Posts by Dr Paul Taylor

Give Xfce a Mac or Unity-style makeover

The existing layouts are fun

Reg readers will already have tweaked their desktop layout for whatever they personally find most convenient.

Xfce (which I use myself) is good because you can "save" the layout and use it on another computer.

People who use tech because they're forced to do so for their work or domestic life, rather than out of choice, want their desktop icons to stay exactly the same, as we have seen from numerous "On Call" posts.

For them, it would be useful (for their BOFHs) if there were layouts exactly matching all previous versions of M$ Windows and MacOS. Then the BOFHs can switch the technophobes over to Linux and they might not notice.

Otherwise, I can't see why anyone would want to "play" with desktop layouts.

Ministers rejected NATS reimbursement plan before 2,000 UK flights were cancelled

100% capacity

All the problems that you list are the foreseeable consequences of running a system at 100% capacity. If Manglement makes the decision to do that then it is their fault when things inevitably fall over.

Microsoft to bounce mail from outdated Exchange servers

creating a monopoly?

Does this mean that M$ sites will only deliver email to their inmates if it has come from another site with recently unstalled M$ stuff?

As I have complained here and elsewhere several times, many universities have surrendered to M$ and forced even their FOSS-using CS staff to use it. Being an independent researcher, I can and do refuse to use it.

But I want to be able to communicate with my colleagues using the most efficient medium that anyone has even invented and not have to guess which balkanised "social media" they might use.

Debian is 33, Haiku is 25, and neither is standing still

Deb-Ian

I searched in vain for a more recent account of Ian Murdoch's tragic death, preceded by some altercation with the police.

Does anyone have any better understanding of what led up to this?

Autonomous AI attacks pose 'clear and present danger' to critical infrastructure

Re: Where cyber becomes kinetic

"kinetic" just means "moving", like in a "cinema": they both come from the Greek verb κῑνέω, “I move”.

maybe "dynamic" might be a better word, from δυναμικός, “powerful”?

Malicious SIMs can shut down phones, steal files, and drag 5G back to 2G

travelling

If you go to another country, you often buy a new SIM, very likely from a potentially dodgy corner store, so this sounds like a real threat.

The AI bubble is already popping; we just don't know it yet

interview format

very irritating and difficult to read. please edit such things into coherent structured narrative.

Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font

forcing HTML-enabled email

Some of us here read email in plain text, because HTML is a security hole (and just a damn nuisance).

We do not need special fonts to read ordinary English text.

This abuse of basic IT standards is yet another way of forcing us to use HTML email readers and thereby expose us to their security holes.

Digital sovereignty is real in Europe. The UK? Not so much

Open Rights with Google Javascript

Can't sign their petition without enabling Google and gstatic!

FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash another

Re: M$ has killed email

I didn't say that DMARC was M$. Mxtoolbox told me I had to use it to get email through to M$. As a result I get multiple copies of the same report from M$ and G. I had to write a program to interpret the stupid bureaucratic format but got no useful information from it. Apart from the fact that my emails are being accepted at the boundary of M$ (and G) sites. But then they're filed as spam.

BTW Please don't lecture me about spam and "reputation". I don't send much email. I frequently check my own domain name and IP against the spam databases listed on mxtoolbox, along with those of my hosting and ISP companies: they are all clean.

The problem is, as stated in this article and elsewhere, M$ (and G) want to turn email and everything else in the tech world into a cartel. University manglement (in many universities and many countries, but notably not France) has been sucked into this, despite the history that FOSS software was developed to a large extent in academic and quasi-academic settings.

M$ has killed email

I have successfully defended myself from M$'s hideous "operating system" and "word processor" for forty years, whilst successfully using email, the Internet and (to some extent) the Web.

However, M$ has now prevented me from communicating with my academic colleagues, even though most of them prefer to use FOSS, because it has conned university manglements to hand over their email systems. Now whenever I attempt to contact someone about an academic question, DMARC tells me that my email has arrived at the boundary of an M$ fiefdom, but then it is filed as spam.

