Posts by John Brown (no body)

DoJ ‘very disappointed’ with probation sentence for Capital One hacker Paige Thompson

You do know that he's referring to convicted criminals using mental health issues as a mitigating feature, even when it isn't don't you?

See, for example, Ernest Saunders, the only person in medical history to make a full recover from Alzheimers.

"One of the points of justice is deterrent. That only works if the gain is more than the pain that results from the illegal action. Poor punishment is poor deterrent."

Another point of the justice system is rehabilitation. Something the US justice system doesn't generally seem to be very strong on.

Re: Whose fault is it?

"Everyone is guilty in this case but there's hardly any punishment."

It seems to be on par with the Google settlement, although comparing the defendants incomes, Google got of way more lightly for a similar number of offences.

No Shangri-La for you: Top hotel chain confirms data leak

FWIW, the first page of normal and image search results on Google are very SFW. Mainly about the hotel breach. No, I'm not work so decided it was worth a punt in case there were some terms I need to know about :-)

Rather than take the L, Amazon sues state that dared criticize warehouse safety

Re: Amazon may be right here?

No, it isn't. It's a warehouse. There are stats for all sorts of work environments which can give a pretty good baseline that can apply across an industry with adjustments for size and worker density. It's the sort of thing insurance actuaries and H&S regulators have been dealing with for years. Amazon are not special or unique.

Re: Key question

Except that not all "legal persons" can be sentenced to prison or vote so a corporation isn't actually a "legal person" but a "very special legal person" with different rights and responsibilities from the meatbag "legal persons". Maybe it's time to redefine what a "corporate person" is and exactly what rights and responsibilities it has?

Re: Who are their lawyers?

"Their warehouses are DESIGNED to destroy cheap labour because it's cheap and doing a proper job would involve a lot of investment in warehouse systems."

I wonder if 3 shifts/24 hours of manual labour for a year costs more or less than the $20,000 Musk reckons his humanoid robots will cost? Is Amazon his eventual target market?

Google burns few hours of profit to disappear location privacy lawsuit

Re: What's it worth to YOU?

Sounds about right. If/when a similar case comes up in the UK *we* will probably end up paying Google.

Agreed. Settled means "out of court", ie this isn't a fine in the legal sense. States should not be allowed to "settle" like this unless a very high bar is reached.

Elon Musk tells Twitter: My takeover deal is back on

Re: I'm late to this party, and won't be staying

"Mine's the one with the legal-in-some-jurisdictions herbal aroma."

Sounds like you have more in common with Mush than you thought.

Re: Talked the price down

The SEC might have something to say about that. he's already had run-ins with the SEC for being a bad boy. I doubt they'd look kindly on unfair market manipulation, which is what you just described.

Re: This Might Not Be Over

I think it's more a matter or protocol and courtesy. It's a civil case, so if both sides reach an agreement which by definition is fair, then there's not much point in the judge insisting the case must go ahead. Neither side is going to be introducing new evidence or witnesses or putting on a strong defence or offence and at best, doing the minimum work required to not be held in contempt of court.

Submitting the agreement to the court is probably about making sure the settlement really is fair and there's no backroom arm-twisting or other leverage being used by a powerful defendant against a smaller, less powerful one.

Re: Congrats, He Did What He Agreed To Do

"This is like me expecting praise because I showed up for work."

What? You mean you *don't* get a tickertape parade every day just for turning up?

Re: staff leaving

"Twitter has had difficulty attracting skilled workers since Musk made his offer."

What's Twitters take on home-working? We know Musks attitude. Be there for 40 hours per week or be fired!

That's be a good reason to leave if Twitter are currently more relaxed with WFH.

Re: Humans have, because it can be a way to get around profanity filtering.

OMG! Clearly they've not updated their filters since about 1998. God help investors from Essex, Scunthorpe and Penistone! Or should that be Es***, S****horpe and *****tone :-)

Re: And here we receive the sum of all horrors

"Twitter outlasted fuckedcompany.com, but @pud may still get the second to last laugh."

Don't worry!! Truth Social is just waiting in the wings to step in and take the Twitter crown :-)

Note icon ------------------->

Well, I for one thought it was blindingly obvious and welcome our new sarcastic overlords!

Re: Free Speech

"Someone should phone them and tell them how the Internet works."

That's weird. By definition, all servers are available from everywhere. Only if you take affirmative action to block others through geolocation or similar stops a service from being world-wide. So, yet another lie from a Trump organisation. The only "work" they need to do is to remove the blocks they put in place.

Re: You REALLY want me to buy you?

"Err.. No. It's like FaceMelta in that regard. If you're addicted to anti-social media, it's important. If you're not, you can try finding RealNews elsewhere."

