Posts by Doctor Syntax

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of fraud: Blood-testing machines were vapourware after all

Re: But, she did do one good thing

I'm sure even directors who are selected because their names look impressive on the headed paper have responsibilities.

Re: But, she did do one good thing

"they did plenty of due diligence"

But not enough on her.

Re: 20 or 80 Years?

One of the lawyers who'd been opposing here has suggested that she was badly advised because she could have cut a deal several years ago so, yes, she may be surprised to hear it. Alternatively she heard it and ignored it.

Re: "what sort of person would think about having a child ... possibility of 20 years in jail

"People have a right to a family life."

As a parent and grandparent I've always tended to see my role more in terms of responsibilities than rights.

Re: Now, if only ....

I don't think Boris lies. I'm sure he really believes everything he says - possibly for as long as several hours - until he needs to say something different.

Re: I'm not defending any of them... but I'm not sure "scam" is right???

I'm not sure getting caught was part of what she intended to achieve.

Re: I'm not defending any of them... but I'm not sure "scam" is right???

"There was after all : a company, a working lab, a research and a product development division, and a product - albeit that it never worked."

I'm suddenly reminded of Feynman's words explaining cargo cults.

"I honestly believe that she set out to try to achieve what she wanted to achieve"

You also have to ask yourself, as she should have asked herself, whether she had the requisite background to achieve that.

In order to successfully direct the development effort to produce that sort of machine would need decades of experience in the field. In fact, that experience would be needed to decide whether it was even feasible. She didn't have that. So what was her role? I think the jury's answered that question.

Re: But, she did do one good thing

"I think the wool was being pulled firmly over everybody’s eyes."

Not everybody's. There seem to have been a lot of people saying it wasn't working but they were either told to shut up or ignored.

Re: "what sort of person would think about having a child ... possibility of 20 years in jail

"Juries are not that stupid and operate under strict instructions."

Juries are given a summing up by the judge and advice as to what the law is. When they get into the jury room their response to that is entirely their own.

Re: But, she did do one good thing

"there’s no suggestion that they did anything wrong"

Or enough due diligence.

Re: 20 or 80 Years?

"this is not a particularly egregious example of fraud (i.e. she deceived sophisticated investors"

But these are Rich Important People. Doesn't US sentencing come down heavily on that?

Re: "what sort of person would think about having a child ... possibility of 20 years in jail

True, but what happens to the children during her jail sentences? At best it's yet another instance of thinking only of herself and not, in this case, the child.

You wood not believe what a Japanese logging company and university want to use to build a small satellite

Will it me called the Mosquito - or whatever the Japanese word is for that?

Chip manufacturing equipment vendor ASML reports fire at Berlin factory

If somebody left a lens sitting about in direct sunlight it'll make an interesting "Who, Me?".

Offering Patreon subs in sterling or euros means you can be sued under GDPR, says Court of Appeal

Re: Any business

"Lord Justice Warby has form on inventing new law by precedent."

That's the nature of the job and, in fact, the law.

Re: Interesting decision

I don't think the judgement actually comments on this (at least it didn't before my eyes glazed over) but the implication seems to be that they knew, or at least assumed, some dollar subs were already coming from the EU and the subsequent half dozen UK or EU subs might only be a subset of those.

Re: On the other hand...

I'm not sure why you got the downvotes as it is actually a good question.

AFAICS that wasn't a situation the court was asked to decide on so it didn't decide on it. The choice of currency was taken as an indication of trading in the EU (including the UK at the time). Presumably this was what the complainant argued. If they only accepted dollars there may have been other indications for the complainant to argue and the court to accept or reject as it considered appropriate.

If they only accepted USD and specifically said "Not available in the EU" or maybe USD and other non-EU currencies the situation might have been different but you'd need to see how a court ruled in those circumstances to be sure.

Case law grows by interpreting the legislation in relation to specific sets of circumstances.

It sounds reasonable. Why should it be different to collecting money here by any other means?

The year ahead in technology fail: You knew they were bad, now they're going to prove it

Re: One per minute

"If the birth rate drops low enough, the entire population could be idiots."

I think there could be hidden assumption in there..

Despite Rupert's misgivings One per Minute seems to be holding up well.

"To give you an idea of how much overkill this is, the bandwidth of the human optic nerve is roughly 20Mbps."

They'll probably mop up the spare capacity with DRM. Mmm - lovely DRM. Can't have too much of it.

Microsoft patches Y2K-like bug that borked on-prem Exchange Server

1. changing the type from the equivalent of "int32_t" to "uint32_t" would solve the problem for several thousand years.

But they'd have lost the ability to handle BC dates.

2. Does everyone understand that by reserving four digits for an update counter *within a day*, Microsoft effectively said "our software is sooooo bad, we might actually have to post a thousand or more updates *in a single day*"?

