Posts by Eclectic Man 3173 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jun 2010
I expect the 'suppliers' of the 'free' 'educational' applications would claim that without the possibility of making some money from the kiddies' data, there would be no apps and the kiddies would be deprived of the education that is their right.
It does rather remind me of the lines from Tom Lehrer's song 'The Old Dope Pedler':
"He gives the kids free samples,
Because he knows full well,
That today's young, innocent faces,
Will be tomorrow's clientele."
Years ago a US confectionary company produced a maths* textbook that used its own products to demonstrate arithmetic (if I start with 25 M&M's** and eat 7, how many do I have left?). They wanted the local education board to adopt the book and mandate it as the only maths textbook permitted for use in the area's state schools.
*I'm a Brit, we says "maths", not "math", sorry.
**(I think it was M&M's, but I'm not sure. Other American confectioners are available.)
"the moon has no atmosphere, so can be easily hit by passing space rocks. I believe there's some evidence on the surface that this may have happened quite a lot."
There is a video (or several) of an impact on the Moon during a total solar eclipse:
https://astronomy.com/news/2019/01/impact-on-the-moon-during-the-total-lunar-eclipse
An atmosphere is no guarantee of safety from space rocks. Ask the dinosaurs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth
I wonder whether the technology could be used to enhance the sensitivity of radio telescopes and the DSN monitoring of, say Voyager?
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/voyager_1_anomalous_telemetry_data/
Tracking a signal of less than an attowatt must be quite challenging.
The modern argument is that if a product is built to last, you can only sell one once. If it is built to fail, you can sell it over and over and over again. There is actually no problem making incandescent light bulbs that last pretty much forever. However the manufacturers realised that soon they would run out market, so the deliberately conspired to make bulbs that would fail after a certain (short) length of time.
https://priceonomics.com/the-mysterious-case-of-the-113-year-old-light-bulb/
I remember the supreme joy of my first 28.8 kbps modem. Oh the dizzying speed of connection!
I also remember the 'discussion' with my then MD at work, when he was wondering whether to go for a 28.8 modem rather than a 14.4 modem. I pointed out that the difference in price (about £15 at the time) was insignificant. (He was also the one who bought himself an analogue mobile phone just when digital ones were becoming available.)
'As the signal is so strong'
Well, 'strong' is open to interpretation. I found this on the Interpleb:
"Question: What is the signal strength in watts received by the VLBA that is transmitted from Voyager 1? I recall that Voyager 1 transmits at 22 watts and is nearly 20 billion km away, so how weak is the signal here? — Robert
Answer: The answer to your question happens to be included in a story about the VLBA detecting Voyager 1 in 2014. As you said, the radio strength of Voyager 1 is about 23 watts. This signal is directed toward Earth, but since Voyager 1 is about 15 billion kilometers from Earth, by the time Voyager 1’s signal reaches us its power is less than an attowatt, or a billionth of a billionth of a watt.
Jeff Mangum"
https://public.nrao.edu/ask/how-strong-is-the-signal-from-the-voyager-1-spacecraft-when-it-reaches-earth/
I respectfully agree with the previous poster, this is truly AWESOME.
> "Fifty Shades of Grey", "War & Peace", 4Chan FanFic, or Vogon poetry
May I humbly suggest including James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegan's Wake', Hermann Melville's 'Moby Dick' and, of course, the novel against which all other novels are rated: Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time? The latter's volume 'Sodom and Gomorrah' really lives up to its title and should amuse the eavesdroppers.*
Sadly I suspect that the classic 'Where the Wild Things are' is too short. :o(
*Sorry, I really have read it, in English translation, so I'm a smug git, (someone's got to do it).
One of the most appalling incidents (to my mind, at least) was when the UK Security Service knew of serious child abuse at the Kincora Boys Home but instead of saving the children used it for blackmail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kincora_Boys%27_Home
I thought that surely this was something that should have caused resignations, at least, and even prosecutions of the UK officials involved. But then the scandals of the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England covering up child sexual abuse came to light, and the Rotherham sex scandal, and others. So I'm guessing that the Security Services reckoned that the abuse was 'par for the course'. (Not sure which particular circle in hell is reserved for them.)
For the avoidance of any doubt, there is no such thing as a "child prostitute". Children are by definition unable legally to consent to sexual activity with anyone. There are sexually abused children, there are sex slave children, there are groomed and coerced and deceived children, but they are not prostitutes, whatever anyone says.
