Posts by Doctor Syntax

US accuses Canadian math prodigy of $65M crypto scheme

I thought all this sort of thing was the sole purpose of cryptocurrencies.

Ireland's AI minister has never used ChatGPT but swears she'll learn fast

Treating them all with even-handed scepticism would be about right. But maybe it'll really be about making sure the DCs have enough power and collecting the money.

Call of Duty studio co-founder pleads guilty to crashing drone into firefighting aircraft

Re: He got hosed

"It's called being neighborly."

OP probably forgot such a thing existed. It seems to be rapidly going out of fashion.

Oops.

I hope they gave the goose a good roasting.

He didn't even get charged with the cost of repairs. Maybe that's a separate civil suit.

"Not only is he one of the founders of game developer Treyarch, which was acquired by Activision and became one of the studios behind the Call of Duty franchise, but he's also the president of Skydance Interactive, a Skydance Media subsidiary that develops VR apps and video games for the media giant. Oh - and Akemann also holds a PhD in mathematics from UC Berkeley."

But a bit short in the common sense department.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

"IT departments must press the upgrade button rather than pay exorbitant fees for extended support,"

What are the actual of cost of ongoing support compared with buying new H/W to replace kit which is functioning quite satisfactorily? I'm sure MS would prefer to keep what in effect becomes a subscription going as opposed to the one-off price of a W11 "perpetual" licence and will price it accordingly. They win, customers lose a bit, MS's old H/W buddies lose substantially. Once the subscription habit is ingrained W12 can become subscription only.

Amazon's Kuiper secures license to take on Starlink in the UK

Tariffs incoming.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

Once the smoke has cleared in 4 years time it might be a good idea for the US to look at their constitution and ask if it needs a few more safeguards built in.

It's common to say of the UK that it doesn't have a written constitution* but it is flexible. At the time America went on its merry way the UK had made a lot of progress in separating the roles of head of state and head of government and continued to do so. The US seems stuck in that past, indeed I'm not sure its as far advanced as the UK was at that time.

* It's not all written in one place but there are a lot of separate Acts of Parliament which together go a long way to amount to one and a whole lot more in court judgments about common law. Fortunately there's enough flexibility left for it to keep evolving.

Re: Idiots took over

If you look at Trump's declared ambitions re Canada, Greenland & Panama canal the only real difference between that and Putin's active ambitions re Ukraine is the breadth of the grasp.

Make that an entrance exam for candidates. Add a criminal record and financial history check as well.

"Are the majority in the middle?"

Not necessarily. It was thought that proportional representation in N Ireland would favour moderates. What happened was the two extremist parties ended up carving up the spoils between them sharing government.

"the IRS, an out-of-control body that is a law unto itself"

This is characteristic of all tax-collecting bodies.

Not even Nvidia's Jensen Huang can talk President Tariffs out of chip import taxes

Re: Regularly bouncing the stock market

The Underpants Gnomes?

As Trump slugs Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs, industry groups hope trade war weapon isn’t pointed at their feet

“push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more.”

That could backfire. Tariffs on digital services. Requirement for data sovereignty. All pretty obvious I'd have thought.

Re: 'de minimis' exemptions are gone too

"products that are avoiding duties that should be paid, drugs, illegal weapons, illicit archaeological items, products derived from protected species, etc."

They'll all get through provided payments are made.

"no doctor wants to lose a paying patient"

At least, not in the current quarter.

"Yes it would hurt, but it would make Trump look like a complete idiot, and that's worth something."

No. It would give Trump a chance to blame somebody - everybody - else. The sensible thing would have been to do nothing at all, let the increased prices take their toll with nobody to blame but himself. Now he can point to all these other countries being nasty to the poor old US.

Nobody imposes tariffs on other countries. They impose them on their own residents who buy the products of those other countries. Governments allegedly imposing tariffs on the US should remember that. But hysteria is catching.

Re: It's all in how you look at it

"Where in the world has the money and the population to buy the $25bn of expensive German cars that previously went to the US?"

They might not be badly affected. Top end markets are always willing to pay silly money.

US datacenters in for shock as Canada mulls cutting the juice over Trump tariffs

Re: Short term pain for long term gain.

I suppose you're covering your eyes and not noticing that the UK has has an economic growth problem. Namely it's stalled.

"GenAI workloads are going to be somewhat resistant to increases in the cost of power overall, given the capex cost of the Nvidia systems themselves at cluster and supercluster scale, and the substantial investment in state-of-the-art datacenter facilities to house and power them. "

Sounds like sunk costs to me.

Re: Erm

The other answer seems to be to make Canadians poorer by adding tariffs to US products. Now he's got somebody to blame for the consequences of his own actions. He'll certainly do that.

Privacy Commissioner warns the ‘John Smiths’ of the world can acquire ‘digital doppelgangers’

"this is only an Australian problem"

You think so?

AFAIK the ID checking was farmed out to a credit checking outfit - I can't remember which one - so he may have had other problems arising from that situation.

