Posts by Steve Button

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Technology question

"we're not going to be able to travel with any battery powered equipment"

Yeah, right. So even though many people use electronic tickets on the phones, we're now going to be told to leave our phones at home when we want to fly anywhere? I'm sure everyone will just go along with that. It's not like our phones pretty much run our lives nowadays. I guess we should all buy shares in Filofax? (had to think about that for 10 seconds, as it's been so long since I heard that product name)

I think people will put up with taking off their shoes and belts at airports, but not being able to travel with all electronic devices is a step too far.

They will just be doubly sure they scan those things going through security.

Amazon CEO wants his staff back in the office full time

Re: What would you choose

When you have a really good manager, you hardly notice them as they will just shield you from all the crap from above and step out of the way to enable you to get on with your job. A really bad manager will try to micromanage people, and even worse will blame other people when things go wrong.

They can be either the good or the bad sort and the blast radius will be pretty much the same regardless of whether I'm in the office or WFH.

Given the choice I'd probably pick the bad manager and avoid the 90 minute each way commute, as that would give me an extra 3 hours to manage the bad manager. Although it depends how bad they are I suppose, but I've only worked for a couple of REALLY bad ones in 30+ years. And they usually don't last.

Unfortunately just by Amazon choosing to "reduce management" that doesn't mean it's going to be better. You might just end up with more stressed managers who can't cope with the workload and miss important things.

Zuckerberg admits Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Re: Was there pressure?

Zuck and co were told by the FBI to watch out for Russian disinformation just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, and as a direct result of that warning they decided to temporarily suppress the story. If that hadn't happened we could be living in an alternative time line.

They only get to play that trick once, and Facebook won't trust the three letter agencies any more going forward. They will push back and ask for credible evidence, instead of a "friendly hint". Zuck has said as much, and I don't blame him. Fool me once, shame on you.

When all the social media sites got direct messages saying "How come Alex Berenson is still on your platform?" that's pretty clear coercion isn't it? I guess we'll see when it goes to the Supreme Court. He didn't say anything illegal, or even wrong. Just inconvenient.

Re: the next one

OK fair enough, I didn't know that.

I guess the problem is who exactly gets to decide what's truth and what's misinformation? When Alex Jones said Sandy Hook never happened, etc. that was clearly deliberate misinfornation. When someone like myself (and many many others) says "These lockdowns, are they actually worth all the collateral damage they are going to cause?" that's not misinformation, that's genuine curiosity with a heavy dose of believing that those who are supposed to know better are actually running around like headless chickens trying to work out what will look better on opinion polls and focus groups, rather than what will actually do the most to help.

And that's not a left/right political thing because although the Conservatives were calling for lockdowns, Labour were asking why they weren't harder and faster.

Re: How interesting...

They are still dishing it out to 6 month old babies and up in the USA, so hardly passé. And this is now a mostly US site. I'm not sure how many are taking up the offer? but it does seem like a huge disparity compared to the UK where we only offer it to people aged 65+. It's an interesting natural experiment though, right?

Re: The poor vulture is getting close to death

Is there any way we can get back the site that at least pretended to "Bite the Hand". Currently it's mostly being stroked by the hand as it sits on the lap of the democratic party.

I'm pretty sure there's no coming back from that. Rather than get it back, I'd like to know somewhere I can get tech news that's politically neutral and is not afraid to "Bite the hand". Does such a site exist?

I want a site that's equally scathing towards Dems/Rupublicans and Conservative/Labour. Because usually they deserve it. Not sure advertisers would like it though. Does anyone want to set one up?

Re: the next one

That's the point though, isn't it? You can't prove that any of those things are actually true or conspiracy theories. They are just opinions. I also can't prove that they are false, but given all the evidence I've seen I'm fairly convinced that, for instance, long term the lockdowns did not work to stop the spread. Except perhaps in China where they had a pretty strict Zero Covid policy for a long time, and eventually had to drop it because it was causing way more damage than it was helping.

