Posts by Twanky

Satellites with lasers and machine guns coming! China's new plans? Trump's Space Force? Nope, the French

Re: Anti-Satellite isn't that hard

So is the Kessler Effect not a thing to worry about? Or not a thing to worry about yet? Genuine question.

Re: I wonder how they will overcome Newtons 3rd Law

More bazooka than machine gun, I guess.

Re: It's time

I blame the people.

Re: Anti-Satellite isn't that hard

This is what worries me most about various 'rogue' states' space/missile programs. If they want to level the playing field and deny their enemies the advantage of space-based surveillance and communications, they don't have to achieve the capability of stable orbits themselves. They just need to throw some debris across the paths of a few satellites and start the cascade.

(icon: How can you hear that they are black helicopters?)

IT outages in the financial sector: Legacy banks playing tech catch-up risk more outages, UK MPs told

Professor emeritus of stating the bleedin' obvious:

"David Bailey, executive director of Financial Market Infrastructure at the Bank of England, said the body has suggested banks provide a full list of their critical services and which specific IT systems are required to support them."

No shit Sherlock?

Facebook: The future is private! So private, we designed some handy new fingercams for y'all!

I'm not sure that Zuck would want to know where I stick my fingers...

No matter what you had in mind when you wrote that, he *does* want to know. *Some* company will want to advertise at you and will want to pick the most appropriate time.

Former UK PM Tony Blair urges governments to sort out online ID

IDs

Government agencies have given me various IDs: My NI number, my NHS number, my HMRC UTR, my polling cards have a reference number when elections (or referendums) crop up, my DLVC driver number and my passport number.

Government and civil service at all levels knows a thing or three about me and has reference numbers for most of it - when it works.

I see no real objection to combining these numbers into an 'ID'. It could be useful when dealing with banks or other regulated companies rather than providing driving licence, council tax demands or utility bills. I get that the NHS don't need to know when I last flew into the country or how much I earned last year or that HMRC don't need to know about my 'little problem' (I need fruit, fresh fruit!). I also get that we don't want to have to carry ID in case some petty civil 'servant' demands it (unless we look under 18 and want to get into that cool bar). I'd also object if 'social media' had to check IDs before granting access. I have no objection to showing ID before getting on a plane or entering another country - but perhaps that's because I'm used to it.

I DO want the State to provide services. I have no wish to organise the defence of the Realm or the justice system or cleaning the streets and trimming the hedges in the park - and that means that I expect to pay towards someone else doing that. I also think that our society should provide a safety net for those unable to look after themselves which means society must stump up the cash for that too. For the State to do these things efficiently they need to know who they're providing these services for.

There has to be a sensible compromise. Different IDs for different silos is OK but a core cross-reference is essential.

cPanel unleashes price hikes on its most dense customers

It also refers to its employees as "cpeeps".

Did anyone else read that as CP-Eeps? See: https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Eep. Can't get the bloody sound out of my head now - so I thought I ought to share the pain.

Ok, ok, no need to push -->

Vulture gets claws on Lego's latest Apollo nostalgia-fest

design a model online... priced up... packed by robot

...and delivered pre-assembled.

Red Hat signs off last set of numbers before it is likely gobbled by IBM

So will the next...

...court case be IBM suing RH for fraudulently over-inflating it's figures? They don't sell RH pre-installed on Dell kit do they?

After years of listening, we've heard not a single peep out of any aliens, say boffins. You think you can do better? OK, here's 1PB of signals

Re: Physics and Mathematics

'The Alpha Centauri system is the closest to us'. Yep, about 4.5 light years, I knew that. What I don't know is if there's another system closer to it than ours.

I'll also admit that the triple star system thing might make snooping on the neighbours more difficult than in a simpler system - but are we even detectable at that distance if there is anything looking - or have we been detectable in the past 35years or so?

Our intra-system exploration has mostly been in the plane of the ecliptic so our comms have mostly been directed that way. Given that exo-planets are usually* discovered by us as they transit their local star how difficult would it be to detect our planet looking from perpendicular to the ecliptic - let alone tell if it had intelligent** life?

* Dunno if it's 'exclusively' - not 'usually'.

