Posts by Fading

Publishers sue to shut down books-for-all Internet Archive for 'willful digital piracy on an industrial scale'

Can you be on the side of authors and electronic libraries....

But against publishers? The music scene has started adapting to life in the digital age and I find I'm more likely to buy directly from the artist than on any online store. This cuts out the middleman publishers/distributors as frequently the bands/artists I like crowd fund the initial run. Most books I read are electronic (I've run out of space for hard copies at home) and these are either via Amazon prime or lately humble bundle (I now have a lot of tech books to get through). The internet archive is a great resource and I would probably be willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee for access - much as I already "borrow" some e-books from Amazon. Set up a model that pays the authors directly, cut out the publishers and put a reasonable time-limit on copyright (author's life +10 years after, 10 years seems to work in pharmaceuticals ).

Australia to refund $720m in 'debts' determined by dodgy algorithm

Governments don't pay for anything...

Unfortunately the only ones that end up paying are all tax payers - so unless the ministers pay with their jobs there is no justice. The first ones that should be paying with their jobs are those that continued to apply the algorithm even after they suspected it to be unlawful. This kind of unthinking adherence to procedures that reverse the principles of law without adequate oversight and a proper appeals process really boil the blood.

Cutting down on fraud is a worthy goal but using the easy option of assuming everyone is committing fraud unless proven otherwise is not the way to do it and should have rung alarm bells.

Surprise! That £339 world's first 'anti-5G' protection device is just a £5 USB drive with a nice sticker on it

Surely to work....

It needs to remain in the USB superposition (https://www.cookieshq.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/usb.jpg) or its quantum state will collapse. Ergo by plugging it in they are using it wrong.

cmd.exe is dead, long live PowerShell: Microsoft leads aged command-line interpreter out into 'maintenance mode'

Hmmmm....

Might be time to convert my daily batch scripts to PS - some have been running happily for so many years it seems almost sacrilege to retire them though.

Wanna force granny to take down that family photo from the internet? No problem. Europe's GDPR to the rescue

Re: If all PII was removed from the image metadata

Is your face as a child PII though? My baby photos could be of pretty much any ugly baby not exactly PII are they?

Where does the copyright law stand on this?

Assuming the grandmother created the photo she retains copyright over the image. As such if she wished to publish said image she is entitled to as she owns the copyright? If all PII was removed from the image metadata would this then pass the GDPR provisions?

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: ID10T error

Depends on the usability of the workaround - the one suggested would work for all situations of email image versus GUI. Faux understanding leads to the same repetitions as no-understanding it is just harder to spot and impossible to call out politely.

ID10T error

These types of error are sometimes the hardest to solve especially if you wish to minimise embarrassment (in the work place this can be essential for long term success) . It is though an opportunity to be creative - nodding sagely, muttering about broken links in emails and showing a way around the problem would probably have been quicker than trying to explain the concepts of static images versus GUI. Ignorance is forgivable - will-full stupidity, not so much.

Capture the horrors of war in razor-sharp quality with this ruggedised Samsung phone – or just lob it at enemy forces

Battery life?

Not going to be particularly useful during a covert op, if you are struggling to find somewhere to plug it in every day.

To test its security mid-pandemic, GitLab tried phishing its own work-from-home staff. 1 in 5 fell for it

I have been caught out....

Reporting a suspicious email that was an actual company email (even had the suspicious spelling mistakes) ....

Microsoft claims it has spun up a top-five AI supercomputer for its pals at OpenAI – but won't reveal the full specs

285,000 CPU cores and 10,000 GPUs

And it still falls over when encountering a 2GB Outlook pst file.....

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: 250 comments largely opposing the change

Change for change's sake (especially when it takes so long to get things agreed in the first place) is fairly unwelcome in most instances. There is a word missing from the new terminology anyway. A whitelist isn't an "allow" list it is an "explicitly allow" list (and deny all else) and a blacklist isn't a "deny" list but an "explicitly deny" list (and allow all else) . This is a known association with the whitelist/blacklist paradigm but not in an allow/deny one.

ICANN finally halts $1.1bn sale of .org registry, says it's 'the right thing to do' after months of controversy

Re: What's Really Behind This?

I made no comment and did not indicate the direction of any support......

Re: What's Really Behind This?

Just leave this here....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/03/rnli-volunteers-sacked-dispute-mugs-adorned-naked-women/

Intel is offering more 14nm Skylake desktop processors, we repeat: More 14nm Skylake desktop processors

And another motherboard needed....

Because erm Intel. Same node pretty much the same chips (just i9's renamed as i7's) nothing much new on the chipset (well Wifi 6 is nice to have as is 2.5GB Ethernet but fairly moot when nothing else on my network can communicate at that bandwidth) and a new top end with a 25% increase in cores (though still less than AMD's second place chip).

Power use is going to be insane at the top - remember all the jokes about AMD's chips that could clock really high but needed industrial coolants to get there? Ahead of their time.....

Won't need stickers saying Intel inside as you will know because your pc is now heating your entire house.....

