Posts by crayon

OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows

Re: A whole fricken OS just to print

If there is enough demand, some enterprising soul could put together the minimum OS needed to operate the printer and package it into an easy to deploy "one-click" format. Yes it is still a whole fricken OS, but most probably going to be a lot smaller than an HP printer driver for Windows - last time I had to install one was back in 200X and it weighed in at not much under 500MB.

As for security concerns about running a whole fricken OS - this is running under Windows! With appropriate settings you could have the guest OS only allow connections from the host OS (and have host share the printer - so other systems on the network need not have access to the guest), and once setup do not allow the guest access to the internet (once it's working there is no imperative to update the guest).

Microsoft gives away '$400m in cloud support' to Ukraine

Re: NATO -vs- Russia

"Now you are just saying that they did hit "some" Russiand targets. You are not actually telling how it is underperforming."

As you're having trouble inferring what was implied, "some" because most of the projectiles from Nato's game changing wunderwaffes were shot down.

"No they didn't. Those mass graves in Russia occupied territories contained people garroted and mostly shot in the head. By Russians."

They are using Himars to deliberately target civilians, just as they have been using artillery to target civilians for 8 long years and continue to do so. Those "mass graves" in Liman that the Ukrainian regime showed as proof of Russian barbarity? And compliant media disseminated those blatant lies? Did you even see any of the videos or pictures? Each of the "mass" graves was marked with a crude cross, and under each cross was one corpse. Does that look like a mass grave to you? Those corpses were of those dead Ukrainian soldiers whom their comrades left behind, and refused to collect even when the Russians offered safe passage for them to do so. It was Russian soldiers who buried those corpses and where identification was possible, scratched the names of the fallen onto those crosses. In return for Russian humanity the criminal Ukrainian regime and despicable Nato media turned it around to accuse Russia of war crimes.

And do you know why Ukrainians very rarely collect their dead? Some believe the tripe about Valkyries swooping down from the sky to revive the fallen so they can rise again to fight their enemy. More practically the Ukrainian regime does not want the dead to be collected and returned home to be buried, because if they're not confirmed dead then they don't need to pay compensation to the dead's families. These are the kind of values that the EU are duping/forcing their citizens into paying the Ukrainians to fight for.

"It is a war crime by UN definition."

If the UN wants to prosecute there is a near limitless list of war crimes that Nato countries - both individually and collectively - have committed. It appears that Biden's guilt (and that of the collective US) have surfaced to haunt him when he blurted out Fallujah when talking about Kherson.

Re: NATO -vs- Russia

"The US supplied HIMARS systems have been performing very well and it's the Russian Soviet era hardware and battle field tactics that are massively underperforming."

When they were first deployed they did score a few hits and propaganda points by destroying some Russian arms depots and such. Russia responded by dispersing their arms depots, hunting down and destroying himars units - in which they have been quite successful killing more than half the units sent. Ukraine, per Nato training, responded by targeting more civilians.

"Most damaging attacks Russia has been able to do seems to have been done with the Iranian kamikaze drones on the civilian infrastructure targets. Pathetic, really."

Most damaging attacks on both Ukrainian manpower and equipment have been and will continue to be the good old artillery. The increased attacks by Russia on the Ukraine's electricity distribution network is a response to the high profile terrorist attacks carried out by the Ukraine - these are the ones reported and applauded by Nato media (the low profile terrorist attacks such as the deliberate shelling of civilians have been studiously ignored by Nato media for years). Ukrainian trains, running on electricity, are the main means of transporting troops and equipment to the front lines, hence the electricity distribution system is a valid military target.

Re: NATO -vs- Russia

The majority of Nato aid is for optics. The main aim is to get rid of old Soviet era hardware to be replaced with overpriced and underperforming Nato gear supplied by the usual war profiteers. The secondary aim is battle test stuff like NASAMS - although it has been deployed for years, Nato hasn't had an opportunity to test their air defence systems, because they're not needed when you're Freedom Bombing wedding parties.

Chipmakers cripple products to dodge US China ban

Re: Restrict Export, Save Peace

You're confusing high end weaponry with high tech weaponry.

