Posts by eldakka 2354 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2011
As the article points out the US spied on telephone systems in the US and overseas. It didn't get AT&T or other companies to do it, the NSA simply built the tools to do it.
Really?
Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, as part of its warrantless surveillance program as authorized by the Patriot Act. The facility commenced operations in 2003 and its purpose was publicly revealed in 2006.
The main issue is that the law in China states that a company MUST give the state any and all information when requested.And that is different to many western countries how?
If a US body presents an NSL (requires no judicial oversight) or a FISA warrant (rubber-stamped by the FISA court) to a US company, the exact same rules apply.
This was a clear and huge breach of the Official Secrets Act,
As the Minister of Defence, would he legally be in a position to declassify such information? I mean, often stuff gets declassified and released to the public, therefore someone has to have the authority (and/or delegate) to override the original classifying officers and make those sorts of decisions.
The point of this research is to prevent the cameras from detecting that a a human is in the footage.
Motion-detecting security cameras are getting to the point that they can distinguish between a person walking in front of them - must record - versus a non-interesting moving objects such as a tree swaying in the wind, a dog/cat/other small animal walking in front, which are "don't record" events.
Therefore you don't need a hoody and sunglasses, which are used to hide the identity of a recorded human, as the system won't have recorded the event at all since it hasn't recognised a human at all as passed across it. Therefore the fact a human was ever there, let alone their identity, never registers.
The question being why a taxi or minicab needs a license and why a city council gets to administer it ?
There are basically 3 reasons for this:
1) Taxi's can accept rides from random people on the street. Someone can stand on the street and flag a taxi down to accept to get a ride, and a taxi can accept that ride and charge for it. This is versus 'booking' services, such as town cars, limousine hire and so on. In this latter case, prior to the internet, the customer would have to contact the company before hand (telephone, or turn up in person to a booking office (and/or have one of their staff do so)) to book. Therefore the transport company would have more details about who's hiring the service, pick up address, pre-payment of the service for the expected duration, possibly even credit car or bank account details if that's how it's paid for. Therefore a taxi was a much more risky proposition, safety-wise, financially for the driver, and tax/money laundering-wise. Since a taxi has no record of who is picked up, where they are picked up, the danger to passengers is greater, therefore a taxi driver needs stronger vetting/background checks for their license. Also, the driver is more at risk, both physically for the same reasons as passengers, but also because a taxi fare is paid on completion of the ride, rather than an up-front daily booking fee, which could put the passenger in more danger due to fare disputes, after the service is already provided, so the passenger can just do a runner if they disagree (or were intending not to pay at all), and can make for more aggressive drivers due to this possibility of losing payment for a service they have provided. And, since the government have this no knowledge of rides situation, it is easier to take cash and not report it for tax purposes, or to claim more money is going through than it is for money laundering, and so on. All leading to higher taxi driver vetting requirements, and stricter monitoring and regulation of taxi services
2) Taxi companies/operators want to restrict competition so that they can make more money. Since the government is going to be more restrictive of licenses anyway, due to issues noted above, then they can use it to their advantage by putting their finger into the pie and egging on the restrictions, to their advantage with respect to enforcing a monopoly or near-monopoly-like circumstances. This enables them to better control the cost of fares, and to make money for buying and selling the taxi medallions/plates. It serves to keep competition out, and they can gain regulatory capture, that is, where the regulators/licensors work for the benefit of the people they are regulating, the taxis, rather than for the benefit of the customers, the public, which was the purpose of the creation of any such bodies.
3) The government can use it to generate revenue, by selling or even auctioning the medallions/plates. Where I am, in the 90's a new issue of taxi plate (often only done a half dozen at a time and only a couple times a year) would net the government between $200k and $400k per plate. The government also charge large fees for actual taxi driver licences (as opposed to the taxicab operating/owing plate/medallion), annual fees on taxis, and so on. This is an additional benefit to the government on top of the other reasons, passenger safety, making it more difficult to dodge taxes and/or use the service to launder money, etc.
Now along comes ride-sharing services. Technically, under the law (depending on how different jurisdictions define various things that is), ride-sharing services are more akin to the town car, limousine hire-type services, in that they can only take fares who pre-book with the company. The person who takes a lyft, uber, or what have you, has to book with the operator first, providing their personal details, payment methods, and pickup address up-front. Of course, and lot of this is transparent to the user now though, because they create an account with the service, and don't even often have to type the pickup address as GPS can provide it automatically, therefore each time they 'book' their ride-share, in the end from a user perspective its not a whole lot different than flagging down a taxi in the street or going to a taxi-rank, as it is all so automated. Therefore, to the chagrin of regulated taxi services, they - up to now at least - have operated under town car service rules (i.e. less restrictive except for that they are not allowed to be flagged down in the street) while being able to behave much closer - and provide real competition to - taxi cab services. Of course this is changing, as some jurisdictions are starting to regulate them as closer to taxi cab services than town car services.
