Posts by Jimmy2Cows

Rental electric scooters to clutter UK street scenes after Department of Transport gives year-long trial the thumbs-up

Re: Logic

You suspect logic behind any of this? Perhaps a corrupt, devious form. I suspect one or more croney mates are involved and want to ensure only their snouts can be at the that trough.

One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway

First rule of politics, surely: never admit incompetence or failure.

Second rule of politics: spin any incompetence or failure as success, innovation.

Third rule of politics: when rules 1 and 2 aren't holding water, come up with an even more ridiculous wheeze to divert attention.

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

...delightful cakey accompaniment is pronounced "scone"...

Well I'm glad that's cleared that one up. I feel much better now the pronunciation schism which has blighted this fair land for many a year, has been well and truly put to rest once and for all.

Talk about the fox guarding the hen house. Comcast to handle DNS-over-HTTPS for Firefox-using subscribers

Re: How much did Comcast pay Mozilla?

Sad but true. Have to assume Mozilla knows they're being figuratively bent-over.

Maybe they the like it ---->

Mozilla today insisted its new best buddy Comcast...

is going to play nice and follow the DNS privacy program's rules.

Yeah. Of course they are. No megacorp has ever said that and done the opposite. No-sir-ee.

[Imagines Comcast as a stereotypical evil moustache-twirling villain] Yes, of course, this information is completely safe with us and will never be abused for corporate or personal gain. You can trust us.

US govt: Julian Assange tried to recruit hacker to steal hush-hush dirt and we should know – the hacker was an informant

Re: A lot of effort to get Assange

This is 100% about setting an example. No one must dare expose embarrassing, exflitated US secrets ever again. I suspect no degree of effort is "too much".

Re: Legal jurisdiction

This isn't about the US prosectuing their laws in other jurisdictions, nor is it about prosecuting him under UK law for something that happened outside UK jurisdiction.

This is about the US seeking extradition of someone whom they allege broke laws in the US, so they may subsequently prosecute their laws in their own jurisidiction.

That someone happens to be residing here at Her Majesty's pleasure in Belmarsh. Since the UK and the US have an extradition treaty, heavily biased as it in in favour of the US, that treaty requires the UK consider extradition proceedings against Assange.

Laws on police facial recognition aren't tough enough, UK data watchdog barrister tells Court of Appeal

China's FR has been able to cope happily with face masks

Apparently.

I'm not convinced on the true accuracy of their tech, as we only have the word of an authoritian regime with no independent assessment.

The number of people with similar eyes/nose/forehead patterns must be significantly higher than the number of people similar eyes/nose/forehead/mouth/chin/cheeks patterns. I see scope for a huge number of false positives and false negatives when everyone wears a mask. There are simply fewer variables from which to establish a positive identification.

Yes that seems like an obvious conflict of interest. That judge should immediately recuse themself from these proceedings, or, better still, should not have been brought into these proceedings in the first place.

Belief in 5G conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with small explosions of rage, paranoia and violence, researchers claim

Re: Something else to consider.

Your sister is Priti Patel?

Hey NYPD, when you're done tear-gassing and running over protesters, can you tell us about your spy gear?

Supplier contracts are not laws. No matter how much the supplier would wish them so. The most the suppliers could do is attempt to sue under civil law.

If the law, as in enacted by Congress etc., prohibits admitting use of certain equipment, that's a whole different kettle of fish. But that would be a law, not a contract.

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

Re: But Y'know, cake?

Mass-challenged individual here. It's still better.

Re: But Y'know, cake?

Especially if the cake has cherries atop.

Re: Or am I being overly cynical?

Nope. Not at all. Personally, I think you've nailed it.

Re: beating covid-19 is not a competition.

Certainly shouldn't be, but of course in reality it is.

Many countries want the presumed kudos of being the first to beat it, to show they are better than everyone else. Be that by developing a vaccine, or by having the best contact tracing.

UK perhaps more than most, because Boris will see it proves the UK can survive and lead in a post-Brexit world. Why work together when we're so "world beating". </sarc>

How do you run a military court over Zoom? With 28 bullet points and a ceremonial laptop flunkey, of course!

Re: Do we have any details...

Away with you and your sensible ideas.

Amazon's not saying its warehouse staff are dumb... but it feels they need artificial intelligence to understand what 'six feet' means

Re: This tech wont go away after Covid

Amazon don't want happy employees.

They want mindless drones, their spirits crushed and their souls destroyed.

Re: Hoops

Needs something, for sure. Working in crowd simulation for the last 20 years, I can say categorically people need all the help they can get to stay socially-distanced.

Re: What does 'six feet' mean?