"… need to restrict the supply of petrol to China and Russia"

How exactly do you propose to do that? Right now, even after 8 months into Russia's SMO, part of the US' supply of diesel is dependent on the continuing imports from Russia.

If Russia is willing to sell and China is willing to buy, who is willing to stop them? And with which army?

Re: Chinesium

We're in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, you appear to be living in the 20th century. You want quality and you can afford to pay then there are plenty of manufacturers in China who can do quality. You want cheap stuff and don't mind poorer quality, there are plenty of manufacturers in China who can do cheap stuff and poorer quality. IOW you get what you pay for. Apple can afford to pay so they get quality stuff - disclaimer, have never owned any Apple products, just assuming that their high prices has some correlation to their quality.

You need to get your skates on, otherwise the 21st century is going to leave you behind.

Twitter begs some staff to come back, says they were laid off accidentally

No idea who Musk is, but he must be doing something right if his antics can rile such <heavysarcasm>esteemed personages</> like the EU's internal market commissioner Thierry Breton and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk into making foolish threats and silly statements. What has Volker Türk been doing lately about the open air prison camp in the Gaza Strip?

"a tacit acknowledgement that the world's richest man's decision to gut the biz may have been hasty"

Author seems to be confusing the above opinion with "a tacit acknowledgement that the world's richest man's decision to layoff certain members of staff may have been hasty".

"Former staffers have already filed a lawsuit against Twitter alleging WARN Act violations,"

Reports from elsewhere says that people redundantised were in accordance with WARN, and some reports even claim that people were given 3 months pay instead of the 60 days/2 months. Does the Reg have anything to say about those reports? Or is "Like many of the layoff reports from Twitter and elsewhere, it's been hard to get confirmation of hard numbers and details, and this layoff recall is no different." the best that can be offered?

"while others who were dumped were actually necessary to Musk's $8-a-month fee-speech future for Twitter."

Whilst they may have been tasked to implement such a feature had they stayed/not laid off, their services are by no means "necessary" as there are no shortage of people that Twitter could hire to implement said feature.

All the US midterm-related lies to expect when you're electing

"Didn't the e-mail from the Democrats National Convention that was published by hackers reveal that the DNC had actively worked to sabotage the Bernie Sanders campaign - in favor of Hillary Clinton?"

Yes, but with compliant media they managed to change the narrative to "the Russians did it (leaked emails)" and their (DNC) misdeeds were pointedly ignored.

As summarised here:

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html

The head honcho of the company given the task of investigating the leaks admitted there was zero evidence of exfiltration (by Russians or otherwise).

Sizewell C nuclear plant up for review as UK faces financial black hole

Re: Daft

"It was of course remarkably stupid to sell that gold when the price was low."

Calm down, it was probably Venezuela's gold that was sold. When Venezuela asked for their gold back the bandit regime told them to get lost.

Re: Daft

Yeah, but do the HP switches come with free upgrades courtesy of the CIA/FBI/NSA ?

China reminds world shock and ore can hurt tech supply chains

Good luck when the propaganda and BS hits the fan of reality and facts.

When Germany went to Qatar with their begging bowl, Qatar honoured them and sold Germany 1 single boatload of gas - most of Qatar's output are allocated to long term contracts.

As for contracts with US companies, sure, as-long-as-it-is-economically-viable-because-of-our-high-production-costs, and you need to apply for a license if you want to export goods made with our Freedom gas.

And before someone jumps in with disinformation about contracts with Russian energy companies - there have been no instances where Russian companies have reneged on their contracts. An example of BS: there was an article with the headline "Russia weaponises energy exports" (or some variant of that), first part of article quotes Annalena the warmonger Baerbock complaining about the reductions in supply through NS1, after much grandstanding rhetoric and BSing, buried near the end of the article is the admission that Gazprom is fulfilling the terms of their contracts and are supplying as much as had been contracted for. This is one of the many propaganda techniques that Nato media uses - BS headline, maybe bury the truth in the article somewhere, or just have a 100% BS article as well.

The high prices of Russian gas that EU customers have been paying? That's because of EU games. A few years ago the EU decided that in order to comply with "free market principles" (aka, "our speculators want to make money off Russian gas"), the long term fixed price contracts with Gazprom had to include a portion of spot market pricing and forced Gazprom to comply, which they did - despite Putin warning them at the time that it would lead to higher energy prices. So EU gas users are paying high prices, speculators are raking it in, and Russia gets the blame - champagne for everyone (well not for the pleb consumers).

