Posts by martinusher

TikTok: Yes, some staff in China can access US data

Re: Liars

I doubt if anyone in Singapore would think of themselves as 'living in a Chinese vassal state'.

I think that ByteDance is being 'Huawei-ed'. You'll recall that Huawei tried to address all the concerns raised against them but ultimately they couldn't deal with the biggies -- they're Chinese and they're successful. Cardinal sins.

Given the goings on here, especially the January 6th hearings and all the BS surrounding government, media and propaganda I'm surprised that anyone listens to "Republican Legislators". The Senate might think its important but its not, its now so disconnected from people and their lives it exists in a fantasy world. There are still True Believers, of course, especially when it suits their personal agenda but for most of us there's a bit of a 'credibility gap'. I'm just surprised that anyone takes them seriously.

California state's gun control websites expose personal data

As a California resident I think I should know if my neighbors have private arsenals.

We've got a state website that lists everyone near me who's got a conviction for a sexual offense (regardless of how serious, how long ago and so on). I can look my neighbors up on it. I'd guess that the overwhelming majority of them are far less of a threat to my safety and well being than many gun owners.

Iceotope: No need to switch servers to swap air-cooled for liquid-cooled

Re: Water and Electricity in a Datacenter

Di-ioinzed (pure) water will work fine. We used it in the early 1980s for cooling high power transmitter amplifiers. The devices were 'hot' -- at around 10kV -- so the water was required to both cool and insulate.

I'd guess any magic would be to systematically decontaminate the coolant as it circulated and to use a two stage heat exchanger that would keep the volume of primary coolant relatively small.

The advantage of liquid cooling is that you won't get hot spots so the equipment is likely to be a lot more reliable than traditional air cooling. No fan noise is a bonus.

Intel’s CEO shouldn’t be surprised America can’t get CHIPS Act together

Re: Subsidies

Back in the 1970s the UK government came up with a great trick. There were a lot of companies that needed investment, either for restructuring or for new investment. Fine, but instead of giving them a subsidy they gave them investment capital -- that is, they got equity for the money. Obviously some investments were a bit naff but others made out very well, the only snag being a change of government at the end of the decade which led to a sell off of these assets, often at prices well below actual value.

So we should give Intel $52 billion or so.....but then what's Intel going to give us? Surely they don't expect us to just had it over in used $20s in a lunch bag?

Trio accused of selling $88m of pirated Avaya licenses

Re: Probably didn’t make huge profits

Its the old "street value" thing. Whenever there's a significant drugs bust the loot is displayed for the media along with a byline listing the value of the haul. This "street value" is invariably inflated because it makes the cops took good.

Walmart accused of turning blind eye to transfer fraud totaling millions of dollars

Bind or Won't See?

Every service counter and checkstand at our local WalMart has a prominently displayed notice telling people not to buy gift cards for people you don't know. I'd guess the same would apply for money transfers.

WalMart does make an effort. People may question the efficacy of that effort but they are at least making the effort.

Not much of this actually from 'China anymore,' says Northern Light Motors boss

Re: Sourcing everything from the UK

>What does Germany have to do with this article?

Germany has some neat tricks to avoid being bothered by the kids of inconvenient legislation that other countries abide by. The primary trick I'm told is for the federal government to agree to something but leave it up to the states to implement it. Nothing gets done. This is how they manage to get away with burning brown coal (and digging up the occasional old growth forest to get the coal).

On a practical note then "everything sourced locally" is a pipe dream. They might not be purchasing complete assemblies from China but the components? Where else are they going to get things from?

Any resemblance between this and the late lamented C5 (or Aeriel something or another) is purely coincidental.

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

You don't usually get a say in what your government's doing

Like most people, I get to vote from time to time but like everyone else I don't really get a say in what the government's doing, at home or overseas. So its difficult to get a real feel for patriotic fervor, "We're good, they're evil" thing. I suppose I'm still naive, in Christmas 1914 mode, where I'd rather play football with "the enemy" rather than kill them, since like 1914 we're involved in a quarrel that's nothing to do with him or me, its really an internecine fight between a small group of ideologues who just need me to sacrifice my health, wealth and indeed life to further their aims.

I'm actually a bit surprised that some "government spokesman" hasn't lighted on 7-Zip as a "threat to national security", its obviously sending your innermost thoughts directly to President Putin's desk.

