Posts by streaky

Cray's found a super scooper, $1.3bn's gonna buy you. HPE's the one

HPE

Being bought by HPE is like having a TV show put on air by Fox - you're going to get cancelled. Run away as fast as you can in the opposite direction would be my advice.

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

Re: Is there a law for that?

It is not illegal to cover your face in the UK. The police can ask you to remove face coverings in specific circumstances but it is not a crime in itself. They certainly can't do it just because they feel like it.

Re: WTF?

Stop and fine clearly not lawful. Don't accept street fines for things that are not illegal kids.

Re: Not my face

It's literally not right. I'd start with the legal ramifications of Harvey v DPP and work back from there. Was police who initiated the hostile contact. He probably made the mistake of accepting a fine though.

Those rules don't apply to the BBC. Not even joking or just being sarcastic, they actually don't - not least because the BBC isn't considered commercial so the commercial photography rules don't apply. In a public place you can then do whatever the hell you want. If it's me I'd vigorously test that in court though.. The BBC is a package and they have huge commercial interests globally. Also yeah on an ethical level all sorts of wow if they didn't obtain permission.

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

She did nothing of the sort, as per the example in my comment below.

Actually..

She would have assessed the evidence on its merits, and when she'd done with that she'd have gone and told the US to go fuck itself if she wanted to do so - as she did when the US was equally wrong about The Falklands.

May has been pissing me right off lately, well, for a long time - but on this she's bang on right, if anything she's being far too cautious.

Any time the US wants to move their intelligence gathering out of sovereign British territory they're free to do so. No? Didn't think so.

The Year Of Linux On The Desktop – at last! Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 brings the Linux kernel into Windows

Re: But why?

"Just why in holy fuck's name would I possibly want to do that?"

I mean.. As somebody who writes software for linux but uses windows desktop I can think of a million reasons - assuming microsoft is thinking of literally everybody when they do things like this is silly?

Julian Assange jailed for 50 weeks over Ecuador embassy bail-jumping

Re: @Len After 50 weeks

Additionally the UK will not extradite for capital crimes unless a guarantee is made that the death penalty will not be invoked.

Not only is that not actually true, the UK extradites for technically capital crimes all the time - nothing Assange has been accused of and is likely to face trial is realistically a capital crime. I believe the last people in the US to be executed for espionage were the Rosenbergs and that was in 1953 - and they were stealing nuclear weapon secrets on behalf of Russia. Nothing Assange has done makes that standard even if the same standard applies - and it doesn't - and Assange would have a hard time making the case to either a UK or Swedish court that he was likely to.

There's NordVPN odd about this, right? Infosec types concerned over strange app traffic

Re: Probably fine, handled badly

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Malicious or stupid I'd run as far away as quickly as possible if I cared.

Honestly I never understood the proliferation of VPN services. The kind of people who use the internet to post nonsense on facebook shouldn't care and the people who should IMHO should be capable of finding a howto on OpenVPN - or ToR. GCHQ considers ToR secure enough to use for their own purposes, so no reason you shouldn't.

Article 13 reasons why... we agree with EU, nods Britain at Council of Ministers

Re: 'making Google's vid-hosting platform liable for infringements on copyrighted material would'

"Sorry, i don't see the problem"

Yeah? Liability in all cases regardless of how serious the effort was? It's not a threat to Google it's a threat to Google's competition and OH LOOK it's EU law helping the big boys dominate their market position again - presumably so they can fine them on the back end too.

I was trying to think if the EU had ever written good law.. Got nothing.

Brit rocket boffins Reaction Engines notch up first supersonic precooler test

Re: people like Elon Musk who are sending the world down the wrong path

You can make methane carbon neutral, burning it carbon neutral not so easy.

Also I meant Tesla obviously but now you mention it, all that NASA research into liquid hydrogen burning in oxygen rocket engines, pissed away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjQ0j1a9RcA

Re: So much potential

actually producing, compressing, and chilling the hydrogen is pretty carbon-intensive with current technology

Not really. With *current technology* we can do it for free, the input being water, by-product Oxygen. The fact there hasn't been any investment to scale up isn't the fault of existing technology, it's the fault of governments and people like Elon Musk who are sending the world down the wrong path. We could all be driving HICEVs by now with fairly minimal investment.