While I upvoted you because I feel the same way, I should point out that with so many people using Twitter and other social media, it really *is* a powerful communications medium. It may not be ii a few years. Or it may be bigger and even more powerful. But don't mistake the fact so many use social media to post pics of their lunch or general inane twaddle that it's not powerful. The printed press have known for years the power of a headline and how to make the inattentive think one thing while the real meat (and sometimes truth) is a few paragraphs further down where many never get to. Twitter is *just* the headlines. it doesn't even bother with the actual story, maybe a link that many don't follow, they just re-tweet the headline.

USB-C iPhone, anyone? EU finalizes charging standard rule

"This is one of those dumb laws designed to pander to the twatocracy, which is bound to become a right, royal shitshow at some point in the future."

Is that what happened when micro-USB was mandated for phones? As with the micro-USB legislations, this one is also designed to adapt to future technology changes in that this one supercedes the last one.

100% agree with that last point. As I said in another post on another topic, the number of people who lift up laptops one handed, and always seem to manage to pick them up from the side opposite the power lead, thus bending the plug in the socket, is astounding. Invariably that's classed as user damage and not covered by the warranty.

(Lets not even go down the rabbit hole of people who lift the laptop up by the screen and at some stage will leave "fingerprints" in the LCD panel.)

"To say otherwise would be to say there could never be a connection better than USB-C."

For a connector capable of dealing with 100W, maybe up to 240W in some combinations, just how much smaller or different might be theoretically possible? Does physics allow for much smaller at these power rating? I find it pretty amazing as it is that the USB-C plugs and cables don't melt!!!

Re: "and any other device charged with a cable"

"I predict increased interest in wireless chargers."

Which standard?

Re: One wonders...

Not without buying an add-on.

Re: Finally

It might walk like a duck, but until you investigate further, you have no idea if talks like a duck or how fast :-)

Re: Finally

"We even had at least 2 different ways of wiring a 25-pin D-type serial connector depending on what it was on"

Which end? DCE or DTE? Or is it for DTE-->DTE? Hardware or software hand-shaking? Is one end a 9-pin D? Or an RJ-45? (Thanks Epson till printers!!), Or a round DIN plug (Thanks Tandy printers!!)? Do we need loop-back links across sone/any of the hardware handshaking to fool the device into software handshaking mode to match the other end? Is that 25 pin D connector on the device even a serial port? It might be a parallel printer port (Yeah, I've seen computers where the male/serial, female/parallel was the other way round to most others. On the other hand, that 25-pin D might be a SCSI port, eg ZIP drives and scanners.

Re: I look forward to the "UK only" versions

"Now we can make the buggers fit proper 13amp plugs to these damn telephone things."

And proper junction boxes on the wall so the four wires from the phone can be screwed into the spade connectors for a proper signal connection. No more of this "I'm in a poor signal area, I've only got one bar" malarky.

Re: Blown electronics ?

It's not really all that different to the current problem of having a multitude of different chargers with different voltages, polarity and current ratings, at least some which will use the same size and shape of connectors and have barely legible details on a tiny label or, worse, moulded into the black plastic. At least with a standardised charging port, if the plug fits then barring a hardware failure, it will charge with less likelihood of the magic smoke escaping.

Re: Lint Magnet

I wonder if the difference is hardware and software? ie the hardware based people here are far more considerate of their kit because they understand how it works and why. To many software people, the hardware can be bit of a mystery :-)

I'm in hardware and I've never, yet, broken a power or any other port. My wife, on the other hand.... :-)

Airbus auctions off bits from retired A380 superjumbo jet

Re: The party may not be over yet

"airlines are choosing to go to Boeing simply because they need planes faster than Airbus can possibly deliver them."

That's a bit sweet'n'sour for Boeing! Boeing get to sell more planes but only because Airbus can't make enough to satisfy demand. Must be nice to be able to make out like a bandit because you're only 2nd choice :-)

Re: What I''m missing in life

If there's any 1st class seats or whatever they call the "best seats" these days, I might bid up to £100 if they include P&P :-)

Google Japan goes rogue with 5.4ft long keyboard

Re: What I would really like

Or the one handed chorded keyboard first demonstrated in 1968 by the man who invented the mouse?

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

I got the impression he was arguing "horses for courses" and making the point that just because you might pay a lot of money for permission to use some commercial software that it may not actually be the best horse for the course. Oh, and clarifying "ownership" of software, both commercial and FOSS.

Re: What?!?

"lousy documentation."

FreeBSD comes with a manual that is optionally installed during the base install and easily accessible online if you need to read it before starting the install. It's structured with chapters and an index and well named section headings that takes you through the basics to some fairly advanced techniques. Windows has a hard to search seemingly randomly structured "help" system that teaches you almost nothing about the system or how to use it unless you already know the terms and words required. :-)

Re: What?!?

Imagine you've NEVER used Windows before and have spent all your computer using life with Linux or something, anything, other than Windows. Then one Christmas you sit down with a brand new laptop and try to install Windows on it. Everything is different to what you expect and odds are you'll need some driver or drivers that are not on the installation disc. And what's this shit bout having to be online to set up a "microsoft account"? WTF? I need to be online to get a proper install before the firewall is even set up and configured? Seriously? And what's this stupid Cortana things it want's me to enable? What does that do? Why am I being warned in strong terms every time I say "no" to something about adverts or tracking that my "experience" will be poor?