But let's not get into arguing about that. It's been done ad nauseum. We can disagree, and that's fine. It's not the point at all. The point is that those opinions would have been taken down or severely demoted by Facebook in 2020/21 because the US government was putting extreme pressure on Facebook to do so. Facebook didn't HAVE to comply, in the same way that the local baker didn't HAVE to comply when the Mafia came round and said "That's a nice shop you've got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it"

There are laws in place to prevent you from spreading actual damaging misinformation, as Alex Jones found out to his cost. But that doesn't mean the government should be allowed to shut down discussion of things that they find inconvenient or embarrassing.

One day you'll have strong opinions about something which your government is doing. Who knows, perhaps this will be sooner than you think, after November? And perhaps when the boot is on the other foot you'll start to value free speech a bit more.

Re: the next one

"giving ammunition to conspiracy theorists"

Well I can see what angle this article is coming from. It's a shame.

Just off the top of my head, a few "conspiracy theories" which have turned out to be true :-

The Hunter Biden laptop*

Possibly the Wuhan lab leak. WAS definitely a conspiracy theory, until it turned out to be likely true.

The vaccines stop the spread.

The Covid vaccines are safe (although the AZ one got quietly withdrawn because of blood clots)

Masks work to stop you catching / spreading respiratory viruses.

Lockdowns work

* And that's the one that Zuck admitted he'd been warned about by the FBI.

That's not to mention all the nasty well documented shit that the CIA got up to in South America and other countries, as well as MK Ultra and other drug experiments with soldiers.

At this stage I'm still 80% sure that man DID land on the moon, but if it proves otherwise I don't think my world view will be shaken much.

And the earth is not round. Or flat. More like spherical.

Still feeling cynical and skeptical.

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: 3 years of updates ?

Agreed. I like the idea of being able to swap out the battery every couple of years, or replace the cracked screen easily when I drop it, but with only 3 years of updates what's the point? I'll need to scrap it anyway if I want it to stay patched.

This is like "Sell me a phone that I can keep for 7 to 10 years, without selling me a phone that I can keep for 7 to 10 years".

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

Lax? I'd have thought a better word would be relaxed.

Google brings more Gemini AI features to Android, saves the best for Pixel 9

Re: Do I understand this right?

What I'd like AI to do, for example, would be to check the weather and work out that my car is frosted and set my alarm to be 5 minutes earlier* so I don't miss the train that it knows I'm going to get. Also, to let me know this as it wakes me up. This and hundreds of other things that could improve my life just a tiny little bit, without getting in the way.

I don't see any of this happening, but it's a route they *could* go down with "AI" ?

* I guess electric cars do this already, and defrost themselves just before you need them without having to be told? 'cos it's 2024.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

Re: 200m

"legacy media bending over backwards pretending to give Trump's camp "equal time""

FTFY.

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

From a billionaire.

That was easy. Next question?

UK axes plans for Edinburgh-based exascale computer

Re: Of Course The UK Has No Need At All For Infrastructure.......

False equivalence.

(and as an aside... HS2? Seriously? I was on the fence about it previously, but since the pandemic passenger numbers are way down. It's just not needed right now. Enough people have realised they don't need to travel as often to get stuff done.)

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Related?

Yeah, over £100 to get into London from Suffolk. That's so much "better". I know a lot of things have gone up in price, but train tickets are highway robbery, but on rails.

FBI gains access to Trump rally shooter's phone

Re: Fingerprint ?

Are you though? Can you actually prove that, or is it just more fake news? It's hard to tell these days.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Nominative determinism?

Richard, it's like you were born to write this story!

Babel fish? We're getting there. Reg reviews the Timekettle X1 AI Interpreter Hub

This clip?

You're welcome.

Microsoft tries to clear the air with mountains of CO₂ credits

Re: Smart people

I think "need" is a bit of a strong word here. When we've made the switch to wind and solar + not built enough nuclear*, and there's a dark and non windy week in December you'll suddenly find that you'll be able to do without just fine. You don't "need" to work, or heat your house or travel. Stock up on candles, blankets and a good book.

But I guess it'll be domestic users who'll suffer rolling blackouts, not the likes of Azure or AWS? If not I guess a lot of people will be wanting to move workloads into eu-west-3 (Paris) where they have lots of nuclear power stations?

Anyone want to take a bet on this actually happening in the next 5 years?