Aha thank you! My brain stopped working and I couldn't remember the dude's name. Senility is a terrible thing. And I'm only 46. Does not bode well for the future.

Re: What does 'six feet' mean?

And charged the quicklime to the hapless employees. And the cost of digging the ditch.

Re: ...unless someone sneezes or coughs directly on you...

Not strictly true.

Recent studies have found that tiny exhaled / coughed up / sneezed droplets can hang in the air for several minutes, and can spread 10s of metres in that time.

Someone doesn't have to cough or sneeze directly on you for you to become infected. Just walk through the cloud they left behind several minutes prior could do it.

Agreed that wearing a mask while driving is generally dumb, unless there are others in the car who need to be isolated, for instance driving someone to a COVID test site.

Bricks and mortar chemists take down Indian contact-tracing website

Re: "Indian law prohibits online medicine sales under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940"

Speculation... perhaps the law explicitly states that medecines may only be purchased from traditional pharmacies with an actual, physical, bricks-and-mortar* shop. Thus making any other purchase channel automatically illegal, without needing to predict the future.

*Accepting there would not be a need for "bricks-and-mortar" terminology in 1940, as there was no need to differentiate traditional stores from online stores.

Hey is trying a new take on email – but maker complains of 'outrageous' demands after Apple rejects iOS app

Re: Tops vs Bottoms redux

I respectfully disagree. There are times when replying inline can be far more succinct and easy to follow. Copying the "relevant" bits to the top and replying to them there can lead to things being taken out of context, makes it harder to follow if related items are missed or out of sequence, and bloats the mail thread more than replying inline.

At my work, if we reply inline we'll prefix a reply with our initials, and colour-code it so it stands out. Not perfect, but makes it easier to follow and identify who said what.

Personally, the question of inline responses is almost trivial compared to multiple people top-posting replies at the same time to the same email. That gets out of sync real fast. Ability to merge multiple replies into a single master (oops, apparently can't say that any more - well bite me, it's the appropriate term) response would be a massive help here.

As ever, one size never fits all. Sometimes reply inline is a good thing, sometimes not. Context is king, and being dogmatically attached to one way or the other, then flaming anyone who doesn't follow your point of view, seems a rather pointless waste of time.

Whose side you on, Nominet? Registry floods .co.uk owners with begging emails to renew unwanted .uk domains

Re: Is this Fraud?

Protection racket.

Nice .co.uk domain you got there. Be a shame if someone cyber-squatted the equivalent .uk name, ruined your image/reputation/business...

Microsoft disbands three-ring Windows Insider circus and replaces it with 'channels'

Re: Just Maybe ...

It'll be a shallow acknowledgement at best.

Re: what about a channel for...

Easier for the devops teams I guess, never having anything to push there.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Again. Except Win10 doesn't appear to be sinking. Damn.

Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft

Good for you. Not that it's really relevant to the problem at hand.

Splunk to junk masters and slaves once a committee figures out replacements

Re: NewSpeak people should consult with someone

The NewSpeak people should consult with someone knowledgeable in languages. I think they are "linguistic racists" because they think about English only ignoring any other language (LOL!)

I fear you're trying to apply logic and reasoning to people who seem incapable of such nuances.

After IBM axed its face-recog tech, the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards: Amazon and now Microsoft. Checkmate

Re: Apologies?

Not sure anyone deserves credit for doing the right thing due to political point-scoring, bad optics and potential for consumer backlash. Especially not IBM.

Re: seen that in a film so it must be tru

That was clearly one of those documentaries beamed from the future, disguised as a film.

Re: Ooooo...

Ooooo so you are telling me there is as much crime at Chelsea flower show as Notting hill carnival

Maybe. Maybe not. That's really not the point being made.

The comparison was about detecting/identifying racial bias by applying the tech to what (as you've just eloquently demonstrated) is an inherent, systemic, institutional bias toward certain types of event.

Just because something has a veneer of respectability doesn't mean crimes aren't occuring. Unbiased use of technology would apply it equally to all venues, not selectively based on potentially biased "intelligence".

California bigwigs rule Uber, Lyft dial-a-ride drivers are employees, not contractors

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

Yeah well thought-out laws designed to protect all parties while recognising their different needs is clearly an out-moded concept. If there ever even were such a thing.

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

Perhaps some flexibility in the law is required, to recognise there may be two competing classificaitons needed here and both should be accommodated. I know. How unorthodox.

Those that want to be recognised as employees can choose to be so.

Those that want the flexibility of being external contractors can choose to be so, with all the personal and finanicial risk that entails.

Oh and the employer is legally barred from pressuring their workers to choose "contractor".

Just a thought.

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

Re: Conspiracy time?

