Posts by alain williams

Crypto-crasher Do Kwon jailed for 15 years over $40bn UST bust

Re: What's the over/under

Assuming Do Kwon has enough cash left to pay Trump the bribe.

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

Re: Hey Trump

Does El-Reg count as social media ? I have always thought of it as a techies forum where we occasionally stray into other areas, not social media.

I do not do farcebook, instagram, etc so I suspect that me putting "None" would immediately flag me as suspicious.

Email addresses: I have hundreds, I usually trivially generate one every time I buy something on-line or register something like their-company-name@a-domain-of-mine.

If they do trawl friends with gmail, microsoft, etc addresses they will see my derision of Trump and support of Palestine -- either of which would probably make me persona non grata.

UK to Europe: The time to counter Russia's information war machine is now

It is not only Russia

USA covered above but Israel has it down to a fine art called Hasbara which tries to convince the world that the Palestinians should be blamed for the war whereas the opposite is true going back 1948. There is a long history.

Some of the worst happens inside Israel.

Home Office kept police facial recognition flaws to itself, UK data watchdog fumes

So: in future do we trust what the police say ?

How utterly stupid of them to not be open; many are not trustful of the police - this will only make things worse.

Bots, bias, and bunk: How can you tell what's real on the net?

It was always thus

The cartoon On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog dates from 1993.

Dorset Council ditching customized SAP for £14M Oracle overhaul

Re: Are not council business requirements largely the same across the UK?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record the councils should get together, write one system and share with other councils around the country. I can see the need for small variations (eg town vs rural) but as wolftone says THEY ALL DO THE SAME FUCKING THING.

If council leaders do not want to do this then we need to start a hunt for brown envelopes, there cannot be any other sensible reason.

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

Your passport really only works at the border

But I thought that the digital ID was only needed when you wanted to start a new job. What you are admitting is that digital ID is going to be used for far, far more than we are currently told.

not everyone has a passport or wants a passport.

But many people have a driving license. OK: many is not all but between passports & driving license you cover most people.

Oh: you do not need a car or have passed the test to have a driving license - you have to have one to be able to take driving lessons.

Canadian data order risks blowing a hole in EU sovereignty

Who can the Canadian courts make do things ?

A Canadian court can order someone in Canada to do things. This can include accessing data that their French bosses have told them to not look at.

So when a Canada resident tachie tries to access data but finds that s/he cannot access it (computer security systems say "no") then that techie has tried to fulfil the order to the best of his ability. That s/he could not get the data is not their fault.

Ball back to the Canadian court, what can it do ?

• Imprison the Canadian techie. But s/he tried his best to obey the order. I suspect that an appeal would get them out (Canada is not Trump's USA).

• Send an order to OVHcloud in France. That will simply say that French laws prevent it from obeying the order; anyway we are not subject to foreign court orders. Take us to court in France, this would go no where.

• Close down OVHcloud in Canada until OVHcloud in France obeys the order. This is likely to spark an international incident.

Me: I will stock up on popcorn until this is resolved.

Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science

How about using AI ...

to improve presidential decision making. Could not do worse than what is currently happening.

Years-old bugs in open source tool left every major cloud open to disruption

If only those who make heavy use of open source ...

and save much money by not writing it internally or buying proprietary licenses were to contribute a small fraction to open source maintainers then these things would be even better.

But all of these corporations have many Mr Bean Counters who just see the price of everything and fail to understand the value of anything.

Donations of total amounts that would not affect the share price or dividends given.

Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason

Re: What’s the point

Microsoft no longer loves you (assuming that it did once) and so has made notepad no longer KISS

70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture

Re: Work-life balance

Is this not called "slavery"? I thought that this was illegal in civilised countries.

Makers slam Qualcomm for tightening the clamps on Arduino

" Qualcomm quietly rewrote the terms of service "

Any corporation doing something quietly should generally be taken as an indication of evil intent. With one like Qualcomm doubly so.

But since a lot of the code is GPL or similar they cannot just grab rights which they do not have in the first place. However: other stuff do they surely not have to give due warning so people can remove their content ?

I suspect that a lot of the community will just move elsewhere and let them fester in their own malevolence.

Google's AI is eating your email by default. Here's how to shut its mouth

I do not have a google account

but do send email to people @gmail.com. If I write email then I own the copyright so google should ask me before feeding it to AI or anything other than the person who I sent it to.

Google has never asked me for permission, which I would never grant.

However google is quite safe: our chocolate teapot of Data Protection (ICO) will never bother to do anything.

UK minister ducks cost questions on nationwide digital ID scheme

Upcoming budget

There is a budget next week and Rachel Reeves is desperately trying to close a black hole. It seems that we have found her a £500m bonus - prolly much more when you consider cost overruns.