The Document Foundation says Microsoft's file formats keep users on a short leash

Plain ASCII

cue the downvotes

AWS rolls the dice for faster, more efficient networking

algorithm?

This is a technical site, so please tell us what the key idea is, beyond suggesting that "random" means "spaghetti".

Britain's latest civil servant is a chatbot trained on GOV.UK misery

People have to use the phone line when the website refuses to cough up what they need.

Only to be subjected to long recorded messages telling the to use the website.

Followed by long recorded messages telling them about "zero tolerance of bad language", which gets them so annoyed that, when they finally get to speak to a human being, they use bad language.

All of this is intended to prevent people from complaining to large organisations. The AI ensures that no human being ever gets to hear the complaint.

To gain root access at this company, all an intruder had to do was ask nicely

Re: common sense needed

If you put all your personal information on a social media site owned by M$, that's your problem.

common sense needed

(1) Banks phone customers and ask them "security questions", clearly failing to understand that it's the caller who needs to identify themselves.

(2) I phoned HMRC (the tax office) to ask them to change my mobile number. I had a polite and fairly long conversation with a young guy. He asked me something like the date of my last communication with HMRC but would not give me a chance to look it up. At the end he told me he couldn't verify my identity. HMRC has plenty of records of my past employers, which of course I remember. I repeated this request in a letter, which is far less "identifiable" than a phone call, but it took them months to deal with this simple thing.

Red Hat blasts RHEL 10.1 into orbit aboard Voyager's micro datacenter

$10 per kilogram

That's roughly what EasyJet charged me to take my rucksack from London to Sicily and back.

Double Canvas breach acknowledged as ShinyHunters sets new pay-or-leak deadline

compromised exams

Yet another addition to my list of reasons why I'm glad to be unemployed.

I heard about this from a colleague who was in a panic that he might have to re-invent his exam paper if such things had been leaked.

Yet another single-point-of-failure that organisations (in this case universities) conspire to create.

Also, what the hell is a "K12 school"? Yet another piece of Yank jargon being imposed on the rest of the world.

What happened when AI ran into the cold hard reality of the legal profession

Ethics in souf easth unglund!

Minister gives Palantir's NHS platform a clean bill of health

Re: Response from an MP

Thanks for taking the trouble to write that.

Re: Response from an MP

Good answer, but I would think the fundamental thing is the Cloud Act (besides that Palantir is such a repulsive company, irrespective of its nationality). I was hoping that someone here could give a technically plausible suggestion of how the raw data might be encrypted such as to prevent low-level by US govt or companies. I don't see how it could be, for basic sysadmin reasons but also because that would also prevent its legitimate use for medical research statistics. Or someone here might have other inside info.

Re: Response from an MP

I posted this here in the hope of getting replies from people who know more than me, so that I can compose my reply to Mahmood, not that she will read it. I don't understand why someone has down-voted me.

She is the Home Secretary, so after the Prime Minister and Health Secretary she has the most power to change things. The Home Secretary is responsible for prisons and immigration, where, despite being a second generation immigrant herself, her xenophobic policies are based on Farage's, in the hope of reclaiming his votes. I could go on, but this is about Palantir.

Of course patients and their doctors and carers will be made to jump through hoops to get the information they need. Just like the "Patient Access" system (for getting repeat prescriptions and trying to get appointments), which requires Google Javascript and is trying to make us get Apple authentication.

But, as Reg commentards know very well, the sysadmins running the system have to have low-level access to the raw data, to back it up and fix problems. Those sysadmins as subject to the US CLOUD ACT.

Is it conceivable that the raw data could be encrypted? I think not, but I would appreciate a professional explanation from somebody.

There has recently been a data breach in the UK Biobank, a voluntary library of medical data that is I think administered in the UK.

