Posts by Doctor Syntax

Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead

Morrisons to double check before you hit return.

Digital sovereignty must define itself before it can succeed

"If you use a service or software that stores your data or identity in a place or with people with no legal protection against state interference, you have no privacy or protection from being locked out."

This sentence entangles several different concepts.

For a non-governmental service, server provider access could be demanded by an arm of the state - in civilised societies that would require a search warrant or similar. That's always been the case if you're talking about written on paper. Even for servers running on-prem the same applies. That means that sovereignty below state level is limited but state interference can be restricted to the local state by using a provider which meets the requirements below.

Services provided for a government department is not so likely to be subject to search warrant although there may be circumstances where it could happen - suspected corruption, for instance. For governments the concern is interference from a foreign government, either access to data or sanctions terminating the service. That requires what I outlined in a previous comment: ... it has to be operated by an entity, be that a company, a government department or whatever, constituted in the area, under the area's legislation with an ownership chain entirely within the area and with the law of the area applying to the contracts for services and without interference from any entity outside the area.

While I take the point about quality of software and regulatory requirements I think that's a different matter to provision of sovereign services. The significant issue for software for sovereign services is whether the software can be run in a manner that meets those requirements. It has to be hosted by a provider which fails to meet them, then its unsuitable. Software from a local commercial software house (including bespoke software) could be suitable but the biggest source of suitable software would be FOSS. Note also that any software support provider needs to meet the requirements.

Re: Dream On!

Sovereignty, at least from the state view, be that country or bloc such as the EU it means that the service provider is subject only to the laws of that area to which it's sovereign. That means it has to be operated by an entity, be that a company, a government department or whatever, constituted in the area, under the area's legislation with an ownership chain entirely within the area and with the law of the area applying to the contracts for services and without interference from any entity outside the area.

Outside of the US that excludes Google, Meta and other US service providers. So they can't slurp what they don't see and they can't see what they don't get their hands on. If they want to continue providing sovereign services in that situation they need to find a partner who meets those requirements and set up a franchise with contracts which are suitably arm's length. Perhaps even more than the slurping is ensuring an outside entity can't arbitrarily tell the service provider to stop providing a service.

I appreciate that this is a concept some people find difficult to get their head round but there are such things as sovereign states which make their own laws and rather resent the US's extra-terrioriality

Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows

Re: Wayland

"While I can't do anything about Systemd given that it is so contageously widespread"

Yes you can : https://www.devuan.org/

(Other options are also available.

Re: If only Linux had something like hier (7) on FreeBSD

WHoosh?

Try man hier(7) (Linux version)

Re: Put Windows in jail?

I suppose there's a trad-off, at least in perceived risks, between the PC being clobbered by a malicious attack and a Microsoft update. That might depend on how it's used but keeping it entirely off the net eliminates both risks.

Re: Put Windows in jail?

Liam mentions a fake virtual TPM in TFA.

To go one step further, I wonder if it would be possible to strip the Windows down to kernel, drivers and a minimal set of .DLLs so that it's just an API for running Windows applications.

Re: Yuck

Also applications for strongly regulated environments only certified to run under Windows.

An all these categories there's also the possibility thet they only run in obsolete versions of Windows.

" the WinApps config for both Docker and Podman defaults to storing the Windows VM in /var/lib"

If only Linux had a standard place for storing data for such services. It could be called something like /srv

GPT-5 bests human judges in legal smack down

Re: Judges

Is this a view based on time spent watching courts at work or reports in the Daily Wail?

Re: From my little knowledge about US-legal...

In some jurisdictions there are small claims procedures dealing with sums which would probably include even a high end TV. Each side pays its own expenses so there's no mileage in a company bringing in an expensive lawyer. If they lose they lose and if they win it's a bit of a pyrrhic victory if they pay their lawyer more than they've saved in damages.

The judge rules on law. The jury is normally the tribunal of fact although the judge's summing up will be important.

However, there are exceptions, one being the magistrates' court. The so-called Diplock tribunals in N Ireland were also conducted by a judge acting as tribunal of fact in terrorist cases where there would be fears of intimidation of jurors. However it wasn't simply a case of the judge saying "guilty" or "not guilty" as a jury foreman would. He would give a reasoned verdict and that inevitably would require him to go a bit further than he might have done in a summing up for a jury. We now hear that jury-less trials might be introduced in some classes of cases in England & Wales to try to clear backlogs.

When I've seen the judges making rulings* there have been arguments from both sides both sides with copies of Archbold and other texts thrust upon the judge. It's not so much a matter of what the precedent is but of weighing which of two or more should be followed in those particular circumstances. It's also incumbent on the judge to explain the decision. If the decision is made in a high enough court the decision and its explanation can then become new precedents binding on later judges in similar circumstances.

