Posts by anonymousI

Taiwan, China square off over chip tech espionage laws

Funny thing, that... it's almost as though ol' Pooh Bear just hates being found out.

Are we springing into a Y2K-class nightmare?

Re: historical memory loss

That's in line with the Rule of Car Size:

Short people can often tend to buy large cars...

Re: USA change its date format ...

Sounds like another case of "If it's good for America, it's good for the goddam world!"

Case in point: liquid measurement. Not only do they reject the logical Metric system by retaining gallons, etc - but their "gallons" are a bit short of the real thing, leading to continuing confusion.

Google blocks FOSS Android tool – for asking for donations

Yes, exactly.

Though some may feel that you could have said '...being a$$hole$'.

UK regulator 'broke international law', says Facebook

Re: What International Law? Obviously . . .

Not sure whether to upvote that for telling the (odious) truth...

...or downvote it for telling the odious truth.

Microsoft offers 'open' app store to draw regulators away from Activision takeover

Brad Smith said "We have developed these principles...", which sounds impressive.

Are "these principles" relevant in this context, or are they an attempt to claim self-control by MS to head off some much more effective regulation?

Australian court finds Facebook 'divorced from reality' as it tried to define doing business down under

Re: store cookies with explicit consent

We shouldn't have to *do* them.

Why should users have to go through that rigmarole every time on close because Facebook et al are usurping their rights?

Intel ‘regrets’ offending China with letter telling suppliers to avoid Xinjiang

But surely the Uighurs are being given all the benefits of that very generous free CCP re-education education?

It might appear somewhat ungrateful to cavil about a few small details involving torture and slave labour...

After deadly 737 Max crashes, damning whistleblower report reveals sidelined engineers, scarcity of expertise, more

What? But surely one aeronautical engineer is as good as any other for these certifications!

(/sarcasm, before downvotes arrive...)

Pulling down a partition or knocking through a door does not necessarily make for a properly connected workspace

Re: Working on that..

These days, after 10 years of age they often know more than you do.

Or at least claim to, which is not quite the same thing...

Canon makes 'all-in-one' printers that refuse to scan when out of ink, lawsuit claims

No print? No buy.

We had the same issue with Canon printers a few years ago. The solution was that we haven't bought anything from Canon since then.

We have some sad news about Facebook. It has returned to the internet after six-hour mega outage

Re: OMG!

Serve you right for the self-indulgence of using Sewerbook so often...

Facebook used facial recognition without consent 200,000 times, says South Korea's data watchdog

Re: Is this a joke?

Yep, that'll really teach them not to play silly buggers with the rights of their users...

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

Didn't your parents tell you a million times not to exaggerate?

Naughty karaoke is China's next tech crackdown target

"...songs that endanger national security."

Hmmm, that seems to rule out anything that isn't hagiographic enough about Comrade Xi and his rather large claque.

McDonald's AI drive-thru bot accused of breaking biometrics privacy law

Who's hungry, then?

Hmmm, American lawyers. 'The Law' used to provide protection against real injustice; now it seems to be more a source of enrichment for Certain People.

Elon Musk hits the brakes on taking Bitcoin for Tesla purchases

Re: In the words of Elon Musk

Good point, though we may note that Mr E Musk is all advertising - so an ad budget would seem somewhat superfluous...

'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces

Re: when to use the word "fewer" instead of the word "less"

It appears the increased usage of "impact" may have a lot to do with tabloid-headline writers.

In which case your point about looking stupid seems quite apt...

Re: Lewis Carroll would like a word...

Very true - but we can't use "frig" since it's regarded as a rude word in many places.

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Re: We've been here before

Good points, but one small typo - it was Dr Bowdler who, er, Bowdlerised the language.

Re: "challenged"

Surely not - "different" may suggest the alternative could be, y'know, "superior" in some way. Or for that matter, "inferior"...

Or perhaps because it's shaped as an artificial ("dummy") breast?

The iPhone 12 captured our attention and wallets, says new report from Gartner

According to Gartner, Apple and Samsung swapped 1st & 2nd positions in the last quarter - which is hardly a case of Samsung "plummeting" down the order.

Maybe a bit less of the tabloid-talk here, please?

Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes. And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB

Re: Depends

The other monopolist racket is to announce that Banana equipment is so superbly designed that nothing but Banana-made ancillary gear is good enough to use with it (so in fact, nothing else will work).

Translation: We've found a nifty way round the anti-monopoly laws, so we're making you pay double price for all the add-ons you need.

Loser Trump's last financial disclosure docs reveal Tim Cook gave him $5,999 Mac Pro, the 'first' made in Texas

Re: A HUNDRED AND FORTY QUID!?

Or one of the nieces/nephews of the Managing Director.

Different surnames, of course.

Re: A HUNDRED AND FORTY QUID!?

Dead right - but then, just think of the warm inner glow that little beancounter must have had from saving (your) 50p - !

It's been a day or so and nope, we still can't wrap our head around why GitHub would fire someone for saying Nazis were storming the US Capitol

Re: Communist = Nazist

No - most families practice communalism. There's a world of difference between that and hard Marxism.

It's very true an early definition of Communism was the same as communalism, but brutal regimes of Stalin, Mao et al mean current definitions of Communism need to take account of the large Fascist element it now includes in practice.

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

Re: Free speech? It'll never catch on...

Not really. The CCP's B&R "initiatives" seem much closer to the Balkanisation seen in recent history.

There appear to be 2 objectives with all those shiny new Belt and Road projects:

1/ Burden Pacific/Asian fiefdoms with costly B&R loans they can't possibly repay, then move in to take over the assets.

2/ Insist projects are built to military specifications, so wharves, airstrips etc can handle all PLA warships/planes.

Re: Free internet != lawless internet

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In our 'good new days' of glorious wokedom, opponents and doubters are digitally stoned to death with demands that they be deplatformed thus silencing their voice, and in many cases also that they be deprived of their livelihood.

But that's okay, because clearly anyone deviating from current groupthink dogma deserves nothing less than erasure...

Facebook appeals ruling that it stole tech. So, Italian judge issues new judgment: Pay 10 times the original fine

Re: Zuck is a moral pauper with lots of money

It seems there's nothing much behind those empty eyes, except a cash register.

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.