Posts by Doctor Syntax

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

There's a school of thought that it's not a failure to stop crime; enabling crime is the sole purpose.

VAT? I transfer money from one of my accounts to another and I don't pay VAT.

"the transfer occurs to my private key, the timer is reset anyway"

In that case it's still a target for criminal users. It gets reset when it's stolen and it doesn't matter if it times out or not, it can be kept going indefinitely by transferring back & forth between two accounts.

OK, let me buy my groceries from you with this crypto-coin that's about to time out.

Athena Moon lander officially FOADs – falls over and dies – in crater

Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Let's hope they don't make it a habit.

Eutelsat in talks with Euro leaders as they mull Starlink replacement in Ukraine

Re: Hmm

Add another possible reason to your list:

The Russian military decide they've been ground down and, while they've still got more guns than the FSB, take Putin out. Yes, I know. Unlikely. These sorts of things are always unlikely until they happen.

Re: Hmm

"the Russian Empire or the New American Empire"

This only requires a minor update: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg/800px-Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg

Re: Hmm

"I would think his interests are in the US."

I doubt his interests extend beyond what he can take hold of.

Re: Hmm

"What would a peace deal be that is different to what Trump suggests?"

Trump sells Ukraine to the Russians in return for stripping its mineral reserves. Just another property deal, much as he tried to push onto Gaza..

Cheap 'n' simple sign trickery will bamboozle self-driving cars, fresh research claims

Locally I have a choice of routes to drive from a road which is at national speed limit to one at 30 and vice versa without passing any speed limit sign.

It would also lead the system to treat temporary speed limits as permanent.

HPE revenue outlook feels the thump of Trump tariffs

Who was it who said "Trade wars are good and easy to win"?

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

A number of local history group colleagues have used Word or one of the look-a-likes to produce A5 books in PDF form ready for the printer. Having then edited some of the out-or-print ones for our web-site I'm amazed that they haven't set the wrap for images but simply tabbed and spaced across or cropped images externally before inserting.

I'm currently working on my own book with LO using Lulu A5 Word template which sets the correct gutters etc. I looked at Scribus and decided it was easier to just use the word processor. Set wrapping, use tables, etc. The WP can look after cross-referencing of captions. WYSIWYG. Write the book as you'd like to read it.

One benefit of writing text and laying it out complete with maps and photographs means that the text can be written so as to place an image and its description on the same page or facing pages as far as possible. Thinking of the text, images and layout separately would, I think, make it a lot harder. Of course the coloured pencil wielders aren't going to concede that but as evidence I point to David Spiegelhalter's "The Art of Uncertainty". I don't think there's a single diagram whose description is in the same view - and the diagrams are often far too small even with a lot of white space on the page. It makes it a lot harder to read than it needed to be.

Re: Moral of the tale

"but the ink is sometimes hard to get"

Not a problem. You can stew it up from iron filings and tannin. Oak galls are good for the latter. If you can't get iron filings visit your local blacksmith and sweep op some smithereens. Alternatively soot, gum and water.

Do you DARE? Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing sovereignty

It looks as if recent events are really a turning point. Europeans will never again see the US as a reliable partner in anything with a term longer than 4 years.

Troubled French outsourcer Atos finds pot of gold at the end of UK state bank Rainbow

Another reminder that a bank is primarily an IT operation. If you don't control your own IT you don't control your future.

Broadcom has won. 70 percent of large VMware customers bought its biggest bundle

Re: For now

The opposite site of that 70% figure is that the other 30% have already made their escape and may well represent the future.

Uncle Sam mulls policing social media of all would-be citizens

"The United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security,"

And what about citizens with those attitudes? Maybe that's OK, the occasional mass shooting is in line with the culture, institutions and founding principles: the right to bear arms AKA the right to get shot.

More Voyager instruments shut down to eke out power supplies

"And the decay rate of the plutonium... isn't going to change "

That depends on what you mean by decay rate. The half life doesn't change but that does mean there's less and less power over time so load needs to be trimmed to what's available. If it isn't then something - and quite possibly all of it, will go TITSUP. (Terminally Insufficient Power Upsets Probe)

Toronto Zoo ransomware crooks snatch decades of visitor data

I doubt they need to keep data for non members any longer than needed to reconcile the credit card payments and statements.

Probably deletion was scheduled for the next sprint - which didn't happen.

A Zoo should be collecting animals, not PII.

Still can't get to your Outlook mailbox? You aren't alone

I've had my own domain run by an MSP for some time with a legacy Hotmail A/C and one Gmail address receiving messages from a web contact page.

When Gmail started messing with OAth2 (not then supported by the Seamonkey client) I ditched it for an Outlook address, subsequently replaced by another domain run by the MSP.

When MS started messing with OAuth2 I set it the legacy Hotmail to forward to a mailbox on the my domain. AFAICS that's worked while everyone else has been reporting outages.

No Gmail, only legacy Hotmail, no OAuth2 extending the attack/failure surface. Stuff just works.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

"what brand is left to recommend?"

Quite.

Satnav systems built for Earth used by Blue Ghost lander as it approached the Moon

"That's gotta involve some very cool mathematics to achieve that."

It'll need a few more digits for the altitude.

Microsoft goes native with Copilot. Again

Re: Linux

Excellent idea. Then it can be ignored in Devuan along with the rest of that behemoth.

