Posts by Malcolm Weir

70-knot winds so far blamed for yacht disaster that killed Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch

Re: Predictive Modeling???

Sciroccos fit the bill...

Re: Acquitted...

Friendly reminder that the acquittal does not mean the accounting wasn't crooked.

Re: Wrong Target....

Fraud is never trumped by "caveat emptor". Failing to notice the duck is lame is the buyer's problem. Actively hiding the duck's lameness is the seller's.

Attackers pwn charter airline helping Trump's deportation campaign

Re: Trump will blame Joe Biden

What, again?

Didn't they target the script kiddies at DOGE a while back?

You're not too smart, are you?

Read the article. It's quite clear that the issue described is that ICE and CBP are lawless thugs and should be first up against the wall. Nothing different today.

But even your sacred evidence makes it clear that Obama didn't ignore court orders, provides no evidence of third-country deportation or blocking due process from the judiciary.

("Immigration courts" are not judicial courts. Once the immigration court has decided, THEN the judiciary gets to weight in).

The difference is DUE PROCESS. Obama's DHS provided much more of it than the fascists do.

Remember the masked alleged ICE agents grabbing people off the streets under Obama? No? How about suddenly revoking valid visas without notice or hearing? No again?

Quite.

This is naive and factually incorrect: there are many more options.

But first, the idea that "if you cross the border without permission" is simplistic, as we would expect from the MAGAt fascists. One simple example is people who cross the border with permission, but for whom permission is then yanked without due process or even notice. Whether or not they are then there illegal is a legal question which may tilt either way.

The biggest dumbness here is the faux binary choice: the US has not had an "open border" in decades, if not centuries. Of course, the MAGAts like to screech that it has, but they're mostly dumb as a sack of rocks, so their errors are understandable if not admirable.

The other side of the faux binary choice comes down to the issue that the US really doesn't have a rational welfare system; sane systems make it substantially easier to manage costs, but that craps on the ability for huge corporations to skim money off the top. For the hard of thinking: Switzerland has pretty open borders with France, Germany and Italy...

(I'm not commenting on the wisdom of various policies, just pointing out the simplistic MAGAt frothing is... simplistic. Shocking!).

US, China agree to roll back tariffs – but only for 90 days

Re: Mouthy American blinks and backs down...

I don't think that's entirely true. The writers agree that the character represents the same stereotype as Trump, but the reality is that Trump fits the stereotype of a narcissistic ill-informed blowhard bully as well as Biff does. I'm sure Trump's behavior helped sculpt the character, but does Biff really hang out with a Jeffrey Epstein character the way Trump did? Did Biff bankrupt his own casino the way Trump did?

So I reckon Biff is what Trump is aspiring to be, not what he is...

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Make Aerospace Grotty Again

All of this seems to boil down to you claiming we need better instrumentation. Sounds good. Why are you so opposed to that?

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Re: The anti-lottery

Five down votes? Sorry, guys, the math still maths.

Re: The anti-lottery

Oddly enough, those who smugly claim that only those with a poor understanding of math(s) play lotteries are frequently themselves wrong:

If the odds of being the single winner are, say, 1 in 100,000,000, and the ticket price is $1, then if the jackpot is greater than $100,000,000 your expected winnings will be (jackpot) * (probability of winning) which exceeds the stake amount, so it's worth playing.

(of course, the Game Theory arithmetic is much more complicated in the real world, because of lesser prizes and greater odds, and the number of tickets sold influencing the probability of you being a single winner, and so on, but at some point the game is worth playing...)

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

Re: Proof-of-personhood

Revenue protection is one part of the motive, but quality of service is, remarkably in this day and age, another.

Gaming in particular has value in knowing who and what the player actually is.

For example, there are scurrilous rumors that someone with the improbable name of "Elon Musk" employs minions to play games for him, so he can parachute in and look amazing to his adoring fan base. If you had to sign in using a verified ID it would be harder to masquerade as His Excellency.

But these days I'm told that bots on modern high-profile games are actually likely to be there because the game publisher wants them to be there, as NPCs rather than bots.