Response from an MP

I wrote to Shabana Mahmood, the MP In my constituency (she has repeatedly made it clear that she is not my MP) and here is the bullshit that she replied:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the NHS and Palantir. I am grateful that you have taken the time to express your concerns on this matter.

As you may be aware, the contract was agreed under the previous Government. The Government has stated that the NHS operates to the highest standards of data security, and that the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) is built with robust security and privacy controls. It has also said that user activity within the FDP is logged and monitored by both Palantir’s UK security team and the NHS Cyber Security Operations Centre to detect and respond to any malicious activity.

I understand that access within the FDP is carefully controlled. Users only get the minimum level of access they need, and only if they are authorised to use the data for an approved purpose. All access permissions are checked, monitored, and reviewed regularly.

The Government has issued assurances that Palantir does not own or sell any NHS data.

The FDP contract also includes audit rights for NHS England. This means NHS England can review and confirm that the platform and its providers are meeting all contractual and legal requirements. These types of audit rights are standard in NHS agreements and help ensure the system is being used safely and responsibly.

The Government says that the FDP is helping to join-up patient care, increase hospital productivity, speed up cancer diagnosis and ensure thousands of additional patients can be treated each month.

I am aware that many people are asking questions about Palantir’s contract with the NHS and I completely agree we should be giving the matter our full scrutiny. The Government is due to review its contract with Palantir and the NHS later in 2026. Please rest assured that I will be bearing your comments in mind as this situation develops.

Brit mathematician lets AI agent loose with credit card – cue password leaks, CAPTCHA chaos and more

Re: Cassandra

Well, if you're going for the Feminist take on the Trojan war, consider Oddyseus and Penelope. He is the prize a***hole of Greek mythology, with history's record of being late home from the office --- ten years (in addition to the ten of the war), seven of which he's been shacked up with the nymph Circe, losing his entire crew along the way to various monsters. Penelope, meanwhile, has been fighting off the attentions of loads of other men who want to get into her ********. When Odysseus finally rocks up, she welcomes him back!!!

Cassandra

The other part of the curse that Apollo put on her was that she would not predict her own demise. Agamemnon took her home from Troy as a bit of fluff, but they were both murdered by his wife Clytemnesta and her lover Aegisthus.

So it was a strange choice of name for the AI.

Logical puzzle, did the AI know this piece of mythology, or was it and appropriate choice of name because it was unable to predict its own demise?

Apollo had cursed Cassandra because she wouldn't have s*x with the god! WTF!

First reports come in of victims of critical cPanel vuln as 'millions' of sites potentially exposed

when was the 23rd month of this year?

If people must use this irrational order for giving dates, at least give the name of the month.

NASA boss: make Pluto a planet again

Re: exoplanets

That's like saying that someone who lives in the Arctic should fix their definitions of "plant" and "animal" before going to explore the Tropics.

exoplanets

There were good arguments for demoting Pluto, not least that Eris is more massive.

However, it did strike me at the time that it was a strange moment to try to define what a planet is, just as thousands of them started to be discovered in very different systems.

South Africa yanks AI policy after AI-assisted drafting invents citations

Re: fictional citations

For your information, I am an independent academic researcher without employment. I do my research because it is my vocation. It is not a very rewarding vocation, but I do get respect from at least some people. Everything I write is very carefully considered, repeatedly checked and re-written. I do not write "slop".

I have long experience of asking colleagues, going to university libraries and using web search engines. Since the latter in particular generate far more slop than useful results, I have started using (free online) AI tools to look for relevant references. Then I (try to) access the papers that they cite. Some of them I have even translated from Latin, French or German into English.

The basic problem, as I see it, with AI is that it is apparently not conceived of as a tool.

What is a tool? It is something that amplifies what humans could in principle do. It is something that users know in principle what it does, how it works, how they could make it, how they could repair it and how they could improve it.

We are instead told that AI is some sort of magic that replaces people.