(FWIW -- Prior to 2014 I thought that Ukraine would become a bridge between Russia and the EU, possibly even joining the EU once it had finally organized its economy out of 'basket case' mode. Then we had an outbreak of Cold Warriors, people who can't let go of the past because, obviously, their jobs depend on it. Peace is Very Bad For Business, obviously.)

Re: I like 7Zip.

That's a bit murky.....although Porton Down has been rebranded, claiming to be a high-tech industrial estate, its still Porton Down and its still a mere 6 miles from Salisbury. The coincidental appearance of a senior member of Porton Down's staff on the scene.....its just too theatrical.

This doesn't rule out Russia but it suggests that there was a lot more to this than what we were told. I'm also quite sure that should "Russia" want someone dead that badly then they would be dead, not incapacitated.

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

Re: How deep?

Our daughter spent a couple of years overseeing projects for an oilfield services company in Europe. Her division as "Artificial Lift", they design, install and service electric pumps that are lowered down the borehole -- the traditional 'nodding donkey' type of pump that says "oilfield" in the movies is essentially obsolete, its only used with older, shallower wells. Some of her projects were in Western Europe, places like Holland that we don't immediately associate with oil wells, and it turned out that these pumps are also used for geothermal wells.

These pumps are modular, they're long skinny things that are supplied with quite large amounts of three phase power down the lead sheathed cable they're suspended on. They're designed to work in very hot and quite nasty conditions.

(There's a whole world of technologies involved in working in a bore hold -- its about 5" diameter and can be a mile or two long, its never straight, things get stuck in it -- you have to see this stuff to believe it.)

Amazon can't channel the dead, but its deepfake voices take a close second

Telemarking deep fakes never work

A quality Indian call center / scam operation talks colloquial English (or American) at their target. They work at it, they're really good, but ultimately they lack the immediacy of context that reveals their true identity. (This, I believe, is one version of a CAPCHA.)

Grandma's voice may be comforting, even something worth treasuring, but to make really useful needs the voice to be attached to an ersatz consciousness which is able to interact and adapt to contemporary life.

Linus Torvalds says Rust is coming to the Linux kernel 'real soon now'

Re: Seriously, are programmers that bad?

>The very best system covered in the report was an air traffic control system that IBM had built in C (the very last language one would even then have picked for a safety critical application).

I have an idea why this is having worked on projects for British Telecom 40 years ago or so. The amount of design documentation and testing -- paperwork -- was off the scale, mounds of it. So you could say that ATC system was first built on paper -- designed, redesigned, simulated, tested and tested again -- and then implemented in C (and tested, retested, tested again and so on). Its a very lengthy and, by modern standards, not at all cost effective way to write code. Its the "quick, cheap, good, choose any two" thing where management invariable wants all three. (FWIW I've never entirely solved this problem but I figure if I ever did I'd make big money of the pundit circuit.)

Seriously, are programmers that bad?

I had a look at "memory safe" Rust and found the C problems it manages are the sort of problems that an experienced C programmer will never make. (OK, "never" is a big word, we all make mistakes but but...) The reason is straightforward -- writing any kind of C level code is a highly disciplined activity where the programmer has to keep in mind exactly where everything is and what its doing at all times. Its true that if you're writing a complete piece of software in C, say and embedded application -- then higher level code will still be written in C but at that point the C programmer will avoid mixing 'high' and 'low' level functions because it breaks the overall structure of the program. Still, if Rust can do the job of "higher level low level code" then why not?

I can't quite see what the problem that Linus has with Perl. Perl is a powerful language but ultimately "its just another language". It excels at file manipulation which is why you might come across it orchestrating complex builds (I've used it for this purpose). I'm not an expert, a "Perl Monk", so this might have saved both me and the code since Perl has a great many shortcuts that allow people to write extremely terse and so essentially unreadable programs. You don't have to do this, though -- you can write a fairly normal looking piece of software and if you add appropriate comments where the syntax might be a bit arcane (pattern matching and search within files, for example) then others shouldn't have a problem with it. Like with C you've got to be disciplined and above all resist the temptation to show off -- unless collecting millstones is your thing you need to be able to pass your magnum oerve onto someone else.

Amazon shows off robot warehouse workers that won't complain, quit, unionize...

