Posts by Doctor Syntax

Accused PII seller faces jail for running underground fraud op

20 years in prsison or 20 years of supervised release?

DPD chatbot blasts courier company, swears, and dabbles in awful poetry

Re: Downvote me, if you are surprised.

Somebody at the meeting that decided to use it probably tried to warn them and was told not to be negative.

Re: As Arthur said

"They forked it into the back of our van, and it didn't even survive the journey. I opened the back doors - avalanche!"

Easy to say, but you should have refused to take something so badly packed.

Re: In training, you learn for life

If... I could actually select "my parcel non-delivery company can't be bothered" and the parcel gets delivered to a nearby collection center ... then everybody is happy.

This is the Amazon locker. There's an assumption in the use of these that Amazon will succeed in delivering to a locker rather than a house - after all they know exactly where they are. This is a false assumption.

On one level some products, sometimes seemingly more or less at random, are banned from lockers but instead of telling you this every locker is reported as "full" when an attempt is made to select it.

On another, even when the locker is selected Amazon may fail to deliver. At this point Amazon's propensity to only code for the "happy path" comes into play. The courier is apparently allowed to move on from the locker without having delivered all the packages. How? Does he have to provide some feedback to the system so the customer can be informed PDQ? That would require the situation to be properly handled.

Reality - non-filled locker in Yorkshire, tracking subsequently locates package in France and next day a courier turns up to collect the return of what wasn't delivered (this can also happen to a non-delivery to the door). Clearly there's no proper handling ot this situation, just more or less random stuff.

I'm sure every developer here knows that a large part of the code of successful system consists of catching and handling things that don't go as intended, if only to log things for later consideration. Amazon apparently doesn't.

Anyone dealing with customer service should learn early that when things go wrong you must keep the customer fully informed. Amazon doesn't and if they haven't collected the information they can't.

Anyone dealing with quality knows that what goes wrong should be reviewed and the knowledge gained fed back into process improvement. You can't do that without collecting data.

I find it amazing that Amazon's algorithms for predicting delivery times have improved to the point where delivery by their own transport is almost invariably within a quarter of an hour of the centre of the quoted range although the range might vary during the day as data gets fed back. They clearly have some very able developers working for them. Why then, can they not handle failures sensibly?

Re: Never, ever train your chatbot on...

Certainly not the internet. Vogon poetry is probably safer.

Re: As Arthur said

It depends what it's successful at. In customer service terms, especially for delivery companies, it probably means keeping the customers at arm's length.

To go OT here, there's scope for a lot of confusion about who's who in delivery terms. The company is usually* tasked by the company or person despatching the goods. However the intended** recipient is usually the one who pays and therefore the ultimate customer.

As a consequence there's scope for woolly thinking by the companies where there needs to be clarity. One company that had failed to deliver refused to accept revised instructions to help them do better on the basis that "We can only accept instructions from the owner of the goods.". Clearer thinking should have led them to realise that unless they'd specifically asked their clients they had no information as the actual owners but if they were delivering purchased goods the owner was most likely the recipient.

* Although it could be tasked by someone who wants them fetched.

** It's best to say "intended" here. It has a wider compass although it may exclude the actual recipient.

David Mills, the internet's Father Time, dies at 85

Re: Hmm!

OTOH, as here, it can be the stimulus that's needed.

AI PC hype seems to be making PCs better – in hardware terms, at least

Over the last few years PC makers have had the problem that PCs have become good enough and upgrades were no longer driving it - hence the W11 & TPU saga. But if they were "good enough" before why do we suddenly "need" sucha hike in performance (and power consumption). We're in danger of finding the typical business PC grossly over-specced and over-priced for what's actually needed because it's expected to run a love-child of Clippy and Cortana. I suppose there'll be some excellent bargains of good enough stuff around in the near future.

Legacy tech shoots down Ministry of Defence's supply chain improvements

Re: Boeing?

The conjunction of Boeing and Defence left me with "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off" echoing through my mind.

