* Posts by SpeedEvil

10 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2011

Backpage.com swoop: Seven bods hit with 93 charges as AG Sessions blasts alleged child sex trafficking cyber-haven

SpeedEvil

"67.3% of the cases used technology (email, online ads, smartphones) in the sex trafficking activities." Or, in other words, as in the commission of every other crime.

A tiny, tiny minority of the adverts on backpage were for trafficed minors.

And any 'risk reduction' assumes that backpage going away will make minor trafficing go away, or make it safer for those trafficed. Which seems very, very questionable.

SpeedEvil

The argument around sex trafficing is made prominently in this indictment.

Does it in fact exist meaningfully?

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_6b121b50-0519-11e8-a529-eb8b5f3a7cd3.html as an example.

In New Orleans, a large number of raids were made of strip clubs, with the explicit claim at the time that they were due to sex trafficing.

No actual arrests were made on trafficing charges, and no trafficed women were found, despite large numbers being detained.

If it is moving consenting adults away from a situation in which they have some measure of safety and can determine their actions, towards other situations (the street) where they do not, that is not better.

I was authorized to trash my employer's network, sysadmin tells court

SpeedEvil

Company policy fixes this.

If there is a policy saying 'you are expressly not authorised to use your knowledge of the company or its IT systems, including any passwords or other methods allowing you to access corporate systems to do X, Y,Z'.

Then this not only makes the case for civil lawsuits simpler, but makes it clear that any access doing those things is unauthorised, and brings in the referred to law on unauthorised access, making it a criminal act, simply because the defence "my company authorised me" goes away.

'Exploding e-cig cost me 7 teeth, burned my face – and broke my sink!'

SpeedEvil

e-cigs hurt several people.

But cigarettes are the leading cause of all house fires leading to death - a rather more significant number. (neglecting any deaths due to normal operation of cigs).

UK's new Snoopers' Charter just passed an encryption backdoor law by the backdoor

SpeedEvil

Re: Well...

That's the fun part!

This is 'primary legislation' - that means legislation that has passed parliament and been debated 'fully' by both houses.

What sets the actual rules is secondary legislation - this can be passed with little or no scrutiny, and require a majority of MPs to vote against it in a seperate vote that the MPs initiate later, only once it's passed.

The only limits to this are if the primary legislations limits cannot be read in a way to cover the powers required.

However, in this case, the definition of 'operator' is 'a postal or telecommunications operator', and that is further defined as 'someone who provides a postal or telecommunications service'.

Which is comedically vague, and can be (without violating the terms of primary legislation) read to mean anything from large ISPs to individuals controlling open source projects.

It most certainly - for example - includes people who operate random wifi hotspots who may be required to install certain software or do certain things.

Would YOU start a fire? TRAPPED in a new-build server farm

SpeedEvil

Re: Did I read that right ?

No, you did not. Redundant power cables are where a power supply is fed from multiple sources so it can use any in the event of failure. If all input supplies are up - pulling the plug on one won't cause anything to happen, except a large 'POWER FAIL' warning.

Greens threaten to sue over solar power cash slash

SpeedEvil
WTF?

The subsidy in its current form is broken - a large slice of the money people pay to get 4kW of PV panels goes to 'non-jobs' - essentially made up to help the building trade.

The cost of a rational rooftop system would be based on payback times of field-scale solar.

if you want to put a small panel on your roof - you can - but you only get the subsidy at the same rate it'd be paid to a more efficient scheme.

This would need the regulatory scheme to be largely scrapped.

If you want to install a 'solar shed' from B+Q, with a 1kW panel on the roof DIY, you can, and it will pay back after 20 years or so.

But getting subsidised so that spending 60% more than the cost of the raw panels upfront is a good investment was barking mad.

Ofcom misses deadline: but on Sitefinder, not 4G

SpeedEvil

Sitefinder is comedically bad, and not fit for purpose.

Sure, if you're in a city, it's sort-of-OK. You can zoom out to a level where you can probably see the tower serving you.

If you're in a more rural location - the process is more like find your location - now zoom out and find that the towers dissapear at a low zoom level, so you zoom out one level only, and do a manual scan around the area using the hideously clunky interface.

It took me around 20 minutes to find which tower was serving me.

'The most ambitious project at eBay for a long, long time'

SpeedEvil

The above is very powerful.

I used to for example - have a search "-(polar*,"brand new","free shipping",sealed) (repair,faulty,spares,broken,"not working",crack*,dropped,water)" - this worked well to find broken cameras.

Unfortunately, they've improved it, so you don't now get a list of matching auctions, it's aggregated by model.

I do not look forward to ebay 'improvements'.

Making search work well for most is good.

Breaking it utterly for some isn't.

Improvements need to be turn-offable, especially fuzzy matching. If I'm searching for a particular part number, and know the exact model, returning 'close' matches without the ability to turn this off can be completely useless.

'Leccy price hike: Greens to blame as well as energy biz

SpeedEvil
WTF?

One major annoyance

I want to put up some solar panels - DIY.

i can source these for perhaps 1/4 the cost of certified panels.

Unfortunately, if I were to connect these to the grid - I can't even get back what I'd normally pay for electricity - only 3p/kWh or so.