Posts by Eclectic Man

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Re: Colour

The mountaineering photographer, Gordon Stainforth, tells a story that one winter he was all set up in his tent with a colleague to photograph a particular view in snow, when the weather set in and they were effectively confined to the tent for several days. They were well prepared with food, fuel, cold weather gear etc., but not books. They got so bored they were reading the labels on the canned food for entertainment.

Book "Eyes to the Hills", Gordon Stainforth, pub Constable, ISBN 0-09-470610-7

Colour

I do not have an e-book, I read actual paper ones. One advantage of that is that with my new, hideously expensive bedside lamp*, I can set the colour temperature to the appropriate one for waking up in the morning (blue-ish) or to pre-sleep mode in evening (red-ish) .

No wonder your bed-time companion was unhappy about the brightness of the iPad display, but couldn't you have set it to a more evening-friendly colour?

Besides, I find that a well-stocked bookshelf has far better thermal and sonic insulation properties than a thin electronic hand-held device.

* https://www.dyson.co.uk/lighting/task-lighting/dyson-lightcycle-morph/dyson-lightcycle-morph-overview. Yes, I know, but I weakened, and it is really nice quality of light, and there is no darker patch in the middle like there was with my old incandescent bulb bedside lamp.

ZOE COVID Study app starts the week with a lockdown of its own

The Diet Myth

I have just started reading 'The Diet Myth' by prof Tim Spector*, basically saying that any diet advice which ignores your personal gut microbiota is unlikely to work. So sounds reasonable. The introduction does mention the ZOE app and Covid pandemic.

Only on page 22, though, so cannot give a full review just yet.

*ISBN 978-1-4746-1930-1

Bloke breaking his back on 'commute' from bed to desk deemed a workplace accident

HMRC view

Umm, as I understand things, if you mainly regularly work at a specific location for two or more years, then according to the UK's HMRC, that is your designated place of work for tax and expenses rules. This would mean that anyone who has been told to work from home for the last two years, and done so, would have no legal claim to work in an office building, even the one they used to use.

Now, that could mean being able to claim expenses from your employer for any trip into 'the office', but it could also mean that your employer might no longer be required to provide you with any office, and could then save the money of heating, or even having an office building.

I think we need a lawyer specialising in employment law to provide 'an opinion' on this one.*

*Well, those of you who are still employed might, I'm retired so watching from the sidelines, as it were.

Re: "ablate"

Aaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!

Should have written "ablute", curse you, auto-'correct'.

Re: 'risk assessments'

If you usually work from home on HMG business, with access to sensitive data, your boss has to personally check the location for physical security (or send someone expert round to do it). Not sure if they check for Health and Safety of the router from bed to desk though.

Speaking personally, I always ablate and wash first, so I'd not have qualified anyway. But then, fortunately I've not (yet) broken my back, although I did once stub a toe quote painfully :o(

Better CEO is 'taking time off' after firing 900 staff on Zoom

Making people redundant

In the event that a (your) company has to make staff redundant, they should consider how they want the soon to be ex staff to react and think of the company in the future. How would you prefer your company to be regarded?

A former employee who says "It was sad, but due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, they just had to let some of us go and I got the short straw. They are actually really good people, and I recommend them."

compared to

"What an utter bunch of heartless f£$%^&(*ts! I hate the lot of them. Not only did they make us all redundant without having the decency to speak to each of us in person, they broadcast it on Zoom, and the CEO had the gall to say that the last time he did this he cried but HE hoped to be stronger this time. And just two weeks before Christmas."

Irish Health Service ransomware attack happened after one staffer opened malware-ridden email

Re: Too Little Information

Only if Regomised, so that we can enjoy the 'Who Me?' column later.

Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'

Re: One small step

According to https://www.engineeringclicks.com/ionized-gas-as-fuel/

"Electricity generation

Ionized gases are used in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generators to produce electricity. Ionized gases are made to pass through a magnetic field, thereby generating an electric current. These systems are said to be approximately 25% more efficient than nuclear power plants, in electricity generation."

