have paid those huge legal fees to buy time, and whatever skeletons were in those crates hastily removed on Monday, shamelessly under the journalists noses, will be disappeared by now.

The delay in getting a warrant hints at corruption or complicity within the British establishment and highlights that the ICO should no longer be required to obtain a warrant.

Facebook's complicity is shown by its legal threats against The Observer before publication, but it's lack of legal action against Cambridge Analytica for reputational damage after losing many billions of dollars.

Re: The *only* kind of UK warrant you have to give 7 days notice to execute.

It's definitely poor legal drafting, but I assume deliberately so. This case proves that the ICO shouldn't even require a warrant.

Facebook's inflection point: Now everyone knows this greedy mass surveillance operation for what it is

ICO is go!

7:10pm on a Friday night and the court finally grants a warrant to the ICO. I hope they break down the doors with an axe tonight but I suspect the two CA QCs kicked it into next week as they'd aimed to.

Prof Stephen Hawking's ashes will be interred alongside Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin

Britain's highest honour?

Hawking wasn't even knighted, even Ringo Starr is a Sir. Seb Coe was made a Lord.

Richard Dawkins complained recently that people mistake him for Hawking - aye, he wishes. Let's bury Dawkins at Westminster Abbey, alive, at least up to his neck. If information isn't lost then can we really die, at least if we post here enough?

I hope one of Hawking's fans create a mini black hole that swallows up the abbey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NAdSuieGE

Surprise UK raid of Cambridge Analytica delayed: Nobody expects the British information commissioner!

Re: Missed this, been out all day

There is a story in The Guardian just now that ties the two stories together. An award winning journalism student accused her boyfriend of leaking nude selfies online and he denied it. She'd sent them via Facebook. It's entitled "What I learned when naked pictures of me were leaked online", apparently not ironically.

Re: On the other hand...

They claimed at the video-taped meeting that they only use time-limited ProtonMail emails, so no email logs.

Why does the ICO even require a warrant?

The emergency services can just break down your door if they suspect there is a crime being committed or if someone is at risk, this case proves the ICO is ineffectual. Also, their maximum fine is £500,000 which is peanuts for companies like Facebook, so why not add the threat of prison sentences too?

That long-awaited Mark Zuckerberg response: Everything's fine! Mostly fixed! Facebook's great! All good in the hoodie!

SPECTRE! Double doh heaven

I was going to request an icon of a man stroking a pussy, but I suppose that would be misused.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/22/facebook-gave-data-about-57bn-friendships-to-academic-aleksandr-kogan

[Facebook] provided him with an anonymised, aggregate dataset of 57bn Facebook friendships...

Kogan was publishing under the name Aleksandr Spectre at the time. A University of Cambridge press release on the study’s publication noted that the paper was “the first output of ongoing research collaborations between Spectre’s lab in Cambridge and Facebook”.

That helps explain why the ICO still doesn't have a warrant to visit Cambridge Analytica, while TV shows boxes of documents and backups being evacuated.

I wonder which government ministers got the beautiful Ukrainian women.

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

Re: Cambridge Analytica can easily dodge the shitstorm

Anonymous age verification flowchart

1) Are you happy for us to video you when you are asleep and broadcast it? Y

2) Can you recognise Daddy Pig? Y

3) Are you Andy Murray? N

You are not old enough to watch porn online.

Re: AI Groomed Candidates

Roombas with kittens on top of them! It's an Adam Curtis reference quoting from an actual poem, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011lvb9

Re: AI Groomed Candidates

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace

Comedy gold!

"...equally effective can go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that's too good to be true, and make sure it's video-recorded, these sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption..."

UK surgeon suspects his PC was hacked to target Syrian hospital

Re: EXIF data?

Not him, he wasn't there, but maybe someone else who was slipped that way. There are too few known details to guess though but he shouldn't blame himself.

Here is an idea, maybe some Reg reader closer to Surrey could offer him some computing security advice? If only to assuage him of responsibility.

Re: Rather far fetched...

This did seem more like survivor guilt than hard evidence. Maybe if Russian bunker busters had hit Surrey rather than Syria.

Cambridge Analytica CEO suspended – and that's not even the worst news for them today

Re: Emerdata Ltd

Tory donors on the board of Cambridge Analytics - and still no warrant for the ICO?

At times like this the smear 'conspiracy theorist' is a badge of honour.

Re: If you think that CA is alone in this mess...

