Posts by Jaybus

Tech giants' payouts go to everyone but affected citizens. US Supremes now urged to sort it out

"Seems to me there is two options here:"

There are more. Why not limit the attorneys' fees? It is fairly likely that the much of the arguing in this case revolved around the attorney fees. Google, caught red handed, probably didn't argue their innocence too strongly, but you can bet that they would argue the attorney fees. Given that, aside from the attorney fees (and donations to the attorneys own alma matars), the attorneys chose to give the remainder to Google's pet charities, I must conclude that they struck a deal with Google in order to receive a larger fee. To keep Google from arguing their fees down, they essentially allowed Google to choose the beneficiaries. Of course, Google was going to give these institutions the money anyway and it is a tax deduction. The only "real" penalty to Google was the attorney fees. Hey! It's a win-win, for everyone except the 129 million people who were harmed.

There is no question as to why either side would not like this deal (or ruling?). The question is why would the court think so?

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

Re: Hearts & minds propaganda, courtesy of MoD

And also as per usual, they will be running into the same domestic issues that the US, and others before them, ran into, such as demand for higher wages, better working conditions, banning child labor, and etc. Companies, including their own, will be looking to cheap labor in less developed nations creating the same double-whammy that stymied manufacturing in the West.

Make Apple, er, America Great Again: iGiant to bring home profits, pay $38bn in repatriation tax

Re: AC

And it would require the purchase of a dongle to open the gate.

Re: Shame they pay no tax elsewhere

I think you missed the part stating that they had already paid the tax in the jurisdiction where they had the money. It is not double taxed. The issue is that the US corporate tax is much higher, one of the highest anywhere. They get a credit for what they pay elsewhere, but they still owe the difference. While they technically owed the difference anyway, they could have what they owe deferred (indefinitely) until they actually brought it back (repatriated it). Since it was over a 35% tax rate, they left it offshore and deferred for many years. The new tax code allows them a one-time tax break to repatriate the cash for cheap, relatively speaking.

So is it a tax break for Apple? Technically, yes, but in practice the US government is getting $38 billion instead of zero. Seems like a good deal to me. 15% of hundreds of billions is much more tax than 35% of nothing.

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

Re: I will get worse...

Good question. Core 2 cannot see core 1's L2, so does the OoO write on core 1 cause the written data to propagate to L3 to maintain cache coherency? Otherwise, the OoO write never makes it past core 1's L2 and core 2 then loads it's L2 with the original copy from L3 and so never sees core 1's abandoned write.

IETF protects privacy and helps net neutrality with DNS over HTTPS

Re: Now this would be a great idea...

"Even if every TLS website had a unique IP address (and SNI were disabled), you could still easily build a database of hostname to IP address mappings, just by taking logs from any heavily-used DNS cache."

Nevertheless, it doesn't affect what I think is the principle feature of DOH. Sniffing out what sites are being visited by hosts on your network is possible, but DOH would prevent redirecting those hosts by altering the DNS replies that they see.

Voyager 1 fires thrusters last used in 1980 – and they worked!

Re: how is assembler outdated and by what?

Interestingly, all of the CPUs you mention are too new too have affected Voyager design. I just viewed a documentary titled "The Farthest: Voyager in Space" that included comments from some of the engineers and scientists involved with the Voyager program. One of the engineers commented that in the interest of stability, technology was locked in as of 1972. The 8080 (1974) and 6502 (1975) were too new to have qualified. Voyager used 3 different designs, but the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem used an updated version of that used on the Viking spacecraft, a General Electric 18-bit TTL design with 64 instructions that used plated-wire RAM. It is rocket science, after all. They couldn't afford to trust a commercial CPU that was never tested in a high radiation environment.

Universal basic income is a great idea, which is also why it won't happen

Re: UBI is the future

"As for most people, we all want a better tv/car/holiday/house so we'd carry on working regardless, however with UBI , employers would only have to pay people like me £10k a yr instead of £25k"

Perhaps, but I can see another possibility. Many will take their UBI and be done with it, preferring to spend their time loitering about. Demand for jobs should not likely decrease, at least not due to UBI, but supply of willing and halfway reliable workers will certainly decrease. The result is an increase in pay for those actually willing to work. That is to say, those who are willing to work for large companies. The cost is highly increased taxes, which further increases the number of people willing to take the UBI and simply quit trying. The end result is a greatly increased income disparity, both for individuals and businesses, with small business eventually becoming infeasible.