It's the sort of conservative approach they should have taken in handling the date in the scanner.

A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'

Boris, don't you think your turnover of apprentices is a bit on the high side?

Re: Sounds like us (sic)

Perhaps her rationale was that it would stop anyone else unscrewing the switch.

Re: Nothing like a disaster...

He probably can't afford a horse.

Re: They had it coming.

"you'll have even less time for it later on, when Murphy strikes"

It works the other way round. That's when you do have time for it.

Re: Screwdrivers in wrong places.

Also back in the days of valves I was working on a PA amplifier. The anodes, at about 350 - 400V IIRC, of the output valves were on the top caps and somebody, for some reason, had cut and resoldered the lead to one of the caps without insulating the joint. Replacing the steel cover without switching off...

Predictive Dirty Dozen: What will and won't happen in 2022 (unless it doesn’t/does)

Here's one that is already starting to come true:

There'll be a public realisation that electricity supply, no matter how green, blue or whatever colour it's washed, is in danger of becoming a single point of failure. The trigger point for this is the withdrawal of POTS and the media are starting to notice. A few areas have undergone this just in time to have their power cut off by storm Arwen. "Use your mobile" doesn't appeal when there's no local coverage, the storm has also taken out the base stations or the power cut has outlasted the charge in the phone's battery.

Re: it's been ovious for some time

If they want to get rid of private cars they'll need to get rid of the reasons for private cars. Because I grew up at a time when private cars were an extreme rarity I have some notion of the sorts of things that are going to be needed. Taking one small area as an example:

For one thing what's now a private house at the bottom of the hill is going to have to be converted back into the shop it once was or a substitute found.* The same applies to all the other former shops down the valley.

Next the remains of the local mill are going to have to be reconverted into businesses with a greater ratio of workers to floor space. Unlike many old mills the buildings are almost entirely still there but I don't think the businesses using them employ more than a small fraction of the staff who used to work there. Then there's the "brownfield site" down the valley which hasn't yet been demolished. That needs to be reassigned as a workspace. The sites of the mills further still down the valley are going to be a problem. Do the houses get demolished and new business premises built to replace them? Even that's not going to be enough to rebalance the population/jobs ratio to they way it was in the 1950s.

Public transport is also going to have to be restored to allow those who don't work in the villages to commute into the local town. But then the local town has lost jobs to the cities.

What about working at home? It's not going to be for everyone but if all the jobs that have been lost from mills can be replaced by forcing businesses to relocate to the old mills or their replacements, then working at home might possibly deal with the extra population that's now here. Because not only have the premises of old businesses, including farms, been converted to housing, but, being situated within driving distance of several urban centres, houses have been built on greenfield sites for commuters.

Net zero? Just a couple of words politicians have heard and keep repeating.

* Yes, I know about online ordering and deliveries. But back when there was a village shop there were also arrangements for ordering and delivery; maybe a little more cumbersome but they were there. There were also mobile shops - dad's cousin, for example, had a mobile greengrocery business. But the village shop within walking distance was essential.

Re: Can we try and get HMG to join the crowdfunding lark

The Beeb's carrying a report of one couple who seem to be having problems getting a notification. As is often the case the only remediation for the failed system seems to be to try the failed system again. Every automated system needs an effective, largely manual escalation system alongside it.

Re: Can we try and get HMG to join the crowdfunding lark

"might help."

You haven't experienced their ACD.

Re: I predict that Toyota is going to remove functionality ...

"Fact of the matter is unless such transport competes favourably with a car it cannot win."

The competition is largely in terms of time and/or general convenience rather than price. Living in High Wycombe and commuting into London by train took far too much of the time but looking at the traffic jams we passed was a clear indication that things could be worse.

Commuting to work at any other phase of my working life the absence of any direct public transport route made the car inevitable. In fact, simply getting to and from the train stations was a substantial part of the time of the London commute; the long waits while BR found enough working DMUs* to cobble together a train was another.

Deciding on the of method of commuting is inevitably a matter of choosing the least bad. The longer Covid runs the clearer it will become that big cities are an idea whose time has gone. Considerations of sustainability should lead to that conclusion anyway. The sunk cost fallacy is what keeps governments from accepting that.

* The only reasonable explanation for the complete lack of relationship between train times and timetable, reinforced by the age and state of the rolling stock.

Re: Self Driving Computers on wheels

Predicting the socio-economics of diseases isn't straight forward. The plague in the mid C14th reduced the population by 30-50% after a substantial decrease due to famine a generation or so earlier. Small population/labour force, lots of spare land. Wages rise, rents fall, feudalism collapses, the common man gets rich and the population burgeons again, right? No. For some time the Statute of Labourers effectively held down wages for some considerable time. Feudalism only ended gradually. Those predictions did eventually play out but slower than might have been reasonably expected.