This is the sort of answer that needs to be given to Facebook, as per a Singaporean Government committee last year on this youtube video, which proceed for about 3:30 minutes past the linked point.
My own view - when Apple do as much technical research and development as Qualcomm then they have a right to complain - at the moment it it like someone who buys a Rolls Royce then complains that it costs more than a Ford Focus.
That's nothing like the case.
The case is more like:
All the car manufacturers get together to standardise on a common set of control interfaces to driving the car, i.e. (for a manual), 3 pedals that are clutch, brake, throttle. And a steering wheel to change the angle of the wheels. And different companies have already developed specific elements of these and have patents on them. But all the companies agree on the common standard, and the companies that have patents on elements of this system agree to license to anyone who asks their patent for on a Fair, Reasonable, Non-discriminatory (FRAND) basis. So in this case Rolls Royce is one of the patent holders who offered and agreed to license their patents for this system under FRAND, along with multiple other patent holders (e.g. Toyota, Renault, GM), to allow everyone to standardise on the same set of control interfaces.
However, Rolls Royce who holds some (some, not all) of the key patents, decides after everyone has agreed to this and have committed to it in such a way as it is infeasible to back out now, that its patents are more critical than anyone else's , therefore they:
1) charge more for their patents (that they had previously agreed to apply FRAND to) than other companies who are contributing patents without which the system also couldn't work (breaching the Fair and Reasonable tenets);
2) requires that you also license other of their patents that are unrelated to these control systems, that you don't want to use, say a welding method that you aren't using, or a screw design that you aren't using, an engine mounting/isolation bracket that you don't use, and so on (breaching the Non-discriminatory tenet, as well as the Fair and Reasonable ones, i.e. you must also license these if you want to license that).
I'm not saying that the above is what is happening, that's up to the courts to rule on, however those are the types of allegations being made (amongst others).
You can use a smart TV as a dumb TV by not allowing it to connect to the internet. Don't plug in that RJ-45 network cable, or enable/provide the WiFi login details (or provide an isolated firewalled connection), etc.
Of course, some people will point out that if the manufacturers are persistent enough, they could do things like have the TV's WiFi automatically connect to open WiFi networks, or embed 3G/LTE modems into the devices or other similar shenanigans. But, if you are sufficiently paranoid about that happening, this can be defeated by disabling/disconnecting those components from the antennas they use (witness the iPhone "you're holding it wrong" debacle).
You are only totally screwed if the smart TV requires an always-on internet connection to even work (secure encrypted heartbeats back to the vendors server). I'm not aware of any Smart TV's that have gone that far yet. Yet.
IANAP, but my understanding is that It's not because of the mass or not of photons that light is bent by gravity, it is because the mass of objects distorts space-time, it curves space-time. And since space-time is the medium that light traverses, when space-time is curved, light follows that curve like a floating object in a whirlpool (of water) or a rolling ball in a cone-shaped object. Therefore massive object(s) like stars, black holes, dark matter, bends space-time, curves it, and light follows that bending that those massive objects - and not its own photonic mass - has created.
That would suggest the number of people of working age and condition are increasing, which suggests more people. Yet the percentage of unemployed is the lowest in decades, even with more people we still have a lower unemployment rate.
That is not how the unemployed figures are calculated.
Unemployed doesn't mean you don't have a job.
If you are not working and, in the survey period, didn't apply for a job in that survey period, then you won't count as unemployed even though you don't have a job and want one.
The way unemployment and employed have been calculated has changed so often, and has so many caveats against it, that the figure is a political, rather than a real, number.
The figures form 30 years ago cannot be compared directly to the figures of today, as they actually mean different things than they did 30 years ago (which was measured differently 30 years before that, and so on ad infinitum).
, it seems a bit harsh for the family to now be suing the airline as they are just as much a victim as those who died as they were duped by Boeing and the FAA into believing the aircraft was safe, even after the first Lion Air crash, and that pilots did not require additional training.