Secret HPE AI chip, TensorFlow updates, neural networks writing themselves – and more

Very nice

HP has long been working on memristor design, and use of memristors in an analog computer has been the goal. Good to see that it might just work.

Slashing regulations literally more important than saving American lives to Donald Trump

Re: All vehicles within 4 years?

"Gosh, which option seems better?"

Well, there is useful tech and useless tech. Not sure which category this falls into, so there is no answer to that question at this time.

Forget One Windows, Microsoft says it's time to modernize your apps

Re: What ?

"The Windows Store (or whatever the fuck it's called) is about envying apples billions, and wanting in. Nothing more."

I'm not convinced that there's nothing more. I do think that M$ has its share of true believers who honestly believe, misguided as they may be, that filtering all apps through "the company store" will somehow protect users from malicious apps. Why they believe that they can detect security flaws in third-party store apps when their own apps are riddled with security flaws is beyond me.

No, the FCC can't shut down TV stations just because Donald Trump is mad at the news

Re: The film "Idiocracy"

Not guaranteed. Trump didn't win because of a strong alt-right or because of a weak alt-left. He won because millions in the middle chose an unknown political criminal over a known political criminal.

Re: Actually

"Hitler is old."

Yes, but he isn't getting any older.

Re: Actually

Absolutely agree. The news media in the US is quite a joke. They all slant things in any way possible to fit their agenda. Whether left or right, better to take it with a grain of salt. But it isn't really due to a political stand! It is all about sensationalizing whatever they deem will garner the most views (or likes?) from their targeted clientele. Neither care too much about the topic of a news report, but rather the ratings that are intricately tied to the advertising dollars. Is it fake news? For the most part, yes, from both camps. I don't trust any news that has even the slightest political underpinnings. On the other hand, the weather seems to be fairly reported, for the most part.

'There has never been a right to absolute privacy' – US Deputy AG slams 'warrant-proof' crypto

Re: There's a difference

That is only partially true. Since the 2nd Amendment does grant the right to keep and bear arms, the right to sell arms is implied. If guns could not be sold, then the US government would be required to supply them.

Twitter: We also made a shedload of cash from Russia's trolling during US White House race

Re: Free market

"The system is hence broken by design and whether it's the NRA, Mumsnet or the Russians doesn't really matter, unless donation and spending limits are introduced."

Does it really matter? There seems to be way too much emphasis on these ads and Russian "influence". I remain unconvinced that any of that mattered to so great an extent that half of the US was brain washed into voting for Trump. Way too much credit is being given to the Russian propaganda efforts, as if Clinton didn't shoot herself in the foot with her own numerous shady actions.

Trump accuses Facebook of bias, collusion with his least favourite newspapers

"This sensationalism is what he feeds on, can't you see that?"

Of course. But that is also what the news media feeds on. It is not unusual for two groups of animals in the same habitat to compete for the same food source.

EasyJet: We'll have electric airliners within the next decade

Re: Well....

Ah! Yes! The perpetual motion machine should definitely be included in any discussion of an electric airliner.

Missed patch caused Equifax data breach

Re: Cashless or clueless?

"Does anyone have a suitable date to propose?"

19 Jan 2038, of course.

Climate-change skeptic lined up to run NASA in this Trump timeline

Re: I don't mine a skeptic. I prefer a skeptic in this position

"This isn't an open question..."

Oh? Do we then know the exact contribution of each of the myriad factors affecting Earth's climate? You cherry-picked from his comment. But, if it is not open, then we certainly should cut off all funding for further scientific study related to the question. No point in wasting resources on it.

Dude who claimed he invented email is told by judge: It's safe to say you didn't invent email

Re: Only the best will do

"We don't need bad liars in government. We want only the very best."

Such as Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet.

