Posts by Doctor Syntax

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

Re: A quiet refrain

"it not being a crime in Russia is not exculpatory"

Not relevant. The relevant factor is that it's outside US jurisdiction.

What are the court going to do? Apply for extradition?

"And here I was thinking that US elections take place inside the borders of the US."

Election may have been in US. Russians indicted for doing stuff in Russia. Is it so difficult to grasp that Russian is not in the US, not in US jurisdiction and that however much US doesn't like it, it's out of their control?

As I said, just theatre but I see you're one of the audience.

"Espionage against the US for Russia's benefit is a crime in the US."

Point missed, apparently. The actions, as far as I can make out, took place in Russia. This may come as a surprise to many in the US but US jurisdiction stops a few miles off-shore from the US coast. Therefore the US has no jurisdiction in Russia. It might be a crime in the US if it had taken place in the US but it didn't. There's no chance they can get extraditions.

Without US co-conspirators it's just theatre and one which invites counter theatre although Putin could gain the moral high ground (!!!) by ignoring it. The only possible reason for indulging in this would be if US co-conspirators were to be pulled in later but if that were in prospect, why not wait?

Nevertheless, judging by a lot of comments here, it may be theatre but he has an audience.

Would the activities have been considered conspiracy against the US in the jurisdiction in which they were carried out? If not why are they being charged? And on what basis does the US believe it has any jurisdiction for charging them? If they were charged with conspiring with named US citizens it might make sense but the best they can come up with is "unwitting Americans".

This seems to me an unbelievably stupid move. It simply opens the door for Russia to respond by charging the entire staff of the CIA if they were to feel like it.

Facebook told to stop stalking Belgians or face fines of €250k – a day

Re: If it's free then you are the product

These days you're still the product, even if you pay.

Re: Appeals.

"That's a very bad idea, the start of a slippery slope, the thin end of the wedge [SFX: riffling through a thesaurus],"

I think "Bennite" came next.

"So am I until March 2019, then I am f*****d"

Probably, but for lack of GDPR. It should be incorporated into UK by then as the new DPA.

Re: Facebook's shadow database of info on you.

"I don't think that's been answered"

It's been answered by a couple of courts within a week.

"The cookies and pixels we use are industry-standard technologies"

The old everybody's doing it excuse.

A few fines on this scale and everybody won't be doing it.

Hands up who HASN'T sued Intel over Spectre, Meltdown chip flaws

"Intel do not accept that they have done anything wrong or the need to compensate their customers."

That's why people are suing. When the case is over then they'll know whether they need to compensate their customers. They may not accept they've done anything wrong if a court tells them they have but that would be between themselves and their sense of their own importance and of no significance to anyone else.

Re: Fork in the road far back

"dBASE IV on MSDOS 3.3 and a 386 chip at 8MHZ and 640K memory (limit 1 billion records)(1989)"

Did anyone actually try it at a billion records?

Re: Software next?

"That does stop frivolous legal action, but equally it makes large companies essentially immune to legal action unless the claim is very high value."

If the claim is low enough to fit in the small claims route then large companies are vulnerable to individual claims as they can't claim back their fees if they lose. They then have to make a decision as to whether it's worth fighting a case at all. If the circumstances are that there could be a flood of claims then it probably would be, if not then it would be cheaper to write off the case and settle.

In the current situation I think the claim would have to be against the retailer not Intel. This makes small retailers (if there are any left!) vulnerable. Against a big company? Best let someone else go through the expense of fighting Intel first so it's easier to point to established facts rather than risk being the first in line and crushed by a strong defence aiming to stop further claims.

Re: Software next?

"I believe US EULA's are not enforcible in the UK/EU, due to different legal wording or some rubbish like that"

I'm not sure whether you were referring to the wording being rubbish but if it's contrary to the law where the product was sold then that would indeed be an apt description because a court would just strike it out.

"but haven't heard of any class action in the UK, yet ?"

