Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft unshackles WSL2 Linux kernel from Windows 10 image for future fettling via Windows Update

Re: It's not an OS

"Tedious fanboyism is tedious."

Not so much tedious as ill-informed.

US senators propose $22bn fund for new fabs on American soil because making stuff is better than designing stuff

Could it be that the concept of second sourcing is making a comeback?

Remember that backdoor in Juniper gear? Congress sure does – even if networking biz wishes it would all go away

Re: Sneeky

"That's a proper back door."

It's not a back door, it's a back room.

"The house of cards is crumbling more every day."

It won't be allowed to interfere with business as usual.

You know Facebook has an image problem when major nonprofits start turning down donations over political lies

I suppose he'll just look t it as more money in his pocket.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: @ Iglethat & "since hes proven that hes a gullible idiot"

I probably do know a bit about it. I'm a biologist by training and a techie by adoption. My first venture from science to IT was in the mobile industry. And you?

Re: Gullibility is no excuse.

"Ever tried teach your parents or grandparents to use technology?"

Given that I'm 75 that would be a tad difficult. But I have friends and relatives older then I who are quite familiar with technology.

The real problem is with younger people who have absolutely no sense of time. The worst are those who are convinced that because they grew up with their Spectra and similar 8-bit toys that they somehow invented all that stuff. They didn't. It was invented by people in my age group, some a bit younger, some a good deal older. We were using computers longer than they've been drawing breath.

Re: 3 years for a terrorist offence ?

The rest of us know that expensive infrastructure - even Voodoofone's - is a common good and that damaging it is damage to everyone who depends on it. You seem to be in a minority of one.

Perhaps the judge should have pointed out that the entire rumour is a cunning government plot to get the gullible to self-identify so the NHS doesn't waste resources treating them when they go down with coronavirus.

Re: It's a shame...

Gullibility is no excuse.

Yes there should be sanctions against networks that allow this garbage to propagate and the Z-listers as accessories before the fact.

But what do we do about the schools that are failing to teach critical thinking?

UK.gov announces review – not proper inquiry – into Fujitsu and Post Office's Horizon IT scandal

The first things should be (a) any criminal prosecutions against the Post Office and/or Fujitsu and/or members of staff responsible and (b) a presumption that all prosecutions against the postmasters are unsafe, even those who pleaded guilty with the Post Office offered a strict deadline to object to any particular case before all convictions are quashed. (a) because until those are dealt with there would be an excuse for anyone called as a witness to an enquiry to object that the matter is sub judice; this might be why it's only a review being set up now. (b) because this shouldn't just hang on whilst things are drawn through a criminal review procedure. When (a) is out of the way would be time for a judicial inquiry.

Sponge code borks square AI brains, sucking up compute power in novel attack against machine-learning systems

At a slightly higher level than the example, a verbatim transcript of a speech by John Prescott could be hugely damaging.

Re: Artificial intelligence

"why proof reading is so hard"

Proof reading one's own text is much harder than proofing someone else's.

Lettuce Encrypt, Encrypt We Must: Hobby projects change name after Let's Encrypt fires off trademark complaints

I suppose there could be a spoofing problem - if a project has LetsEncrypt in its name it might be trusted without further investigation by the unwary and then go on to load something untrustworthy with LetsEncrypt then catching the blame. So, yes, I can see why they would take that line.

Germany to fund development of edge CPUs as part of 'tech you can trust' plan to home-brew more kit

"Technology You Can Trust"

Who's "you"?

Scottish cops dangle £6m for help understanding 160TB treasure trove of structured and unstructured data

And the moral of the story - structure your data when you capture it. It's easier that way.

Otherwise, there's always grep.....

An Internet of Trouble lies ahead as root certificates begin to expire en masse, warns security researcher

If this knocks off-line a lot of botnets running from vulnerable webcams and the like it might be a Good Thing.

City of Los Angeles sued for tracking rental scooter rides – that's the rideshare company's job says EFF and ACLU

Re: Distinction

The complaint states that only data about the scooters is recorded including the start and end points. The basis of the complaint is that this is sufficient to deanonymise the data.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

I should have added that because my annual mileage is fairly low it would also mean hiring a car for a not inconsiderable portion of my annual mileage. It doesn't make sense.

And would those two down-voters try answering my original question?

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

Where I've seen hotels with charging points there might only be one or two so the first problem is getting there before someone else arrives to get an overnight charge. The next is getting there before anyone else rolls up in an ICE car and finds the only place to park is in front of the the charger (yes, that has been me).

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

Agreed, but I suspect that even the 2WD plugin-hybrids would be top of the 2WD range.

The issue is that to get occasional range you need a hybrid. To make EV worth-while you need plug-in. Combining the two is more expensive as it needs both an ICE and the extra circuitry for external charging. But then the cost is bumped up more by sticking in all the additional bells and whistles of the top of range models.

Re: Electric or Hybrid?

"Waste might be better than burning fossil fuels, but it still releases CO2. And wood chips again sound good, but growing a tree takes years, is usually imported from abroad using a dirty heavy oil burning ship and then the CO2 it absorbed over a number of years is released into the atmosphere in seconds."

Nevertheless wood chip is a closed cycle. Drax is now, I believe, entirely wood chip and it's big. As you say, it's the transport that's the killer.

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

I looked into that last year. My wife was warned off driving because of eye-sight problems. I looked at the market with a view to replacing both cars by one.

First requirement would be 4wd on the basis that the council doesn't quickly if ever get round to clearing snow on these hill roads. At present SWMBO's little Suzuki fills that role. That requirement restricted the market.