US government: We can jail you indefinitely for not decrypting your data

"If they don't have to reveal the code that does this it doesn't even need to be an algorithm, just a straight switch."

Ah, but they do. That evidence, the crafted key or decryption method, would be discoverable. The defense would show that the method decrypts one file out of an obviously much larger set of files and claim that the prosecution made it up, (which of course they did). So what would the jury think? Would the judge even allow the "evidence"? I very much doubt it.

Re: Does the govnernment even read their own briefs?

"This case could set some very dangerous precedents. This is getting into the though crimes idea."

Certainly. But it would also be a dangerous precedent for the court to establish forgetting one's password as the "go to" defense. I suspect that this could lead to laws similar to the DUI laws that establish guilt for refusing a blood alcohol test, an even more dangerous outcome. Better that the judge hold him for contempt.

"Therefore the files are encrypted porn images, because hash collisions are so rare."

It definitely does not prove that the images are porn. It is, however, plenty enough to justify a search warrant and the judge's order to comply. The judge, wisely, does not want to set a precedent that allows future child pornographers to conveniently forget their encryption keys.

China's cybersecurity law grants government 'unprecedented' control over foreign tech

Re: Original?

"So have the Chinese actually invented anything original since the Compass circa 1100 A.D.?"

In 1979, China implemented IP laws. Prior to that, all IP was the property of the Chinese government and there was not much incentive to invent anything. From 1979 to just the past few years, there were laws, but little to no enforcement. In the past few years they have stepped up their enforcement of IP laws. Makes sense. When they had no IP of their own, they weren't much interested in protecting any IP. Now that they do have some, as a direct result of allowing some capitalism in manufacturing, they are suddenly interested in protecting IP.

British broadband is confusing and speeds are crap, says survey

Re: Webpages that crash

It's video that is the culprit. The trend has been to add annoying pop-up video content, as well as multiple video ads on the sidebars that autoplay when the cursor gets near them. On many news sites the text cannot even be read anymore due to the dynamic page resizing and jumping about as the multiple MBs of content trickle in for every single page.

President Trump to his council of industry CEO buddies: You're fired!

Re: Political Correctness "key words" and "tricky phrases"???

"Those who try to keep that from happening are the opposite -- they are fighting for equal rights for all human beings."

That would be nice! However, I don't see Antifa in that role. When I see them attack in their black uniforms with helmets and bats, I am more reminded of the Communist vs Nazi riots of Weimar Republic Germany. Yes, Himmler and Goering ended up on the winning side of that one, but not for lack of trying by the SPD. And btw, both sides wanted to take the rights, and sometimes lives, of other human beings. And both sides attempt to do so by terrorizing the middle (ie. sane people). Given that we also have an example of the case where the far left / alt left / Bolshevik side ended up on the winning side, how can you blame someone for refusing to believe that one is better than the other?

They say we're too mean to Microsoft. Well, how about this... Redmond just had a stonking year. And only 8% tax. Whee!

Re: Tax rebates?

"They're legally obligated to their shareholders to apply for the tax rebate."

Well, it's more that they are not authorized by their shareholders to pay extra taxes that they do not legally owe. But in any case, there is no rebate. The "effective tax rate" of 8% is a completely meaningless metric. The article distorts their real net income by conveniently leaving out the amount of the massive loss from its failed mobile business. They paid 35% on their real income, not 8% on the good stuff. Net income has always been revenues minus expenses, so no Trump-inspired loopholes required.

Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C

Re: Coding 54 years

"AI still doesn't exist"

Of course not. It's to be expected, as natural intelligence barely exists and was some 4 billion years in development.

Trump tramples US Constitution by blocking Twitter critics – lawsuit

"Were people banned in this manner?"

Most likely. Someone as famous as Obama, or Trump, would attract thousands of loonies. That is like asking if the whitehouse.gov email servers have spam filtering. That brings up another interesting point. If his Twitter account must allow everyone to communicate, then must his e-mail account accept all spam mail?

Re: ID 10 T alert

'Notice how that very famous paragraph doesn't say "....that all AMERICANS are created equal." it says "All men".'

