Posts by Cederic

Australian court overturns 'Google is a publisher' decision

Re: Testing boundaries

I believe historically your comments regarding the dwellers of this green and pleasant land would have been ignored, shrugged at or (more likely) entirely agreed with.

Defamatory or not, they're not going to cause a level of offence that (again, historically) might have, for instance, led to the invasion and subjugation of your homelands.

At the same time, if you were to impugn the reputation of an individual then yes, that may well provoke an appropriate response.

Google may also link to your derisory view of that individual, but in so doing would be merely pointing out 'over there is something said about someone', which I believe is different to Google saying it about them.

Of course, this being the Internet Australian and UK law are mere nodes within the virtual landscape. That's where life does however get complicated, and is why the US has the 2010 SPEECH Act to protect Americans against the laws of other countries.

I'm not sure any of this forgives the horrific insult you threw at our poor hosts. I refer you to Wesley's polite rejection of Montoya's initial proffering of his word.

Sony camera feature hopes to make digital images immune to secret manipulation

all photographs are manipulated

You can't convert from RAW to (print or web format of choice) without pixel level manipulation. I guess this can validate that a source image exists that contains content seen in the eventual image, but the image being shared will invariably be marked as 'manipulated'.

E.g. my passport photograph is not as it came out of the camera - I cropped it, converted it to JPG, resized it so it would be within required file size. It's still recognisably the photograph I took but it's certainly not the same photo that came out of the camera.

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

Re: Bang On - except the death stats

You make a good point. Coal power stations don't create such vast natural habitats that are resistant to human development and spoiling.

The Chernobyl exclusion zone has been a massive wildlife success story.

Samsung heir pardoned after doing time for bribery

Re: Capitalism for the Win

Surely this is corruption not capitalism?

The bit I can't work out is how one individual can matter so much for the country's economic health. The company will continue to operate and be successful without him. The claim that this is necessary for economic reasons just doesn't feel credible.

So now I have a less than positive view of the South Korean President.

Microsoft open-sources its emojis as part of new design philosophy

Even Disney haven't managed to extend copyright that long.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Re: preaching the gospel

The problem is that Linux Mint can't do everything. It can't run the primary system used by my employer, it can't run the creative applications I use at home for video and photography and, much as I welcome and respect the work Valve's done on this, it doesn't run the games I play.

I could switch my desktop at home and work to Linux and only have to switch to Windows a few times a day. Or I can run an OS that lets me do everything I need (oh, and gives me access to a built-in Linux kernel so I can also do everything I would prefer to do in Linux on Linux without rebooting).

preaching the gospel

Meanwhile, in the real world, hundreds of millions of users of Windows desktops have no admin access to their systems. Very clearly the OS works perfectly capable without that being needed.

As for Android and Chrome Books, they abandoned trying to pretend to be Windows and have been successful as a result (well, Android anyway).

Linux will be far more compelling when it supports business systems, when it supports gamers, when it supports creatives and when, as a result of at least two of those three, it starts to become the default installed operating system on mass market personal computers.

Oh, and yes, I've been using Linux for longer than you've been evangelising it for desktop.

Report slams UK plan to become 'science superpower' by 2030

thank you

Without distracting from the whole article being well written and informative, thank you for the excellent objective write-up of the current UK and EU disagreement regarding the Northern Ireland protocol.

The Register yet again setting standards other media really ought to learn from.

Electrical explosion at Google datacenter injures three

Re: Arc flash?

That link also tells us it's at the electrical substation, rather than in the data halls, which I find useful context.

Also: Google have substations attached to their data centres!?

Tiers before bedtime: AWS updates Lambda pricing structure

scary example

That's a fantastically contrived example. 75 million function calls a month and nobody thought to do some background number crunching so that each of those calls takes six seconds, not sixty?

150k/month is well beyond the cut-off for 'rent some data centre space and buy some servers' being cheaper, and whether you're on-prem or in the cloud, that's just a horrifically architected service.

