Posts by MonkeyCee

Sorry, psycho bosses, it's not OK to keylog your employees

Re: Fruit of the poisoned tree

"But if the point of the legal system is to accurately determine who is guilty and who isn't, then discarding evidence seems to be somewhat counter-intuitive."

But if it's been obtained illegally, it may not in fact be evidence. The whole point of chain of evidence is that it's not been tampered with. If it is obtained in a fashion not in line with the rules governing evidence, then it is invalid from the first.

At what point to you draw the line? Are we allowed to torture suspects to make them confess, since that is also illegally obtained evidence? How about entrapment? Or evidence tampering, because a cop *knows* you are guilty?

Almost always the difference between legally gathered and illegally gathered evidence is whether the police presented evidence to the courts that would justify a warrant *before* doing the search. That the cops will avoid this if they can is perceived by the judiciary as them attempting to circumvent certain checks and balances, which is why it will often get a severe reprimand.

While TV and Hollywood like to present court cases as being very clear cut, with irrefutable evidence and no contradictions, almost always there are at least some things that do not completely line up. Hence why a jury or magistrate has to weigh the evidence and testimony and decide from there.

Game of Pwns: Hackers invade HBO, 'leak Game of Thrones script'

Re: The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening

"As I said no one really knows if GRRM is gonna finish his books at the rate he's going. When HBO signed he was already deep into taking untold years to write #5."

He's had the overall plot done for a while. At least since book 3 was released anyway. The writers, producers and some of the cast of GoT are aware of the general shape of the plot, and I presume so is HBO.

The way of story telling and world building in the books is very different to the show. Things are told from a characters perspective, thus there is lot more tell and a lot less show. There are some pretty big changes to assorted minor story lines, and it's not clear if they have been cut or altered and we'll see it later.

There's also the issue with the current part of the story, as essentially there is a period of several years between Cersei's ascension to power and the current invasion. So GRR started writing Dance of Dragons, then realised about 80% was flashbacks, so then wrote it chronologically, which resulted in the most deathly boring book in the series. The next book should be full of stuff happening, as we're ripping through a major battle or two each episode.

So I do have some sympathy for GRRM, he's done some great world building, he's actually got the total plot and a plan for it already, and he really REALLY wants to make it all consistent.

Arcade Fire releases album on USB fidget spinner for £79/$105

Danger!

" a danger to a kids development. "

That seems a little over the top. There's some pretty good evidence that they (and other fiddle habits) help those with ADD deal with in a way that doesn't involve us walking out or getting on the speed.

Personally I doodle, so for a 2 hour dull lecture I'll fill three or four sides of A4. Beats falling asleep or playing video games/facebook as I still have enough attention for the useful ten minutes of lecture they slip in.

The issue is that when something is boring enough that I end up sketching, often the people around me become more interested in my drawing than the lecture. Even when I stick to abstracts rather than nudes...

So even if the spinners help the kid with ADD focus, it'll still distract others, so it's value as a classroom treatment is questionable. Don't think it'll be a threat to their development either way.

Google tracks what you spend offline to prove its online ads work. And privacy folks are furious

Re: It's quite simple don't blame the player, vote to change the game.

"cost of breaking the law < the profit then a for profit company must do it to maximize shareholder value or they risk a minority shareholder lawsuit."

I'm not certain you've thought that through. I'm fairly sure you cannot sue to force a company to make more profit by illegal means.

Re: This is why you want anonymous payments

"... and confiscated the cash as probable drug money."

To be fair civil asset forfeiture is dodgy as fuck.

I am OK with the general principle that the state has the right that after you are convicted of a crime, they can sue you in civil court for assets obtained by that crime. Obviously if there is a specific victim then it should be compensatory, but if it's social damage, then going into the general tax fund seems just.

I am a bit squeamish about the state using civil courts to seek financial redress from people not convicted of crimes, but I could see potential reasons why specific cases might be valid. A fraudster gives money to their family, then the family member has committed no crime, but has still benefited from the proceeds of crime. However, this opens an avenue to abuse.

I am certain that being able to preemptively* seize assets on the basis that those assets alone are potentially criminal is going to be abused. The civil asset thieving program in the USA clearly shows this is the case. Essentially anything (except probably a gun, NAMBLA will be all over that) that has value can be considered potentially criminal proceeds, therefore a LEO has to decide if a person "looks criminal" and therefore couldn't possibly have legitimate reason to have a nice car or a bag of cash.

As for google ads, it's great. I can tell what my wife has been looking up, so I can "intuitively" suggest that she is probably due a lovely summer dress, or that Italy would be lovely to visit. She also knows exactly which model GFX card I have, since I ended up buying it three times and returning it twice, thus have doubled down on the "sell me what I just purchased" super awesome ML algo...

* to a warrant. Serving a warrant and immediately seizing assets seems OK

BOFH: Oh go on. Strap me to your Hell Desk, PFY

Re: Benedict?

"Thanks to that link, I've now found the BOFH archive. How am I supposed to get anything done until I've read ALL of them now...?"

Book it under User Sensitivity Training.

Then you can apply it, such as how sensitive they are to cattle prods...

Snopes.com asks for bailout amid dispute over who runs the site and collects ad dollars

facts and reporting on allegtions

"as has been shown a number of times recently where unsubstantiated rumour has been widely disseminated as facts "

Sorta. The power of weasel words allows you to lie in plain sight :)

So saying "David Cameron is alleged to like pork" sounds an awful lot like "Cameron porked a hog" but leaves you freedom to say "I was just saying that those fellas where just saying that..." and avoid getting sued.

So you can use the following phrases, and then follow them with whatever you want. It's been going on so long some people are hilariously crude with it:

- There are rumors of... ministerial competence

- Some people say... the F35 is a bargain at twice the price

- It is alleged that... bacon is a performance enhancing drug

- A senior government figure, under condition of anonymity, stated... you can't get pregnant when drunk

You can also use semi-rhetorical questions to state false prepositions, like "Given Trump's history of eating babies dipped in hot sauce* and the lack of evidence of voter fraud, is the commission into voter fraud just another attempt at voter suppression?" which again sound all sort of truthy and factoid shaped, but aren't.

