Posts by conel

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

Micro-usb was never mandated.

But do imagine the situation now if the EU had succeeded in doing so.

Shortsighted

Imagine if the EU had succeeded in mandating micro usb a decade ago. We'd be stuck waiting on the politicians to allow progress/ innovation. For people claiming there is no more innovation to be made, who saw laptops/ phones using the same charging connector 10/ 15 years ago?

There is no environmental savings here either, this does effect the charger but the phone. Apple are already shipping ithings with usb-c to lightning connectors and all the mandate will do is cause people to throw out their existing lightning cables.

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

Re: And the UK ?

The good news is the government is fully aware of this problem.

The bad news is their solution is mandating smart meters to facilitate electricity rationing.

Amazon not happy with antitrust law targeting Amazon

Give 'em enough rope

Amazon are gradually pushing themselves down market and they should be allowed to continue. I've been automatically translating "Amazon recommends" into "garbage with a high profit margin" for a few years now.

The idea that Amazon are some behemoth that can't be competed with is simply not true. If you want generic garbage you can get it from ebay/ alibaba at a lower price. If you want reasonable quality there are numerous other retailers that are at the same or lower prices for the different market segments. What Amazon has is convenience and that will only go so far.

Government regulation targeted at a specific company isn't a sensible route to go down. Improved transparency such as "country of origin"/ "affiliation with retailer" could be applied to all retailers to benefit consumers, but the politicians are not really interested in that.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

How about we build nuclear power plants and have as much energy as we want.

That way we won't need the one-child policy above.

Facebook job ads algorithm still discriminates on gender, LinkedIn not so much

Reality versus Policy

That Facebook show jewellery sales jobs to more women than men and cars sales jobs to more men than women is not an indication of bias.

Being qualified for an auto sales job doesn't make you equally qualified for a jewellery sales job and vica versa.

Apple, forced to rate product repair potential in France, gives itself modest marks

Re: I admire the French for this but

Can you see any potential drawbacks to this or is your genius brain certain that this will make everything better?

We need a 20MW 20,000-GPU-strong machine-learning supercomputer to build EU's planned digital twin of Earth

Hubris

They want to centralise decision making on what crops to put in what fields!

In engineering when working on things as mundane as aircraft strutures testing/ benchmarking of the simulation results is necessary. Someting that is impossible with something as gradiose as an earth digital twin.

The notion that they can simulate the entire planet and make better decisions than specialists - quite literally working on the ground in some cases - is simply science fiction.

Clop ransomware gang leaks online what looks like stolen Bombardier blueprints of GlobalEye radar snoop jet

Re: CAD Models of the RADAR - really not high value

I'd echo this; the mechanical aspects of the radar - which is all that's likely to be in the CAD files - is not that important.

Citibank accidentally wired $500m back to lenders in user-interface super-gaffe – and judge says it can't be undone

The law doesn't say that. The judgement is that the money can be kept because the receiver didn't have reason to believe the transfer was in error. If the error had been deemed obvious than they would've had to pay the money back.

From the pdf; relating to a seperate lawsuit:

"The UMB Complaint accused Revlon of improperly amending the 2016 Loan Agreement to avoid paying the Lenders, and alleged that Revlon had defaulted on the loan. More significantly for present purposes, it alleged that Revlon was unable to repay the loan because it was “insolvent and facing a severe liquidity crisis.”

"The non-returning lenders believed, and were justified in believing, that the payments were intentional," Judge Jesse Furman ruled."

"Indeed, to believe otherwise — to believe that Citibank, one of the most sophisticated financial institutions in the world, had made a mistake that had never happened before, to the tune of nearly $1bn — would have been borderline irrational."

I think the lenders would've known it was a mistake on the basis that the debtor wasn't liquid enough to repay the load. Don't think the judge's reasoning here holds up. I'm sure the lenders were sophisticated enough to realise bad loans don't get repaid in full, ahead of time, intentionally.