Maybe you have a non-standard definition of whipping boy.

Trump urged (ordered) Germany to stop NS 2. He boasted that the US would supply the EU with all Freedom gas they need.

When shit hits the fan, not only are the US merely capable of exporting a tiny fraction of the gas that the EU needs to replace Russian gas, but they cost 3-4 times what the Americans themselves are having to pay domestically (FYI that is what Macron is saying, not Pravda). It is a fact that worldwide there isn't enough spare capacity to replace more than a fraction of Russian gas - if EU leaders thought they could replace Russian gas just by saying so then they are either stupid or deluded (they're both).

Even if right now they are able to buy enough gas to replace Russian gas, there isn't the infrastructure (not enough LNG vessels) to physically transport the gas to the EU.

And even if there were enough LNG vessels, there isn't enough terminal capacity in the EU to unload and regassify the gas.

It would take years to persuade non-Russia countries to ramp up production. Countries like Qatar that have ample reserves and could possibly expand extraction require that the EU sign long term contracts, which the EU will find hard to do because they are supposed to transition to "green" energy. Without long term contracts which country would risk investing for the sake of the EU's short term needs?

In short, EU leaders have lied to the sheep (technically voters) when they say they're going stop buying Russian gas/oil. And they have lied to the sheep when they say they're going price cap Russian energy.

They have 2 choices:

Drop sanctions on Russia and hope Russia is as magnanimous as Nato is malignant.

Or suffer de-industrialisation (EU industries are already relocating to the US - which is what the US wanted all along - and to China) and face internal unrest over increasing inflation and unemployment - in which case the EU becomes regime changed without Russia without having to lift a finger as everything has been self-inflicted by the EU's own sanctions. When EU industries are on their last legs you can bet your bottom € that American vultures will be swooping in and picking them up for a song.

Even now, before the EU's full boycott of Russia oil/gas have kicked in, they are having to supplement imports by buying Russian gas through China, and Russian oil through India and pretending that it is Chinese gas and Indian oil they're buying. Neither China or India produce enough gas or oil for their own domestic consumption - but if the EU are desperate enough to pay a premium then Chinese and Indian companies aren't against making a quick buck. Don't think the EU can rely on these supplementary imports because they are not scalable.

"Russia kept reducing the supply with various excuses and suggestions"

The initial "needing to be serviced" turbine was returned to a particular company for it to be serviced. After some Oscar winning grandstanding by Canada, the turbine was eventually servied, but instead of being returned directly from Canada to Russia, it made a stop-over in Germany.

Germany tried to persuade Gazprom to take back the turbine, but the paperwork indicated that the company returning the turbine was not the same company that Gazprom had contracted with to service the turbine. Would you receive goods that had dodgy paperwork? Gazprom had standards to adhere to so they didn't. It became even more farcical when Olaf "offended liverwurst" Scholtz visited the site where the turbine was stored, "inspected" it, and pronounced it was functional and ready to be returned to Gazprom, and begged Gazprom to take it back.

Other turbines used on Nordstream 1 were due to have scheduled maintenance as well (and Siemens themselves have confirmed that at least on of them was leaking lubricant or something). But given that the issue with the first turbine was still not resolved, it was decided to take them offline rather than return them for servicing.

Which left Nordstream 1 operating at 10% or something, before the terrorists attacked both Nordstreams.

"They then blew the Nordstream 1 pipelines."

Sure, and next the propaganda outlets that you read will inform you that Putin committed suicide because he was losing in the Ukraine.

In the hours before the Nordstreams were attacked, at least 6 US aircraft were circling back and forth between the 2 points were pipelines were severed. Days before the attack Nato had one of their numerous warmongering "drills", at least one US Navy vessel stayed behind after the drills, and only left shortly before the terrorist attacks. A UK "science research" vessel was known to be operating in the area and left days before the terrorist attack. The whole of the Baltic Sea is closely monitored by Nato, in particular the stretch between Sweden and Denmark where the terrorist attack took place (don't want Russian submarines to pass through unnoticed). Given all the Nato hardware operating in the area of the terrorist attacks, WTF were they doing that 1) enabled Russia to carry out the attack 2) Can find no evidence that Russia did it. If they are that incompetent they may as well commit collective suicide now.

