Posts by Woodnag

Net privacy wars will be with us always. Let's set some rules

Hypocrisy

El Reg uses doubleclick... tracking straight back to Google.

Tesla Cybertruck no-resale clause vanishes faster than a Model S in Ludicrous Mode

"Porsche has implemented similar restrictions on reselling their limited-run vehicles, but the German automaker's penalties end at not allowing flippers to reserve future vehicles."

That's because the GT3 Touring is gorgeous. Tesla truck, not so.

UK convinces nations to sign Bletchley Declaration in bid for AI safety

...identify AI safety risks and build a shared understanding

So no binding agreements not to do bad stuff then.

Woopiedoo.

Pure virtue signalling that Something Is Being Done.

When it really isn't.

Just one in ten UK orgs have significant AI investment plan

Re: Still not interested

Maybe gov could explain what "world leader in AI" actually means.

Meta decides to Just Say No to Oversight Board requests and allow paid posts for ketamine

Binding?

ARTICLE 4

Implementation

The board’s resolution of each case will be binding and Meta will implement it promptly, unless implementation of a resolution could violate the law.

charter_february_2023.pdf https://oversightboard.com/attachment/494475942886876/

Qualcomm to shed over 1,000 staff in California, plus some Brits, starting in December

Proactive?

At the time, CEO Cristiano Amon told investors "We're taking a conservative view of the market, and we'll be proactively taking additional cost actions."

Sorry mate, you get customer forecasts and this is reactive (and too late), not proactive.

UK silicon startups to share £1.3M chump change as part of chip strategy

Re: £108k

That might cover the cost of initial silicon, depending on process node.

The whole "chip strategy" is virtue signalling that Something is Being Done.

UK would be better to negotiate low pricing from Cadence etc for qualified startups.

US Navy sailor admits selling secret military blueprints to China for $15K

Re: Not.

It wasn't that important. The "secret military blueprints" headline is just silly.

He passed on "CUI and other sensitive information". CUI = Controlled Unclassified Information.

EFF urges Chrome users to get out of the Privacy Sandbox

...as demonstrated by the ads for a type of product for weeks after purchase. Targetted, sure, if the pretense is maintained that the tracker doesn't know that the purchase was already made.

Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans

Your examples are people whose actions caused financial damage to the 0.1%.

IBM laying off oldies improves the financials.

Irish watchdog fines TikTok €345M for mishandling kids' data

Re: Data is just like breathing

Close. The lesson for TikTok is to have a large office in Eire. Works for FB.

Ex-Twitter employees pull Musk back to money table over missing severance

violations of California's WARN act?

Why isn't the State pursuing violations of California's WARN act?

iPhone 12 deemed too hot to handle for France's radiation standards

Re: I need to look at how the test is done

It sounds strange to me that the testing was done 3 years after product release.

If you like to play along with the illusion of privacy, smart devices are a dumb idea

Re: please forgive my lack of knowledge...

DD-WRT runs OpenVPN, so you could run the VPN link directly on a (DD-WRT supported) router...

My Home Assistant app has location tacking enabled...

Oooh, you got the waterproof version!

Lawsuit claims Tesla corp data security is far less advanced than its cars

Re: Genuine Question

It's like your NI number, innit.

No.

Big Tech has failed to police Russian disinformation, EC study concludes

Re: Disinformation?

You've highlighted the exact problem.

Anyone who points out Western disinformation or lies or propaganda is tarred with "oooh, you must be a {citizen of enemy of the moment}.

Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists

Re: Expose

I heard that Hugh Hefner found God.... no, sorry, that's porn again. Not the same.

Re: the DC-8 was a product of the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation.

On Second Bootnote: Yes, too soon. None of yer fu'ing business.

How to ask Facebook's Meta to not train its AI models on some of your personal info

Re: @imanidiot

For privacy, avoid being in a group photo including people that love to tag photos....

Netizens can ask Meta

"Netizens can ask Meta"... There is no ask, just do and do not.

