Posts by Doctor Syntax

Atlassian Jira, Confluence outage persists two days on

Re: The Cloud...

Maybe we should update that along the lines of "Other peoples' computers who have control over you."

Re: The vocabulary of our age

Or "not more than 100%".

South Yorkshire to test fiber broadband through water pipes

Re: I would just want to be sure...

It might mean all the crap gets flushed out.

Re: common ducting

"It needs the utility regulators and local authorities to bang heads together"

Very, vary hard. The local authorities are amongst those whose heads need to be banged, otherwise they'll conduct one of their rare resurfacings just before the utilities dig it up.

Just as well they aren't going via Wombwell. (Yes, it's a place, yes it's in the Peoples' Republic of South Yorkshire).

Re: Where's Elon when you need him?

"All that megaherz in the water though, homoeopaths will kick up a stink."

It'd only work if you dilute it enough. How many litres per hertz would that have to be?

"between Barnsley and Penistone"

They're going to have problems with their press releases blocked by the geographically challenged.

European Right to Repair resolution headed for vote

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

If only its home market were bigger, say the whole of the EU, and was protected from foreign imports that didn't comply.

Alternatively, the UK could duplicate the legislation locally. It would then receive the same protection from non-compliant imports and sell compliant products to the rest of the EU encumbered only by all the other complications of the EU now being an export market instead of an extended home market. Of course to do that means effectively accepting legislation that we had no input into.

Remind me again how freedom from EU legislation was going to enable us to take back control and make us more competitive.

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

Absolutely. Nobody can complain about the consequences of what "we" voted for. It's not as if "we" weren't told because we told "us" lots of times so it must have been an informed decision..

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

Perhaps a useful metric would be the ratio between the number of years away and the half life of the wast product.

100 grams of tritium contains about the same number of atoms as 8 kilos of plutonium.

Re: Ludicrous speed

At first glance it seemed quite reasonable. I read it as 6.5 knots. Must clean my glasses.

They could manufacture some Trimphones as a by-product.

This may seem weird but don't give us all the chip funding, say Intel and friends

Or cover all the niches so other countries don't get a foothold.

How do China's cyber-spies snoop on governments, NGOs? Probably like this

A good two step strategy would be:

1. Run a honeypot operation feeding false information.

2. Fail to conceal that you were taking step 1n without actually making clear what it covered. This applies even if you didn't actually take step 1.

IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims

"It names as defendants not only IBM but current and former executives including Rometty, former CFO Martin J. Schroeter (now CEO of IBM spin-off Kyndryl), current CFO James J. Kavanaugh, and current CEO Arvind Krishna."

IBM as an entity, like any other business, is owned by its investors. Why do investors persist in suing themselves? It they win all they succeed in doing is routing money from themselves to themselves less the amounts paid to two lots of lawyers - net, they pay two lots of lawyers If they lose they don't shit money from themselves to themselves but they still pay two lots of lawyers. It's lose-lose. Is there some remote possibility that this behaviour is incited by lawyers?

OTOH, suing the executives and maybe the board makes sense if the effect was to enrich specific individuals by pursuing policies detrimental to the shareholders.

Feds slay dark-web souk Hydra: Servers and $25m in crypto-coins seized

Re: Here's an idea

A completely un-prohibited market in tobacco allowed millions to die of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases - including those whose smoking was only passive. That also was a lose-lose proposition.

Re: Here's an idea

"Stop trying to police what people do with their own bodies."

But also stop inducing others to do things to their bodies brains which will do them long term harm.

Re: Hydra hosting provider

"He's probably not going to court"

I'm sure the US have in mind that the only way to settle the Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere is regime change in which case he might well end up in court.

Microsoft brings Cloud PCs and local desktops together in Windows 365

Re: "Windows 365 Offline" will make it possible to work with or without an internet connection

I'm pretty sure the Windows "privacy" policy wins that.

Re: "Windows 365 Offline" will make it possible to work with or without an internet connection

Why not open a Windows Bank? You pay all your income into it and in return you're allowed to use Windows and you get some pocket money back providing you behave yourself and wash the car every week.

Re: I don't get it

"Like, why is it 5 more."

Less accurate?

Re: Scarey

Is that "need" or "want"? The two are often confused.

Re: New, new, new!

wall

And what happens to the data on your SaaS Windows desktop if you have a cash-flow problem and can't pay the subscription for a couple of months? Probably the same as happens if you can't pay the subs for your SaaS cloud storage.

Block claims ex-employee downloaded customer data after leaving firm

"in this instance these reports were accessed without permission after their employment ended."

It depends on what you mean by "without permission". Computer didn't say "No".

'Virtually no difference' between AI and humans in diagnosing prediabetes

Re: The great cost reduction potential

"The model is paid once"

Given today's trends in software licensing that's probably once a day or maybe once a scan. And the rates will keep going up.

