Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"If the worst automated car is better than the average teen with 2 months' experience, that's a step up. If it learns from mistakes, that's already better than the average human."
Let's think that one through. You choose an "average teen with 2 months' experience" as you yardstick. Why not a 40 year old with over 20 years of driving experience? Presumably because the latter is a much better driver and wouldn't be such an easy target for the automated car to beat (and don't think I didn't spot that weasel "if" at the start of the sentence).
So it rather looks as if you think humans can learn from something, whether it be from mistakes or from simple practice. And yet you say they can't.
"Breaking the new laws will result in huge fines, and possibly prison for individual company officers. That's the choice that people like Zuckerberg, Schmidt, Cook, etc will personally face."
And eventually US govts will wish for the old days when they had tech businesses resident there.
"They’ve forgotten what it is that motivates voters, and hence politicians."
I think they know very well what motivates their users and also that their users are voters. They also have very good communications with their users. It could turn out to be the politicians who've forgotten something. When it comes to being warned about terrorism, that's a relatively remote threat*. Being warned about your finances being at risk, that's personal.
*I lived in N Ireland for many years in the '60s to the '80s so, yes, I do know a little about that.
"Simple. No one's above THE LAW. If the law compels you to break the contract and takes precedence over contract law, guess who wins."
And what if THE LAW (to adopt your caps) says you've got to keep things confidential.
Take, for instance, my daughter's job. She works from home managing clinical trials for a pharma company based some distance away. By using a VPN she can log onto the office system, video-conference etc. as if she was in their office. Now consider what's likely to and what will certainly be exchanged over the link. Patient data is likely and is going to have various regulatory protocols governing it, from basic DPA stuff upwards. And certainly trials results will be involved; those are share price sensitive so they're governed by financial regulation.
TL;DR The law may or not be an ass; legislators are and whenever they stick their noses into whatever they don't understand they'll contradict themselves.
"Which has meant nothing since the US compelled Switzerland ... to break their vaunted bank account anonymity."
I thought someone would come up with that. AFAICS that's left the Swiss hopping mad and consequently I'd expect them to be even less willing to countenance anything else that goes against their take on privacy.
"How many companies do you suppose are under contract to keep their data encrypted to protect their customers?"
It goes the other way as well. If you have log-in access to any online service take a good look at the T&Cs. You're obliged to keep those confidential. How do you do that if you don't have secure encryption while you use it?
There's a simple rule to apply here. If you want to advocate breaking online security you should be obliged to put all your online credentials - bank, Amazon, Tesco, whatever in the public domain for a year before implementing everything. If, at the end of the year, it still seems like a good idea then go ahead.
"if a government with appropriate legal authority shows up and demands access, ProtonMail will have to make a choice"
What's all this about "a" government. ProtonMail are based in Switzerland. I don't think Switzerland are going to take kindly to any old government rolling up. The only legal authority that stands there is Swiss.
"What people keep forgetting is that Horizon (and other science progs) aren't aimed at people who already know the science - but at people who might be interested, if they are suitably engaged."
They used to be aimed at people who knew science but not the bit that was the subject of the programme. They're now aimed at people who would like to know about the current subject but don't mind having their intelligence insulted by the presentation.
"Can the big, slow, sclerotic businesses of today survive connected hostility?"
If one of the reasons they're considered slow and sclerotic is because they have paranoid sysadmins insisting on decent security, not only will they survive, they'll outlive the move-fast-and-break-things businesses.
The books of the Yes Minister scripts are presented as if they were academic historical research based on cassettes dictated by Hacker late at night post-whisky. The introduction says that the inconsistencies "have been preserved as they allow us insight into the mind of this great political leader" or words to the same effect. Although Yes Minister was entertainment (or maybe we should class it as infotainment) it seems that fact has ambushed fiction and a similar argument could be made for preserving the Trumpetings.
"The sooner Oxford & Cambridge colleges are closed (and the facilities razed to the ground, just to make sure) the better."
I understand that they do actually have real science and engineering depts as well. Just close down PPE courses - or, even better, require a STEM degree for entrance.
