Posts by aks

Kaspersky challenges US government to put up or shut up about Kremlin ties

Who's backdoor?

I've always assumed that the issue is that Kaspersky *doesn't * have a backdoor.

Biden bans Kaspersky: No more sales, updates in US

Re: Reds under the bed etc.

So, you're suggesting removing your Kapersky products today then go shopping for replacements?

I have always assumed that the USAs issue with their software was the it *didn't* include a back-door.

Really? A sarcasm detector? Wow. You shouldn't have

Re: "sarcasm detection is finally getting the attention it deserves."

As a Londoner living in Dublin, when I brought my American girlfriend to London, she heard an accent which wasn't Irish or English and asked me if it was American. It was Australian.

She had been brought up in the USA thinking of herself as pure Irish. After six months adjusting to Dublin, she was surprised to think of herself for the first time as American. All four grandparents from Ireland and she with pure red hair.

Forget everything you learned playing Lunar Lander: Chinese boffins reveal secrets of Chang'e 5 probe's touchdown

Re: There is...

Technically, I agree but fortunately has the same basic meaning but subtly less emotion. Don't forget that this is a journalist writing the article, although a technology competent one. Which word would you suggest as an alternative? I'm stumped.

US reckons it's about time the Moon had its own time zone

Re: using adjusted UTC would be the best and makes the most sense

The second is defined as part of SI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second

The same atomic clocks used on earth would run differently if they were moved to the moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time

That's the reason they're suggesting placing atomic clocks on the moon.

I do like the Customer Service reference. We've all been there.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

Re: Ah! Memories!

here's one

https://www.voicesofyouth.org/blog/mental-illness-not-joke

ESA salutes Galileo satellite system meeting aviation standards

Re: "We improved [..] Galileo purely by retuning the software in the ground segment."

The article itself explains that it was the reporting requirements that were tweaked to comply, not operational ones.

Japan's lander wakes up, takes blurry snap of Moon

Re: Just five more minutes, ma!

SI *is* metric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

The problem was between American feet and inches and metric.

Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree

Re: MoneyCrocodile Tears royalty-free images

https://www.shutterstock.com/search/crocodile-tears

Re: Small to invisible

Rufus has an option when converting from the ISO to a USB stick which allows you to prevent the checks for unsupported hardware.

https://pureinfotech.com/rufus-create-bootable-windows-11-usb/#create_windows11_usb_unsupported_hardware

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

No software is perfect. No system is perfect.

The biggest problems here were and are a lack of adequate aggressive testing and apparently no way to challenge the findings, even in court due to the special semi-state status of the PO.

Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

a fairly study case

I assume this should read "a fairly sturdy case"

Programmable or 'purpose-bound' money is coming, probably as a feature in central bank digital currencies

Re: 16 Tons and what do you get?

The hackers are already getting prepared.

PLACEHOLDER ONLY Someone please write witty headline here

Unintentional Internationalization

Back in the 1990's I was retrofitting Internationalisation to software that was already being sold in various parts of the world but needed to support the more exotic locations such as Japan.

A simple way for me to test my code was to have loadable language tables and the Welcome screen for the USA said "Howdy, partner".

Somebody (not me, honest) decided to add my new code tables into the next delivery.

Unsurprisingly, there were some faxes flying once the latest version got installed.

Happily, this was a quick fix and the final produce worked correctly for 29 languages, including Welsh.

To pay or not to pay for AI's creative 'borrowing' – that is the question

QI-QO

Why not train the model using solely out-of-copyright materials?

One clear bonus would be to raise the quality of the output

The years were worth the wait. JWST gives us an amazing view of Neptune's rings

"click here for a closeup"

This ends up with a 404

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Re: So answer this.

The article mentions the "owner" of the road. I assume this means that this is a private road across private land.

Apple's iPhone 12 woes spread as Belgium, Germany, Netherlands weigh in

Re: Follow the money

I see that as a good thing. Professional companies doing the testing rather than bureaucrats.

G20 sets 2027 as the year in which it hopes members can tax crypto transactions

Making the Ponzi scheme of cryptocurrency legal is the opposite of sanity.

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

Re: So LibreOffice it is then.