It is the airline who provided the flight service to the customers who perished. It is the airlines responsibility to provide a safe service to its customers. It is the airlines responsibility to provide a safe aircraft to the customers. The passengers on the aircraft were not customers of Boeing, they didn't buy their tickets from Boeing and Boeing wasn't the provider of the service.
Therefore it is the airline who is responsible. The Airline failed in its duty of care to provide a safe service, a safe aircraft to its customers. Irrespective of the quality of the aircraft provided to the Airline, it is the Airlines responsibility to ensure the aircraft is safe.
However, the airline can then sue Boeing for compensation, the cost of the litigation and any payouts incurred from the customers cases, if the airline can show that it was a faulty aircraft (which is what appears to be the situation) and not due to mistakes made by the airline. As Boeing has a duty of care to provide a safe aircraft to its customer, the Airline..
Well, there's the problem. Boeing and the FAA thought pilots could pilot planes without AOA indicators or AoA disagree alerts. They have been optional on the 737 line for decades and the planes flew very well.
But prior to the 737 MAX AoA sensor data was not a control input. It was an information input to the pilots and warning systems. No control system acted on input received from the AoA sensors. If installed AoA sensors malfunctioned, the worst the plane's systems would do is start throwing alerts to the pilots or, if they had the optional AoA indicators, show weird numbers on those indicators.
With the 737 MAX, AoA sensors are not optional, they are critical flight control input. That is, control systems now directly act on data received from the AoA sensors, unlike with the previous 737 versions, and MCAS adjusts the TRIM automatically and directly from AoA sensor input. Therefore having the "AoA disagreement light" remain an optional feature, even though AoA data is now critical flight-input and automatic control adjustment data, is negligent at best.
The core of the problem is that Boeing intentionally downplayed, if not hid, MCAS and how it worked and how to respond to it, intentionally failed to require pilots to train on this system, to protect sales.
Jamming can be directed at specific targets or various size regions. So you could, for example, jam all satnav signals in, for example, the North Atlantic, while not jamming any signals in the Bering Sea of White Sea etc. Which wouldn't help the Russians if they were also trying to navigate in the North Atlantic, but if they were positioning forces outside there to enter it, which jamming the other sides attempt to position their forces in (e.g. travelling from US to Europe) or to reinforce it.
However, in this case, while 'manual' navigation methods aren't that accurate, they are definitely good enough to get you across an Ocean to within shouting distance of your final specific destination, close enough that you can then navigate by land marks.
LORAN is basically just a ground based GPS (or since LORAN was first, it might be more correct to say that GPS is an orbital LORAN) , that is, it sends out radio waves which are received by the ones using the system, just like GPS does. Therefore jamming/spoofing is the same as with GPS. The one saving grace may be that since it is ground based, its transmission power could be more easily increased to get through jamming, rather than the extremely weak GPS signal received down here. Of course, the jamming signal strength could also then be boosted. In the end it could come down to who is closer, the LORAN broadcast stations or the jamming broadcaster.
"The fact of the matter is, it was Michael Sanchez who tipped the National Enquirer off to the affair on Sept 10, 2018, and over the course of four months provided all of the materials for our investigation.
I would think that this would be defamatory against Michael Sanchez. And if AMI tried to argue a defence of "truth" (where in american libel law truth is an absolute defence), then they'd have to provide evidence of that truth. If Michael isn't the source, as seems likely, they wouldn't be able to support a truth defence, which could reinforce the "external forces" accusations.
and given that they weren't buying it just for it's absolute value, but its potential then that 8.8% should probably have been quite a bit bigger.
An earlier Reg article on this case gave us that figure, $17bn.
Back in August 2011 when HP was about to buy Autonomy for $11bn, the US megacorp “valued it at that stage on a standalone basis at some $9.5bn but together with synergies at $17bn.
On that basis, 13.6%.
Meg wasn't the CEO at the time of the Autonomy purchase. So no, the mutli-billion dollar deal wasn't done by an intern, it was done by the CEO prior to Meg, Leo Apotheker. Meg did oversee the writedown however.
Reading the wiki page on it, this is funny in a sad/unbelievable type of way:
Though Apotheker served barely ten months [as CEO before being fired by the board], he received over $13 million in compensation. HP lost more than $30 billion in market capitalization during his tenure.
Well, that was a well spent $13 million on a CEO!
The raft of legislation, bureaucratic administrative rules and legal precedent is so vast these days that it is nearly impossible to be not breaking some law at some point while going about ones daily business. And I don't just mean just "as a business", but also as an average person who is an employee just living their daily life.
