Posts by Phil O'Sophical

UK's proposed alt.GDPR will turn Britain into a 'test lab' for data harvesting

Re: @Doctor Syntax

codejunky comes across like a Moscow Mule.

What, all vodka, lime & ginger beer? Doesn't sound that bad.

Brits negotiating draft deal to rejoin EU's $100B blockbuster science programme

Re: The enemy is both too strong and too weak

It;s all the fault of those evil EU officials who expected the UK to uphold the agrreements it willingly and voluntarily signed - like being out of the Horizon programme and ESA to pick just two

You really do have a selective memory.

The withdrawal agreement explicitly refers to the UK continuing its participation in many EU programs, and calls out Horizon as one of them, subject to the UK paying the agreed money. The EU has consistently refused to finalise those payment details because of the disagreement over the NI protocol, but that has now finally been resolved and the UK can participate as provided for in the TCA.

As for the ESA, it is a European agency, not an EU one. The UK membership of the ESA has not changed as a consequence of Brexit. The ESA website is quite explicit "not all member countries of the European Union are members of ESA and not all ESA Member States are members of the EU. ESA is an entirely independent organisation although it maintains close ties with the EU through an ESA/EC Framework Agreement." and the UK is clearly listed as a member.

The UK has never had another land border.

Prior to Brexit the UK never had a land border with the EU, there was an internal land border with another EU member state.

Post-Brexit it is entirely correct to say that the Irish border will be the only EU-UK land border. There was no EU-UK land border before.

All of which proves to me the man’s an idiot

Pot, meet kettle.

Re: Some balance?

The EU made it abundantly clear that was never going to be on the table. Not surprising of course, since the UK is not the only country that would be very happy to see the EU unwound back to that.

The case for Brexit was built upon the claim that the UK held all the cards and that the EU would be so desperate for a deal that they'd agree to one on any terms the UK asked for.

I've only ever heard that nonsense peddled by remainers as propaganda to ridicule the process. It was clear from the outset that the EU held most of the cards, and the UK would have to fight for every inch.

the line from Brexiteers has like yourself been that the EU is being variously petty and vindictive towards the UK (*).

I, and others, have been saying that since the successful referendum result. The UK leaving the EU was a smack in the face for Brussels, and they cannot afford for it to be seen as successful, since that would undermine the reason for the EU to exist. It's not a question of being vindictive, but of simple pragmatism on their part. They must do whatever they can to make Brexit fail, for their own eventual survival.

Sorting out the border issues would clearly be advantageous to both groups, but would benefit the UK more than it would benefit the EU. It is therefore totally unacceptable to people like Emmanuel Macron, who have always insisted that the UK must suffer consequences for daring to leave the club.

Re: Never forget that the original had the emphasis on "my"

An impact assessment should have been created ahead of the vote to enable the reasonable debate we never saw (before or after).

They should have done that in 1992, before enacting Maastricht, where most of us didn't even get a vote.

Startup that charged $1.20 a day for coworking space in nightclubs folds

Re: Back in the late '80s to mid '90s ...

I remember staying at Rickey's once. Once was enough, I never really understood it's attraction. It was demolished many years ago. The Oasis has gone too. I haven't been back in that area for a couple of years, I should plan a trip before changes even more.

Brit broadband subscribers caught between crappy connections and price hikes

The article makes clear even in your quote that there are very few alternatives

Really? You mean where it says "an issue in the UK may be that the broadband market is overcrowded, with too many players chasing too few subscriber pounds" ??

There are players with Ts&Cs which allow customers to leave if the contract terms change, but if people don't look for that when they sign the contract it's hardly reasonable to later blame the supplier they chose just because it was cheap. It never seems to occur to some people that there might be a reason it was cheaper than the others.

service providers ought to allow customers to leave without penalties if mid-contract price rises are imposed, but admitted that few actually offer this

Perhaps people should learn to read contracts before just signing up to the (apparently) cheapest supplier? Caveat Emptor.

