Posts by cyberdemon

Twitter's machine learning algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians over those on the left

Machine learning no doubt has its place, but we're still learning what that place is.

Room 101?

Poor data sharing is holding back the UK court system's pandemic recovery, says National Audit Office

Re: Usual solution to data sharing

Or/and sell it all to Microsoft, Google, Amazon...

Japanese bloke collared after using AI software to uncensor smut and flogging it

It's not that Ask Delphi lacks a moral compass, it just doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

Surely it both lacks a moral compass AND doesn't know what it's talking about. It's just a pile of statistics about English text. Like any so-called AI.

Antitrust battle latest: Google, Facebook 'colluded' to smash Apple's privacy protections

Imagine if Microsoft owned Android?

It already thinks it does... But I see your point. Google still tries to maintain a "don't be evil" facade (it dropped the phrase from its actual corporate charter years ago) whereas Microsoft were evil before it was cool, and these days don't even pretend to have any qualms about treating users as no more than data-cows to be milked, tracked and herded.

Chrome is great, except for all the anti-features like DRM (have you noticed how some websites are now 'un-screenshottable' in Chrome?), Google tracking (fortunately since chromium is open source, you can remove the tracking but i'm sure Google will have their revenge if you do), aggressive shutting down of certain ports and protocols.. The ban on text reflow on mobile... Not to mention adding web-breaking features that No Web Browser Should Ever Need, like WASM. Google is really asserting its interests through Chrome, and they are heavily aligned against most users' interests.

Youtube seems to be just as much a sewer of clickbait, misinformation and hate as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok - the only difference is that most things on YouTube are accessible without being in 'the club' i.e. a friend/subscriber/follower. (not all, mind - they still have subscriber-only / unlisted videos) and the 'recommendation' algorithm really homes in on some scary crap. (see: ElsaGate etc.)

Also, Google are really cracking down hard (with the full support of Priti Patel) on anonymity (aka not-monetised users). If you use Incognito (or worse, Tor), you are sometimes (or if Tor, always) faced with an infinite captcha and are completely unable to use Google services.

But yes I agree they have mostly done a good job with GMail (that's not to say they are averse to analysing your emails to sell ads to you and anyone who contacts you) but at least it does provide a good service.

Google Search, meanwhile is going down the pan. It often fails to return results for things that are in plain sight on the internet e.g. github, and so much sponsored content and click-tracking. I have switched to DuckDuckGo but it is so slow for some reason? In search of another alternative tbh.

Back to the topic of TFA: Personally I would *in theory* happily pay to not have my data slurped, but in practice I don't trust these guys as far as I could throw them, and I think they would simply take my money AND my data.

Nobody cares about DAB radio – so let's force it onto smart speakers, suggests UK govt review

Sounds like they're trying to protect the livelihoods of the buggy-whip makers

I'm not sure what they are doing actually, except trying to kill off FM..

On the one hand, our lovely tories have always tried to ensure a steady stream of license royalties to the patent holders of DAB, and DAB+ which still includes hefty per-unit licensing royalties. (and notice DAB+ is a requirement for the government's "digital tick") but I don't see how this particular policy benefits anyone except Amazon and Google.

When they say "smart home devices will be forced to rebroadcast DAB stations" - I don't think that has anything to do with DAB itself - more like, they will have to be able to *stream* all DAB stations over the internet, and broadcasters may well have to pay for that "service". Moreover, it will encourage more people to get an audio bug installed in their home smart speaker, instead of a DAB radio set.

Of course "smart speakers" will always out-compete DAB radios because 1. DAB is shit. 2. DAB is expensive due to the patent licenses, and 3. smart speakers pay for themselves in terms of all the data they hoover up. Amazon and Google would sell them at a loss if that sort of thing was legal and didn't make people suspicious.

Plus, the Internet is much more capable of reliably delivering a 100kbps data stream without bit-errors than a broadcast antenna to most if not all places, (even cars) especially with the advent of 5G etc.. And with so many competing stations, "broadcast" loses its relevance (except for local stations) - "multicast" is much more efficient.

My only hope is that this will finally kill off the idiocy that was DAB, and that it will convince the next government to NOT kill off analogue FM radio. We need it as an emergency broadcast system for one, and for two we still need some sort of broadcast radio service that is simple, cheap, license-free, local, accessible and NOT in the hands of the tech companies.