I've used them all at various times for various purposes, sometimes untangling a Word document by saving to rtf then saving back as doc or docx.

It's not free but I use EmEditor in preference to Notepad++, especially for mass changes to various files, including folders full of xml or html.

Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

Refugee is a looser term. Asylee is in Collins dictionary as British English meaning "a person who has been granted asylum".

Such a person does not have allegiance to the host country although one would hope they have respect for their host.

Surely, asylees means those who have been granted asylum not those who are simply seeking it.

Cruise self-driving taxi gets wheels stuck in wet cement

Re: Having some empathy for the machines...

It would be easier to mislead a machine than a person into this kind of error. I foresee deliberate sabotage being part of our future, sadly.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

As I remember it from the time, the USA wanted to get to the moon before the USSR so they didn't build unreachable missile sites with which to threaten Earth.

The rest of the "large rocket" program was to develop ICBM technology, just like the current DPRK rocket program.

Let's take a look at those US Supreme Court decisions and how they will affect tech

Racecraft

This Wikipedia article says it better than I could.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racecraft

Supreme Court says Genius' song lyric copying claim against Google wasn't smart

I wonder why the owners of the original copyright weren't part of the suit, alongside Genius.

My first assumption is that they don't have deep enough pockets to go up against Google.

As it is, Genius have copyright over REDHANDED, being their modifications to the original lyrics.

MIT discovery suggests a new class of superconductors

Re: "Room temperature"

Liquid oxygen is more desirable than liquid nitrogen. Therefore, nitrogen is the by-product.

Desirability trumps availability.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Re: As luck would have it....

I tried to get the International version of Amazon's Fire TV stick. They advertised it but wouldn't sell it to me. The only one they would sell was the UK version, at the same price. I live in the Channel Islands, which aren't even inside the UK. I assume there's all sorts of licencing issues that control this but maybe there are various restrictions hard-wired in.

America ain't exactly outlawing gas cars but it's steering hard into EVs

The other point made clearly in the article but not in the comments is the protectionist nature of Biden's proposals.

Starlink opens final frontier for radio astronomers

Re: Sorry but no.

I fully agree with the concept but quibble about the name "dark side". The "far side of the moon" is as fully lit/unlit as any other longitude of the moon.

Calling it the far side is anthropocentric, but then "I'm only human".

Building bits of brain in the lab will change our minds

Birdbrains

I remember reading somewhere that birds have more efficient brains than mammals.

Once the scientists start using the compute power of these organoids, they may find it better to use cells from birds rather than humans.

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-bird-brains-are-more-brilliant-anyone-suspected

Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved

Re: Stop operating?

Not only Signal but Telegram, that is being used heavily by journalists and others in Ukraine, etc.

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

Re: But why is this necessary?

Multi-currency account already exist. Mine is with Wise (formerly Transferwise). Go to their website or look them up on Wikipedia.

Re: But why is this necessary?

UK notes are now plastic, not paper.

Anti-money laundering bill targeting cryptocurrency introduced in US Senate

The danger of legitimising cryptocurrencies

Regulating and attempting to control the use of cryptocurrencies leads to them being treated as semi-legitimate.

They are a simple Ponzi scheme and should be treated as such as they're nothing but vapourware. The fact that they're also being used for criminal activity, including money-laundering and the withholding of information about profit/income to the tax collector is a different issue.

There's no fool-proof way to control the flow of real (fiat) money in and out of them other than to have *complete* control over the interface between the two. Unlikely to happen.

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

Re: My favorite new article

"NFT's, which are clearly a rip-off scheme"

Agreed, but unless you're talking about banning them, regulating them would simply legitimise this new Ponzi scheme.

As with Bitcoin, some people jumped in early and made money. Those people cashed in and moved on to the next scam.

BBC is still struggling with the digital switch, says watchdog

TV Licence future

Television transmitted through the air or via satellite are starting to fade away in favour of streaming. This trend can only accelerate. I know few people who watch any live TV in preference to selecting the content on demand. This includes watching news channels.

Changes are underway in the UK regarding TV watching. Fewer and fewer people are watching live TV and few young people take out BBC licences.