Re: fibre

That's the standard American punctuation style, very jarring to those of us on this side of the pond.

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

Re: I still have analog landlines.

when was the last time you saw a home phone that was actually wired to the wall socket (and thus receiving power) and not a cordless job, sitting in a cradle, which is plugged into the mains, and not receiving power down the phone line?

I have one sitting on the desk in front of me, and another in the garage.

Neither is connected to a POTS line, sadly, but both go to a VoIP system with battery backup, and the fibre ONT has backup as well. Best I can do here.

IIRC it wasn't necessary to wait for electronic exchanges to be able to do away with direct routing. Crossbar mechanical exchanges had translation registers which could map dialled digits into a completely different set of routing digits.

Re: This reminds me

Anyone thinking of doing that should join RAYNET, the UK group info can be found at https://www.raynet-uk.net/, it has links to international groups. They train with the usual blue-light services, and so can easily integrate with them if the situation requires it.

Re: Multiple redundancy

Mine phone only says "No service" if there's genuinely none, from any network. If there is service, but from another provider, it shows "Emergency Calls Only". I thougt that was standard.

TSA wants to expand facial recognition to hundreds of airports within next decade

Well, it requires that a comparison be made between the ID photo and the face of the person present. The question is whether it makes any difference whether that's done by a guy in a uniform, or a machine. Personally I'd have more faith in the machine being unbiased.

Want to feel old? Ethernet just celebrated its 50th birthday

Re: Rings

At least now with twisted pair you (mostly) just stuff yourself up.

Until some bright spark "discovers" that you can plug two computers into one socket by using an RJ45 T-piece, and it apparently works...

I had to spend some time in front of a whiteboard explaining collision detection, and why the T-piece really wasn't a good idea.

Re: Rings

I Hated token rings, we would always lose the bloody token!

https://tpm.amastelek.com/2018/05/dilbert-token-ring.html

(the original Dilbert site is no longer accessible)

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: Paris...

CDG was really awful, like a run down 60's post-apocolyptic film set.

And that was before the new Terminal 2E collapsed!

Sun keyboard were all in US layout

Ah, but which US layout? Sun keyboards came in "US" and "US/Unix" layouts, with minor differences that could be very irritating, such as Control and CapsLock swapping places, and Backspace, \ and ~ moved around a little. Once you'd got used to one, finding that the system you're using had the other was always a PITA.

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

The "US International" keyboard is a US-layout keyboard where certain characters are "dead", and act as modifiers. For example hitting the apostrophe key (') once does nothing, but type ' and then a letter a will give you á.To get an apostrophe you need to hit the ' key twice. I find it easier to use the standard US keyboard, with appropriate compose (Linux) or AltGr (Windows) sequences for accented characters.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Re: Will you just stop beeping!

A cleaner's job is to clean, not to tamper with equipment they aren't certified to touch, even if they think they're fixing a problem. If this cleaner thought there was a problem with the breakers, or an incorrectly open cabinet, their responsibility was to flag it via their own hierarchy, and/or to tell any employees who were around at the time. By touching it at all they were violating numerous H&S rules.

Re: "there weren't whooping sirens"

When I read that story, my first thought was that fridges are never 100% reliable, why didn't they have backup samples in another lab?

'Joan Is Awful' Black Mirror episode rebounds on Netflix

Re: "it is so easy to forget that terms and conditions are, in fact, a contract"

https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/electronic-signatures-are-valid-confirms-law-commission/

The common law in England and Wales has always been flexible in recognising a range of types of signature, including signing with an ‘X’, initials only, a printed name, or even a description of the signatory such as “Your loving mother”. The courts have considered electronic signatures on a number of occasions and have accepted electronic forms of signatures including a name typed at the bottom of an email or clicking an “I accept” tick box on a website.