Max Schrems schreds another 'blockade' to challenging Facebook data transfers in Austria

Re: We've asked Facebook for comment. ®

legal@ press@

Fairly standard emails for a large company..

They use a different domain for their corp stuff which is easy to find, once you know that you know how to contact them. Can't guarantee it doesn't all go to /dev/null though..

Overheard at a Brit mobe network: On the count of Three UK, smile and say, er... we lost how many customers?

Meh.

I left EE because they screwed me around sending my new sim and then cancelled my contract without any contact despite being an existing customer since before EE was T-Mobile. I was going to get angry and rant at them but before I did I shopped around and found 100GB/mo for 20 quid and when EE asked me what I was going to be paying (presumably in an attempt to price match them) when I was getting a PAC they baulked when I told them "yep, we can't match that". Moved to Three and they've been absolutely solid so far. I can pay 5 quid a month to upgrade to unlimited for a months as a one-off whenever I like and upgrade without extending my contract too, both of which I like very much.

Vodafone: Daft Huawei comms gear ban will cripple UK – and cost punters loads

Re: Would be ironic

It would be ironic - not only has GCHQ's own (published) advice to the government been that the risk is manageable, and they're cooperating, but I'm fairly sure I recall the part where we told the US to go stuff themselves on this. They might be considering certain restrictions but beyond that I can't see it happening in the UK. The EU27 on the other hand have no capability to even evaluate the risk let alone manage it but leave them to it I say.

Plus we have photos of the Cisco thing thanks to Snowden...

Three-quarters of crucial border IT systems at risk of failure? Bah, it's not like Brexit is *looks at watch* err... next month

Re: Pity the small traders

"However, hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the UK only have international trade with countries in the EU"

Most small businesses don't actually trade outside the UK and frankly, the ones that do tend to be international in nature and are used to trading under international rules. The only difference is tariff regimes in reality. The "problem" businesses are the ones that sit in the venn diagram of trading internationally but *only* within the EU so have no experience of customs declarations or that trade almost exclusively to the EU and don't really have a proper customs declaration procedure in place - and that's not actually many businesses by the way. Plus customs declarations are easy.

"Just shows that the current Conservative party doesn't have a clue about the UK economy and business."

Doesn't show anything of the sort and by the way if the conservatives don't, nobody else does.

TL;DR

TL;DR: I've never worked in IT project management and I don't know what red risk is but it's obviously bad.

SMH.

Did we actually read the risks or just look at the colours and make judgements based on them that we're all fucked? Different projects have different impacts, the most important are amber/green and y'know, risk.. Without looking at the project boards it might be, y'know, projects can't complete without policy decisions and it could be solely down to that - they could otherwise be ready to go and most of the NAO notes suggest exactly this.

Fun fact: GPS uses 10 bits to store the week. That means it runs out... oh heck – April 6, 2019

Why on earth would you send 128 bit data packets for GPS? Complete waste of bandwidth. Real issue is that people are using data for things it isn't really for, but software and firmware was designed to handle this many many years ago - you'd have to be relying on some ancient kit for this to be a real issue.

Uncle Sam to its friends around the world: You can buy technology the easy way, or the Huawei

Re: Be curious, if the UK has to toe the line ...

"Politics is the art of the possible"

That's certainly true, the issue these days tends to not be we can't do x or y because it isn't possible so much as we're not even going to try because it sounds a tiny little bit difficult.

"being snu-snu'd senseless by Keira Knightley and Margot Robbie on my own tropical island"

:x

Re: Be curious, if the UK has to toe the line ...

"It's essentially about the UK aligning itself with a clique of radical free-market capitalists in the US for the mutual benefit of radical free-market capitalists there and in the UK"

ROFL.

Also sovereignty is the right of the people to chose their own destiny. It isn't parliament's, it isn't the Crown's, it's the people's.

Also I'd like to see the US try. GCHQ has Huawei gear's source code, has vetted it, is making them produce reproducible binaries. It's pretty clear the whole deal (minus the Iranian regime stuff) is nothing more than Operation Protect Cisco. Why protect Cisco other than obvious economic reasons? Because it's fairly clear the NSA still have operations to backdoor Cisco gear. Friends don't let friends buy Cisco.