** For a given value of 'intelligent'.

Re: Physics and Mathematics

A question I've asked before and not been able to find a satisfactory answer: Is Earth detectable from (say) Alpha Centauri now*? If the local small furry creatures had been regularly observing Sol for the last 35 years (SECI project) would they have actually noticed us - their closest** neighbours? Then apply that same question to not just observing Sol but trying to scan all observable planetary systems.

Our space engineers efforts to maintain communications with various probes and rovers is impressive but not highly reliable even when they know exactly where the signals should be coming from. The comms from the first Moon landing only 50 years ago were heavily distorted - or was that caused by the trans-Atlantic television signal I was watching? They seem to have cracked near-Earth and interplanetary comms but... 'space is big'. We need more research.

* Yes, I know, Simultaneous is not a thing at interstellar distances - but you know what I mean.

** I don't actually know if any other planetary system is closer to the Alpha Centauri system than Sol.

Re: Misleading headline

You weren't supposed to have discovered Nio signals yet!

Cyber-IOU notes. Voucher hell on wheels. However you want to define Facebook's Libra, the most ridiculous part is its privacy promise

Re: What is the 'stable asset backing' ?

'Wonder if the Zuck realises that his cost model means that he will be paying to run this service...'

Yes. It's part of the free service he offers for the benefit of mankind.

So, how long until...

...we have to offer some of our Libra credits for an ad-free Facebook experience or even for subscription to a Situation Publishing site?

They would end up knowing even more about us. It would not improve privacy - just an illusion of privacy.

US can try extraditing Julian Assange next year, rules UK court

Re: why the remeote video link ?

Most definitely don't say you're just going out to smoke a fag...

...You Brits are so intolerant.

Re: Apologise!

Er. I think most were saying he was *less* likely to be extradited to the US from Sweden - not that the US wouldn't seek his extradition at all. At least, that's the impression I got.

Perhaps someone who cares could perform a text analysis on the various comments to give a definitive* answer?

*subject to 'alternative facts'...

You gotta be kitten me: Pakistan politicos feline silly after filter farce hits purrrfect conference

Re: Fit for purpose?

I had to look up what that meant; I'm glad I've lead a sheltered life so far.

People find the oddest things exciting.

One man went to mow a meadow, hoping Trump would spot giant grass snake under flightpath

Bishop's Stortford Independent

So, as they've named the guy he's now on a watch list and if he ever visits the USA he'll be searched by the large fingered customs officer?

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

Re: Hello darkness, my old friend

'superior knitting patterns from the hundreds she has'

See! Communicating in code!

Facebook ordered to open internal docs for investors livid about losing cash following data slurp scandal

Re: A Joy to Behold

*all* about? Wow! I thought that was Zuck's job?

Gaze in awe at the first ever movie of a solar eclipse from recording long thought lost forever

Re: "Central NC is about 6,600 km from London and central India is about 7,700 km"

I'm not trying to suggest a direct route - and as Stoneshop has pointed out Suez was a thing by the time of Maskelyne's India adventure - but a comparison to show that we're not talking about an order of magnitude difference in distance.

What I was trying to suggest was that the introductory phrase 'all the way [to]...' might be followed by 'North Carolina' just as much as 'India' for a Brit at the time we're talking about. Both being quite a long schlep.

Really great stuff

It's a bit late to buy Maskelyne a beer but we can certainly raise a few in his honour.

I'd raise a couple of points about the article though:

- I was surprised to find so many Nevil Maskelynes listed in Wikipedia and indeed to find more than one magician among them. It would have been good to give his dates in the article. Most of them seem to have been based in the British Isles.

- Comparing 'an expedition to North Carolina' with 'Maskelyne travelled all the way India' from the British Isles suggests a rather USAian focus. Central NC is about 6,600 km from London and central India is about 7,700 km (77 M linguine) according to gmaps. Both significantly long journeys for the late 19th century - but regular routes for the majority of the distance.

A really interesting article which caused me to start a little digging - I shall enjoy finding out more.

As it's Friday perhaps raise a few more -> in honour of the guys who restored the film and the author.

