Posts by ExampleOne

Net neutrality lives... in Europe, anyway: Top court supports open internet rules, snubs telcos and ISPs

On the one hand I can see that these zero cost tariff options (e.g. Netflix, Facebook, Youtube traffic doesn't count) are good for the consumer

Actually the court, according to this article, is quite clear that these are NOT in fact good for the consumer in the medium and long term because they reduce competition. From the article:

It went on: “Furthermore, the greater the number of customers concluding such agreements, the more likely it is that, given its scale, the cumulative effect of those agreements will result in a significant limitation of the exercise of end users’ rights, or even undermine the very essence of those rights.”

Is Little Timmy still enthralled by his Leapfrog tablet? Maybe check he hasn't sideloaded an unrestricted OS onto it

Nothing against the device, everything against the company.

LeapFrog are owned by vTech, the company who when they had a data leak involving childrens personal information, simply updated their T&Cs to exclude liability [1, IIRC there was an article on this site that is escaping my google foo] and insist parents signed over any right to sue or complain, under an explicit agreement. This behaviour is beyond reprehensible, and is completely unacceptable generally, for a product targetting children.

[1] - https://www.troyhunt.com/no-vtech-cannot-simply-absolve-itself/

Presumably, once you have 14.1 on it, making 17 work should simply be a matter of bumping version numbers in the build system? The technical challenge here is getting anything on to it in the first place?

That said, it is still a LeapFrog device, so I would refuse to buy it or allow it into the house...

UK and Japan agree to free trade deal that excludes data localisation requirements

The deal is the first negotiated by the UK alone after Brexit and is being hailed as a template for the many such deals to come once the nation completely and utterly departs the EU and is no longer bound by the bloc's existing deals.

So the template for UK trade deals is "roll over an EU one with a few tweaks"?

Hidden Linux kernel security fixes spotted before release – by using developer chatter as a side channel

Your inability to manage your Linux estate does not mean it is unmanageable.

Re: Security by obscurity, yawn

For public evidence, I think this very site has the best example when they blew the lid on spectre early.

It clearly can and has happened.

Ex-Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain loses US appeal bid against fraud convictions and 5-year prison sentence

Re: I thought we had abandoned extradition

Obnoxious as it is, and infuriating for all parties as it is, it is highly questionable the extradition request would survive contact with a court room while both governments agree she is entitled to diplomatic immunity. Unless and until either she or the US government waive that immunity, legally speaking there is no case to answer in UK law.

Yes, it is horrible. No, it is not justice, but sometimes the law ends up working that way, and the principles involved in diplomatic immunity are kind of important.

The bigger question that should be being asked is why she had immunity in the first place, and why the government continues to hand it out easily to associates of credentialed diplomats from the USA given their track record on immunity over rather more minor issues (parking tickets and speeding fines).

US election 2020: The disinfo operations have evolved, but so have state governments

I still don't get the foreign interference argument. I mean, are people really suggesting that foreign states are spending anything more than a small fraction of what the political parties are spending? Of not, are we really saying that the political parties are so incompetent that foreign interference is that much more proceed effective?

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

Clearly someone, somewhere, in this chain operating a credit facility. I would start asking if the appropriate ombudsmen should be got involved.

Alternatively something in this story doesnt quite pass the sniff test.

FCC: Remember that confidential paperwork you gave us, China Telecom? Yeah, well, we're handing it over to the Feds

They are judging everyone else by their own low standards.

This has been fairly clear from the start with the stream of innuendo a d the complete lack of any evidence other than "they might..."

Google allowed to remember search results to news articles it was asked to forget. Good

Re: If only there were the idea of a spent conviction?

But with increasing numbers of jobs doing vetting, those convictions will still show up, just later in a different step.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

My point is that amazon A) knows what I have purchased on amazon, and B) don’t appear to be able to make the leap to related products. Even a basic recommender system should be able to make the related product leap when fed amazons dataset. I mean, surely the dataset makes it clear someone who bought a drill is more likely to buy screws than a new drill?

I find it amusing that the ad targeting produced by the internet advertising is so appallingly bad. It's worse than the supermarkets did 15 or more years ago based on their "loyalty" cards. What is really sad is how basic many of the mistakes are: I am pretty certain the "recommender systems 101" course I did about 12 years ago would avoid them once even slightly trained.

Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future

Re: What a surpirse. It's muppetry.

The problem isn’t the analog receiver, the problem is the lack of a DAB receiver. They didn’t need to ban the former to mandate the latter.

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

Re: Next great idea

Well, HP are the only printer vendor I am aware of trying the subscription ink circus. Ironic, given Canon, Epson, and Brother are all going down to ink tank/CIS system route.

Sony reveals PlayStation 5 will offer heretical no-optical-disk option. And yes, it has an AMD CPU-GPU combo

The installation to the internal storage isn’t the issue, the issue is not wanting the device to ever connect to the internet.

It may be an unpopular stance, but a hard air-gap will require less policing than any form of allegedly moderated content filters.

Having young children, a major drawback of the online only approach recently became very obvious: how do you get content while blocking online access?