It's all down to past experience. Back when I switched from Windows to FreeBSD, it was fairly painless because Win98 was the just released version and most of what we used a computer for wasn't online, so there was far less issues with being dependant on always on connections, email, cloud storage etc.

Note: I'm not a daily Windows user but use it frequently. It changes more often than FreeBSD or Linux does from a GUI perspective and how to find the tools to do the job.

Re: Modern printers....

"and failed miserably because CUPS does not really allow a RAW print stream with the application formatting the print any more)."

Yeah, it does.

CUPS recognizes many types of images files as well as PDF, PostScript, and text files, so you can print those files directly rather than through an application.

If you have an application that generates output specifically for your printer then you need to use the "-o raw" or "-l" options:

lp -o raw filename

lpr -l filename

This will prevent the filters from misinterpreting your print file.

Re: Documentation and code quality

"But not the toaster, never make the toaster smart."

I once bought my sister a Takie Toaster to annoy her. She loved it!!!

Luckily, it was just a selection of voice recordings played semi-randomly from a selection depending on the function. No "AI" or "helpful" suggestions :-)

Re: Public Domain

The author doesn't have to release the source, but you are, of course, free to decomplie/disassemble/reverse engineer it and then do what you will with it.

This rumor needs to Die Hard: Bruce Willis denies selling face to deepfake biz

Re: "Negative; I am a meat popsicle"

Came here to say the same thing!

FYI: TikTok tracking pixels can be found all over the web – just like Meta, Google

Re: Oh, so that's an excuse?

Agreed, it's hardly "transparent" if you go to a site some way other than via a TikTok video or ad and your only connection is a supa-sekrit hidden tracking pixel and have no idea TikTok just grabbed some details about you without your knowledge or consent.shining. Maybe not a lot of data, but something to add to their ever growing file on you.

Remote work wipes $453b off office real estate

"Yesterday I read a report from a consumer organisation about power saving, they claimed that a TV uses 1.6Kw/h when on standby, so switching it off at the wall would save £275 a year,"

The BBCs Reality Check section has covered this a few times. Most of these reports are based on very old data or "common knowledge" that is either out of date or was only ever apocryphal in the first place. About the only thing worth not leaving in "stand-by" are the games consoles that have "instant on" function. Pretty much everything else that's less than 10 years old is costing you a £1 or £2 per year on stand-by, if that. The same misconception has also be covered by them in relation to consumer groups and government banging on about "green" issues. If a million people turned of their TV at the wall every night, it'd probably save less than the power used for the fancy coloured lights illuminating the outside of some architects "masterpiece" in a major city centre for one night.

Re: NO... You are fired.

A lot of Alan Lord Sugars wealth is property these days. He might have to sell his private jet!

Re: Finally, the truth will out...

And those CEOs and board members don't just leave their money sitting in the banks, and definitely not all in their own compan's shares! They invest, and "everyone knows" property/real estate is where the big returns are.

Re: Turn the office buildings into homeless shelters

"Nobody needs to make vast profits,"

HERETIC!!!!! BURN him at the STAKE!!!!!

You think those poor billionaires can survive with just one tiddly little yacht?

From today, America and UK follow new rules on how they can demand your data from each other

(deep)fakr news!!!

Re: CLOUD act

"Well, it has a super-duper-special acronym so we can all trust it, can't we."

If the new agreement is anything like the the UK RIPA Act, we can probably expect so many loopholes in it that the FBI will be investigating dogs fouling the UK streets and people putting the wrong kind of rubbish in their bins.

FBI: We tracked who was printing secret documents to unmask ex-NSA suspect

Re: Very strange

Many places these days, you print to a queue. Then you go off and find a printer and use your NFC ID badge to release your print jobs. It's unlikely jobs would be left on a printer in those circumstances. I'd expect any TLA or anywhere with security requirements to have been using this managed print system for quite some time by now,

Big changes coming in Debian 12: Some parts won't be FOSS

Re: good move imho

Yes. Asking a "noob" if they want to install "non-free" drivers and/or software is something they may or may not understand, not tick the box and lead to a non-working system and a bad experience.

On the other hand, turning it on default and asking the user if they want to turn it of, the "noob" will most likely leave it and those who really don't want non-free stuff will know enough to make an informed choice to turn it off. It may be one of the rare occasions where on by default is the best option.

Re: Seems like a pragmatic idea

"Wifi didn't work but I didn't know that (yet) because I had no need for wifi at home....as someone who has run with Linux on their desktop since 1998."

Rookie mistake! :-)

Anyone running Linux since that far back ought to know to check out all the hardware and drivers to see what works directly after the install finishes and long before the sudden and urgent need to use it. Back in 1998 it was rare for *any* laptop to be fully hardware compatible out of the box with any version of Linux/