NASA rattles the tin for an extra $1.6bn to keep 2024 lunar hopes alive

Re: Hard to get excited

'funding it that way'

I think I understand that you'd rather not see funding for education reduced. I'd agree with that.

If government (any government of any country) wants to spend money on a new project it either has to take more in tax, borrow from it's trading partners or cut spending elsewhere. The first option is rarely popular and the second can lead to longer term problems including more of option three - but at least that will be for a future government to sort out. The third option is basically a matter of priorities and not everyone will agree on those.

Economically successful countries educate their citizens.

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Overthinking it.

Just sit on this suitcase and when <target> comes past press this button. You'll be a hero. We'll look after your Mum/Wife/Kids, of course.

Customers furious over days-long outage as A2 Hosting scores a D- in Windows uptime

Re: Uptime is not easy

True. I don't want to add to the 'A2 bad' sentiment - the article and comments so far cover it nicely.

What has not been emphasised enough is that when your IT is hosted by a company that claims to have experts looking after your IT infrastructure 'so you don't have to' you are completely in their hands when the shit hits the fan. You have no option but to sit back and wait for their expert help (compared with, for example, TSB hiring IBM to sort out their recent migration cock-up). Admittedly you can leave them once they've fixed the immediate problem - but there's not usually that option during the crisis.

A business *could* try to protect itself by using multiple separate hosting providers but that requires proper planning and investment in IT infrastructure which seems to be anathema to many businesses.

Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance as a number of ex-colleagues would say.

All's fair in love and war when tech treats you like an infant

Re: Am I perhaps too old to use a payment robot?

Alcohol-free beer? You monster!

Canadian woman fined for not holding escalator handrail finally reaches the top after 10 years

Re: Other escalator laws

'It's an older joke than that.'

Yes. In my defence I did say 'Terry Pratchett used the line'.

There seems to be a greater proportion of Sir Terry fans among el Reg commentards than among the general population. I felt that would help explain why the joke was recognised so quickly by some and not others.

Re: Other escalator laws

'it might not be as obvious to non-native speakers as some might think.'.

It's a Terry Pratchett thing...

Terry Pratchett used the line in 'Truckers'. Something along the lines of 'Dogs and pushchairs must be carried - and some people wern't carrying either pushchairs or dogs'.

Supreme Court of UK gives Morrisons the go-ahead for mega data leak liability appeal

Re: Should companies be on the hook for criminal employees' doings?

Fair point AC. Yes, the punishment should fit the crime. If they've been lax they should be punished. If not then they get a token slap on the wrist. Someone else here used the horrible term 'best practice' but it's applicable here IMO. Even if they've not been lax, their system protection was not adequate in this case and *someone* still has to pick up the bill to protect the people who had their information leaked.

Re: Should companies be on the hook for criminal employees' doings?

A thought-provoking response from Nick Kew - thank you, Have an up-vote - though I disagree.

In response, I would suggest that one test of whether the precautions are 'reasonable' would be to examine the risk/impact for the company. These days, infringing GDPR can have very serious repercussions for a company so although the risk may be the same as before, the impact is much higher. I don't know if the events in question are pre- or post-GDPR but companies should have been preparing long before the deadline. Also, I would contend that the majority of the precautions I suggested would be the same to prevent malware getting onto and/or ex-filtrating information from systems handling sensitive (personal, in Morrisons case) information; and there's no reason for an employee to feel they're being unfairly treated.

As for countermeasures against spies/whistleblowers: well, that's why a court should decide if the precautions were reasonable. If a case has come to court they clearly weren't adequate but that's a different matter.

Re: Should companies be on the hook for criminal employees' doings?

Yes. I agree. Unless the company can show that they took all reasonable precautions against a rogue employee misusing the information... Reasonable precautions would include locking down removable media, restricting inbound and outbound network traffic, only allowing access to aggregate/summary data for selections of more than a certain size and many many more. Oh yes, and no BYOD.

Loose Women woman's IR35 win deals another high-profile blow to UK taxman's grip on rules

Public vote with their feet after name and shaming

Yes - that would be good.

Real question: have Starbucks UK suffered a measurable hit on revenue that can be attributed to being associated with unethical tax practices by the press? If so, then it shows naming and shaming works. If not, then I guess it shows the majority of the public do not care enough to even change the brand of coffee they drink.

