Posts by Jim Mitchell

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html

Remember when we warned in February Apple will crack down on long-life HTTPS certs? It's happening: Chrome, Firefox ready to join in, too

Re: Is there any advantage left by using commercial certs?

Hey, *I* was checking for the extra UI widgets!

When one open-source package riddled with vulns pulls in dozens of others, what's a dev to do?

"Then there are the licences: most open source licences explicitly exclude liability and I've not seen the clauses invalidated by any court yet."

I'm not a lawyer, but in the physical world, I don't think liability waivers don't cover negligence, even if they say they do.

Singapore awards 5G licences – and winning carriers pick anyone but Huawei for nationwide network

Re: Seen it all before

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/technology/who-owns-huawei.html

And "own" is quite different from "control".

The state of OpenPGP key servers: Kristian, can you renew my certificate? A month later: Kristian? Ten days later: Too late, it’s expired

This is the classic "hit by a bus" people problem. Do you have a plan to recover if people you rely on are suddenly, possibly permanently, unavailable?

No longer a planet and left out in the cold, Pluto, it turns out, may have had hot beginnings

Re: It'll be a planet again

And yet the moon sits right there, reminding us that the Earth has definitely not cleared its orbit....

Microwave-tech-touting British upstart scores £3.6m to build 'large-scale quantum 'puters'

Re: Are we there yet?

Somebody confusing their "always 20 years away" technologies might explain the millions of lasers comment. That is one way of doing fusion.

"Other approaches to quantum computing require alignment of millions of laser beams with such incredible accuracy, the company said."

Some other approaches to quantum computing might require millions of lasers, but I don't think most do, so this is an odd statement.

Overload: A one-way ticket to a madman's situation

Re: phoning and testing

If the OS didn't set a timer to pop regularly and interrupt a MVCL, then I could see it locking out other tasks until completion That would be an OS issue.

Re: phoning and testing

"Unless they did something illegal, instructions would run to completion before anything like a task switch could happen. " MVCL is interruptible, at least now. I would hope it was back then, as well.

Bloke rolls up to KFC drive-thru riding horse-drawn cart only to be told: Neigh

Re: WTF?

Fruit on pizza should be pineapple! Hawaiian pizza lovers of the world unite!

Sponge code borks square AI brains, sucking up compute power in novel attack against machine-learning systems

Re: Artificial intelligence

As I understand it, the human brain processes text very poorly. "starts with exp, ends with ble, is medium long, in this context read as explainable". I don't see what this has to do with "meaning".

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Never understood this

Is it a Persian and are you a Bond villain I would recognize?

Hey Mister Prime Minister ... Scott! Can you get off my lawn please, mate?

Re: I salute that man!

Turns out, they actually wanted a trebuchet in the *shape* of a koala...

Barmy ban on businesses, Brits based in Blighty bearing or buying .eu domains is back: Cut-off date is Jan 1, 2021

Re: We dont need .eu !!! :)

Oh my, if people knew what was in the salt they put on their food....

Zealous Zoom's zesty zymotic zone zinger: Zestful zealots zip zillions

Re: Video Won't Be My New Voice

That you know of.

All-electric plane makes first flight – while lugging 2 tons of batteries aloft

Re: The video

Yes, lets bring catapult launches to the commercial air travel! I've seen Top Gun, it looks like massive fun to me...

'Beyond stupid': Linus Torvalds trashes 5.8 Linux kernel patch over opt-in Intel CPU bug mitigation

Re: git broke English

Is "huck" equivalent to "push" in Gitish? (not an expert git speaker, myself)

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

Re: You supported a system...

The Legislative branch is on top in my naive reading of the Constitution. They can impeach members of the executive branch and the judiciary, while the reverse is more difficult.

Twitter ticks off Trump with new 'Get the facts' alert on pair of fact-challenged tweets

Re: Free speech?

I want a President who can actually pass a high school government course.