Class actions haven't normally been a part of UK law. There is, however, recent legislation to this effect: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34402483

It doesn't seem to me the best way to go about gaining redress if the amount to be claimed is within the limits of the small claims court (or small claims track of the county court in England & Wales). AFAICS class action in the US seems to be basically a money-making scheme for lawyers. What's left over, from some reports here, doesn't even go to the claimants. Small claims courts take out the financial risk of losing as there's no facility for BigCo's lawyers fees to be dumped on the litigant. That, in turn, makes it not worth while for BigCo to put a lot into defending the claim as it would cost them more than they'd save if they lost. In a case like this, however, it would be best to leave someone else to get a case on record establishing liability as otherwise a judge might decide it's too complicated for a small claim.

"By not returning your CPU, you accepted the EULA."

At best a EULA is a contract. Contract terms can't breach the law in the appropriate jurisdiction. For consumer products, at least in Europe (yes that includes the UK) and maybe other places there's strong consumer protection legislation. If some words purporting to be a term on a contract are contrary to that legislation (assuming we're talking about consumer sales) then they might as well not there as far as the contract is concerned because any court would strike that term out.

Great PR wording

"Purport"

"Various classes"

"Generally claim"

Impression conveyed: this is a noisy bunch of little people, nothing to really worry about.

Reinforcement learning woes, robot doggos, Amazon's homegrown AI chips, and more

"Sometimes when it’s just trying to maximize its reward, the model learns to game the system by finding tricks to get around a problem rather than solve it."

A bit like the horse that could do arithmetic except that it was picking up cues from humans when to stop tapping out the answer.

How long has it taken for this insight to dawn on them when it's been in plain site for a century or so?

James Damore's labor complaint went over about as well as his trash diversity manifesto

Re: Reason for firing

"IMHO anyone who publicly publishes anything deserves the consequences."

So what consequences do you deserve for publishing that comment?

A computer file system shouldn't lose data, right? Tell that to Apple

Apple SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi insisted, "There's nothing we care about more,"

What, not even money?

BOFH: Turn your server rack hotspot to a server rack notspot

Re: Silent treatment

Silence is also the best way to deal with cold callers. "That sounds just what I need. Can you hold the line a moment, I'm just talking to someone who called at the door. Shouldn't be long.". Press mute. Hang up when the phone starts whining.

Re: Stairs - they go up and DOWN...

With the stair oil they only go down.

Ubuntu wants to slurp PCs' vital statistics – even location – with new desktop installs

Re: Sounds like Windows

"the beta release of Devuan ASCII ... was only released a couple of days ago."

Now downloads, thanks. Will try the live version on SWMBO's laptop which currently has to run Stretch.

"what is no less a fingerprint that has a sufficient set of data to identify individual users."

Really? Let's look at the list:

"Ubuntu Flavour & Version" That's a fairly limited choice. Almost all the installations at any one time will be split between very few options there.

"Network connectivity or not" A binary choice containing even less information.

"CPU family, RAM, Disk(s) size, Screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model & OEM Manufacturer" With enough cash you can buy kit with the same spec by the pallet. No serial numbers of any of them. How do you distinguish them one from another by this information or from the next pallet load of the same spec?

"Location (based on the location selection made by the user at install). No IP information would be gathered" That's time zone and maybe language. We've made a start on identifying the individual - it's somebody in the UK!!!!

"Installation duration (time taken)" That, indeed, can very. But if I go off and take a break whilst it's busy copying the files how, from the time I allowed, do you tell it's me?

"Auto login enabled or not" Another binary choice.

"Disk layout selected" This can be a bit of an individual thing. But in some cases, particularly if I were just trying "let's have a quick look" I'd let it default so that layout carries exactly the same info as the disk size because it's what the distro would always pick for the disk size. If I were building for a particular purpose I might customise that. And having built for a specific purpose when I come to built the next I might vary that according to what I learned from the last. What's more, if I were building for a particular purpose I'd set up LVM with plenty uncommitted disk and more to each logical disk as needed so what would be uploaded at install time might well not be what would be seen a few months later.