Office 365 enjoys good old-fashioned Thursday wobble as email teeters over in Europe

This..

Keeps on happening with Microsoft over and over and over again. Our corp overlords when we were sold pushed us over from corp gmail to corp off365 for reasons I don't really understand and we've been having issues like this ever since. Firstly it's not in any way difficult to keep an email service up, secondly google have never had this issue. There's something in MSFT's processes somewhere at some level that is simply _wrong_ - perchance Windows is involved somewhere? If it is, get it out.

Black Horse slowed down: Lloyds Banking Group confirms problem with 'Faster' payments

Re: cheque's in the post mate

What's a 'cheque'?!?

Brexit-dodging SCISYS Brits find Galileo joy in Dublin

Re: I don't understand...

I mean't when they told us that businesses would not move out of the UK because of Brexit

Depends on your definition of moving.

There's far more businesses moving to the UK rather than away from it because of brexit though regardless, and that's all that matters.

Re: I don't understand...

The Brexiteers swore that this kind of thing wouldn't happen...

No, we pointed out explicitly that the EU wouldn't be able to run Galileo without us (true) and latterly that the EU's position makes *no sense* due to the fact there are Israeli companies involved in building the system (also true) and the fact they tried and succeeded for a time to get China involved with the same level of access the UK is looking for (also true). The EU is is a nonsense, and the Galileo project is one of the many many many proofs of that.

Ecuador says 'yes' to Assange 'freedom' deal, but Julian says 'nyet'

Re: Assange is a political prisoner, in the United Kingdom, end of

They offered him a deal where he won't face the music in the US and he STILL won't leave

To be fair, and I prefix this by pointing out he's guilty as hell, he's been assured he won't be extradited to a country where he'll be executed. Two problems with this - firstly it would be illegal to extradite him to the US (not to mention a PR shitshow) if he faced execution. Second point is he doesn't face execution for what he's on the hook for.

The problem Assange has is Mueller is about to indict him for being ground zero in the whole Russia gets Trump elected thing, and there's an entire political class in the US (and outside it) who are going to have very serious problems with cognitive dissonance over it. When that happens Ecuador isn't going to have much choice but to throw him out on the street, the US will suddenly start giving a damn and the amount of pressure the US will bring to bear on them will make it impossible to resist. That will confuse a bunch of folks because they think that either the UK or US give a damn now, when in fact he's basically imprisoned himself, he's quarantined.

I have good news for Assange though - if he knows anything and isn't just a Russian patsy then he has a get out of jail free card he can play although I strongly suspect he doesn't in which case oh dear.

Oh: and by the way, double down and double up mean different things.

Brit bomb hoax teen who fantasised about being a notorious hacker cops 3 years in jail

If he is he should be in Broadmoor or Rampton. See if he still thinks he's clever after a few weeks there.

Microsoft polishes up Chromium as EdgeHTML peers into the abyss

GG

I've only been suggesting this for about 10+ years now Microsoft. Don't think it'll really help gain users but at the same time all that writing your own layout engine noise is a massive waste of resources..

Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don't call back when asked for evidence

No Shit..

This is all.

There is no evidence, the people selling it don't understand it and it's actually embarrassing that I work in tech when stuff like blockchain happens. It has uses, they are few and far between, most stuff people are trying to "solve" with blockchain can easily be solved with other existing and well tested and understood processes and technologies.

UKFast mulls putting IPO on ice due to six little letters: BREXIT

Re: Blaming BREXIT?

Uncertainty. Your office could be hit by a meteor tomorrow - that's uncertainty. Plan for no deal and you'll be ready for everything, there's no uncertainty here. If you can't IPO in the event of no deal then you can't IPO because there's something fundamentally wrong with your business plan.

This stuff isn't difficult the terminally incompetent are making it difficult from random bloke on the street through business all the way up to senior levels of government.

We know what the "worst" (best) case looks like, plan around it.