Mulled Chrome API shines light on long-neglected privacy gap: Sites can snoop on your find-in-page searches

If you are filling in a password field in a webpage, of a website you don't trust, just what are you doing?

US cable subscribers are still being 'ripped off' by creeping price increases – and this lot has had enough

Re: "bundles" are subsidizing unpopular channels

As I understand it, cable channels come in two flavors, those the cable company pays to carry, and those the channel pays the cable company to carry. Those unpopular channels might actually be subsidizing the popular ones!

Also, if you value your time, a DVR is a great investment. If you fast forward thru an ad that actually looked interesting (rare, but possible), you can rewind and watch it at your leisure.

Re: Competition

My residence is very fortunate to have two providers available. I switch every couple of years to get the best deal. While I've managed to keep the list price pretty flat for fifteen years, I'm still getting screwed on "fees", "taxes", and "surcharges". I'm expecting to see a "corporate income tax" line item on my bill one day.

If you are not as lucky and only have one coax/copper/fiber provider available, you are at their mercy.

AT&T tracked its own sales bods using GPS, secretly charged them $135 a month to do so, lawsuit claims

As I understand it, there are 3 groups that get % in a class action suit, the lawyers, "the rest", and a handful of other people as representatives. Gunther, possibly, could get a significant settlement, even it is a class action. The rest might get a coupon for a a free session with an AT&T in-home sales agent...

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

Re: Unpasteurised milk

Without sick cows, we wouldn't have a smallpox vaccine! Be careful what you wish for.

Here in the US, in the era after urbanization, but before food safely laws, "milk" was a very questionable substance. PBS's American Experience had an episode on this subject:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squad/

People who wish for a "relaxed" regulatory environment (aka "conservatives" and "libertarians") might want to watch and see what unregulated capitalism can produce.

Re: Unpasteurised milk

Yes, "raw" milk is fine, until you're sick. Pasteurization has saved millions of lives, do you want yours to be one of them?

Oracle to take IT out of the equation for HR, ship prebuilt metrics, KPIs to analyse carbon-based lifeforms

Re: In Larry we trust?

I'm sure Oracle would love to automate the selling as well. Software can't sue you for retroactively changing the commission structure!

US small biz loan system bans software robots. The lesson? Make sure IT knows about any automation projects

Re: Greed

The PPP was setup such that banks were the gatekeepers. Businesses could not apply directly, but had to go thru a bank.

Chinese carmaker behind Volvo and Lotus ships first two satellites for planned IoT ‘OmniCloud’

Re: Volvo and a theme park ?

The goal of the Chinese Communist Party is the perpetuation of the Chinese Communist Party as the controlling entity of China. The party leaders decided that being "capitalist" was a better way of retaining power over the long term, so they did that. Happy people with cash in pocket are less likely to engage in counter-revolutionary activities, you know.

Soichi to join three-spaceship club, SpaceX is going to the Moon (no, really), and rocket boffins step up COVID-19 fight

The Lunar Lander definitely started its journey on Earth, like the command module it was flying with. It just didn't have crew in it.

After 20-year battle, Channel island Sark finally earns the right to exist on the internet with its own top-level domain

Re: Glad they didn't overthink the process....

If that is the correct description, I wish the article had said that. I don't understand the intricacies of the Channel Islands, but I can understand Canada (and most of Australia).

That LVI CPU hole wasn't the only Intel fix: Dozens of flaws patched to stop chips turning into potatoes

Re: Mitigations, mitigations

If it is your computer and not running software from people you don't trust, then it sounds like these classes of flaws should not worry you. Multi-tenant in the cloud on the same processor is a problem, as you have little control over what else is running. Code from websites you don't trust running your browser might as be an issue.

Aww, a cute mini-moon is orbiting Earth right now. But like all good things, it too will abandon us at some point

Re: Wouldn't it be great

Would have been OK, but they muffed the parking.