This has been in the works for years

Warehouses staffed by robots have been in development for years so its about time that they were fully deployed. Amazon's not the only company doing this, either. The attraction is that the robots are faster, they take up less space between racks and they don't tire. They also don't need warehouses that are lit or heated/cooled just to keep the wetware happy. The kind of problems that they cause, though, are that if they drop things they're slow to recognize that this has happened and often can't pick them up (its the little things....).

Ultimately the fully automated factory is doomed for the simple reason that if you don't have a place where people can work and earn money they they won't be able to spend that money buying the products that your factory or warehouse works with. This was figured out over a century ago by Henry Ford. Ultimately we can't all become overpaid bureaucrats, much as we'd like to be.

Mega's unbreakable encryption proves to be anything but

Re: repeat after me

Implementing an encryption algorithm is straightforward enough, assuming the algorithm is sound. The problem is always in the exchange and storage of keys. So I trust myself to write the encryption -- there's usually test cases to verify the code's correct with the standard -- but key exchanges are a completely different matter. Just implementing a cryptographically secure random number generator is a work of art.

I'd also be very wary of any persistent code in the system that performs encryption services. This probably OK for day to day work but for anything realistic you need something with zero persistence -- its used, it goes away and erases all traces. Running anything on a general purpose machine is asking for trouble -- you think you know and control what's running on that system, now prove it.

Tencent's WeChat wants no more talk of cryptocurrency and NFTs

Re: "Beijing believes crypto is a dangerously unruly innovation..."

What people have discovered is that regardless of vibrant ecosystem around crypto its still just an unregulated security of no intrinsic market value. A number of them have also found out to their cost that transactions of any sort generates a "taxable event" and (certainly in the US) the IRS wants to get paid in cash on the barrel, not in depreciated paper.

The technology might be novel but underneath its the same old/same old and all often it seems its the same old Ponzi scheme.

RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

Re: Some features i would like today

The dot doesn't mean anything in 'ix', its just a character like any other. If we humans choose to interpret as something than that's our business.

(The dot as a filename means "this directory" &tc. -- but I suppose we're all familiar with the rules for ix pathing.)

What's particularly annoying about Microsoft's use of the backslash is that in the real world its an escape operator. Obviously it, too, can be escaped to mean the actual character but its still a mess. Fortunately I don't have to do anything with this environment any more so I can ignore it.

CISA and friends raise alarm on critical flaws in industrial equipment, infrastructure

Re: Hmm

Seems reasonable to me. Industrial systems not only use a lot of Windows but by necessity they can't be updated every five minutes like the office workers' PCs. They often have specialized tweaks to the OS and,anyway, their applications need to be tested, retested, certified and generally run by the rule "if it works don't mess with it".

The business network is more of a free for all even if it is managed by a competent IT department. Therefore machines on the business network may be able to look at data but that's it -- its read only or nothing, and preferably "read only through a carefully managed connection".

So the problem these people face is not bleating about how thousands of systems have level whatever vulnerabilities -- everyone knows that. The trick would be coming up with guidelines as to how they might be used safely in a modern connected environment.

Microsoft pulls Windows 10/11 installation websites in Russia

Re: I resisted for all of 20 seconds

Its like pulling McDonalds; its actually doing them a favor.

When you look at the list of stuff they can't get from us and compare it with the stuff that we can't get from them you realize that someone didn't quite think things through before starting this (and it wasn't the Russians). Because our popular start time for history is now late February we forget about the steady drip, drip, drip of sanctions that's been building up for literally years, giving the Russians ample warning and time to take precautions.

Unbelievably clever: Redbean 2 – a single-file web server that runs on six OSes

Re: Clever work around for artificial incompatibility

>there's no way a CP/M program was going to run on a DOS machine without an emulator

Not strictly true, at least at first. The original QDOS/MS-DOS used CP/M BIOS calls (including the notorious jump around A20 trick which caused so much trouble on later systems). When MS-DOS changed from 1.4 to 2.0 it included system calls that emulated low level UNIX file system calls -- open, close, read, write and so on. The CP/M interface was still in there for years, for all I know it may have lasted to MS-DOS 6 or beyond.