Re: FM vs DABS(+) !!!??? Qui Bono

Except that (unlike analogue TV) there really isn't an awful lot of bandwidth to sell.. FM radio stations use what.. 150-200kHz bandwidth? And you can't even sell it to mobile phone or walkie-talkie manufacturers, say, since it requires a fairly huge antenna to broadcast a reasonable distance.

There was/is, however, a great deal of money to be made by Phillips, Fraunhofer et al in the licensing of all the patents covering DAB/DAB+, which are chiefly why DAB radios cost so much more than FM ones - there is still about £20 (so i'm told) per unit of license fee to pay for DAB+. A little less than the ~£30 originally levied on DAB radios, but still a license to print money. (the original, and impressively shit DAB is now out of patent, but nobody wants to listen to that crap, if they even can..)

So the public purse will make little to nothing out of this, but certain private companies will make a fortune, and Britain will no longer have a reliable emergency broadcast channel.

Make no mistake, this is the crony government at work one again, lining their own pockets and those of their mates.

Theranos blood-test machine demos for VIPs rigged to hide any failures, court told

due diligence

How did they even manage to spend $350m on "making a space in the corner and putting a sign up", and maybe a bit of premature advertising..

Yes I'm sure there's other stuff involved in "preparing their stores to offer rapid blood testing" but the figure sounds fishy to me, as if they are sweeping up other losses into their insurance/damages claim for their own lack of competence.

Yes, theranos were charlatans, but as Pseudo said, you'd have to be pretty incompetent yourself to spaff that much money on the back of their dubious claims..

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Re: Fecesbook

Faeces has an 'a' in it, in English English. And I suppose as a singlular entity, it doesn't have to be plural.

So, FaeceBook?

Subtle, but to the point...

Where's the Shit icon?

The ex-company that used to be called Toys'R'Us might be offended by your comment, which implies some sort of vague association.

How about "the ex-company that used to be called Facebook, before its CEO was prosecuted and it was was disbanded entirely"

Correct answer

The (ex-)entity formerly known as Facebook. Rest in pyrolysed pieces.

Re: Sparkling turd

The phrase I heard was "You can't polish a turd.. But you CAN roll it in glitter!" :)

Perfect description of marketing..

Re: DataSlurp Incorperated?

@NoneSuch

And what does that have to do with the post you 'replied' to, eh? :P

Late Posts are down there ↓↓↓

Also, they've been doing it since a long time before 2021, and 'incorporated' has one 'e'. Welcome to the Reg forums :D

Re: It doesn’t need a new name

@ idiot taxpayer

As Jake said, send them off to work the fields or something. We don't need their corporate rot in other companies. In fact we need to get rid of that same scourge from a lot of other companies.

I'm talking about the "treat all customers as data cows" culture. Surveillance, Modelling, Manipulation.

i.e. "Let's build a marketing machine and use everyone's private data that they trusted us with as input."

Sack the bloody lot of them.

"Apparently Zuck wants to create an umbrella brand "

That's It!

Umbrella Corporation.

Re: Hatebook

Twatter gets my vote.

There used to be an actual parody site called Twatter.com, calling itself the Anti-Social Network, but it soon folded as Twitter itself became the open sewer of hate that it is now.

There are some still around though e.g. http://www.twat.me.uk/

Re: It doesn’t need a new name

It doesn't need a new CEO. It needs to be liquidated and its global assets distributed to various good social causes.

As for Zuck and the board of directors... Chain Gang? They could start by fixing the potholes on the A34.

Re: Better than Life

Worse than Death?

If you could delete three corporations

Obviously Facebook would be top of the list, but what would the other two be?

Amazon, Microsoft (would be my choice)

But that leaves Google, Apple, Intel, the Communist Party of China.. :(

TriOptimum Corporation

to go with El Reg's theme..

Hatebook

Simple, recognisable and on-brand. Only 2 letters from the original.

Cleggy, you can have that one on me.

I wouldn't give him so much credit.

He knows people think of him as a child in adult's clothing so he puts on that persona to try to evade responsibility, but he is an adult, and one who is as evil and power-mad as the rest of the hundred-billion club.

