Posts by anonymousI

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Re: Cars Should Be Air-Gapped (Except for Radios)

That will, of course, be entirely the fault of the nerd yoof involved.

Nothing at all to do with the enthusiastic godparents: Toyota and the officials "protecting" our privacy.

Apple's at it again: Things go pear-shaped for meal planner app after iGiant opposes logo

Re: "everything, everywhere" trademark

I think you should provide a link to that new country Chain...

Chinese ambassador to UK threatens to withdraw Huawei, £3bn investment if comms giant banned from building 5G

Re: This title is too long because we don't allow for Re:

Or recall him.

For a congratulatory banquet, including an announcement of promotion for "developing CCP business correctly".

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!

Ahem - "close cooperation" with the US also helped, without having to be in the same political pot-pourri.

Facebook caves to Australia's call for explanations of News Feed algo changes

Re: Are you not entertained?

And more 100% agreement. It seems news programme editors must tell presenters to prioritise colour and movement above all, in the apparent belief their audience has the focus and wit of a wayward waif.

So on top of the tabloid-traditional shock! horror! content, we now get over-exposure to anything that's in vivid motion - and often totally inane.

Equifax finally coughs up the money for its 2017 monster hack… to the banks for having to cancel your cards

Re: Don't worry

And, as usual, their "fees, emoluments and disbursements" will neatly match the money pot.

Some big boots to Phil: HPE says bye to globo sales chief who is heading for a land down under

What's Australia done to deserve this, given HP's history with some recent products? ;-(

Lockdown endgame? There won't be one until the West figures out its approach to contact-tracing apps

Re: No use

"Location data is not supposed to br harvested"

True, true... but has anyone told Gobble, Farcebonk et al? They took "all your data belong to us" as a starting point and made it compulsory - and universal.

UK Information Commissioner OKs use of phone data to track coronavirus spread

Re: Maybe so, but...

Yes, of course, I can remember it being introduced, now you've kindly reminded me.

It's just that my memory isn't what it used to be, for some reason...

Re: Maybe so, but...

Dead right, ThinkingMonkey; once the political class get a taste of power, they'll simply keep it.

We should never forget that income tax was introduced in 1915 as a temporary wartime emergency measure...

Internet Archive justifies its vast 'copyright infringing' National Emergency Library of 1.4 million books by pointing out that libraries are closed

Re: cosseted authors?

True, that's the highly visible symptom.

But the disease seems caused by a perpetual concatenation of avaricious lawyers, ready as always to create and prolong legal argy-bargy right down to the last dollar (of their clients).

Neuroscientist used brainhack. It's super effective! Oh, and disturbingly easy

Re: Let them dopamine themselves to death

No problem - given the ease with which our beloved politicians create new/more imposts, there would be some punitive taxes involved before you could say Democracy.

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

Re: " if they were smarter they might not have to turn to crime"

And of course the really cunning ones turn words into money via the legal caper.

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: Google are ...

Quite right too. They should of course be more properly be referred to as:

Criminally

Unprincipled

Net

Thieving

Sods.

French data watchdog dishes out largest GDPR fine yet: Google ordered to hand over €50m

Re: Who pays these fines?

"Be a paying user, or a shaven sheep? I'll take the former, thanks."

Could we be sure about the either/or option possibilities there, though?

Big Zucker's millionaire lawyers, who've provided such [/outstanding/] advice so far, may already be working on proposals to now make us pay while we quietly continue to be shorn of our data.

Muslim American woman sues US border cops: Gimme back my seized iPhone's data!

Media slant

Something odd about the reporting on this matter, with the person described as "Muslim American".

If another religion had been involved in this, would she then have been said to be Catholic American, etc, or described as an American Catholic? The point being that Muslim is not a nationality, so in other cases it would be the fact of being American that was the signifier.

London's Gatwick Airport flies back to the future as screens fail

Some targetted voting?

Has an IT droid from LGW been through the comments section? It looks like nearly every post in this thread has attracted one downvote.

No, of course not; they would all be too busy "future-proofing".

Brit bank fined £75k over 1.5 million text and email spamhammer

Change the odds

£75k (or even a bit more) after delayed prosecution will never deter them, as others have noted.

One answer may be to start action earlier - and then have jail as an option for any further offences.

It would need a change in thinking, as well as the law, but might focus some wayward minds.

Deeming Facebook a 'publisher' of users' posts won't tackle paedo or terrorist content

Re: Logic Failure on your part.

Much of the mostly confected media outrage about what other media are doing/saying is driven by little more than attempts to hobble the commercial competition.

Legacy media empires hate the new media for stealing their lunch, hence all the noisy "public interest" campaigns demanding restrictions and censorship for those now-vast upstarts.

Wi-Fi sex toy with built-in camera fails penetration test

Re: The question has to be asked

Not at all.

British women are like Goldilocks - not too much, not too little - just right.

Australia: Stop blaming Centrelink debts on its IT systems

Re: We know what's going on here!

"It's very obvious even to the blind that this particular Liberal government hates poor people and especially those on government assistance"

A stirring statement, which might have even more impact if it wasn't for the fact the policy was introduced by the last Labor government.

