Posts by Claverhouse

US govt indicted me because I make privacy tools, says crypto-chat app CEO accused of helping drug smugglers

Re: So tomorrow Signal, Telegram?

The fact that the arcane rituals of the American way of banging people up are followed is of no interest to non-Americans, nor in anyway 'fair' or in the interests of abstract justice.

Re: So tomorrow Signal, Telegram?

Anyway, the stylish drug dealers insist on an Escobar phone with all the bling...

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https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/03/escobar-fold-phone/

Biden administration reveals probe into government security has found holes, wants more private sector collaboration as the cure

A New Dawn

Well, at least we can be sure Mr. Biden will not use this as an opportunity to throw money at the usual suspects.

Third time's a harm? Microsoft tries to get twice-rejected encoding patent past skeptical examiners

Oh God, Oh Microsoft...

'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces

SCOTH

That Whisky label looks like it was drawn by Hergé.

Four women, including TV star, thought they were investing in a software business. It was a scam. Now the perp's going to jail

Whilst sympathetic to the sort of morons easily parted from money to a fast-talking crook, I imagine it's easier to become a crook if one has lived in a car for 4 years alongst with one's family.

And 'Charity' in America seems mostly funnelled to those who don't need it, like Universities with multi-billion-dollar Endowments.

He is in good company.

Å nei! Norway's Stortinget struck by Microsoft Exchange malware

Re: “-et” means “the”

The Storting sounds like a great name for an American rural horror/crap TV series.

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

I wonder if it was a 'sustainable' construction building, with wooden walls and wool insulation

Doesn't look like a traditionalist dream to me.

Rather more like a modernist's delight, with plenty of plastics, cladding, foam ceiling tiles and exciting new materials recommended in Bauhaus Weekly.

Re: the knife sharpeners,

"I'm afraid my wife is out."

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

Possibly not if they are a danger to themselves and others.

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

A previous employer had what was effectively an anti-thievery system on the fire door which prevented it being opened by not-particularly-obvious means;

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Same as the Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

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Thank God we learnt and progressed over 100 years

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

Old is Better.

Talk about a Blue Monday: OVH outlines recovery plan as French data centres smoulder

Worse Things Happen...

I was hosting at Dreamhost when something went wrong [ nothing dangerous, something to do with email ? ] and various loonies went bitchcakes over the temporary loss of services.

Bad things happen and I can't imagine webmasters whining about a gap in hosting rather than being thankful no-one was injured...

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Also, disgusting, hideous fugly modern architecture.

UK draft legislation enshrines the right to repair in law – but don't expect your mobile to suddenly be any easier to fix

Re: Well it's a start...

...and gushing with pride in their British manufacture. The company could improve their logistics a bit as the first machine arrived damaged...

Sounds a bit like some people go on about the infamous 1970s... Except then they blamed the wicked Trade Unions.

McAfee to offload enterprise business for $4bn, focus on consumer security

McAfee is accused of using his Twitter account to “publish messages to hundreds of thousands of his Twitter followers touting various cryptocurrencies through false and misleading statements to conceal their true, self-interested motives.”

He had the highest precedent.

Google's ex-boss tells the US it's time to take the gloves off on autonomous weapons

Re: Can be banned

Interesting.

Google engineer urges web devs to step up and secure their code in this data-spilling Spectre-haunted world

Re: There's only one way to do it

Release the Lawyer !

Royal Navy and Air Force get low-code bridge in UK military recruitment saga

Back in the Mists of the Past

I vaguely remember a time when military recruitment had passed on from grabbing people and hitting them with sticks, yet still needed no computing; instead youths, mostly, strolled into Army Recruitment Centres.

No doubt spoilt by the IRA --- though if anywhere should be securely screened from attack it is such places --- but it didn't cost billions to run.

Chancellor launches £500m business software subsidy in the UK. What's 'approved' software then?

Re: Productivity-enhancing software

True. In cases like this I always advise that a donation to the governing party, and becoming personal friends with MPs and Ministers, brings rich rewards later. Investing in one's future.

Linus Torvalds went six days without electricity, swears smaller 5.12 kernel is co-incidental

Re: No Backup Gen?

about a million pounds a shot for 800kW :)

People on variable-rate plans in Texas, like Griddy, recently found normal suppliers can suddenly charge higher prices as well...