GCHQ pushes for 'virtual crocodile clips' on chat apps – the ability to silently slip into private encrypted comms

I have sympathy but you're right the situation they're in is completely self-inflicted. They wanted to see all data all the time and when anybody found out - as was remarkably inevitable - the public were massively alarmed. Nothing has changed in GCHQ (and at the NSA, BND, others FWIW) since the events that led us to where we are now; without competent civilian oversight (there's civilian oversight, but it isn't competent) of what GCHQ are playing at with regards to what they're doing to perfectly innocent citizens minding their own business for a purpose that could easily be defined as "nothing good" long may it continue. I don't even see where competent oversight comes from by the way, they're never going to let people like me who _understand_ what the tools they use do and what the effect might be on national, personal and business security - as long as that remains true people like me are going to do everything we can to ensure they stay shut out of everywhere it matters. I've said it here before but their remit as defined in law is to protect the national security of the country, work in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK and support the prevention and detection of serious crime. Trawling comms of Joe Average minding his own business isn't that - in fact it plainly makes their job far far harder.

I don't even have confidence that they're even restricting themselves to working within the rather open legal framework they're allowed to act.

US told to quit sharing data with human rights-violating surveillance regime. Which one, you ask? That'd be the UK

Re: People in glass houses ...

2 wrongs and all that

2 wrongs for sure but data flows both ways. If the EU took the same view about the US things would get very messy very quickly. The problem is how low the bar is, it's basically on the floor. UK *does* have strong protections is the trick, it'd be nice if they [the government] unfucked a few things is all. Some proper competent oversight for GCHQ would be a good start.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Re: I'm sneering, but you know who's to blame for this?

smart meters are an EU wheeze leapt upon by Ed Miliband's Department of Energy and Climate Change

They're explicitly required by EU law - I'm still not sure if it's good or bad that we're miles ahead of Germany on this. The problem with it is the desperate panic with which the whole thing was rolled out - it's led to many problems. Personally speaking we love ours, it's solved many many problems that we had before (related mostly to our meter being installed within our flat and we broke their [the energy company's] system for self-reporting meter readings and shocking issues with bill estimation). Does it save energy? Probably not, it will for anybody who really doesn't understand where their energy use is going but otherwise it won't. For some it'll be nothing, for others it'll be probably be hundreds a year. The other issue is now there's a standard they're sitting on the new standard compatible meters and still trying to push the old ones out the door and nobody wants them because they have supplier-switching issues which of course is exactly what suppliers want - IMHO they should have all been prosecuted under competition law but what is a person to do?

Microsoft: You looking at me funny? Oh, you just want to sign in

in practice such an event hasn't occurred within living memory.

Well, except for that one time two days ago when all their second factor stuff died for a very extended period... But other than that! Oh yeah and that one time a few days before where the entirety of office365's outlook email service died for 4 hours.. But other than that!

To be fair though presumably one can authenticate the old fashioned way still..

Re: I Don't Get It...

They're *supposed* to be a *second* factor. I don't know what it is Microsoft have implemented but it better be something more secure than plug it in and away you go.

Azure, Office 365 go super-secure: Multi-factor auth borked in Europe, Asia, USA

Re: Office..

Because the criticisms are normally unfair.

Office..

Outlook (email) was also down completely for 4 hours the other night and nobody noticed. When we were acquired by our new parent company we were forced off the perfectly fine corp google mail service we were using that never had issues onto the Microsoft stuff and it's been crap ever since. I usually defend Microsoft quite a lot but you'd think they could manage to keep something so simple online for everybody, all the time.

Bloke fined £460 after his drone screwed up police chopper search for missing woman

It's not in dispute that he technically breached the rules. The issue for me is that the rules aren't fit for purpose and maybe if they were people wouldn't ignore them so much.

Re: Here's what's interesting.

Bit of a leap. The helicopter's altitude would have been significantly higher than this drone. The reason he wouldn't have known it was there is they weren't in conflict which is precisely the point isn't it? The downwash from a heli would have destroyed it basically instantly if he was within hundreds of feet of it.

I'd be interested to see the video from the heli which should have been saved as evidence to see what actually happened.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying the guy isn't an utter clown, but I'm interested in how much real risk there is/was.

Here's what's interesting.

