Posts by Doctor Syntax

Family meeting! Chocolate Factory makes its business-like video-chat service free to anyone with a Google account

you'll need a Google account t... That account is "so it remains secure", according to a representative.

That always works.

I'm doing this to stop humans ripping off brilliant ideas by computers and aliens, says guy unsuccessfully filing patents 'invented' by his AI

I thought patents were already issued for things invented by computer. Do you mean it was actual people adding "on a computer", "on the internet" and "by mobile phone"?

Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard

Re: No shock

"Don't tell me that this didn't benefit someone, somewhere in the process."

That'll be the Robin Hood Airport?

Re: Great news!

"do everything we can to ensure it will not happen again."

Given that this was the result of their duty to ensure it couldn't happen in the first place this isn't reassuring.

I find it deeply annoying that those making such anodyne statements never get directly challenged on them.

Just got to love these modern "experts" not a clue most of them.

Unless your idea of an expert is the cheapest pair of hands that can be recruited by the cheapest off-shored outsourcer there are no experts involved.

Re: Never ascribe to mailce ...

"These programmes are devised by people with one track minds focused narrowly on a single objective, the contracts are assigned to corporations to which only the financials are of interest,"

And this is why we should demand more than anodyne statements when things go wrong.

The possibility of personal punishment might lead minds to focus on more than one thing and a single contract worth less than a few percent of global turnover might make the financial return on implementing things properly worth while.

Re: Always abused

This raises an interesting point. For ANPR the data subject is the registered keeper. The proof of the right of the registered keeper is the current registration held by the DVLA.

Re: GDPR

"The actual perpetrators don't have to pay it out themselves."

No reason why not. GDPR makes provision for those with responsibilities to be prosecuted.

Re: Colour me surprised

The issue is a little more than subtle than thinking of guilt by association. It's the underlying assumption that the individual doesn't matter.

Government - at all levels - then starts thinking in abstractions: hard-working families, the vulnerable, minorities, elites and the like. All manner of things can then be done in the name of supporting or opposing such abstractions because it becomes permissible to trample on the rights of individuals regardless of whether the action is supposed to be supporting those abstractions of which the individual might reasonably supposed to be a member.

why are we being mass-surveilled in this way? What possible justification can there be? Oh yeah, terrmotorists.

FTFY

Re: No login details or authentication of any sort was needed to view and search the live system

"Fining doesn't work as they don't pay the fine."

If the fine is a personal one if would be wrong for the council to pay it. If it did then the councillors responsible could be surcharged.

Re: Massive invasion of privacy

"a huge GDPR fine for the council will ultimately make things worse for those residents as yet more cuts are required to pay for it"

GDPR and the current DPA based on it allow for the officers of a corporate body to be held personally responsible for its failings. Where the body is a public one ITSM that this would be the appropriate route for prosecution.

Re: So who is to blame?

AMAFM1 posting A/C?

Re: Massive invasion of privacy

Councils are very obviously part of the government in all but name

That name is local government.

Re: Massive invasion of privacy

I doubt anyone changed places there.

Re: Colour me surprised

"the current environmental issues"

This is the council that, some years ago, had some representative appearing on local TV news bragging about how some new venture had brought so many new jobs to the area followed a few weeks later by another representative appearing on local TV news to bewail their traffic problems. The fact that there might be a connection between jobs and traffic never occurred.

It's also council whose approach to environmental issues is to cut down a lot of its trees wnilst being quite aggressive to those citizens who opposed that.

Re: If I lived there

It depends on the coverage. If it extended to the "smart" M1" it might not make much difference if you lived there, you'd just have to be travelling past.

Smart but lethal.

The People's Republic of South Yorkshire is alive and well.

I see they're not taking responsibility for causing it, even though there would probably be no personal consequences.

Assange should be furloughed from Belmarsh prison, says human rights org. Here's a thought: He could stay with friends!

Re: time marches on

Actually there was no US extradition warrant out for him when he skipped bail. I rather think that the previous US administration had realised that ignoring him would be a sufficient punishment.

Re: time marches on

The greatest threat to Assange seems to be Assange. If he hadn't skipped from Sweden he could have served whatever time he was due there and then moved on to wherever would be prepared to take him.

Instead, although there wasn't even a US extradition warrant against him, under the pretext of avoiding extradition to the US he fled to the UK where it would have been much easier for him to have been extradited to the US if they'd asked - which they hadn't. So he then took the extraordinary step of skipping bail, to the detriment of those who'd supported him with bail and hiding in an embassy from which there was no chance of escape without being rearrested. He stated there until (a) there was a US extradition warrant and (b) the Swedish process (which still had first dibbs on him) was pretty well exhausted.