One small step

Well, good to see something actually happening, although, I did get a bit disoriented by the second photo, which seems to be sideways, rather than the right way up. Still, I'm sure the Orbex Engineers will get things the right way up for the test rig.

One question I've wondered about is that in the live fire tests of rocket engines, they do tend to just waste all that energy. Couldn't there be some way of capturing it, it does seem an awful waste.

UK and USA seek new world order for cross-border data sharing and privacy

Re: while maintaining high standards of data protection and trust

heyrick: "It's utterly astonishing that anybody on the left side of the ocean can such a thing with a straight face."

'Botox'

Re: Nice drafting

/begin sarcasm

Surely it was only "protection" that was accidentally left in? They want our trust. After all, we poor dumb minions, leading our sad, humdrum lives, cannot be expected to understand the complicated ways our data can be used to enhance the lives (and bank balances) of our 'betters', now can we?

/end sarcasm

Re: UK will pull out of GDPR

From the UK ICO web site:

"The GDPR is retained in domestic law as the UK GDPR, but the UK has the independence to keep the framework under review. The ‘UK GDPR’ sits alongside an amended version of the DPA 2018."

(https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/dp-at-the-end-of-the-transition-period/data-protection-and-the-eu-in-detail/the-uk-gdpr/)

So I think it might require an Act of Parliament to repeal it, or replace it with something else (not that that would put off a government intent on 'liberalising' personal data protection laws).

Gas giant 11 times the mass of Jupiter discovered in b Centauri binary system

Direct observation

The fact that the planet was found by direct observation is amazing. So congratulations to the team, beers (or beverage of your choice) all round.

Clearly the theory of planetary formation in solar systems is a complicated and challenging field of study what with all the many different arrangements of planets orbiting stars that have so far been observed, and none like our own system, with three or four rocky inner planets and larger gas giants in outer orbits. This could be due to how easy or difficult planetary systems are to find, or to the exceptional nature of our own system.

(Umm, do I sound a bit like Sheldon Cooper? I have just been watching back to back episodes of 'Young Sheldon', maybe it is rubbing off.)

OK, boomer? Gen-X-ers, elder millennials most likely to name their cars, says DVLA

'Mad' Max

My sister had a sports car (Triumph TR something, I think), which she did call Max. It was very second (more likely third or fourth) hand and did break a half-shaft one evening on the way to the theatre (seeing 'Big in Brazil', by Bamber Gascoigne, with Prunella Scales and Timothy West - very good).

Academics horrified that administration of Turing student exchange scheme outsourced to Capita

How do they do it?

How do companies like Capita time and again fail to deliver on government contracts yet get more of them? Particularly when competing against an established and, as far as I can make out, successful incumbent? Oh, Hang on, the British Council sounds like a public body :

"The early 1930s were a time of global instability. Britain’s influence was weakened because of a global financial depression, which reduced living standards, jobs, and trade.

At the same time, extreme ideologies were gaining ground, with the rise of Communism in Russia, and Fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain.

The UK government created the British Council in response."*

So that explains it - crap commercial organisation: GOOD, efficient, well-liked public body: BAD.

As you were, nothing to see here, nothing at all.

* https://www.britishcouncil.org/about-us/history

Road to nowhere: UK plans for an 'AI assurance industry' but destination is unclear

AI and Ethics

It is too easy to criticise attempts to put ethics at the heart of the AI debate, but it is also essential to have ethics as the main condition. Many articles here on the Register and elsewhere have highlighted injustices by AI and 'Computer says "no" ' decisions, which could not be challenged because there was no way to legally examine the reasoning.

Examples I recall include:

Police use of criminality predicting software, so that when a neighbourhood experiences a crime, it gets more police patrols, finding more crime in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Denial of bail as a person lives in a 'high crime' area and is therefore deemed more likely to offend if released than kept in custody discriminating against people from black neighbourhoods.

Training of AI systems on a dataset obtained almost exclusively from white, middle-class males, and not considering that a hispanic or black female may therefore not be treated fairly, especially facial recognition systems.