"The person in charge of a small unmanned aircraft may only fly the aircraft if reasonably satisfied that the flight can safely be made"

You can reasonably satisfied if that's the case with an FPV drone. I'd be more comfortable at 100 miles satisfying myself through FPV that than using line of sight to satisfy myself at 400 meters. Also yes I did put it like that intentionally. There are a few absurdities in law with this stuff, which is probably why some people don't take the law seriously. I can fly actual aircraft (PPL - although my rating lapsed admittedly years ago because I wasn't getting any use out of it) and so I'm fully aware of the issues and the drone panic (albeit sometimes justified) is drowning out sensible regulation in this area.

Also that offence isn't strict liability is it? It can't be else it wouldn't rely on a person satisfying themselves - surely they should be required to prove a person isn't reasonably satisfied that it's safe to fly.

Re: Russian speaking?!?

Here's a question. Why _shouldn't_ they report facts? Propaganda. Lets hide who is going through the court system and just let Tommy Tippee stand outside the courts and broadcast who is who on facebook.

European Union divided over tax on digital tech giants as some member states refuse free money

Re: How about fixing the existing tax code to cover this??

When we're not in the Single Market anymore, surely companies won't be able to book UK profits in Ireland/Luxemburg/Netherlands, as now?

This is a simple one - because Hammond doesn't think we're going to leave the single market and that it's up to him. I very strongly hope and would suggest to the government as a voter and 40% tax payer (and FWIW as a party member under 40 - we're a rare breed) that this isn't a thing.

Re: the laws of unintended consequences

Using a country's IP address blocks to levy taxes means increased VPN usage (as mentioned above) to avoid taxation.

Are you really saying that because of edge cases we shouldn't do anything about this? People aren't going to use VPNs to use facebook purely for the intent of pretending they're in Ireland just to save Facebook £0.0000000000001 a year, that's *insane* to even suggest.

If it's a sale of an actual thing leaving the EU fixes this problem because customs, if it's a company intent on making no margin because services they either play ball or get lost - this by the way is perfectly doable by Facebook saying what percentage of their user base are in the UK and figuring out what is what from there - there's actually no need to not trust their numbers on this; even as it relates to tax, until proven otherwise. Also by the way being banned from booking UK ad sales to the RoI when we leave the EU.

Re: How about fixing the existing tax code to cover this??

So how about fixing the existing tax laws to get rid of shady tax strategies such as the "Double Dutch Debit", the "Irish Shower", "Lax in Lux(embourg)" and "Nobody ever goes to Jersey, but somehow our multi-billion dollar company is headquartered there"??

Because it operates under the rules of the Single Market. No single market, no problem. Problem is the rules that make this a thing won't change before hell freezes over.

If nothing else, pass an EU wide corporate income tax for specific types of companies that are problematic, so that wherever you operate in the EU these companies pay the same tax.

Won't solve the problem and would trigger many referendums that would certainly fail in a whole bunch of countries. You'd turn even Luxembourg into a country intent on leaving the EU. They don't want a fair tax system, and that's the problem and why this will never be a thing, a lot of countries are quite happy with how things are thank you very much.

The key to this is being clear about what we're talking about and then doing it right and doing it fairly - I do see why Hammond has done this unilaterally (I always suspected this was going to be the case). If they're paying tax at a rate that smells sensible they shouldn't be fair game - if they're providing minimal value to a country and potentially even actively harming it, paying no tax and located somewhere they pay almost none like, I don't know, Facebook then the system is unfair and measures to correct should be applied. The UK tax system is exceptionally simple, and we need to stop being taken for a ride by companies making massive revenues and synthetically buried (by moving) profits for the avoidance (and evasion) of tax here. If they don't like it they have the choice to not serve customers in the UK.

US Republicans bash UK for tech tax plan

Re: International norms

That's the actual issue, there's a massive tax evasion exercise going on, if we're talking about international norms. Then again it's one that relies of fairly fundamental EU law at its heart and we have no tools in the box to fix it until we leave.

I have no confidence in our [UK] government to sit this guy down and tell him to shut the f up, which is somewhat alarming really. That said W&M isn't nearly as influential as the article might suggest.

