Posts by Doctor Syntax

Florida man is world's fastest flasher: Just 53 quintillionths of a sec

Re: What electrons?

"The electrons are still there though."

Where?

How did they measure it?

NotBeingPetya: UK critical infrastructure firms face huge fines for lax security

"see, we followed current best practice, so we're off the hook"

If they've demonstrably not followed "current best practice" in actual practice that mightn't be well received.

All this EU red tape telling us that we've got do sensible things like this. The sooner we're rid of it the better.

Coat. It's not raining right now so I don't need it.

Britons ambivalent about driverless car tech, survey finds

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"A new DSG can change gear in 8ms, so it can go up then back down again in the blink of an eye without you even noticing."

A handy trick to fix mistakes but it still falls some way short of anticipating needs.

"You can also choose the style of gear changing you want"

I can do that with a manual without telling a machine.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"It's the oblivious '35 is the right speed in any circumstance' that I (and others, seemingly) find vexing."

IME it's been a safe rule of thumb for at least half a century that the driver doing 35 in a 30 area will also be the driver that does 35 in a 40 area and vice versa. There's something magic about that number.

Re: Integrated transport system

"Black cabbies ... are practically taught to pull across traffic without notice to get a fare."

And have the turning circle to do it.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"Auto gearboxes, I am sure there must be good ones out there"

I'm not sure. An auto gearbox can only respond to what's happened, it can't anticipate. My car has an indicator to signal what gear it thinks I should be using. It regularly tells me I should change up again just before I encounter an uphill hairpin bend. Presumably if it were an automatic it would actually do that and then change down again.

Re: Patent-bashing

"finding the autonomous car that's come to pick me up from the station"

It'll be the one shouting "paging Mr. Short" through it's loudspeaker and competing with all the others shouting for their passengers.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"rocks the whole car forward and back as the torque from the engine finds its way through the system."

It must be very embarrassing if there's anyone following.

Re: Sunday (autonomous) driving

"is there going to be a speed control button on these things, so the elderly can set it to FUCKING DAWDLE at 35 on country roads"

As an elderly country dweller my problem is with townies of all ages who come here, park in dangerously daft places irrespective of the proximity of car parks, when walking can't work out how to maintain maximum visibility in winding lanes and when driving can't work out an appropriate speed (that works for both alternatives*). Worse still, those who come cycling and worst of all, organize cycling events.

Walking parties who lack anyone who can read their map are another nuisance. I watched one party turn back a few yards short of the corner beyond which was the clearly marked (on OS and in reality) start of a public footpath and then head of up what was clearly signed as a private road instead.

*There are a great many roads here where your 35 would be vastly excessive as well as those which seem to attract drivers who are unable to maintain speeds uphill.

US military gets authority to shoot down citizens' small drones

Never mind drones around army bases, shoot them down around airport approaches.

KCOM whacked with £900k Ofcom fine over 999 call handling

Re: Fixing it

"I would be curious what happens every time a BT exchange in the 21CN goes up in flames"

I think the problem isn't in the BT exchanges. It's the emergency services closing call centres and relying on more distant ones where local knowledge isn't available.

Worse than that; the actual service provision gets closed. A few days ago there was a fire locally. I happened to be next door. The local fire station is only a couple of hundred metres or so away so after a couple of minutes and no sound of a fire engine being heard I walked over there to see why they weren't turning out and found it deserted until someone, presumably a retained local fire-fighter rolled up in a van and told me it's unoccupied most of the time.

We eventually had 5 or 6 appliances at the scene from up to about 20 miles away. But it's not the number that counts it's the speed of first response. A woman had been trapped in a flat above the fire Fortunately she'd been rescued unharmed before the first one arrived; a retired fire-fighter happened to be around.

Re: Gaucho Rasmussen

I read it as "Groucho" first off.

The worrying thing is that IP was supposed to have been designed to route round failures but all too often seems not to.

Can the last person watching desktop video please turn out the light?

I don't really regard a channels "look what is coming up" type announcements as adverts

Each to his own, I suppose, but I don't seem to be the only one here that does.

Re: Not surprised. No. Not even slightly.

"Pretty sure it is was noted as being the prime time for a reason and that was why it was targeted with better programming."

Targeted, certainly. Better? Matter of opinion. Thanks to MythTV we seldom tune in to watch anything at broadcast time these days.

"Pity theres no such thing as targeted advertising due to the strict privacy and freedom laws we have."