Notice that it is the Declaration of Independence and not the US Constitution, so doesn't pertain to this case.

Canadian sniper makes kill shot at distance of 3.5 KILOMETRES

"it was said to have been stopped by an ordinary nylon jacket."

Slow is a relative term. This particular projectile has a mass of almost 42 g., or about the same as a carpenter's claw hammer. An overhand throw would suffice to kill small animals. At "just subsonic" velocity, it would make a real mess of just about any living thing. And comparing to a handgun round, a .45 ACP fires a projectile with a mass of around 13 g. and muzzle velocity of around that same just subsonic speed, so the .50 BMG at 3.5 km has around 3x more impact energy than the .45 ACP has at point blank range.

The internet may well be the root cause of today's problems… but not in the way you think

Re: Christian Berger: The problem isn't ideologies spreading on the Internet

@ BoldMan: Repeat after me "Government finances are not the same as Personal Finances"

@ Commswonk: Hopefully you will soon realise that the statement is essentially bollocks, perpetuated by those who believe that there is an infinite source of money mysteriously available. It was that attitude that ratcheted up the deficit and the accrued debt that had to be addressed in 2010.

Nonsense! There is one very glaring difference. When an individual borrows money, it must be paid back from the individual's resources. When a government borrows money, it is paid back from "other people's money", frequently from the future earnings of those who have not even been born yet.

Re: Christian Berger: The problem isn't ideologies spreading on the Internet

"A tax corporations pass on to whoever they can - employees, customers or shareholders."

Of course. And why should they not? It is essentially a cost of goods sold item, just like materials, wages, etc. I'm sure that a CT increase causes corps to foot the bill early on, but the burden will fairly quickly shift to the consumer. Net effect: yet another tax on the consumer and artificially increased price of domestic goods vs. imported goods. In fact, I would argue that it never makes sense to increase CT without a corresponding increase in import tariffs. It likely makes more sense to increase taxes on individuals, not businesses.

It's Russian hackers, FBI and Wikileaks wot won it – Hillary Clinton on her devastating election loss

Re: Not entirely correct.

"A look at the county level map shows her support even more narrowly clustered near the big waters or boundaries."

Well, it is the large metro areas that she won. The large cities are, understandably, clustered near the big waters.

Re: Not entirely correct.

Furthermore, take a look at the Presidential election map by county or voting precinct, where precincts that were won by Trump are in red and those won by Clinton in blue. The much greater detail shows that Clinton won large metropolitan areas and Trump won nearly all of the rest. At the time it was put in place, the worry was that the large cities, at the time Philadelphia and New York, would have undue influence over the election. Judging by the finer detailed election maps, they were correct in their assessment, and the 2016 election shows that the electoral college system is still working as expected.

Re: Comey was required by Congress to inform Congress

Turns out she made a good choice to use a private email server. What would have happened if the FBI had also gotten the 30k deleted messages?

US military makes first drop of Mother-of-All-Bombs on Daesh-bags

Re: Stupid bastards

Well, history is a little conflicting in that regard. The fire bombing, and eventually nukes, actually worked quite well in stopping the "radical Shinto terrorists" in 1944-1945.

BMW chief: Big auto will stay in the driving seat with autonomous cars

Re: Wrong

"...all mature with lots of existing designs to work from and knowledgeable people to poach."

Of course, but the devil is in the details. Yes, it gets a car built, but at what cost? Dr. Robertson has a background in maritime studies and extensive experience in automotive sales and marketing, along with purchasing. When he mentions that it will be "easier" for BMW, I have to think that he is referring to "financially easier".

Having all of the pieces is not good enough, because it does not ensure an optimal production line. Sooner or later, all of the above will (or could) have autonomous cars. The winners will be those who do so without pricing themselves out of the market. I have to agree with Dr. Robertson that BMW, (and Ford, Honda, etc.) can add autonomous driving to a commercially successful car more easily than tech companies can add optimized vehicle production lines. It will be much cheaper to add the tech than to add the entire production line. And, yes, the poaching will be critical, but works both ways.

Europe to push new laws to access encrypted apps data

"Did you just say random numbers should be illegal?"