Re: As long as UK.gov keeps the money this time

"This time anyone putting up money must know what they're getting into"

Given that he was already doing a runner last time they should have had a reasonable idea. It's difficult to see why they didn't get charged the full amount. There's no point setting bail if it's not to be forfeit in full.

It's so unfair when a bad reputation follows ou around like that.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: HP printers

"I'm expecting 5G to explode the number of common household objects that we have to pay monthly service fees for"

I'm not, for the simple reason I wouldn't buy one.

Resistance is futile: Some Cisco security appliances are ticking time bombs of fail thanks to faulty resistors

Re: The manufacturing process issue

Or simply a process failure during manufacture of one batch of resistors. Which leads to the possibility that other manufacturers might have used components from the same batch.

UK snubs Apple-Google coronavirus app API, insists on British control of data, promises to protect privacy

Re: Watching from the bunker

"while these are unusual times, we are acutely aware of our obligations to you."

If they're aware of their obligations these are indeed unusual times.

No, silly me. They always were aware, they just didn't feel inclined to follow them.

Re: It's not just a matter of trusting their ethics...

"WTF is it doing on the internet anyway?"

But it's not on the internet, it's just in the cloud. What? Do you mean the cloud's on the internet? Nobody told us that before.

Re: Fingerprints

"your prints are deleted"

Are you sure? I thought this was one of those things, along with DNA record deletion, that was just too difficult and continues to be just too difficult however often they get rapped over the knuckles for it.

Re: How does this work with public transport then?

You still have the same risk whether you're alerted or not. Your real problem in such a situation is getting false alerts but at putting yourself at a higher risk.

Re: Here in Belgium...

"UK plod don't do road-blocks"

I've not been far enough away to check on that for myself but I do read reports of people being stopped on the motorway (they also say it helps them spot county lines dealers) and using drones.

Of course Hancock wants his own version of an app. He even had his own personal app and we can all remember how well that stood up to scrutiny.

More likely the Crapita >=21 app.

Re: Seems sensible to me

"I don't see anything daft about keeping the data under UK control. At least the UK legal system has some control on it."

The UK legal system has bugger all control over HMG's abuse of data. The only legal system that had any hope of such control was the EU's. Why do you think the ERG tendency now running HMG wanted to take back control? You didn't really think it was you who would be getting control did you?

This is the crux of any tracing system. It must have an effective testing regime to confirm putative contacts. In fact, to be useful, it would be nothing more than the front-end to a testing system and the current target, assuming it's ever actually met, is probably an order of magnitude short unless the infection rate is got down to manageable size before introducing such a system.

Re: Three steps to avoid this

"This is not just about you and your personal choices."

No, it's about HMG's choices. Several European govts have opted for a choice that respects privacy. Germany even abandoned its first choice to do this. One then has to ask HMG why it made this particular choice.

It might be simply the ruling ERG's xenophobia leading it to wish to do the opposite of Europeans. It might be an unthinking data-fetish.

But from our PoV it's simply UK govt., having a long history of not being trustworthy in terms of privacy, doing yet another thing which is not trustable in terms of privacy and asking us to trust them. There's nothing to stop them reconsidering like the German govt. did but my expectations are low.

"If we make any changes to how the app works over time, we will explain in plain English why those changes were made and what they mean for you."

"We've changed how the app works to share all the data already collected with anybody in govt, local govt and those who want to buy it. What it means to you is that all the data has been shared; you can delete it from our servers if you want to but it's too late. We said we'd tell you about changes, that's what we're doing now."

Wakey-wakey! A quarter of IT pros only get 3-4 hours' kip – and you won't believe what's being touted as the 'solution'

"we're quite lucky that our migration process includes time to get that crap in to a better managed state"

Why haven't you done that previously? If it can be done when it's put into cloud it should surely have been possible to do then under your your direct control. This sounds like a management failure.

US threatens to turf out four Chinese telcos amid concerns over national security... and COVID-19, doctors, schools, jobs, communists, etc

"The FCC’s logic is that since China Mobile – the world’s largest cellular network operator – was found to be a security risk because it is majority owned by Beijing, then any other telcos majority owned by the Chinese government must ipso facto also be security risks."

The rest of us think exactly the same thing about US-owned corporations.

Lords: New IR35 off-payroll tax rules 'riddled with problems, unfairnesses, unintended consequences'

Re: Dividends

"and all (personal?*) income taxed at the same rates, whether salary, pension or dividends"

And employee benefits. That's what permies always forget when they make these suggestions. As soon as the availability of sick pay, employee protection rights and so on are taken into account they'd realise that they're not comparing like with like.