Re: But it's a work of fiction

I could see some parents with boomerang children begging that company to exercise their rights under the Herod clause...

Near Field Communication to get longer, stronger – better at contactless

Re: increased range needs to be optional

protect the content of your wallets from crims conducting stride-by scanning of your phone or cards.

I'm not sure that changes to the standard will have much impact here, it's not like anyone running such a skimming operation will be rigourously sticking to the power and antenna limits as defined in the standard. The cards are unpowered, unless they have some way to detect how far away the reader is then they have no way to know if the terminal is using legal power output, or 10x that.

Open source licenses need to leave the 1980s and evolve to deal with AI

What about non-artificial intelligence

What about the situation where you remove the "A" from the discussion, i.e a smart human C programmer downloads and studies lots of Python code, and teaches themselves Python from it.

They then write some new code, which inevitably borrows concepts from the code they trained themselves on, even if it doesn't contain direct line for line copies.

Is that an acceptable use of the input open source code? I think most authors would be happy that others learn from them, and most of us have probably done it at some time.

Now, try to define a licence which permits that, but doesn't allow a machine to learn from the same code. I think it would be difficult.

Japan's digital ID card gets emergency review amid data leaks

As long as they haven't got the ideas from Logan's Run ...

unique identification for all Japanese residents and is necessary to access some government services.

One Card to rule them all, One Card to find them, One Card to bring them all and in the darkness bind them?

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

The EU may well be guilty of fixing something that doesn't actually need fixing here

I'm inclined to agree. My last few phones have become obsolete because they no longer got updates to new software, and/or didn't have the CPU power to run new bloated software, not because they wouldn't hold enough charge. Even before that, when I did change battereis it was likely to get a bigger battery (in the pre-Li-Ion NiMH days), which this legislation won't affect.

Mandating that phone suppliers and manufacturers need to support 5 or 6 years of updates would, in my view, be more useful than mandating user-changeable batteries.

Or they'll require that you use a genuine Apple iBattery (at 10x the price) or some features won't work as well, a bit like printer ink cartridges.

Re: Mining landfill?

Once it's profitable there will be an avalanche of landfill mining projects.

Where's there's muck there's lithium?

Re: As luck would have it....

As happens with cars, etc.

Really? I've bought cars in the UK and EU, and haven't seen any significant differences in price that aren't explained by tax rates. The pre-EU days when you could order your car to be picked up from the VW factory & save on taxes are long gone.

The exception might be those cars which have to be specially modified for RHD, but even when we were in the EU no-one ever seriously suggested changing to drive on the right :-)

Recipient of Europe's largest ever seed round doesn't even have a product

Re: A lot better than nothing

Something similar in Britain and we would hear about the "world leading.." from Sunak and the rest.

Instead what the French are hearing today from Macron is:

« Nous sommes en bonne position en Europe continentale, mais nous sommes un peu décrochés par les Britanniques, tandis que les Etats-Unis d'Amérique et la Chine vont beaucoup plus vite que nous »

("In mainland Europe we're in a good position, but the British are a little ahead of us, while the US and China are moving much faster than we are.")

and « Le pire des scénario c'est une Europe qui investirait beaucoup moins que les Américains ou les Chinois et qui n'arriverait pas à créer de grands champions, mais qui déciderait de commencer par la régulation. » ("The worst scenario is that Europe invests less than the US and Chinese, and instead of creating champions decides to start with regulation")

Oh, he knows his political colleagues so well...

A toast to being in the right place at the right time

Re: He's toast

Why would a Scottish kitchen have a need for any sort of salad?

The Scots do a pretty good single-container salad made from barley and hops.

Re: He's toast

Did you also observe the re-entry process?

Years ago I was at a meeting in a central-London building with highly secured entry, turnstiles & metal detectors etc. After an evacuation due to a kitchen smoke incident we hung around outside for 30 minutes or so, and then re-entered the building - via the fire doors helpfully held open by the fire wardens, without even a basic badge check. Anyone could have triggered the alarm from the lobby, and then joined the crowd at the assembly point to get in.