The Goethe of Computing

Never having been particularly active, I am wonderstruck at the man's dedication and sheer output.

Linux can never die; thanks to his lifelong work, which benefits all --- but he should be thinking of retiring sooner than later.

Palantir and UK policy: Public health, public IT, and – say it with me – open public contracts

The Occult

With Palantir, he is giving our money and our health data to a company which is deeply implicated in helping elect and benefiting from Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory and subsequent no-bid contracts.

A company with deep connections with the CIA, the NSA, the FBI - it seems that if it has got three letters in its name and wears dark glasses, it’s a customer.

Pretty sure Donald Trump and the 3-Letter Agencies were mutually antagonistic since before he was elected, because he never gave them no respect.

[ Probably rightly. ]

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From the estimable leftie, Thomas Frank...

Among the industries that define American culture, the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ was virtually airtight: the media and entertainment industries hated him, the tech industry hated him, academia hated him. The foreign policy community hated him, the NatSec community hated him, Iraq war Republicans hated him, the little world of the DC commentariat hated him, and the broader world of the press hated him too.

The mind-blowing detail about this Coalition of the Aghast was that it also included the Central Intelligence Agency. Not long ago, the CIA was the great bête noire for peace-minded liberals: as everyone knew, it was the government agency that overthrew foreign governments, deceived and misled people in distant lands and fought for dictatorship around the world. Its list of crimes against democracy was long and disturbing.

But over the last four years this picture changed completely. Now liberals were supposed to shed tears for the agency — because the poor CIA had been maligned and disrespected by Trump, who (among other things) claimed it exaggerated the role played by Russia in the 2016 election. Indeed, the affinity between liberalism and the spy agency eventually became so obvious to ‘resistance’ people that it didn’t have to be explained.

...

This is utterly fatuous and yet it is not wrong. In the Trump era, the press did indeed come to resemble what Washington calls the ‘intelligence community’. Hayden himself became an ‘analyst’ for CNN in 2017, as did James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. Former CIA chief John Brennan became one for NBC. Countless other former spies made similar moves, speculating on TV about ‘disinformation’ and the occult power Vladimir Putin had over Donald Trump.

https://mondediplo.com/2021/02/02usa

'Meritless': Exam software maker under fire for suing teacher who tweeted links to biz's unlisted YouTube vids

Re: "protect our intellectual property"

To be honest, there were allegations of faulty machinery when more votes went to Bush via Diebold than the MSM considered fair; but since the MSM have fully realised that criticisms of that machinery, now run by the new owners Dominion, by Mr. Trump, are totally unfair and that it gives good vote.

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[ Diebold Election Systems, Inc. changed to Premier Election Solutions sold to Election Systems & Software, sold to Dominion Voting Systems ]

Robots that take out your garbage? Oh What A Feeling, says Toyota as it opens its very own smart city

GO

Woven City features three sets of "interwoven" streets to form a repeatable grid of nine blocks, each framing a local park or courtyard.

Sounds like the same city planning that makes it difficult for a drunk to identify his residence.

Linux Mint users in hot water for being slow with security updates, running old versions

Stopping Firefox Updates

For some time because I loathe Australis, I had to block Firefox from updating. One installs an older version, then start it, and close instanter, then go to wherever the Firefox Update Channel is in one's OS, and sets it to either blank or whatever. Then start Firefox and switch off all updates

Otherwise once one has put in the old version, Mozilla immediately starts updating it to the newest vile version.

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Now on Pale Moon, as old-fashioned as I desire, so don't have to bother any more.

A Good Place

I was stuck on Mint 18 for a few years past it's sell-by date simply because they dropped KDE and --- it being an old computer --- I was captious about installing an entirely new OS.

They have every right to drop whatever they want, but when they drop something excellent, with poorer alternatives, they must expect some will stay with what works best.

As for 'security', these never-ending screams make me tired. As I just wrote in a forum admin forum, I've never got malware and if I did, I would nuke and re-install.

Microsoft president asks Congress to force private-sector orgs to admit when they've been hacked

I doubt if [ American Schooling ] Voucher Schools have much to do with helping the 'poor' by defunding the public schools. And as for other things since when is it acceptable for private foundations to influence public policy ? As with Bloomberg, another rich wretch who seeks to use his billions to control peoples.