For the reasons given I looked at hybrids. Most seemed to rely on the petrol engine to charge the battery. ?? That seemed more like gesture politics than a sensible change.

So I then looked at plug-in hybrids. Right at the top of the price range.

Fortunately surgery resolved the sight problems and I dropped the idea.

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

"Imagine renting a car for those few days a year."

What car would that be when they're all electric?

Re: This does happen

You drive into a Jet filling station and drive out a very few minutes later with a few hundred miles range in the car.

Re: Restructure the Market

"Just keep knocking up the taxes on petrol and diesel and you'd achieve the same effect."

It causes withdrawal symptoms when govts, addicted to the revenues from those taxes, discover they've succeeded beyond their wildest nightmares.

Re: "the ones at the bottom of the pile are ignored..."

I doubt the [MD]oT has ever been in favour of freedom of movement, at least not since the days of Barbara Castle.

Re: £6k or is it a £3k change?

On the principle that most governments never announce any money just once I'd guess it'll be an extra £3k.

Contemplation is cheap.

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

Can we clarify this? Do you mean the number of vehicles that didn't exceed 100 miles on some particular day, say 1st March 2020 (before lockdown) or the number of vehicles that never exceed 100 miles a day in the course of a year?

It's a big difference. I don't have a daily commute Pre lockdown I might not take my car on the road on some days and most occasions when I did I wouldn't exceed, say 20 miles and living where I do a substantial part of each journey involves driving uphill and then wasting the potential energy thus gained in braking going downhill. Being able to reclaim that energy would be a good fit for an electric car.

About half my annual mileage takes place on holiday when I might drive a few hundred miles a day going to and from my destination, I wouldn't count on being able to access an overnight charger at my destination and I wouldn't want to have my days dominated on holiday partially controlled by having to hunt up somewhere to top up the battery and hanging about when I do.

There would be no point whatsoever in having a vehicle which can't fit both scenarios.

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Not All Kitchen Appliances Are Different

I think the difference between Jake's solution and yours is that Jake controls his, you only think you control yours.

Re: Desirable level of smartness

"it has an intelligent chrono sensitive piezo-sonic alerting mechanism when it works out its door has been left open too long"

Ours has that. Trouble is, its idea of too long isn't the same as mine. Bleeping nuisance.

Re: Scott Helme on expiring TLS root certificates

"the person responsible for not renewing it etc"

The only people who might have known what to do to renews might have long gone.

Re: A solution looking for a problem

"super modern - it is a DAB radio"

Make your mind up.

Plain old FM here.

Re: My fridge freezer

She probably says the same thing about you.

Re: My fridge freezer

That's another way of working it out.

Re: My fridge freezer

Much the same thing here. I date them from the house we were in when we bouht them, ot years. The current freezer was bought while we were in our previous house so some time between '91 & '01. The previous was 2 houses further back so probably early 80s. I can't even remember when we bought the fridge but the door seal is starting to go - trouble is, I replaced the light bulb in it a few years ago and I'd hate to dispose of the fridge with some life left in the new one...

Re: Smart freezer - code frozen!

"then your premium fridge is just as functional as a bargain basement version"

If you're lucky. If not it just gets bricked.

Re: Yep, this need legislation

I can, of course, offer you that guarantee and wind up the company next day.

China's silicon-self-sufficiency plan likely to miss targets due to Factories Not Present error

Re: Yet again...

Yup. Icinsights.com are based in Scottsdale. US wishful thinking?

Huawei launches UK charm offensive: We've provided 2G, 3G and 4G for 20 years, and you're worried about 5G?

"We believe that the UK will continue to take an evidence-based approach"

Evidence is only accepted when it supports what the govt. wants to do.

Why would someone want to hack Germany's PPE supply chain? We're glad you masked

Why go public? If they've spotted it about it just keep quiet and feed them some disinformation.

Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it

Re: Not quite the same...

Similar vintage a friend got the Fortran control characters wrong so it threw a new page instead of a new line. To make matters worse when he was taking it home on the back of his motor-bike it unfolded itself behind him.

Franco-German cloud framework floated to protect European's data from foreign tech firms slurpage

Re: "Europe has no notable operating system developers"

Isn't he a US citizen now. However large open source projects aren't the product of single countries. Developers are world-wide.

Amongst Linux distros there's SuSE which seems to have done the rounds: originally German, bought by Novell (US) then AttachMate (US), then MicroFocus (UK) then Blitz GmbH (German again) a subsidiary of EQT partners (head office Sweden).

Document Foundation (LibreOffice) and NextCloud are also based in Germany.

Re: After the CLOUD Act it was inevitable

Having skimmed through the PDF I'm a little less hopeful. Amongst the usual suspects contributors are Google, Oracle, HPE and Cisco. Admittedly it's the German branches of these but it makes it look a little less than European.

Re: After the CLOUD Act it was inevitable

Cooperation with allies is a far better way.

They do believe in cooperation: "We tell you what we want, you cooperate.".

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

Re: Last month's solution?

Hmm. NHS website says contacts are advised to self-isolate.

gov.uk says "must" self-isolate.

The M word implies it's a legal requirement but is it?

It could be 'five to ten years' before the world finally drags itself away from IPv4

In a couple of decades IPv6 hasn't succeeded in pushing its predecessor to the fringes if not displacing it entirely. Does that suggest it really was the right design for the job?

Re: Sign of mass adoption

70% of Google traffic seems like mass retention to me.

Re: IPv6 isn't a very good solution?

"We're told that we absolutely have to move to IPv6 because of the Internet of Things"

Possibly the strongest argument against it.