Whatever the ethical criteria turn out to be they really must be robust, but, from a government that has indicated its desire to repeal the UK's Human Rights Act and maybe leave the European Court of Human Rights, it does seem that we need to keep a close watch on them.

Virgin Media fined £50,000 after spamming 451,000 who didn't want marketing emails

Wow!

I'm sure that a fine of £50,000 will be a strong disincentive to everyone out there thinking about sending unwanted emails. (Not)

(What a pathetically small amount of money for a such a large company to pay for breaking the law.)

Boffins demonstrate a different kind of floppy disk: A legless robot that hops along a surface

Re: BBC Reith Lectures - Autonomous Killer Robots

The lecturer did not give a reference, but I expect that if you searched the right munitions manufacturers' web sites you'd find one. If you consider the explosive power of Semtex and how much plastic explosives have probably 'improved' in the last 20 years or so, and the use of shaped charges*, the 'armour-piercing coke can' is all too plausible.

(Rather academic to me, of course as my home is built using the standard 'brick and block' construction method.)

*As I understand it, the shape of an explosive charge can be used to focus a lot of the energy of the explosion in one direction, rather than just creating a 'ball of flame'. This was used for some of the first few nuclear bombs to achieve the desired uniform compression effect of the fissile material and thereafter a self-sustaining chain reaction. Although the first one used a high velocity naval gun to fire a pellet into a mass of fissile material, IIRC.

BBC Reith Lectures - Autonomous Killer Robots

Listen to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00127t9

(Log in account required.)

This morning he specifically addressed the issue of swarms of killer drones, each the size of a tin of shoe polish. Scary stuff, particularly when the politicians reckon they could be around in 15 to 20 years, the AI experts reckon 18 months to 2 years, and the UK's MoD reckons 'now'. There is also a drone the size of can of Coca-Cola that contains enough explosive to punch a hole through 'feet' of steel plate. A tin-foil hat just ain't gonna be enough.

Hubble Space Telescope restored to service: No repeat of those missing messages, but here's a software patch anyway

Re: HOORAY!

There is an explanatory article by NASA here:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html

"Why send the Webb telescope all the way out to L2? When astronomers began to think about where the Webb telescope should be placed in space, there were several considerations to keep in mind. To begin with, the Webb telescope will view the universe entirely in infrared light, what we commonly think of as heat radiation. To give the telescope the best chance of detecting distant, dim objects in space, the coldest temperatures possible are needed."

HOORAY!

Well, basically "HOORAY!"

At last some happy news. Actually I am hoping for a picture of JWST by Hubble some time in the near future, just a portrait of it in unfurled and working position, assuming Hubble can focus that close.

But, basically, "HOORAY!"

Foreign Office IT chaos: Shocking testimony reveals poor tech support hindered Afghan evac attempts

Re: Such is the way of things.

Unfortunately the 'book' status of the Afghan Army was fiction, designed to collect vast sums of money fro salaries of non-existent soldiers funnelled directly into the bank accounts of corrupt officials, who, strangely did manage to leave Afghanistan before the Taliban took over, or did nice little deals with them. (Allegedly.)

Rolls Royce Foreign Office

The UK once described as " A Morris Minor country, with a Rolls Royce Foreign Office".*

Not anymore.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/5931/html/. (List C, first item)

Re: Disgraceful ...

I'm sure he said he wasn't paddle boarding because 'the sea was closed' that day.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-raab-taliban-kabul-politicians-b1908571.html

So presumably he spent the time on the sun lounger, reading Jeffrey Archer or Dan Brown.

Re: "fewer than 5 per cent of these people have received any assistance"

And the Taliban 'soldiers' manning roadblocks and 'checkpoints' were not allowing anyone through to the airport without travel documents.

The fact is that a crisis stretches a system and demonstrates its flaws in real time. As a Brit I am deeply ashamed of the UK's performance in this crisis, and appalled by the haphazard management by the FCO. The testimony by a 25 year old cicil servant who alleged that there was no '24-hour' rota, and he was at one point alone in the crisis room is quite shocking. The admission by the FCO senior civil servant that in retrospect he would have returned from holiday earlier, is just mind boggling.

