Posts by Missing Semicolon

Whistleblower cries foul over alleged fuselage gaps in Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Re: Unfortunately Airbus withdrew a book written about its history from Amazon

The Internet never forgets. I wonder if it's "cached" somewhere? That would be an interesting read

Linux Foundation is leading fight against fauxpen source

"Valued at $5Bn" is as a result of there being revenue.

If everybody just downloads the source, there's no revenue.

The problem of making money out of the hosted solution, is that you'd better be much better at it than AWS, or AWS can simply download the source and host it themselves.

Remember, the $5bn came from somewhere - ususally VCs. And they don't just give you money for nothing. Without the VC money, Terraform would still be a college project.

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Re: Time for legislation

"Let's not forget: Whilst "limited liability" protects SHAREHOLDERS from financial fallout of bad decisions, it in no way shape or form legally immunises the MANAGEMENT or board from liabilities accruing from unlawful actions"

So you are the person I can finally sell this bridge to!

MPs ask: Why is it so freakin' hard to get AI giants to pay copyright holders?

Re: 'AI', another nail in the coffin of copyright?

Hogwash.

Just because copying is easier for you and I, does not invalidate copyright. "From which it follows that ready duplication in digital format implies no monetary worth beyond that of storage and transmission. In turn, is implied lack of scarcity." That is an argument of convenience, not fact. Taken to it's logical conclusion, there is no living to be made by any creative endeavour, beyond the craft of the embodying item (statuary, ceramics, woodwork). Really, if it's digitally encodable, there can be no copyright - and thus, no living to be had?

I'm not saying that all copyright is good. The egregious behaviour of the likes of Elsevier should be subject to regulation - especially as the actual content really is free. But all copyright is not bad either.

Re: Begging the question

When you read, you don't copy and store. AI training makes copies of the data in an electronic retrieval system, a process usually explicitly forbidden in the license under which the content is made available for consumption.

Remember, there is no "right" to copy. There is only an explicit grant to do certain things. The law provides for certain carve-outs, but the wholesale copying and storing of content is not "fair use" for example. Publishing content on the internet does not provide an implicit right to copy and re-use.

The propensity of LLMs to be able to reproduce original training material indicates that, in some encoded form, they have a copy (an unlicensed copy) of the original content. The LLM operators' provision of "guardrails" is merely hiding this fact, not disproving it. In fact, I'd go as far as saying the the anti-source material guardrails are simply concealing the evidence of criminality! They really hope that by blocking the ability to reproduce certain content (say, the books by authors in a class-action) they are hoping to convince the court that the original content is not being stored.

D-Link issues rip and replace order for besieged NAS drives

Re: Enabled by hardcoded credentials

I'm sure it pretty well is. Any security hole was present at the point of sale.

I think D-Link thing we believe that software "rots" so that security holes "emerge". We need to remind people that this is not so.

H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid efforts to crack down on abuse

Re: hose out the stable first

For the avoidance of doubt, that's Anna Eshoo, Representative (D-CA 16th District) since 2023.

She's been knocking around California representing various districts (how does that work?) since 1993.

What happened to agility and new business models? Cloud benefits have all gone to IT

"The focus of their cloud efforts, for example, has been disproportionately on improvements to IT, which generate lower rates of value than improvements to business operations. A shift to higher-value cloud use cases in business operations would create significantly more value."

So improving IT is just an overhead, buying toys for the techies - didn't we outsource you suckers yet?

But improving "business" processes (try saying it like the Eagle in Muppet Christmas Carol) is "important".

Never mind that IT improvements generally mean less downtime, better service, and more security.

Tech titans assemble to decide which jobs AI should cut first

Re: Seeing AI making so many mistakes...

As has been seen by the outsourcing fad, and cloudiness, this all works when you don't give a flying .... about the results. AI will be used to automate many functions that we, the proles, make use of. The fact that it does not work will make no difference to the bonuses of the C-suite, so no problem is detected.

Notice that the solution to the poor uptimes of Azure is to shrug. "Cloud down? Computer says no, you can't access your account/perform this critical action". And nobody (nobody important) was harmed.

Feds finally decide to do something about years-old SS7 spy holes in phone networks

Re: As far back as 2007?

"There are already Ofcom rules for presentation numbers, complete with fines of up to £2m (from memory). Problem is a lot of the spoofing is via VoIP, via the Internet and from overseas."