However, the article is about IR35 which is more to do with individual's tax arrangements than trans-nationals'. Personally I was really pissed-off when a company I worked for 'hired' a bod who 'paid' himself by 'borrowing' money from a company in Dubai. IMO that's personal tax evasion.

Re: It's time...

'HMRC were made to cover every last cost incurred by the people they're dragging into court. And then, like they like to do, add punitive penalties.'

...and HMRC get their money from where?

I do understand that those found to have been wrongly accused of tax evasion are aggrieved and have incurred expense defending themselves and so should be compensated. I also understand that the expense of defending themselves may deter some people from doing so - which is a further injustice. However, insisting that HMRC pays punitive penalties only increases the amount of the country's tax income not spent on the purposes it was gathered for - ie it's wasted.

HMRC does not ultimately make the rules. Lawmakers do - even if they delegate the authority. HMRC needs to be able to report back to the lawmakers where tax law is open to abuse - in either direction. Lawmakers should be held to account at the ballot box.

Hackers bragged that pretty vanilla breach included FBI watchlist? Well, colour us shocked

It's a meaningless thing to say.

'The FBI National Academy Associates, a business offering training and professional networking services to FBI-affiliated persons, said...'

'Nuff said.

As the UK updates its .eu Brexit advice yet again, an alternative hovers into view

Add to the collection

So when you've got the .com, .uk, .co.uk, .eu, .de, .dk, .jp, .cn... .xxx domains for <company> and are paying the renewal fees you can now spend even more on a .inc domain?

I never did understand why having the domain names for every country you operate in (or might want to in future) was considered a Good Thing. I would have thought the message that "we're a company that operates internationally so here's the relevant section of our head office web site" would be most convincing.

I'm even less convinced about owning <company>.xxx (unless, of course, that really does represent your line of business). Anyone looking for <company> related porn would probably be mightily disappointed to be redirected to <company>.com.

Bit nippy, is it? Hive smart home users find themselves tweaking thermostat BY HAND

Re: Load shedding ...

'Houses can be wired to have an "always on" circuit and a "load shedding" circuit.

The alternative is to load-shed by shutting down substations on a round-robin basis.'

Erm. Shirley at least one other 'alternative' is to have adequate generating and grid carrying capacity?

I would agree that waste is not to be tolerated and recognise that efficiency is a means to reduce waste, but cutting off some service because it's getting too popular right now points to a problem with the service - not with the consumer.

Boffins may have found something more salty than Brexit Brits' tears this week: Underground pools of water on Mars

Watney's on Mars??

Hell! Where's CAMRA when you need them?

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

Regression

'The level of fine is noteworthy given past penalties imposed by the ICO against companies that sent larger volumes of dodgy stuff'

If you perform a linear regression on the four example fines against the volumes of spam given in the article you get a fixed penalty of about GBP 33.25k plus about 3.14p/spam. Which puts Vote Leave Ltd's fine right on the regression line.

Icon: I couldn't find the sad git icon.

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Awkward question.

I guess this is a question that only the 'social' media platforms would be able to answer: I wonder what adverts were being shown around the original and subsequent copy videos and pictures of the crime - and what the owners think of their adverts being shown in that context. If I were an advertising customer I would want to know. A vain hope, I fear; I expect the platforms would strongly resist publishing those stats.

The multi-layer contracts selling screen space probably preclude the advertisers (the platforms' actual customers) suing the platforms but if we (Joe Public) could be told that (say) XYZ company's adverts were shown to 10% of people who viewed the crime then XYZ's directors might be interested in reputation damage limitation and bring additional pressure to bear.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

Re: Not sure the comparison is valid

'If it looks like a duck; walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. It is a duck. In this instance replace duck with turd.'

OK:

If it looks like a turd; walks like a turd and sounds like a turd. It is a turd.

Walks and sounds like a turd? I don't think your digestion is quite right.

Bank of England takes a break from opining on banks' IT outages to 'fess up to forking needless cash on legacy kit, manual processes

Cloud first?

So BoE is going to have to put their systems into the cloud? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-cloud-first-policy

Should save a fortune!