Texas blacks out, freezes, and even stops sending juice to semiconductor plants. During a global silicon shortage

Re: Power Grid

There are grid interconnectors between the UK and Ireland/ France. This is *very* different to a common grid, if you don't realise this then think twice about offering advice.

Motorola stung for £838k after Chinese digital mobile radio biz Hytera wins appeal against UK asset-freezing order

Deductible?

I wonder if they can have the costs taken off the original $763m in damages.

'Best tech employer of the year' threatened trainee with £15k penalty fee for quitting to look after his sick mum

Re: Burger King

It's because decades old large corporations treat people properly compared with newer cynical firms using politics for cover.

Went for an interview with Intel as a student for work placement and was shocked when I got a cheque in the mail for travel expenses, big bluechip firms don't do bullshit like this from Sparta Global.

Trump's official campaign website vandalized by hackers who 'had enough of the President's fake news'

Re: I approve of anything which stops George Bush having four more years.

He was talking about UV light, which is a disinfectant and is being developed as a treatment. Claims that he recommended injecting bleach are... fake news.

President Trump's H-1B visa crackdown wiped $100bn off market value of America's largest corps, top study finds

Re: do they mean speculative algorithms

The automation part made me laugh. H-1B visa holders are supposed to be highly skilled workers, not the kind that can be automated. And H-1B is used as a vector for offshoring anyway.

Policy Based Evidence Making

This "research report" is simply policy based evidence making.

First analysts, now YouTubers put you on blast. Do you A) take it on the chin or B) up fire up the DMCA-o-tron?

Vapour Ware

This company started off with a concept for a gas-turbine powered hybrid truck, an obviously dumb idea which could never hope to compete with a diesel engined truck. Open cycle gas turbines, although a lot lighter and more compact than diesels are far ess efficient, more expensive, louder and require more maintenance.

After a while I guess they figured the above out so they pivoted to hydrogen powered, but of course they didn't actually have any solutions for the usual problems related to hydrogen.

And now they've pivoted to battery electric and couldn't even come up with the same level of functionality a scrapheap challenge team would manage.

They seem like legit con artists.

See below for the original pitch:

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a29127/nikola-motor-hybrid-big-rig-natural-gas/

With H-1B workers not exactly rushing to America this year, Uncle Sam plans to spend millions home-growing IT staff

Auction the visas

A simple solution to H1b would be having companies bid for the visas on the basis of what salary they're offering. Who ever offers the highest salary gets the limited supply of visas.

Amazon makes 850,000m² bet that its people will get off the kitchen table and back to an office

This could be about getting remote from Seattle more than a divergence from other tech companies regarding remote working.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

The MCAS system is bad enough without exaggeration:

"MCAS could not be overridden despite receiving erroneous data from an Angle Of Attack (AOA) sensor".

The MCAS could be overridden but the pilots weren't familiar enough with it to know how. A combination of the system being very difficult to deal with and the pilots not being appropriately trained.

With the US election coming up, when better to petition regulators for a controversial way to chill online speech?

Platforms to Publishers

The immunity is a good thing for platforms and shouldn't be removed. But the more social media sites go down the route of promoting/ censoring content based on political preferences the closer they are to publishers and publishers shouldn't have immunity.

The platforms can of course define what content they want to host at a certain level, in the way that sub-reddits are for particular topics. The rules should be transparent and clear to users, so if a platform wanted to be political and be pro/ anti a particular position that's fine and should be in the rules of the platform. If a platform claims to be politicaly neutral but actually censors/ promotes political views they should be considered a publisher with all the liability ramifications.

Then platforms can decide for themselves what they are and consumers can know what they're getting rather than this pretend neutrality.

It's handbags at dawn: America to hit France with 25% tariffs on luxuries over digital tax on US tech titans

Oh yes, and don't forget about the "Austere Religious Scholar" he killed as well.

Re: They're tariffs

It's reasonable for the US to respond to a country singling out a US dominated industry for special treatment, and as taxes go tariffs on luxury goods from France is quite progressive.