Reg scribe spends week being watched by government Bluetooth wristband, emerges to more surveillance

Re: Freedom is Slavery

I genuinely hope that you are right, but if you read the 'i' article I linked, they talk about "Gain of Function" research that seems to have involved deliberately modifying a virus to make it as infectious to humans as possible.

> Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research institute in California, said its binding mechanism “looked too good to be true – like a perfect key for entering human cells” – while another unexpected feature appeared like something expected “if someone had set out to adapt an animal coronavirus to humans by taking a specific suit of genetic material from elsewhere and inserting it”.

Even if it wasn't deliberately released in 2019 in Wuhan, I think it is likely (or at least highly plausible) that this was a bioweapon in-development, and deliberate or not, it has been hugely beneficial for the Chinese regime.

Freedom is Slavery

For when you accept that you are under constant surveillance and you listen and obey all government commands, you are 'free' to live your life without fear..

"Ignorance is Strength": Thanks to the WHO's early dismissal of very relevant lines of enquiry, and the sea of bogus conspiracy theories which propagandists have put out to drown any real ones that might exist, we will never know if this pandemic really was a natural occurrence or a deliberate power play by the Chinese government..

But either way, it has given all governments (and some corporations) immense power over individuals, and given every country in the world a great shove towards a perfect Orwellian model of a totalitarian regime.

"War is Peace": The only stable system of government, he argued, is to be in a constant state of war. Not a real war, but an imposturous war that is fought chiefly at home, providing effective means of controlling dissent through fear.

"The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war," therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous, war has ceased to exist."

The book is so apposite that it seems incredible to say that it hasn't been used as a template for power.

For anyone who hasn't read it, it's so old that despite Mickey Mouse Act etc, it is out-of-copyright: https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf

Amid drama at .NET Foundation, Microsoft's De Icaza reveals it was meant to be like GNOME Foundation

Says the director of the F# Foundation

F### this

Want a piece of GitLab? It's going to cost you: IPO price per share settles at $77

Not "budget" but at least it's not Microsoft

So at least you don't have Microsoft sniffing round your data and building AI codebots that automate the plagiarism of your IP..

And at least it's not tracking you across other platforms like LinkedIn, Teams, MS Office and MS Windows to find out which little dilberts do the most work for the least pay, and emailing with a nice summary of how much more work they could do every month..

Nine floors underground, Oracle's Israel data centre can 'withstand a rocket, a missile or even a car bomb'

Re: can withstand a rocket direct hit

Don't be silly, nobody needs to worry about a small thermal exhaust port..

LAN traffic can be wirelessly sniffed from cables with $30 setup, says researcher

Re: I thought LAN cables were shielded

If the cable happens to be running through the middle of a completely shielded RF anechoic chamber that also happens to house your SDR (i.e. in RF terms you are in the middle of nowhere - just you and the ethernet cable) then this might be plausible. I bet the software on the SDR didn't cost $30 to develop and I bet it can't cope with more noise than a statically-charged mosquito.

UK's VoIP Unlimited hit by DDoSes again, weeks after ransom-linked attacks KO'd it

Interesting. I wonder how many other VoIP providers are currently under attack, and if there is a special motive for it, perhaps an experiment by somebody to see how feasible it is to disrupt phone communications on command.

If it works, it could be a useful weapon when WWIII breaks out...

(fortunately it seems it's not particularly effective.. although it might be a bit more so when BT switches off its landline network in favour of VoIP)

Clearview CEO doubles down, claims biz has now scraped over ten billion social media selfies for surveillance

His muskiness tweets

Am I missing something here? Why is there a random snippet about Elon Musk's latest dodgy firmware update in the middle of this article? What does that have to do with Clearview?

Facebook, Instagram finally end days of uptime by returning to some downtime

FB is a plague on society, it affects people that don't even participate.

^ This.

TBH, since Facebook cause various psychological harms including inciting people to various hatred, often at the behest of foreign 'troll armies' etc. (never mind their laughable tax contribution), could we please take a leaf out of China's book and just ban the lot of it, permanently?

Spiritual Opium? - more like Spiritual Arsenic.