"A simple set of bands of income tax for all income is a much fairer system"

Absolutely fine - providing you then treat employee benefits as taxable. Once that's done the tax rates can be lower so those not getting benefits pay lower tax rates whilst the overall tax take remains the same. The distribution of taxation between groups of workers would be broadly the same as at present providing the benefits are valued appropriately.

Apple and Google tweak key bits of contact-tracing privacy plan

"No it's not an OS update"

From the FAQ linked in TFA: "In the second phase, available in the coming months, this capability will be introduced at the operating system level". Sounds like an OS update to me.

Re: "apps using the API will check health authorities databases"

It does seem that these sorts of proposals are getting closer attention* than the tradition anit-social media and advertising networks have done in the past let alone existing "think of the children" telecoms surveillance. Maybe some of this attention will start to spill over into other areas.

* Maybe one factor is that this is being proposed at national and, indeed, global scale so it's a lot harder to hide than one at a time individual primary care trust data slurping contracts.

All such schemes are dependent on widespread testing just to get started. HMG's testing target is 100k per day by the end of this month. It seems from current progress that the number actually delivered is a fraction of the claimed capacity and I expect that if the claimed capacity is 100k they'll declare the target met even if reality continues to fall well short.

However, let's assume the delivered tests actually meets that target. The current policy is that frontline staff and their households are entitled to a test. The number of households is estimated at above10 million. I wonder if anyone has worked out that even if only the staff let alone other household members are to be tested this is going to take well above 3 months. To test the existing households within a reasonable period of time the target is about an order of magnitude short. If lockdown is eased the number of qualifying households is going to increase so the testing capacity is going to have to increase further.

Now let's assume that this scheme is under way. It depends on the testing regime picking up a large proportion of existing and new infections. Without this there is inadequate data to start the system and most positive contacts will be missed. This means that the existing UK testing capacity is unlikely to be able to bootstrap the system in any useful manner.

Let's further assume that the system is up and running on an adquate footing. What happens when the positive contacts start to flood in? We must assume that a proportion, probably a majority of reports will be false positives. How should those receiving a warning react? Are they to assume the worst and go into self-isolation? What's the economic and personal impact of such unnecessary periods of self-isolation? The reports are going to have to be followed up with tests to avoid this and the testing system will have to be able to cope with this as well or TPTB will need to be prepared to switch testing strategy from frontline household members to putative contacts.

It seems likely that such a system is going to depend a testing system adequate to bootstrap it effectively and, unless the infection rate is low enough when it's introduced, a testing system adequate to not be overwhelmed by testing those with positive contact reports. It's certainly not going to be a means of easing to load on testing, nor on getting infection rates down from current levels.

It's likely to put pressure on vendors to make this update available PDQ. As the update is an OS update then presumably any other pending OS update will be included.

Cosmo Communicator: Phone-laptop hybrid is neat, if niche, tilt at portable productivity

Re: Why are you going with Psion comparisons?

Nokia Communicator of fond memory.

Like theOtherJT above I used mine for remote support although back in those days it wasn't SSH. Just use the built-in modem and VT100 emulation to dial into a modem.

Check the overnight jobs with their logs conveniently emailed to me (hint - email doesn't depend on the intertubes, just pipe stdout to mail username leaves it ready to be read by elm).

Fix problems for a client 100 miles from where I was working; he just unplugged his fax and plugged the modem into the same line.

Dumpster diving to revive a crashing NetWare server? It was acceptable in the '90s

Re: A long time ago

"a bit of tape and string"

Ah, but this one required a push and the basic Heath Robinson engineering principle is that you can't push with string.

Actually, I don't think that principle is true. I've just been tieing up some fruit bushes. The garden twine comes in tightly wound cylinders which are quite firm. You can push with string.

Re: hot-wiring with office supplies

The self-threading HP tape drive would sometimes, in the words of the HP field engineer, forget how to thread. The solution was a bent paper clip reset. Two pads on the circuit board were exposed for this purpose.

Re: Genius ...

Excellent improvised engineering "solution".

Improvised, yes. However it should have been replaced by a proper engineering solution. Something like the reset switch being connected in parallel to relay contacts with the solenoid powered in parallel with the CD-ROM drive's eject motor.

And thanks to Howard for the reminder of Mitsumi.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Re: Dare I suggest

"a mere Nodder"

It goes back a long way. The records of the Wakefield manor court from about 1300 have many references to an attorney called "Hugh the Nodder".

Re: POTUS Supporters

"As a biologist, is there any way you can think of that would allow this belief to give a prod to natural selection?"

The NHS could deny them treatment when they catch coronavirus or anything else, from ingrowing toenail upwards.