I suspect that here: ask ----> do not.

NHS watchdog expresses vendor lock-in concerns over Federated Data Platform deal

Bleating

The National Data Guardian (NDG), a government patient confidentiality watchdog, has now warned.... blah blah blah... and as it has absolutely no power to force the government to follow any requirements, it will be duly ignored.

Google 'wiretapped' tax websites with visitor traffic trackers, lawsuit claims

Re: Sue You, Jimmy!

Also, Google serves ads, so it has every website categorised by type. They could easily disallow calls by their tools from certain URLs. They choose to pretend that they are not a party.

The Register uses Google Analytics among other tools to keep track of readership size

You do know that useage of Google Analytics is illegal under GDPR?

https://noyb.eu/en/update-cnil-decides-eu-us-data-transfer-google-analytics-illegal

Maker of Chrome extension with 300,000+ users tells of constant pressure to sell out

44 Magnum?

Really? Makes such a mess. .22LR much neater, and unless you use one of those NAA mini-revolvers, very controllable.

Japanese supermarket watches you shop so AI can suggest more stuff to buy

Re: AI is the Emperor's New Clothes.

"I am often offered things that I have bought (and will not need another one of for some years)".

The ad slinger may well know this. But the company that's being charged for the ad certainly won't...

Re: when it spots a man shopping for products consumed only by women

Try Walmart. Had video ads for years pushing crap while you wait to pay.

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

users to spot dodgy websites?

This isn't for "users to spot dodgy websites". It's for websites to dodge ad fraud by testing the client as real or a bot. And getting a much more reliable tracking/IDing of clients as a result. No thanks.

LG to offer subscriptions for appliances and televisions

piracy warning

The piracy warning is worse than just dumb. The only people that see the warning (and can't skip it) are the people who have a genuine disk in the player, so preaching to (and and patronising) the wrong audience.

Microsoft's 10,000 job cuts didn't quite do the trick

"workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business"

Who wants to join a company which regards layoffs as a standard ongoing practice?

With a contract outlining a nice severance package, perhaps...

TSA wants to expand facial recognition to hundreds of airports within next decade

TSA doesn’t retain the details of people’s faces—what’s called biometric data—after the comparison is made. “Biometric data is overwritten as soon as the next passenger steps up to the queue,” Langston says. “And then, when the technology is turned off at the end of the day, whatever storage system in there dumps completely. There is no saved image.”

But Langston acknowledges that, until this week, some of travelers’ biometric data was collected and sent...

So, the statement "There is no saved image" was a lie. Obviously every image is sent to NSA/FBI/etc. Why not? Nobody in the surveillance chain suffers any ramifications should the truth come out.

Microsofties still digesting pay freeze upset by Nadella's 'landmark year' memo

anyone can be a shareholder

No. Only those with disposable income.

Re: but when you're making more than $50 billion a year

"Just stop buying/renting/subscribing to anything from MS"

It's getting more difficult to 'buy' as opposed to rent. And older Outlooks very quickly won't work with the latest Exchange Server... odd, that.

Ex-FBI employee jailed for taking classified material home

Re: smartwatches

I think you missed the word "unprompted".

smartwatches

"These smartwatches ... begun connecting to cell phones unprompted"

Er, what? Shirley that's the elephant in the room. Bluetooth flaw?

US vendor accused of violating GDPR by reputation-scoring EU citizens

TeleSign told The Register it was compliant with the law?

TeleSign told The Register it was compliant with the law, saying: "Telesign has in place a data privacy program, which encompasses global law and regulations including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). The company constantly reviews internal policies and practices to maintain compliance with the evolving regulatory landscape."

TeleSign told The Register it was compliant with the law?

No, they didn't old chap. "data privacy program... encompasses global law and regulations" does not mean "abides by the laws", just means that the laws are taken into account. Not quite the same thing.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Someone shopping at Bunnings for Crescent slabs?

At least the Bunnings in Lismore is above the flood level now. Northern Rivers rule!