I reckon that any bill to remove E2E encryption on the basis of protecting children from abuse should include a clause that says any organ of government that becomes aware of child abuse and decides not to do anything to protect the children and bring the offenders to justice must have authority to proceed in that way signed by both the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary, detailing the abuse which is to be 'allowed'.
Is this really about actually finding child abusers and preventing child abuse, or politicians trying to show that they are actually doing something about child abuse?
I would look at how much effort the proposers of this are actually putting into social services and child protection agencies to protect children (tragically far too many references to put here, but look up "Baby Peter", "Victoria Climbie", "Rotherham child sex scandal" and lots of others).
Wasn't it Martin Hellman who wrote his thesis on secure communication over insecure channels? If I recall correctly, he suggested sending your correspondent large number of puzzles, each one reasonably solvable, but the whole lot very difficult. The correspondent selects and solves one puzzle, which determines the key for communication, and returns to you a message encrypted under that key. You only have to check which key is used and send out the actual message encrypted under that key. An interceptor has to be lucky, or use a great deal of effort in solving a hole load of difficult puzzles.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/24/turing-award-winner-martin-hellman-cryptography/
As Riff Raff says "Madness takes its toll". (The song 'The Time Warp')
I assume this is so that people can post whatever infamy they like with 'or so I have heard', or 'people say' after it and get away with maligning their political enemies without any moderation or warning that the statements are factually incorrect, misleading or pure fantasy.
Arthur the cat: "I think it was an elephant. Could have been a rhino in which case the "bad tempered" is redundant."
Rhino's are sweet and nice, and only really interested in eating grass. I met one once in a reserve in Tanzania (or Kenya, I forget which). I fed it some grass. It had two armed guards, not to protect the tourists but to protect it from poachers. Of course this was a tame one, wild ones could be absolutely livid:
https://www.facebook.com/BritishComedyGuide/videos/not-the-nine-oclock-news-gerald/767252717054388/
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
(MacBeth)
Sorry, couldn't resist. Mine's the doublet without a first folio in the pockets.
Just a thought. In the USA, black people have historically been restricted to particular neighbourhoods with worse infrastructure, worse healthcare and more pollution, particularly exhaust fumes and particulate matter from vehicles. Before tetraethyl lead was removed from petrol / gasoline there was considerably more airborne lead pollution near major roads. Each of these can affect brain development in any people who inhabit those locations (whatever the colour of your skin). If the models were generated from AA and WA populations with different development histories, maybe there could be subtle brain differences which might show up in scans.
Umm don't you mean "In the US white poor are convicted of way less crime than black poor"?
Historically (and, I suspect, currently) in the UK and, I understand in the US, the law enforcement and judicial systems have been consistently biassed against black people. Black people are more likely to be arrested, convicted and get more severe sentences than white people with equivalent evidence.
See the image here from ESA:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/52036285993/in/feed-37440125-1651169895-1-72157721616820865
"Alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. After full review, the observatory has been confirmed to be capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard science instruments.
Upon completing the seventh and final stage of telescope alignment, the team held a set of key decision meetings and unanimously agreed that Webb is ready to move forward into its next and final series of preparations, known as science instrument commissioning. This process of setting up and testing the instruments will take about two months before scientific operations begin in the summer."
Sadly even the JWST needs a cooling device to reach below 7K for its experiments:
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/innovations/cryocooler.html
"Webb's MIRI instrument carries detectors that need to be at a temperature of less than 7 kelvin to operate properly. This temperature is not possible on Webb by passive means alone, so Webb carries an innovative "cryocooler" that is dedicated to cooling MIRI's detectors."
However, I wonder whether these Josephson junctions could be made using ceramic 'high temperature' superconductors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity
There are far more meat packers than physicists, but competition for jobs in academic physics (also any of the hard sciences like chemistry, biology, medicine and mathematics) is great, so it is not like you can go from refuse collection officer to professor at MIT just because you want to.
"Boyd noted that by 2021, only 8 percent of ransomware victims were getting their data returned"
That is an appalling rate. Companies really do need to assess the risks of not having adequate security, including offline backups. As the price of serious amounts of storage is now so low (I can literally go to my local Apple store and buy an 8Terabyte hard drive right now), it can only be ignorance or laziness that is preventing them.