No wonder AWS is profitable.

Google hit with lawsuit for dropping free Workspace apps

Re: Offer it at a loss

Of course, this being Google there's a risk that after you start paying for it it'll be withdrawn soon anyway.

We'll get you that Wi-Fi 7 laptop by 2024, Intel says

Wifi 7?

Wifi 6E routers aren't affordable yet, with almost no options available to buy even today.

Maybe there's a market for wifi 7 but it's not looking like it's in the home.

Nancy Pelosi ties Chinese cyber-attacks to need for Taiwan visit

Re: China's just testing the waters

No, reunited with the mainland is correct.

Of course, the correct way to do that is to expand Taiwanese democracy across the rest of the country.

Bill Gates venture backs effort to bring aircon startup to market

Re: Nice idea, but....

Can confirm. Landed in some place I was told was Australia but after several hours driving through a large zoo called The Outback I saw only their kangaroos, wallabies and goats*. Left again entirely alive, unpoisoned by spiders or snakes, and not eaten by crocodiles or the mythical koala.

I even saw what was described as 'the sea' and survived the alleged jellyfish, sharks and colourful octopuses.

The only place I've seen wild crocodile is Panama. Which came as a surprise..

*and lizards and a gorgeous four foot lace monitor and emus and various other avian life forms and some weird beings that called themselves Australians.

BT accused of 'misinformation' campaign ahead of strikes

Re: That claim that it's 8% for their lowest paid workers...

Thank you for attacking me for something I didn't say.

Re: That claim that it's 8% for their lowest paid workers...

On the flipside, my energy costs are quadrupling in a year, fuel for my car is 50% higher and my pay rise was less than 5%.

I can't afford to pay BT enough to give their staff a pay rise twice as high, and don't want to, and think it'll cause an inflationary spiral that'll destroy my meagre savings and leave the whole economy devastated.

Anybody whose mortgage has gone up by £150/m from just the tiny interest rate rises we've had this year has a £250k mortgage, so I'm really not sure that's going to be a problem for BT's lowest wage staff.

The inflation is due to the Government spending half a trillion on the Pandemic, along with short term energy issues. Giving people more money isn't going to fix any of that.

Infosec not your job but your responsibility? How to be smarter than the average bear

Re: Be careful with that bold statement

Allow me to summarise for you.

Cohen: The bill (including amendment) allows excessive sharing of data.

Clarke: Nah, that won't happen.

It has happened.

Re: Be careful with that bold statement

At the time many people pointed out its overly broad applicability, which the Government assured us would not be the case.

As just one example, see the comments by Mr Cohen and the false assurances provided by Charles Clarke in Parliament: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2000-07-26/debates/02d133e1-f824-4a39-8e1b-7d295414ebad/RegulationOfInvestigatoryPowersBill

Upgrading what might be the world's oldest running Linux install

No, not at all. Should I be?

It was secure when first put live, it's been continually patched and upgraded since, so it's no less secure now (and probably more so).

Browsers could face two regimes in Europe as UK law set to diverge from EU

Re: FUD?

A script that tracks your mouse as it moves across the web page provides information that helps site creators understand how you view, interact with and use that page.

That information can be used to improve the readability and usability of the page, so that more profit can be made. I mean, so that the user experience can be improved.

You can't do that server-side.

Russian ChessBot breaks child opponent's finger

Telegram

Telegram seems to be mostly immune to the Russian censorship. A lot of Russian reports and comments on the war in Ukraine are on there, and non-Russians are sharing reality in return.

My Big Coin founder is – you guessed it – a $6m crypto-fraudster

Re: "Is that illegal?"

Allow me then to rephrase.

Do you know which specific law he's on trial for allegedly breaking?

Re: "Is that illegal?"

Do you know which specific law he was found to have broken?