The really odd thing is that the population, which is believed to have been growing quite fast at the end of the previous century, stabilised for several centuries. These things are hard to estimate before censuses so opinions differ as to how long it took the population to regain its 1300 level. People tended to marry later and have fewer children but it's not clear why.

Re: "All office chairs are gaming chairs"

"Support your local woodworker!"

Seconded. That was my Dad's first trade and also a cousin's/

Re: Can we try and get HMG to join the crowdfunding lark

A few days ago I got a text message encouraging me to get a booster. I had one several weeks ago which leads me to the conclusion that either:

1. This is specifically aimed at me to tell to get a second booster. I've not heard of that being more than a possibility for some time in the future so if that's the case I find it very puzzling.

2. This is specifically aimed at me but they've got their records in a twist. Again.

3. It's untargeted text spam in which case how do I recognise any similar but targeted messages aimed at me in the future?

Perhaps I should ring 119 to find out.

Re: I predict that Toyota is going to remove functionality ...

You'd end up with a few hundred well integrated routes. The vast majority of other routes people need would remain the usual random partial collection of disjointed services.

Re: Self Driving Computers on wheels

"COVID is going to be with us for at least one more year."

Covidiot numbers will remain stable. As the Darwin award picks them off one by one the Barnum effect will replace them. Barnum's prediction is the really reliable one.

Re: I predict that Toyota is going to remove functionality ...

When I was young we had 4 buses an hour each way, 30 minutes into the local town, doubled up at rush hours. It's now 1 per hour, 40 minutes journey time because the route zig-zags to try to cover a second of the old routes.

It's easier to go to town by bus by first driving to an adjacent village which has a 15 minute route into town served by 2 bus companies each running 4 an hour service.

Re: "All office chairs are gaming chairs"

You've just reanimated one of those strange interview memories.

One of those strange not quite a chair, not quite stool perches on castors of the 1980s. Sitting on a fortunately normal office chair being interviewed for a job by an interviewer who kept scooting round the room on his toy.

Re: "All office chairs are gaming chairs"

Tracking the changes of shape (and size) over the years.

Re: "All office chairs are gaming chairs"

"Your back will thank you."

During bad back episodes I've found that the best chair is something like this: https://www.londonfine.co.uk/products/antique-elbow-chair-english-country-kitchen-windsor-armchair-early-c20th

The old chair makers understood lumbar support.

Re: "All office chairs are gaming chairs"

I didn't know peanuts had gas rams.

No, that is a gas ram in the pocket.

Re: I predict that Toyota is going to remove functionality ...

"the UK Government will seriously propose the concept of completely removing private car ownership"

The DoT has been at that game ever since the days of Barbara Castle, the non-driving Minister of Transport of the 1960s. The notion that the plebs can go wherever and whenever they please sticks in the Whitehall craw.

You've stolen the antiglare shield on that monitor you've fixed – they say the screen is completely unreadable now

Oops! Nitrogen.

Toner powder can do the same in reprographics shops.

Liquid oxygen and hydrofluoric acid were both stuff I used in my old days with no problems.

The well known to be scary stuff is often effectively safe because it's respected. Periodically there used to be articles in the media about Abrus precatoria whose poisonous black and red seeds can be used as beads. These would usually end up with a necklace of the things making its way into the lab for identification. A toxicology colleague who'd come from East Africa where the plant grew wild said their was no problem with them - everyone knew they were poisonous so nobody tried to eat them.

Re: After many many many years

We've got one.

Re: HAZMAT suit please, nurse, gloves please!

"cough mixture into the keyboard"

I hope that was before consumption.

You geeks have inherited the Earth, but what are you going to do with it?

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"There are still plenty of those around but younger ones did sociology, psychology and proudly avoided all STEM and then got their degrees in Eutruscan pottery or something."

Things are less predictable than you think. None of my friends who wrote the book - another local history book as it happens - have a stem background. The oldest is well into her 80s. As it happens her husband was a maths teacher but I've seen no sign of him taking any interest in using IT. Another of our local history group, very active on YouTube, was a German teacher. In fact I know quite a few people of my age or older (and I'm long retired) whose backgrounds or interests are in the arts just use computers as an everyday tool. So too, no doubt, do your Etruscan ceramicists.

Re: "impossible to imagine how the global pandemic would have played out without it."

Medical research would have been somewhat less advanced and it would have taken longer to distribute the genetic sequence of the virus. Clinical trials would have proceeded more slowly and it would have taken longer to forge supply lines. OTOH we wouldn't have the the Covidiots undermining things and arguably a few countries might have had saner, more capable governments running things. It's not easy to see how those factors would have balanced each other out.