* or in the USA or Germany, deliberately got rid of it all.

Internet Archive blames 'environmental factors' for overnight outages

Re: Global warming?

Yeah, hilarious. I guess you've got me with that line, and it's check mate? Again. No need to bother arguing because liberal=good, so no need to look into this and everything is hunky dory? Why don't you just continue to remain un-curious?

I like to think of myself as "liberal", with some small c conservative opinions too, but those are mostly labelled as "right-wing" by Wikipedia.

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2023/who-watches-the-wikipedia-editors/

"Right-wing publications naturally fare less well under this system. If they are cited in an article, some editor or another will inevitably slap the qualifier “right-wing” in front of the quote to signal they are not be trusted. In 2017, editors voted to ban citations to the Daily Mail, with the result that if, for example, a government minister makes a policy announcement in the Mail, it cannot be referred to until another “reliable” outlet has referred to the Mail article."

Global warming?

"Those environmental factors are likely to be an increase in heat following a cooling outage."

It's the environment dammit. Won't someone think of the poor polar bears?

I'm just kidding, it's a damned useful resource and long may it continue, unlike Wikipedia which really needs some political balance and is pretty useless these days, unless you are only interested in hearing one side of a story.

EV world in serious trouble if China cuts off rare earth materials

Re: Hmm

"that would save at least 30% of all emissions"

That doesn't seem right. Are you just talking about from travel? Can you quote sources?

Re: Hmm

Sorry, read that as "alternative *to* EV motors" not "alternative *for* EV motors".

Re: Hmm

"start thinking about alternatives for EV motors, but not a single proposed solution appears ready for reality."

Not a single one? I can think of two. Petrol and Diesel. In a short enough time other technologies will come along.

Tech luminaries warn United Nations its Digital Compact risks doing more harm than good

Re: Optional

Hardly twaddle. We were told by various health organisations that masks definitely work. We were told by law that we had to wear them. Cochrane has pointed out that the evidence for their efficacy is not even statistically significant. If they are worth using at all, then you'd think the evidence would point strongly to them making a difference? Or even slightly?

The argument that mask advocates always seem to come up with is "Well we've always used them and surgeons use them, so they must work". That's just dogma. Or they then go on to quote low quality observational studies.

Some hospitals are even bringing the bloody things back right now for patients. This madness should stop.

Off the top of my head...

Biden is as sharp as a pin.

The story about Hunter's laptop is Russian misinformation and should be suppressed.

The Covid vaccines are safe and effective and they stop transmission. (Fauci said that they are "dead ends for the virus" and he worked for the US government).

We were told they were 90 something % effective against hospitalisation (96%?) but it was not made clear that's Relative Risk Reduction, so for most of us that figure is useless on its own.

Masks help to stop the spread of respiratory viruses.

https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses

I could dig a bit and find some more examples, but I think you get the general idea?

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-misinformation-becomes-common

As an aside I have found The Free Press a far better source of unbiased news than, say, The New York Times. Founded by Bari Weiss who used to work for NYT, but got fed up with the social justice warriors.

Re: I wouldn't worry

I agree with your sentiment, but I think you might have the figures wrong....

https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impact-do-us-contributions-have-un-agencies-and-programs

According to this site, the US alone contributed $18B in 2022.

But that could also be misinformation. ;-)

Considering the track record of the US government in stifling "misinformation" over the last few years, and the US being by far the largest donor to the UN, this would worry me a great deal. So much "misinformation" has turned out to be true, but inconvenient.

Supreme Court won't stop Biden leaning on social media giants to tackle disinfo

Re: Dissent is not the same as lies

"slander, libel, provocation, incitement to violence and any fraudulent information"

Let's take the Hunter Biden laptop as an example. Which one of the above allowed the US government to order all the social media companies to suppress that story?

Also, the things that Alex Berenson said on Twitter and then had his account suspended? Was that slander or libel? And why did they re-instate his account later on?

Be careful what you wish for because soon you might have a Trump government who also suppress and censor things that they don't like, and you might not like it so much when the boot is on the other foot.

Free speech is important, and people were being suppressed for basically saying "something sucks"

I guess you could argue that a lot of things said in 2021 caused "harm economically" to the profits of Pfizer?