If you drive to work, it's quite likely you will breach some road or parking rule on the way to or from work. Or while at home, maybe surfing the internet you may inadvertently break some copyright rule. Or making a comment on a forum, or just walking the dog (maybe didn't scoop?).
"Lawyering up" is not evidence of wrongdoing, not an admission of guilt, it is evidence of at least a vague understanding of your rights.
So no, the fact they consulted a lawyer is evidence of nothing more than that they recognise the complexity of the legal process so tried to get some clarity by consulting a lawyer.
Because first they have to prove that there was in fact accounting fraud.
If such accounting fraud did happen, it was Autonomy who would have committed the fraud.
If HPE wins against Autonomy, then they have a decision that says fraud was indeed committed. Then they could go after the accounting firm for not detecting such fraud since that was their job. In this case, they would be suing for fee recovery of what they paid the consultants as they didn't do their job, as they should have gotten that 'making whole' compensatoin from the case against the former Autonomy execs as they were the ones who, in this unproven scenario, would have been the ones who committed the fraud.
However, even if HPE loses, if they lose because of the accounting differences between the two different countries accounting systems, something that the accounting consultants HPE hired should have been aware of and accounted for (pun intended), then HPE could sue them for more than just recovering the fees they spent on the consultants. In this case, it is possible (depending on the contract between HPE and the accounting consultants hired) that HPE could recover the writedown cost from the accountants if it was found they acted negligently.
In either case, first the former Autonomy execs need to be sued to determine which path to follow against the accountants - just a fee recovery, or a fee recovery plus compensation.
because if you have two of anything and they give different readings, which one do you trust?In the MCAS case, you'd disable MCAS if you were warned that the AoA sensors are disagreeing and that one may be faulty. That is, you'd ignore the AoA sensors entirely. MCAS isn't required to fly the aircraft, it's a system to make the aircraft behave more like the previous 737 models, rather than a system necessary for general flight safety.
Therefore if all the following were true then 2 AoA sensors are sufficient:
1) There is a way for the pilots to know that there is something wrong with the AoA sensor suite;
2) The pilots know MCAS exists;
3) The pilots know that MCAS depends on the AoA sensors;
4) The pilots know the failure mode symptoms of MCAS;
5) The pilots know how to disable MCAS;
6) The pilots have been trained to fly the aircraft without MCAS assist (in which case MCAS wouldn't be necessary at all, as its primary purpose was to make the plane fly like the old 737 and thus not require any additional flight training, thus if the pilots were going to be trained how to fly the plane without MCAS, there'd be no reason for it).
In the Lion Air case, it appears that none of the above were in place.
Point one is enabled by an optional, at extra cost, "AoA sensor disagreement warning light" I think it was described as. That is, a light that turns on (or a status on the MFDs) that just tell the pilots the AoA sensors disagree. If you want to know the actual AoA readings are, that is the actual angle of attack angle the sensors are reading the plane as being at, as opposed to just a warning light, that is yet another extra cost option on top of the warning light cost.
And as is apparently the case, the other points were not clearly laid out in the flight manual or the conversion "training", which is apparently all of 1 or 2 hours.
I have a machine running here which has been connected to the internet 24/7 for about 10 years, and running an operating system that hasn't had any updates for (what in 2 months will be) 25 years.
A sample size of one is statistically, and practically, meaningless.
I've never been in a situation where I've needed a seatbelt.
Does that mean no-one needs to wear seatbelts and that a seatbelt has never saved anyone's life?
I think it has something to do when you could include in the books ('book' revenue) future sales or some such. That is, in what quarter/year specific income/revenue could be included in the bottom line for the year being reported on. I think, from vague memory, it is something like a contract of sale, even if no actual monies had yet been exchanged, could be booked in the year the contract was signed, as opposed to the year in which the revenue was realised. Therefore if you had a good year in contract signings for future income then it could all be booked 'now', therefore inflating that years revenues. But, if this was done, then that revenue booked in the 'signing year' couldn't be booked in the next year when the revenue was actually received. Or something like this, I'm not an accountant.
In the US this can't be done, but in the UK it can. So UK earnings for the current year (but not in the long run, over several years once 'averaged out') could be inflated compared to accounting practices in the US. Therefore if HPE assumed that it was being done under US accounting practices, and if HPE used only that one year's books to estimate future earnings, then they could be caught out by the differences in this accounting practice I think the company had more revenue than it had, thus inflating the value of the company in their eyes.
At least, that's my understanding of the Autonomy side based on an earlier (like, years ago) half-remembered article on the Reg.
