Posts by SolidSquid

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

I mean, the problem here is they aren't singling out people based on performance, it's just across the board redundancies. And as one of the unions pointed out, the number of government workers should really be expected to grow as a proportion of population (since they'd have more data to manage), but the actual numbers haven't shown that. To some extent this could be explained by more efficient processes with computers replacing actual sheets of paper, but 55 years without growth is a long time

Also, if you're just wanting to cut dead weight, why would the dead weight take the redundancy package when they could stay in their cushy govt job until they retire? The ones who'll leave are the ones willing to work at a new position and think the benefits of a govt post don't outweigh the downsides anymore

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: I agree with the majority of the article...

Don't think they said to *ask*, just get them to do it. Best way would be to tell them you don't approve of them using it because it doesn't have the Windows security software that lets you control what content can be accessed online. Watch as they quickly tell all their friends how great/cool Linux is because their parents don't like it and can't control what they do on it (even if that's not necessarily the case)

Elon Musk's X isn't important enough to feel the full force of EU regulation

Re: Why should it be classed as important ?

It kind of replaced Tumblr to an extent for artists, it's kind of hard building an audience without a platform you can easily share artwork on and the big art sites end up with people getting buried. Quote tweets on Twitter made it easier for people's work to be shared while still giving proper citation. There's also a few authors I've followed who used it to give quick updates on where they are with their new books etc.

As far as businesses and stuff? No idea why it'd be relevant beyond there being a lot of people there and them wanting to advertise

Oracle staff say Larry Ellison's fundraiser for Trump is against 'company ethics' – Oracle, ethics... what dimension have we fallen into?

Re: You have (the right) to remain silent

Actually this is pretty much on the money. The first amendment protects speech from the government, but unless it puts you in a protected class (and even then usually within a narrow definition) it doesn't protect you from actions by private entities in response to what you say.

In this case they're arguing his comments violate his employment contract at the company by going against the ethics standards, which if true would make it entirely legal for the company to take action against him (either internal disciplinary action or legal action if that isn't possible for some reason)

US hands UK 'dossier' on Huawei: Really! Still using their kit? That's just... one... step... beyond

> It's not implausible, even, that American spies are concerned their level of covert access to the world's conversations will also become available to Chinese eavesdroppers

Or possibly their concern is that a growth in Chinese equipment being used means that their own covert access will be reduced, regardless of whether the Chinese equipment is being used in the same way

Reusing software 'interfaces' is fine, Google tells Supreme Court, pleads: Think of the devs

Re: Its late stage capitalism at its very finest

The problem is that they quite often buy up and either adopt or shut down the companies that would displace them

Re: maybe

From Google's perspective that doesn't solve the problem, they still have an outstanding court case stating that APIs are copyrightable. Unless they can get that ruling first, buying Oracle to get them to go away would still leave that on the books for future court cases

Twitter: No, really, we're very sorry we sold your security info for a boatload of cash

Re: Well...

Might be why they're trying to claim that no personal data was shared externally, if they can muddy the waters around what "personal" data is they can argue they didn't violate the 72 hour limit

Chef melts under heat, will 86 future deals with family-separating US immigration agencies

Re: Go woke go broke

Yeah, who cares what the employees who keep the company running think about controversial company policies, ignoring them definitely isn't going to backfire in any way

Re: Screw Chef

Eh, it's only a Godwin if it's an ad hominem attack, not if you're referencing the actual legal proceedings and specific behaviours of the Nazis

Re: Screw Chef

"Do you know what's missing from the above? Any mention of housing children like caged animals with little to no; food, clothing, medical care..."

Also missing from above, losing track of where the children end up after leaving the internment facilities. There's been at least a few cases where ICE has lost track of the children, and I think they even refused to give numbers on how many there were they'd lost. This becomes an issue if the parent's case is considered invalid, because the parents are then deported without being reunited with their children

Re: "don't enter the country illegally"

If they want to claim asylum then just showing up is exactly what they need to do, asylum can't be claimed until after they're on US soil. The laws regarding asylum also make allowances for crossing over the border at points other than a recognised border crossing and set conditions under which those detained should be kept (which haven't been abided by, particularly those regarding the detainment of children)

Re: All's well that ends well?

Court cases take time to start up, and given the cases would need to be brought in the US it's difficult for those who can demonstrate they were harmed by it to bring a case, given they've likely already been deported by the time it would go to court

UK ISPs must block access to Nintendo Switch piracy sites, High Court rules

Re: When DNS over https become the main

While this is true, trying to do deep packet inspection of all traffic on the fly would be so unworkable (and bog down connections so badly) it's very unlikely the ISPs would be willing to do it. Against a specific individual and with a court order or as part of a criminal investigation sure, but not against every single connection just to blacklist a few sites

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

Re: Can you explain?

Easier to use than a strongly typed language, the flexibility/range in terms of libraries, the embedded tool for checking code standards (pep8), the ability to write custom C-based libraries for it where speed is a deal breaker and being able to run in a Just-In-Time compiler/environment with high levels of compatibility where C isn't an option all make it an easier sell, especially since it means you don't have to learn a different language when you want to switch the kind of project you're working on

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: Eh?