(For social media, of course, verified ID is a drawback. Who amongst us hasn't claimed that the toxic rant on their account wasn't the result of hacking? This is a particular problem for many high-profile people and politicians, whose accounts regularly seem to get hacked to post garbage that Absolutely Wasn't From Them).

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: Phonetic Alphabets

Hmmm.... that should be:

A for 'Orses

B for Mutton

C for Yourself

,,,,

Trump’s 145% tariffs could KO tabletop game makers, other small biz, lawsuit claims

Re: Sue him directly.

For information (not criticism):

1. You cannot sue the President for official acts (however daft), you can only sue the US Government, which is what this is. If you try to sue in state court, the federal government will "remove" it to federal court.

2. Even if you win a lawsuit, no-one goes to jail. That requires a prosecution.

3. You cannot prosecute a sitting President; first, if the prosecution is in civil court, it will be removed to Federal court (like with point 1). And the United States (i.e. the US Department of Justice) will not prosecute a sitting President. And the Supreme Court in the case of United States vs Trump said that he's absolutely immune from prosecution for official acts, with no good definition of what constitutes an official act: theoretically, he could declare someone an enemy and order the military to murder them, and that would be OK. Yes, this is ludicrous.

4. The legal position is that the only way to deal with a lawless President is to impeach and remove him, and then a prosecution could proceed, but see last point: any prosecution would have to establish that the act for which a prosecution is being sought is outwith the bounds of a President's official actions, and there's no guidance for how to do that.

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed

Re: Who is to blame?

'Must "just work"' is probably wrong in the language of requirements. "SHOULD just work" is better, but when I'm "designing in" security I assume both that the operator knows the reason for the hoops I'm asking them to jump through, but also if they don't, the security maybe lessened but it's not entirely eliminated! In other words, assume the user will make mistakes and you won't go too far wrong!

Mind you, there are mistakes and there's installing a separate network interface....

P.s. I was amused to discover today that Hegseth's efforts to axe large parts of the DoD is his second attempt: back in 2015 he tried to axe part of the US Military Academy ("West Point"). Literally. With an axe. By throwing it. At a cadet. Who he hit.

They have a free daily newsletter: The Atlantic Free Daily which is quite good.

I agree that the paywall model is not ideal, but it's understandable with the whole "pay our people" thing and the reality that advertising revenue is fickle. I would love a "pay per article" mechnism, and even better if that was capped so that once you'd paid enough on the pay-per-article model you'd get the rest of the issue free (the thing costs $80 / year, i.e. $6.67 / month, so charge $1 per article with a cap of 7 articles before the rest of that month's issue at no additional charge).

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

Re: Just another Trump lie

Obviously, this commentator hasn't listened to Trump ramble recently....

A trivial comparison of Trump 2025 with Trump 2017 will easily spot the degeneration. The man's going to be 79 in 6 weeks, so 82 by the next election, in which he's not eligible to stand anyway because of that whole Constitution thing. Even if the Supreme Court decides he magically is, that's not the same as the states obeying the Court (which is now optional, by the way, as evidenced by Trump).

Re: Just another Trump lie

Nah, mate, it's not debatable. There are pictures showing Donold next to Musk and Vance, both of whom are apparently 6' 2". Trump is at least an inch if not two or more shorter, and is known to where lifts in his shoes. And there are many, many pictures showing him alongside others whose height is known.

Trump is also known to lie about trivial issues.

It is absolutely undeniable that Trump is not 6' 3".

ICE enlists Palantir to develop all-seeing 'ImmigrationOS' eye to speed up deportations

Re: They have a massive logistical issue

Ah, in the words of, well, me, that's bollocks.

Two of the aircraft in question were in the "finishing center" in China, and have now (this weekend) been flown back to the USA. On their own. So, you know, the orders have reached the "fly across the Pacific" phase of manufacturing....

There's a third which was due to depart for Zhoushan but now will (obviously) stay in Renton. Also ready to deliver aka "flying".

Those are all the narrowbody 737 Max 8s, and make up about 30% of the Chinese orders Boeing had formerly hoped to deliver this year.

This piece of self-inflicted economic chaos is impacting aircraft at all stages of manufacturing.