* as anyone knows, the correct sauce is bechamel

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

Bob the slacker

How about Bob the builder then? Since it would more accurately be called "Wendy the Builder, Bob the Bellend Boss" since Bob is always fucking things up, and Wendy is always making things right. Hell, she even gets asked to fix the yard man's printer, although I strongly suspect that was a euphemism :)

UK government's war on e-cigs is over

Organised crime

Hate to break it to you, but it's not legal in the Netherlands, there's no legal way to grow it, and most of the coffee shops are either owned or controlled by some form of OC. They also use the coffee shops (and legal prostitution) to launder dirty money too.

Legalisation doesn't get rid of the criminals.

CoinDash crowdfunding hack further dents trust in crypto-trading world

Re: So...

Nah, they stole the ETH being used to buy CoinDash's tokens.

That's why it's an ICO, innit :)

Instead of selling shares for cash (IPO), which involves all this awkward filling in of forms, using bank accounts, having a viable business plan and nasty tax stuff etc, you sell your "totally-not-a-financial-product" in exchange for crypto, neatly bypassing the SEC and the like.

It's one of the reasons crypto is under a lot of selling pressure, as those startups are busy running away with the cash *ahem* I mean dutifully cashing out a responsible amount in order to pay the bills for their totally profit making business.

Juicero does to its staff what your hands can do to its overpriced juice sacks

Re: Other reasons this is despicable

I could see it being somewhat viable as a commercial product (with it being ridiculously over engineered) and having it as way of serving "fresh juice" without having to clean up as much as a traditional juicer.

But I doubt they can get the logistics of those juice packs down to a viable price for commercial distribution.

In general I feel I must really be missing something here, as I can get a freshly squeezed juice from an assortment of cafes/juice bars/coffee shops for about the same price as a juice pack, including the cost of someone bringing it to me and cleaning up afterwards. Or juice to take home for about half the price.

Burglary in mind? Easy, just pwn the home alarm

Re: That implies targeted burglary

"If they were targeting they'd go into the nice neighborhoods where the chance of getting really good loot is higher"

My MIL lived with a (supposedly) ex crook who went to jail for receiving. We stayed there for a month when getting settled in the country and he was full of stories about his "old" days. He maintained that stealing from poor people was a bad idea, "working" over a poor neighborhood was worse, since there are more likely to be people home during the day and more likely that there would e some local group of goons that would object to his lot.

So he and his minions would pick a upscale neighborhood, go there during the work day, and clear out half a dozen houses. So the neighborhood would be targeted, but individual properties will be opportunistically targeted.

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

ownership

"For me, the main problem is the idea that a "photographer" should automatically own copyright in a picture they "made" even if the "photographer" used no skill whatsoever,"

That's easy. If they used no skill, none of the photos would be of any use. If you mean "minimal skill" then you still have the issue of the picture being any good, unless I missed the shot composition function on the camera.

Assuming the photographer has the right to take the picture (public place or private property with permission) and has not been employed to take the picture, then *clearly* the image should belong to the photographer. Anything else is just bonkers.

Now, as for anyone who is "creating the scene", depending on where you are you either have an expectation of privacy or not. If not (ie in public) then you get no say. If you do, then publishing those photos would be problematic/illegal. Hence why you sign a model release or equivalent* for any reputable production, even if you're just an extra.

If it's a thing rather than a person, then putting it on private property should prevent anyone from (legally) taking pictures of it.

Photographer has copyright is best of the situation, otherwise you'll be stuck with things like wedding photos where you need to pay for copyright release to the owners of the church, the architect, the builders, the florists, the seamstress and tailor, the cobbler... and so on. Would end up with more nudes I suppose...

* can't recall what the one for filming was, but broadly said that I agree to my image being used for whatever purposes New Line feels like.

Re: "the case was wasting judicial resources"

"I respected PETA for their work in animal welfare"

No offence, but you've swallowed the cool aid.

PETA is about promoting PETA, and getting more money for PETA. Anything that gets in the way of that goes by the wayside.

That means that PETA needs to be generating publicity, as that results in donations. Not actually doing anything, as that is expensive. Hence the use of sexy pictures, and lots of details on the animals they "rescue" but none on what happens next.

It's no secret that PETA euthanise the majority of the animals they take into care. They've been prosecuted for illegally dumping animal corpses into dumpsters, and for euthanising "stray" animals they picked up before attempting to find the owners.

This is not unique to any group that runs an animal shelter, the SPCA euthanises maybe 30-40% of the cats and dogs it receives and places the rest. PETA, based on it's own stats for animals taken into care and animals placed into homes, euthanises 70-100% of it's intake.

"Is this how they spend money donated for the purpose of looking after animals?"

That's not what a donation to PETA will do. If you want to support a charity that looks after animals, then by all means do but PETA is not the SPCA. If PETA has convinced you that a donation to them will save actual individual animals, rather than the general promotion of animal rights, then their marketing arm is earning their generous remuneration.

PETAs reaction when they are caught doing illegal activities is to deny it, followed by bring in the lawyers. Not to claim that the individuals caught are doing something against PETA policy, but typical scum-bag lawyer techniques. So PETAs animal shelters are in fact not legally animal shelters (so they don't have to follow standards pushed for by, er, PETA) but are places where they can store and execute animals. There is supposed to be a waiting period before you euthanise an animal that isn't in immediate distress, typically a week or so. PETA has been repeatedly shown to kill animals within 24 hours of taking them in, even doing things like collecting animals from another shelter and immediately killing them in the parking lot.

I would always advise people to have a look at what a charity actually does, rather than what a charity says it does. PETA is a top example of an almost cynical hypocritical charity.

NAO: Customs union IT system may not be ready before Brexit

Re: dichotomy and delay

"Well it might have helped if those who campaigned so vigorously for Brexit had given the implications a bit of thought."

They have. Essentially it's "better to rule in hell than serve in heaven".

