Posts by Danny Boyd

Prince Harry, the Count of Montecito, turns Silicon Valley startup exec with first job based in 21st Century

Re: They can't really complain about the racist backlash

The poor thing was rebooted in Safe Mode w/o networking.

Re: Name?

You mean the current Russian one or the past one?

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

"Yes, thank you", more precisely.

Russia botches Twitter throttling, cripples anything with t-dot-co in the name – including Reddit, Microsoft

There goes the myth of almighty evil Russian hackers

The dimwits can't even throttle Twitter correctly, sheesh!

Re: Why am I not surprised?

Somebody finally thought of the children...

Huge if true: If you show people articles saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome, they'll believe it

Plus-minus delta zilch

A browser I can trust that is +-0.1% faster/slower in rendering than a known spyware? Hm-m, tough choice...

How, pray tell, did Mozilla trespass your privacy?

Search - yes, I agree: StartPage (anonymized Google search) or DuckDuckGo. But browser?

Your comment is several years late. There is no IE anymore.

€121,000 YOGA Book Android is 'priced right' says Lenovo

Is it another 6.2 cm tall gentleman?

Most probably, mistake in the announced price. I think, 2 orders of magnitude or more.

You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?

Me too ...

... got a request for faeces sample with a sampling kit and the brochure. Deciding to be a good citizen, gathered the sample. Then read the brochure and discovered I gathered the sample all wrong. Said "Oh, well..." and threw everything (incorrectly gathered sample, rest of the kit, and the brochure) in the trash. Now I'll tell this story to my grandchildren: "This is how your grandpa couldn't get his shit together..."

P.S. Mr. Dabbs, I want to thank you for all your rants I enjoy!

The chips are down. We need your support, semiconductor industry tells US President Biden

Simply ridiculous

First they outsource production to Asia because it's cheaper, now they want money infusion to "bring production back to American soil". Why it is not on American soil in the first place? I swear, I start to like Trump's approach: "Bring the production home or pay the import dues!"

British govt emits fuzzy vision for UK version of American boffin special forces group Darpa

Re: Exempting it from FOIA ...

You really think Labour would do it differently? We're talking advanced research for defense. You expect them to publish their musings in The Register weekly? Would be interesting, I'm sure.

Re: .....stable door, horse......oh dear.......long gone.................................

With the above said, why don't we consider whatever goes on in China "local research and local manufacturing"?

Re: A bit late?

"Useful to the military and the government" - yes. To the citizens - no, not DARPA's concern. However, all military- and government-oriented developments quickly get picked up by private operators, who bring them to citizenry.

Healthy 32-year-old offered COVID-19 vaccine because doctors had him down as 6.2cm tall with BMI of 28,000

Re: The reason I lost so much weight in short order?

Quorn Chilli is a good laxative?

Re: Short and very wide eh?

I'm afraid on Jupiter the poor chap will be compressed even further.

Re: people replaced by algorithms ... or just poor coding...

Typical error: not checking user's input against known rules and boundaries. The classic case of GIGO.

Re: The Osman

0.0633 Osman shorter, to be exact.

Re: Size matters

Not the size per se as much as units of measurement. Surely you'll agree 62 millimeters are bigger than puny 6.2 centimeters.

What's that, Lassie? Dogs show signs of self-awareness according to peer-reviewed academic study?

Watch enough cat videos...

... and you will come to inevitable conclusion that the cats are not only self-aware, but they champion a superior (to us humans) intelligence. Which, given their rather tiny brains, is mystifying. My wife thinks cats are "thin clients" connected directly to The Universe.

Same with dogs.

House Republicans introduce legislation for outright ban on municipal broadband in the US

Extremely stupid move

I wonder what prompted Republicans to come up with this idea? Lobbying from private providers? C'mon, those are small fish. Attempt to troll the Dems? Not at the cost of your reputation. Perplexing.

Dangerous flying car drone zoomed into UK's Gatwick Airport airspace after killswitch failed

Aha!

So that's what was flying around Gatwick back in 2018 and was never found! It traveled in time.