We all have pet projects but when the pennies are tight we have to give up on some of them. That is, of course, unless the Gov't thinks that it can run a profit by selling some of our information to big tech or the CIA or someone.

Thunderbird 145 finally adds ‘native’ Exchange support

Re: Why was this page unavailable ?

I did not fill in the survey but needed to refresh the page a few times.

A bug or a nudge ? No idea.

Microsoft spins up Azure HorizonDB to take on distributed Postgres rivals

How much is M$ contribusing to PostgreQL ?

This is a paid for service, nothing wrong with that, but what is M$ giving back ?

The best thing to give back would be code, this would ensure compatibility between platforms; yes, yes, I know that M$ likes discourage portability but we do not want fragmentation - ie code that works on one platform that does not on another one.

Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight

Re: The person who writes documentation

You write documentation for someone who doesn't know the product.

No: you need different levels of documentation, even experienced users need documentation - but about things that would mystify a novice user.

Yes: you need good documentation for the new user that assumes that they know zilch; this will let them get it installed & running. I have wanted to try out several packages and given up because I could not get a basic installation to work. Optimisation & customisation happens next.

Also: many programs produce hopeless error & information messages, eg not saying the name of which file is missing, or just the name but not the directory that it is in.

Geopolitics push European CIOs to think local on cloud

How is the local cloud reached ?

They also need to consider the interconnects, ie the cabling, routing, etc. I WW-II Gordon Welchman pioneered Traffic analysis and deduced much from pattern analysis in communications.

We also need local equivalents to Let's Encrypt - this is based in San Francisco, we would be foolish if we thought that the USA spooks had not compromised it, if not it is subject to USA laws.

Fix these for starters.

Here's one way to cut support ticket volume… send them to another company entirely

Bonus points is when customer gets angry - they you can just close the case.

I have had this in shops as well - they try to put me off, when I persist they claim that I am shouting/abusive/... and then refuse to talk to me.

Musk gets approval for bumper Tesla payout but, unlike his robot, there are strings attached

Tax it at 95%

That will still leave him with $50 billion - more than enough for anyone.

Use the tax for: food aid, Medicaid, overseas aid.

That will never happen, but it is nice to dream.

Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

Re: 21th century colonialism

prohibit export of data to providers operating under different jurisdictions outside of EU

The best way of achieving that is by:

• ensuring that the data-canter owner is not beholden to non EU laws, ie is an EU company

• does not run software that it does not know what it does - ie not use closed source code. Who knows what Microsoft telemetry does ? (Ditto for not MS s/ware). Open source is the only way to go

Even this is no guarantee but is a good start.

Bank of England says JLR's cyberattack contributed to UK's unexpectedly slower GDP growth

So now we know that cyberattacks cost ...

(as if we did not know that already) so when are government and corporations going to put real effort and funds into preventing it in the first place ?

100% prevention is a pipe dream but we can reduce the number of attacks and/or their impact.

The trouble is that it is cost today for probable benefits tomorrow - something that short term attitudes by politicians and corporate bean counters are averse to.

Ministry of Defence's F-35 blunder: £57B and counting

Re: Again why beancouters

buying all their key equipment from Yank suppliers was a stupid, stupid, stupid idea

Fortunately we have more Eurofighters than F-35, but less from the USA is good, even more so since the coming of the orange one.

Amazon Web Services’ US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted

Re: Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

The 14,000 staff were a cost to Amazon.

The AWS outage is a cost to Amazon's customers & their customers.

Which of the two costs has the larger effect on Amazon's profits ?

Re: Prompt

Your comment was prophetic: Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft sites down in Microsoft global outage (4pm GMT 29 Oct).

UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO

Pay peanuts - get a monkey

anyone coming from outside the civil service "will be expected to start at the salary minimum if successful."

But someone from outside the civil service is exactly who they want. Someone with real world experience.

Appoint a civil servant and you will get someone who will want to continue to do things the way that they are currently done - as that is all that they know.

Who is outlining the role ? I suspect one of the monkey that inhabits Whitehall :-(

Ex-CISA head thinks AI might fix code so fast we won't need security teams

How delightfully naive

to think that a little AI magic pixie dust will solve all security problems.

The truth is good, old fashioned software engineering practice that starts with a secure design and ends with quality assurance testing.

Yes: AI might help with this but AI must not be used as an excuse to cut s/ware development costs - which only results in enshittification.

Australia sues Microsoft for misleading M365 users about Copilot subscription options

Fourth option not mentioned

LibreOffice, even cheaper and keeps on working even when someone screws the Microsoft cloud.

MPs urge government to stop Britain's phone theft wave through tech

Every 'phone stolen results in a replacement bought

Where is the incentive for manufacturers to reduce sales just to save customers some money and inconvenience ?