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

Re: Talk to the coders

That's changed then. India developers used to be great at churning out code but being good at their job means going beyond the basic spec and doing a professional job.

You don't tell your plumber to leave no leaks when installing your bathroom, so why would you need to tell your developers not to leave gaping security holes and inevitable service failures when developing code?

Professional software engineers don't write to the spec. Don't tell me that someone that only does that is as good at the job as the people that do the job properly.

Well, your cost of living is substantially lower too. I have to pay more than the cited annual Nigerian salary just on housing costs, energy costs and broadband each year, because that's how expensive stuff is here. I knew a few Infosec people that hated working on-site in the UK because they couldn't afford the multiple staff members their households in India enjoyed, and the other costs were compromising their ability to invest in their property portfolios.

You may be doing the same work but that's why you're an option. Your lower salary if why you get the work, not us.

But that was obvious back in the late 90s, which is one reason I made career choices that moved me into roles that don't get outsourced.

Don't dive head first into that crypto pool, FBI warns

Re: KYC

Umm.

So if they have a corporate name, I can phone them and I can Google them, I should run?

I guess that's true, in that I should just stay clear of crypto currencies anyway.

Rejoice! System Administrator Appreciation Day (SAAD) is nigh

Re: I am shocked -- shocked! -- at the inaccuracy...

Ah, you appreciate pi on the date that most nearly approximates to it.

Similarly, you appreciate your sysadmins on the day that most closely reflects their value to you. $29/7 an hour.

Deploying disaster-proof apps may be easier than you think

Re: Well I'll be

To host a server on my own I'd be paying higher business broadband costs alone than the entire annual cost of a resilient cloud based set up.

So the cloud is cheaper - for my use case.

It's more expensive for others. It's also not a company based calculation, as even for large corporations, some systems suit cloud deployment and others on-premise. Which is why hybrid is so popular.

Reducing cloud to cost is of course also ignoring all of the other opportunities and risks involved, but even cost needs proper analysis.

Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

No, it's helping them through complex processes and assuring they get the right outcomes, as well as managing simple things like changes of details, requests for information and complaints.

Other terms could apply but 'engagement' felt it covered everything.

We're just ditching our expensive telephony system on the grounds the ten people still using it can just use Teams instead.

Even with this outage I support that change.

(We're retaining full telephony for customer engagement, including support, because there's a value proposition there)

If they're already in the office together it's a moot point.

Although our meeting rooms connect with the outside world via Teams. Oh well.

Baidu crashes the cost of robo-taxis by 75 percent

oh, a duet

I misread that initially as a duel.

Maybe I read too much cyberpunk.

UK chemicals multinational to build hydrogen 'gigafactory'

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/23/tesla_model_s_explodes_after/

I call that a serious fire hazard.

Under an hour? To be able to continue a journey in a serious fire hazard that weighs too much and damages the road and its tyres as a result?

Hydrogen keeps you moving, and causes less pollution, and doesn't need more electricity than the current national supply, and lets us use so-called 'green' energy when the supply exceeds demand, and lets us more easily transport solar energy from sunny regions.

Electric cars do not scale to the whole population. Anybody promoting them is either ignorant or actively seeking to curtail freedom of movement. We don't all live in a city centre with our jobs next door and easy access to a range of cultural and entertainment options.

British boffins make touchless computing tech on the cheap

Re: I just installed it

Many modern interchangeable lens cameras (particularly mirrorless ones) can be used as a standard webcam, which gives you a large range of lens options with great optics.

I won't name specific models, as there are options for a range of budgets and sensor sizes.

Russia fines Google $374 million for letting the truth about Ukraine be told

unusual for Google

Normally Google roll over and comply with unreasonable authoritarian governments - e.g. removing mentions of Tiananmen Square from Chinese search results, or suppressing videos highlighting Hunter Biden's laptop.

Nice to see them refusing to give in for once, although perhaps this merely reflects their continued support for US Government policy.