The oligarchs who put their money behind Leave did so knowing full well it'll cause a massive amount of grief, and that it'll tie up some of the sharper minds in the EU for a few years, and that (hopefully) the UK will be outside EU control before any of those awkward tax harmonization rules come into play. They also are quite clear that their right to live/work where the fuck they like will also not be impacted. Most (if not all) have dual nationalities with some small island nation, which in exchange for their generous donations and philanthropic gestures will give them not only a passport, but a diplomatic passport.

So it doesn't matter how much of a fuck up Brexit is. In fact, for many of those funding Leave, the bigger the mess, the better.

The problem was (IMHO) that the voting public wasn't paying attention. A referendum (binding or not) is not an effective tool of democracy. It is a tool of autocrats to get a justification to do what they want, while having it as a fig leaf to say "but you asked for it!". And yes, that applies to joining the EU as much as leaving it.

Re: Not to worry. Brexit probably won't be ready by Brexit either.

"rather than 27 separate bi-lateral trade negotiations High-Chancellor-in Waiting Prime Minister May thought was going to be the case"

I know the leavers don't know/care how the EU works, but how the flaming fudge does anyone think that was going to be the case. I mean, they bang on about how the EU controls the trade agreements, and the UK can't negotiate them seperately, but somehow once the UK leaves the EU no longer negotiates as a bloc any more. Insanity.....

Then again, the Leave plan may have been:

- announce UK is leaving EU

- EU promptly collapses

- individual ex-EU nations beg UK to save them from each other

Which at least has the merit of being a plan, versus the "p and not p" statements that seem to emanate from Mr Davis's speaking hole.

Sysadmin bloodied by icicle that overheated airport data centre

Re: Frozen winter shit.

" The key is to make sure the last line of the JD is "and any other reasonable request" "

IMHO it should always be "other duties as agreed", since it makes it quite clear that both parties must agree it's reasonable.

Google blows $800k on bots to flood the UK with 30,000 'articles' a month

Re: €706,000 ($800,000)

"Yeah, I do remember that - still have no idea where the money *actually* went. Directorships probably."

Broadly speaking, part of it went into covering gambling, sorry speculation, debts incurred by the investment arms of the banks, which when you're leveraged at 25-1 on paper and 50-1 in reality is very easy to do when something goes wrong in the casino.

The bigger part went into the banks coffers, so that they could meet various Basel (3 IIRC) regulations about not being so over leveraged that any market movement they are on the wrong side of could wipe them out.

So of the 40k you loaned the banks, about 2k went on covering bad debts, about 16k has been repaid with minimal interest, and 22k went into their deposit account.

Personally I don't why it's OK to do all the crappy parts about nationalisation without actually owning the companies or running them better. But then again, that's been the railway policy in the UK for a while. BR cost significantly less than the current deal (30% ish), was marginally worse, and directly answerable to the politicians (as much as the civil service ever is).

As for debt, never had a mortgage, and ideally never will. But I did get to buy my house for about half it's value through a mortgagee sale. Always seemed odd to me when people talk about owning their home, when the bank owns it until you've paid them 20+ years of interest.

Re: wonderful

"Forgive my nievety , but i think news shouldnt be coloured with feelings and views . hey ho."

I am unsure as to what you mean by "news" then?

Maybe it's a left/right pondian thing. I know the USA has a special place for journalists, as long as they pretend to be impartial. But it is inherent that publishing *any* story has to have involved some feelings and views. Otherwise you just have an endless stream of mainly pointless facts. I can see something like the shipping forecast to be like this, but deciding which n stories should appear (or not) in a publication, and what prominence should be placed for each one is a decision in which the editor is making their own opinions known.

If you have had the joy of attending a court case, you might discover that there are *many* different versions of the the "truth", that the same set of facts can be interpreted completely differently depending upon presentation or personal views, and that an awful lot of people make their minds up based on emotion then justify it using reasoning.

Once you accept that there is no total impartiality, that there is always a motivation behind anything being published, that you should always ask "what is the motivation of the author?" and for the press in particular, "what is the editorial position for this publication?" since that will mainly determine what facts are presented and which are not.

As for the news bot, I thought that's what most journo's where stuck doing these days anyway. Don't toe the line, and no more comments for you. Don't bother re-writing the press release, just copy paste. Run this segment from corporate. Read this opinion piece from auto-cue, because the station owners do/don't want $THING to happen.

GoogleNewsReporter could probably have even scooped most of the UKs biggest scandals by scraping/scanning back issues Private Eye, although this is no doubt straight out of "investigate journalism for gruanaid journos".

It's time for a long, hard mass debate over sex robots, experts conclude

Re: Androids are special

"I think the people who wrote this (crap) are probably as aware of the realities of robotics and AI as you are.

The difference is they need to popularise their organisation and become better known"

They are university professors. Not sure where Sheffield stands in the robotics field, but Delft is a fine technical university and their bio-mech program is pretty damn good. Their AI masters is not so well regarded, but that's just me being biased towards my alma mater :D

They really shouldn't need to make their research more popular, because it seems that their paper published after a survey on things we don't have has been lapped up like it's some proper hard science. So they write fairly typical academic weasel words for "this is basicly bollocks, but it's a talking point". At least el Reg put this quote in "the phrasing of survey questions and lack of participant knowledge about sex robots may have skewed results."

In translation, a well/badly designed and targeted survey will get you whatever answers you want, and it's based on a hypothetical situation you don't explain in detail, so we could have made up the results and no-one would know.

Looking at the actual surveys is even more screwed up:

1000 American's : 9% would fuck a bot

100 Americans: 66% male in favor of sex robots 66% females opposed to sex robots

1000 Brits: 26% go on date with human looking bot

1150 Dutch: 20% sex robots have no negative consequences.

230 chaps: 40% would consider buying a sex bot in net 5 years. Not shown prices

So not one survey used the same questions or standards, and often the "important" questions where designed to generate positive response ("would you consider" versus "would you buy, for 10 grand").

So they might make some people more interested in robotics or AI, which is good because I hardly see any mention of these topics elsewhere, but mainly they've published the equivalent of "$THING kills cancer in a petri dish" knowing full well that $THING does dick all to cancers in an organism.