So the Labor party's crocodile tears are about something they created themselves.

GDS shouting matches so severe team takes to talking by hand signals

Limiting the number of people at meetings worked a treat circa 1975.

It would work well now, but has been made unworkable by the need to show "inclusiveness" bringing in everyone and their associates - all of whom feel they must be seen contributing.

Optus' HFC problems were never a secret, so why did nbn™ need the network?

Cans and "string" (aluminium or not) would be no worse than many areas will get from MTM, aka Malcolm's Terminal Memorial. It will certainly fulfil his rampant ambition to go down in history, though infamy might be closer to the mark.

People who wantonly destroy valuable national projects for the crassest political reasons are never well regarded by history.

Aust Federal Police keep lid on docs that triggered NBN raids

Only the jobs of the political appointees responsible for the massive MTM mess.

And "jobs at rusk"? Always good to hear from New Zealand... :)

iiNet founder Michael Malone takes nbn chair

Harrumph!

Michael Malone has not become the nbn(TM) chair. He's going to take a seat on the board.

Was the headline made deliberately misleading to act as clickbait?

Telstra passes on NBN billions, plays it safe

Re: Bah

...and of course the only other uses are for (alleged) "piracy", and porn.

After all, for what other possible purposes could a first-rate national comms network be used?

</more sarcasm>

Turnbull's revenge: Copyright moved from AGD to Department of Communications

Yes, exactly: "They were voted in by the maniacally nodding majority of both parties."

After both those parties had trousered several million dollars in political donations from their new best friends, the content purveyors. What's that old joke about having the best politicians that money can buy?

A Dyson car? Don't rule it out. We're suckers for innovation, says CEO

It's possible you could get all of that from Dyson - but the cost would probably be more like £112,000.

Ecuador and Sweden in 'constructive talks' – just don't mention Assange™ by name

Re: The old joke about the true Aussie male

That's not quite right - it's actually:

"Eats, roots, shoots and leaves."

So maybe the Ecuadorian Embassy has some hidden attraction...

Australia cracks tech giants' tax dodge code

Re: Wait and see

Cynical, much?

And all that just because the film studios were able to get support from both sides of politics for legislation that was very much to their liking.

By what can only be described as a remarkable coincidence, this breezed through parliament following the earlier placement of some massive political donations...

Feds ponder jamming journo comms in Australian Parliament

Yes, that, plus all their ever-so-generous political donors from the film and music industries.

Turnbull's Digital Transformation Office to 'leave you quivering with excitement'

Turnbull's DTO may be more likely to leave me "quivering with excitement" if the Government had not just enacted data retention and website blocking laws.

These were passed with support from the Opposition, and in what appears may have been a truly remarkable coincidence, came after the movie and music industries had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to both sides of politics.

So, I shall attempt to try and control any quivering enthusiasm for the current government.

Going on holiday? Mexico wants your personal data

Re: Doesn't really matter...

And Mexico is far from alone in saying "all your details belong to us".

PRChina, among others, has some interesting information requirements which go even further.

Tony Abbott says food importers deserve help denied to telcos

Re: Required

Politicians have far higher personal standards than that.

In other words, it'll cost you a lot more than a rather nice dinner...

Skin colour's irrelevant. Just hire competent folk on their merits, FFS

Re: Here is the PC forecast

But there's no such thing as the diversity unenhanced concept "Normal".

Everything is equal to everything else, remember.

US Ambassador: No, net neutrality will NOT allow the UN to seize control of the internet from us

Re: The new bogeyman

"A UN plot" only in media campaigns supporting the major netops, which sound as if they could happily suggest that net neutrality will give you herpes and abduct your first-born.

NBN Co reveals product roadmap and Telstra planning deal

Bloakey1, the current Australian government shares your nostalgia for things past.

Which may explain why they canned the advanced NBN and replaced it with their equally costly but very inferior "MTM", more generally known as Malcolm Turnbull's Mistake.

NBN Co makes it official - backhaul charges will fall

Re: Cheaper CVC = Higher AVC = Slower Speeds

mathew, you sound a bit desperate and uninformed here, as you do on some Australian blogs.

For example, you have chosen to completely ignore two key items:

The last cost of rolling out the network (before the govt canned it) was less than early figures; and

The takeup of higher level plans was substantially higher than budgeted.

These differences support the lower CVC charges. These are a clear benefit for endusers, despite the impression you have sought to create to the contrary.

US Congress in cash freeze bid to DERAIL global DNS handover

Perhaps the issue is whether the US, with all its well-publicised imperfections, might still provide more stable, and independent, backing than would occur with the average rent-a-country UN oversight.

Churchill is said to have observed "Democracy is a much flawed system of government, but it is preferable to any of the alternatives."

There's not a lot of democracy in most UN countries. While it will never please the US haters, the present system works reasonably well - which is more than could be expected from some of the mooted changes.

Turnbull should spare us all airline-magazine-grade cloud hype

Re: He's missing the obvious then.

No, he has much higher standards.

Like those able to be provided by the Hollywood studios and big media groups, for example.

Offshore metadata storage fine by me, says Malcolm Turnbull

Re: Just call us the Australian Republic of China.

And all our data will then be doubly well scrutinised.