Re: They have a massive logistical issue

Look, with the tariffs businesses will have to on-shore manufacturing, so the USA can become a self-sufficient manufacturing powerhouse "again" ("again" in the sense that although it was never really self-sufficient, but it did make a greater proportion of mid- to high-value goods).

These new manufacturing businesses will need to employ people in jobs to do the things that were previously outsourced to Asia and Central America.

Those people will come from.... errr.... hang on, there seems to be a problem with the Trumpian Brilliance!

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

The biggest problem with Trump from a business perspective is that Donold *likes* uncertainty and real business leaders *hate* it. Donold thinks all business is like the real estate business, and creating churn in that market can lead to great opportunities... but an awful lot of real estate transactions are just paper: company A sells a building to company B and nothing changes on the ground (until company B implements their new maintenance plan, which usually involves less maintenance and more explanations about how that's good).

There's an interesting rumor that the former governor of the bank of England is responsible for some of the recent walk-backs from Trump... allegedly he threatened to sell and coordinate a global sale of US treasury bonds. The fact that he's now the PM of Canada is integral to the allegations!

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Re: Minor correction

@Lewis R "In addition, it is getting hard to acquire new recording tapes, as well as drives, let alone repair parts for drives."

This is a very skewed assertion as there is no storage technology for which the "repair ancient tech" problem does not exist. I mean, try plugging in your ESDI or ST506 drives!

Re: 9 track tape?

IIRC, reel-to-reel 9 tracks tapes are required (by law) for certain treaty obligations (like exchanging missile test data with the Russians, although these days the Russians can probably just log in and look at the data directly).

Dems dub Trump cuts to chip export controls a 'gift' to Xi and Putin

Re: Beating the same old drum

This comment seems a bit like saying the speed limit in the village wasn't being observed by everyone, so lets eliminate it!

The level of funding was low and yet the export controls did act as a speed bump. Yes, it didn't stop those determined to ignore it, but it slowed them down.

Re: There is no intelligence in sight

It's a better fist than the last lot, as you note, but Starmer is still being cringingly obsequious to the wealthy. I mean, changing the top marginal tax rate from 45% to 55% isn't going to impact the standard of living for those impacted (making more than £125,000). Or if that's too bitter pill to swallow, how about a new 55% rate for those making over £250,000?

I mean, sure, it's perhaps regrettable that any taxation is necessary, but the UK needs money to pour into important things like defense, infrastructure and the NHS.

(The inheritance tax thing on farms was cack-handed. Easy to extend an exemption to owner-operated farms, which would still close the loophole of the wealthy using farms as a tax dodge, while providing an actual incentive for family farms to remain exactly that).

Re: Well, they did help him become President

But in Florida and DC he's a rapist. Not, I grant you, a convicted rapist, but he's a rapist. Imagine how surprised I was to discover ol' "grab 'em by the pussy" was a sexual criminal!

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

Err.... time machine, much?

"first quarter of FY2025" has ended. Second quarter FY2025 ends next Monday.

Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense

Well, they _could_ have used the Starliner capsule that returned safe and sound last year, but having the Dragon option allowed sober risk assessments to be made.

SpaceX loses a Falcon 9 booster and scrubs a Starship

Re: I wonder if this would work as a commenting system?

Instead of "Absolutely right!" I suggest using "Definitely, *poster name*" and "Up to a point, *poster name*!", depending on whether you agree or.... not.

This would be a suitable nod to this site's British heritage...

Re: SX runs better when he's around it.

Although the numbers may be in dispute (I believe there's likely some double-counting because of the way Harris received Biden's campaign funding, so a single contribution appears on both campaigns, not that the Harris numbers are relevant to Musk's purchase of the Presidency), it's laughable to claim that Musk's $288M is a "rounding error". Even using the (questionable) numbers above, it's 16%. And as you note, it might be argued that he "donated" advertising on Twitter above and beyond that.

Re: SX runs better when he's around it.

Dear Eel, you're spouting obvious nonsense. Again.

The Harris campaign spent a grand total of just under $1.2B.

The Trump campaign spent a grand total of just under $1.5B.

Musk provided $288M of that $1.5B.

FAA confirms it's testing Starlink, maybe for tasks Elon says Verizon is doing badly

Re: Experience matters, Verizon is the problem

FYI, the dish in Atlantic City, NJ will be there because that's where the FAA's test facilities are. It's there to test the solution intended for Alaska, not because it was needed to provide connectivity.

