Posts by Doctor Syntax

Python head hisses at looming Euro cybersecurity rules

"It wouldn't hurt law makers to say what they mean, rather than hope the courts correctly infer what they meant"

It's not quite as simple as that.

Legislators generally do say what they mean. but when legislation is written it's impossible for the legislators to anticipate every situation in which it will be applied. The courts have to interpret it in the circumstances of a particular case. In order for the system to work properly the legislation, however detailed, still needs to take into account that they can't revisit it every time an unanticipated situation is met or that circumstances have changed. It will probably be at least a few years before they get a second chance.

Re: The "Enforcement" Pantomine.......

Making laws is one task. Bringing offenders to book is another; it might be the police or a regulator but it might be an individual, business or whatever if it's a civil matter. Interpreting them on a case by case basis to determine if they have been broken is a third task. Keeping the performance of those tasks separate is a Good Idea. It's probably essential if you want to have a free society.

Re: Something needs to be done to protect consumers

There's a difference between not being defect free and being out-and-out malware. There seem to have been plenty of reports here about software repositories such as Pypi being subverted to introduce malware into the supply chain. Should these be treated as a "product", even if not commercial, whose providers "should be responsible for ensuring that it is appropriate for the job"?

It's easy to say that those who use the repositories should each be responsible for vetting everything they use, tracking every new version and re-vetting all changes. Easier said than done - the overall cost would be huge when given that every user would be duplicating the work. The likely outcome would be that companies would simply stop using them or else there would be a second tier of commercial repositories who would vet new additions before adding them.

UK govt wants standalone 5G by 2030 but won't shell out to help hit target

Re: Sounds like marketing speak, I wondered why...

"Could they find a scientist or engineer for this role?"

Or just someone who's even heard of the Iron Triangle?

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

After all, it's working out so well: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65240749 (What do we have that the rest don't?

Ex-Twitter execs sue over $1M+ in unpaid legal expenses

Re: Have an upvote

"starts suing anyone he can think of"

That would open him to being declared a vexatious litigant. From Wikipedia "Those on the vexatious litigant list are usually either forbidden from any further legal action or are required to obtain prior permission from a senior judge before taking any legal action."

I was, in effect following your own logic of what happens if you put this into reverse: if someone has multiple cases pending against them from multiple litigants should a court take that into account as possibly indicative that some restraint is needed to avoid the possibility of their incurring still more?

"A slightly better version would be to require the approval of a judge, rather than the plaintiffs"

A likely mechanism would be the judge appointing an administrator responsible to both the court and representatives of the plaintiffs.

Re: Have an upvote

"But making the defendant ante-up is ridiculous"

That was my first reaction. But then it occurred to me that as there's a concept of a vexatious litigant perhaps there should also be an special status for the opposite case, a defendant who gets a large number of claims against them. It would not necessarily mean having to commit money into escrow but having their accounts frozen so that payments by then need approval of the plaintiffs. At the very least it would make delaying tactics difficult for them.

Three quarters of UK tech pros are ready to leave their jobs

Re: "Salary will always be key to any tech job seeker"

Although I retired from freelancing at about the same time as yourself it was being "offered" early retirement from a paid job in my 50s that gave me the opportunity to make the break into freelance. I needed to continue earning something before the rest of the pensions kicked in and the draw of freelancing was the opportunity to continue doing something I was good at rather then being dragged into management which seems to be the expected career move at that age. That and, of course, being "virtually invulnerable to office politics and arsehole bosses".

As always with surveys, you've got to look at who's promoting them and what they want them to say.

If there's a skills shortage why are 75% looking to change as opposed to already having left? Maybe the grass isn't greener on the other side.

It's this easy to seize control of someone's Nexx 'smart' home plugs, garage doors

Re: Elementary, Watson!

"it declares bankruptcy, parachutes out the officers"

If it's a listed company the shareholders might sue the management.

The longer term advantage, however, is that even the most recalcitrant board might start to take notice, realise that it can be a threat and start looking at their own products and processes.

Techie called out to customer ASAP, then: Do nothing

Re: It happens!

The SI might not have been told either.