Boffins eyeball computer vision costs, find humans are cheaper for oversight chores

"While this paper is sweet news for bakers, fear that generative AI will replace knowledge workers is widespread and justifiable because large language models (LLMs) that handle writing chores can run on commodity laptops – no fancy cameras required."

It's not the baker's eyeball that matters, it's the knowledge behind it that enables the judgement to be made. Just because one interface is text and the other isn't that doesn't mean that real knowledge can be replaced by a dumb simulacrum of that knowledge. I'm sure there are a few disasters lying in wait for those businesses that think otherwise. Perhaps el Reg should be thinking of a companion to "Who me?" to deploy when those start to show up.

Wanna run Windows on an M-series Mac? Fine, buy a license, but no baremetal

Re: It's also not a particularly cheap platform

And you can always install a better OS on it.

Re: More Windows on ARM is good

It depends what you mean by success. Commercially for Microsoft, it's successful. As a very occasional user - really only to try something out to advise others - it's a crock which succeeds at nothing, not even in its persistent attempts at running its own updates. In terms of reliability the crossover point between Windows and Linux happened nearly 20 years ago.

Re: It isn't Microsoft not "allowing" users to run on bare metal

Why pay Apple premium prices to run Windows?

Subway's data torpedoed by LockBit, ransomware gang claims

"The biggest sandwich chain is pretending that nothing happened," the criminals said, highlighting the silence from the company's official channels.

Somebody's ego not getting tickled?

As a franchise, do individual outlets depend on the central system for normal operation?

White goods giant fires legal threats to unplug open source plugin

[It]"can stop working at anytime!"

This is true of any IoT gadget that relies on an external server but it's very noble of them to remind customers of this.

Sierra Space bursts full-scale inflatable space habitat module

Fast/Flight/Full Air/Atmospheric Release/Relief Test

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Re: Since comparison was invited …

There's an interesting parallel here as the first application for Horizon was payments of benefits for the DWP or whatever name it traded under at the time. One of my clients did some work for them. Another freelancer who had rather more dealings with that work than I did summarised them as "not the sharpest knives in the box" which more or less confirmed my own dealings with their predecessors of 3 decades earlier.

Maybe the entire shit-show is en illustration of "start as you mean to go on".

Re: I fail to understand

Pointing out this inconvenient fact always seems to result in downvotes.

Re: I fail to understand

"Why Paula Vennels, plus the rest of the PO board and the Fujitsu board of the time and since, haven't already been prosecuted and imprisoned for perverting the course of justice fraud, perjury, misconduct in public office, false accounting, libel, false imprisonment."

The enquiry has shielded them. It was set up to come first, before any prosecutions of possible witnesses. It started in 2020 and is still scheduled to run at least well into 2024. If you look at the history of this you'll find that witnesses have been delayed because of delays in finding documents or delayed because a whole lot of evidence turned up just before they were due to be called so had to be put back whilst that was considered. Surprisingly some of this "newly discovered" delaying evidence turned out to be duplicates of documents already in evidence.

It would be good to think that once the enquiry is finally disposed of (and I doubt the same tactics can be continued now they've got public attention) that these delays will be investigated as obstructions of justice. Somehow, I doubt they will.

Another thing that needs looking at is how the PO were able to drag out the public enquiry the way they have. Without the ITV programme it stood every chance of going on indefinitely until nobody involved was left alive or at least mentally competent to give evidence. As it is they've not only managed to postpone getting the convictions overturned and compensation paid, they've also delayed any criminal investigation into either the business or its employees.

Re: I realise the UK still has a strict class system

Too technical for the general media. The tech coverage has zero impact on the public. The Eye would be seen as fringe and probably not worth believing. The key was having an actual case won which not only provided the basis for the drama, it also avoided any risks of it being sub judice or, with the facts established in court, exposed to defamation action from the PO or Fujitsu.

Until now it's been possible for the PO to even drag out the enquiry but I doubt they'll manage to continue that stunt.

It must have been. After retirement from BT the opportunities of freelance opened up.

Re: Generous

"Government can appoint administrators from private sector."