Yes, Donald Trump did 'negotiate' the removal of US forces from Afghanistan without the knowledge of anyone else, but we did know this was coming and we did know that we'd have to get lots of people out when the Taliban eventually took control. It may have happened a lot quicker than expected by anyone, but that is no excuse for, as it seems, not having actually prepared anything in advance to manage things.

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

Re: Difference?

In the UK, even prisoners have the right to a private conversation with their lawyer, although I recall therefore some instances of the rooms being bugged in some prisons.

https://www.rahmanravelli.co.uk/articles/stop-bugging-us/

"...

The starting point is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). RIPA provides a statutory backcloth to all covert police operations so that all such operations must be properly authorised. This requirement for proper authority emanated not from a Government desire for its citizens to know and understand the power of the authorities; but because it had to under human rights law. Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights established, even before the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force, the right to privacy. Any surveillance is a breach of privacy. Of course, surveillance is also a necessary and legitimate tool in the fight against crime. The problem is getting the balance right between allowing the State to watch us and preventing law enforcement authorities from becoming oppressive 'Stasi' type agencies paying no regard to our rights. The Human Rights Act is the protection from State abuse.

..."

Re: Difference?

I would hope that in the event of anything of interest being flagged up by the AI transcription process, the original recording of the conversation would be checked to find out whether anything untoward had occurred, like threatening someone, or such like. But as it seems reasonably easy to smuggle mobile phones into prison these days, any serious criminal would probably be using their own phone, not a prison phone, for felonious purposes.

When you think of a unit of length, do you think of Antony Gormley's rusty anatomy?

Plural of Brontosaurus

I was going to be pedantic and point out that the plural of "Brontosaurus" is "Brontosauri", but the Cambridge University English Dictionary (and that august seat of learning should know) states that it can also be "Brontosauruses".*

So this pedant has been pedanted**, and I thought it only right and proper to admit my failing and mistake, and throw myself on the el Reg Soviet's mercy.

* https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/brontosaurus

** In English, any word can be verbed

UK data watchdog fines government office for disclosing New Year's gong list

Re: Is this a problem?

Sadly, as Sir Terry Pratchett discovered, that being made a knight of the realm, you don't get given a sword, so he made one for himself.

https://www.geeknative.com/16313/terry-pratchetts-meteorite-sword/

Re: So will the £500,000

I thought that HMG did not fine itself.

So I am bewildered (and STILL awaiting my richly (un)deserved knighthood for services to procrastination).

More seriously, a tad worrying that Cabinet Office is responsible for running Government security policy (including IT security). There was a Register article recently, I recall, about how much they were spending on training their staff in IT security.* Clearly someone is in need of a refresher:

* https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/29/cabinet_office_cybersecurity_training/

European Cybercrime Centre confident it's kicked credit card crims – again

Re: Oh, I know this one.

Not just - "you have a parcel waiting collection / delivery".

In the past few weeks I have had texts from, purportedly Nationwide Building Society and Santander claiming they have noticed 'some unusual activity' on my account. Strangely the address of the web site where I am supposed to log in to check with them, starts off with the name of the institution, but then goes a bit 'random' after a full stop, rather than "/". So I checked by phone and lo and behold! They denied sending me the texts!

Visiting a booby-trapped webpage could give attackers code execution privileges on HP network printers

Print queue robustness

Once, when working in a secure site, we switched off the printer at the end of the working day and went home. Next morning, enter the office, turn on the computers and the printer. Printer zooms into life, and prints the classified document it was printing before it got switched off last night. Of course the manufacturer was very proud that their printers would remember the print jobs, and it was a matter of operational robustness that a mere power outage would not lose the print queue.

It was a matter of some concern to the system administrators, how to make sure that just turning on a printer would not reveal highly sensitive information*.

*(Like the day I spent the whole morning quietly working on reviewing the main contractor's documentation, only to discover that my military officer boss had spent it all 'tweaking' his business card design, and the aforementioned 'Main contractor' had been designing the flyer for the upcoming team social event. Completely true, I could give you their names but they'd have to kill me ...)