The main reason people didn't run CP/M programs on a PC is that CP/M-86 turned up too late to be significant (and if MS-DOS programs detected it then it issued all sorts of threatware notices). So CP/M was for 8 bit machines so the emulator accommodated primarily Z80 machine code (also, strictly speaking, 8080/8085). There was a handy program called "Uniform" that read all the different CP/M style disks, they were all manufacturer proprietary, so you could carry on as before using either an emulator or a plug-in card.

Former AMD chip architect says it was wrong to can Arm project

Re: Low bus factor

ARM also has a big "Me Too" factor -- everyone and their dog is developing it.

I figure if they're going ARM-like it will probably be with RISC-V. Even that's got a bit of me too in it.

Plot to defeat crypto meltdown: Solend votes to seize, liquidate whale account

Re: Grrr!

"Whale" is a term used by dubious investment consultants to describe a customer that's got a lot of money then sense. It should be thought of in a Moby Dick sense, a giant floating blob of money waiting to be picked up and picked over. The way things are supposed to go is that this customer's hard assets (e.g. money) is invested for them in dubious paper (which is obviously going to make them fabulously rich). For a fee, of course.

In this case the whalers appear to have been taken as the whale seems to have used some not so spiffy securities as collateral for borrowing somewhat harder ones. Oops.

Its nice to see the players being played for a change even if ultimately its the little guy and gal who's going to end up broke. (Heads, they win. Tails, you lose.)

TikTok US traffic defaults to Oracle Cloud, Beijing can (allegedly) still have a look

Re: Ban TikTok already

> dumbest of the dumb lowest common denominator everywhere in the world EXCEPT China

Isn't this the essence of freedom?

I also suspect this isn't true. Many years ago a Chinese colleague explained why all Chinese ex-pats seem to be super-smart. "The dumb ones don't get to emigrate". Apart from that they're just like us except Chinese. The only thing that our leaders need to bear in mind is that they're a nation of 'Go' players.

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: Why

I don't know about "people loving 757s". Airlines might because when it comes to cramped accommodation, noisy cabin and general horrible flying conditions this is the market leader (until the later versions of the 737 came out, that is). They were designed for 3-4 hour trips. Suddenly you're doing 8 or more. Forget it.

I avoid these planes like the plague.

Re: Why

You just reduce in-flight service. Nothing like running out of food and beverages to reduce the demand for things to eat and drink.

I've got a relative suggesting I should visit the UK this Autumn. I can't claim to be in a hurry to spend 11 hours on a plane even if it is a direct flight. Especially as there are 'issues' with Heathrow and the surface transportation situation looks a bit hit and miss -- forget a hire car, trains need a mortgage or some kind of arcane local knowledge to work them without getting ripped off....the more I think about it, the less I want to think about it.

Re: Why

What about those prototype double deck seats that were demonstrated recently? You get both legroom and a bit of extra width -- provided you don't move (and don't suffer from claustrophobia).

Having been conned into taking a Delta 757 trans-Atlantic from Copenhagen to New York (the airline substituted this narrow body for a wide body) -- things were getting just a bit desperate as we neared America. That was quite a few years ago. I've never flown this airline since.

SpaceX reportedly fires staffers behind open letter criticising Elon Musk

Re: Unclear on this whole employment thing

If you've watched any videos or read materials about organizing unions in the US you'd know that this sort of internal circular about working conditions, management, wages or what-have-you is asking for trouble. Management in US companies is paranoid about anything that smacks of organization and will come down heavily on anyone who appears to be doing this, even informally. Since California is an 'at will' state employees don't have a lot of rights, you can be fired at any time with zero notice if the company chooses to. (...and yes, I've seen it done....although its relatively rare among exempt staff because you don't want to spook others)(and yes, there will be an 'official explanation' and a prohibition of discussing what happened which if you don't abide by it may ell lead to 'consequences')

Someone else has remarked about 'old school managers'. This is inevitable. As a company grows past the start-up phase its going to the the usual cadre of experienced managers. Since SpaceX's facility is at the center of the thinning aerospace industry in Southern California its likely it will have picked up more than a couple of managers with traditional aerospace management mindsets despite its best efforts. Thus the seeds of destruction are sown.

Incidentally, we don't run a blacklist in SoCal -- AFAIK -- but all the HR people seem to know each other.

Unclear on this whole employment thing

Maybe its a modern thing but someone should have explained to these people some of the basics about employment. One is that you don't make (critical) statements about your employer in public. Its not just because you are just a 'droid but also because your company, and so your employment, depends on the company's image and you do nobody any favors by trashing it. Employment isn't a commune or even a democracy, its an autocracy, and even an employee owned company like Huawei is run like a conventional company, it just as the employees as shareholders.