Re: Pay tax where users reside

Funnily enought a flat rate of tax is very popular amongst economists. Redution of adimistration costs and a removal of sweet-heart tax breaks which distort markets (how much tax an industry pays is a function of how effective they are at bribing lobbying politicians).

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

Re: So what happened?

This quote from Boeings CEO on why they moved the headquarters goes a long way to explaining the problems they're having.

Condit makes no secret of another factor: as CEO, he didn’t want to be bothered with tiresome “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff”.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/

They've been going wrong for about 20 years now.

Re: So what happened?

It was the McDonnell Douglas acquisition, the same thing happened when McDonnell purchased Douglas.

The below paper was written by a Boeing engineer 19 years ago and is eerily prescient about the problems they're having now.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e9da/f5cc1c94c6e34e29095ca168e8fa2d750df9.pdf

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Etymology of Slave

Slavs were so commonly enslaved in the middle ages that's where the word comes from. Most every people at some stage in history were slaves/ slavers, St. Patrick was a Welsh slave brought to Ireland for example.

The history of slavery and its abolishment- with the obvious modern exceptions - is nearly the opposite of what the woke crowd are trying to intimidate people into believing.

MIT apologizes, permanently pulls offline huge dataset that taught AI systems to use racist, misogynistic slurs

Re: No Sh*t Sherlock

I don't think the AI failed, it was just too close to the reality of how some humans communicate for comfort.

What appears to be wanted here is an AI which adjusts it's picture of reality to moral preferences.

Did nobody tell them about the lockdown? Logitech releases new 'luggable' mechanical keyboard for LAN parties

If you can live with wired and a white back light the Razer Blackwidow Lite is half the price.

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

Binding Micro usb

What if the EU had made micro usb mandatory. Would we now be waiting on new rules so we could move to usb-c?

51,000t might sound like a lot but split across 500Mn people in the EU it's only 0.1kg per person. And that's not an annual figure, it's total.

What's the best case scenario with these regulations, reduce the waste by 10%? 20%? So maybe a few 10s of grammes of waste saved per person...

Boeing admits 737 Max sims didn't accurately reproduce what flying without MCAS was like

"Condit makes no secret of another factor: as CEO, he didn’t want to be bothered with tiresome “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff,” or boring meetings with Boeing’s key customers (airlines) who came to Seattle."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/

Facebook ad platform discriminates all on its own, say boffins

Mirror Calibration

Facebook's algorithms are a mirror which reflects reality. Some people don't like the look of reality so they want Facebook to distort the reflected image, sounds like a tricky job.

Back to drawing board as Google cans AI ethics council amid complaints over right-wing member

Fact?

The author claims that "the controversy centred on the fact that James has repeatedly expressed transphobic views". Surely there must be some very strong evidence to claim this as a fact. I mean, it's not simply that some loonies have called her transphobic on twitter, is it?

Of course, it is and this is one of her "transphobic" statements "If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically.”

The left really has gone bat shit crazy when they're going after a black woman because she's opposed to having people with penises in women's bathrooms and sports teams. It's kind of funny and the ideology will inevitably eat itself alive, but it's disturbing to think how much damage they might do first.

Google and its terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in full

Question to Editor

"Those defending Damore pushed an article published on a website that specializes in promoting controversial views (example lead story: Should We "Stop Equating 'Science' With Truth"?)"

The first line in that article: "Actually: no."

The website in question, Quillette published their article in response to a Slate piece titled "Stop Equating “Science” With Truth" (hence Quillette's use of quotation marks). And yes, the Slate author really meant it.

The Reg's editors should consider if they're ok with this kind of blatant dishonesty.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/11/stop-equating-science-truth/

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/08/evolutionary_psychology_is_the_most_obvious_example_of_how_science_is_flawed.html

Your top five dreadful people the Google manifesto has pulled out of the woodwork

You also stated: "Just to be absolutely clear here: If you ever make a statement about what a broad group of people are like, especially in comparison to another group of people, you are going to be wrong. And the bigger that group, the more wrong you will be."