Dear Britain's mast-fearing Nimbys: Do you want your phone to work or not?

'But I have no expectation of a phone signal when up on the moors. If I do get one, it's a bonus.'

<misty>Oh the joys of family holidays wandering on the moors</misty> - rudely interrupted by a dozen frantic text messages from people from work as we drove down again to the holiday cottage.

Nah. Not a bonus to get a mobile signal when you're hoping not to have one.

icon: 'cos that's what I like to do --->

Silent Merc, holy e-car... What is that terrible sound?

Re: More options needed

Kraftwerk? Nah. You want people to move quickly out of the way, not sleepwalk.

ElliptiGo long stride bikes

'kinell. $3.7k for a bike? More money than sense!

Back to electric car noises: The noise they made in Gattaca, of course - or was that covered by the milk-float option?

You have the right to remain on-prem, but you should really head for the cloud, UK plod told

Six years after the UK government introduced its "Cloud First" policy...

So this is promulgated by 'Government Digital Service'? Is that the same outfit that mandate use of ODF formats for information exchange across government?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-open-document-formats-odf-in-your-organisation

Oh. Them...

Never mind. Right. Where were we?

Official science: Massive asteroids are so difficult to destroy, Bruce Willis wouldn't stand a chance

So our choices are:

- Massive shotgun blast

- Massive single bullet

- Dirigible asteroids (what could possibly go wrong?)

We gotta get off this rock! Not all of us to the same place obviously.

How AI could help docs spot mums who hit the sauce too much while creating their version 1.1

This is

78.26%? What a ridiculous accuracy figure based on 'Data taken from 46 participants' from an initial set of 207 participants. It looks to me like the test only found 36 out of those 46 participants to be affected by FASD when professional opinions considered all of them to be affected. (36/46 = 0.7826 to 4 decimal places). This looks like blatant cherry-picking of the study subjects.

According to Wikipedia 'FASD is estimated to affect between 2% and 5% of people in the United States and Western Europe.' - and the wiki article cites CDC as a source for that figure.

Although the El Reg article does not suggest such a thing an automated test of each annual cohort of children born in the USA (about 4 million per year) with 2% prevalence and test accuracy of 78.26% would give the following results: 62,800 (1.57%) correctly diagnosed, 17,392 (0.43%) missed, 3,067,792 (76.69%) correctly given the all-clear and 852,207 (21.31%) incorrectly diagnosed. The harm done to 852,207 children by incorrectly labelling them as affected by FASD would be outrageous.

Obviously, not every child would be tested. Only those who show some sort of 'problem' behaviour would be tested; but having labelled some people as affected by FASD (along with the associated finger-wagging directed at their mothers) there must be an intention to intervene to change their behaviour (an alternative which could be to use the label to avoid wasting valuable intervention resources on affected people is even more disturbing). I expect that the interventions used in cases of FASD are similar to those used for other developmental disorders - so why not target the interventions on all those displaying the undesirable behaviour rather than focus on a possible cause of that behaviour?

When the bits hit the FAN: US military accused of knackering Russian trolls, news org's IT gear amid midterm elections

Re: What we need is a good cyberwar.

'That should end well :/'

Hmm. Certainly it won't be pleasant or do the economy much good while it is going on and if it escalates to a proper shooting war then it will be far worse than unpleasant.

However, if the world engages in overt cyberwar it will become part of *your* nation's security interest to get rid of insecure IoT tat - and that may actually be a good result.

Insane homeowners association tries to fine resident for dick-shaped outline car left in snow

Re: Power unchecked

OK. I know I shouldn't feed them - but AC looked so hungry.

'According to Anna Soubry - "Mrs May has a problem with immigrants" coded language for she's a xenophobic racist.'.

Yes, that seems to be a fair translation of that quote. If it's a real quote it strikes me as a wild accusation by Mrs Soubry with no evidence to back it up.

'May was always a closet leaver...' Evidence? I understood Mrs May says she voted 'Remain'.

'...and her ideal society resembles something worse than Orwell ever dreamt up.' Example? Are you really suggesting she would approve of the society described in '1984'?

Come on! Higher standards of thought please.