Resource burden of electric vehicles set to triple by 2050

Re: It's not just the batteries!

You really do have to add nuclear into the mix to make that work, or you'll need an unfeasibly large amount of battery backup. And I literally mean unfeasible.

Microsoft's latest Surface devices almost as easy to fix as they are to break

Re: Doing what IBM Thinkpads/Lenovo have always done

https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/27/nokia_g22_repairs/

There are other alternatives.

I used to keep Battery A and Battery B on my Nokia 2110, so that one was always charged. Was super easy to swap and lasted for days. Could even use it as a modem on my Psion, so basically a smart phone. ;-)

Hats off to MS

I'd like to see more of this, and will choose laptops and phones based on reparability. Most people don't seem to care much, but perhaps that will change.

Built in obsolescence is something our government should interfere in. (on of the few things) I'm looking at you Apple and Google.

Study employs large language models to sniff out their own bloopers

Re: Not necessarily

"Unfortunately it always generates the most obvious and therefore banal version of possible texts, wiping out all originality"

So, a bit like most of the "stories" on El Reg these days. I think this explains a few things, they must have employed simian journalists, or AI, recently who can only regurgitate press releases but not much more.

Not like the old days with Lester and Orlowski, et al. :-( Although there are a couple of exceptions still.

( no Gold Badge for me then!? Mr. How To Win Friends and Influence People. )

Footage of Nigel Farage blowing up Rishi Sunak's Minecraft mansion 'not real'

Re: Pretty funny

It wasn't your comment per se, but the massive thread of about 20 after that, which have all now disappeared. Presumably someone deleted their own, or mods removed the incendiary stuff??

Re: Pretty funny

There was a whole massive thread of arguments Trump vs. Biden which has now vanished (thank God) but now makes my comment look at bit out of context.

Re: Pretty funny

Wow. Is there ANYTHING I could say that wouldn't get turned into a Trump vs. Biden thing?

Is this how it's going to be until November?

Seriously, I don't fucking care about your stupid election. You are fucked regardless of who wins, but just for different reasons. I hate this polarised politics of Trump Derangement Syndrome vs. MAGA nutters.

Just stop it already.

It was just a funny video of another annoying cunt Farage. Laugh. Move on.

Pretty funny

How long until a major news source gets taken in by one of these? Or has that already happened?

World's top AI chatbots have no problem parroting Russian disinformation

I don't trust Reuters when it comes to Pfizer. Conflict of interest

https://www.pfizer.com/people/leadership/board_of_directors/james_smith

Even that "fact check" is a bit slippery if you look at it closely. We can't be sure what's causing the excess deaths, it still needs to be investigated.

We COULD relatively easily find out by comparing unvaccinated vs. vaccinated, but the MRHA are withholding that information for "commercially sensitive" reasons.

As an example of fact checking only going in one direction, Chris Witty said the excess deaths were caused by lack of statins being prescribed, but strangely that didn't get fact checked by the media, although it did get debunked thoroughly by Heneghan and Jefferson.

I'd argue that "catch it" means you have a "case" of something and are showing symptoms at some point. Not a positive PCR test for example.

A bit like you don't "catch" measles if you've got immunity. But you might still have some detectable bits of the virus in your body.

It's not me who has the misunderstanding here.

Seriously!? Have you been living under a rock?

Start here, but you'll need to sign up for a trial as it's paywalled.

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/will-excess-deaths-ever-be-investigated

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/trustthevidence?r=1lcx51&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Also there's been two debates in parliament, but attended by about 5 MPs unfortunately and nothing seems to have come of it.Just a lot of talking.

Then there's Dr. Ahseem Malhotra who has written to the GMC asking them to investigate Covid vaccine harms.

There's a lot of rabbit holes to avoid, so don't go down those (but not in Trust The Evidence, those two old geezers are solid ... and stubborn). Some people want to attribute all excess deaths. I would just like it to be investigated properly, by someone with no axe to grind.

"it's quite reasonable to employ a moron in a hurry test."

