Posts by alain williams

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch loses first stage in fight against extradition to US

If this were the other way round ...

would someone be extradited from the USA to the UK ? I doubt it.

If Lynch is tried in the USA I suspect that he will be found guilty - there is too much money riding on it.

Pipe down, Jeff. You've only gone where Gus Grissom went before, 60 years ago today

Re: Do allow Bezos his moment of glory

Does that mean that my son should not be be pleased and deserving of congratulations when he wrote his first "hello world" program ? That was first done many decades ago.

Do allow Bezos his moment of glory

Although I am not a fan of his business practices his flight is an achievement and he should be allowed to celebrate. Hopefully it will result in cheaper access to earth orbit and, eventually, travel beyond that.

I hope that there is healthy competition from SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others.

Happy 'Freedom Day': Stats suggest many in England don't want it or think it's a terrible idea

I have some sympathy for Boris

He is caught between the medics on one side and his back benchers + business people on the other. He cannot please everyone and has tried to come out with something that is vague enough to please no matter your opinion -- but he has failed.

Not explaining the reasoning is part of the obfuscation, it just makes things worse.

Boris' ideal role would be father Christmas: a fantasy man of smiles and freebies all round.

Oh: his Sunday shenanigans on trying to evade self-isolation y/day was simply beyond the pail.

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

Re: Using it wrongly

Humans should then be responsible for making decisions.

After (re)viewing the evidence (ie images) that the AI matched to the person. This might be hard for a human if the image quality is bad or the person has different make-up or ...

What happens if AI is not being used and a venue owner thinks that s/he recognises someone who caused problems some time back ? The owner may well be confusing an innocent person with someone else - this has likely happened many times.

This is the data watchdog! Surrender your Matt Hancock smoochy-kiss pics right now!

Would they have bothered ...

to make those raids if you or me had been snapped smooching someone who was not our spouse ?

SonicWall suggests people unplug their end-of-life gateways under 'active attack' by ransomware crims

Re: EOL

Jesus people. All this bashing of SonicWall when these things went EOL *7 Years* ago!

When I have bought things I do not remember seeing something that says "This will EOL in 2022", or similar. But the EOL date is becoming increasingly important.

Maybe the EOL date should be mandated to be big and obvious on the box & web site.

"too out of date for SonicWall to patch"

Not true, they still have the source code so they could patch but they do not want to as they would rather sell a new box.

It had to happen: Microsoft's cloudy Windows 365 desktops are due to land next month

More secure ?

It is more secure than working on a home PC full of games and untrusted applications,

Eh ? Keeping files on some MS server to which god knows who has access to is more secure ? Who has been smoking what ? How much has the NSA helped create this ?

Oh, I suppose what they are saying is "The MS Windows that we provide is so insecure that you cannot trust it".

Then: what happens when your Internet connection is down or the MS servers are dead ? If it is all on your own machine then it is always available.

Yes: I do see that being able to access files from multiple machines is useful, but there have long been other ways of doing that.

Lenovo says it’s crammed a workstation into a litre of space – less than three cans of beer

Re: The most important question

So about 1/2,777,777 of an Olympic swimming pool or 1,277 of a Tun (beer barrel).

Get an adaptor

I suspect that a lot of old and little used connectors will not appear on new motherboards and save a $ or two. If you really need it a USB to serial adaptor will help you - but mean that you have more spaghetti behind your PC.

NASA readies commands to switch on Hubble's back-up hardware

Voyager spacecraft

All of this shows how remarkable that Voyager 1 & Voyager 2 launched in 1977, some 44 years ago, are still working. OK: running out of power and simpler computers with some problems but still not failed.

NHS England staff voice concerns about access controls on US spy-tech firm Palantir's COVID-19 data store

Re: What a surprise

Quite. Access to NHS staff for Civid-19 research is not as lucrative as other uses of that (no longer) private personal data.

Black screens in Windows 11? Bork has seen it all before

Blue or Black ...

it is still a BSOD

Brit firm fined £200k for banging on about missold PPI in 11.4 million nuisance calls

1.75 pence/call - fine not large enough

The fine should be against the firm owner personally so that s/he cannot avoid paying by just folding and creating a new firm tomorrow.

.

BTW: Why does El-Reg not name these reprobates ?

Cyber insurance model is broken, consider banning ransomware payments, says think tank

A report saying the bleeding obvious

I, and others here, have said many times that if insurance did not pay ransomware then companies would be forced to up their game.

Yes: it would hurt a few that did not get the message, but after a couple of bankruptcies other companies would start to take it seriously - not just try to blame others.

If this is not done then the pain will persist for many years, this will not stop it but should make it much harder for the crooks.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web NFT fetches $5.4m at auction while rest of us gaze upon source code for $0

How much do you think that I would get ...

if I wrapped this reply up as a NFT ? Would El-Reg sue me for a cut ?

I think that this is all a bit silly.

Who in America is standing up to privacy-bothering facial-recognition tech? Maine is right now leading the pack

Already done ?