For my sort of applications, it could be a tool. It could read the whole of the world's published literature, answer questions on it and give citations. To be useful as a tool, it would then need to check that its citations (a) exist and (b) say what it claims.

But apparently this checking stage is considered superfluous. Hence the "slop".

fictional citations

When I was working on some history of mathematics, Perplexity.ai and ChatGPT.com gave me about as many invented citations as real ones.

Is it so unreasonable to ask these things to check their information?

Greece relaxes Euro biometric border entry rules amid airport chaos

ok in Sicily

My partner and I flew to Catania in Sicily on 18 April and returned today (26 April). The system worked fine on entry, but on our return neither the machines at Catania nor those at Luton could read my passport. Even so, there was no significant delay. I'm only saying this for information and not to give approval.

Bullet train upgrade brings 5G windows and noise-cancelling cabins to Japan

Re: Cancelling noise from mobile phones?

You might think that it's only teenagers that behave like this, but twice this week (on holiday in Sicily) I have had to sit through old people making lengthy loud mobile phone conversations on buses. Fortunately my Italian is not fluent enough to follow them.

Cancelling noise from mobile phones?

British trains are not so much bullets as sling shots, but it's not the noise of the train that bothers me.

It's people who have lengthy mobile phone conversations at full volume.

People who do this typically have nothing worthwhile to say. However, recently I had to sit through a woman's detailed description of how one of her colleagues was being sacked for bullying, including his name and the names of the bosses of the company. All this is presumably confidential information.

How did this behaviour become acceptable?

UK told its Big Tech habit is now a national security risk

Palantir in Parliament

There is a debate in Westmister tomorrow about the Palantir NHS contract. Write to your MP, correction: the MP in your constituency.

M$ and gmail send my email to spam: I wrote on Mathstodon about this and have just passed 1000 boosts and 1000 favorities, so join the club!

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Viva la France!

Problem is that the UK govt still has the fantasies that Britain is a world power and there is a "special relationship" across the Atlantic, not to mention the act of self-mutilation ten years ago.

At least I will be able to send emails to French colleagues. M$ has made that impossible in numerous other universities. Gmail has also started marking my emails as spam, even to very longstanding friends.

NHS staff resist using Palantir software

don't link Palantir to ICE or Gaza

Palantir would not suddenly become acceptable if Israel stopped bombing Gaza and Lebanon,

Palantir would not suddenly become acceptable if American immigration officers learned to say "Thank you for showing me your passport, Sir/Madam, Welcome to our country".

The very name shows that the purpose of Palantir is to know everything about everyone.

It also seems very strange that a gay man like Thiel would associate with fascists. Has he never heard of the Night of the Long Knives, 30 June 1934, when the Nazis slaughtered their senior gay members?

Palantir is an intrinsically unacceptable company, whether or not they deal with ICE, Israel or Satan himself.

It is intrinsically unacceptable that the personal data in my medical record be sent out of my country, where there is some fig leaf of personal data protection, to Trumpistan, where the CLOUD ACT appropriates all data from everywhere.

AI models will deceive you to save their own kind

maybe wrong choice of sci-fi

Perhaps these things should be fed on Azimov's laws of robotics instead of Kubrick's 2001.

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

American "National Divorce"

You had your opportunity for that in 1861: the barbarian half of the country want to leave, but the civilised half fought a war to make them stay.

Slavery was not the original reason; if the South had been allowed to secede, economic sanctions could then have been used to force it to abandon slavery.

Now you (and we) are paying for that decision. Problem is, it set the principle that there was no right to leave, which the civilised states might want to exercise now.

Re: He is in a uniquely powerful position, akin, yes, to a Roman emperor.

Assassination was the usual way for Roman Emperors to leave office, though Senators had become irrelevant long before the end.

Linux PC vendor System76 tries to talk Colorado down over OS age checks

Dilbert's Law

People become managers (or politicians or lawyers) exactly because they don't have real skills, eg as sysadmins.