@Captain Veg

[Celeriac]

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: People like shiny branded shit

More like the Giffen Goods.. As in, it's not actually any better (if anything it's worse), it's just got a higher price tag so the idiots want it more

Re: Have to agree coming at it from the other way.

The Pinephone is not so good, sadly. :(

But I have had great success with a Fairphone 3 running "/e/" OS. (de-googled AOSP that works)

Reluctant to patch

They've got customers using those features..

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Want to run it?

I think snap is actually worse than systemd.

Every application is mounted by the Kernel in its own squashfs. If you run `df` on a bare Ubuntu install of their latest version, you'll find it comes with about 15 mounted 'filesystems', one for each of the stock Snap apps that Ubuntu comes with, each with their own copy of all the system libraries, and a bizarre interface to the rest of the system. In fact it is just like the app-sandboxing evils of Apple that you cite, but coming to a Linux desktop near you.

It's supposed to be for security, but the very idea that you are bypasing root priveleges and handing a potentially untrusted squashfs image to kernelspace is just.. bonkers imo

And at least systemd actually has a USE, for a desktop/laptop user. It does make certain things easier. (I agree on servers it's totally backwards and often downright dangerous)

Also, without organised religion there would be no civilisation. So religion had a use too. But now we have civilisation I agree religion is obsolete. Still not as bad as snap though ;)

Re: Want to run it?

I've been using Debian for 20 years (that makes me feel old, but i'm 36), and I somewhat agree, somewhat disagree.

Debian is *perfect* for a beginner provided they have someone experienced and patient enough to show them the ropes (as I did, and then did for other people)

But for a beginner who is on their own, or with nothing but internet forums, it can be a bit scary/frustrating.

It kind of assumes you know what you are doing. But if you DO know what you are doing or have a friend who does, then it is the most powerful and useful distro out there by far.

Whereas other distros try to force you down a certain path, which experienced users might decide they don't want to go down.

(e.g. 'snap' is the most ghastly thing ever invented. seriously wtf)

Re: Want to run it?

You can configure SteamPlay (aka "Proton", a per-game customised version of Wine) to try to play ALL windows games. not just officially-supported ones.

For almost everything I've tried, it works flawlessly.

GTFO works. DOOM works. Even VR games like The Forest and Dead Effect work.

KDE

Don't know a lot about Mint/Cinnamon, but KDE has served me well as a desktop for many years, is available on most if not all distros, and is at its best yet IMO.

10 years ago KDE 4 was a bit of a "duff release" i'll grant, but its successor has really made up for that.

"KDE Connect" is awesome for integrating with my phone. Dolphin file manager does everything a file manager needs to. Settings are easy to find and very useful/powerful - it's as customisable as a desktop should be without being confusing for new users. My Bluetooth mouse "just works". Even my work VPN "just works", after setting it up via the networking widget.

It doesn't crash, it doesn't get in the way, it does everything I need, and I can trust it to work for me and not somebody else*.

Most things that I need for work are available natively for Linux e.g. Chrome, LibreOffice, Slack, Teams, VSCode - And of course, these days we can run even those Windows apps and games without a Linux version on Linux via Wine and Steam's Proton. Basically everything that I need as a computer user.

* Here I am referring to all of the evil 'provisioning' antifeatures in Windows, Android, iOS etc that are designed to give someone else (your employer, your software/hardware vendor and any advertisers who pay them, your state.. etc) surveillance and control over what you think and do.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

Also, I suspect his version will be something like: All public sector procurement must go via the Official Journal of the United Kwaingdom (aka MY desk) and Boris, Sajid, Priti and I will give the work to the friends and benefactors of the Tory party when we have our meeting at the usual pub in Mayfair.

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

AC > What utter nonsense.

So, for example the European Public Contracts Directive 2014 which forced all public sector procurements over a certain value to go via the Official Journal of the European Union.

This was almost entirely Britain's idea, so far as I know, having worked on several public procurements for a large EU-collaborative science project.

The idea was to stop the rampant corruption around public sector procurement in Italy, Spain, France etc.

Of course, it was a nightmare for public sector bodies like the one I worked for, (will it be above the OJEU threshold or won't it?? We won't know till the quotes come back so better lets assume it will..) and it made it a right pain to buy the stuff we actually needed, because we had to waste a lot of people's time and get various £100k's quotes from companies, only to have to write some document justifying why they are not fit for the job.