Notably with The War on Vaping; down to one individual's personal objections.

In accordance with Bloomberg’s agenda, these groups have directed a significant amount of their energy on low- and middle-income countries. Using their money, clout, and connections, they impose their views and will on these nations, without the input of local populations and with little or no regard for their specific circumstances, needs, and values. In the midst of a wave of interest in “decolonializing” public health, this sort of patronizing interference, well-intentioned though it may be, deserves scrutiny.

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https://insidesources.com/bloombergs-philanthro-colonialism-a-threat-to-global-health-and-science/

I'm fired: Google AI in meltdown as ethics unit co-lead forced out just weeks after coworker ousted

Without Merit

Google is the Devil, but...

Apart from not understanding whatever their ludicrous jobs were for --- a research paper on the negative environmental and social effects of massive, power-hungry, biased language-processing neural networks like the ones used by Google. --- nor why such companies need ethics departments. The decline of religion, regardless of whether one is a believer, aside, most people will know the correct action usually [ though hopefully not pandering to temporary moral pronunciation, which does not deal with thieving or cruelties as is traditional in moral codes, but with whatever the speaker wants to be ] and it is fairly easy for a company to stick to the straight and narrow *. Therefore the existence of these moral pundits is in itself otiose. However, if they misbehave --- or test the resignation limits --- the company is entirely within its rights to drop them.

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* None of which implies the functions of the company, which is after all, advertising, mostly, has any moral merit; but their actions and interpersonal relations within that ambit can be moral.

The wastepaper basket is on the other side of the office – that must be why they put all these slots in the computer

Re: Fire

Incidentally, it is down as 'the capacitor plague' in Wikipedia, and was in the early 2000s. A

From that wiki...

...problems were reported by the specialist magazine Passive Component Industry

There are industry magazines for such things ?

The chips are down. We need your support, semiconductor industry tells US President Biden

Re: Maybe

More his son, Hunter, and the president's brother who have had dealings with China, I believe.

The 'fact-checking' industry/propaganda machine have determined that what benefits the president's family in no way benefits him in any way.

Texas blacks out, freezes, and even stops sending juice to semiconductor plants. During a global silicon shortage

Re: Doomsday Preppers

Canned food was invented by the French c. 1810 ( or 35 years earlier by the Dutch Navy in a way ) and the first canning factory was created in London 1813. All very impressive.

However for nearly half a century they opened their tins with hatchets, knives ( with a strong chance of slippage and self-maiming, hitting with rocks, and bayonets. Which certainly did the bayonet no good.

Preppers should stockpile bayonets.

Good To Know

Former Texas governor Rick Perry suggests that going days without power is a sacrifice Texans should be willing to make if it means keeping federal regulators out of the state’s power grid.

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Perry-says-Texans-wiling-to-suffer-blackouts-to-15956705.php

Nominet claims effort to replace its board with 'safe hands' is invalid, refuses to put it to member vote

Re: You'll be nothing without me, I tell you...... nothing!

Atlas shrugged.

Google Bolsheviks

one of Nominet’s largest members, Google, has said

So how come Goog has inveigled it's loathly self into this organization ? Do they sedulously try and plant controls in every tiniest part of the Internet ?

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In its letter to PublicBenefit.uk, the board says: “We invite you to withdraw your request for an EGM.”

For that insolence alone I would destroy them.

Devuan adds third init option in sixth birthday release

And yes, I've had to run a few Windows machines --- for a particular app --- recently, and even allowing for the extra abstraction of virtualization, I was stunned at the wading through mud uphill speed.

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[ The Linux and other virtual machines proceeded normally, so not just down to virtualizing. ]

Moving On

My latest --- and probably final, since I ran my ex-beloved OPENsuse [ current version ] in a virtual machine and was so horrified at the blocky dark modernism I shall never go back ( and the hideous secret about all the alternative themes etc. in KDE on offer and done by artists who like clean black minimalism ) --- OS, PCLinuxOS, is systemd-free.

Can't honestly say it ever concerned me much, but it's nice to shun a cruddy universal. Like not watching Come Dancing.

Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network

Indeed

"It's no secret that we were designed from the outset to be to deal with a monolithic operating company risk, which was largely to deal with Microsoft,"

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Excellent way of putting it...