"Is Twitter only now used as a way for people to whinge at the PR depts of companies when they have some minor grievance"
Given that in most businesses customer facing staff are powerless to deal with the most minor complication, not even having the ability to escalate it, it looks as if Twitter is just about the only way of getting the attention of anyone in the business with any nous* this looks as if it's becoming SOP. It's yet one more instance of making the customer do the work, in this case escalating a case.
*Assuming such a person exists
"This. It depresses me how many people said they were voting for May or Corbyn when they are actually voting for their own local MP."
Why shouldn't they vote that way. It might make a difference if their local MP makes it clear they're going to oppose the party leader on some topic or other. I corresponded with my local MP over surveillance. He stuck by the party May's line. I told him I wouldn't vote for him as long as she remained leader and I didn't.
"There's nothing in the rules to say a party can't change their leader, and hence who becomes PM, 5 minutes after the election is won."
Probably not 5 minutes after it's won. After it's lost is a different matter. In any case if a leader who voters aren'tt prepared to support is replaced then the voters can act accordingly.
"So much so that even the press started calling the Tory Manifesto the May Manifesto."
In which case what's wrong with refusing to vote for her proxy, the local candidate?
"Also, as the Lib Dems found out, our their voters don't seem particularly patient with the policy compromises that PR forces."
It was they who suffered, quite unfairly, I think by this. It would have been grossly irresponsible in 2010 to let the country slip back into the hands of Brown or to saddle it with a government too weak to start sorting out the mess that Brown had left behind. Sadly their supporters haven't forgiven them for temporarily becoming more than a party of protest.
"Politician that triangulate peoples opinions and polls are not leaders, but, almost per definition, followers."
To some extent I can sympathise with this. However the last several years should have taught us one thing: politicians of all parties - here and in the US - got completely out of touch with what the electorate was thinking. You can't lead if you take peoples' willingness to follow for granted. Leadership needs more than sound-bites.
"you would instinctively change the password on first use as you did on that shiny router you bought. You would also have to enable ssh"
These are aimed at kids (my 8-yo grandson for instance). They won't necessarily have basic sysadmin skills. Also, as he did, they might forget the P/W if changed. (Actually in his case it was a different OS with a different default P/W. An OS update appeared to have reset it probably back to the OS default. I'd tarred off his home directory and re-flashed the OS before I realised the default was different.)
You're right in that they'd have to enable ssh. On Raspbian that's done through the same menu as changing the password but unfortunately the two aren't linked.
"recent-ish Raspbian versions warn you every time you login via SSH if you retain the default password."
Also, IIRC, Raspbian ships with sshd off by default. Turning it on is an option in the raspi-config script. It wouldn't be difficult to add a step to the script to require a password change at the same time.
There are probably conflicting requirements here. While we - and, I'm sure, the Raspbian team - know that this would be a Good Thing the device is aimed at youngsters and it's quite likely that they'd lock themselves out by forgetting the password. However, flashing a new card would be a quick fix for that.
"As regards further punishment, it would be sweet if some sort of proceeds of crime order could be made against all those convicted to recover the missing £66m, just as they are about to be released from prison."
I'd hope recovery proceeds have already been started. However AFAIK this goes to public funds rather than to the victims. Still, they may have to pay a £15 victim surcharge.
It's a long time ago but AFAICR it wasn't anything to do with the instruction set but with presenting the processor with a consistent API to the hardware. The kernel is still compiled to the native code of the processor but the developer doesn't have to worry about what sort of bus etc that the CPU can see. I'm not sure how this relates to the drivers; maybe their job is to present the HAL API.
"he would without hesitation have declared unreserved and irrevocable loyalty to the Presidency."
No, he would have said something which the President would have believed to have been an expression of unreserved and irrevocable loyalty to the President bu whicht, when examined more closely, and with proper guidance would, in due course, have been seen to have been capable of a different interpretation and, indeed, whatever interpretation circumstances might require as dictated by those same circumstances as they might change. I could clarify it at greater length, of course.