"Third party software selected or not" Another binary choice.

"Download updates during install or not" Yet another.

"LivePatch enabled or not" and one more.

So that's 5 bits of binary choices, some mass production data and some fairly general variable choices above that. You mention fingerprints. In forensic science we used to think in terms of discriminating power and frankly I don't see much discriminating power in that lot.

Getting GDPR understood is going to be difficult enough. Let's not make matters worse with disinformation.

"You can spot the Americans because they refer to personal data as PII"

From that well-known American site ico.gov.uk and its definition of personal data within the meaning of the forthcoming DPA:

"Personal data means data which relate to a living individual who can be identified"

PID would be a handy abbreviation. Unfortunately, that TLA has long established usage elsewhere so let's substitute Information for Data. PII it is, whichever side of the pond you're on.

Re: Your survey questions

"Five negative options and only one positive. Maybe just a teensy-weensy bit of bias there?"

This is el Reg. Look at the slogan on the mast head.

No bias. All hands get equally bitten.

Re: Blatant attempt to drive traffic to a commercial site?

I think I found the one you mean. Try running whois on them. It doesn't look anything like what I'd expect from an official EU site.

Googling GDPR FAQ brings up pages of ads, all from service vendors. Oddly enough it doesn't seem to bring up anything from the EU itself. Attempting to search the actual EU official site, http://ec.europa.eu for GDPR FAQ doesn't actually lead to anything like an FAQ although, bizarrely, even though I'm querying an https page entering the query brings up a warning that the information I've entered is to be sent over an insecure link.

Re: Ubuntu will fail GDPR

"default Opt-in are illegal"

Only as regards collecting PII. There isn't any in that list.

Re: What PII?

@Dan 55. I think you missed the import of the title. There's no PII in the list of what's collected.

PM urged to protect data flows post-Brexit ahead of Munich speech

Re: 5 eyes

"any agreement should explicitly exclude UK being used as backdoor for getting EU citizen data to USA."

We all know it won't.

"I think you mean generated by a rather dim AI that just generates random, meaningless phrases."

No. Worse. By a committee of political advisors.

The phrases will be equally random and meaningless but the committee'll convince themselves they mean something.

The speech will already have been written. It's a bit late to be advising her about what to say.

Transport for London to toughen up on taxi firms in the Uber age

"It also one of the few major public transport providers that is now expected to operate without a subsidy (major infrastructure projects excepted)."

That's a pretty big exception. Every time infrastructure subsidy in the north is mentioned it seems to be because another cut is being reported in what's promised (but not delivered).

"Monitoring movement of traffic and people in the capital is a crucial part of TfL's work"

The former, maybe. The latter? Well, it doesn't fit very well with those professed concerns for data protection.

When it absolutely, positively needs to be leaked overnight: 120k FedEx customer files spill from AWS S3 silo

Re: Expand GDPR

"This sort of stuff happens when some techno phobe suit, often and older man, can't or can't be bothered to remember his password"

Older man? Sounds more like a millennial.

Re: Expand GDPR

"I suggest we expand GDPR. Expand the scope to the whole world"

If the operation covers any EU residents it will be within scope. For those of you who are non-EU residents dealing with non-EU businesses, you need a regulatory system that will look after you better. At least even the Brexit-minded HMG has to put it into UK law so it will apply even when we're outside the EU.

If this laptop is so portable, where's the keyboard, huh? HUH?

Re: Conversely, I basically issue no laptops.

"What annoys me is the waste of a setup like that where the laptop spends it's entire life docked and the lid is never even opened, which seems quite commonplace."

Hot-desking?. In that case, however, thin clients might be even more to the point.

Re: Brilliant!!

"Remember those?"

Yup. Used one as an office machine for a while. Kermit and an RS232 lead plugged in an it was my terminal to the Unix box. When Windows came along it was a great thing. I could have several of those little 5" screens on the go all at the same time.

"In a lawyer's office, especially, I would not want to manage the logistics of issuing a laptop that goes home with them with all kinds of stuff on it."