From the same pool of employees of large companies you're complaining about. Yes, I know about freelancers, I used to be one. But to un a large project you need a large team which is going to require several levels of management to coordinate it. You can't just put that together from the freelance market ad hoc.

"This is true and sadly have not been investigated yet."

No investigation needed. We know all about it. Those in post would be TUPEd over with their projects and not replaced because they "weren't needed now"

"Nobody asked the obvious follow-up - what other systems do you run?"

Actually, BT asked that question of itself. It was called the Argent project, named after a director in charge. I know because I had the job of handling it in the ruin-up to my retirement. It was handled with all the thoroughness of an ISO9000 exercise. As I'd retired by the time it was complete I've no idea of any real changes that resulted.

Re: Generous

"In reality all their existing contracts should be cancelled and reviewed."

OK. So we cancel all their contracts. Whatever they're doing for whatever department stops, today. What do those departments do tomorrow?

Energy breakthrough needed to build AGI, says OpenAI boss Altman

This guy seems to have discovered the centre around which the rrest of the universe revolves and it's himself.

Poor communication led to complete lack of communication

Because testing obviously wasn't.

BreachForums admin 'Pompourin' sentenced to 20 years of supervised release

Re: "forbidden to use the internet"

I can only assume that the prosecution had a word with the judge that he's been very useful to them in bringing cases against some of his former users, otherwise it seems inconceivable that he'd get off so lightly, even with guilty pleas. Either that or it was in the "too much likt hard work to bring to trial" box.

Re: "forbidden to use the internet"

So in due course his lawyers will go back to court and apply for a relaxation of the terms.

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Re: HP Toner

Laserjet 3020 AIO here. The HP badge looks to be more solidly engineered than some of the later models I've seen. It doesn't get much use these days as it's supplemented by a Brother with colour and 2-sided printing. Even so, it would probably have outlasted me.

Re: Security

I'm sure the entire tech media have run stories about printers quite frequently. If anyone in the investment world reads them it probably helps keep the share price up. It's not the tech media you need running such stories, it's the media the general public reads.

Five ripped off IT giant with $7M+ in bogus work expenses, prosecutors claim

Re: Wait, what??

It was the IRS that finally got Al Capone.

Zuckerberg wants to build artificial general intelligence with 350K Nvidia H100 GPUs

Given that these are going to consume stupid amounts of energy we need to set some rules about this:

1. The data centres to run this are to be powered entirely by sustainable energy.

2. This must be generated carbon free. Carbon offsets will not be allowed.

3. The generating capacity must be new, built specifically for this purpose and would not have been built otherwise.. Simply diverting from an existing source will not be allowed.

4. To ensure that 3 is obeyed the data centre must use only 50% of the new capacity with the other 50% supplied to the local grid.

5. Carbon offsets must be used against the CO2 released during construction of the generating capacity.

Russians invade Microsoft exec mail while China jabs at VMware vCenter Server

"Some of them have already been found by the Bad Guys who, it seems, have a very much better record at finding them than do the security firms."

If the good guys get prosecuted and fined for finging and reporting them, then this situation is inevitable.

Fujitsu gets $1B market cap haircut after TV disaster drama airs

In the PO case there has been a case decided in favour of the sub-postmaster. In the PPE case there has been none and it would be legally hazardous to risk making such a programme.

Re: 4% down ?

"Up until now the investors have been assuming that they'd get away with it."

For the current quarter. No need to look beyond that.

Re: Accounting system

There were all sorts of strange things happening including some in the message handling system communicating between the counter and head office so that at the end of a day's trading the accounts didn't balance and the discrepancy was assumed to be the sub-postmaster's fault. Double entry book-keeping doesn't automatically keep you right but it helps to tell you when something's gone wrong and by how much. You still have to work out what went wrong or, if you're the Post Office, jump to an unwarranted conclusion.

Re: If government contracts with Fujitsu

Could you cite the cases where guilty verdicts have been given against the Post Office and a government in this case.

I agree that there could eventually be successful prosecutions brought against the PO and some of its employees in this case at which point you could say they're criminal but I'm struggling to work out what evidence and argument might be used in relation to the governments* in this case. The PO is at arm's length from government.