No, there's plenty of badly targeted ads. Even in-line from whatever site you're looking at: "You might be interesed in"

...whatever you've just bought and don't need another of

...something that you just decided not buy because it was overpriced crap

...something that matched one key word of your search string but failed on all four others

The reason there's no well targeted advertising is that marketing is over-populated with over-eager gabblers with no self-control and no thinking skills.

"It’s an encouraging figure, as it may incentivise advertisers to use their ad spending more effectively"

There's a leap of logic here which equates "seen" with "effective". For those of us for whom "seen" leads PDQ to "pisses off", "seen" should probably be equated to "counter-productive".

Smart streetlight bods Telensa nearly double full-year revenues

Re: Why?

"surely a cheap arse light sensor on the top will be far cheaper over the long run."

it depends what they're sensing. If, say, they're sensing a pedestrian or vehicle walking along the street the lights can be turned off completely when there's nobody about but turned on when there's someone in range. If they're able to communicate the next one along can also be turned on so as to light up the area the traveller is moving towards. That not only saves power but also cuts light overall pollution although the neighbours might be annoyed by them switching on and off.

Re-identifying folks from anonymised data will be a crime in the UK

"Otherwise it's little old you vs Google, and how do you think that will go?"

Maybe you should ask Max Schrems that.

Re: Tell me - who writes these laws?

"King Canute?"

This sort of comment is usually a good indicator that the commentard in question knows virtually nothing about pre-Conquest English history.

Re: IP addresses are "Personally identifiable information" are they?

"Retail the logs"

Dammit! Retain!

Re: Kids under 13

"How will parents give consent"

It will be up to the service receiving consent to work that out - and to be able to persuade a court that its solution constitutes all reasonable efforts.

"Like I said before: don't expect things to change."

In some respects the new legislation will simply replace the old. The consequences, however do change. Criminal charges against individuals are one change.

Re: intentionally re-identify individuals

Big retailers are already giving data they shouldn't basically to anyone "big" that offers something shiny.

Because they think it's a risk worth taking. It'll stop being worth taking. As ever, some will only learn the hard way.

Those vendor-specific email addresses I use could be quite handy.

"How exactly does one 'recklessly' perform high-level data analysis?"

By telling the court you didn't mean to do it, it just happened that way.

Look on it as a loophole blocked.

Re: Exceptions proving the rule

"No doubt there will be the usual clause where MPs are completely inviolable, also."

And if you ever need to discuss a confidential matter with your MP you'll realise the value of that.

Re: Really?

Yes, tell it to stop adding value liabilities to our product.

FTFY

It's going to take time to adjust to the new reality.

"It boils down to whether the company finds it cheaper to comply with the legislated anonymisation requirements or just sue the researcher. I know where my money would bet."

So do I, on the basis that pissing off an expert who can give evidence against you that could result in an eye-watering fine really isn't a good idea. If your legal department is any good they'll tell you that.

"A lot of companies will find ways to ship the data out, to the illegal stuff in places like the US were it isn't illegal and ship the results or the decisions taken back to the UK/EU."

And after a few big finds get handed out they'll put more effort into finding ways to ensure that they don't. Not unless the US adopts similar legislation.

Re: IP addresses are "Personally identifiable information" are they?

"Or are you expected just to encrypt ALL your logs even if doing so is a pointless and time-consuming task?"

Retail the logs long enough to provide the service and then delete them. Unless HMG rope you into providing them with free surveillance service you don't need to retain them.

It's clear from comments here that the notion is deeply ingrained that everyone with a server has an expectation of mining every last nanobit* out of any data that passes it by. The whole basis of GDPR is that not only are you not actually entitled to do that any more, you're not allowed to. It's going to take some time to sink in.

*Probably the best approximation to what it's really worth is all those "we think you'll like these" offerings are anything to go by.

Re: "...and share and process it as necessary"

"Typical, of course, of this Government to actually ignore the existing body of law and simply make stuff up as they go along."

Parliament is sovereign. If they pass a Bill to designate IP addresses as being entitled to the same protection as PII they can do so.

I'd expect that attempting to use an IP address on its own to identify a user in court would still be fraught with the same problems as a present.

Re: IP Addresses

"a legitimate right exists to retain the source used to connection from, and share and process it as necessary."

What legislation do you rely on for this statement?

You need to retain that address for as long as the connection remains current. Afterwards you might want to retain it, share it and process it but you have no right to do so.