Absolutely. Entropy as well. If they can legislate away entropy, then end-to-end encryption would be impossible.

GCHQ dismisses Trump wiretap rumours as tosh

Re: partial denial

"GCHQ have introduced the possibility that they may have wiretapped Trump before the election result. Why would they do that?"

I'm not sure that they would know any other way. They are trained to collect factual information, not be the source of it. As a result, vague statements are standard operating procedure.

That CIA exploit list in full: The good, the bad, and the very ugly

Re: Obama?

I have always found it quite racist to think of Obama as a black man, since his mother is white. How does that work? Is black more powerful than white, genetically, so that the black traits outweigh the white? Or is it the tired, old, racist adage that "you're only white if you are "pure" white"? Any non-white ancestry means that you are not white?

Bruce Schneier: The US government is coming for YOUR code, techies

Re: Compare and contrast

"but it didn't force them to repackage these loans in to blocks"

No. It didn't force them to, but it allowed them to. Bankers were unwilling to make the low income loans, so the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act was enacted during the Clinton administration to repeal parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and allow the banks to trade sub-prime loan backed securities. It was an incentive to get the banks on board with knowingly making loans to people who could not afford them.

Grumpy Trump trumped, now he's got the hump: Muslim ban beaten back by appeals court

Re: Once the new man is on the Supreme Court

I disagree with that assessment. There has been more than one case, and not all courts have agreed to stay the order. See Judge Gorton's (District of Massachusetts) decision at http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2017/02/Gorton-order.pdf

Unlike Robards, Gorton discusses legal arguments in detail. It seems the SCOTUS has its work cut out, since the Immigration and Nationality Act clearly does give the President authority to "impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate". Pretty much a Constitutional crisis, so I doubt that anywhere near a unanimous (or quick) decision is forthcoming.

Trump cybersecurity order morphs into 2,200-plus-word extravaganza

Re: Sounds great

I agree that it is not a valid concept for the IT worker in the trenches. However, he is issuing orders to the heads of departments and multiple levels of management above those IT workers to whom reports would be stifling. You know. Those bosses that are rarely seen or even heard from. I understand the intent, but how dare he order those bosses to actually work. There could well be a coup if this order interferes with golf schedules.

Big blues: IBM's remote-worker crackdown is company-wide, including its engineers

Re: It's Baffling Me

And that the new coversheets go on all of the TPS reports before they go out.

President Donald Trump taken on by unlikely foe: Badass park rangers

Re: Less than a week in the position...

"O.K. some have been itching for a rematch ever since, but history suggests they may not like the result."

History shows that neither side would like the result. US military deaths in their civil war: 592,680 (334,680 Union, 258,000 Confederate) . US military deaths in World War II: 407,300. Also consider that the US population in 1860 was 31.4 million as compared to 132.1 million in 1940.

Trump's FBI boss, Attorney General picks reckon your encryption's getting backdoored

Re: Back to MD5, et. al.

I'll second the no worries. I don't believe anyone is considering any kind of return to known broken methods. Anyone who believes that there is "unbreakable encryption" is being deceived. They want to try to prevent their own boffins from leaking vulnerabilities that they discover. They want to leave the next heartbleed-like vulnerability undiscovered for as long as possible. So, in other words, the same thing every government (including those in the EU) is already doing.

Just business as usual. The quality of the encryption is, and will always be, the responsibility of those using it.

Chelsea Manning sentence slashed by Prez Obama: She'll be sprung in the spring

Re: Assange v Chris Grayling

Exactly. I think it was his end game plan. If the US allowed clemency for Manning, then a US court might be his best bet. After all, Manning was the treasonous spy, not him. His sentence should, and almost certainly would, be less. If he can get the US to extradite, then it likely looks like a safer bet than a rape conviction in Sweden. Perhaps the US isn't asking for extradition because they know they would be last in the queue and would rather see him face the rape charges.

Promising compsci student sold key-logger, infects 16,000 machines, pleads guilty, faces jail

Re: How is a keylogger illegal?

"If the guy lived in a free country he'd be fine."

And what free country would that be? Where, exactly, is it legal to aid and abet thieves?