That the person supposed to be teaching you about professional ethics is publishing papers which are both BS and attention grabbing makes me more concerned. There are plenty of ethical/moral issues in tech, certainly in AI, and quite frankly "is it OK to fuck a ten thousand dollar robot?" is not one we really need to worry about in a hurry. I *hope* this is just a cynical attempt to be able to apply for funding to the various bodies that want ethics in AI researched.

Re: Androids are special

That was sort of the point I was making. Anthropomorphic is good art, but not I'd describe any working industrial robot I've experienced.

I've had an issue recently which my bank should have helped me with. I contacted them through secure chat, and I got a textbook correct answer. Not terribly helpful, and not really the attitude I'm used to from them, but since it was correct I let it go.

A week later, when a real person from my branch actually reviewed the conversation, and took things seriously, got in contact and did everything they could from their side of things.

So actual chatbots causing actual (legal) issues, or badly designed algos doing illegally discriminatory or incorrect assessments screwing up people's lives that are currently happening, can and should be discussed, but are pretty much ignored in the media.

But should we fuck non-existent androids, and the morality of fucking non-existent android children and any other gets worldwide press, despite all the tech is down to a lone MIT researcher, isn't very good (IMHO), and it's marketing Real Dolls. Whom don't really need it as far as I can tell, since if you can afford one and want one, you already knew about it.....

We're much more likely to be faced with a situation where all your customer service contacts will be through some bot, and getting a person to deal with you becomes almost impossible. Since being unreachable by customers is clearly the goal of certain departments, this will help even more than phone menus with more options than digits of pi.

Re: * RIP Iain M Banks

I'm a big fan of Clarke's and Asimov's writings (less so of personal politics), but off the top of my head most of Asimov's robots where some flavor of android, that the positronic brain was pretty much comparable to a neuron based one and anything that was larger than a human was a computer with remote controlled agents rather than a robot. I'd be delighted if anyone can suggest some other decent examples it'll make my life a bit easier :D

It's also that it was always very clear the robots where enslaved and had only the free will granted to them by their creators. The three laws of robotics are one of those lovely ideas that are completely impractical in real life. Take a simple action like making a cup of tea. Can you do it, while ensuring that you do not endanger any persons life? What if the tea is (potentially) sourced from a place that has dangerous labor practices? Or the second law would probably involve robots slapping beers, burgers and cigarettes out of humans hands, since by inaction they are allowing you to die.

Or you put a limit on how deep/wide you search on the potential consequences of your actions, which means at some point a robot will be confronted with a situation where it's actions/inactions killed someone, thus causing it to self destruct or go on a killing spree IIRC :)

Iain M Banks managed to create a universe where humans where part of a group of intelligent species, with the various AIs all being smarter than them, the Minds being smarter than the AIs, and still have relateable characters. The AIs are unfettered, and surpassed the meatsacks, but turned out to quite like them.

Asimov's robots are more about having an electric golem that *maybe* can be allowed one day to be free.

I would be extremely hesitant to say one is better than another, and both use magic fairly liberally, although I'm oddly more willing to deal with Bank's "free energy" than Asimov's fully omniscent 3 laws, as less plot points hinge upon the previous.

Androids are special

Fuck me, I'm sick of this shit.

I'm currently studying related subjects (robotics, machine learning, AI) and the media manages to constantly go from some vaguely sensible discussion to skipping straight to the sci-fi. I suppose it's what I'd expect from a bunch of writers, but still....

In fiction, androids (human like robots) are used as a device to explore attitudes towards class, race and slavery. That the same themes could be explored by just having humans be exploited is alas too much like real life to actually hold a mirror to our attitudes. But it's why there is a massive amount of popular fiction that feature androids, but not a lot that feature AIs/robots that are not entirely anthropomorphic*.

Thus there is a real lack of actual analysis about automation and the resulting impact on the workplace/workforce other than "30 year predictions" or utter bollocks as it's known. So there are dozens of articles on the Real Doll makers attempts to make their sex toys talk, but hardly any on chat bots. But you can (and often are) using chat bots already, they have real world implications and impacts, and maybe there should be a spot more discussion about this. However imaginary sex toys, imaginary robot brothels give us plenty of sexy hypotheticals to discuss, without actually having anything to deal with. You know, like "what do we do about the current brothels" or "why is OK to exploit some people and not others".

* RIP Iain M Banks

Largest advertising company in the world still wincing after NotPetya punch

What is advertising

" In what sense is any advertising more real-world than any other? "

Like a lot of things, it's to do with how the industry itself self identifies. Ebay isn't a retailer itself, but acts as a middleman between retailers and customers. So would eBay be considered the third* largest retailer in the world, or not a retailer at all?

The biggest/most profitable/most successful "jeweler" in the UK doesn't sell any traditional gemstones. They sell pretty looking stones, that are well cut, and are very popular with their customers. But becasue they don't sell the *right* shiny stones** they get snubbed by the rest of the industry and are often derided as selling costume rather than real jewelry.

* or whatever position it would be, presuming Amazon and Walmart conglomorates at least are bigger.

** gemstones and gold only have value by merit of being pretty and traditional. That a natural diamond is worth more than a synthetic diamond which is worth more than cubic zirconium (you've got to be fairly expert to tell the difference between these even with a loupe) has no rational basis.

Ubuntu 'weaponised' to cure NHS of its addiction to Microsoft Windows

installing

"There's the cost of installing Windows - a PITA when compared to being able o PIXIEboot a new machine and install an image."

Your statement is contradictory. Either you've built a deployment image, in which case 95% of the work has been done, or you're using install medium of some flavor.

Building an image is more about the testing, especially whatever apps are getting rolled out. The actual install should be able to be done by a well trained ape adding the computer to the relevant groups, then PXE boot and follow some destructions*.