Retaining the optical drive isn’t just a pragmatic decision for compatibility. This is a games device, it really needs an option for completely offline single player usage.

In colossal surprise, Intel says new vPro processors are quite a bit better than the old ones

And I don't see the value in integrating the WiFi. There is a well-defined abstraction to the network with moderate bandwidth required. It's the archetype for a functionality that should be on a separate chip with a vendor-neutral interface.

I think, in battery powered mobile devices, there is a power benefit to integrating it.

Away from the battery powered mobile device use-case, I completely agree it is better off chip.

Briny liquid may be more common on Mars than once thought, unlikely to support life as we know it

Re: Oh, I dunno ...

I was thinking something similar. Given the terrestrial environments life has been found in, it seems presumptuous to dismiss the possibility out of hand. This may be an environment outside the known parameters, but unless we have multiple examples of such environments here on Earth we can’t say terrestrial life couldn’t survive it, just that it hasn’t had a chance to.

Is this environment that much harsher than the brine lakes under the ice cap in the Antarctic?

Uncle Sam courting Intel, TSMC to build advanced chip fabs on home soil – report

While I may sympathise with the official objective of removing reliance on China, I can’t help but wonder if many countries outside the USA currently feel a reliance on the USA is a better option?

Uber, Lyft struck by sue-ball, no, sue-meteorite in California after insisting their apps' drivers aren't employees

Re: Contracting...

If IR35 gave the "contractor" the rights of an employee, along with the tax implications, it wouldn't be so bitterly unpopular.

There is also a difference in intent: In the UK the intention is to effectively force all the contractors into employee relationships (this doesn't prevent short term contracts). In Cali it is to effectively force the employers to offer employee relationships.

Does a .com suffix make a trademark? The US Supreme Court will decide as Booking marks its legal spot

Re: Actually seems reasonble

It is questionable if the Windows trademark would actually survive a test in court.

MS did abruptly settle the one test it has had quite late on in proceeding, and the Lindows team did very well indeed out of it, AIUI.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: Covid jail "prank"

Given all you have heard, you are still prepared to consider the app design anything other than “incredibly stupid”? The current design appears to fail completely in the single most important aspect for such an app: encouraging trust sufficient to get people to install it.

That said, it is kind of amusing to listen to all the politicians who threw years ago were assuring us that people were tired of experts and didn’t trust them now appealing to us to trust the experts.

Intel is offering more 14nm Skylake desktop processors, we repeat: More 14nm Skylake desktop processors

Re: I don't get it...

And, while not mainstream or even x86 derived, Raptor had some fun findings on the power draw of the nominally 95W TDP 4-core Power9 CPU from IBM: under load, apparently, they consistently drew around 65W and it was a struggle to get them to draw more.

The only conclusion that could be drawn was the 95W TDP was a “designed to” figure that had been specified before the chips were finalised.

Google is a 'publisher' says Aussie court as it hands £20k damages to gangland lawyer

I have no problem with the contention that google are considered a publisher for all material published (I.e. served to an end user) by their servers. This isn’t particularly outrageous. Further, it appears in this case it isn’t the initial publishing of the information that is the subject of the complaint, it was continuing to present the results post notification. This isn’t that far removed from the Spanish case!

The interesting point in this case, and the Spanish case, is that the original website probably has a legitimate interest defence on the original article which sounds like it is an archive site. However old newspapers may no longer be relevant, and google really shouldn’t be allowed to present archive material as recent results, especially once warned presenting without full context could be defamatory.

Any other ruling on “Are google the publisher?” raises the question of who is the publisher for information served by aggregators and other social media sites: I am pretty certain The Age would legitimately be able to defend having their archive available online (not a major problem as most people wont find the article there anyway, and without google etc would almost certainly appreciate the context if they did) and how can they be held liable for the actions of Google? This principle is clearly covered in the EU at least where it is clear that public domain data (I.e. The Age archives) can still be protected data (I.e. not fair game for google to scrape and publish all over the internet).

Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and cloud-based IoT gear bricked by vendors. Looking at you, Belkin

Re: Consumer rights act 2015

More amusingly, if you do take this approach, assuming my memories of how the law works in these cases is correct, you are actually suing the retailer, not Belkin.

Want to stop these dead in the channel? Make the consequences of selling them too annoying for PC World.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: I expect I'll get a ton of downvotes BUT

Except that for plenty of companies, Ink is a lot more reasonable priced once the printer is paid for up front.

I can specifically reference Epson EcoTank where the Epson inks are comparable in price with third party inks on Amazon. I have never checked the Canon MegaTank or Brother equivalents as I don't have them, but assume they are similar.

Interestingly, as alluded in the post you are disagreeing with, the price for cartridge ink per sheet drops dramatically once you move out of the cheap consumer inkjet market. Highend canon photo printers ink cartridge prices aren't ridiculously high, but you are looking at a £500+ printer. This is not a system designed for bulk printing, and is a market that is far more aware of TCO calculations than the regular consumer.

Perhaps there should be two price tiers - the fully costed purchase that accepts third party inks and the gillette model one where the printer is sold at loss but only takes the manufacturer cartridges.