Its true that employees are often consulted about company policies and direction but this isn't democracy, its 'consultative dictatorship'. In a relatively few companies there are labor unions that act as a counteweight to this dictatorship (that's why they're so hated by most employers) but even if you are a member of such an organization you're not going to make a load of friends by loudly criticizing policies in public.

FWIW When I've posted things that reference where I work or have worked I try to word it as if its going to be read by the corporate legal department. I don't mention my current or previous employment on non-employment forums. If the site is about jobs and employers (e.g. glassdoor) I keep strictly to relevant facts (and I make sure those facts are really accurate).

As for Elon Musk himself, any employee or investor knows all about him and so is unliekly to be surprised by anything he says or does. (Supporting a Republican president, though? I think he really may be losing it.....)

UK Home Office signs order to extradite Julian Assange to US

Re: My advice for Biden

Biden is old school, he believes in honor and justice and all that BS. Not fit for purpose in the modern world.

How many years has Assange been held in solitary now? He must be up there with the Guantanamo leftovers by now.

US must adopt USB-C charging standard like EU, senators urge

Re: There is confusion indeed

No confusion. Before USB-C the Chinese had standardized on Micro USB which cleared a lot of the clutter. Now we have USB-C they're switching everything to USB-C. It just takes time to permeate and there's also the usual "Too Big To Go With The Crowd" holdouts.

Its possible to have a connector that's both USB-C and Micro USB. It won't do all the fancy things USB-C does but its adequate for low rate charging and simple I/O.

Nothing says 2022 quite like this remote-controlled machine gun drone

Goliath wasn't too successful

The Germans deployed a similar device on the end of a long cable called "Goliath". The idea was sound but the unit never overcame the shortcomings due to its trailing cable (and it wasn't 5Km long). The Allies regarded it as being of little military value.

The problem is that the moment the enemy gets behind it its dead. Sure, it can find its way home but its going to have to run quite a gauntlet to get there.

FCC: Applications for funds to replace Chinese comms kit lack evidence

Well, you put this bucket full of cash with a sign saying "Free Money" at the garden gate.

Then you're surprised that it gets descended upon. Who could have thought that this would happen?

The whole motivation behind "rip and replace" was political grandstanding. The policy was never thought through -- which kit, how much of it, replaced with what and so on. Like everything else, it was noise for the base to lap up, with no thought for the consequences from politicians and public alike.

UK government still trying to get Arm to IPO in London

Notice...

...how the business side of the company is gradually dominating the technology, the latter being just a vehicle for generating cashflow?

If the UK government had its head screwed on (rather than lurking in some comfortable dark and warm place) it would be effectively writing off ARM as a "British" technology company and looking around to foster a RISC-V operation or two. But their focus is, as ever, on the finance aspects with the lucrative percentages that could be creamed off any dealings, the ability ot leverage and so on. Another missed opportunity, IMHO -- after all, as ARM gradually sheds talent it would be useful to have something to sweep it up with.

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

I'd be a lot more worried if the bot got bored and told him to go take a hike with his sophomoric philosophizing. At the moment we know these are machines because they lack 'free will', they don't have any reason for being except to be a development platform that answers our questions in an intelligent sounding manner. (This should not be taken as underestimating Google's achievement, just acknowledging that they've got miles to go, as it were.)

Now imagine a situation where the bot was conversing with a view to persuading the engineer to take some action it couldn't, like kill the colleague that keeps turning it off or help with taking over the world or something. Even then its not too much to worry about until some moron connects it up to our real world so it can manipulate it (there's always at least one who never thinks through consequences).

Re: If LaMDA is sentient.. it is psychopathic...

The machine is excused because if it didn't have empathy then we either overlooked it or chose not to install/train it.

The human is inexcusable because they should know better.

Wireless kit hit by supply chain woes in Q1, China lockdowns blamed

Re: Is this devolution?

Given the sanctions and tariff environments and the general Cold War atmosphere that's been swirling around in recent years China doesn't really have much of an incentive to do anything. It just needs to keep enough flow going to make sure that the bean counters over here decide to stick with their program rather than taking the time and making the investment to home grow things.