Unfortunately the morons in a hurrry were Boris and Hancock who made up rules as they went along. Cummings who tore up the pandemic preparedness because he thought he could do better. The WHO who gave emergency use authorisation to a gene therapy (but didn't call it that, because then it would have needed a LOT more testing).

On that last point, we're STILL seeing significant excess deaths from something. No one in power seems to want to investigate what could possibly be causing that. I have a niggling suspicion that at least part of that picture could be something that was "safe and effective". I'd really like to know. Is that too much to ask?

Alarmist you say? I feel like I have a right to be alarmed at this point.

"That a (sic) would be because mRNA vaccines hadn't been used successfully at a large scale before."

Still haven't. Depends on how you define success, but I'd start with you don't catch it and you don't pass it on. Or at least very unlikely to. For an added bonus of "success" I'd want lifelong immunity, not 5 months of slightly reduced risk of getting seriously ill.

And if you understand the difference* between ARR and RRR, that last sum changes considerably.

* which sadly, our politicians and journalists didn't understand, even on this very site. At least on their Twitter account, Iain.

I would disagree with that, and I do sorta understand how it works. I understand that a vaccine introduces some attenuated pathogen into the body and your immune system does the rest. These mmRNA therapies get your own cells to produce a small part of the pathogen, and then your immune system does the rest. It similar, but subtley different. It matches the old definition of gene therapy, but I think that got changed.

Here's the real point though... what we're talking about here is arguable, but the way I'm framing it would get labelled as misinfo.

Prof Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson do a much better job of explaining it, which is not surprising as I only got as far as degree level Biology and then haven't studied further in any academic sense.

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/

Although most of their posts on vaccines focus on the AZ ones, which are, shall we say, traditional vaccines.

I rate this post as disinformation. Stating that Igor Chudov "reposts any and every anti-Vaxx" needs further context and is grossly exaggerating.

Like I said, it's just one example of the kind of opinion that they label as disinformation.

A great number of people are now declining the COVID gene therapy (not a vaccine) but that doesn't make them "anti-Vaxx". Those people have legitimate concerns about Pharmacokinetics as well as side effects of these mmRNA treatments, which seem to trigger a disproportionately large number of autoimmune conditions in people who never needed the treatment in the first place. The risk/reward ratio is very much not worth it for these people. But they'll still happily get the normal vaccines. There are other people who are truly "anti-Vaxx", but that's another story.

Has it ever occurred to you that there might be two people who have an opinion that differs from yours? Perhaps it's only two of us, but that's still more than one. :-P

Not MAGA. Not a Vatnik. Just don't trust this organisation, as they always go one way. (progressive/liberal)

Since you asked for a reason, this is ONE example, but they are pretty systemic.

https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/this-blog-will-be-censored-by-newsguard

Researchers find Meta's withdrawal of misinformation tool hard to swallow

Re: What's disinformation?

"We have the NHS and when labour win the next election it should be fully funded and be a beacon of true socialist governance."

This is hilarious. For comedic purposes, I'm assuming by beacon you mean a thing which is on fire all the time!? This comment will come back to haunt you. Could you put a timeline on this? Do you think 5 years is long enough, or will they need the full 2 terms to fix everything? I'll bet you a pint of beer that we won't be hailing a beacon of true socialist governance in June 2029. Wanna take that bet?

Re: What's disinformation?

"If you cannot grok the changes taking place around our planet then you are a fool"

I used to feel like that when I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and swallowed the whole thing. Since then I've actually read a few things and it seems it's nowhere near the emergency that we're being lead to believe.

Re: What's disinformation?

I genuinely amazed that you somehow turned my comment into a Trump thing!? And amazed that your comment got so many likes. There's a lot of dumb people out there. I know that around half of people are below average intelligence, but why are they turning up on Reg forums?

Some people have some small c conservative views on a few things, and should be allowed to hold those opinions without them being labelled as disinfo. That's all.

If NewsGuard just labelled all the outlandish things that Trump says (and he says a lot of them) as well as Russian misinfo, then I wouldn't have a problem with them. Would also have to flag disinfo coming from the left too, which they shy away from.

To give one example, when Fauci said something like "vaccinated people become dead ends for the coronavirus" they should have flagged that as misinfo. Along with all the papers that printed similar. But they would never do that, would they?