NXM: "I didn't want several hundred volts that near my head."
Whyever not? It is the amps that kill you. On an edition of BBC's 'Tomorrow's World', one of the presenters (William Woolard, I think) demonstrated static electricity by taking off a nylon jumper (it was the '70s) and claiming that he was charged up to about 4000 Volts. He then lit a gas flame by 'earthing himself' to a Bunsen burner by touching it with his fingertip.
Buy your incredibly expensive (near small car price) electrostatic headphones here:
https://mynewmicrophone.com/top-best-electrostatic-headphones/
Sony already has a vibrating screen TV:
"the BRAVIA OLED can do things no other TV can do. Thanks to the vibrating units behind the panel, sound can move from side to side within the picture and be isolated to certain parts of the screen. Dialogue and sound effects emanate directly from onscreen objects, providing an audio experience that’s as immersive as the video. And they vibrate the screen so delicately that the movement isn’t even visible to the human eye."
https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2017/05/sights-sound-inside-acoustic-surface-powering-sonys-first-oled-tv/
There is a very strong tendency to misunderstand what algorithms are, and what they should be for. The statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter referring to predicting mortality rates in older people said that the model "fitted the data very well" about increased mortality due to factors such as smoking, drinking, diabetes etc. It is reality that exists, and algorithms which are used to implement models of reality to predict or explain events.
Many people seem to think that once you have a statistical model, it is 'reality' whereas in fact it is a model, and any computer program which 'implements' an algorithm does it only to an approximation of 'reality'.
"QKD is a way to securely distribute encryption keys, which are then used to encrypt and decrypt data for end-to-end transmission using standard public key algorithms."
The point of public key cryptographic algorithms is that you can publish the algorithm and the public part of the key and keeping the secret part secret can transmit messages securely over unsecured links. However, all of the public key cryptographic algorithms are computationally intensive, requiring mathematical operations such as modular exponentiation with quite large numbers. Time was when the minimum length of an RSA public key modulus was 1024 bits, I expect that is much bigger now.
Public key encryption was implemented (see, e.g., PGP) to enable the exchange of the keys for more computationally easy symmetric (secret key) algorithms, initially DES and more recently AES*. This allows the actual message to be sent using an efficient algorithm with minimal message expansion. So my guess is that as the QKD is considered secure there is no point in using it to send a public key to anyone, just send the symmetric key directly.
Unless I am missing something here? (EL Reg's cryptography experts are politely requested to advise, opinionate, pontificate and correct.)
*https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/Advanced-Encryption-Standard
For a scary explanation of what Putin might actually be doing with his invasion of Ukraine, try:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/26/2094225/-A-terrifying-look-into-Putin-s-possible-motivation-leading-to-the-invasion-of-Ukraine
"Since Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, without even bothering to justify it with anything other than a few stale lines of crude propaganda, I was perplexed by the strategic insanity of this decision. Let’s set aside the quaint idea that Putin would be governed by any kind of basic morals or international norms, but what was there to be gained from it?"
In one of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork patiently explains that he knows his enemies are trying to subvert the city, so he needs to spy on his friends to make sure they don't make any unexpected decisions that could be 'inconvenient'. (As I recall, I have undoubtedly not expressed it as eloquently as Sir Terry.)
I'm sure the Chinese leadership are as keen as anyone to know what is going on in the Moscow Kremlin at the moment.
Most businesses are feudal in structure. They have bosses and 'underlings', and some bosses are also underlings, but in general there is very little, if any, 'democracy' even at shareholders' meetings. (In some UK companies even a vote at a shareholders' meeting does not affect director remuneration as that is controlled by their friends on the, sorry the completely independent and objective, remuneration committee.)
However, companies have to be careful about paying in company 'script', as the taxation authorities are very keen for everyone (ok, 'the little people') to pay their taxes, so script needs to be relatable to the local legal tender.
"The USA's policy of decoupling its technology industries from China lacks a strategy, a theory of success, and an understanding of how to achieve its ill-defined goals, ..."
A pretty damning assessment. Makes it sound like more of a 'wish list' that an actual policy. My personal experience of plans is that the ones without clearly defined goals invariably make things worse, not better. The relationship is so complicated and involves not only China, but also lots of other intermediary countries, decoupling would take decades, if it is at all possible.