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Re: Ooops! - Watch nerd

Yes, indeed. The 'ejector seat used' version has a red barrel. Civilian versions come with the options of black, blue, green or orange barrels.

Re: Ah, Izal Bog Roll.

Many years ago, I heard an advertising account executive interviewed. on the radio. He was asked about the more important campaigns he'd been involved with. He claimed that the one that the public was unaware of, but which had the greatest success, was in trade literature, persuading management to replace Izal with soft toilet paper in 'workers' loos.

Lloyd's of London suggests insurers should not cover 'retaliatory cyber operations' between nation states

Culpability

I do wonder how the insurance companies would attribute 'cyber crime' to nation states and whether that would include actors geographically located in, say Russia, which are not an official part of the government, but which, at least in the hallowed walls of the Register, are often associated with the government. At least tolerated (while they do not attack Russia's interests) etc. The various groups known as 'Russian Business Network', 'Russian Bear' and other actors (Google them at your own risk) are often considered by Western media to be working with or for the Russian state, if not actually part of it.

China plans to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later

Re: Encrypt data... errr quantumly

Are there any genuine quantum cryptographic algorithms? That is, encryption / decryption algorithms which can only be implemented on quantum rather than classical digital or analogue computers?

Re: Quantum computing and decryption

There is also the 'discrete logarithm' problem*, which is the security behind the Diffie-Hellman key agreement algorithm**. I don't know which Quantum Computing algorithm is currently used to determine those.

Not being a quantum mechanic, I don't understand either quantum mechanics or Quantum Computing, but I believe that it relies for its power on the idea that quantum particles can exist in a superposition of states. The trick is to get those states to be possible solutions to your problem. When you have all the particles set up properly, when they 'collapse' into a coherent and self-consistent state, you have your answer.

The reason why the one time pad is 'Quantum Secure' is that every solution is possible and no computer, quantum or otherwise can tell them apart without more information. Quantum computers would generally be used to crack the session key distribution algorithm, which is often a public-key algorithm, based on large primes (RSA, Elliptic Curves) or the discrete logarithm problem. The session key is usually used to encrypt one message, and distributed using a, currently secure, public key algorithm.

* https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mrh/330tutor/ch06s02.html

**A bit too complicated to describe here, but see

https://www.hypr.com/diffie-hellman-algorithim/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

Re: Fusion rocket engines - the gist

Not a fusion device, but the Russians are working on a nuclear powered cruise missile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

One allegedly blew up recently:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/world/europe/russia-nuclear-accident-putin.html

After 'hyperdrive' (and for Star Trek fans, 'warp drive'), fusion rockets, as I recall, have been the mainstay of science fiction writer for decades.

Academics tell Brit MPs to check the software used when considering reproducibility in science and tech research

Not just software

A while ago (1994 https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515483/epic-failures-11-infamous-software-bugs.html?page=3 ) Intel produced the Pentium chip which contained flaws in the hardware arithmetic. Mostly they did not matter for general computing, but one researcher was concerned about the accuracy of his work, so did all computations twice, and differently, and found the bug. Made quite a few headlines too.

I don't doubt that most experimental results are difficult if not impossible to duplicate, but the pharmaceutical industry, at least in theory, uses 'double blind' test to ensure that results of drug trials are valid.

One of the problems is that a niche, one-off, tool used by a single person as a short cut to doing many tedious calculations will be jumped on by management and made into a product to be sold, or it will rely on one person to design, code and validate it. And then the UK's CRAMM (CCTA Risk Analysis and Management Methodology) which was a curious collection of questions about the IT system under consideration, which were 'processed' by a 'scheme' and frankly although I reviewed it once, and recommended several serious improvements, nothing was changed, and many of the questions, although mandatory had minimal to no affect on the recommendations, but several had major implications through 'weighting' which was never explained or justified. It was, however very repeatable.