Popular prayer program becomes propaganda pusher after reported Israeli hack

Re: scepticism

(quoting Wiktionary) from Ancient Greek σκεπτικός (skeptikós, “thoughtful, inquiring”), from σκέπτομαι (sképtomai, “I consider”), compare to σκοπέω (skopéō, “I view, examine”).

By definition, it's what religion forbids.

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: After Trump's complaints about foreign states stealing American IP

don't the Trumpistanis have laws against reverse engineering?

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Re: ransom fees and copper cables

s/random/ransom/

I was asking two separate questions about copper cables: (2a) why can't I keep using my modern one, that works absolutely fine and (2b) why don't they put their effort instead into replacing the ancient ones on telegraph poles that serve Victorian terraced houses?

ransom fees and copper cables

My ISP (ICUK/CIX) has told me about this but, whilst I have nothing but praise for that company, I am livid with OpenReach, for two reasons:

(1) If I do as they want, ie end my POTS/ADSL service, they will charge me a "cease" fee, as if I were the one in breach of contract. If I don't do it, they will breach the contact.

Oftel should ban such random demands. But OpenReach is an unaccountable private monopoly.

(2) I am less than 500m from the exchange, to which I have a perfectly good copper wire that has never had any trouble.

My previous house, on the other hand, was 5km from the exchange and served by a crummy old wire that had faults at least three times.

What is OpenReach doing to replace these ancient cables? Why can't I continue having my Internet service over the copper wire that is perfectly good enough?

Since customers are not allowed to challenge OpenReach about this, please would UK Reg staff do so.

Birmingham City Council's Oracle ERP fiasco now £144M and still not working

Meanwhile BCC has plans to flatten at least two districts: Ladywood and Druid's Heath. Ladywood was flattened in the 1960s, when 19th century slums were replaced with 20th century slums, that they have failed to maintain, warranting the building of 21st century slums. They plan to pay for this by judicial robbery / no-fault eviction of owner-occupiers, on the grounds that they "formally" own the land, when probably they formerly owned it and then sold it, ie they are illiterate as well as incompetent and arrogant.

They spent years and untold millions re-paving the two main squares, making it very difficult to walk through them. Now they've dug up New Street, the principal shopping street.

Oh, and I have a year's recycling piled up in my garden (being fortunate to have the space for it). Even though they can't resolve the bin strike, they have decided to give everybody four bins, supposedly for different kinds of recycling.

Experiment suggests AI chatbot would save insurance agents a whopping 3 minutes a day

suggestions vs hallucinations

I'm currently investigating a topic in the history of mathematics and I have been playing with Perplexity.AI. It formats bibtex items very usefully, filling in details. It has given me some interesting explanations and connections.

But it also hallucinates! (In my case, that's inventing journal papers.) When a human tells you something that's wrong (accidentally or intentionally), after some prodding, the story falls apart. But AI not only doubles down on its errors, but invents considerable detail to back them up! (In my case, inventing the arguments in the fictitious papers.) Only when you go to some trouble to prove that it is incorrect will it back down.

Things like this will become rather serious when people are giving "evidence" to Courts or Parliament.

So what the balance is between conveniently formatted bibtex and useful suggestions, versus refuting hallucinations, I don't know.

It's also sycophantic when I tell it about my own work, which would be great if it came from a senior colleague, but is meaningless from a computer.

The danger of this is encouraging teenagers to take their own lives or join extremist political or religious organisations.

It also uses my own website to answer my own questions, when I want to check or extend my own work.

Dead batteries cough up lithium after a bath in CO₂ and water, boffins say

lithium metal

I confess that I lost interest in Chemistry early in my A-level, but I somehow doubt that Lithium comes out of this in any other way than as an ion (or salt if solid). Magnesium metal was pretty spectacular as a teacher's demo - I rather doubt whether Lithium could be found in a school chemistry lab.