But you will get an extra 2 fps so all good.

(where's the Chipzooky icon?)

Lars Ulrich makes veiled threats of another Metallica album during web chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Great v Good

I would agree they haven't made any great music in 30 years - good yes, great no (I'm not as cynical as the article's author). There is also the aura surrounding Metallica that doesn't enhance their image - yes many bands are in it for the money and happily take the corporate 30 pieces of silver but many musicians actually seem to care more about playing music (Dave Mackintosh of Dragon Force fame can frequently be seen in pubs playing around the home counties in the band "The Machines" - go see them when the lockdown ends you won't regret it) .

Great music sometimes isn't just about the sound - it is also enhanced or reduced by the emotion you know is behind it.

(Beer because I miss watching a live band in the pub)

Why should the UK pensions watchdog be able to spy on your internet activities? Same reason as the Environment Agency and many more

Re: VPN Always Essential - Now Compulsory

Not just a VPN - what we need is a little browser plugin to provide innocuous internet traffic (randomly browse BBC and other "sanctioned" sites, official twitter feeds etc). Something to provide continuous plausible deniability....

Video game cloud streaming shaken up as Nvidia loses more big names, Microsoft readies its market killer

And just like the TV streaming services....

Market fragmentation means you have to pay for many services just to ensure you can get to play what you want (it's bad enough needing to have Steam, Epic, Uplay, Origin, Battlenet, Wargaming.net, Arc and gamesessions installed - but at least the launchers are "free") . At least with GOG the "Galaxy" launcher is optional.

Of course the main problem with streaming is the weakest link - your ISP. Can I rely on my ISP not falling over when I want to kick back and game? Well if experience is anything to go by the answer is a solid no. Sorry streaming services it is bad enough when origin goes down and takes down my EA library with it (offline can be enabled but getting into offline mode when the EA servers are down is a giant faff) at least I have other games I can play. Entrusting my leisure time to a streaming service isn't for me and I would need to realy make use of it to justify another expense.

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

Re: Who'd have thought

The full quote is "people have had enough of experts from organizations with acronyms that have got things so wrong in the past" - puts a different slant on the whole thing wouldn't you say?

Intel's 10th-gen Core family cracks 5GHz barrier with H-series laptop processors

Re: So does that make this an

I just assumed you were Canadian.

Intel must be running scared.....

of AMD's new Ryzen 9 4900H and HS 45 and 35W chips. The cinebench R20 results put the 35W AMD part significantly ahead of Intel's i9-9880H even when the latter is running at 90W.

Not only is Zoom's strong end-to-end encryption not actually end-to-end, its encryption isn't even that strong

Re: If Boris says Zoom is secure...

He didn't actually say that though did he?

Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...

Re: wait, what?

Probably makes it easier for GCHQ to watch the briefings........

PC owners borg into the most powerful computer the world has ever known – all in the search for coronavirus cure

Re: BOINC

Must be aiming for particular GPU's on [email protected] - my 1080 Ti gets a WU every time I connect (don't have it on 24/7 as need to keep the noise down during conference/video calls) .

Depends on the GPU...

Any gamers using the AMD Radeon VII will be donating 3.45 Tflops of double precision compute performance. My lowly 1080 Ti can only manage 354.4 Gflops. But that's the beauty of distributed computing - the power is in the numbers not the individual.

Completed

A couple of covid-19 work units already. This i7 7820X with 1080Ti is certainly a lot faster for [email protected] then the previous machines I used for my first 100 work units.

Microsoft Teams usage jumps to 32, no, 44 million as Windows-slinger platform slides onto home workers' PCs

Using the freemium version here....

As a messenger and video caller it works fine for the price (not on 365 yet - well I have a personal subscription but work is still exchange and office 2016) . It is simple enough for even the less technical minded to use so does have that going for it.

AMD, boffins clash over chip data-leak claims: New side-channel holes in decades of cores, CPU maker disagrees

But the code used..

Was pre-existing side channel exploit code that has been mitigated? Seems that if you have patched for the existing side channel attacks then this method as outlined in the paper would not work. Of course this doesn't mean a new side channel attack that has not been discovered and mitigated could not take advantage of this exploit but that is a harder attack vector than many others are already out there.

I'm still a little more concerned with the IME exploit and the many meltdown/spectre variants that my intel chips are vulnerable to - thankfully I am probably not a high value target.

'Unfixable' boot ROM security flaw in millions of Intel chips could spell 'utter chaos' for DRM, file encryption, etc

So the Intel IME..

Is a 486 with 1.5MB of RAM running a custom Minix.... so who is going to be the first to get Doom to run on it?

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

So can you lend me 60 quid or not?

Scammers generally are not a problem (touch wood) - extended family on the other hand.......

Is technology undermining democracy? It's complicated, says heavyweight thinktank

Re: Eh?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/theukcontributiontotheeubudget/2017-10-31

Obvious lie isn't obvious.....