Tories spar over UK's delayed Online Safety Bill

Re: I'm surprised

Almost.

Try this: https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/

Re: I'm surprised

Her name is Badenoch.

I've seen nothing saying she's anti-ECHR. Braverman was the candidate that said she'd withdraw from that, Badenoch (and the others) have not.

I'm also confused that you think she's anti-Green, although if you mean the Green Party then as a member of a different Party I think that's understandable.

What I'm most bewildered by though is why you think Sunak is credible. He's a high tax socialist with the fiscal control of a Labour chancellor, being supported by people that still want to overturn the democratic will of the people of the UK.

However you're criticising Badenoch for being pro-Brexit, and at the same time recommending electoral fraud to achieve the outcome you want. Sorry but we left the EU and we aren't going to adopt their corrupt manipulation of democracy.

All of which is off topic, but since you made an unwarranted unsubstantiated personal attack it felt appropriate to provide a different viewpoint.

irony

The people telling the former software engineer that she doesn't understand the bill, while continually breaching what would be the very provision she's pointing out is horrific...

Oh, and I haven't gone onto Twitter to check but I suspect many people have pointed Damian Collins at Sections 12 and 13 of his own bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137

It absolutely demands the removal of legal speech.

Digital burglary at recruitment agency Morgan Hunt confirmed

Re: "risk is low"

Very useful? It's good enough to not just commit ID fraud but also take over existing accounts.

This is as serious as personal data breaches get.

SCOTUS judges 'doxxed' after overturning Roe v Wade

Re: The left no longer understand what democracy means.

The current US Supreme Court agrees with you, which is why they reversed the law wrongly created in Roe vs Wade.

I'm pro-abortion but also very much support the courts applying the law as it stands. Change the law.

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

No.

"The IT industry being what it is, those emoticons evolved into emoji"

We're not accepting the blame for that. That's on the users. We still use ASCII.

API rate limits at the core of Elon Musk’s decision to ditch Twitter

May 16th was when he highlighted the need to validate the public information Twitter provided, as it was not holding up to scrutiny. That wasn't 'trying to back out', that was 'hang on, those SEC filings have no supporting data'.

The 7 days to which you refer is the time it took to respond to a request for the rate limit to be removed. After those seven days completed there were still rate limits in force.

Those rate limits mean that using the API to properly validate the number of 'bot accounts' would take an "unreasonable time", which is where that phrase comes into play.

The position is thus that Musk inquired about information given to the SEC that materially impacts company value, Twitter were unable to demonstrate that this information could be relied on, and told Musk he could try and validate himself - then failed to give him the tools that would let him.

So no, to answer your question, I'm sure he does not imagine that a judge 'would buy' that seven days was unreasonable, because that's not what he's saying.

Leaked Uber docs reveal frequent use of 'kill switch' to deactivate tech, thwart investigators

I told you!

I told you they were evil! I said it back then, and never became a customer as a result. Finally I am vindicated, and they will.. retire in luxury to their Caribbean islands.

There's no justice :(

Boris Johnson set to step down with tech legacy in tatters

It didn't. See the discussion earlier in the comments.

Re: Slimming the government

Yeah, they'll be able to pursue their Europhile agenda without having to disguise it from the elected Government they've so intent on subverting.

Case in point: The Home Office staff plotting in public to derail the provision of security and safety to refugees in Rwanda.

Health trusts swapped patient data for shares in an AI firm. They may have lost millions

Re: Not much comment on patient data

The de-identified data is very much subject to section 171 of the DPA 2018 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/section/171?view=plain

So the Trusts would have to approve any reversal of the de-identification for it to be legal, which then brings into question their lawful reasons for permitting that.

UK, South Korea strike data-sharing pact

I have two Samsung televisions, and they're very very nice televisions.

They're also old enough to predate the predatory advertising and data slurping that's infested more recent products. Entirely with you on avoiding those.