BBC's iPlayer still requires a licence but none of the other streaming providers do unless you want it free of advertisements. The BBC have pulled out of BritBox but will still supply (sell) content to them. BritBox will now become absorbed into the new itvX which replaces itvHub. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BritBox#BritBox_UK_and_ITVX

This article from the Daily Express is interesting in showing which countries have never had a licence fee or have abolished it. A number add it to the electricity bill, which is one way to hide the tax. The article doesn't say what the money raised by the tax is used for. https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1706991/tv-licence-fee-payment-streaming-BBC-UK-2022

The UK Government has floated the idea of funding the BBC out of general taxation as a way of hiding the subsidy. The idea of converting the BBC, BBC2 and BBC4 into one streaming service, presumably as a revamped iPlayer is floated in the Express article.

There is no specific tax for listening to radio, but I assume that the BBC national and local services are paid for from the TV Licence Fee income.

Personally, when living in the UK I have not paid a Licence Fee for about 25 years. For most of my time in the UK I did not have a TV capable of watching any programming. It was occasionally used with VHS or DVD players. This was triggered by failing to find anything worth watching and my strong antipathy to the BBC resulting in my not wanting to fund them. I do not watch live TV, nor have I ever used iPlayer.

The changes underway with itvX will accelerate and my prediction is that within the next couple of years the number of people watching TV over terrestrial or satellite will drop sharply, triggering a panic within the BBC.

London cops break into gallery to rescue lifelike art installation

I assume that this was a planned stunt and the "concerned citizen" was one of the staff.

Any insurance claim should be denied, maybe prosecuted for fraud.

FTC wants to pause Microsoft's Activision Blizzard mega-takeover

Re: A ten year agreement

Alternatively, Activision's experience and credibility on these other platforms might allow Microsoft to sell it's home-developed products more widely while using any FTC agreement to counter accusations of fishing in other people's waters.

FTX's crypto villain Sam Bankman-Fried admits 'I made a lot of mistakes'

Re: As far as I understand, he had a backdoor

All cryptocoin are part of a Ponzi scheme. Other than criminal organisations that saw it as a way to launder money, it was always obviously so.

Finally, governments are waking up.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2022/1130/1339266-bitcoin-heading-on-road-to-irrelevance-ecb/

Time Lords decree an end to leap seconds before risky attempt to reverse time

Re: Didn't someone previously propose

The second is scientifically defined and doesn't vary. It's days that are being fiddled with.

Boffins are studying Martian clouds to avoid another Opportunity episode

Re: Martian weather forecasting

Designing an array with tilted faces plus gaps between might allow occasional clearance using vibration.

Reducing partisan divide alone does not boost support for democracy, study finds

In many parts of Europe, voting day is Sunday.

Boffins shatter data transmission speed record

Re: All the cat videos in 1 second?

Cat porn?

Musk reportedly wants to gut Twitter workforce by up to 75%

"The newspaper claims that cuts are on the horizon whether or not Musk's takeover goes ahead. Citing corporate documents and "people familiar" with the matter, management wants to reduce payroll by $800 million, or nearly a quarter of the workforce."

It's hard to get clarity here but seems to be the current Twitter management who're proposing this. Another poison pill?

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

Re: Judge on results, not appearances

images don't need to be 24 fps etc, slow scan every 2 seconds will use very little bandwidth. otherwise, reduce the resolution as youtube does.

US Air Force announces plan to assassinate molluscs with hypersonic missile

Re: What about "President" Biden?

I use postal voting as it's the only way available to me but it's so open to fraud that I'd ban it even though I'd lose my vote.

One man's battle to get patent rights for AI inventors in America may be over

Re: when the AI can, without prompting...

I'm assuming that since there's no prospect of DABUS doing any of those things that any money will be pocketed by Stephen Thaler or his company Imagination Engines.

Since there's no way for him to pay the AI money, does this mean the AI will be treated as a slave (self-aware intelligence being treated as property)?

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

Re: NASA and other acronyms are all upper case, you illiterate artiste morons.

I dislike both small-caps and smart-quotes, but that's merely a personal preference. All-caps produces a much stronger negative reaction.