Re: This is a job for .... Justin Case!

"between Christmas and New Year when they had stupidly planned to go live on a new system"

Stupidly? If there's downtime to make the cut-over it's a very sensible time. I've told here before of the client who, at the last minute, postponed that. It was December, 1999 and the new system was the Y2K-compatible version...

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

If you don't have your own record and the other side has, they get to tell the story to their own advantage.

Re: Stick to IMAP, move to local every so often

or POP. In fact download it immediately while its still working.

Cops cuff teenage 'Robin Hood hacker' suspected of peddling stolen info

The eleventh commandment "Don't brag".

Corporate investment in AI down for first time in a decade

"It does seem kind of early in the hype cycle for this to be dropping off."

Peak AI passed already?

As defense tech goes commercial, does national security miss out?

"Meanwhile other speakers called on entrepreneurs to shift mindsets to take on the role of protecting national security themselves."

How did they see this applying to multi-national companies?

Tesla ordered to pay worker $3M-plus over racist treatment

Re: How about direct support absent the middleman.

Would you also apply this to other compensation situations?

Suppose you suffered an injury at work which left the you severely disabled and unable to work for the rest of your life? You might say the company should pay an annual income. But what happens if the company goes out of business? You would still be unable to work but the income would have gone forever.

The purpose of a lump sum is to future-proof the compensation.

Of course, in the example you suggest, it might work as expected until someone finds a health care professional willing to act as a middleman.

Unilever claims it's a 'cloud-only enterprise' – now with added OpenAI

Eggs and basket

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

Ouch!

I suppose a power cut will take out the O2 site so once the POTS system goes you'd have no comms of any sort.

Re: No service update

Welcome to 21st century customer service.

When Google cost cutting goes molecular: Staples, sticky tape, and PC sweating

"Centralise distribution and you've reduced the need for someone to go round and replenish supplies."

It probably costs more in that it means a lot more individual trips to & from stores.

I suppose the objective is to keep the activist investors off their backs - and off the board.

But didn't the decline of HP start with cutting the daily doughnuts?

Providing they buy enough string and sealing wax to keep the servers from falling apart it should be OK.

Bank rewrote ads for infosec jobs to stop scaring away women

Re: So they removed the impossible?

I think a lot of this nonsense originates from ISO9000 and its relatives. It starts with an innocuous statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. (NB this more or less knocks on the head any idea of recruiting the inexperienced and training them up). Then the next draft of the quality manual specifies a period of years. The next one says it must apply to all products in use. The next one says that departments must specify exact versions of products when recruiting.

If the penny ever drops that the quality manual is a millstone, in this and many other respect, it gradually starts being whittled down. Eventually it arrives at a statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. The ISO9000 certification simply becomes a badge saying the organisation wasted a lot of time, effort and money developing what is quite possibly a mediocrity management system - providing they're consistently mediocre everything's OK.

Re: Autistic People too

Not disqualified, over-qualified.

Re: Autistic People too

"So putting a number value there, really is just laziness."

You're being too kind.

Why UK watchdog abandoned its Apple monopoly probe

Re: So now the UK is out of the EU...

I think your & the OP's downvotes were a reaction tone of the posts being found offensive by those who voted remain* but are now stuck with the result, those too young to vote but who are now stuck with the result, those who voted leave but now realise they were victims of a con, those who thought it wouldn't have any consequences & wanted to make a protest vote and, with less justification, those who didn't vote because they thought they didn't need to bother voting against something so self-evidently stupid would never get anywhere near a majority.

I'd guess that now amount to more than half of the UK's population.

* In case you've forgotten, that was a whisker under half the votes cast.

Uber driver info stolen yet again: This time from law firm

Re: Legal stuff

Thanks - adds context.

It still leaves the issues of just how much they had - that weasel word "included" - and whether they needed it all. And whether the drivers knew it had been passed on. We're still not at the stage where data is regarded as toxic: you may need to have some but it's safest to hold as little as possible. And insufficiently guarded is doubly toxic.

Why did they have this data in the first place?

Why a top US cyber spy urges: Get religious about backups

Re: Free secure data backups! Now!