There are real average differences between groups, debate the accuracy, question the research but to advocate for blank slatism is silly.

The irony of your piece is that the memo and responses appear to have brought out the worst in you.

Re: Wow...

You wrote an article so bad that it's making many long term readers question the integrity of the publisher.

Re: Ad hominem

According to the Cambridge dictionary an ad hominem attack is a criticism directed against a person, rather than against what that person is saying.

I think it's clear this is what you're doing.

Re: Ad hominem

Claiming people are biased because they're white is an ad hominem.

Making ad hominem attacks doesn't help.

Wrong think black list

According to the author anyone who studies variance between population groups and considers how the averages affects society is a bigot.

This is truly bizarre, it's extreme blank slatism and is the far-left equivalent of creationism. The inability to consider group differences and still treat people as individuals is the most concerning part of identity politics.

"Just to be absolutely clear here: If you ever make a statement about what a broad group of people are like, especially in comparison to another group of people, you are going to be wrong. And the bigger that group, the more wrong you will be.

And, no, simply inserting the word "average" does not excuse you from making such false generalizations about groups of people; in the same way adding "allegedly" does not let you accuse a random person of being a child molester."

If I was to say that on average women live longer than men would I be wrong?

Google diversity memo: Web giant repudiates staffer's screed for 'incorrect assumptions about gender'

Re: Article by a former "Google Distinguished Engineer"

That was a very weak response, here's another response explaining why:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450214/google-memo-about-allegedly-devastating-response

Steve Bannon wants Facebook, Google 'regulated like utilities'

Re: "Clash of civilisations"

The biggest threat to western civilisation are it's inhabitants who are unwilling to acknowledge just how good it is compared to anywhere else.

His Muskiness wheels out the Tesla Model 3

Re: It will retail for just $35,000

I'd love to know where people get the notion that charging an electric car is so cheap, £2-3 my arse.

60kWhr * £0.14/kWhr = £8.4 (not including charging losses)

Although that's four times what you're claiming, it still sounds kinda cheap compared to diesel/ petrol. But it's not when you consider the taxes.

A similar car would need about 18l of diesel/ petrol to go the model 3 range of 215 miles (assuming 54mpg). That would be £20.7 at £1.15/l, but when you strip out the taxes it's only £6.84 at £0.38/l.

Add back in the electricity VAT rate of 5% and you get £7.18 worth of petrol to go the same distance as a Tesla model 3.

Electric cars do not work without subsidies.

Ex-Waymo engineer pleads the 5th in ongoing Uber law fight

Surely he's just going to bugger off to Brazil or somewhere similar.

No H-1B visas? No problem, we'll offshore says Tech Mahindra

Re: H1Bs have an easy fix no one talks about

An auction seems like the obvious solution to me. Limit the number of visas and whoever pays the highest salaries gets them.

Britain's on the brink of a small-scale nuclear reactor revolution

Re: Heat engines

Super critical steam turbines can hit efficiencies of over 48%. So not much difference with CCGTs maxing at about 60%. Utterly irrelevant though, has to be considered with the fuel and the energy density of nuclear fuel can't be beaten.

https://www.xkcd.com/1162/

BTW, gas turbines are heat engines too.

(Pointless discussion but I saw an excuse to link to XKCD)

Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd

Re: Repeating history

"Looking at the statistics for 1974 casualties in Northern Ireland there seem to be 294, and of those 73 were probably army."

The UK joined Europe in 1973 and according to the below data 479 people were killed in 1972. Not that the exact numbers really matter, the point is the UK wasn't a utopia immune to internal strife as Andrew is trying to make out.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=phNtm3LmDZEM2Jpkp5e0ldQ

Re: Repeating history

"No blood had been shed here affecting change for a very long time. "

That's as far as I got through the article as well, bizarre claim. The year before joining Europe was the height of the troubles, 500 killed in one year.

A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK

Aesthetics versus Function.

Criticising the number of ports is like criticising the number of pockets on a Burberry handbag.