Which simple task is given to the half-trained assistant? Preferably the screening task so no role for the AI.

How many people get scanned for pre-diabetes as opposed to having blood tests?

Microsoft UK revenues surged as profits slimmed

How much of Microsoft UK's costs are payments to other parts of Microsoft? If corporation tax in the UK goes up expect those "costs" to increase.

Red Hat gets RHEL 8.2 certified for high level US government security

Re: Common Criteria

Slow news day?

Re: Common Criteria

Congratulations to the US govt. in finally catching up with the modern world.

If a system is accredited in the patch state it was in when it was tested what happens when there are further patches? Does the accreditation lapse because a patched system is no longer in the same state? If it remains in the same state does the accreditation lapse because it is now out of date?

Cooler heads needed in heated E2EE debate, says think tank

The executive summary says "At the forefront of the discourse is a false dichotomy between protecting privacy and ensuring national security. ... On the privacy side, it is believed that governments and law enforcement agencies desire unrestrained exceptional access to EZEE communications to spy on their citizens." If that's what they believe that to be the whole of the privacy side then it certainly is false. The essence of privacy isn't just to protect against governments and law enforcement to spy on their citizens - it's to protect against anybody spying on anyone.

Although they then go on to say that the issues are more nuanced letting that misleading summary of the argument stand unmodified in the executive summary - and in the first paragraph which might be the reading limit for some skimming the report - is seriously misleading. It's just asking to be quoted out of context.

I think the stake for a place in the argument for anyone arguing against has to be the willingness to post online their login credentials for their bank, shopping sites, social media, work etc. We need that to be able to see the extent to which they understand their "If you've nothing to hide...." mantra.

Boeing demos ground-based anti-jam system for satellites

Re: An eternal game of whack-a-mole...

"You do something to harden your stuff, the enemy does something that renders the hardening less/non-effective"

So you love it or you hate it. Anti-jam? Sounds like Marmite.

The one with a jar of something in the pocker.

The metaverse of fantasy worlds is itself still a fantasy

Re: If your boss is bugging you about this tech, here's how to respond

The board will very likely think he's talking sense.

Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest

Re: no VLANs ????

"And it's not as they cost anything"

But they do. The bank would have to pay somebody who knew what they were doing to set them up. What's more they have to pay somebody to ensure every new box is on the right VLAN.

Re: Root Causes

"But what if it goes wrong, who do we sue?"

The correct response at this point would be:

"Do we sue Microsoft, Oracle or any other supplier?"

Re: Maybe they should have outsourced their IT...

"massive talent pool of IT in India"

It sounds as if the Hyderabad police have more of it than the bank.

Re: the Andra Pradesh Mahesh Co-Operative Urban Bank

Why the downvotes other than "loose" instead of "lose"? It's the account holders who were the victims. They weren't in a position to know their bank was so lax.

Unfortunate.

"The unfortunate institution"

It's not the bank that's unfortunate, it's their customers. The bank got exactly what it deserved, the customers didn't.

Google talks up its 540-billion-parameter text-generating AI system

Re: Able to explain jokes?

Does it understand when jokes are explained to it?

I can't help thinking that to teach an infant human language doesn't require 540 billion "parameters" (does a "parameter" maybe correspond to a neurone. But the results "still suffer from the same weaknesses: they all generate toxic, biased, and inaccurate text."

Wing launches drone deliveries in the US where people actually live

Can I add that this comment is in no way associated with yesterday's experience with an Amazon locker with a no-longer pristine opening mechanism and a help number that doesn't go through to the agent queue but a recorded message telling me to key 1 to get an SMS to get connected to an agent or to use their app if I'd installed it on my phone - or maybe, if I'd listened that long, they mught have told me to go to their site on my computer which was several miles away at home. Silly me expecting a help number to go through to a help line.

Re: Pointless

"Completely and utterly pointless waste of capital and resources. Especially in areas with good road networks."

You raise a serious point but not the one you intended. Could this, in fact, be less polluting than road delivery?

Re: so what?

Another site that attempts to deliver nothing unless it's allowed to use javascript. If I were a potential customer I'd take that as indicative of the whole business's capability of delivering. If you're willing to use what is, in effect, your shop front to demonstrate how your developers fail to cope with anything but the happy path then we have to assume that that will also apply to the service itself.

"make sure everyone has a good first experience with drone delivery,"

Then after a few months wear and tear and all the edge cases the frAgile development didn't cover will start to take their toll.

Beijing bails out bankrupt Chinese chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup

Even so, given the current state of the semiconductor supply chains it seems to need a special talent to go bankrupt.

Mailchimp: Crook stole cryptocurrency clients' mailing-list subscriber info

Professiona spammers again

For avoidance of doubt,that's Mailchimp. Your semi-professional spammer bank, retailer or whatever, will happily send them PII of their customers and insist that they're doing nothing wrong under GDPR.