* Note the plural. There have been several governments, Labour, coalition and Conservative during the period this was running.

Re: If government contracts with Fujitsu

Firstly, at least in the event of a jury trial, the jury is the tribunal of fact. If the criminal rials were held before a jury then the evidence was weighed and believed by 12 members of the general public, people like you and me (unfortunately I'm above jury age now so not exactly like me).

Secondly, in the event of the evidence being one-sided, including the situation that the computer is assumed to be right unless proved otherwise, it would be very difficult for a normal* jury to come to reject it.

Thirdly, if there is expert evidence on both sides the outcome can be very different and you might be surprised at the ability of an experienced judge to evaluate evidence.. This is a long read but if you tackle it you may find it enlightening: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/bates-v-post-office-appendix-1-1.pdf

* I have come across at least one irrational jury.

Re: Justice

The company doesn't get to choose who's charged, let alone who's found guilty.

Re: Fushitesu

Interesting idea.

Situation1.

Contract is going to take 2 years to go live. We expire contracts every year. So half way through development the contract's expired and work stops until review is complete and contract re-let to previous incumbent. In the meantime the contractor reallocates the staff who were working on it to another contract. Contract restarts with new staff until some of the original staff can be reallocated back to it. The re-reallocated staff now have to catch up with what's happened while they were on the other contract which itself has had to cope with the influx of staff and their release.

Situation 2.

Contract is live and is processing work so the client is completely dependent on the contractor. The annual expiry date comes round. Contractor demands a massive hike in price to continue. Expiring the contract when it's in operation simply puts the clients balss in a vice and gives the handle to the contractor.

Re: Fushitesu

Let's try a small thought experiment.

Imagine you, Jonathan Green, were working for Fujitsu from, say the early '90s.

Somewhere about 2009 you hear about this problem with Horizon with which you have had no contact at all.

What do you, personally do next? What are your options?

IT consultant fined for daring to expose shoddy security

Define exploit. On first discovery it wouldn't be possible to know whether the password was a bit of stale code from a test environment as opposed to being live. The only way to determine that is to check that there's what looks like viable data at the end of it. We're not told whether he made a copy of it. We're not told that he used it for gain (other, perhaps, than doing his job and warning his client that their supplier was insecure). I find it difficult to call that exploitation.

From what I read into TFA the first court appears to have taken the reasonable approach and dismissed the case. Having a superior court toss it back at them sounds a lot like double jeopardy which has long been held to be unacceptable in English law. Although there are now exceptions where fresh evidence is available there doesn't seem to be any in this case. Does the prosecution get to appeal verdicts in Germany?

Re: The problem is law is old and tech is new

And regarding Horizon, just read what a judge is capable of understanding, at least is expert witnesses have provided evidence:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/bates-v-post-office-appendix-1-1.pdf

Fujitsu will not bid for UK.gov business until Post Office inquiry closes

Re: "We welcome Fujitsu's decision to pause bidding"

Paragraph 8c appears to fit the case.

IBM Consulting is done playing around, orders immediate return to office

Re: I thing it is OK

"Being on site has a lower barrier to ask someone for input/help and discussions are more direct."

Maybe I didn't understand what you were getting at but I'd understand "in office", at least in this context, as being at the employer's office but "on site" as at client site. In this context "on site" may be essential depending on the nature of the project. "In office", however, adds nothing positive and very likely plenty that's negative if the work can be done from the worker's choice of location.

As Broadcom nukes VMware's channel, the big winner is set to be Nutanix

"shift customers entirely to subscription licensing"

Did someone mistype "shaft"?

Perfect timing... US Navy throws Boeing $103M to update its sub recon jets

Fitting outside toilets?

I read on the Beeb that Ryanair were sending extra engineers to Boeing to increase inspection of the planes they've ordered. I wondered if having the plane inspected would be an extra charge flying Ryanair

Study: Thousands of businesses just love handing over your info to Facebook

Re: adverts specific to your needs

There are still usable search engines

For some small value of "useable".