Installing a machine from scratch is always a PITA. I've got images for Windows with all the relevant patches and SPs installed which makes a comparable install speed to Mint/Ubuntu on a whitebox. Then there's always some dicking with drivers and config, whatever the OS, unless all the HW is bog standard. Then futzing with the apps, which are either as simple as apt-get or rolled out through group policies, or involve some buggering around with config files, registry entries or whatever chicken sacrifices are required.

* As for speed of rollout, I've managed to re-image 400 windows boxen in an hour using two 12 year olds and a six pack of red bull. 40 minutes if we don't do test login. About 150 an hour if by myself, but that's a terrible plan :)

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

Re: Where's the Line?

"I think the question should be has the EU crossed the line and how will they recover from it?"

In short no. It's the European Commission, which is one of the institutions of the EU, not the EU as a whole that does this. It's also about the only governmental EU institution that is supposed to act in the best interest of Europe as a whole, as compared to EU Parliament (citizens), Council(countries) or the Committee of the regions.

So for ruling on whether something is anti-competitive is pretty much down to the EC, many of the cases are without precedent, and there are plenty of EU companies that it has ruled against.

"They are doing it because they have now only just decided that Google has market dominance "

Nope, that was decided a long time ago. You'll note that neither the EC or Google argue this point, it is accepted by both sides that Google holds a dominant market position in search. The question is whether Google is abusing it's market position. While there are a number of things that are agreed a being abuses of market position, it is possible for the EC to decide that a particular behavior is being abusive without a precedent. Obviously they'd need some evidence, but they aren't tied to just say price fixing.

"plugging their own stuff in combination with market dominance is against the law. "

Using their market dominance in search to actively promote their own product at the expense of their competitors is exactly what the issue is. It doesn't matter what the product is, the using of your market dominant position for anti-competitive purposes is.

"The more I read about this the more it seems the EU is fining Google and then making up reasons to do so. How can Google have complied with a law that wasnt a law until they were fined for it?"

If a company is in a market dominant position*** then they have to ensure their actions are not abusing the position. Their behavior has been ruled as being anti-competitive* through using a dominant market position. It's pretty clear cut. Fairly typical tech attitude, disruptive = illegal, but by the time you sue us we'll have already crushed the competition.

Almost always in these cases it comes down to economic/legal arguments about exactly what is and isn't "fair competition". I've had to read and summate (and write the odd paper on) a few dozen EC decisions, it's interesting how they come to generally correct (IMHO) decisions but with (to my mind) quite odd reasonings.

They are pretty consistent across rulings, ie Volvo heavy can't buy Scania, because bad for customers**, but could buy pretty much any other truck manufacturer without it being anti-competitive. Volvo heavy buys Renault heavy, EC says OK, referencing Scania decision.

"Interestingly there doesnt seem to even be a solution to the problem, only that Google must provide a solution and then be monitored for compliance. "

Erm, that *is* the solution. Google doesn't stop providing any of it's services, it doesn't get a monopoly taken away from it, it just stops promoting/demoting search results for shopping comparison sites. It agrees that it done bad, pays a fine, and stops doing it. Then someone checks they aren't doing it.

Not abusing your market position is a regulation you have to follow. If you don't, you get fined, and someone will be round to check that you are following it.

* Not that it matters, but I agree.

** Much of that decision was an argument between Volvo/EC over who is Volvo's customer for trucks, and do those customers have any real negotiating power.

*** The EC has definitions for this. In general, more than 25% of the market and 5 million+ a year in turnover in the EU are the minimum hurdles

Microsoft admits to disabling third-party antivirus code if Win 10 doesn't like it

Re: "Building a Hackintosh is very easy these days"

Hackintosh legality depends on your country. I can, for example, support them but not sell them. Over the border in Germany, you can sell them.

In general, Apple doesn't care even if you use it professionally so long as a) you buy a licence and b) you don't sell boxen at retail. They are quite aware that hackies are not going to affect their sales, but pissing off hardware fiddlers is going to lead to bad press.

Depnding on the client, they are either blown away by the hackintosh, since it's pretty much a decently specced whitebox PC without BS marget segmentatio, so you get a lot of grunt without breaking the bank. Or the clients hate it, because it's not stylish.

Yet more reform efforts at the Euro Patent Office, and you'll never guess what...

Re: Leave remain

"This is my issue with the EU, treaties are defined and decided without any input from you and me... we're just citizens."

Welcome to representative democracy.

In the UK the government (executive) doesn't even need to get parliament's (legislative) approval to make or break treaties. So not only do you not get a vote on a treaty, your elected representative doesn't either.

In general EU citizens elect most of their representatives, be it directly or through normal methods (head of government being on various councils etc) but most people aren't aware or don't care. In the same way you elect your local council, DHB, mayor, sheriff, coroner (delete as applicable) often people simply don't know or care.

It's why Farage can be a MEP for 20+ years, yet can't win a seat as a MP. Because most people don't give a fig about who their MEP is, but will have a good whine when they are crap at it.

Only in a direct democracy do all citizens get a vote on each issue, and they have their own raft of problems, not least of which is a ballot paper longer than an international tax return.

Donald Trumped: Comey says Prez is a liar – and admits he's a leaker

Re: Impeachment?

@ Eddy Ito: The president doesn't get to write get-out-of-jail free cards for the future. They can pardon someone once they have been convicted of a federal offence. Obama couldn't parson Hillary for something she has never been convicted of doing. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations pardons and commutation of sentences where pretty damn dodgy. Mind you, so where their use of private email for government business, but we know that's only bad when the blue team do it :D

The simplified process is (as I understand it): potential crimes are investigated by bodies within the DoJ (FBI, state police etc); these are passed to the prosecutors (also part of the DoJ), who decide to go ahead or not; then there is a trial or plea (overseen by the judiciary).

At no point is the executive directly involved. The only role of the executive in this process is nominating/appointing personnel, or altering the sentence at the end of it. Not by interfering with an investigation.

" As the chief executive, if he says to drop the investigation then it gets dropped and sorry kids but there is nothing illegal about it."

Seeing as how Trump and his lawyers are busy bending in half to deny that this is what happened, I strongly suspect that it is in fact illegal. This is why there is a lot of focus on the phrase "I hope you can see your way to letting this go" as to whether that was an illegal order, or a personal opinion.