I take it you're only suggesting it be free with Windows because Windows users are most in need of backups?

Re: Good backup is expensive

It's the board that needs to get the message first. Then they can kick the complaints all the way back down the ladder. There does seem to be an inkling in govts that critical infrastructure is - well - critical. They might even be getting insistent about it. We can only hope that they work out PDQ what they need to insist on.

AI software helps astronomers deblur galaxies snapped by Earth telescopes

Re: A money saver!

It's probably also produced material for a PhD thesis. Maybe a bit too specialised to write it.

Paid and legacy Twitter verification now indistinguishable

"He (and the rest of the legacy notable blue ticks) were the product"

Musk is probably running the site on that basis. Nobody told him that the product are the rank and file users who are sold to advertisers.

In the battle between Microsoft and Google, LLM is the weapon too deadly to use

Re: Futile

"It might be a good idea to find out before widely deploying this stuff."

More likely the usual three step procedure will be followed:

Use it blindly, find out the hard way what doesn't work, "it's sooo last year".

NHS Highland 'reprimanded' by data watchdog for BCC blunder with HIV patients

"I guess you have what you deserve"

Those whose email addresses were inadvertently negligently shared didn't deserve it.

“encourage compliance, prevent harms before they occur and learn lessons when things have gone wrong.”

One hopes that this would consist of a severe bollocking pointing out GDPR's provisions for action against senior members along with notice that this will happen next time and an insistence that at the very least this will be an item on the annual reports of everyone in the command chain.

But I doubt it. ICO have given up the fight.

Regulatory capture in action.

Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins

Re: Ask the dictionary

Growing up in the post-WWII years the typical usage seems to have been anyone involved in the sort of R&D that won the war (excepting, of course BP & the like which we were never told about). As such is was a term of respect. The IoPs problem seems to be that it's neglected to polish its own image.

more than 10 times the number of respondents thought the term described a man compared with the number who thought it described a woman

I wonder what response they'd get if they asked about the term "scientist" or "physicist".

EU mandated messaging platform love-in is easier said than done: Cambridge boffins

" If you want to message someone on telegram, use telegram. If you want to message someone on WhatsApp, use that."

And what if you just want to have one ID on one system instead of buying into every service every would-be tech bro sets up

I don't have to have a mobile on every network and a landline from every landline operator because they all inter-operate.

I don't have to have email addresses with multiple MSPs because email inter-operates.

What's proposed here is to try to make messaging work the same way.

Legislators really need to commission a proof of concept before legislating.

Germany sours on Microsoft again, launches antitrust review

Maybe they're hoping Microsoft will open a very large EU office in Germany. After al it worked for Munich.

Microsoft scrambles to fix Windows 11 'aCropalypse' privacy-battering bug

Re: It beggers belief...

The problem here is not with what's done and why. It's with the term "crop". If that's what's offered to the user then it's reasonable to expect the user to think that that's what will happen. What's actually happening would be better described as "frame".

LibreOffice Writer acts in the same way and the compress option only affects the image's resolution, not its boundaries.

Re: Why expect the PDF converter to do more than Word did?

I didn't. The Word files were already bloated by uncropped images.

Critical infrastructure gear is full of flaws, but hey, at least it's certified

Re: But I followed the rules...

They can wave it at the press, possibly successfully. Waving it in court is apt to be subject to more rigorous cross-examination.

Accenture puts 19,000 staffers' heads on the chopping block

Re: 35 years and Greed is still Goooood!

That comes later when they discover what the laid-off workers had been doing all these years.

Utah outlaws kids' social media addiction, sets digital curfew

Think of the children...

... and remember that some of them may be voting as soon as the next election.

Oracle reportedly making job cuts at health IT arm Cerner

Our patients

Larry Ellison said: “As we move our Cerner patients ..."

Is that Larry Ellison MD?

Barred from US tech, Huawei claims to have built its own 14nm chip design suite

Re: Intel

The logical extension of this is that they get down to 0nm & then have nowhere to go but negative numbers. Although, as you point out, the existing numbers are already imaginary.