When was the last time you owned a phone with a replaceable battery? Let alone one that used a battery with an industry std.form factor, capacity, and voltage rating?
Samsung Galaxy SIII from 2012 that I had for 3 years (because I could just pop the cover off with my thumbnail and replace the battery when the original started holding significantly reduced charge).
While I agree with what you have said in principle, I don't think it would be just in this case considering the referendum to enter1 the EU (or EC at the time) was done under simple majority as well. To me it would not be just to use a simple majority to enter, and then require a supra-majority to depart. In hindsight (being 20/20), it perhaps should have been a supra-majority to enter as well.
1 OK OK, to get technical, a referendum was held 2 years after the UK had joined the EC to determine whether the UK would stay in the EC. But the point stands that it was a simple majority vote.
only now you've added distrust of referendums
As the first poll wasn't a referendum as laid out in various ACTs, it was, legally, an opinion poll that the Government Of The Day decided to, after the fact, treat as a referendum, I would think holding an actual referendum, as per the laws regarding referendums, would restore faith in the referendum process, no matter the outcome.
I suspect that some point, the airlines would like "pilots" that are basically meatbag window dressing. Hire basically a computer operator who has no knowledge of the guts and mechanics of flying.
That's true of any and all professions that require skilled (read: well-paid rather than minimum wage-slaves) staff.
IT have been doing it, trying to 'dumb-down' systems so that organisations don't need highly technical, expensive, staff to set stuff up, configure it, tune it, keep it running smoothly. They'd rather have a room full of unskilled staff following flow-charts and panicking when the task goes off-script.
Airlines have done it over time, at one time aircraft required a flight engineer(s) in addition to pilot/copilot to manage and monitor all the complicated systems that go into making an aircraft fly. They've managed to get rid of those by having more automation. Next on the chopping block will be getting rid of one of the pilots. That is, making the system 100% automated, thus only needing a single pilot to deal with emergencies, who could also be the chief steward for the flight as most of the time they won't be needed in the cockpit at all for the entire flight.
Hospitals are trying to reduce the number of doctors and nurses needed per patient, by using computer expert systems to help with diagnosis.
Factories try for more automation to get reduce even the minimum wage-level staff they need.
It is all about cutting costs. And the most obvious cost to cut is the meatbags that require wages, and breaks, food, sanitary facilities, moan and whine to management or unions, complain and take the company to court when they get underpaid or other payroll shenanigans, can be whistle blowers to expose unethical (if not downright illegal) business activities, etc.
Except, now that Twitter so thoroughly curates their platform to police what is and is not allowed to be said there, far above and beyond what the law requires, they may no longer fall under safe harbor provisions.
I'd like I introduce you to 47 U.S Code § 230, aka "Safe Harbor", and specifically subsection (C) (aka the “Good Samaritan” section) paragraph (2):
(2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
As has been upheld in many, many cases, moderating, curating, blocking, censoring, content does not in any way threaten a sites safe harbor protection.
As long as the specific material that is in dispute is not the original creative content of the site itself (and doesn't breach the other exceptions, e.g. (e)(5) No effect on sex trafficking law) then a site can curate to their hearts content without losing safe harbor protections.
This has already been tested in many cases, and come through (mostly) unscathed.
Safety force field:
Awesome! A force field. Cool.
Nvidia’s Drive boffins have come up with a set of policies and mathematics, dubbed the Safety Force Field, that can be used by autonomous vehicles to, hopefully, avoid crashes and injuries.
Oh wait, so it's not an actual force field? I was all excited there for a sec. Bummer.
GDPR is a cookie own-goal
I don't agree. It's more like those sites have overtly exposed themselves to Darwinism. That is, when I find sites that do this, I block the site entirely, as it is not a site I wish to visit. The site doing this is doing me a service by making it blatantly obvious that it is a shite site I want nothing to do with. If enough people follow suit, the site will either change its practices, or shut down.
I generally agree with you, but this is particularly problematic:
Acts of a criminal nature should always and without question be banned and blocked before anyone sees them or has a chance to download or share themselves because acts of a criminal nature have been through the due process to define them.
Who defines criminal nature? Which countries laws are used as the basis of this? Who chooses that?
I mean, if a country says being homosexual is illegal, does that mean that these platforms must remove anything that supports homosexuality?
What about abortion? Some places outlaw it, other places provide financial support to to cover the costs of having an abortion.
On a multi-national platform, criminality is not black and white. There are no easy answers, which doesn't mean we just give up, but it does mean it'll be hard.
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