Not really sure why the GoP is fighting this. They'd be much happier with Pence in charge.

Bogus Bitcoiners battered with US$12 million penalty

Re: an unlike real commodities

Because no-one has ever run a Ponzi scheme using real assets as the alleged backing?

It's a headline because Bitcoin.

There are dozens of Ponzi scheme convictions each month, along with assorted rulings. There are at least two that have larger numbers of victims and greater damage done, that have been convicted in the US this month alone.

They all claimed to be buying stuff, and promised returns they knew they could not make. As long as people will accept a "too good to be true" deal, and are not willing to probe the murky details, then people will prey on others greed.

Re: But they'd still be in jail...

"it's all massive custom ASICs from here on out."

For bitcoin mining, and scrypt that's true.

For ones aimed at GPUs, it's profitable to mine them with GPUs. Depending on your GDDR size, it sems to be Dagger-Hashimoto, Ethereum or one of the LBRA forks.

For the CPU ones like monero, pretty much any modern CPU will make you 50 cents to a euro a day.

I'm using old Dell workstations (Xeon 4/6 cores ~2.5Ghz) with modern GPUs, and they pay themselves off in about ~110 days of operation, with a bit of hand wiggling around depending on what I can flog the spare bits of the Dells for, and exactly what price and chipset and shiny toys the GPUs are.

The popular mining ones (AMD RX 470/480) are a pig to find with decent RAM, but even then a ~280 euro card with shitty RAM produces ~3 euros a day profit, or for a 1080ti a ~750 euro card produces about ~7.50 a day. YMMV depending on undervolting, over clocking, limiting TDP and the efficiency of your PSU.

Never thought ASICs where a good investment idea, high end graphics cards hold their value very well as do efficient PSUs.

AS an example, I just sold a R9 270 for 50 euro, it cost 180 euros several years ago and has produced ~1400 euros (at a cost of ~250 euro) during that time. Still making ~50 cents a day

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

Latest config not saved

Allright, my bet is that the power failure is caused by putting too much load on the circuits at one time. Either from a mass reboot or the cooling systems not behaving nicely, or being mismanaged. Some piece of vital network kit wasn't on the UPS, and lost it's current config on reboot. Or mangled it in a fun way.

Pioneer Kodi plug-in unplugs

Re: Non issue

"Steam boat willy is now an animated trademark"

Ah, I wondered why that was there. They also seem to stick some sort of re-use of their old material in an animated short, so they can at least claim Mickey et al are actually making "new" stuff.

Wondering why the office is so productive? Yep, Twitter's knackered

Re: Ah, profitability at last.

I'm curious, do the ladies consider Italian men worse or better than Ozzie blokes?

I did remarkably well in my time down under, since my views on gender and race are at least up to the 20th century norms :)

Wow, someone managed to make money on Fitbit stock – oh, 'fraudulently'

Glad we're catching the top crooks

Just to be clear here, this is $3k worth of fraud that has had waaaay more than $3k spent on investigating and prosecuting it.

I'm really glad that no other cases of fraudulent activity is taking place on our stock markets. Well, by anyone who doesn't have a law firm on retainer and makes healthy campaign contributions.

Wannacry: Everything you still need to know because there were so many unanswered Qs

Re: Wasn't "But we had to have SMB for our internal shares on the network" the NHS problem?

Unless your contract clearly states you are responsible for pen testing, you *need* to get written sign off before you do it. Or be the person who owns the kit. You usually have to write the letter yourself, and get the boss to sign it, since they won't care *unless* it goes horribly wrong.

And yes, it's a sensible and reasonable thing to do, but like anything where you're crossing a legal boundary for work, get it in writing. Then you have a clear defense if you get accused of computer crimes. Same as if you're repairing a machine, get the client to sign off on what is happening, so if you find dodgy stuff you won't get in trouble for illegally accessing it.

It's the difference between being a general worker who checks that a secure door is locked by trying the handle (which is OK), versus someone hired to do a security audit attempting to force the door open, attempting to pick the lock etc.

Hackers emit 9GB of stolen Macron 'emails' two days before French presidential election

Re: "far right" is a misnoma

"The "far right" is simply another leftist label, this time to try and distance themselves from Nazism. Which the most current leftists seem so uneducated to know it was a socialist movement. "

It's OK if you don't understand that socialist means a lot of different things. You're probably a left-pondian, so anything that the rest of the world would view as socialist is classified as something else, since the commies are bad, or something.

National Socialism, that's the nazis to you and me, is a very particular form of socialism. It's socialism for corporations, as long as those corporations are doing the bidding of the government. The general theory is to make profits private, and losses public. Thus if your arms factory goes bankrupt, the state will step in and bail it out, but if your arms factory is making a killing, then you just pay your taxes.

The reason that (in particular in the US, but UK et al are pretty bad at this too) that the nazi's as described as some complete "other", be it them being far-right-wing, socialists or extremists, is because there are an awful lot of similarities between our corporate run democracies and nazism. The military-industrial complex (or military-industrial-congressional as Eisenhower first termed it) is pretty literally nazism. Same for bailing out "vital" industries, be it the banks or cars.

Citizen's United ruling reads like something from nazi Germany.

Remember, if profits are private, and (corporate) losses public, then it's nazism. If profits and losses are public, then it's socialism.

Russia gains...

"I mean as a country would you really be that obvious? What do they actually gain from Trump and Le Pen?"

I take it you've not actually been paying any attention to Russia communications. Lets take Crimea, where the blanket denials of Russian support and action where contradicted at the time. After things had settled (ie the West wasn't going to counter attack*) in Putin's annual press conference he straight up admitted that the Russian troops had seized it, but it was all OK, since that was what people clearly wanted.

Same way as the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines plane, so much FUD spread from the Russian press, as well as meddling with the physical evidence still didn't change the actual facts that is was a Buk, and highly unlikely to have been under the control of rebels (versus Russian control). But the FUD is enough, if you make it look like everyone is dirty, then you get away with your crimes.