You sound incapable of critical thinking, with a tendancy for strawman arguments and to conflate unrelated issues.

How about, instead of selfishness, perhaps they just don't feel inclined to provide all their contacts (and recursively their contacts' contacts) to an privacy-be-damned, ineffective programme which seems to really exist just to:

a) look like the government is doing something

b) harvest data and give it to Palantir

Repair store faces hefty legal bill after losing David and Goliath fight with Apple over replacement iPhone screens

Re: If Apple had their way then any scratch would require the owner to buy a new unit.

As would pretty much any other manufacturer. For all their other questionable attitudes, this particular attitude isn't unique to Apple.

Re: You kill our right to repair, we'll stop buying your over priced tat.

A few might stop buying. Many millions more won't.

Net impact to Apple tends to zero. Consumer activism can't fix this. Only right-to-repair legislation can.

All-electric plane makes first flight – while lugging 2 tons of batteries aloft

Re: Enough for ... a not overly large dog

But does the dog get a 'chute?

-----> The one with the inbuilt flying squirrel glide-flaps and parachute please.

After 30 years of searching, astroboffins finally detect the universe's 'missing matter' – using fast radio bursts

Re: Astroboffins. Really?

Much to learn, you still have.

Re: I can lend you a tape measure if you like.

Only if said measure uses El Reg-approved standard units. We'll have none of that archaic metric or imperial malarky, thank you very much.

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Re: Is that so hard?

Sadly, for Boeing exec's, yes.

Those dozen+ initiatives are way cheaper than getting recertified as safe to fly. Thus they'll focus on what they have (apparently) done, definitely not on what they want to avoid at all costs. As a bonus they think it will sound good.

Combine with regulatory capture and a general loss of critical-thinking ability across the board, and I fear a lot of people will buy into this. Even those who really, really shouldn't.

Re: "more than a dozen initiatives focused on enhancing workplace safety and product quality"

Umm... because they're desparate to restart production before the product implodes completely?

Boeing haven't openly proclaimed there've been "yes" responses to all those questions. Had all answers been "yes" I'd expect a very public, very excited announcement to that effect.

Therefore, my money's on the answers to all being firmly "no".

HPE's Black Thursday: Staff face pay cuts or the ax, office closures to save $1bn+ after coronavirus slams IT titan

Re: dual monitors

Only two...? Pfft. Amatuer. Real WFH men* have at least 3.

[Sets himself up for similar disparaging remarks about only having 3 monitors...]

*Yes, and women, and whatever non-binary gender one may happen to assume at the time. But that wouldn't fit the meme, would it.

Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID

Android may be royalty-free, but licenses for Google services (Google Play, Play Store etc.) certainly are not, they cost manufacturers a lot of money. You can always, er, Google it.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

graphene is part of the solution

...The fabrication is relatively simple and could be easily scaled up to squared kilometres...

ORLY? Guess I missed the breakthroughs that have enabled this easy fabrication of kilometre-square graphene sheets. Guess we all missed them.

DBA locked in police-guarded COVID-19-quarantine hotel for the last week shares his story with The Register

Re: What a shit hole

That seems to be exactly what they're doing. All the while hiding behing the science and the data so they can point fingers if it doesn't go as they hope. I won't say as they plan, because clearly there is no plan.

O2 be a fly on the wall during BT and Vodafone's video calls: Telefónica's UK biz, Virgin Media officially merge

combined 46 million subscribers ...?

34m + 14m + 3.3m doesn't equal 46m in any maths I know of. I get 51.3m. Am I missing something? Or do they expect 10% to say "fuck off" and defect (escape) to other services while the getting's good (i.e. new org, significant contract change, contract and exit fees don't apply)?

UK IT contractors slipping back into old ways of working now IR35 tax reforms delayed

Re: but you don't "deserve" to pay less tax.

Ego has fuck all to do with disagreeing with you. There are a few chancers, sure, same as any other sphere, but mostly not. You do realise dividend tax was increased in 2017, so PAYE and contractors pretty much pay the same amount of tax overall, on the same gross income?

This whole "pay less tax" thing is bollocks these days. And no, I'm not a contractor.

All this does is create conditions whereby people can be fired then rehired (or not) on "inside IR35" terms - no rights, no sick/holiday/pension pay, no employment protection.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Seems like a serious GDPR breach before it's even released. Except it's the government and GDPR gets in the way, so they'll just bypass all that by saying it's "lawful purposes". But they still need to ensure it's secure and protected.

Be interesting to see if that can be challenged.

Spyware slinger NSO to Facebook: Pretty funny you're suing us in California when we have no US presence and use no American IT services...

Re: Class action suit?

Fuck no.