"This is a contract ceiling that includes all possible hardware, components, and services over a ten-year period at the worst possible pricing structure."
And is therefore the MS sales team's target.
Never, ever, tell your consultants the actual size of your budget, they will spend and spend and spend until it is all used up and you have to pay more to get a workable system. Remember that at the end of the contract the consultants walk away, and YOU are left to live with whatever they 'delivered'.
(D'oh icon, obvs.)
"I'd be very surprised if several space-capable nations hadn't already deployed space-based/satellite-based weaponry for just that reason."
Although that may be tempting there are a few issues. No conventional warhead launched from orbit would be much more devastating than basically a lump of iron dropped from that height. You also have the difficulty of re-entry into the atmosphere and the problem of burning up, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of any warhead. So we are left with 'nuclear' weapons in space. And these require maintenance. Nuclear material being what it is, it degrades over time. I don't know how long they might last in space but there is also the problem of someone shooting them down. Unless you are going for the 'Goldeneye' approach of an EM pulse to knock out comms and power grids ( would that even work from space) what is the point of putting weapons in space?
Of course we know how to build a bomb that could devastate an area the size of France*, if we wanted to, but hopefully no one does, and an ICBM might be a cheaper and more reliable delivery method than a satellite.
*https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/#post-heading
"However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the size of France."
"Palantir hires the best and brightest people from public and private sector organisations around the world."
So claims everyone else. OTOH, they are hardly likely to claim "We hire whoever is available, and scrape the bottoms of the barrels when necessary".
Was she a success at NHSX, or does Palantir just want the connections?
When I was offered 'voluntary redundancy', it turned out that HR could not find their copy of my contract, but I still had the original in my filing system (in the file marked "Contract"- yes I am a nerd).
Let's just say that I was COMPLETELY HONEST and ABOVE BOARD in my explanation of the details of redundancy payments and notice periods etc. located therein shall we?*
As for heyrick: "contact terminated, disregard all, goodbye", actually you generally have clauses, such as non-disclosure agreements that do survive termination of employment. I would never break one of those, mostly because I cannot actually remember anything, but also because some of those customers have guns, and people who really do know how to use them.
*(Actually I was, but I did get them to acknowledge my notice period was 2 months, not 6 months, so I got a lot of tax back on the non-PILON part of my redundancy payment.)
"Similar rule in UK that stops contractor from taking up a position with end client or end client's client."
Under EU legislation I think that would count as an "unfair restraint of trade" and the clause would be unenforceable. (Not sure after 'Brexit' though.)
The clause as stated in the article does seem extreme. Sounds like if you joined Infosys 15 years ago, spent two days initially working for customer Xyz, then never worked for them again for the next 15 years, you would still be barred from accepting a job there.
When I was 'let go' by one employer, the clause in my contract said that I could not work for ANY of their clients for a year. The company administrator admitted that clause was not enforceable. Had they insisted on enforcing it, I would have demanded a complete list of their clients, and a year's salary to compensate me for not being able to work for a year. They gave me three month's pay and told me to stay home instead. As I was about to resign anyway (they had put me under a 'manager' in whom I had absolutely no faith at all), I reckon I got a good deal.
As reported in the article the judgement was clear that the contractual exclusion clauses were insufficient to exclude costs incurred directly as a result of IBM's failure to provide appropriately working software. The reason for the precise costs awarded was because the claimant had invoices and could prove exactly how much they had lost.
The art critic Brian Sewell was being interviewed on some TV program or other, and I recall him describing the 'art world' as "a bunch of shits who are only interested in money". Which was how fakes got to be so 'valuable'. The price was never about what it looked like, but who had created it.
Although I have to admit that the da Vinci exhibition I saw at the UK's National Gallery years ago was easily the best I have ever seen. I couldn't buy a ticket online, so got in the queue at 6:00, got to the ticket desk at 12:00, bought a ticket of 18:00 entry and spent over 2 hours in the exhibition.
HELLO Everybody!
I have an exciting new opportunity just for YOU.
Yes, YOU could be the owner of a custom designed NUMBER.
For small fee I* will personally craft a NUMBER and sell** it to you, and promise that I will not sell the same number to anyone else.
Unbelievable I know, but YOU could be the owner of your very own NUMBER.