* This has been about the admissibility of evidence that issuing guidance to a jury.

Enforcing piracy policy earned helpdesk worker death threats

Re: Why wasn't the violent idiot fired immediately and the cops called?

They might have said the same thing to the angry guy's subsequent business partner.

Re: Why wasn't the violent idiot fired immediately and the cops called?

Were you truly in a position to distinguish between a nutter and a genuine threat? If you decided that it was a nutter and it wasn't you could have been putting many lives at risk, including your own.

It has to be taken seriously, the consequences are too serious if it's real. The possibility of it being real cannot be dismissed simply because it's something outside your experience. As I keep saying here, experience is a dear teacher. I's better to learn from others' experience and not have to larn from your own.

Re: Reminds me of poor management

Management did nothing, even when shown the posts.

The possible replies to that are "If he did do that would like to be the one answering the police and reporters' questions afterwards?" and "Have you checked with legal?"

Re: Americans

Working in N Ireland we were offered a side arm for personal protection id we felt we needed it. Most declined. I certainly did, following the example of my father who also believed in not having guns in a house with small children (in his case his poaching shotgun). One of those who did take up the offer had an accidental discharge at work. He was in a stacked Portakabin. The round went through the cabin below where our librarian worked. Fortunately it missed her but I don't suppose she was too pleased.

Re: Americans

Even artillery pieces are guns. RA soldiers are gunners.

"they did not believe it to be an actual threat."

And that against Henry was believed to be an actual threat? The response to Henry might well have been the same until it was validated by subsequent events. Having a bomb threat validated by subsequent events isn't the best course of action. I suppose my point of view might be influenced by having had my former place of work bombed twice, once with limited success (windows broken etc) and once, after I'd left, successfully. And burnt down with what might have been a fire bomb.

It still needs someone prepared to give evidence of that and if nobody was willing to do tyhat you have a problem. If Henry did it himself it would be his word against the bully's. A willing 3rd party witness would be needed.

Part of the answer might be in this "He would tell anyone who listened that the next time he saw me, he would put a bullet in my face,"

It seems the threats were made to 3rd parties and it would be necessary to get one of them to confirm it HR and the police. They might not be prepared to do that.

There's also the matter of getting threats like that taken seriously - he might just laugh it off as not really meaning it. It's worth remembering that when a bomb threat was made to Robin Hood Airport the culprit was let off on those grounds. It's also worth remembering that when I suggested that shouldn't have happened I was downvoted here.

"And frankly, that guy should have been sat down and had that explained to him."

A bit tricky doing that when the two parties doing the shouting (at each other) are directors and they're doing it in the middle of an open plan office.

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

OTOH I sometimes suspect my car is built by Microsoft.

If it thinks* the driver isn't watching the road it will make a warning noise to attract the diver's attention to the dash display where it's showing a message telling the drive to watch the road. This happens particularly at complex road junctions where the driver is trying to take in at least 180° of surrounding roads.

The steering wheel mounted volume control is close to the button to trigger voice activation of the phone. If the latter is accidentally triggered when the handset isn't in the car the central display will show a message telling the drive that no device is connected and ask - while the car is in motion - whether the driver wants to connect one. Either answer seems to bring up some sort of connection dialog which simply doesn't go away by itself, even though the car is in motion and the driver obviously can't safely respond, not even to cancel it.

The collision avoidance system has a mind of its own. Slowing down approaching a T junction it will alert when there's nothing closer than the wall or hedge across the road. When creeping slowly up to the stop line it will slam on the brakes if another vehicle drives across and even stall the engine (and add insult to injury by then telling the driver that the vehicle in front has moved). Ditton for oncoming traffic on the other side of the road although it hasn't (yet) completely stopped or stalled the car. There are multiple pages in the driver's handbook warning of situations where it can make mistakes but the developers seem not to be aware of this being an indication that they've got things wrong.

Much the same goes for the lane awareness system. In particular it seems not to work with the collision avoidance system to realise that the reason that the driver is changing lanes to avoid a parked car; occasionally it will show both collision and lane alerts. On one particular narrow road with a steep camber it has to be restrained from oscillating between ditch and centre line. It has, for no obvious reason, tried to pull the car to the verge on a straight road or to the right towards the next lane on a left hand motorway bend. Like the collision avoidance there are many pages in the handbook explaining how it can make mistakes without this being seen as an indication they've got thongs wrong.

I've never had the courage to engage cruise control but one of the options is to take the current speed limit into consideration irrespective of the number of times the speed limit indicator fails to show anything or shows the wrong speed.