It does not matter where the VoIP number comes from. If the law was applied properly, the rules for presenting calling numbers would be applied to all calls over an operator. The operator would not be able to throw their hands up and go "ugh, Internet" and wash their hands of the problem. Can't prove the veracity of a caller ID? Don't process the call. End of. I know money would be left on the table, but that's what the law is for.

Re: As far back as 2007?

Anyone can provide anything. But the gateways onto an operators network are not just open doors - somebody has to pay for that. So, level 1 of the trace.

It would be simple for "proper" telcos to require that all voip interconnect providers specify a list of valid Caller-IDs on their account. After all, they get allocated a block of numbers, so unless they can specify which are valid, they should be blocked.

Remember, many times when the Caller-ID is fradulent, the actual call originator may not really have the rights to it, so it's an upstream filtering problem.

Now, I know that shell companies and wotnot are a thing. So you just mandate that if the declared originator proves to be fraudulent, then the next organisation up the chain becomes liable. All the way up to the telco.

"Hard"? yes. But with real monetary penalties likely, you'd be amazed how fast the "hard" problems get solved!

UK govt office admits ability to negotiate billions in cloud spending curbed by vendor lock-in

Re: The Unacceptable

I don't think that the new lot have people any more clueful on computery-thing-magic than the current lot.

Google bakes new cookie strategy that will leave crooks with a bad taste

Re: Seriously, author?

If you keep writing application keys in the TPM, the flash will die pretty soon.

OWASP server blunder exposes decade of resumes

The End

Are we at the stage where you must assume that any information entered into any "secure" web signup process will, at some point, be public?

How does civilisation cope with simply no way to definitively identify yourself?

Malicious xz backdoor reveals fragility of open source

Obligatory

XKCD

Red Hat tries on a McKinsey cap in quest to streamline techies' jobs

Closed source

The mundane work is maintaining repos of open source software. These types will simply assume they can just take ownership of it all. Expect requests for licence fees for all rpm-based distros.

Good news: HMRC offers a Linux version of Basic PAYE Tools. Bad news: It broke

Re: It's 2024

Mypy would have found this for you. See above.

Re: Old news

I didn't say that type-annotating Python code was easy :-)

Most stuff (comprehensions, lambdas, etc) work OK. Recent versions of Mypy are also better than old ones.

The "freedom of expression" noobs need reminding that this is professional programming, and any source of improving code quality/shortening QA cycles is a good thing. Right up to writing slightly less dynamic, safer code.

In general, it is about documenting your assumptions ("this parameter has a .foobar() method", "this value might be None/must not be None" for example). If it is impossible to annotate those assumptions, then it may well be impossible to enforce them either. "Optional-poisoning" is Python's "const-poisoning, and requires similar levels of careful thought.

It sounds like your "miserable year" had more to do with your cow-irkers, rather than Python :-)

Old news

Python3 has type annotations. Use those, and Pycharm starts helping you. Better still, Mypy can find your bugs just like a static compiler.

It can get a little tricky to correctly describe what you mean for very dynamic code, but the effect of that is to make you write more "classic"-syled code.

Fujitsu set to be preferred bidder in UK digital ID scheme

Re: Bung received..

Do you really think it's Ministers that get the bungs/directorships/whatever? Go look who actually signs off on these things - it's nobody elected.

Go look down the hall - Whitehall.

This is why things stay approximately the same degree of cr*p whoever is in power.

Fujitsu's 30-year-old UK customs system just keeps hanging on

168M

To look after a system for a couple of years?

Look I know it's all chums, but whose? I don't even think it's the here-today, gone tomorrow elected pols!

Microsoft's first AI PCs Surface with Intel cores and a Copilot key

... or as an utterly unused key to map as the HOST key on Virtualbox.

UN: E-waste is growing 5x faster than it can be recycled

Re: It's inevitable

No, it's the lack of cost in making the thing in the first place that's the problem.

Back when we made our own stuff, the cost of making and repair scaled together. Now it does not. One of the "benefits" of Globalisation.

Nominet to restructure, slash jobs after losing 'major deal'

PDNS contract

So which of the usual suspects have picked that up? Presumably with the attendant lousy performance?

Garlic chicken without garlic? Critics think Amazon recipe book was cooked up by AI

Re: The response, translated

Yes it really is about "until you complain, we'll just keep taking the cash, thanks!". Otherwise, "not our problem kthxgby!"

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

I've heard a suggestion that Greggs is the new Lyons tea house. Cheap, basic, everybody goes, reliable quality (not necessarily "good").