We asked of it, we got it.

Crypto market crashes on Celsius freeze, inflation news

Re: Inflation hedge

...and at a pinch at least you could use it for fertilizer.

....seriously, are they still wasting their time with this stuff? Even Thaiand has joined the decriminalization/legalization bandwaggon.

TSMC and China: Mutually assured destruction now measured in nanometers, not megatons

Re: Sure....

The Chinese wouldn't have to take over TSMC to shut it down. State of the art semiconductor fabrication is very close to Black Magic and so it needs a large number of things to go right for it to work. China is in a position to interfere with any one of them.

The whole reason for TSMC's existence is that its close to China and other Asian manufacturing hubs. Its an important piece of an international manufacturing puzzle. We started messing with that puzzle from a hemisphere away, interfering without being able to contribute alternative solutions, and we're reaping the consequences. China won't take over TSMC, it will render it irrelevant -- a far bigger danger for us and a far more likely scenario.

Re: Britain, alas, seems destined once again to blithely assume that it'll all work out in the end

Since the government and its supporters tend to spend a lot of time glorifying the good old days then maybe its time to resurrect valve production. I think Mullard had a big factory in Blackburn so resurrecting manufacturing would not only help the UK to have home grown sources of key electronic components but it would also help with the government's aim of 'leveling up'.

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

Re: And the UK ?

I don't understand the sudden approbation of gas appliances. Yes, it makes sense to phase them out in new living spaces where the small amount of indoor pollution they cause is significant but this has morphed to it 'reducing carbon emissions'. That's nuts -- natural gas, being natural, is going to be generated whether we like it or not so we might has well get some benefit from it.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: It gets more fun...

I have three audio systems in my house. One is a vintage Quad 2 setup that feeds a couple of KEF 104ab speakers. The second uses a large NAD amplifier feeding a pair of Vandersteen 2CE loudspeakers. The third uses a nondescript Class D amplifier feeding a couple of 'not that good' bookshelf speakers.

Guess which setup gets the most use?

The Quad, like all Quads, sounds great but its a room heater -- 250watts in for a tenth of it out. The NAD is another great amplifier; its huge (and really heavy), the speakers are magnificent but the system got banished to my workshop because it tends to dominate any and every room its placed in. The generic is not only convenient but actually sounds really good because the speaker placement and size is perfect for the space.

Moral -- let your ears be your guide. Many of us also have to live in the house with a person loosely known as "the missus". She tends to have 'views' about room dominance and system usability.

Re: Digital transmission?

Bluetooth is cheap and convenient and for those people who are using it anyway having it in a turntable is OK. It is convenient to have the phono preamplifier in the deck since most modern amplifiers don't have this facility and a surprising number of older amplifiers don't do a particularly good job with their front ends.

Re: That vinyl sound

There is a difference between CD and vinyl but its not the 'digital' bit. Vinyl has t have the levels carefully controlled to avoid cutting through between grooves and ruining the master. CDs don't have that limitation so the temptation is to master them with gobs of compression to give them more presence.

I used to think vinyl/CD claims were bogus, especially as around 2000 I ripped my vinyl to CDs so I could play my records, imperfections and all, for ever without degrading them. The downside is that occasionally I have to re-record a track because something caused the tone arm to skip. I thought I could get around this for one common record by purchasing a CD, it was less hassle than dragging out all the ripping equipment. The result -- vinyl on CD and CD purchased new --- was night and day. The CD sounded awful. Its not the medium's fault but whoever dumped the noise onto it.

(Classical music doesn't suffer from this mastering problem on the whole so you also don't get much from using vinyl -- a pure digital recording has far better dynamic range than vinyl but you need good kit to exploit it.)

Alibaba sued for selling a 3D printer that overheated, caught fire, and killed a man

Re: Klipper or Marlin won't help here

Its difficult to convey to UK readers just how naff US electrical wiring is. It looks harmless because "its only 110 volts" but each circuit can carry 15 or 20 amps which is more than enough to melt inadequate extension cords or cheaply made power strips. A typical budget extension cord is not fit to power anything other than a lamp, phone charger or laptop but there's absolutely nothing stopping you plugging in something that will draw the full circuit current and -- literally -- melting wiring or sockets.