Same here, and mostly I knew it in regards to the Pulp Fiction kind. Both uses make it kind of awkward suggesting someone uses the software in a professional environment

Re: Eh?

I mean, Paki was pretty commonly used in the 80s as well, doesn't mean it's not racist

Re: Eh?

"Don't care to be insulted? Don't show up in public"

Or fire you, or de-platform you, or switch from your company to a competitor, or re-brand your software as long as the licence allows

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: So, to sum up. . .

Referendum said a majority wanted brexit, but even then the campaign talked about it with regards to a deal, not no deal. Now that we have the actual options which could be reached given the red lines the Conservatives set for negotiations (no deal, May's deal or no brexit), we could put to a second referendum to see what option the public favours

Also, parliament explicitly didn't derogate the decision via the referendum. They set up the referendum to be advisory, it was supposed to give an indication of what the leanings of the public were but not be legally binding on them

Low Barr: Don't give me that crap about security, just put the backdoors in the encryption, roars US Attorney General

Re: ...mechanisms that can be used by investigators...

Well obviously you already have Five Eyes countries, who can already get any other intelligence information gathered, and the Nine and Fourteen Eyes groups as well, if slightly reduced. Oh, and of course you have to monitor the middle east, so communications there would need to be monitored by an ally. Saudi Arabia maybe?

Hope to keep your H-1B visa? Don't become a QA analyst. Uncle Sam's not buying it: Techie's new job role rejected

I'd be curious what this single page of jargon was. It's entirely possible that's exactly what they did, but equally it could be they simply didn't understand the technical aspects of the job and didn't bother to ask for clarification

Office 365 verboten in Hessen schools: German state bans cloudy Microsoft suite on privacy grounds

Re: "Office 365 [is] not compliant with the EU's General Data Protection Regulations"

Because the German government, when putting GDPR into law, went for an enhanced version rather than the minimum required to fulfil it, giving people additional protections. Other countries don't have it because the other countries governments haven't been willing to do that

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

I'll be honest, I wasn't even aware this was something Mozilla was intending to roll out as a feature for Firefox until this shit storm hit. Now I'm looking at the advantages of it and thinking it might be worth a switch

Re: Dear Police

Or for being cut like the fire brigade when he was London mayor

Not all heroes wear capes: Contractor grills DXC globo veep on pay rises, offshoring, and cuts to healthcare help

"Magic" is deceiving someone so they believe what you want them to

Re: "the workforce doesn't carry the hopes and dreams of shareholders on their back"

Even if they don't explicitly cut wages, no pay rise for years and no automatic raises to match inflation effectively results in a pay cut every year

'It’s not a surveillance program'... US govt isn't going all Beijing on us with border face-recog, official tells Congress

Re: It's not a surveillance program

Pretty much this. "We're not running the database against any other systems" doesn't mean "We're letting other people run their systems against the database" isn't also true

Chinese government has got it 'spot on' when it comes to face-recog tech says, er, London's Met cops' top rep

"I personally wouldn’t have any problem with it whatsoever because I'd like to think they're doing a great job and trying to catch criminals and terrorists and get them off our streets."

Head of the London Met doesn't think police would treat him unfairly if stopped. In other news, water is wet

Trouble in paradise: Just a day after G20 love-in, Japan throttles chip part exports to South Korea

Re: There should be a law against.....

The issue is that it was a long time ago, but Japan has largely denied a large proportion of it even happened and a lot of people in Japan (at least in part due to propaganda efforts by the government at the time) don't believe they did anything beyond occupying territory they wanted to annex

BOFH: What's Near Field Implementation? Oh, you'll see. Turn left here

Re: BOFH really is becoming more userfriendly

If they're not a user anymore then he doesn't have to be friendly to them

Japan drops banhammer on drunk-droning for the sake of public safety

Re: "Drink and dive"

The difference there is that you're only putting yourself at risk, not other people. Still not a good idea though

No backdoor, no backdoor... you're a backdoor! Huawei won't spy for China or anyone else, exec tells MPs

Re: No laws?

You wouldn't end up in Guantanamo, but you might get a national security letter which instructs you to provide information and binds you to keep quiet about the existence of that instruction, refusal to cooperate with either of which can lead to jail time

Auditors slam FBI for shoddy testing of facial-recog tech. But no big deal. It only has 641m images on its systems

"and maintains that face scans can enhance public safety if used properly"

If the FBI has refused to act on several recommendations by the GAO to ensure it doesn't violate people's rights and that it reports data accurately, no amount of rules built around usage will allow it to be used "properly"

"To date, we have not had any violations or notice from the public that they feel like their rights are violated"

How many people have been scanned by it vs how many *know* they've been scanned by it? And how many are told they were initially identified with facial recognition if they're arrested? The FBI is notorious for keeping it's methods quiet, and requiring police forces they give access to those methods keep quiet as well. Plus, whatever they do is never going to catch false negatives. Nobody is going to walk into a police station and say "yeah, I was the criminal but your software didn't pick me out", so there's going to be massive biases created there as well (beyond the existing bias against anyone who isn't white caused by sampling issues)

WikiLeaks boss Assange acted as a foreign spy, Uncle Sam exclaims in fresh rap sheet

"It also noted that WikiLeaks published "the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to US State Department diplomats around the world.""