Could Microsoft do worse?

The sad thing is that given my age this might well be the last car I'll ever own and that there's probably no point in even looking at anything else because this is the standard of S/W on any modern car.

* Not entirely anthropomorphism, simply using "it" as an avatar for the development team.

Re: It's a fleet, not one car

It must have been different from another in the fleet.

I had an Ghia-ised Orion as a company car which would try to rip the driver's thumbs off by trying to self straighten cornering under power. Its replacement was a Montego that had the exact opposite problem. A subsequent boss said a group of them hired a Montego Turbo to go to the TT and it put them in ditch; I wasn't at least surprised.

Re: Linux cars...

"deliver few surprises and its passengers to their destination"

Elegance, sheer elegance.

"the third one is located centrally at the back"

More likely at one side. The better hree-wheelers of yore like the Morgan & BSA had the central rear wheel configuration.

Or maybe it is the pgo stick.

Re: Trabant!

OTOH there were a few whose faces were well-known in Yorkshire who just happened to be on hand to turn it back up onto its wheels. It was something of in in-joke.

OK, so Anthropic's AI built a C compiler. That don't impress me much

Re: Spotify

Maybe their best ones have been laid off because they're th most expensive.

Re: "That don't impress me much"

"until these AI can do things they can't even comprehend "

If you want stuff to be reliably useful at some real world task you need to have a degree of confidence in it. To have a degree of confidence requires a degree of comprehension of how to do it.

For the moment what we do comprehend is how, by pattern matching, it will invent non-existent legal case or bibliographic citations. It takes words it recognises associated with the prompt and fits them, apparently appropriately, into recognised patterns to produce realistic but false results.

Re: "That don't impress me much"

Pattern recognition includes seeing faces in clouds or on pieces of toast.

Re: 'Devs aren't nearly as won over'

Careful. Do not upset Bob. Otherwise he'll come and SHOUT AT YOU.

So basically, it's gambling addiction? That explains a lot.

How AI could eat itself: Competitors can probe models to steal their secrets and clone them

Re: Pot, kettle, all black

I have negative sympathy for them.

Anthropic wants comp-sci students to vibe code their way through college

Providing students taught this way are careful to put on their CV it should make filtering job applications easier.

Trump's Genesis Mission gets its first set of 26 sure-to-succeed objectives

Possibly the political heads are going in one direction and the grass roots who know otherwise are sneaking in good idea by the back door. That's assuming it all works. The "assuming" bit has so much work to do i needs its own fusion power.

Skyrora circles Orbex wreckage as UK rocket rival heads for administration

"The company was on that cusp for a while."

Hofstadter's law strikes again.

Booster nozzle anomaly fails to stop ULA Vulcan Centaur reaching orbit

How was your delivery?

It was great . . . Not so great

BOFH: Loss adjuster discovers liability is a two-way street

Re: Talk about

Gravity.

Never fails.

Re: Boss, in an uncharacteristic fit of energy, decided to replace the water bottle in the cooler

"Happy Friday the 13th all."

Maybe I shouldn't have sent one of my users a NextCloud welcome email.

Icon - the well known invalid token error.

Re: Talk about

It's very tricky parking your car on top of a six foot stack of wooden pallets.

Misconfigured AI could trigger the next national infrastructure meltdown

Re: Advice please

Obviously a few power banks to keep your phone going. If you can't order pizzas in a situation like that you imght starve to death.

Re: "when" not "if"

Or say they're sorry.

The big FOSS vendors don't eat their own dogfood – they pay for proprietary groupware

The temper tantrums are what are making the rest of the world realise they may need to abandon the Great American Hegemony.

Re: "for as long as software has existed, it's been normal to distribute the source code"

"(although in this regard Windows is far better than Linux - exactly for the reason you can't recompile for each release, and why should you? Compiling code should not be a user matter - they use software, not build it)"

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Linux users* compile the applications they use themselves. Very occasionally if something isn't in the distro repositories or the project doesn't offer binaries this might be the case but this seems to be getting rarer. Time was when I built QGIS but now I just use the Debian version.

Where did you get this strange notion?

Other than Gentoo users.

Re: "for as long as software has existed, it's been normal to distribute the source code"

"the ugly desktop UI and thereby ugly desktop applications."

How, then, do you explain why MS Office is so ugly?

$8K laundry bot knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em, and knows it has help standing by

"I estimate that I spend as much as 10 min per week folding laundry"

You must be one of those who takes their time over it.

Or just your money.

Maybe their target market is industrial scale laundries.

You have a robot tha will tidy up a home by putting everything away. Where do you put it away when it's not in use?