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

1. Build a Time Machine

But that makes a different problem: one of getting Discovery to 88 miles per hour. You cannot use the better alternative as Discovery is too large to get in through the Tardis doors.

Playtime’s over: Crooks swipe Toys R Us Canada customer data and dump it online

Statutory redress

There ought to be statutory compensation given to all those affected by such a heist. Partly to redress any loss or hassle caused and partly to raise the cost to the compromised organisation which would increase insurance costs and so make the board more willing to enact proper security in the first place.

Salt Typhoon hit governments on three continents with SharePoint attacks

Re: Test

Same thing happened to me ~12 hours ago: a comment did not appear after I submitted it, so I tried again, again nothing. Several hours later I saw the comment twice.

AI bubble inflates Microsoft CEO pay to $96.5M

Maybe he could spend some of this ...

in quality assurance of Microsoft products.

Turns out the end of Windows 10 is good for something: The PC refresh cycle

Re: More bubbles are going to burst.....

One of these days, Redmond et al will have to recognize that the latest and greatest is just a pipe dream. 90% of users already have what they need.

Which is why AI (needing new hardware) is being pushed.

This being written on 13 year old hardware running Debian Linux.

How many people use this missing functionality ?

you will always find differences but how much of that is important ?

Trump's anti-sustainability agenda comes to Eurozone

Re: TDS

I can disagree with Herr Trump and articulate why ... please articulate the other side !!! ... That is called debate

Please include in that debate objective, testable evidence -- too many recent speeches are contain assertions that have little basis in reality or are emotive, dodgy stories that are not representative of the wider picture.

The rejection of the scientific method by those who do not like what it shows is one of the worst changes in recent times.

Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily

It might be someone else's photograph ...

but if it is my face how do I opt out ? I do not use any Microsoft software or service.

This should be opt in by the individuals in the pictures.

Fujitsu pumps £280M into UK arm to keep lights on after Horizon scandal

No justice yet

Most postmasters have not been compensated. No executives at Fujitsu or Post Office have gone to prison.

I am waiting. I fear that I will be waiting a long time.

50 years in deep space, and Voyager still can't escape budget gravity

So the USA is saving $1¼ million on Voyager

but then splurge $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza and $35 to $40 million a year to protect Trump while just in Palm Beach.

I know where I would make budget cuts.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Cheaper to leave it where it is ???

I thought that Trump was so eager to cut needless government costs that he set up a new unit: DOGE to do just this.

Or does DOGE not cut vanity projects ?

I have not heard of DOGE for a while - is it still a thing ?

SaaS turbo-charged software spending tough for CIOs to control, says research

SaaS - I thought that that was the point

By making it a service the customers will always be on the hook and so pay more.

Was this not obvious ?

Square Kilometre Array is so sensitive, its datacenter needs two Faraday cages to stop RF leaks

Re: Are they are two separate cages?

Presumably local transport would either be horse & cart or steampunk.

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide

Re: Just to be sure

Strangely found in some hotel rooms pointing at the bed.

That will be really interesting for them to explain what was going on when a child takes his/her clothes of before going to bed.

Greg Kroah-Hartman explains the Cyber Resilience Act for open source developers

Re: Compliance is the same overhead for all producers :(

The proper approach is to use Product Liability.

Presumably liability is not just about suing people it is also about fixing things. If there is a bug in code the camera manufacturer can get his programmers to fix it or encourage (ie pay) the open source author to do so. What is the cheapest way ? If the code is non trivial prolly paying the author - which also complies with the GPL requirement to make available this code fix.

So this could result in those who use open source code paying the authors - I expect that they will do so begrudgingly and as little as possible.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project'

Re: Android is dead to me.

Interaction or communication with your government or bank might become extremely difficult.

I do not care. I do not do banking with my 'phone, they are not secure and easily lost. On-line banking I do from my Debian (Linux) machine.

Re: Android is dead to me.

The problem is that there isn't really another option.

Try LineageOS

Digital ID, same place, different time: In this timeline, the result might surprise us

Re: Dishonest about it's purpose

It will strongly tie your ID to your 'phone.

• via the cell towers your 'phone company knows where the 'phone is, the will now know where you are

• many people browse the web using their 'phone, they will now know who is browsing what web sites

What permissions will the Digital ID require to install on a 'phone: address book, location, ... ?

Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

Judge people by your own standards

Trump thinks that Lisa Monaco is partisan and that if she has access to sensitive information that she would abuse it. This does not describe most people. Most will do a job honestly and not use any special status for their personal benefit or that of their favourite causes. That Trump thinks that she would is a reflection of Trump's own corrupt morals.

Trump also fails to understand that just because Monaco is in a position of power that she would have access to sensitive information. Most businesses would not allow that. Trump & cronies doing that in the USA government is not how well run organisations work.