Re: Tough Problem

They weren't twins who'd been given the same name, were they?

(I have seen that in a baptismal register. It may have been that the family were still following the traditional practice of letting the godparents choose the name.)

2 officers bailed as anti-corruption unit probes data payouts to N Irish cops

Re: Decades in the 1990s

"and eventual partition"

Without partition, of course, there'd undoubtedly have been an extremely bloody war of secession.

"Police's data is considered especially sensitive in Northern Ireland, where many officers never reveal their job or role, even to family members, because of the tension with local Irish nationalists who do not believe the region should be under British control."

When I lived there I reckoned on the risks coming equally from the prods and would expect they still do.

FuriPhone FLX1: A Debian-powered brick that puts GNOME in your back pocket

"It means that the FuriPhone can run thousands more apps than a pure Debian phone"

I wonder how many of those thousands are not leaching data, insecure, depending on long and dubious supply chains etc.

UK biz dept overspent by £208M prepping to pay workers hurt in Post Office IT scandal

Re: The wheels of British so-called justice turn extremely slowly

1. If the defendant has (been coerced into) pleading guilty then neither judge nor jury has any role in reaching a verdict. As some of the victims were in that position why are you blaming judges in those cases?

2. If the defendant pleads not guilty and opts for a jury trial it is the jury, not the judges who reach a verdict.

3. If the defendant pleads not guilty and opts for a summary trial then it is the judge's role to reach a verdict. That verdict can only be based on the evidence put before the court. I'm only familiar with judge-only trials in the so-called Diplock procedure in NI. There the judge gave a fully reasoned verdict, based on the evidence.

4. I'm not sure as to the balance between 2 & 3 but I'm sure someone with a handle like VoiceOfTruth will be able to provide authoritative figures on this despite the lapse in knowledge about court procedure..

5. Whatever the form of trial the judge's role is to remain impartial, and not imagine what they think the evidence should have been in areas where they have no technical knowledge. Thank goodness,

Microsoft vet laments a world where even toothbrushes need reboots

"is it a good thing ?"

No. Can't you get a crash helmet that's just a crash helmet any more?

Toothbrush porn?

Re: You should never need to reboot a machine.

If it was a 360 shouldn't that have been IPL?

Re: You should never need to reboot a machine.

"Not sure whether this is possible with classic SysV init"

AFAIK it isn't. Then again, it's not something that's frequently updated to spread its tentacles wider and wider into the system nor to fix such of its bugs as haven't been marked EWONTFIX. That's the benefit of following the KISS principle.

Re: Microsoft vet

Or the marketing weasels?

The internet did exist 40 years ago. The web didn't but if bootable toothbrushes had existed there'd have been a place to discuss them, maybe something like alt.health.toothbrush

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

Re: A charming stranger

If we shut our eyes and pretend it isn't happening it'll go away. That worked with Covid - unvaccinated and still here Worked with Y"K as well, didn't it? Who believes in experts?

Trump’s tariffs, cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts

Re: Not thought through.

"rump could have another tantrum at any moment and remove the tariffs"

And will be gone in four years anyway.

Re: I'm Not a Fan of Tariffs, But

"Most of the $$ spent by a Govt circulates back into the economy"

In this case a very small part of the economy.

Re: There are the "Non-tariff" barriers as well.

Nope, they shouldn't do a thing to let Trump shuffle the blame off to them. If they just keep things the same it'll be difficult for him to pretend something else is responsible for the inflation.

Re: One thing

" and would probably end in war."

Which is why the best thing for Canada to do is just sit tight, watch US inflation rise and Trump stew in his own juice.

Re: I'm Not a Fan of Tariffs, But

"There is no internal production to increase to compete with the imported goods, and new production capacity cannot be build fast."

From their own point of view internal producers won't need to add new capacity. It's far cheaper to simply take advantage of the tariffs on incoming goods and raise their own prices to match. Increased income with no outlay.

Dell ends hybrid work policy, demands return-to-office despite remote work pledge

Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

Exactly. So Dell the man never really said it and it isn't in any way hypocrisy.

Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

The 400 miles away might mean a different time zone so they've wither finished work or not yet got up. I'm sure you'll personally be delighted to be woken up an hour early to pick up a work phone call or interrupt your evening meal.

"The level of defensiveness around this is very very telling."

Indeed it is.

Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

"If you need a response in real time, then you shouldn't be using email."

And if you don't need a response in real time you should consider whether demanding it anyway might constitute an unwarranted interruption - and realise email might be better.

A company can have offices in different time zones on different continents.

Those working from home ignoring their email to get stuff done. When they're in the office it's so much easier for a micro-mangler to wander up and personally break someone's productive train of thought.

Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

I suppose a post on linkedin doesn't count.

"Therefore, in my experience, there is an advantage to quick communication when people are nearby one another and meet anyway."

And the one who was deep into something gets their concentration broken.

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

Re: Don't panic

Some remember Win2000 as the last good Windows. And W12 may well be subscription only and thus even more reviled.