"he is threatening to take similar actions against British firms should the digital services tax indeed take effect in 2020"

Which British firms are behaving like Google, Amazon, Facebook in this area? Tell me who they are and I'll join that fight too. Also getting pissy about something that doesn't exist, will not exist for a long time and the government has made clear will be put together with the involvement of business is a pretty strong clue you're a nutjob and nobody should take you seriously. Sounds like the OECD path he's suggesting won't work anyway given how opposed to this measure he is.

Double taxation - the problem is getting these companies to pay *any* tax, anywhere.

We're Zuckers for a sequel: Brit MPs' battle to grill Facebook boss continues

Re: Personally, I find it refreshingly honest.

Yep that's why Facebook are expanding their UK HQ. Oh hol up.

It's no google megahq but they know that when the UK leaves the EU they'll have no legal method of pretending UK sales are taking place in the RoI unless May does something *monumentally* stupid like try to keep us in the SM for any period whatsoever.

RoI gets the numpty operation, London gets the largest Facebook engineering hub in the world outside the US - and they made that decision long after the UK voted to leave the EU. Go on, paint your narrative, make my day.

Course you don't have to take my word for it you can ask their VP of European Ops. "The UK’s flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company. And we’ve built our company here – this country has been a huge part of Facebook’s story over the past decade, and I look forward to continuing our work."

We've done google, we've done facebook, would you like to talk about Amazon expanding in the UK since the decision to leave, or Starbucks firing everybody in the Netherlands and moving all the jobs to London or one of the other isn't it weird how all the jobs are going the opposite way to what was claimed?

Budget 2018: UK goes it alone on digital sales tax for tech giants

Re: Reg...

"So we have a tax code so complex that companies find it's worth spending a fortune to find loopholes"

Yep. I don't know if there's a good answer to this but generally speaking simpler tax systems are better than complex ones - everybody pays their fair share and you can an have an overall lower rate, which is of course the overriding position of the Conservatives on taxation despite claims to the contrary, the issue is making it happen. If a company intentionally makes no margin to avoid paying taxation I don't see how you can really stop that. This measure seems to be more aimed at companies like Facebook explicitly where the real issue IMHO is companies like your Amazon's and your Starbucks of this world;

Countries outside the EU aren't having this problem. I was bemused by the point he made after about about companies avoiding paying UK tax (VAT especially) by booking sales to branches in other countries - given that Hammond is somebody who wants to at minimum remain in the single market. Well, that's what Amazon does - hence why I buy things from Amazon EU Sarl. Once we get out the Single Market Amazon will no longer be allowed to use this completely synthetic "fulfilment" relationship where it pays sales tax for UK (and by the way French, German, others..) sales in Luxembourg. The EU can't stop this either because of course the Single Market is a fundamental part of the EU's core reason for being. This is the real problem we have, and it's the easiest one to fix.

Reg...

Chancellor made it *extremely* clear it's not a digital sales tax. For one thing due to the fact it isn't a tax on sales.

'BMW, Airbus and Siemens' get the Brexit spending shakes

Re: "Keep calm and carry on"

FT isn't pro-remain, it's a mouthpiece of the European Commission. You want finance news read cityam like finance workers do.

Nevertheless, it's going to be the easiest deal in history. Apparently.

It is. Remainer conservative MPs and arguably naive leaver MPs stupidly put a remainer in charge of the whole affair who immediately set to work making it as complicated as possible. Nobody anywhere is arguing that May hasn't completely ballsed up the leave process. Then again we know what it looks like to leave the EU - we don't pay them money for anything, we're not in the single market or customs union and they don't make our laws or customs tariffs - including tariffs on goods coming from the EU. Anything else is noise, and yes - that includes the NI/RoI border and passporting and all the other *nonsense*.

If we don't *leave* as the country voted for the UK political landscape is going to jerk pretty wildly to the right. It shouldn't need to and if we leave it won't, but it will if we don't.

The D in Systemd stands for 'Dammmmit!' A nasty DHCPv6 packet can pwn a vulnerable Linux box

Re: Meh

People who don't like systemd are autists. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, you just can't deal with change - even when it's for the better - probably all run 32bit boxes and cried like babies about itanium; despite the fact it's a better arch.