UK.gov emits draft IoT and smartphone security law for Parliamentary scrutiny

Default passwords

I've not found the relevant clause in the document, but it strikes me, as a one-time SysAdmin, that installing an OS without a default root password could be a mite tricky. OK, so they could make it mandatory to ensure change of root password on first log on, but that is not quite the same thing.

In any case you will have great difficulty connecting to my thermostat (40 years old), dishwasher, washing machine, refrigerator, kettle or even toaster over the Internet, as none of them is remotely 'intelligent' (a bit like their owner ;o) ).

ASIDE: Re: 'Footage'

BenDwire: "And why is it still called footage when no film is used? How about bittage, bytage or streamage?"

For the same reason that ships still 'sail', even though they use diesel (or nuclear) rather than wind power, and people still 'dial' a telephone number, even though all phones have buttons (or at least flat screens with images of buttons). (There is a beautiful scene in 'In and Out'* where a person tries to push-button a dial telephone, it is superb comedy.) People wear 'glasses' even though most have polycarbonate (plastic) lenses. It is just that society continues to use the original, now 'old-fashioned' terms.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/movies/tom-hanks-philadelphia.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_%26_Out_(film)

James Webb Space Telescope gets all shook up – launch delayed again

Re: a "sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band"

Showing my ignorance here, but could some kind engineering type pease explain to this (pure-ish) mathematician type what a 'clamp band' is? And is 'unplanned release' a euphemism for destructive failure, or merely the sort of thing my shoelaces tended to do before I started tying them with a reef knot rather than a granny knot?*

* see https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SquareKnot.html for a topological explanation

Re: a "sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band"

NASA? Mere beginners compared to the century-long experience of the UK's wonderful British Railways Excuses Department. Their responses to delays and cancellations of trains ranged all the way from:

"Leaves on the line"

to

"The wrong kind of snow"*

*(Absolutely true, except maybe the name of the 'Excuses Department'.)

Crypto for cryptographers! Infosec types revolt against use of ancient abbreviation by Bitcoin and NFT devotees

Re: Spartan's did it first

Indeed:

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-culture/ancient-spartan-retorts/

See number 6.

Hidden or secret

Crypto means hidden' or 'secret': https://www.dictionary.com/browse/crypto

However, it has become used to mean something akin to 'pseudo', as in the form of 'crypto-currency', where a 'real' currency can be embodied in paper notes or metal coins.

The 'crypto' part of electronic currencies like bitcoin comes in the security features of the blockchain, which is a form of digital cryptography.

So I'm not sure why Mr Schneier is objecting so strongly to the language evolving. Maybe he's just getting old, like me :o(

Fancy being an astronaut but didn't go to uni? Your time may have finally come

Re: Work expereience?

Will Shatner has been into spaaaaace, and captained the Enterprise for years. Does that count? (I don't know if he can swim 75 metres though.)

UK health secretary confirms end for NHS Digital, architect of the GP data grab debacle

The NHS SPINE authentication was originally designed, and intended, to be done locally (hence the PKI). However, when the NHS higher-ups were told about this, and the, inevitable but small costs of each practice, PCT etc. running their own authentication server, they insisted that authentication be done centrally.

This resulted in the enormous delays for NHS staff logging on to the system, and their practice of just leaving the card in the reader to avoid the 90second wait. Incidentally, originally as implemented (many years ago and it has been fixed now) any one of the thousands of KMtaj agegakuh sseinf inf* could delete everyone's access privileges, including their own, thereby shutting down the whole of the NHS!

*Now, now, you didn't expect me to actually say who could do it, did you? ;o) (But, actually, yes, they could have.)

Re: Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield

In his series on the Lake District National Park and its environs, Simon Reeve will be showing the inside of the site this coming Sunday evening, 28th November, at 9:00pm on BBC 2.

UK Test and Trace finding consultant habit hard to break: More contracts go to Deloitte and Accenture

Career path for Civil Service IT

I thought the career path was to get well trained in IT specialities and then find a much better paid job in industry, outside the civil service. (NOT a joke. The civil service has great difficulty retaining highly skilled IT experts as the commercial sector pays staff a lot more.)