Also, Free Credit Check adverts on the TV - "don't tell them your name, Pike"

Re: Misinformation Abounds

I politely disagree because you don't need to understand a technology to be affected by it. Non-military people should be able to write about wars to use an analogy. I'm slightly impressed Macwhirter didn't label it Open Authentication.

He is not alone among non-technical journalists arguing for greater regulation, such as

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/its-time-to-regulate-the-internet/556097/

I'd comment on Macwhirter's article to suggest new legislation so the ICO doesn't require a warrant to raid premises in future, but I'd have to use a social media account to log in!

Re: Any Social Network Is Tomorrow's MySpace

Certainly not 15 years ago in the past.

I find it very suspicious that the ICO still doesn't have a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica, or that they haven't responded to CA's claims that the company had been cooperating contrary to ICO claims.

I noticed one US commentator claiming Cambridge Analytica's Facebook micro-targetting can't be that effective because it didn't work for Ted Cruz, and secondly because they wouldn't have to offer dirty tricks and honey traps if it did.

I don't find that convincing because Cruz lost in the Primaries, and perhaps was intended by Mercer to lose. It seems to have worked elsewhere including Kenya, although we can't know how many times it failed to swing an election, but it seems criminally reckless in Kenya due to previous electoral violence there. Indeed, even to consider a Sri Lankan client is morally bankrupt for the same reason.

This is at least as big a scandal as the NotW hacking scandal, and I'd suggest banning the Mercer family from any corporate involvement in the UK.

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

The Daily Mail is reporting the driver was a felon who'd spent four years in prison for armed robbery and falsifying documents. Typical Uber employee then.

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

I just had to install Windows 10 from scratch on a Lidl tablet for my mum, Took me two days on a fast internet connection, Effing insulting. Forced me to create a disposable outlook account, and then whined when I didn't want Edge as the default browser? It used to be bimbo~ware, now it is Putin~ware. I feel dirty.

Anyone fancy testing the 'unlimited' drive writes claim on Nimbus Data's 100TB whopper SSD?

Re: 30TB?

Truth? You can't backup the truth!

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

Re: We don't know

I cannot do it without Compters. [A Winter’s Tale]

NRA gives FCC boss Ajit Pai a gun as reward for killing net neutrality. Yeah, an actual gun

High velocity wounds are different

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns

Pai shows typically bad judgement associating with the NRA just as the rest of corporate America are distancing themselves.

UK names Russia as source of NotPetya, USA follows suit

WikiLeaks leak

In Leaked Chats, WikiLeaks Discusses Preference for GOP Over Clinton, Russia, Trolling, and Feminists They Don’t Like

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/

Off topic but I thought this may interest some of you. Some of the commentators are interesting if you can guess the names. I don't want to comment there but I am out of popcorn.

It took us less than 30 seconds to find banned 'deepfake' AI smut on the internet

Marge Simpson never did those things.

Yup, all the past years appalling videos and photographs of Trump have obviously been faked. It is simply not credible that the President of the United States of America would demean the office in that way.

FBI slams secret Nunes memo alleging Feds spied on Team Trump for political reasons

"I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they run the danger of falling into contempt, and popcorn being passed."

FYI: Processor bugs are everywhere – just ask Intel and AMD

Re: Even the 6502

The Z80A was bug free thanks to the sprites. My Spectrum also had the perfect keyboard. I keep telling potential employers that a fully secure business should only deploy Spectrums as one Sys Admin can listen if any modems or tape decks are being accessed.

Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018

#60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19VsGaAH_do

Smile

#50

"From the age of fifty, Moore’s Law began to age rapidly, passing into senescence and then, at the beginning of this month, into oblivion."

It's not that everything starts to go one thing after the other; everything goes suddenly, and all at once.

#meltdown #spectre

Hawaii governor: I wanted to tell everyone nuke alert was fake – I just forgot my password

Re: Eh?

Rocket surgery. Brain Science.

We're cutting F-35 costs, honest, insists jet-builder Lockheed Martin

Queen Elizabeth Class

I'm just glad someone has finally solved the problem of landing aircraft onto ships. Brown buying two aircraft carriers for £6 billion+ seems visionary now we can put aircraft on them. The Germans and Japanese will think twice before they mess with us again.

WW2 Enigma machine to be seized from shamed pharma bro Shkreli

Re: Fail

I'd suggest arbitrarily hiking his sentence by 56x would be appropriate. Because we can.