Beams from brightest gamma ray burst ever seen were pointed directly at Earth

Don't worry

The chances of anything coming from Sagitta are a million to one...

Is it a drone? Is it a balloon? Whatever it is the US warns locals not to let them fly in Iran

Re: Beware drones carrying genies

Back when I was doing A-level chemistry, my Grandfather's old encyclopedia was very useful in giving us the instructions for making NI₃

Chemistry teacher was fortunately more amused than annoyed, but then again he had regaled us with stories from his time as a chemistry student.

File Explorer gets facelift in latest Windows 11 build

Re: The Recommended File feature

"You opened a PDF file yesterday, maybe you'd like to take a look at this one"?

Huawei could be banned from 5G networks across the EU

Thierry Breton ... claimed that 5G population coverage is 95 percent in the US but 72 percent in the EU

I find both those figures very hard to believe. The last numbers I saw for the US were closer to 65% of population.

Crypto catastrophe strikes some Atomic Wallet users, over $35M thought stolen

security?

because information like the security keys and backup phrase are stored locally on the device, "if your device is compromised, the wallet can be compromised too."

Sounds like the cryptocurrency equivalent of keeping the front door key under the mat.

This ain't Boeing very well: Starliner's first crewed flight canceled yet again

The tape wasn't tested for flammability until "late in the process,"

WTF? How could something even be specced for use in a spacecraft if its properties weren't clearly known beforehand? Sounds more like they found a last minute need for a fix, and sent Bob to rummage in his junk box. You wouldn't do that for a plane, let alone a spacecraft, what sort of clowns run Boeing these days?

Bookings open for first all-electric flights around Scandinavia … in 2028

I can hear the announcements now

"Your departure will be delayed due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft. It'll take about three hours to recharge."

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

So they just implemented a Spanning Tree protocol?

California rolls closer to requiring drivers in driverless trucks

Not the right solution

Having a "driver" simply present on board while the truck's computer does the actual driving won't fix the problem. Chances are they'll be too busy playing with their phone or watching a movie to be able to react fast enough to any errors made by the automation.

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Re: Unintended consequences

Doesn't even need a cut-in. I was on the M6 last week, saw a sudden sea of brake lights ahead. I braked firmly, enough to come to a safe stop behind the car in front, without getting rear-ended.

As soon as I began easing off on the pedal, the asinine AEB system decided that I wasn't slowing enough and slammed the brakes on again, leaving me unable to do anything but look in the rear mirror and hope that the following driver was awake. Fortunately he was.

These systems might help drivers who are asleep at the wheel, but they are far from perfect. I'd like to turn mine off permanently, but that's not allowed. All I can do it switch them off each time I start the car.

No wonder there's such a demand for older used cars without these "aids".

Amazon Ring, Alexa accused of every nightmare IoT security fail you can imagine

customers ... will perhaps take years to get over the ugly incidents Amazon’s laxness made possible.

Or perhaps they'll take legal advice. This has the signs of an impending class action suit, and then the ambulance chasers will get in on the act. "Do you have a Ring camera? Might you have been spied on in your home? Text RING to 12345 to find out if you're entitled to compensation".

And for once, I'd completely support them.

BMW adds games to the 5 series but still ain't the Ultimate Gaming Machine

Re: Oh my.

The world is an enormous and fascinating place, why would I want to spend my entire life in just one small corner?

The future of digital healthcare could be a two-metre USB cable

Re: Webcam consultation?

I'd guess that discolouration and shape could tell a doctor a lot, before they have to get you down from the ceiling after the "does this hurt" tactile exam. Then again, IANAD.

Why you might want an email client in the era of webmail

revamping the user interface.

Am I the only one who thought "oh Fuck no, what have they broken this time, and how long will it take me to redo all my configuration"?