Atheists warn followers of unholy data leak, hint dark deeds may have tried to make it go away

Re: Just like the Peoples Fronts and Judea

As a mathematician, you probably will agree that "there is no proof X exists" doesn't immediately lead to "so it's proven that X doesn't exist".

Re: Americans and Religion

Maybe they wanted to believe there is no god(s) differently? A schism, you know. As in "those hypocrites falsely believe there is no god, but we, true atheists, will show you the way to understand why our faith in no god is the only true faith!"

Re: Same could be said about religious people

Atheism is not absence of faith.

Agnosticism is.

Atheism is faith in non-existence of god(s). Atheists are very religious people who fervently believe there is no god. Believe, because non-existence of god cannot be proven just like god's existence cannot.

In this regard atheists don't differ from other religious people ("true believers"). And, I must add, all have equal right to exist and advertise their beliefs.

Amazon sues NY Attorney General in preemptive strike: Web giant faces claim it did not fully protect workers in COVID-19 pandemic

Re: They make a convenient bogeyman though…

>If he works hard at school, gets a good degree, and proves himself then,..., they’ll coddle him and pay him well. On the other hand, if he idles his life away, Amazon will offer him 50 years of slavery...

What can I say?

A) This sounds fair - you work hard, you get money; you don't - you don't.

B) Unhappy at Amazon? Go somewhere else, you're not a slave, you're an employee, you can quit anytime.

Re: Slavery barns, American style

Why is it slavery? Does Amazon own its employees? No more than Walmart or McDonald's or Google. Not happy with your job? Find a better one.

Supermicro spy chips, the sequel: It really, really happened, and with bad BIOS and more, insists Bloomberg

Stubbornly stepping on the same rack

Jeez, Bloomberg thinks it's not enough it beshat itself in 2018, it goes for encore. Do they want to became a common word like "xerox" or "kleenex" as in "this is a crock of bloomberg"?

No evidence then, no evidence now, just blah-blah. I lost my respect for Bloomberg in 2018 after this load of crap was first aired, and now I see I made no mistake then.

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

If only...

... executive orders could produce chips (instead of just increasing the world entropy), the life would be much simpler.

Phishing awareness gone wrong: Facebook tries to seize websites set up for staff security training

Re: Is proofpoint being malicious

It's not about Proofpoint being malicious. It's about "Facebook" and "Instagram" being registered trademarks. Facebook MUST "police and enforce" the ownership in order not to lose the registration.

SoftBank likens itself to a goose laying 'golden eggs' as Vision Fund boasts best results since 2017

"What would that make WeWork then?"

Well any goose, even the one laying golden eggs, has to excrete from time to time. Or so my biology teacher said.

As Huawei's semiconductor purchases slip, its founder tries a new tactic: Flattery

Re: Don't dring the Kool-Aid

>like everything else in Trumpworld its based entirely on fantasy or individual self-interest

If I'm not mistaken, attack on Huawei was (and still is) bipartisan.

EncroChat hack case: RAM, bam... what? Data in transit is data at rest, rules UK Court of Appeal

Re: Whilst the Judges seem to have overthought this but so has El Reg

>you also wouldn't want to live in a police state where your every move is monitored

Aren't we already?

War on Section 230 begins in earnest as Dem senators look to limit legal immunity for social networks, websites etc

Re: What, exactly, is 'free speech'

Sorry, but "such as this" doesn't work. This site knows my real name and e-mail address. Yours too, otherwise you wouldn't be able to post here. And I don't see why FB or Twitter can't do the same.

No, you're not imagining the tech drought: Lenovo PC stocks one third of normal amid pandemic demand

Lenovo seems to be really firing on all cylinders

I tried to order a real battle-grade ThinkPad (i9 / 64 GB RAM / 2 TB SSD), guess what? Three months wait.

Microsoft backs Australia’s pay-for-news plan, risks massive blowback over a lousy $3bn and change

I tried same searches on Google and Bing - results are practically identical. But Bing doesn't sell your queries to advertisers.

StartPage is not a separate search engine, it's anonymised Google search.