But even back then in 2017, Italy, Spain, France even Germany were known to be ignoring these rules, and our collaborators were telling us not to keep worrying about them.

Apparently only Britain stuck to this red tape - we always were stickers for rules and love to hide behind them so we can push pens around instead of getting a job done.

And I bet you your Brexit hat that old Kwasi Kwarteng will come up with a mirror image of OJEU that's even worse, and we will be wishing we could have the old red tape back with less knots in.

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

Sadly, it was the UK who introduced most of the EU's 'red tape', and we will still be entangled by it post-brexit, but with our own uniquely-british knots tied in it, meaning that any corporate/legal strategy that works in the EU is no longer guaranteed to work in the UK. While multinationals can afford to navigate a pile of red tape for access to a market the size of Europe, they are not going to do that all over again just for our shitty little self-important island.

We're like a badly-behaved toddler smashing the toys and storming out of the playgroup and then whingeing that nobody wants to play with us.

We have some sad news about Facebook. It has returned to the internet after six-hour mega outage

Re: Facebook would NEVER do this.

"What do you mean they are celebrating and say they hope we never come back?? Get it back online NOW Maurice!"

"Boss, I can't open the door to the server room.."

Microsoft's .NET Foundation under fire as resigning board member questions its role

Re: Sobering

> and unless you find another platform you will only be furthering their cause.

Oh and before you jump to Node.js, guess who bought NPM last year..

Re: Sobering

Sadly, Microsoft never did stop being Microsoft. They laughed when other big corporations pretended to "not be evil", they tried it for a while with the open source act, but now with other corps like facebook and amazon seemingly trying to out-evil them, they have thrown off that garb - They are the OG of 'evilcorp' - they have been Evil since before it was cool, and now they are proud of it.

Microsoft only pretended to "stop being Microsoft" about open source in the first and second E's of their tried and tested EEE strategy: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

MS embraced Java in the 90s, but realised it needed a Java of its own, so extended it to form .NET and has nearly succeeded in eradicating Java. They made it nice and open to get all of the wide-eyed young developers on board. But they extinguished the open source flame.. So now YOU have been embraced, your knowledge extended with what is now microsoft-proprietary information.. They have pulled the rug out from under you, and unless you find another platform you will only be furthering their cause.

It was the same deal with GitHub.. Microsoft: We love open source! That's why we bought GitHub! Now all you lovely open-sourcers are working for Microsoft, contributing code into our new OpenAI code-generator that we just bought and is now anything but open and (we hope) will one day make people like you redundant.. What do you mean you don't want to work for Microsoft for no money and you want a real job?? Well perhaps we should remind you that we own LinkedIn too. Bwahaha >:]

Want to check out Windows 11 but don't want to buy a new PC? Here's how to bypass the hardware requirements

Re: Even better....don't bother yet!

s/yet//

ftfy.

UK umbrella payroll firm Giant Pay confirms it was hit by 'sophisticated' cyber-attack

Re: It is always "sophisticated"

It has to be "sophisticated" otherwise it's an admission that "our cybersecurity was incompetent"

'Quad' group seeks to set security standards for global tech industry

Re: Finally something, even if it is sloow and maybe too late

Yes, exactly as George Orwell predicted. Surveillance, propaganda, thought police, and an eternal state of cold war. "It's the only stable system" :(

Where do you think the Telescreens were manufactured? (although surely not Eastasia, because we have always been at war with Eastasia..)

Priti Patel, Peter Dutton et al will be over the moon to buy a population surveillance and control solution from the chinese, even if they don't own it.

And it doesn't seem to apply to just to the Tories - Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Jacqui Smith would all jump at the chance if they were still in power. As Orwell said, it's the only stable system of government: Totalitarian oppression - and it offers a government the dream of staying in absolute power forever.

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans, thank you very much

Re: So: in 100 years time ...

At the rate we're going, more like 5

Mine's the one with the Rad-Away in the pocket

Swift 5.5 unleashed with async keyword to fix 'pyramid of doom', plus other changes in 'massive release'

my eyes

wtf is this shit?

What's wrong with standard languages like ISO C, C++, Python, Javascript, even Rust is more standard than this apple-centric bollocks