Posts by Doctor Syntax

Apple quietly admits 8GB isn't enough in 2024, M4 iMac to ship with 16GB as standard

"I remember in the early 80's declaring 64K is enough"

If you were using a Z90 or 6502 it had to be enough.

Re: And what about our friend Linux.

"Facts have never held back Apple marketing!"

Never held them back? Never even troubled their heads, more likely. (other, similar marketroids are also available.)

UK immigration seeks tech support, development partner for border crossing systems

I'm not quite sure of the logic of splitting these unless it's to offer the option of just going ahead with the cheapest when the Treasure quibbles about the cost.

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

Re: It's not a "glitch"

"Surely, there are only three things that need to be done: verify the cheque is genuine, verify the source account has the funds, and transfer them."

The first of those might require that the cheque is taken out of the machine to go into the banking system and that's not likely to be until the next day.

Re: How did they think--or know--this could work?

"As a long-time Chase customer, I resent their relentless marketing"

Take a few minutes to think over what you just wrote and all its implications.

Re: Do I understand this correctly?

They'll probably end up footing a good deal of the losses. At least some of the perpetrators will have been well enough organised to have used false IDs and become untraceable.

Re: Banksters hate being ripped off by other crooks.

I'm not entirely sure "lax regulation" is appropriate here. I don't know about the US, although I suspect it was similar, the situation in the UK is that it was, essentially, government policy.

We had central banking encouraged, by government to set interests rates to achieve inflation of around 2%. The statisticians were directed by government to use a measure of inflation that excluded housing costs. That was government policy. At the same time manufacturing was being off-shred to the lowest cost countries available. If there was any dumping going on that was ignores. If it caused unemployment in local manufacturing that was ignored. We had low inflation and cheap money; voters like those and governments like voters to like what's happening. Voters even liked the idea that the alleged values of their houses was rising and that they could take out more cheap loans against those inflated values.

But all that cheap money went into soaring house prices. Even when house prices and, with them, rents were at clearly unsustainable levels of inflation there was no feedback mechanism in place because they weren't in the figure used to determine interest rates. The situation was flagrantly ignored and that resulted in the toxic debts. Actually I suspect it wasn't totally ignored. I've always suspected that Blair realised it couldn't end well, rode the resulting popularity while it lasted and stood aside in favour of his Chancellor (Finance Minister) just in time for the latter to become PM and face the consequences of his policies. Although, of course, the rest of us also had to face those consequences.

Wanted. Top infosec pros willing to defend Britain on shabby salaries

Re: Pay grades

An even more basic problem is that the hierarchy values generalists more highly than specialists. The nominal justification would be that generalists are more flexible and can fit in equally well in different roles. Specialist, by virtue of their specialist training can only fit their specialist roles and so are less flexible. Obviously flexibility is seen as valuable and so they are paid more. Of course the reality of this is that the generalists are equally suited to fit multiple roles is because these generalist roles all require none of the knowledge or experience with which their arts degrees did not supply. The hierarchy, of course, sets its own valuations and relative pay and is run by the generalists for whom, in essence, it exists. That none of these flexible generalists are quite flexible enough to take on specialist roles is somehow overlooked.

Yes, once upon a time I was a specialist in the Civil Service. Why do you ask.

Five Eyes nations tell tech startups to take infosec seriously. Again

Again

Given that Barnum's rule applies to startups more or less by definition then such advice will have to me offered again and again.

Tardigrade genes may hold secret to radiation treatments for humans

Re: "that speed up the generation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP),"

And to produce more ATP in the first place means stepping up the rest of the respiratory metabolism. ATP is the link between various steps in the oxidation of energy stores such as glucose which make energy available and the various bits of biochemistry such as muscle contraction which need it. The cells which need that energy will already be able to signal the mitochondria to get on with the job. As you say, this is more likely to be another signally pathway to satisfy other needs for ATP.

Incidentally, as mitochondria play such a major role in energy handling and only descend maternally why do horse breeders pay much more attention to the sire than the dam?

Re: Why such immunity?

They're regular but simple eukaryotic invertebrates whose terrestrial members have evolved to live in extreme conditions such as those which will dry out for prolonged periods. Where there's an ecological niche something will evolve to fill it and those niches must have existed since the first plants started to colonise land or even intertidal environments. Radiation resistance is likely to be a by-product of resisting drying out etc.