I could be wrong, it's been a fair while since the documents were released, but didn't he (or wikileaks at least) offer to retract the names of anyone who might be put at risk and the state department refused to assist with it because it would lend credibility to the leak?

Upgrade refuseniks, beware: Adobe snips away legacy versions of its Creative Cloud apps

Re: To be fair to Adobe ....

While that might be true, it doesn't address the issue of people running on older systems (windows 7 and 8). Also, there was a recent price increase which people may have been reluctant to agree to and, while it might not be intended, this kind of gives the impression that Adobe is strong arming people into agreeing to the price increase). Just because they don't have a competitors, doesn't mean they can just do what they like (abusing a monopoly in an industry is generally frowned upon)

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

It's a call and response, if you're Glaswegian then standard response is NAHYIGHT

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

When even lawyers are advising against paper copies you *know* you've gone off the deep end

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

Re: There is quality

Without them being able to gather sufficient evidence to prove those above the PHB knew about it anyway

Oh dear. Secret Huawei enterprise router snoop 'backdoor' was Telnet service, sighs Vodafone

Re: Catflaps...

The internet is a series of tubes with catflaps in them?

There's NordVPN odd about this, right? Infosec types concerned over strange app traffic

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

For the FBI at least, there's a fair few articles suggesting that Cisco has at least acknowledged that the backdoors existed (https://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-removed-its-seventh-backdoor-account-this-year-and-thats-a-good-thing/), although no confirmation that they were FBI driven. Outside of that though I'm not aware of any such thing outside of China, which seems primarily targeted at the internal rather than external market

Finally, after years of dunking on Magic Leap, El Reg's Kieren tries out the techno hype goggles. And the verdict...

Got to admit, I was surprised at that. Think my current pair cost me £20 and they've lasted a good few years

From what I understand, it's not just Europe. Luxottica (who I'm assume you're referring to) also trade heavily in North America, as well as having a presence in most other areas of the world

Naming your company 101: Probably best not to have the word 'Oracle' anywhere near branding

After the traditional lake/river boat I take it? A nice reference to the old canal systems which were commonly used for transportation?

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

Re: Tsk...

Nah, you're mixing the Vote Leave campaign, which was the main one and fairly public about their finances for a political group, with groups like Leave.EU which also supported Brexit but did so independently and have provided no information on where their funding came from

Re: What I don't understand

Apparently the SNP tabled an amendment which would require a 60% threshold, which was rejected, but other than that there was no actual discussion about what numbers would be required to trigger anything to happen. It was after the fact parliament decided a simple majority was sufficient to push for Article 50

Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave? @Snowy

Given most people pushing for the referendum are pushing for one which is legally binding, you would just have one more which would be based around the clear options we have now. Given MPs voted out the option of a no-deal brexit, this would likely mean either May's deal or no brexit, which is likely why groups like ERG are opposed to the idea (rather than worrying about democracy), since they seem to want a no deal brexit and running down the clock is the only way they can get it now

Re: Vote Leave fined for promoting Brexit

You're right that this is how electons/referendums generally work. However I'd point out that framing it as an advisory vote rather than a binding one may have lead to a larger number abstaining from voting than would otherwise have been the case, as it's possible that people would have seen it as a pointless excercise and parliament would just do what they wanted to anyway (rather than blindly following it without even doing any planning prior to invoking Article 50)

Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave?

It's not really another or a first vote. The previous vote was essentially a vote on invoking Article 50, this vote would be on which of the options we currently have should be taken, or if we should withdraw article 50 and do the actual analysis which should have followed the first vote before we actually invoked A50

Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave?

It's not just saying another vote would be binding, it's parliament explicitly writing the bill to make the referendum legally binding. The previous one was supposed to be advisory and was explicitly not written to be binding (this was changed to avoid an amendment which would make the threshold 60%)

I'd agree that both sides should rely on evidence/facts though and that the law should be followed. Given behaviours by certain groups during the last referendum there should definitely be very close scrutiny of how they campaign. Having it be legally binding isn't just stirring the pot though, it's at least partly intended to counter the fear that Remainers would just keep pushing for new referendums until they got the result they wanted, something which at least some Brexiteers have suggested is a reason why they oppose a second referendum

Wondering why 'Devin Nunes herp-face' was trending online? Here's the 411: House rep sues Twitter for all the rude stuff tweeted about him

Re: But he actually has a case...

FB and Google are going to be watching this and laughing while eating popcorn, none of what you've described is illegal or a violation of safe harbor rules