Nevertheless HMG might impose a duty on you to do so by their surveillance legislation. The document remains notably silent on this matter.

"Even the US will have to respect GDPR if it wants to handle data on European citizens."

Quite so. What are they doing over there to provide similar legislation? Or is any UK or EU company using US data processing services going have to cross their fingers every time they say they're compliant?

"This seems like the best thing to come out of Brexit so far to me, provided it actually gets enforced."

It only "comes out of Brexit" in the sense that without Brexit there'd be no need for an act; GDPR would apply automatically - and would do so from between May and Brexit without the Act.

"And what about companies and corporations who do it?"

I'd hope that criminal sanctions would apply to officers of the company who sanction it. Even the mose eye-watering fines found only rebound on a CEO by their being sacked. Jail time would be a much more effective deterrent.

"So, Amazon can refuse to deliver a parcel to you if you refuse to share your address, because without knowing your address there's no way for them to deliver to your house"

Actually they could deliver a parcel to an Amazon locker without knowing your home address so they couldn't actually refuse to do business on that account.

Re: Oh good

"Are they cancelling out their own snoopers charter?"

Well, the document says Our vision is to make the UK the safest place to live and do business online. With the increasing volumes of personal data there is an increasing need to protect it. so they'll have to, won't they? Won't they?

Engineer gets 18 months in the clink for looting ex-bosses' FTP server

Re: Hacking?

"its definitely theft"

It definitely isn't.

Re: Hacking?

"The company say they rotated passwords but I think the reality is they didn't or at least not for all accounts."

Probably just kept sending password reset emails to his old account.

US Homeland Security CIO hits ctrl-alt-delete after just three months

15 minutes

As per a previous thread, clearly the policy is to implement Andy Warhol's idea. By the time of Trump's end of tenure the entire US population will have held a USG post for at least 15 minutes.

3 months is a pretty good tenure for someone not holding a job by nepotism.

Big question of the day: Is it time to lock down .localhost?

Re: Tiny changes may be fatal

"It was unfortunate"

A matter of opinion. For some it was a training opportunity.

Heavy clouds in IT world make it rain gold for UPS box manufacturers

Re: So You Think You're a Software Engineer?

"Programmers designing DCs is about as sensible as airline pilots designing planes."

I think you missed the A/Cs point: if the language used determines the efficiency of the program in terms of CPU cycles to deliver a particular function then ultimately it has an effect on the power and hence cooling requirements of the data centre that runs it.

Slacking off? ICO probe throws up concerns over instant messaging

Now this might come as a surprise but people in offices - all offices, not just in government - regularly talk to each other. They even talk to each other about business. Hardly any of this is written down except when it involves formally taking decisions. The rest of it just dissipates into thin air. So why should there be any expectation that such talk, extended to cover people who are geographically separated, be any different?

Yes, I know there are those who want to be able to comb through records looking for whatever form of wrong-doing they suspect. They're unlikely to find it because if there's any expectation of a particular communication channel being recorded anyone seeking to set out on some nefarious has the option of just plain face-to-face conversation. And the official decision taking will be formally recorded just as it always has been.

Openreach pegs full fibre overhaul anywhere between £3bn and £6bn

Re: Internet is now a utility

"The government needs to lay down a public utility standard - that says fibre to every premises that has an electricity supply within 5 years."

Good idea but your post seems to have been truncated. I don't see your plan for achieving it, where you're going to recruit the army of workers to do this, where you're going to source the materials in that time frame, where you're going to raise the money and how much the customers are going to be willing to pay you for the interest you're going to pay on the money you raise.

Re: BT in the countryside

"What about those unlucky people who live in the countryside?"

SImple. They'll wait longer still. This was always the problem. Every metre of cable laid to an FTTP customer, every day's work on FTTP is one not given to extending the FTTC network.

"Other than the cost of laying it, what other additional operating costs are there?"

The interest on the capital borrowed to lay it.

Commonwealth Bank: Buggy software made us miss money laundering

Re: Outsourcing...

"BTW, don't try to get around the $10000 mandatory reporting by doing multiple smaller transactions, certain patterns of transactions will flag the lower amounts."

In your day. On the basis of this report, maybe not now.

Forget sexy zero-days. Siemens medical scanners can be pwned by two-year-old-days

Headline

I keep reading it as saying that they can be pwned by two year old boys and wondering just how young they're starting these days.