Sweden had their own investigation on the incident, but they're not sharing the result. Ditto for Denmark. Germany announced that they have some information, but they cannot disclose it publicly, because it would affect their national security.

Now if these 3 countries had evidence pointing to Russia, why are they all keeping quiet?

They all have a record of making evidence free accusations against Russia. So why the silence now?

"The Middle Kingdom reminded the world of that fact after Australia's minister for resources, Madeleine King, on Tuesday delivered a speech in which she noted China's dominance:"

So King delivered a speech noting "China's dominance", after propagandising it becomes "China reminds the world ..." (in a sinister threatening tone).

Just to remind the world of the facts, "rare" earths aren't that rare and are found everywhere. The only reason China dominates supplies at this time is that extracting these rare earths is a dirty business that most other countries don't want to dirty their hands with, leaving China to do the dirty work.

"And indeed China will – for as long as it makes sense to do so."

Of course, as long as it makes sense and is mutually beneficial.

Some countries do things even when it doesn't make sense, like the EU cutting back on imports of Russian oil when ordered to do so by the US, whilst at the same time the US actually increased imports of Russian oil. And then the EU makes nonsensical demands of India telling her to stop importing Russian oil when Indian imports of Russian oil are a fraction of what the EU imports from Russia. For once the Indian FM did a sensible thing and told the EU officials where they could stuff it (in diplomatic terms).

Twitter employees sue over lack of 60-day layoff notice

Re: Idiot dot com'ers..someone not in the Bay Area I'd guess..

First half of article brings up an irrelevant discussion of "pricing oil/gas in X-currency" to cloud the issue - the issue being the payment for oil/gas in USD.

And stating "There is absolutely nothing to prevent Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or any other oil producer ..." doesn't make it true.

Russia will be banging another nail into the coffin of USD denominated trade when their non-USD based commodities trading platforms come online, soon.

Re: Idiot dot com'ers..someone not in the Bay Area I'd guess..

"Why does this, this unsustainable debt, not affect the USA too? It does. Debt will be the undoing of the USA. Sooner or later other countries will not want to trade using dollars (we already see this for various reasons)."

It doesn't affect the US because of the petro-dollar. A bargain was made with the Middle East energy exporters to sell their oil/gas in USD and they will be protected from regime change. Iraq started selling for € and Saddam was hanged, Libya planned to sell for African Dinar and Gaddafi was buggered to death. When most world trade is carried out in USD, the US Fed can run the printing presses 24/7 [1] without collapsing the USD. It can run up huge budget deficits (~30T and counting) without serious consequences - let the next government worry about it.

The day of reckoning is getter nearer, when the US loses the power to conjure up USD without the attendant consequences then the US economy will collapse. The only question is whether they will go quietly or take the world down with them.

[1] figuratively speaking, in reality - in BOFH-speak - it's just <TAPPITY-TAP> <CLICKETY-CLICK> <ENTER>, and now there is an extra 1T in social security for the weapons industry, another 500B for regime change operations, 100B for Ukraine (but they're kickbacks deductable), 100K for health, ...

Hong Kong wants to be the world’s home for virtual assets

Re: This Is A Joke?

Don't let the facts cloud your ignorance.

FDI into China 2019 (141B), 2020 (149B), 2021 (180B)

HK 2019 (73B - for much of the year it was mired in protests and riots)

2020 (134B - despite or because of National Security Law enacted),

2021 (144B)

Taiwan 2019 (8B), 2020 (6B), 2021 (5B)

Singapore 2019 (106B), 2020 (75B), 2021 (99B)

Of course you're within your rights to argue that those people aren't in their right minds and only you are.

US chip industry worried it may lose out to rivals over China ban

Re: "some US companies are alarmed at the amount of revenue they may lose"

"Not one semiconductor company or supplier has agreed with this moronic Trump Biden Nancy Kerrigan Kneecapping policy of these stupid politicians."

