NASA: Wanted: Astro-troglodytes, must love green soup and blue string pudding.
Posts by spold
931 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2012
ESA mulls sending waves of robot explorers into dark depths of lunar lava tubes
ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree
Sunday 21st February 2021 04:59 GMT 
Wow
I was just going through some old boxes and found my "A course on programming in Algol 60" by Reeves and Wells! (1970 print edition). I wrote Algol code (on paper-tape) for an ICL 1902 - second programming language I learned! ... the first being Basic, ok a smattering of Cecil (the ICL was old and had been donated to my school by United Bread - now toast).
Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network
Tuesday 16th February 2021 23:45 GMT
Some history
In the early 90s I actually was the project manager for IBM's project with Barclays for Image-based cheque recognition. The actual technology wasn't actually in-house IBM, it was a third party out of the US (Something like Check Decisions but I can't be accurate). It was a bolt-on option for the IBM 3890/3897 cheque sorters. These were amazing machines to witness working as thousands of cheques whizzed through them - primarily they were sorted by the FI number.... is it ours "on-us" or another bank. In the early hours of the morning then little trucks would tour the City in London carting the other bank's cheques over to them. They would then stuff them through their 3890s again to sort down to branch level. The image-based system had a couple of aims - stop moving trucks of paper everywhere, secondly introduce signature recognition to help with fraud. The general process was called "truncation" - the other aim was to get rid of staff in branches that would inspect/handle cheques. Also, they could introduce the little pictures of your cheques in your monthly statement instead of sending you packets of your cheques. The fun part, and the almost but not quite happened wheeze I came up with was based around the fact that American signatures are actually slightly different from UK ones (don't ask me why), so this affected the signature recognition confidence accuracy. Obviously, you can't go pulling cheques out of the banking system for long, and they had some stupid rule about using old cheques. So I proposed grabbing 100,000 cheques out of a Friday night batch, sticking them (and me) on Concorde to the US, stuffing them through the vendor's signature training systems, and then putting them and me back on Concorde to have them back in the system before Monday. The whole thing didn't fly (haha) because British Airways would not guarantee the integrity of the "cargo" for the flight. I thought it one of my better ideas though.
Forget about an AI stealing your job, even pigs can be trained to use computers
Samsung floats autonomous ships as ready to sail in 2022
Harmed by a decision made by a poorly trained AI? You should be able to sue for damages, says law prof
Wednesday 10th February 2021 00:30 GMT
Re: Theory and Reality
The context of the article was in the dear old USA,,, but on the other side of the pond there are some useful levers to pull....
The GDPR has provisions both on profiling and automated decision making (without any human involvement).
You can only carry out that type of stuff in very limited circumstances. You have to identify if the processing of your data falls into that category, if so, then you have to give the data subject information about that processing, as well as provide the ability for them to request human intervention and challenge any decisions made. It's mostly in Article 22 if you want some bedtime reading. Also, there is a more extensive article on this from the UK ICO.
However, this is also in the category of people bothering to read the information, the usual lie "I have read and understood....<Click>".
ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button
Wednesday 3rd February 2021 18:06 GMT
Re: Price point
I still have my T430s that is 7+ years old. The T series has always been the most dependable, unlike the cheapo E series (bargepole territory). While slim, being carbon fibre enhanced it is a tough as old boots. I've taken it seven times around the world (literally) on trips to China, uncountable numbers of transatlantics... it's been stuffed under airplane seats and crammed into luggage racks. I've probably hit a number of irritating junior consultants with it ;-) If you spec' them well at the start they last for donkey's. Yes I have another nice new shiny blade thing but these are business workhorses.Only thing I had to do last year was swap out the HDD for a SDD, should keep it going for a while longer.
European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab
Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur: Expect an ad, get a bork
Got Surface Hubs? Better get cracking: Windows 10 for Whiteboards to resume rolling out in February
Wednesday 27th January 2021 00:25 GMT
Ummmm.... so 2019...
>>>
a big screen with a camera on top makes a handy tool for bringing remote workers virtually into the room.
<<<
But if everyone's is remote, and there is no-one in the meeting room to use the pricey hardware (except for the squirrels that have moved in).... is that what was meant as "problems following installation"?
A "somewhat limited" market of people that are concerned at the moment (unfortunately).