UK must give more to ESA to get benefits of space industry boom, says Brian Cox

Re: Um....

It's never really dawned on some that bing part of the community means that you're part of the decision making process whilst being outside it means that you're not.

Intel wins something: Judge tosses out shareholder lawsuit over foundry losses

I hope the plaintiffs were required to cover Intel's costs. It seems unreasonable that the other shareholders should be required to pay.

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Request to the IPT

To that end, government advocates should be required to produce statistics and publish all confidential data which they hold on their own devices to demonstrate that if someone has nothing to hide they've nothing to fear.

Re: Both Labour and Tory support the STASI approach.

I'd have no confidence in the current USG taking the same approach tomorrow as it took today, nor repeating tomorrows approach the day after that. But if Apple had gone along with it their security services would have been turning up at Apple's door PDQ with their own list of accoutns they wanted to be opened up.

Re: Hmm

A few days ago I said that despite the protests from the USG that the reality would be that their security services would be pleased to get a share of the product. With what's happening to them now I'm not sure if that's the situation any more.

But yes, HMG needs to lose this one.

Re: Communists...

The HO's core competence is house-training Home Secs although there are a few who don't need it. They are remarkably good at it. One of them wrote an article in the Times describing the process whilst clearly not realising that that's what he was describing.

Re: Put up or shut up

How would an E2EE system be backdoored without a backdoor in the encryption? Other, I suppose, by having it send a second copy to someone else encrypted, for all the good that would do, with that someone's public key?

Re: Put up or shut up

"But you can guarantee that when some MPs' data gets exposed due to a back door which the government insisted on, there will be howls of outrage from them!"

MPs may well expect their messages, at least between themselves, to be leaked by one of the participants in a conversation, e.g. giving the entire lot to the journalist who's going to help them ghost-write their memoirs or just dropping individual messages as and when it suits their own agenda. They probably don't realise that security can exist.

Put up or shut up

"it's understood that the notice didn't include any technical instructions for Apple"

If the HO or any other organisation thinks that a secure back door is feasible all it has to do is produce a proof of concept example that passes expert external scrutiny. Until then it's time to stop demanding others do what they can't.

Cybercrims now licking stamps and sending extortion demands in snail mail

Re: Advertising

"I call them and tell them to stop - which probably costs them more in customer service pay than if they kept sending them."

I threatened to charge then a tenner a letter for handling charges. By the time I'd finished speaking to them they realised I meant it. They stopped.

Re: Advertising

Or send them to the return address.

I remember back in the days of TW3 somebody commented that if everyone just posted the coupon slotted into some newspaper or magazine how much it would cost the advertisers in postage...

Re: Quick get those letters and envelopes to CSI!

I'd like to think they really are licking stamps and leaving fingerprints on the stationery. OTOH if US stamps are anything like our own they'll be self-adhesive. It might still be worth checking the letters with ninhydrin.

iOS users left refreshing in vain as Microsoft Outlook woes drag on

Re: My email works .....

You know all those jokes about sending apprentices for a long stand or striped paint? Maybe some joker at Microsoft told an intern to go and fix email.

Worry not. China's on the line saying AGI still a long way off

"Such trial-and-error learning is crucial in real-world applications, particularly in areas like ... self-driving cars"

Trial and error is not a good idea for self-driving cars.

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

Re: Sure, what could go wrong?

Or you have two separately routed fibres.

Re: Get it Effin' Done

Sometimes a vendor specific "proprietary" standard IS the better choice if it's a standard so widely used the vendor is unlikely to run out of reasons to have spares at a decent cost any time soon.

Running out of stocks of a proprietary part is SoP. It even has a name: planned obsolescence.

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

"the digital energy platform software to operate"

I hope it has a good UPS.

But - but - but - HMG passed a law to say we have to be carbon neutral by whenever. Surely that's enough for it to just happen.

Re: This is great news but...

It'll be 3.1 million average houses at average times.

Maybe cancel that ChatGPT therapy session – doesn't respond well to tales of trauma

"a description of bicameral legislatures and some vacuum cleaner instructions – stressful and/or agitating in the right circumstances, but not nearly as much as those other situations."

It depends on the individual narrative. There are some bicameral legislature stories that might be upsetting and there's a branch of forensic-medical literature about vacuum cleaners.

America's National Science Foundation workers fired in bulk by Trump now reinstated

Re: Hmm

I suppose if you wanted, you could visit the US & appear as an amicus brief in Judge Alsup's court to explain to him why he's wrong. I wouldn't recommend it, though.

Re: Hmm

"There is cause, too much money pumped into a growing bureaucracy while the country is hugely in debt and deficit."

In employment law "cause" has a meaning: it is something the employee has done to justify firing.

"corrupt government agencies"

I take it this is the Trump definition of corrupt: "Anone who disagrees with me".

Re: I guess I picked a bad place to live

Or rubble.

Scientists create woolly ma-mouse by looking at mean genes from the Pleistocene

Re: Global Winter

The theory behind this is that the mammoth 2.0 would protect the tundra against melting of permafrost by removing dead grass. I initially found that a little difficult to follow as I'd have thought insulation would have helped keep it cold. I realised they must be thinking that geothermal warming is the problem and they want to encourage heat loss.