Correct, up to "these stupid politicians"

Stupid politicians only carry out orders, they don't make policy. Before Trump became president, do you think he had heard of Huawei and knew what they did? Chances are that even among Reg readers, a non-insignificant fraction didn't know much about Huawei at that time.

When a new president moves into the WH they are presented with an agenda of the things they should achieve during their term. If they are good and can tick off most of it they're allowed a 2nd term. If they are bad and actively oppose it then they might find themselves disgraced like Nixon. If they're really bad then they might be JFK'ed.

Elon Musk reportedly outlines horrible Twitter layoff process

"Yeah, sorry, Elon: looks like not everyone is observing those policies right now."

Just fire them, ……… again, if necessary.

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

Re: Psychology

The version of Android that came with Samsung's Note 3 had a similar bug (not saying it's a Samsung problem, it is an Android problem).

When an app wants your location, you're asked something along the lines of:

Allow "dodgy app" to access your location?

You are given a choice of Yes / No, and separately "Remember my choice". If you select No then "Remember my choice" is disabled.

Instead of putting up with that nonsense I installed lineageos on all 3 of my Note 3s. I bought a bunch of them second-hand because they were one of the last Samsung models that had a removeable battery, I would have gone for Note 4s but there were stories about the emmc dying.

Never mind the Saudis: Here's a new OPEC for EV battery metals

"I don't think China actually tried anything of the sort, but the 'yellow peril' types were adamant that they were. China didn't try it because contestable monopolies are contestable, as you say."

They did something smarter. They consolidated several rare earths companies into a single entity and based it in Xinjiang. Now the US will have to certify that that company's products are free from slave labour and whatever other nonsense that the US thinks of, or stop importing.

China promises its digital currency will offer 'controllable anonymity'

"Had those tourists had wallets full of actual money instead of plastic cards they wouldn't have had a problem, would they?"

You do know that most countries have restrictions on how much cash you can carry through customs?

And Russian holiday makers spend a lot more money than your average cheapskate European holiday maker.

And if it was known that every Russian holiday maker was carrying wads of cash, they would be relieved of it by some shady Turks soon after leaving the airport.

So no, cash is not a solution.

To make a point of how lawless Russia is - it was recently announced that even after pulling out of Russia, BP was entitled to dividends of $700million for 2H2021 I believe. Those dividends have been placed into a bank account ready for BP to claim at their leisure.

In contrast to the lawful EU which after illegally stealing Russia's assets are now trying to legalise said robbery.

At the time Canada "froze" those people's account, for those people affected it may as well have been expired.

"Obstructing public highways and trying to cause a national supply crisis is not the behaviour of people who have any sincere interest in "freedom", they deserved far, far worse."

in 2019 HK's demonstrations, protests, riots went on for close to a year. They blockaded multiple thoroughfares on and off for months, they blockaded the airport multiple times, invaded and defaced the Legislative Council (Nancy the hag Pelosi called it a beautiful sight, but when Freedom Fighters invaded Capitol Hill, the Hag called them secessionists and demanded blood). They firebombed police stations and MTR stations. One police officer was shot through the leg with an arrow - the perp was merely arrested and not gunned down as would've happened in the liberal US. For all that, the HK government never had to resort to blanket freezing of people's bank accounts (yes there had been accounts frozen, but they were targetted and limited to ringleaders, and didn't affect your random off the street supporters).

So in your opinion, how much worse do you think those HK rioters deserved?

"You might like to reflect on why so many wealthy Russians store their money abroad in the first place."

Because most of them effectively stole the money. Many of them "made" their money during the Yeltsin years when valuable state assets were sold for peanuts and proceeds were laundered in the West.

Putin is on record saying that those wealthy Russians abroad who are now having their assets stolen by the West deserves no sympathy.

Remember all the disinformation about Putin having squirrelled away billions? It turns out that he wisely kept his billions of ill-gotten dollars/pounds/yuan in Russia otherwise you would be hearing all over the fake news media that Putin's billions have been frozen/confiscated/stolen.

"Money that rots away, if sitting still too long - that is pure evil."

Absolutely. But you don't need a digital currency for that. NATO countries illegally expired hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian assets in the blink of an eye. Now Ursula Vondof Lying wants to create the framework to make that illegal action legal. Freedom loving Canada expired the bank accounts of people who supported the freedom truckers.