US stocks slip as Trump pulls trigger on Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

Re: Neither Canada or Mexico was doing enough to stop drugs

Ulbricht went to jail in 2015. The Donald was (arguably) President from 2017 to early 2021....

NAFTA hasn't been in effect since 2018. It was replaced by the USMCA.

And, yeah, I'm gonna guess this is a violation of the US/Mexico/Canada agreement, which was negotiated by Trump...

Welsh woman fined for flatulence-fueled cyber harassment

Re: £199(£247)

Microsoft Office Excel (which has probably been remained Microsoft AI World Sums, or something) knows about Welsh pounds. See "Format Cells-->Currency-->Symbol"...

Clock ticking for TikTok as US Supreme Court upholds ban

I suspect this should have read "the President can violate the law" or "violations of the law by the President are not actionable" or something.

The law went into effect, and the chief executive (POTUS, both the 46th and 47th) have directed their governments not to do anything. In the case of the 47th, he went further and ordered the DoJ that nothing that happens before he took office or up until the moratorium expires can be used in evidence.

Re: Inquiring minds want to know

Belated reminder: the internet grew out of an effort to build an infrastructure that was tolerant to important nodes being nuked (as in literally the target on nuclear weapons).

As to the DNS: that's a different First Amendment issue. It's one thing to say ByteDance can't operate in the USA, but it's quite another thing to compel a DNS provider to block them. One is a simple infringement of one speaker's rights (which has been cleared by SCOTUS). The other is compelled speech, which has not.

Stop gibbering. The Executive branch *always* gets to set priorities, and in this case President Biden has decided that enforcing this stupid ban that the guy who takes office 12 hours after the ban comes into effect has stated he doesn't the ban, is daft. So only a total moron would decide to spend resources on a piece of stupidity, and only an even more total moron would get faux outraged about Joe deciding this ranks about number 457 on the list of top ten things to do on inauguration morning.

Asda tech divorce from Walmart delays cut-over for 55 stores

Walmart has been a leader for years..

It must have been, what, 30-odd years ago that I was making regular trips to Bentonville, Arkansas to install and integrated one of our products into (a very small part of their IT system).

At that time, the Waltons understood that one of their "secret weapons" to manage costs was to have a very heavy-weight IT department. Back than they had a Thinking Machines system working on things like sales prediction based on various inputs, including weather forecasts: the simplistic idea is that when it rains, people buy umbrellas, but they were doing that so of estimation several weeks out so they could ship the umbrellas (and the overcoats, shoes, etc) to the right stores in time (still no umbrellas for Arizona in winter).

All of which is a long way of saying that a newcomer may not have understood what the Walmart IT system actually _did_. And certainly may have thought those systems to be high-end expensive, because they were!

What happens when someone subpoenas Cloudflare to unmask a blogger? This...

Re: First Amendment

The issue with UK defamation is that legally it's a crapshoot. Lots depends on what evidence is presented, the mood of the judge, the weather forecast, etc. Starmer, as a former DPP, knows this all to well.

The thinking behind the threats is that Truss is gets her name in the papers, and if it goes to trial, the whole thing gets lots more airtime for someone who should be consigned the waste-lettuce-bin of history.

I suspect the strongest defense Starmer has is that he could claim to be acting as the PM and therefore the "shadow" of Parliamentary Privilege (if not the whole enchilada of that protection), and so things he says in the context of his job as PM that are related to his job cannot be defamatory. Yeah, I know: echoes of a recent US Supreme Court opinion. Of course, that's not the only defense: "substantial truth" also applies, as does the "political rhetoric" doctrine meaning that the hypothetical man on the Clapham omnibus could not possibly believe what a politician says anyway, so Starmer couldn't have damaged Truss....

1. The quote is "falsely shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theater". The first word is important.

2. That (1918) case has been superseded, and now that quote has no legal relevance.

Re: First Amendment

There is no federal anti-SLAPP law, so it would come down to whether the jurisdiction in which blogger resides has one. My wild and unsubstantiated guess is that a blogger writing about Tamworth is unlikely to live somewhere with strong anti-SLAPP protections.