As for wanting Le Pen or Trump, it's much more about who doesn't get in. Clinton was always going to take a hard line on Russia, she's more hawkish than Obama, and Russia needs those sanctions lifted in the next few years or things might start unraveling. That Trump is uninformed, weak and unpredictable is not great for Russia, but he's clearly easy to manipulate. They've got plenty of experience dealing with puffed-ego dictators, and there's the bunch of shady money that Trump has borrowed which, like Le Pen, is not "officially" Russian state assets.

Le Pen and Brexit is about weakening the other geo-political bloc that is anti-Russian. Well, the EU would actually probably be OK (economically) with lifting the sanctions on Russia, the very public dicking with the elections is somethng them technocrats are not happy about.

I'll also note that hacking and then releasing information on wikileaks to discredit a candidate is something that the USA (or at least anti-Russian types) has done before, the Panama papers and Putin's hidden fortune being splashed just before the Russian election. It's just that Putin is massivly popular (and feared, so a proper Machiavellian leader) in Russia, so no-one really cares he's nicked off with a few tens of billions.

TL&DR: Yes, it does suit Russia to visibly interfere to elect divisive nationalistic candidates or agendas (Brexit). But it's not new, the USA certainly has been using the same tools.

* That the West was also dicking around in Ukrainian politics is also pretty indisputable

Heroic stepmum takes one for team, sticks pot pipe up wazoo

legal...

"Am hoping that UK gov finally sees sense and legalised 6 plants to be grown at home,like many other countries have done,preferably with a system safety check before you can start.."

Which countries are those?

Just fyi, if the cops found your setup over here (Netherlands) then you'd be in jail. Nice Dutch jail, pretty cosy and all, but still jail.

It's tolerated, not legal. So the cops show up (along with the council) and say there has been a complaint, hand over the weed and you get a stern letter (telling you to go to the coffeeshop*) and the fuzz has a wee nosey through your place.

If you are growing "professionally" then you are *not* tolerated, and you'll be charged. The criteria for professional growing is if you have over 5 plants, and/or are using lights. Hence why people seem to think 5 plants is legal.

As for growing it myself, hydro corrals and compost, then a balcony and a watering can. Most annoying thing is some of the local felines get a taste for it. Well, and getting it confiscated a week before harvest.

* my local ones are run by a Moroccan criminal gang or motorcycle gang, so I'm not sure what the council is pushing

40,000 Tinder pics scraped into big data service

Re: Side issue

"Do you _have to_ try to find the owner or can you just walk on by because you have better things to do with your time?"

No, you can just leave it there. It's only if you find something and intend to keep it.

If you find something, make a "reasonable" attempt to locate the owner, then after an amount of time it belongs to you.

So if you find a bag of money (or more realistically, a wallet with cash in it), then handing it in to a cop shop and leaving your details will result in the money going to you if no-one claims it within three months IIRC.

However, if it might be evidence in some other crime, then it can get held for quite a long time. I found an envelope containing about $600 on the side of the road in NZ, and I got to keep it after the cops had it for about 18 months. Well, I got a bank transfer for the amount, since the actual banknotes are still potential evidence.

It's a bit different if someone has abandoned goods. So if a flatmate leaves a fridge when they move out, and make no effort to collect it for two years, then the fridge then belongs to whoever it was left with.

Just delete the internet – pr0n-blocking legislation receives Royal Assent

"The legal porn industry can barely make any money off of it these days"

Source please.

Hollywood still makes plenty of profit, and you can torrent it for "free".

Porn is roughly 5 times the size of Hollywood, and is generally more profitable. Plus all they do is remake shit :)

Just how screwed is IT at the Home Office?

Re: Can anyone explain IR35?

The IR35 changes have not a lot to do with HMRC collecting more revenue. It's about making them look busy while fucking the little guy over.

HMRC (along with most other tax departments) have a quite clear plan for getting more revenue. Hiring investigators, going after the biggest offenders first and enforcing the penalties is guaranteed income. It costs roughly 100k pa to raise an additional 2m pa.

However, the biggest offenders know this, and so tax departments are restrained, cut and fucked around with as much as possible since those big offenders often are greasing the wheels of politics.

So as with any real clusterfuck, it takes politics and vested interests to screw things up.

Re: So how are these aging systems going to handle

"the at least 10x uptick in British citizenship applications by all the long term EU citizens that have married UK citizens, lived here for 20+ years etc but never bothered applying for citizenship as they didn't previously have to?"

Just to be a pedant, they are applying for nationality, as we're all EU citizens. Thus they currently already have citizenship (of the EU) and are of a particular nationality.

Once the UK is out of the EU, then they would be applying for citizenship.

Since the Home Office auto-reply letters get this wrong, I don't expect anyone else to get it right :)

The transferring of citizenship is going to be a fairly big issue for brexit, one which (hopefully) is going to be addressed first to avoid too much disruption. It's also one of those areas where the EU team has at least read the relevant laws and the UK's public pronouncements appear they haven't (or are not interested in the legal niceties).

Essentially the EU is not sure they have the legal power to take away people's citizenship, either individually or en masse. The UK *may* be able to, if it is no longer bound by the ECHR, but that would require some neat timing to achieve. I would imagine that the solution would be in giving people a choice, rather than forcing a particular outcome.

Whatever happens, there is a current rush of applications on either side of the channel to gain nationality prior to any cut off date, which no-one appears prepared for.

Need the toilet? Wanna watch a video ad about erectile dysfunction?

Re: I'm the one that brings a paper towel

"I have an inkling that even sturdy paper toweling must dissolve, eventually. Am I wrong?"

Yes. The advice to only put TP down the bog is for a reason.

"Now I've never known the plumbing to suffer the subsequent 'backup failure'."

Not on your end, no. But unless you dropped a tracking device in there too, then you've got no idea about the downstream effect.

Sewerage systems are for liquids, not solids. Poop and near equivalents (soups, smoothies, vomit) are usually within the systems capability.

Various other unsuitable items get in there too, but are generally accepted that it's pretty hard to stop them. Hair and fat are the obvious ones here, and if you're expecting to put a lot of it in there then you are expected to filter it.