Future astronauts at risk of heart attacks, strokes if radiation allowed to ravage their cardiovascular health

They Usually Bring Up That Transatlantic Passage Was Considered Impossible

There have been many remarkable scenes enacted in the great Examination Halls and in the narrow cells around, but it can at once be definitely stated that nothing either before or since has approached the unanimous burst of frenzy that shook the dynasty of Chung when in the third year of his reign the well-meaning but too-easily-led-aside Emperor K’ong inopportunely sought to replace the sublime Classic then in use with a work that has since been recognized to be not only shallow but inept. At Ho Chow nine hundred and ninety-eight voices blended into one soul-benumbing cry of rage, having all the force and precision of a carefully drilled chorus, when the papers were opened, and had not the candidates been securely barred within their solitary pens a popular rising must certainly have taken place. There they remained for three days and nights, until the clamour had subsided into a low but continuous hum, and they were too weak to carry out a combined effort.

Kai Lung's Golden Hours

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There is so finer way of inducing a turbulent shit-storm on the American internet than to suggest we are not actually in fact capable of all flying into deep space in tin cans, and there living like gods forever.

Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted advertising plus a squeeze on the processing of personal info

Re: Erich Mielke

Indeed.

Court witness describes how Autonomy founder Lynch would wash his rear-end in US prison showers and dorms

The New Gulag

British prisons sound hellish *: America seems far further into the Inferno, moving in on Latin American and SE Asian territory.

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* In Britain much depends on the person in charge at the top ( Mr. Gove never seems an improvement on anything; but he was when he replaced Mr. Grayling. )

New Jersey blames Microsoft for weeks of outages, glitches plaguing coronavirus vaccine sign-up website

Forever and Ever...

“We are working with the state of New Jersey to deliver vaccinations as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible, and that includes addressing some technical issues,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Bloomberg

... And then addressing the technical issues caused by the patches to repair the technical issues.

Manhunt: 'Armed and dangerous' MIT AI scientist sought by cops probing grad student's gun murder

Re: Sentient train tracks?

Usually this waits until civilisation has collapsed, for infrastructure to be torn up for other uses...

Everywhere has had opportunistic theft of installation from railways etc., same as nicking lead from church roofs --- which has revived ( although this is partially the fault of the Church in not selling the lead and replacing it with modern valueless battens, not like it's either holy nor visible ) ---- but this looting seems demented.

No joy for Julian Assange as Uncle Sam confirms it will keep pushing for WikiLeaker's extradition to America

Enemy of the People

Maybe they'll revive the idea of droning him.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to step down this summer, AWS boss Andy Jassy to step up

Bezos Earth Fund

Is that his plan to rename Terra ?

Amazon coughs up $62m to shoo away claims it stole driver tips, cut pay rates without telling them

Re: Back in my day..............

Bush II's mob quashed the outcome of the judgement[s], so since then there seemed little point in alienating one's powerful donors.

'He who pays the piper...'

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And more recently we have returned to the normal old ways of Bushobama. with even the same people in governance, so nothing will change.

This particular ruling is a midge in the depths of the Amazon.

£30m in contracts awarded in Post Office's £357m ATM overhaul

To Service You Better

...and in response to public demand we are withdrawing services.

Chrome 89 beta: Google presses on with 'advanced hardware interactions' that Mozilla, Apple see as harmful

Re: Good on 'em

The web, as Google sees it...

...entirely belongs to Google.

Missing GOV.UK web link potentially cost taxpayers £50m as civil servants are forced to shuffle paper forms

For the Anarchists here...

Having less government would mean these services aren't provided in the first place.

And the market couldn't step up ( as in privatisation etc. or mercenaries ), avoiding government, because they would need to be paid; from government coffers, which implicitly is government at second-hand.

If say, an arms contractor in America gets a contract with the Pentagon, the monies they shall receive still come from government just as much as if the weapons were made in government workshops.

Xiaomi proof that we're a military company, says Chinese tech slinger as it sues US over ban

And Albania...

Satya Nadella spoke with Australian PM about opportunities created by pay-for-news-plan. Zuck called the Treasurer for a chat, too

Peaceful Summits

It is excellent and reassuring when the World's Leaders meet together and engage in full and frank discussion.