Family-owned aerospace biz throws a wrench in Boeing IP lawsuit

inaccuracies and omissions

A spokesperson for Boeing told The Register in a statement: "This lawsuit is rife with inaccuracies and omissions..."

Yet they can't actually name any inaccuracies and omissions in the statement. Hmm.

Google HR hounds threaten 'next steps' for slackers not coming in 3 days a week

Re: Hey Google!

He's only an exception if it's in his contract. If it isn't, difficult to see how others can be punished for the same WFH unless it can be shown that productivity is affected.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Re: Waiting for the gotcha

The gotcha is that ATX PSUs usually require a min load on the 12V and 3.3V supplies as well as the 5V to regulate properly...

Leaked Kyndryl files show 55 was average age of laid-off US workers

Re: Average?

"Average" could be mean, median, or mode. Same answer in a Normal distribution. Definately not in a distribution such as personal assets, where a few very large values (billionaires) skew the mean way up and give a false impression.

TL;DR If an article says average as opposed to declaring the statistic to be one of mean, median, or mode... then the argument is probably biassed.

Average?

Mean or median? If the median is higher than the mean, the distribution is pushed towards old.

The mean itself doesn't say much, as it can be distorted by extremes.

Sonatype axes 14 percent of staff, reminds them not to talk to the press

Re: Fire experienced engineers

Two basic choices to explain badly managed layoffs, which destroy molare in remaining employees:

1. Poor management, in which case the company is surely at risk of failure because poor management is rarely siloed.

2. Deliberate policy, to encourage others to resign before the next wave of let-goes.

Either way, wouldn't want to be an investor.

Fresh GDPR ruling says even 'minor anxiety' could mean payouts for EU folks

Re: UK?

The UK is under DPA, as you say, not the GDPR.

Sure, the DPA wording was copied across because UK was subject to GDPR before Brexit.

But now, the UK can change what's in the DPA, and I'm sure they will to weaken citizen protections and attempt to attract FB from Ireland. And then spend 10 years pretending to the EU that the changed DPA is equivalent to GDPR...

UK?

Data privacy lawyer Kingsley Hayes, head of data and privacy litigation at Keller Postman UK, said the "ruling is good news for people seeking compensation in data breach cases, as it provides a clearer path to seeking damages for GDPR violations."

Except GDPR doesn't apply in UK since Brexit.

Winners?

It's not about winners. It's about making sure that companies like FB that flout GDPR can be penalised for privacy violations under GDPR. Without rulings like this, GDPR is toothless.

Mirai botnet loves exploiting your unpatched TP-Link routers, CISA warns

Alternatives

Open-WRT, DD-WRT, tomato...

US citizens charged with pushing pro-Kremlin disinfo, election interference

US citizens charged with pushing pro-Kremlin disinfo, election interference?

Er, no.

The actual charges hang around being agents of the Russian government within the US without providing prior notification to the Attorney General.

Essentially unlicensed lobbyists.

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

...in recognition of the current lack of public confidence

Exactly. No money for it. The BS "in recognition of the current lack of public confidence" is ignored about passing on everyone's NHS data to Palantir, innit.

NHS England considered using Palantir tech to manage strike disruption

Anonymized in accordance with the ICO's Anonymisation Code of Practice?

NHS England said that patients would not be allowed to block the transfer of their data under the National Data Opt-outs programme since the data was due to be "anonymized in accordance with the Information Commissioner Office's Anonymisation Code of Practice before being released."

Well, you can grab that here: https://ico.org.uk/media/1061/anonymisation-code.pdf

Foreword: "This code of practice is not a security engineering manual, nor does it cover every anonymisation technique."

It actually doesn't give a code of practice, but rather a newbie's guide to anonymisation. In Annex 3: "In this annex, we will set out a few examples of the anonymisation of data, to indicate the range of techniques available to the information manager."

It advises the get out jail free card: "The DPA does not require anonymisation to be completely risk free".

Nutshell: Do something, and if it fails you are not liable.