The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout
Friday 15th January 2021 13:12 GMT
And your backdoor
When I were but knee-high to a grasshopper I was PMing a roll-out of a new networked in-store terminal system to a now-defunct electrical retailer. The sort of thing the salesy people would use to tell you it was out of stock until next year. The logistics went fine but the customer was not happy as the whole thing would collapse in a heap of springs and cogs at random points in the day. Great effort was spent trying to debug/diagnose everything to no avail. So, similar to this, I got an engineer to sit in a store all day and watch.... after a couple of hours, sure enough, it fell over... the culprit... every time they got a new delivery of a telly or a fridge they opened the rear electric wind-up door to move it in, the motor thing created huge spikes on the mains at which point the server had a wobbly and went tits-up.
Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?
ESA signs on the dotted line for ESPRIT, Europe's Lunar Gateway module
Saturday 9th January 2021 14:19 GMT
Great - circle a rock
Ultimately the moon does not make the best business continuity plan for mankind. We know it is a rock, future missions are best directed further afield. Why not set up a gateway at one of the stable Lagrange points L4 or L5 - things can sit there forever and if you want a staging area, shipyard, colony, or whatever these would be much better places to put them.
Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem
Trump silenced online: Facebook, Twitter etc balk at insurrection, shut the door after horse bolts and nearly burns down the stable
Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching
Monday 4th January 2021 23:20 GMT
In a mobile device world....
If I buy a mobile device in China then I have to show a passport... my identity is recorded... and it is now bound to my International Subscriber Mobile Identity (IMSI) number, and my International Mobile Equipment number (IMEI). As data flies through switches it may be subject to access through Lawful Interception Gateways (LIG ports)... in many countries... and is identifiable using these numbers. Depending on the encryption provisions, I may or may not be able to see the data, however, I can see who is talking to who or accessing what, I may get additional data from your ISP (who also has your real identity).
Dodgy procedures doomed Arianespace's Vega before it even left the launchpad
45 million medical scans from hospitals all over the world left exposed online for anyone to view – some servers were laced with malware
We got it! Japanese space agency confirms its probe has Ryugu asteroid samples
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there
Friday 11th December 2020 14:49 GMT
...and unlocked doors
I have occasion to do security reviews for companies from time to time. As well as confidentiality and integrity of data, availability is the third component. Reviewing a company just outside Toronto I delved into the power side of things.... oh we have a new UPS they said. This UPS turned out to have been housed in what was intended as a small underground car-park in the building. Ummm... what happens when it rains? (Thunderstorms and huge amounts of rain from them are not uncommon in the summer).... well they had thought of that... the UPS sat on a couple of 2x4s (2 inch by 4 inch planks translating into English, and I won't go into why they are not actually 2 inches by 4 inches here). This was just in the corner of the said garage with an open ramp to ground level. I asked some questions about it and they obviously clued in as to where this was going. When I came back a week later, there were 2x6s, and there was a security guard in full uniform sitting outside at a small table and chair that had been positioned at the top of the ramp (I'm sure hired for the day since they knew I was coming back). I didn't ask if he had an umbrella and a bucket....
HP CEO talks up HP-ink-only print hardware and higher upfront costs for machines that use other cartridges
Friday 27th November 2020 02:11 GMT
I use re-manufactured (3rd party refilled) toner cartridges for that reason....
Why? Because every time the toner got low it was cheaper for me to junk the printer and buy a new one rather than buy a new HP cartridge, I'd just keep an eye on the sales, and when a deal came up buy a new printer and store it until needed. Sticking a perfectly good printer (except it had no toner) out with the garbage made me feel like an environmental terrorist (I know - if you feel like one why don't you indulge yourself and have one).
HP also had this "green" send your used cartridge back to us for free scheme... so I requested the return, they promptly couriered me a 3ftx3ft shipping box with a pre-paid return label. So I dump 1 used cartridge into it to rattle around and drop it off with the courier (who gave me a lot of strange looks of course). So you still feel bad since they shipped you a box involving all the transport that required (it involved air-transport from a different city), and then shipping the humongous box with 1 toner cartridge in it all the way back again.
Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah
Apple's global security boss accused of bribing cops with 200 free iPads in exchange for concealed gun permits
China prepares for launch of Chang'e 5 mission to Moon, which would make it third nation to return lunar sample
Never mind the White House. At least we know who's going to Spaceport America. Virgin Galactic to fling ship into space again
Friday 6th November 2020 23:15 GMT 
Bow chicka wow wow
>>>
We will, however, leave it to others to make the comparison between the frequently broken or blocked toilet facilities onboard the Space Shuttle and International Space Station and what tends to spew from certain lawmakers
<<<
We are looking forward to seeing the pyrotechnic ejaculations.
OK, perhaps not.
Suspended sentence for bank IT worker who broke into his boss's webcam because he didn't get a payrise
Days before the US election, phishers net $2.3m from Wisconsin Republicans
NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly
Did Arthur C. Clarke call it right? Water spotted in Moon's sunlit Clavius crater by NASA telescope
How the tables have turned: Bloke says he trained facial recognition algorithm to identify police officers
Oh Mi: Xiaomi shows off 80W wireless charging, claims battery fully fat again in under 20 minutes
FYI: NASA appears to have scooped dirt from an asteroid 200 million miles away and plans to bring it back home
IBM to spin out Managed Infrastructure Services biz – yes, the one that was subject to all those redundancies
Fujitsu gets ready to eat its own dogfood as company-wide digital transformation project kicks off
Pack your bags! Astroboffins spot 24 'superhabitable' exoplanets better than Earth at supporting complex life
Flying camera drones, cuddly Echo gadgets... it's all a smoke screen for Amazon to lead you gently down the Sidewalk – and you'll probably like it
IT guy whose job was to stop ex-staff running amok on the network is jailed for running amok on the network
Monday 28th September 2020 00:47 GMT
Re: Yes seen that
Thank-you for the kind upvotes to the post.
One thing I omitted from the details but was actually quite amusing.... the IP addresses were all assigned to the newco's ISP rather than direct to newco. However I found the ISP was conveniently exposing a public RWHOIS service - so I could actually find who the IP currently allocated to within their space.... when I contacted the ISP they said "sorry we cannot confirm who our addresses are allocated to for client confidentiality reasons" - it was amusing to say well you don't really need to because you have a public service that confirms it! Guess no-one told them :-)
Saturday 26th September 2020 03:14 GMT
Yes seen that
...was asked to look into a strange case where company supplies were being diverted... although a smaller company this was a health helicopter rescue service so not that funny. Some logs had been deleted - which pointed to a certain level of privilege. As it happened the IT chappy in charge had recently left the company and the remaining evidence pointed to this being the only account that had previously had the privileges to execute the transactions outside the application. A bit of investigation pointed to the usual fact that there are a whole lot of systems out there that HR doesn't know about and fail to close down when people leave, and also unknown secondary VPN log-in accounts had been created. Deep diving into the available system logs pointed at IP addresses owned by the company that he had just moved to... (dumb)... calling the newco they were initially saying it was personal information but when they understood they were able to link the traffic in their logs to his newco PC leased IP address (double dumb). So my client CTO had a word with their CTO, and very soon the chappy was looking for a new gig... they were lucky not to get into the criminal prosecution arena... they were just mud in the local CTO community.
First they came for chess, then Go... and now, oh for crying out loud, AI systems can beat us at curling
Get ready for Clippy 9000: Microsoft exclusively licenses OpenAI's mega-brain GPT-3 for anything and everything
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 02:10 GMT
So...
>>> and deliver advanced AI solutions for our customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the amazing power of advanced natural language generation
<<<
and therefore any MS VP, or Manager, or whatever [GPT-3 title]'s quotations or messaging, is likely natural language syntho-babble...?
Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked data including search algorithms – DoJ claims
Humans suck so much at beating this pandemic that Microsoft has made an AI to enforce social distancing
She was praised by the CEO and promoted. After her brother and mom died, she returned from compassionate leave. IBM laid her off
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 00:43 GMT
Re: What the Hell Has Happened to IBM?
...last time I was at Incredibly Borked Management (I was there twice, 20 years apart, how things change - the first time was brilliant and it took a great offer for me to leave) the manager had a PBC quota... they had to give one person in their group a PBC3 no matter what. I never had one fortunately.
I'm pleased I quit for a company that was more focused on delivering value to its customers.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