How do you know that Google has not already done the analysis and that all that the settings do is to stop the apps telling you what it has learned/worked-out ?

Knowing who your chums are will help Google learn more about you and so better target more advertising.

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

Expect a reply when I am in the pub ?

Then do not complain if what I write has been filtered through the London Pride that I have drunk.

Samsung commits to 5 years of Android updates... for its enterprise smartphone users at least

5 years from when ?

It will be from when first released, not from when you bought it. So for many they will only get 2-3 years of updates - this is nothing like enough.

I get it that they want to sell you a new shiny as soon as possible but that is not what I want - I will replace mine when it breaks.

Report picks holes in the Linux kernel release signing process

Few install directly from kernel.org

It would be good to see an audit of the security procedures at the distributions as well.

Campaigners warn of an 'algorithm-driven censorship' future if UK Online Safety Bill gets through Parliament

Re: An old joke

The new 'joke' should be set in China.

Gov.UK taskforce publishes post-Brexit wish-list: 'TIGRR' pounces on GDPR, metric measures

Grenfell and red-tape

Red-tape has many purposes, one of which is to make things safe for us. Remove regulations and house builders will rejoice as they can cut corners. The fact that we will have houses more likely: to go up in flames, fall down and flood will be none of their concern and we will be left to pick up the bill - assuming that we did not die in the fire.

Deregulation of banks was a large part of the 2008 crash, the lessons of the 1929 Wall St Crash having been forgotten.

Similar concerns on all other areas where red-tape is cut.

Japan assembles superteam of aircraft component manufacturers to build supersonic passenger plane

Do we really need this ?

Will it not just increase the carbon footprint of the rich who will be able to afford the high ticket prices ?

Tech contractor loses IR35 tribunal appeal: 'Right' to substitute didn't mean he could, say judges

Re: Yet another push for us to all go work at Tesco

What really irritates me is that the government is making such a song and dance over this while failing to sort out tax laws for big business and the rich which makes contracting look like a drop in the ocean....

Quite easy to fix: contractors should start making donations to the party in power ... IR35 will recede

Blue passports, French service provider: Atos bags £21m UK Passport Office deal

"become completely digital"

Digital might seem a no brainer for us techies, but the ONS says In January to February 2020, 4% of households in Great Britain did not have internet access.

So are these to be excluded ?

'Vast majority of people' are onside with a data grab they know next to nothing about, reckons UK health secretary

Re: "the vast majority of people are strongly onside"

Do you wear clothes ?

"the vast majority of people are strongly onside"

The evidence is that "the vast majority of people have not objected" - so if they did not object then they must be strongly onside. That most people do not know about it or do not understand how easy it is to de-anonymize data and how personal data can be abused in years to come - is not an issue that Hancock wants to talk about.

This is using the same logic that a losing candidate uses when claiming that the victor was elected by a minority ... having assumed those who did not vote as would have voted against the victor.

Do we know if Hancock has opted out ?

Chinese app binned by Beijing after asking what day it is on anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre

Is Barbra Streisand known in China ?

Or is talking about her eponymous effect discouraged ?

Oracle hits UK reseller with lawsuit for allegedly reselling grey market Sun hardware

Levis and computers

Yes: Levi Strauss won that. IIRC Tesco were selling Levis bought in Czechoslovakia, etc, at prices cheaper than available in the UK.

So: the likes of Levi Strauss can take advantage of globalization (ie get stuff made where cheapest) but consumers cannot. One rule for the big companies, another for consumers.

I would agree with Levi Strauss charging more for jeans in the UK if they made the jeans in the UK paying workers UK wages.

Is what Oracle is doing really very different ?

Now that Trump is useless to Zuckerberg, ex-president is exiled from Facebook for two years, possibly indefinitely

Two years, let me see ...

About 1.5 years before the next election, so time to re-enable the account if Trump is going to run for president ... which means that it might be expedient to suck up to him again.

Brit retailer Furniture Village confirms 'cyber-attack' as systems outage rolls into Day 7

Re: I hope Furniture Village

Whoever let the malware in will be carpeted.

China reveals plan to pump out positive news about itself. Let's see what happens when that lands with social media fact-checkers

A people & their government are different

Chinese people are generally friendly and hardworking but anything coming from the communist party need to be treated as dangerous as it is.

Your typical Chinaman is pleasant and friendly, I know several. The Chinese government causes me great concern.

This happens in many places:

I have Israeli friends but despise how the Israeli government treats the Palestinians.

Dictator Alexander Lukashenko is not typical of Belarus peoples.

etc

Apple sued in nightmare case involving teen wrongly accused of shoplifting, driver's permit used by impostor, and unreliable facial-rec tech

It is not Apple or SIS who lied ...

but employees of Apple and SIS. They were employed in a security capacity and have demonstrated a total carelessness and negligence in what they did. Making these personally pay Bah, on top of huge compensation by Apple & SIS, might make others in similar positions take their responsibilities seriously.

Fines for wasting police time would also be appropriate.

Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Copyright as well as data protection

Who owns the copyright on the images that they have downloaded, do they have permission to keep them ?

Granted that most of the big Internet corporations ignore copyright (unless you are breaching theirs) but that does not mean that the question should not be asked.

The Home Office will need to overturn a long legacy of failure to achieve ambition of all-digital border by 2025

How to do identity ...

DNA fingerprinting at birth?

Chip under the skin - they are doing another trial run at the moment - with cats.

Doncaster insurance firm One Call hit by not-dead-at-all Darkside ransomware gang

£15 million + cost of repair + reputation loss

How much would it have cost to have decent disaster recovery in place ?

Unfortunately you are not going to stop numpty employees clicking on links to bouncy kittens, or whatever, no matter how many times you tell them.

Parliament demands to know the score with Fujitsu as Post Office Horizon scandal gets inquiry with legal teeth

Government delays in deciding ...

are quite understandable. They first have to find out if any of their mates are likely to be adversely affected if the inquiry is made a statutory one.

To what do we owe the Honor? Huawei spinout breaks silence with two pro ultraportables

Linux option?

The previous ones had a Linux option, do these news ones have that ?

I like it when the manufacturer supports Linux out of the box - it means that everything should just work.

Us? Pwn SolarWinds? With our reputation? Russian spy chief makes laughable denial of supply chain attack

Trust is not, unfortunately, binary

I would love it if were as simple as Martin Gardner’s Two Tribes: one side always tells the truth, the other always lies.

Reality is more complicated. Even our side lies, I would like to believe that they lie less that the others. It is not just Boris & Trump, but also our security services, various other agencies and what the press says. Sometimes it is to gain advantage over the other lot, sometimes to cover up their blunders & incompetence.

I probably over optimistically flatter myself that, with a bit of work, I can see what is true & what is false.

I'm talking above about politics, those at corporations also lie as well.

Mammoth grab of GP patient data in the UK set to benefit private-sector market access as rules remain unchanged

Your data will still get shared

There are some exclusions When your choice does not apply, one of which is When information that can identify you is removed - we all know how ineffective that is: Machine learning algorithm can identify 99.98 per cent of people in any anonymised dataset, so who are they trying to fool ?

Chinese AI censors live-streamed Alpacas – beasts with a very NSFW and political back story

Overload censoring mechanisms

Winnie the Pooh is banned in China as he was used when Xi Jinping could not be used.

Maybe start using Napoleon Bonaparte instead, then Julius Cesar, then ... - eventually so many will be censored that the censors will start to look stupid.

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

Re: The entire IT and " security " team

Let's first find out which bean counter refused extra funding to beef up security and backups.

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Re: PDF ?

The PDF is here

Why opt out ?

Does not the GDPR mandate opt-in ?

Open-source JavaScript project Babel 'running out of money' after employing paid maintainers, sponsors pull out

Open source stuff should be free ...

to everyone, especially the large corporates who depend on it. Guys should work for free so that these corporates can make even more money, why should they contribute a penny when they can get it for free, free, free .... ?

And if they did pay for features to be added then their competitors might use these features and that would be a bad, bad thing!

If the FLOSS software does not quite do what they want: then they will pay many times more than a contribution to the FLOSS developers ... because, well, closed source vendors need to be paid, you cannot use their stuff without making large, repeated, payments ... that is how it works y'know.

Well, that seems to be the attitude. I suspect that if they did a real cost benefit analysis then helping FLOSS would come out on top - often (not always); but the managers & bean counters cannot see that. If it is open source it should be free, free, free!

'A massive middle finger': Open-source audio fans up in arms after Audacity opts to add telemetry capture

What the GDPR requires

Look at what the GDPR says about this.

Just 2 of the points:

* Consent requires a positive opt-in. Don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other method of default consent.

* Explicit consent requires a very clear and specific statement of consent.

Mind you: the majority of web sites & applications do not do what the GDPR requires them to.

Nasdaq's 32-bit code can't handle Berkshire Hathaway's monster share price

Use of floating point numbers ?

Storing financial quantities in floating point will only give you a head ache; eg do not store a bank balance in pounds. Store it as an integer number of pennies (or whatever the smallest currency unit is). If you store in floating point you might get a rounding error of a penny and the auditors will go bananas looking for someone bacon or salami slicing.

Having said that: I do see people manipulating prices in Javascript where numbers are stored as double floating point (IEEE754); but the maximum integer value that can be safely held is 9,007,199,254,740,992 ~= 9×10¹⁵ - which can easily hold a BRK.A.

You might need to do some calculations in 1/100 of pennies - to keep the VAT people happy.

Big right-to-repair win: FTC blasts tech giants for making it so difficult to mend devices

Re: F- it!

Repair it:

* save money that you can spend on your local economy, not fund USA companies

* save the planet

China sprayed space with 3,000 pieces of junk. US military officials want rules to stop that sort of thing

China does not care what the USA says

They will only change if debris falls on Xi Jinping's head.