However, the SPEECH act (28 USC 4101) may possibly be relevant, although I doubt it for much the same reasons: the Federal court likely won't be issuing judgments in the case, only supporting discovery. So while SPEECH would protect a US blogger improbably writing about Tamworth from having to pay damages, it won't help a UK one.

In general, courts don't particularly like anonymity, so while Joe-the-blogger may be able to shield his identity, it requires having third-parties willing to fight for that, and that's not Cloudflare (although in many cases Cloudflare may not have the definitive information, just email addresses and possibly just PayPal information.

The strongest defense here is probably substantial truth combined with Mike Masnick's Streisand Effect: ridicule the feck out of the politician for being a feeble dweeb!

In entirely related news, looks like Liz Truss has a big sad that someone has called her not terribly smart.

Los Angeles wildfires force tens of thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

Re: A question

Brick is mostly incompatible with seismic safety. Concrete has similar issues (which is why the freeway bridges collapse). Slate/tile is better than wood roofing, but fireproof (ceramic) tiles exist and are purpose designed... but they all cost more money, and there's already a shortage of new housing in California (presumably from all the people who hate it so much that they move there).

One of the challenges is deciding what problems you're building for: typical building fires would like interior sprinklers and fire-suppression systems, but wildfires need exterior systems throwing water on the roofs of buildings (to quench sparks and embers).

Re: Running Out of Water

(I don't often agree with this poster, but FWIW I think he's essentially right here. I suspect also he doesn't really care that I think so!!).

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/01/08/california-mobilizes-additional-water-tenders-to-los-angeles-fires/

This is mobilizing 140 water tenders (although it's not clear from where). But it's going to take some time to marshal and deploy them, so if one were thinking about infrastructure improvements (a thing that everyone wants and nobody is prepared to pay for, especially not those who built their political fortunes on cutting taxes), have a fleet of hundreds of tankers and drivers in the LA basin has a lot going for it.... especially since the fleet could be deployed to other fire sites elsewhere in the state if deemed appropriate.

Probably the smartest thing would be to have a state-wide (or west-coast-wide) system where resources are pre-deployed from San Diego to Bellingham, and could be designed to do double-duty to support earthquake response as well as fire response and a hypothetical tsunami response!

But the fatal flaw with this idea is (a) it takes a lot of money to set up (although less than redoing the hydrant system), (b) it takes a continuing flow of money year-on-year to maintain, and (c) ideally it never does anything, making it an attractive target for cost cutters ("the tanker fleet hasn't been used for a couple of years; why are we paying for the useless things?").

Word from a friend who's going into his third night shift in the Emergency Operation Center at JPL is that it's still there. Major concern remains wind-blown embers, but the nearest point of the Eaton fire is slightly less than half a mile away, but fortunately (for them) the wind is shifting to the north a touch, so the campus is not immediately downwind of the blaze.

Only observation here is that it's very unlikely to be homeless related, as the big fires seemed to have started in wilderness areas.

Re: A question

Nope. The San Gabriel mountains are not what you'd call "heavily forested" (nor have they ever been). Steep canyons, scrub land with creosote bushes, absolutely of no interest to the timber industry.

Re: A question

When the wind blows at 90mph, it doesn't really matter if you have boundaries.

Have a squint at Google Earth: you'll see that JPL *has* clear space on three sides.

But the other side of the coin is that while the fire break areas represent unrealized real estate development, they _also_ require upkeep. This is SoCal: things grow there 365.24 days a year!

The last point is the terrain doesn't favor large fire breaks. They aren't terribly obvious most of the time (because the inversion layer causes poor visibility) but the "hills" around the LA basin are real, steep sided mountains. The closest high peak above Altadena (where the Eaton fire is) is "only" 1427m, so a bit taller than Ben Nevis, and it's about 2 miles from the town!

Tired of begging, Microsoft now trying to trick users into thinking Bing is Google

Re: Devious yet inept

Hmmm... Apple is undeniably better at building the walls than Microsoft. As a post above notes, it's thus-far been entirely possible to defeat MS's approaches (with a greater or lesser degree of effort), but e.g. getting around Apple's App Store restriction is ... harder.