If panspermists were to propose tardigrades as the means by which life spread they'd then have to explain what they had to live on once they landed or how they had to back evolve to produce bacteria which are far more primitive. (They also need to explain why two sequential unlikely events, genesis of life and dispersal over long times and distances through the most hostile of conditions are more likely than one.)

China's first space tourism venture sells first pair of tickets

"A straight-up-and-down joyride isn't enough."

The "and-down" bit is quite useful, though. Just ask the Boeing crew.

Half the world's online via mobile, but growth is slowing

"These are some of the findings from the State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report for 2024 published by the GSM Association (GSMA)"

Do they know how to spell "sigmoidal growth"?

WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials, arousing suspicions

In a hole, digging like mad.

Boeing launches funding round to stave off credit downgrade

Wow. Only last week I expressed the thought that that might be a tad embarrassing.

Senator accuses sloppy domain registrars of aiding Russian disinfo campaigns

Re: Domain names are the wild west

There are other registrars serving other geographical areas. Not all .tv domains are for TV stations in Tuvalu, not all .io domains are for businesses based in the Indian Ocean

Re: What's the guy's real intention?

I refuse to thank economists for anything.

Re: It's typosquatting

There are a couple of problems here:

1. Which existing domains are to be checked? All of them? If not where do you draw the line and how do you explain the decision to the owner of a domain that just misses out on the relevant criteria?

2. How do you distinguish between a malicious attempt and a genuine one? e.g. I have a .org.uk domain. There's a corresponding .co.uk. Both are genuine. OK, genuineish. The key word is a place name. I live there, the other is a domain squatter outfit hoping someone will come and buy it off them for £££££. But the principle applies - what hoops would I have had to go through to prove I wasn't typosquatting theirs by registering mine?

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

Re: Triple redundancy?

If it's winter check that it;'s not summer spec. diesel.

Re: Making things worse

And did they learn anything from that?

OK, I think I can guess.

Re: Reminds me of my first FDDI testing

Except when it's DNS.

Re: Every network admin has done this

"I wonder how they would respond when they do make the inevitable mistake"

Let them learn by their mistakes at somebody else's expense.

Re: redundancy and diversity?

Best go for three, then. Two identical to fail between normally and a different one to fail to when the common-mode hits. Or four so that there are two redundant pairs.

Mature node chip output to surge 6% in 2025

"The latter are long-term plans to reduce the country's reliance on imported chips, especially in light of efforts by the US to curb China's access to advanced technology"

Be careful what you wish for. Who didn't see this coming, apart from some US politicians?

The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source

I'm increasingly reminded of the first episode of Yes Minister when Sir Humphrey explains to Bernard about the title of the report being prepared for Hacker which appears to be exactly what they don't want. He explains it's getting rid of the difficult bit in the title where it won't do any harm. The title? "Open Government" and the difficult bit is the word "open". There seems to be a lot of getting rid of that same difficult bit in the title these days.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

One issue is where does the money actually go. I was happy to donate to LibreOffice until it turned out that donations weren't actually going to support coding.

Re: Fools

Count the assumptions being made here.

Re: Sorry, no.

The licence is very unlikely to be selected at random. If somebody is putting it out under a permissive licence it's going to be for a reason. A reason that they know and you don't.

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

Re: Okay...

Maybe but I knew of one business that was being robbed blind by the till operators. Subsequently hidden cameras showed them at work. The owner didn't realise until he got a phone call from the bank or so he said I've no idea why he didn't look at his bank statements.

If the evidence was solid enough I think I might have written it up without actually laying the blame on any particular individual, told him that that was what the software had found and there was the bill. If he wanted to challenge it in court it was up to him. He might then have been put in a position of trying to defend his staff. But then giving evidence in court used to be part of my job so it might have bothered me less than Bill. That past career tells me that it's not uncommon for businesses to be ripped off by employees and not be aware of it.

Re: Computer wiped every month ?

A Bill becomes an Act when it received Royal Assent. If it became an Act in 1990 the earliest it might have been in Parliament would be 1989.

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

But surely this is the Boss and they're always expendable, especially when they're starting to show signs of sentience.

Only a fire extinguisher? I was expecting the safety catch on the window.

Say hello to the epi-bit, a new approach to DNA data storage

Re: Dubious

Add to those shortcomings the fact nature doesn't always copy DNA correctly.