"In short, CBDC is not a solution to any problem faced by normal individuals. It's at best a waste of time and at worst a tool for total control & oppression on a scale never before seen."

Tell that to the Russian tourists who had been planning on holidaying in Turkey and pay for their stay with their Mir cards. After the US leaned on those Turkish banks accepting Mir cards they stopped accepting them. For some reason Erdogan has kept rather quiet about that affair, and so far diddly squat from him. Now if Russian had a digital currency system in place it would make it harder for the US to interfere with commerce in other countries. That is what China, Russia and other like-minded countries are aiming for - neutralising the US' toxic weaponisation of the USD.

If you think 5G is overhyped, wait till you meet 5.5G

Re: If we had not kicked out Huawei

"Are people REALLY this stupid?"

Yes, you are, at least.

For those complaining about there being no difference to 4G, the article helpfully points out that:

"In fact, as far as the UK goes, 5G services are still effectively being delivered by bolting 5G radio antennas to the same network infrastructure used for existing 4G services."

“But it’s important to remember 5G was first trialled in the UK just three years ago, so this technology is really still in its infancy. We’re still only scratching the surface of what it can do,” he added.

3 years most countries that "had" 5G were also just trialling it. But many of those countries trialling it back then have by now built large and functioning networks.

This whole article reeks of sour grapes wrt Huawei, and poor excuses for why 5G in the UK is in a sorry state. The number one reason is that the UK banned the most suitable supplier of 5G because Huawei refused to put in the backdoors demanded by USUK.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

"Whut? No-one except Iran, NK, etc wants more plutonium. The existing nuclear powers have a glut."

So why not ship it over to them. In the case of Iran it kills two birds with one stone - your nuclear waste is taken care of, and Iran doesn't need to run those centrifuges that the US and Israel seems to be so upset about.

"If they decide that they are going to build something then they just do it, and nobody protests because they'd be beaten unconscious and then sent off to court, where they'd either get sent for forcible re-education at best."

Unlike the British road to development, they broke the fingers of Indian weavers so their high quality products would not compete with lower quality products from Britain's newly industrialised textile mills. Or the USA who stole the land from the Native Americans and worked the land with slaves from Africa.

"I suppose it might look superficially impressive at how much they've built, right up until you look at how it's been done and the build quality of what's gone up and how quickly it's likely to come back down again."

Not sure what your point is in linking video, except to prove that China is not only competent in constructing buildings but they are also pretty good at demolishing them as well.

"Central command and control is great at doing things and maximising output, but really, really awful when you realise that 70% of the output is faulty and would fail a QC process. (hence why it's there isn't one because it would embarrass somebody) and nobody can protest anything at any point so there is no self correction process in the system."

So with all the new construction that have been going on on China for the past 30-40 and at 70% faulty rate where are all the stories of buildings in China tumbling down? There should be thousands falling down each and every day. Do you even believe in your own bullshit? At one point Shanghai was reported to have had more cranes in operation than the rest of the world put together - not sure how true that was. I know for a fact that in some places even constructing a low rise residential building requires local government inspectors to sign off on each particular stage of construction. If in future that building was found to have been sub-standard and or in breach of building regulations then the official(s) who signed off on the relevant work will be held responsible.

Kioxia warns of potential cost of US chip policy over China

Re: You're probably right

"But Chinese Jet engines aren't, I'm told, quite up to best in the world standards."

Right now they are not state of the art. But they are adequate and getting better. The most important thing is that as they are domestically designed and produced there is little that outside forces can do to disrupt their production.

Cutting off China's access to chip making technology now is about as effective as bolting the proverbial stable door. China has reached a tipping point now where if they are denied certain technologies they are in a position to develop it themselves. It may take years, but once they've mastered the technology they have a huge domestic market to sell to plus the 6+ billion people in the rest of the world who are sick of being dictated to by the west. Have a look at the EU's energy policy with regards to Africa - EU officials have no qualms begging African countries to sell them oil and gas, but they have ostracised and will not provide loans or tech know how to African countries who are building infrastructure to provide other African countries with oil/gas - because it's,.... not green and African countries should be moving to renewables (and leave the oil/gas for the EU).