Don't worry, IT contractors. New UK chancellor says HMRC will be gentle pushing IR35 rules

Re: Perhaps this is a little graphic...

That ain't no hug, the cat has its teeth in the dog's neck. The modern domestic feline is optimized for smaller prey, so the dog is probably safe.

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

Re: Sigh.

"not expecting"? If you are not anticipating slower, or even stopped, traffic ahead of you, you are not a good driver.

You know the President is able to shut down all US comms, yeah? An FCC commish wants to stop him from doing that

Re: Did Trump turn off your editor's internet?

Lincoln also killed lots of, nominally, US citizens without much due process. Still got a big memorial with a nice statue.

SAP co-CEO: I'm leavin' on a jet plane... Davos knows that I'll be back again...Oh babe, I hate to go (back to work)

We can't build a bridge to Europe until Denmark agrees to sell us Greenland. I hear Trump is working on that, though.

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

Re: Confusing.

One other OSes, you can have both 64 and 32 bit applications. Apple has decided to express their "courage" and be different.

GSMA report: Sorry, handset makers, 5G is not going to save the smartphone market

Re: "It just so happens that there's something better."

Doesn't the majority of the population live in urban areas these days? Your mountain scenario is the minority.

Cool 'joke', bro, you could have killed someone: Epilepsy Foundation sics cops on sick flashing-light Twitter trolls

Re: mailing a rabid bat or rattlesnake

What. a single scorpion? That doesn't make much sense, most scorpions are relatively harmless, and a single one won't last long among lots of feet.

EU wouldn't! Uncle Sam brandishes 'up to 100%' tariffs over France's Digital Services Tax

Re: Wrong argument

For physical goods, transfer pricing is fairly simple. Intellectual property is harder. Just how much should Starbucks UK pay Daddy Starbucks to license the "Starbucks" name and logo, etc.?

Oracle finally responds to wage discrimination claims… by suing US Department of Labor

Re: So relieved to learn we have good people ready to fight for "our constitutional structure"

Oracle, for better or worse, has a point about the "constitutional structure" of the Federal government as it exists now. Congress is supposed to enact laws and the executive branch carry them out. With Congress passing a law that delegates the details to the executive branch to create (ie "regulations"), some see this as un-Constitutional. It is an interesting point, and if correct, we're living in suddenly a different world. Every regulation in the past 85 years gets tossed. Congress would have to figure out all the details, and agree on them, itself. Since the current elected body can barely agree what day it is, this might be a problem for future functional legislation that requires subject matter knowledge, skill, and attention to the details.

You live where you live ... and ex-SAP boss Bill McDermott lives in a house like this

"is resplendent with unapologetic Gone-with-the-Wind chintz" Chintz is a kind of fabric, so I'm very confused. Did somebody actually make a Gone In the Wind themed chintz fabric, and it is used in this house?

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

Re: 3 out of 10 for trying

I think the term is "greenhouse" to refer to the windows on the vehicle.

Totally Sardonic Bank: Well, it must be, to have a TITSUP* the same week as THAT report

If you're living so close to the financial edge, you probably shouldn't be buying concert tickets?

The US Army recruits WALL-E Chris H as its next-generation bomb disposal robot

I dunno, when I combine "heavy" + "Chris", I get Chris Christie, not "CRS-H".

Physicists are rather giddy after creating a rare type of laser using laughing gas

Re: Pedantic time

GHz == Giggle Hertz, apparently.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Just how secure do you think the previous hotel room door lock methods were? The key cards? Not very. The metal keys? Not very.

Boffins show the 2017 Nork nuke can move, move, move any mountain (by a meter)

Re: Not a big problem, IMO - until

Size is irrelevant as long as it fits on a boat you can park off a major US city and have go BOOM.

Gavin Patterson's gravy train keeps on rolling as former BT boss tossed two more sinecures

Please explain your reasoning behind your statement that "'Sinecure' is defamatory".