Please note that NUMBERS are not all equal, some are BIGGER than others, some have SPECIAL PROPERTIES, and you could OWN a NUMEBR that is just as 'SPECIAL' as you are.
HURRY! HURRY! HURRY! There is only an infinite amount left!
*I am a mathematician with not only a B.Sc. but also a Ph.D. in MATHEMATICS - the study of NUMBERS.
**I accept cash***, gold, diamonds, other precious gems and metals
***No Roubles, sorry :(, but a multi-million property in central London will do nicely.
And the lawsuits claiming that as the Apple Medic (or whatever it gets called) said my blood pressure was ok, I didn't see a doctor and so had a stroke or heart attack.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with a Basal Cell Carcinoma (the mildest form of skin cancer, doesn't spread, easy to treat by removal). I had the op, all ok. A year or so after the op, I found a hard lump on one of my toes. No lump on the corresponding toe on the other foot, and was convinced I had bone cancer, but I controlled my panic. (I am prone to panic, so I did well there). Booked an appointment to see a doctor, and he said, after probing it with his fingers that he thought it was 'mobile' (i.e., not attached to anything) and would probably just go away of its own accord. But that I had done the right thing in asking about it.
A few months later and it had completely disappeared.
If you think you may have a medical problem go see a qualified doctor. There are lots of things that can go wrong with you that can be treated effectively, but an incorrect diagnosis can be very bad. I recently had a blood test as I've been lethargic and getting a lot of coughs and sneezes for the last few months. Turns out I'm way below the ranges for vitamin D and Folic Acid, so now starting to feel better for taking the tablets (vitamins should always betaken with food, BTW).
Also, does Apple intend to record the data of people's blood pressure?
As for erratic heartbeats - I get that whenever I watch the news these days.
Hi Danny 2,
"You were the guy who was stabbed for wearing a puffer jacket, right?", not quite. I was once beaten up for being seen leaving a gay bar. Then years later after attending London Pride one year a guy called me a "queer c**t" and threatened to stab me. It was my friends, David and Stephen, who were stabbed in June 2020 in broad daylight in a park after a BLM march, David and two others died at the scene, Stephen survived (I was not there).
I'm afraid that politicians at the top almost always seem to hypocrites. Today's news that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the two most senior politicians on the country have been fined for breaking their own covid lockdown rules surprises no-one. Neither does Boris's decision not to resign but 'carry on' after taking 'full responsibility'*. We Brits, well past Brits, created concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer Was, and used smallpox against the native Americans, and of course there was the infamous Irish famine when potato blight destroyed the potato crop (which were eaten by the Irish) while the wheat was exported.
I've never really got on with Nietzsche, as I find most of his writings incomprehensible, but he was definitely wrong not to consider that his 'Ubermensch' might have had some compassion for lesser beings.
Sadly the situation in Ukraine gets worse by the day, I suspect it will last a lot longer before three is any meaningful resolution.
All the best!
*Can someone please explain what taking 'full responsibility' for something that went wrong actually means? AFAIK it seems to mean 'let's not talk about this ever again', but that doesn't make an sense to me, an admittedly amateur philosophiser.
Ancient Rome was in the habit of assigning a dictator to deal with an emergency. For example when Italy was invaded by Hannibal and his troops they installed Fabius Maximus to deal with the emergency as dictator:
"Fabius's tenure of the dictatorship in 217 was his second term in that office, with Gaius Flaminius as his deputy"*
But, of course, the Romans returned to their version of democracy (voting by male free citizens only) after the emergency had been dealt with.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Fabius_Maximus_Verrucosus
The article states that just the kinetic energy of a lump of metal travelling at greater than Mach5 is equivalent to several tonnes of TNT. I recall that during the Falklands conflict one of the UK's ships was destroyed by an Exocet missile whose warhead failed to detonate, it was the heat of the engine and the unspent fuel that set the ship ablaze.
Technically in order to be a munition, a flying, guided object needs to have a warhead, otherwise it is 'just' a controlled craft, and not subject to arms controls.* one of my former colleagues had a radio-controlled model aircraft, jet propelled, which was so fast he needed a proper runway to fly from as it would quickly escape radio contact when in flight if he couldn't see it.
*This may no longer be the case, please advise if you know better. Obviously ballistic objects like bullets are legally munitions.
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