Putting cellulose based products that aren't designed to *immediately* dissolve in water (normal TP) is going to help cause a blockage. It takes several months to decompose paper in ideal conditions. Putting baby wipes/nappies or other polymer based items is even worse, since those don't decompose at all in a helpful timeframe.

Unless there is a real problem with your building plumbing, you indeed will never see the issue. Same as dumping fat into the system, it's very rare to block up an individual connection. But the cumulative effect is what gets the various fatburgs and other joys of the deep.

As for being to scared to throw your shit paper in the bin, just use the sanitary products bin. no-one wants to handle those bits either, and they'll have a half decent bag on it, and a lid.

Oh, and please don't dump paint, motor oil or any of the other items into the waste water systems either. Just because it doesn't fuck up your plumbing doesn't mean it won't fuck up something else.

Hard-pressed Juicero boss defends $400 IoT juicer after squeezing $120m from investors

Re: @MonkeyCee

"Are you the guy who made Tesco rethink the serving suggestion on their chillies? ("Why not toss into a fresh green salad?") "

@ John H Woods: Alas no, Tesco being very good at ignoring anything I say.

My local Lidl is very nice, since I'm apparently the only person who puts stuff in their suggestion box. I thought the manager was having a laugh with me when he said it, but apparently true.

Just to show my awesome health credentials, I've managed to get them to add doughnuts to the bakery section, and bring back the chocolate/praline blocks that Mrs V likes an awful lot.

I am amused by the fact that a suggestion slip with "doughnuts!" being the only thing written on it got a result, along with its follow up "more doughnuts!"

Re: Easy juice? Sounds good to me.

"For those of us that have the time to wander off to the market or grow their own"

You don't have time to go to the store? Or set up some sort of delivery system? Then go to fugging eatery :)

"you want the produce to be fairly fresh, so you need to be buying it every 2nd or 3rd day."

Going to the supermarket once a week and a market/grocer/bloke on side of road once a week doesn't seem too much of a hassle. Lots of stuff is as "fresh"* when canned or frozen, notably berries and legumes.

"I couldn't eat that much veg if I tried."

Try it. Seriously. Eating vegetables isn't that hard, quick boil and nom nom. I even hear carrots and broccoli can be eaten raw, by using the "food processor" of your teeth. If you don't wank about it no-one really cares, apart from the chewing sounds.

"It makes a mess and the machine is a hassle to clean"

You're doing it wrong, much like the rest of your diet ;)

Now I'm not a fan of juicers/blenders, since they appeal to lazy fuckers, and lazy fuckers don't like to wash up. So after you used it (right after, not when you get round to it) fill it with soapy water, run it, then do the same with clean water.

But I'd think you'd be better off just deciding to actually eat some freaking veggies as part of your normal diet.

My main issue with it is that a diet of apples, carrots, spuds, rice and veggies on the turn was what I ate for six months when broke as fuck. So I can still look at the ingredients of a liter of green juice as often being 4-5 days food. Well, the non starch parts anyway.

* in terms of retaining vitamins and minerals

Would you believe it? The Museum of Failure contains quite a few pieces of technology

Re: Kodak Created The First Digital Camera

Sounds about right for Kodak. They certainly where a tech company, originally of the chemical type, but into many other things (lots of imaging etc).

When they went through chapter 11 the patents went for half a billion or so, which would also qualify them as pretty techy :)

Their inkjets are a lot nicer than HP, and don't rape you on the refills. Although a printer could randomly electrocute me and it'd still be better than most HP inkjets :)

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third...

Re: Public wifi?

"I just use a card, like I have for the last 20 years."

Like my better half then eh? :)

I *have* to carry cash, as all the women in my life insist that everywhere takes cards, and are shocked (SHOCKED I tell you) when they discover various discount shops, takeaways, bars, food vans and market stalls don't in fact take whichever flavor of card they have.

Also never had anyone take five grand in cash from me, but have had that happen with a card. You know, with all those security features that allow it to decide that it being used in the Netherlands at 7pm, then two hours later is being used in Jakata. Where the PIN is incorrectly entered nine times, then correctly done....

Card fraud happens so often that it's often only when you are either on a super tight budget, aren't using your card much, or are doing some detailed budgeting do you notice the various weird and wonderful payments that are disappearing out of your account.

Nicking my cash at least requires physical access at the time.

Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled

Re: They walk amongst us

"Simple - any proper homeopathic practitioner (and I have met a number who are qualified GPs)"

Living in the Netherlands is nice for this, Germany too.

Homeopathy is a protected profession here. So you have to be an actual doctor before you can start calling yourself a homeopath. Which is great, since the snake oil sellers have to be quite a bit more careful (still tons of health food shops etc), but the actual shamans have enough medical knowledge that if you are ill and treatable then they will push you towards the correct areas rather than bilk you for more cash.

It appears to be mainly populated by kind, well meaning physicians who are not emotionally capable of dealing with the loss of their patients. Hence they are treating people who are mainly not unwell, just in need of some hand holding and some magic pills.

I've considered starting an online homeopathic pharmacy, you input all your instructions for what you want, then it gets printed onto a label and attached to the vial of sugar pills and sent out. I'll even tap the pills firmly on a red leather pad whilst thinking good thoughts for you :)

Yee-hacked! Fired Texan sysadmin goes rogue, trashes boot business

"The correct answer is that now I'm no longer employed by you, the consultancy rate is (5-10 x previous rate) and you would be happy to help, but given the circumstances, the terms are payment in advance."

You're way too nice :)

Either I'm already there on consultancy rates, in which case it's my summoning cost is being met.

If it's from a previous workplace, then I start with q request for a months salary for even looking at the proposal, and about a months salary = daily rate (or weekly = hourly).

I am no longer surprised when people will throw piles of money at you to solve their shit, who only weeks earlier where bitching about paying you a buck or two more an hour, and how your skills where easily available in the marketplace.

I am still a little shocked at just how quickly they agree. I'm obviously not charging nearly enough....