Laptops given to British schools came preloaded with remote-access worm

Re: 'we believe this is not widespread'

Tory, shmory... They explained clearly: the supply was short, so they grabbed what was available, because media and opposition put a pressure on them to move fast.

India’s top techies form digital foundation to fight Apple and Google

I wish them all the luck

Seriously. I love India and believe in its hi-tech future. But...

Fighting Apple will be hard: you cannot legally clone iOS and AppStore. You may have more luck trying to reduce Apple's footprint on Indian market.

Cloning Android and GooglePlay is possible (just ask Huawei), so I'd look in that direction.

All this, however, hints at a rather unexpiring future: there are N countries in the world with each having its own Android clone and its own Play store, because all N countries got fed up with Google dictate, and all N countries busy at getting rid of Apple as much as possible, because they are fed up with Apple dictate. Sad picture, but what can one do? Apple will be Apple, and Google will be Google.

Pirate Bay co-founder criticises Parler for its lack of resilience

Easy solution

" When someone the size of Amazon dumps you, everyone else will deny you due to reputational damage.”

Talk to Pirate Bay, Mr. Matze, maybe they'll host Parler? It could be even cheaper than AWS. Even if it isn't, there are two big advantages: 1) PB seems to be unkillable; 2) they take it easy about "reputational damage".

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

Dorsey is right!

"The CEO went on to argue that when Twitter bans a user, they can just go elsewhere."

How true! Telegram subscription went up significantly since Twitter's ban. Keep up a good job, Jack!

Want to let an AI-powered doctor loose on patients? Try slapping a food-label-like sticker on it, says Uncle Sam

Re: "help patients understand the technology"

The label should say: "AI-powered. If you have no advanced degree in CS to understand what it implies, run for your life."

The CIA's 'entire' collection of UFO records has been made available for you to sigh at

One of my two favorite bumper stickers: "Beam me up, Scottie, there ain't no intelligent life on this planet."

(The other being "Make love, not war. See the driver for details.")

Re: A matter of interpretation

I recall reading about "a column crowned with a life-size sculpture of an angel" and being a bit baffled.

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Re: Small difference

>"Big tech companies just opened a Pandora box, they cannot pretend to be neutral now, they will be forced to censor, ban and cooperate after what they did."

Exactly. And there goes Section 230, torpedoed by the very AHs it was meant to protect. Amen.

Trump tries one more time to limit H-1B work visas with new minimum salary requirements

Re: Good idea

Interestingly, it's not TATA or HPE or IBM that lobby against H1B limitations most fervently. It's Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft et al. Minimal wages limitation will rob these companies of that part of the profit that comes from importing cheap Indian pseudo-graduates to replace experienced American workers. Yes, American, whatever their extraction is, because by now (being experienced) they are Americans.

Privacy pilfering project punished by FTC purge penalty: AI upstart told to delete data and algorithms

Re: Inconsistent decision is concerning

It's not because Google or Facebook is bigger. It's because they are richer and can pay FTC a proper kickback.

Salesforce relieves Republican National Committee of its tools citing 'risk of politically incited violence' across the US

Re: Everyone of these moves

Recall the recent election results. There is half a US population of the rats you talk about. I doubt they are going to abandon their ship easily.

Buggy code, fragile legacy systems, ill-conceived projects cost US businesses $2 trillion in 2020

Quite a time ago...

...one young chap asked my advice: "See, I wanna be a professional programmer. What language should I learn?"

I said, "Why don't you become a writer instead? You already know the language!"

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

Section 230 should stay

With cardinal amendment: "this section applies to information exchange platforms, which conduct no reviewing, policing, or censure of the users' data".

Thus, Telegram, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. are still subjects to Section 230, and Facebook and Twitter are not.

No need to drop Section 230 just because two or three "platforms" are not "platforms" in fact. Simply exclude them.

Think: if a "platform" is policing the user data, how can it be held irresponsible of this data?

Be careful where you log into GitHub: Dev visits Iran, opens laptop, gets startup's entire account shut down

Yeah. Next you'll mention Tor, you villain!