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-brexit-bus-supreme-court-vote-leave-appeal-latest-a9056871.html

UK.gov lays out COVID-19 guidance as the tech supply chain considers its own

Re: Souces of infection

I thought the whole point of quarantines was to keep all the sick and potentially sick in the same place to stop infection of the wider area. Ergo keeping the people on the ship was the primary purpose. That this increased transmission rates on the ship was a known outcome and not the primary purpose of the quarantine.

Re: Well I guess this just goes to prove .....

I just waiting for parts of this Novel virus to mutate into an SCO virus and then we all get sued into oblivion.....

Microsoft's Cortana turns its back on consumers as skills are stripped from Windows 10

Re: Re:Tiles

Telekinetic mouse pointers you say? Tobii eye tracking has a feature where you can jump the mouse pointer to where you are looking - bit gimmicky but I can see it may be of use for those with limited limb function.

First MWC, then GDC, now Nvidia's GPU conference is online-only as coronavirus spreads in Silicon Valley

Re: "But we’ll do this all online"

Petty Ladies [sic] need work as well. Whilst no one is going to pay me to look pretty I do not begrudge those that can make a living from their looks.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

I grew up with a TI 99/4.

And not the 4a version (the 4 had a chicklet style keyboard whilst the 4a had a more normal key type). Nothing like a game of Blasto to get the arguments started. Interesting machine that had a choice to start in an equation calculator mode (not available in the 4a).

If you're struggling to keep new year resolutions, try NGTS-10b, a mere 1,000 LY away. One year is just 18 hrs

Re: The other side cold and dark?

Venus has a lot of problems - rotates the wrong way and takes 116 days longer to do it than this exoplanet takes to get round its entire sun. Also the atmosphere at the surface is 93 times the pressure we have on earth.

So sorry Europe it may be the final countdown but Venus is not a good destination to head for....

Worried about future planet-cleansing superbugs? But distrust AI? Guess you're not interested in these antibiotics

Re: Don't get too excited...

Not sure weight gain is the principle reason for antibiotic use in industrial farming - surely steroids would be far more efficacious. I believe antibiotics are used to mitigate the poor conditions and hygeine of some intensive meat farming practices.

All that Samsung users found on UK website after weird Find my Mobile push notification was... other people's details

Yep received the same message myself.

S8 here and assumed the "find my phone app" was flakey (though it was already disabled)....

Among those pardoned by Trump this week: Software maker ex-CEO who admitted hacking into rivals' systems

Re: King Trump

You do realise that the FTP act was only introduced as part of the agreement for the Tory/Lib Dem coalition of 2010? And forcing an election when it might be popular? What foul attack on democracy is that?

Netgear's routerlogin.com HTTPS cert snafu now has a live proof of concept

I quite like my R7800....

So which is better OpenWRT or DD-WRT?

AMD really, really wants you to know its chips are doing OK without any help from Intel and its supply issues

Re: For once, its not just spin

You are a bit out of date - clock for clock the latest AMD chips beat Intel on IPC. Only because Intel can take advantage of the mature 14nm process by overclocking to 5 and above GHz is this deficit reversed. Hence the inherent problems with the 10nm process - better IPC for intel than 14 nm (add some + here) but can't clock as high.

[disclaimer] I own a Skylake X processor based machine so not shilling for AMD [/disclaimer]

El Reg tries – and fails – to get its talons on a Brexit tea towel

Re: Tea towel?

Bayern München towel in the pocket you say? Surely it will be adorning the choicest sun lounger at some holiday resort?

Cache flow problems continue for Intel: Yet more data-leaking processor design blunders discovered, patches due soon

Re: Secure Proccessors for sale - $100 each

Don't have to go quite so far back - Intel Atoms from before 2013 (so prior to Avoton) are pretty much immune to all these attacks so far.

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Re: Antitrust

Just mentioning that one sent a shiver down my spine....

Re: Antitrust

Spybot search and destroy used to be one of the programs (not app) on my 128 MB (yes MB) USB stick I permanently carried around. This was used to clear off many a toolbar, browser highjacker and homepage redirect from friends and family's machines circa 16 years ago. Stick also had a useful read-only switch.

So many hours wasted making a machine usable enough to copy off what was needed (back-ups? who had back-ups) before nuking from orbit.

Two billion years ago, snowball Earth was defrosted in huge asteroid crash – and it's been downhill ever since

Hmmm

Snowball earth was more likely a consequence of albedo rather than lack of H2O/GHG in the atmosphere. The initial vapourised water would quickly precipitate out as snow if that was the only consequence of the impact. More likely is the dust cloud from such an impact would be the primary driver for change. After a short period of cooling due to dust clouds in the atmosphere, the reduced albedo when the dust finally settled onto the rest of the snowball earth could have driven enough melting to sustain the water cycle as we know it. So whilst the Yarrabubba impact could be linked to the ending of the ice age I don't agree with the how.

Rugby legend Will Carling tells El Reg: Techie stats bods will love this year's Six Nations

From commentator curse to...

A.I. stat curse. I can foresee as soon as the kicking stat appears on screen the kicker will manage to do the exact opposite.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

Re: Suggestions please...

Heos speaker from Denon?