Federal bans aren't stopping US states from buying forbidden Chinese kit

Thank you troll for your contribution.

"That is incompetence ,not malice."

Do you have a link that even hints at Huawei's malice?

"There is a difference of having security issues in your hardware/software due to mistake than the CCP forcing you to put in vulnerabilities."

So far there is zero evidence that the CCP is forcing Huawei or any other Chinese company to put in vulnerabilities. But we do know that US Govt officials have put in backdoors in Cisco gear. If they can do it once, they can do it twice. And if they can do it twice they can keep doing it.

"So despite me not wanting Chinese kit, we're still stuck with their CCTV cameras cause they are cheaper than the competition."

Bloody hypocrite?

China doesn’t need to take Taiwan’s fabs to escape US trade bans

China's policy has always been, still is, and will be on a peaceful reunification. Unless the Taiwan side does something silly like declare de jure independence, in which case China's anti-secession laws gives it the right to use force in response.

Deng Xiaoping said something along the lines of "let's shelf the Taiwan problem for now, our generation may not have the wisdom to solve it, leave it to a future, wiser, generation". It's patently obvious that the current leader of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, isn't one of the wiser ones. Her provocative and ultimately futile and self-defeating policies are the root cause of the rise in tensions.

Even Elon Musk knows this (or maybe he's just looking out for his factory in Shanghai).

Big win for Big Tech as Indian IT minister signals reversal of data sovereignty plan

When a country loses their sovereignty, what are they left with?

India banned dozens of apps owned by Chinese companies because of "privacy" concerns. Compulsive data slurpers like Alphabet and Meta are welcomed.

India should get a backbone and grow its own internet companies. It ought to have the talent and definitely has the market size.

Japan space agency blows up eight satellites aboard Epsilon rocket

Maybe they should ask for help from the DPRK, they seem to be pretty hot at launching rockets.

Post-Brexit 'science superpower' UK still hasn't appointed a science minister

Anything else would be socialism ...

Because bailing out "too big to fail" financial institutes is in no way socialism, and in no way would it encourage more bad behaviour leading to those "too big to fail" financial institutes to fail again.

How one Ukrainian software maker planned for survival as invaders approached

Does she have any advice for her soon to be ex-compatriots who have suffered 8 years of shelling by the Kiev regime? Elensky did, he advised "if you feel you are Russian then go back to Russia", so now they are, and are taking their land with them.

Microsoft China turns 30, gives nation the gift of jobs and export promotion

"The Register cannot imagine a Chinese SaaS company escaping controversy if it expands to global markets – even if Microsoft vouches for it."

Like with Huawei, the only real controversy will be the underhanded methods the US will employ to take down a competitor.

Intel's planned Italian facility now tied up in election politics

"That said, we're told Draghi's aides are negotiating behind the scenes with Rome's next leaders to ensure the agreement with Intel remains intact."

Otherwise those aides won't be receiving their "commission"?

'The “megafab” is be located in Magdeburg, west of Berlin; is slated to come online by 2027'

Germans are closing down their hitherto profitable domestic industries to beg for offshoring scraps from the US. Hopefully in within 5 years time they would be able to replace their cheap and reliable energy sources with expensive and somewhat unreliable energy sources.

NSA super-leaker Edward Snowden granted Russian citizenship

If by "we", you mean nato, then yeah, most of those wars fought after Vietnam were against vastly inferior people (in terms of their equipment). You don't need a lot of men to destroy those people and their country when you can simply conduct massive indiscriminate aerial bombardment.

Russian is fighting the 3rd largest army in Europe, backed by the whole war machine of Nato. Ukraine spent the 8 years in which it pointedly ignored Minsk II to dig in and fortify the front lines as well as whiling away the time by shelling and killing over 14000 people in the Donbass. You need more men to fight against that than you do when you are simply bombing camel herders, wedding parties and school buses.

"Snowden's status as a whistleblower is disputed by the US government"

If it was up to the entity whose dirty laundry you aired then nobody would be classified as a whistleblower. And given what happened to past whistleblowers, Snowden had to flee to a relatively secure location before revealing the crimes that his government committed in the pretence of protecting the people.