In a lawyer's office the logistics of providing a full size PC at the various courts they might have to attend would be even harder to manage.

"Yah know, to listen to you guys, you'd think the only stuff worth knowing was computer stuff, and anyone who doesn't understand computer stuff must automatically be, like, yah know, an idiot, and computer guys are gods who know everything that's worth knowing."

I drive a car. I don't do it for a living and it's a long time since I was able to do stuff like take the head off and reseat the valves (MGBs were nice to work on). Nevertheless I need to know where all the controls are and what they do. I also need to know which side of the road to drive on, what the various road signs etc. mean.

Back in the day I used to be a laboratory scientist. I needed to know things like how to set up a microscope, how to balance the tubes in a centrifuge etc.

In short, I, like everyone else need to know enough (NB enough, not everything) about the tools I use to be able to use them. Why should it be different when the tool in question is a computer, especially when it's being used as part of one's job?

"Doctors are the same way."

In my student days I knew quite a few medical students. Ever since I've never been able to regard the medical profession with the expected degree of awe.

Former ICE top lawyer raided US govt database to steal aliens' identities

Re: Ok, but 'why' though?

"Conscience? Yeah, they have heard of it!"

Not convinced.

Re: What a stupid idea

"I'd rather sentence people like him to public service."

Given the circumstances of his original crime that would appear to be handing him further opportunities.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"In the end it was another great example of the quality of Government recruitment and vetting"

And exactly the sort of failure to be expected again* should govts get their wishes about back doors.

And probably again and again and again.

Oh sh-itcoin! Crypto-dosh swap-shop Coinbase empties punters' bank accounts

Re: Sounds about bloody right

"Yet doesn't have the cash in the bank to cover a months rent?"

What seems to have happened is that unauthorised deductions took away the money that was there for the rent. If this was your bank account would you blaming yourself for the purchase that was charged several time without your say-so?

Re: Cryptocurrency

"The real problem was speculating in an unregulated market with almost all your money."

The problem here doesn't seem to have been punters speculating with almost all their money. It was the payments processor taking more money than had been speculated.

I hope the refunds will also compensate for any consequent damage to those who were driven into the red.

Say goodbye to a chunk of that sweet Aruba payout, hedgies – judge

"That $17.13/share gets them $39.2m, some $17.3m less than the $56.5m they would have netted at the $24.67/share deal price."

I hope that price only applies to the plaintiffs, not the rest of the shareholders. If it does apply to the rest then maybe they'll sue the plaintiffs for the difference.

Astro-boffinry world rocked to its very core: Shock as Andromeda found to be not much bigger than Milky Way

Re: What a waste of time and money

The point is that our monkey ape brains

FTFY

Re: What a waste of time and money

"Isn't there something more useful that we can spend the money on?"

Back in the C17th people took to puzzling about these things. I suppose if you'd have been alive back then you'd have said much the same thing. It was one of the things which lead to our understanding of Newtonian mechanics which has served us well ever since.

People didn't stop thinking about such things and noticed a few discrepancies that didn't quite fit with the Newtonian view. Maybe if you'd been alive you'd have said the same thing then. Out of that came the theories of relativity and out of those came a whole lot of other stuff from nuclear energy to the clock corrections necessary for GPS to work.

But in your view it's still a waste of time and money. Me? I wonder what's the next lot of useful stuff that's going to come out of it.

Re: "By measuring the escape velocity, scientists have recalculated the galaxy’s mass and size."

"So, you can observe the speeds of stars that actually have escaped the galaxy, and those that haven't."

I'm not sure whether they'd spot the stars that have escaped but the maximum measured velocities of stars in the galaxy is likely to be just under escape velocity.

Re: Films / TV-shows ever dramatize the collision of galaxies?

"with the exception of Trump, of course"

Other politicians are available and also ignorant of science.

HomePod, you say? Sex sex sex, that's all you think about

Antibiotics for flu?

Not unless there's a bacterial secondary infection.