There's only one explanation for this interest: GRANTS.

Yet another UK government seeks to reform GDPR

Never mind the GP - banks are doing it and you'd think they have most to lose if they have to make good on fraud cases.

Re: Insufficient

Perhaps you should get Max Schrems on your case.

Personally, I'd have written my original request addressed to both and told them to sort it out between themselves instead of pointing fingers at each other. If they failed I'd then have raised a single case against both with the ICO. Not a data protection issue but I've used the same technique about road repairs.

Re: Tory-Lite

I havem't had a passport for years. I know people who've never held a driving licence and others who've given up driving. What's an NI card? And I don't know my NHS number, only been asked for it in connection with medical appointments but now knowing has never been a problem.

I think I may have scored a very small victory with our local hospital trust. Some time ago SWMBO received an apparent phishing email (links, not from the domain it claimed - you know the drill) asking her to log on (i.e. register) to a 3rd party site to obtain some information from the trust. A complaint followed. Then I got an apparent phishing email asking me to register for some other 3rd party site to view my patient information. ??? Haven't been a patient there for years. Another complaint.

Now, several weeks later, (probably about the time it takes for these things to work through the systems) there's a mailing from the trust's domain itself explaining to patients that the former email was genuine.

There's still a few issues. The service is called Patients Know Best (PKB) so what does PKB know? Does information only get passed to them when the patient registers or has that already happened?

Re: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Governments change. The Departments remain the same. It's just a new set of politicians being house-trained.

Re: "Data is the DNA of modern life"

Remember that statements like this are made by government mouthpieces who are very unlikely to know anything of either data or DNA except that they've heard of them. Ignorance enables them to say these things without suffering from cognitive dissonance.

Re: Insufficient

"and so my personal data remains there"

Did you write to NIECR to require them to remove your data, reminding them that this is your right and their obligation under GDPR?

Re: Insufficient

From the link about the story being refuted: "an investigation found no evidence of data being available to unapproved researchers"

A successful investigation, I see.

Re: Tory-Lite

Not so much Tory-Lite, more Old School Labour. They have form on this. Next up, ID cards, no doubt.

'Consent' LinkedIn used for data processing was not freely given, says Ireland

"we have been in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are working to ensure our ad practices meet this decision by the DPC's deadline."

If you were in compliance why are you having to do this work?

There really ought to be extra penalties for businesses which pay a fine and then come out denying they did anything wrong. Let's start at 200% of the original fine and double again for each repeated offence.

Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids

For the kind of DJ whose job is more or less "that was ... This is..." and otherwise keep prattle to a minimum, I don't see why an AI couldn't do the job at least as well as a meatsack

Automating the bottom of the barrel.

A closer look at Intel and AMD's different approaches to gluing together CPUs

"That does, however, mean that the 72-core version is only making use of a fraction of the silicon on the package. Then again, the same could be said of that 16-core HPC-centric Epyc we discussed earlier."

Presumably this gets round the yield problem. Just activate the working cores.

Ford CEO admits he drives a Chinese electric vehicle and doesn't want to give it up

"One car goes 150 to 200 miles as an all electric car, and it has a small internal combustion engine that powers the batteries. One tank of gas gives a range of up to 1,000 to 1,200 kilometers."

Sort of like buying an 1800mm piece of 4x2.

$180 for an overpriced, dubious SSD drive? Maybe don't join the USB Club

If it uploads to somebody else's computer does it even store anything on the USB bit other than, maybe, some S/W and credentials to access somebody else's computer? If so what happens when that computer goes away?

IBM's mainframe bubble bursts and growth stalls

IBM's consulting business delivered flat revenue, but 11 percent profit improvement, which Krishna attributed in part to "yield from our productivity actions." IBM-speak for firing people is "resource actions."

It's amazing thatr revenue is flat. When the effects of their productivity action really start to kick in that's going to fall as well. Consultancy is a people business.

I'm reminded of the tale of the peasant who was trying to teach his donkey to go without food to save money. He'd almost succeeded but it died.

On-prem SaaS? ServiceNow will do it if you ask nicely, and really need it

"attendance expectations are communicated – especially around times when teams are busy finishing a coding sprint, or planning future releases."

Does this mean that when finishing a coding sprint the coders are encouraged to stay away from the distractions of the office or is it just the micro-managers who'd distract them.