Spotted at industry confab: Quadcopter equipped with Brit missiles Ukraine is so fond of

Re: Here We Go Again...

This changed from .co.uk to .com for a reason.

Amazon's Roomba acquisition gets caught on FTC's rug

Re: If you don't want it to know "the most intimate secrets" of your home....

'This type of enlightened self-interest is the only reliable indicator of corporate behavior,"

Are there any examples of companies exhibiting this "enlightened self-interest" behaviour?

GNOME hits 43: Welcome To Guadalajara

Re: The strive to be a desktop on mobile has killed both KDE and Gnome

"just try and find the setting to set the font for the clock in the taskbar on either desktop"

Running KDE on openSUSE Tumbleweed:

right-click on Clock -> configure Digital Clock (it's on the first tab shown "Appearance").

But yeah, in general things are more locked down and defaults are dumb (probably the dumbest idea is for thin or invisible windows borders and scroll bars, bl00dy annoying).

Things that worked perfectly in KDE3 got screwed up in KDE4+, eg Restore Session, all programs were restored in their respective Desktops. With KDE4+, programs that were in Desktops 1 & 2 nearly always gets restored randomly into each other, programs on Desktops 3+ were mostly restored correctly.

By some version of KDE5 this seems to have been fixed, ie I've not noticed this problem for a while. However starting from some version of KDE5 another feature I rely on has been screwed. I setup window properties for various programs, eg the calculator will always start up with its window:

- always on top of other windows

- shaded

- appears on all desktops

But now when you start up programs with custom window properties they appear with a minimum window size (so small no content is visible), and when you try to resize it it will sometimes disappear off the screen, to get it back you need to right-click the program on the taskbar and toggle the maximise/minimise window a few times.

KDE3 was the best version so far. KDE3 -> KDE5 was like 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. KDE4 -> KDE5 gradually improved to 3 steps forward and 2 steps back.

Federal agencies buying Americans' internet data challenged by US senators

Business as usual

So tax-payers are paying for the privilege of being spied on?

Former Newport Wafer Fab owner linked to buyback from China's Nexperia

Free Market is the freedom to control the market, if we can't control it then we'll break it. When Huawei became the world leader in some categories of telecoms equipment they have sanctions slapped on them. When TikTok became the first China owned net property to achieve widespread international usage it had sanctions slapped on them. As the China's economy moves ever closer to eclipsing the US' more and more sanctions are thrown at it.

And as everyone here knows (fool or not) the only reason for the ban on Huawei's equipment is that having them installed will make the Five Eyes ability to spy on their own citizens more difficult.

Iran steps up its cybercrime game and Uncle Sam punches back

"which the US considers a terrorist organization and claims has plotted to murder US citizens, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton."

Is that the same John “We know where your kids live” Bolton who threatened the former head of the OPCW (in the good old days when the OPCW was independent), because “We can’t accept your management style.”

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kids-opcw/

We should give Taiwan $4.5b to protect chip fabs from China, say US senators

"What's particularly nice about the US federal debt is that electing politicians" "just serves to INCREASES it even FASTER!"

White House to tech world: Promise you'll write secure code – or Feds won't use it

"Uncle Sam wants federal agencies and software providers to keep those attestations hush-hush so that America doesn't give foreign spies and other miscreants a heads-up on how to break into US networks."

is their way of "ensuring" that govt mandated backdoors are kept secret.

China's single aisle passenger jet – the C919 – likely to be certified next week

Re: Should we be making lots of airplanes ?

Climate activists are one of the biggest source of passengers for airlines, jetting off from one conference to the next complaining about the polluting effects of aeroplane exhausts.

Re: Russian market?

Under sanctions they've had to replace dozens of foreign parts with indigenous ones. So those foreigners have lost a market and gained a competitor.

Same thing is happening with all those sanctions piled onto Chinese companies. They will be losing an even bigger market and gaining a potentially even more formidable competitor.

Chinese researchers make car glide 35mm above ground in maglev test

"The Red Rail sees the train hover 30 feet above the ground with the track positioned above the vehicle."

The linked to article says 'Dubbed "Rainbow," the maglev line that is about 800 meters long was built in Xingguo County, east China's Jiangxi Province.' There is no mention of "Red Rail" anywhere in that article.