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

Re: Hard to fight the feeling that had this been a regular person

My name is incorrectly spelt in the NHS. I know enough not to even consider trying to update it!

Brits blissfully unbothered by snail-paced mobile network speeds

+1 this.

The people who demand state-run monopolies for services weren't around when you had to wait weeks for a new phone line, longer for an ISDN line, and there was no impetus to allow anything but an expensive-to-rent piece of GPO kit to be connected to the hallowed copper pair that entered your property.

UK awards £1.73M to AI projects to advance net zero goals

No more or less than the other bunch of charlatans. Both consider stuff important that really isn't. Just (some) different things.

It is really depressing.

Virgin Media sets up 'smart poles' next to cabinets to boost mobile network capacity

Re: "digital electricity" technology

Or indeed, safe. HV DC is much less survivable than AC.

Apple to settle class action for $490 million after Tim overcooked China outlook

Re: "the UK's Norfolk Pension Fund"

American company, sued in an American court, for actions in America. The fact that the shareholder is domiciled overseas has no bearing on the matter. If it were otherwise, international investment would cease.

NASA missions are being delayed by oversubscribed, overburdened, and out-of-date supercomputers

Re: Unknown scheduling practices or assumed higher costs

Central storage went so well for KCL, didn't it? I seem to remember that the users were still being told not to use local storage even after the massive lossage?

McDonald's ordering system suffers McFlurry of tech troubles

Re: I refuse to use those touch screen thingies

.... Before ordering something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike food!

Share and Enjoy!

RISE with SAP plan fails to hit go-live date in West of England council

Liability?

If SAP are managing the delivery, why is the council liable for costs due to late delivery?

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Re: Confused

It's not bad.

But M$ don't like it, so it gets rate-limited making requests to the O365 Exchange server. And demands sign-in way more than Oulook does.

Fedora 41's GNOME to go Wayland-only, says goodbye to X.org

Wayland only

Oh, have they finally finished it yet?

Network Rail steps back from geofencing over safety fears

Why not alarm the dangerous thing?

Put a leaky feeder along the track whilst work is in progress. Any one in range of the feeder will get ponged as being in danger.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

Re: Root cause

"The underlying problem is the accessibility of the ducts"

The underlying problem is the ability for morons to get away with pretty well anything, since the Police seem to be overwhelmed.

French government sites disrupted by très grande DDoS

"Voting Trump = Voting Putin"

Blimey, you really did drink the kool-aid, didn't you?

European Commission broke its own data privacy law with Microsoft 365 use

Kicking!

You won't believe how long the grass is that this will be kicked into!

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

Re: The title was too long.

My understanding is that Spirit also do work for Airbus and other manufacturers. And they don't have bits falling off. So the "screw it, ship it" attitude is only for Boeing jobs. Which means what they will be hiding is Boeing either explicitly or on-the-quiet instructing Spirit to skip steps for speed.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

Re: Android has a 70% global market share.

Because Apple users are more valued, as they tend to be richer.

Capita says 2023 cyberattack costs a factor as it reports staggering £100M+ loss

Magically surviving

Why are they getting more business, when it is plain that they can't cope with what they already have, what with firing loads of staff.

They must be taking some important Whitehall Mandarins out to some seriously nice dinners!

GitHub struggles to keep up with automated malicious forks

Why is it possible to script the creation of repos?

Anyone wanting to create that many should be paying for a service somewhere.

If a new repo could only be created by a 2FA-logged-in user manually, at least the volume of fakes would reduce.

Sigh

And this is why we can't have nice things.

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Why do the lawyers want money from Tesla

.. when they were engaged by the shareholders? Surely they should foot the bill?

Whilst they might have won, I don't think that lets you set any arbitrary fee you like.

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden

Re: Excuse

Chinese cars are not cheap because Chinese industry is super-efficient. Whatever the globalists say. They are cheaper because labour costs are low, due to the poverty of the workforce, and the poor employment rights. Parts are cheaper, as the raw materials and processes can be provided without regard to the environment. And the energy costs are almost zero, being provided by subsidised coal-fired power stations.

So, we are simply outsourcing our worker-oppression and pollution to China, and we should recognise that in our tariffs.

New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners

A new solvent.

Is it more or less carcinogenic than the existing solvents? Cause more or less pollution in manufacture and recycling?

72 flights later and a rotor blade short, Mars chopper loses its fight with physics

Re: Why are you linking to Xshitter for photos instead of NASA or JPL???

HTML is much harder to mometize.

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

Re: Consultants

"in-house staff". What in-house staff?