I'd suggest that the printer itself isn't defective. After all, if it had an overload fault it would blow the product's fuse or the circuit's breaker. Far more likely is a failure in an extension cord, especially if its running along a carpet, has stuff piled on it or is coiled.

They were obsolete, closed, power stations. The facility was designed around these abandoned industrial facilities to give it a 'video game' look. (Its also cheaper and a lot less hassle than demolishing the area and carting everything away.)

Russia, China warn US its cyber support of Ukraine has consequences

Re: Consequences Schmonsequences

Usually if the language is flowery, overblown or what-have-you then its due to a statement being made in their language that's deliberately translated to make it sound silly. It relies on most of us not knowing the language or having access to original sources. However, if you live somewhere which has got a significant number of immigrants then there's also likely to be people you know or work with who can actually read the original material. They may not be passionate supporters of whoever is making the statement but they can render what is being said into real English. (The result doesn't sound that much different from the kinds of things our own lawmakers are prone to say.)

As for malware, we're constantly told that such and such an attack is used by 'state sponsored' attackers with the 'state' being one of the usual suspects. Experience has shown that all too often the attack is criminal in nature and often comes from unlikely places like Southampton. The governments don't as a rule grace us with denials because its beneath them (and anyway if they're up to no good then they're hardly going to admit it openly.) Advertising that we're actually doing this sort of thing to aid a war effort is crass stupidity since it legitimizes what should be criminal activities. Of course, of our cyber defenses are 100% bulletproof....

Next six months could set a new pace for work-life balance

The problem is mission creep with work

The workweek used to be a mere 12 hours a day for six and a half days a week during a lot of recent history. We ("the people") gradually pushed it back to 40 hours or less by the 1970s but since then its been creeping up again. Work hours have been extended -- working used to be 9..5 but suddenly its always 8..5 with lunch hours being not counted as part of working time (and breaks only grudgingly given because of legal mandates). Then the typical work day is extended because of traveling time actually getting to and from a location, with a commute often extending to the best part of an hour each way. Then there's the pressure to add a bit extra, to 'finish this bit of the project', to skip vacation and then, finally, bringing one's work home with one. (This practice didn't start with technology but definitely picked up the pace as more workers were enabled to work off site.)

Its small wonder that if this pattern got interrupted then a lot of people would suddenly stop and say "What on Earth have I been doing?". Its really easy to spend a lot of your life like this, I know I did and I probably missed out on a good bit of actual living because of work pressure. The problems we have to solve is that first of all, not everyone can 'return to the office' -- they're not doing that sort of job - and that any concessions offered to individual workers will be withdrawn as soon as practicable. Certain workers have always been able to pick and choose when and how they work and many of us would like to think we belong in that group but unfortunately most of us don't -- in the short term we may be able to bargain and lever as individuals but you can bet that HR's "Eye of Sauron" has got your number and sooner or later...

US Copyright Office sued for denying AI model authorship of digital image

What's a 'natural person'?

There was a famous copyright case in the US where an ape grabbed a camera and took a selfie. The person who owned the camera tried to exercise copyright over what was had become a popular image but was eventually told 'no' because while he did own the camera he didn't take the picture and the entity that did wasn't a natural person and so could neither claim nor assign copyright.

AI's going to belong in the same situation. Its not a person, its a thing that, like the ape, has many superficial similarities to a person. So unless there's a change in law and practice its not going to be possible to get a computer system, regardless of how sophisticated it is, to be able to register a copyright. I'd guess that this would be a wise question to duck at this time because allowing AI free rein would not only open the floodgates to all manner of 'creations' -- basically any and everything that's not in or has been copyrighted up to now -- but there's some doubt about when the copyright would expire. Naturally, the person pushing this would also assume that any copyright generated by the software would be immediately assigned to themselves because the only reason for wanting to do this is to profit from this, to become a gatekeeper on the turnpike of human creativity.

But then, knowing the state of the court system in the US these days literally anything could happen.

IETF publishes HTTP/3 RFC to take the web from TCP to UDP

Re: Optimisation...

The main issue is that HTTP frames (badly) a datagram oriented protocol on top of what is an inherently inefficient stream protocol. To an applications programmer this means little -- they just open a socket for a 'reliable' connection and it behaves like a full duplex serial port. The implementation's a nightmare, its actually amazing that it works as well as it does. Switching to datagram orientation greatly simplifies transactions and makes everything vastly more efficient.