Epson already have this (their CIS EcoTank models), Canon and Brother (AIUI) also have CIS models. Interestingly the CIS models were something like £100-£150 more expensive than the equivalent cartridge models when I was last buying a printer a couple of years ago.

The only problem is HP appear to have moved the other way towards "subscription" ink.

And this is why you buy printers with CIS systems installed. Not much they can do to control the ink sourcing with them.

The rumor that just won't die: Apple to keep Intel at Arm's length in 2021 with launch of 'A14-powered laptops'

If they aren’t planning to replace the professional systems with ARM versions why is the problem with an iPad + keyboard as an ARM laptop the fact it isn’t really suitable for professional usage?

For serious compiling and heavy work, in practice, there really is little evidence that ARM are going to offer any significant benefit over x86 once you build a full, high performance, platform around it. RAM is RAM, PCIe is still PCIe, GPUs remain unchanged, etc...

I would also question the assumption that Apple are magically going to be able to produce an ARM system (not core, an entire system, which is effectively going to be the requirements for an ARM based Mac Pro) given all the people who have tried and failed miserably. Are there any widely available current SoCs at sensible prices with 64GB or 128GB RAM?

I may be surprised, but for Apple, keeping the current split where iPad is ARM for consumption, and Mac is x86 for creation or production, leveraged the strengths of both platforms.

Two thoughts:

1) Apple already has an ARM powered laptop: the iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard.

2) How to completely alienate your professional workstation customers: finally announce a long awaited successor to your workstation line, then effectively EOL it before it has even hit full availability.

Apple may well be working on a new 5nm higher performance ARM chip, but I somehow doubt they are planning to kill the Intel laptop and desktop lines. They can easily enough run both, given the slight split in their market between consumer and production devices.

IBM Watson GPU cloud cluster Brexits from London to Frankfurt – because GDPR

Re: Pointless And Political

Except AIUI the UK approach to these things as a member was:

A) sort of implement something that looks vaguely like the EU directive

B) get sued in CJEU

C) get told it isn’t compatible with EU law

D) GOTO A)

Which was sort of tolerated as a member, but based on history will not be tolerated from a third party state. This means that the UK won’t just have to pay lip service to implementing and enforcing GDPR compatible rules, it will actually have to do it!

I assumed it meant they were going to organise moving the data instead.

Container full of storage on a lorry in London, ship it, at other end replay storage logs since it was cloned in London.

Depending how their storage is set up, this could be pretty trivial or pretty painful, but the basic logistics are not complicated, especially if customers move most of their workloads in advance if the shutoff.

Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file

Re: The Modern UI/UX

I think the assumption is all users are familiar with computers, and design paradigms designed for users who are not familiar with point and click guis are no longer relevant.

To the people who think I like that, I have a couple of elderly relatives they should meet!

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: Can be done on the router

Oh the sweet innocence...

I caught Sky engaging in deep packet manipulation to change the IP in DNS replies from the authoritative servers to my local servers. The only reason I can’t see TalkTalk doing similar is their technical incompetence.

I am no longer a Sky customer, obviously.

Star's rosette orbit around our supermassive black hole proves Einstein's Theory of General Relativity correct

Re: Theory?

Except despite our inability to falsify either General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, there is still the issue of spooky action at a distance.

Don’t mistake our inability to falsify a theory for our acceptance that it is 100% correct.

Google Cloud's AI recog code 'biased' against black people – and more from ML land

The toilet one sounds like an attempt for an Iggy...

Guess what's heading to trial? IBM and its tactic of yoinking promised commissions after sales reps seal the deal

On “similar” deals. Without more details on all three details, who was involved, and how the revenue was assigned, it is hard to comment.

Note: I am not saying IBM are squeaky clean here, just that the dispute appears to hinge less on “varying the contract” and more on what revenue is in scope for the commission: IBM are not actually trying to change the percentage involved.

For example, if the commission is on hardware sales, and a large part of the deal is actually support or software, does it count as a hardware sale?

> His portion of the revenue, it's claimed, was about $12.6m, for which he was to receive about $1.4m. Instead, IBM decided the applicable commissionable revenue was only $2m, for which Beard was to receive about $230,000, roughly 15 per cent of the expected amount.

So the disagreement here is not about them trying to change the commission rates, it is about how much of the sale revenue is in scope for commission?

Linux fans thrown a bone in one Windows 10 build while Peppa Pig may fly if another is ready in time for this year

Re: I will avoid Windows 10 for as long as I can

PCIe pass through a GPU?

Security-focused microkernel goes in for some seL4-care, becomes a foundation to keep that ecosystem growing

Re: "developers and other stakeholders"

This is where the whole formal verification thing comes in... if it’s correct it IS correct, like 1+1=2.

'Anything' related to remote working is a winner for Euro disties, but classic enterprise hardware? That's another story

Re: But if there is ever an end to this...

Last year I am sure there were many companies interested in WFH, but felt there were unresolved risks in moving to a more WFH friendly policy. Any change has risk associated with it, and as the current have everyone in the office was mostly working ok, why take on risk?

This year, all of those companies have basically had a risk free pilot because everyone is in the same boat.

It will indeed be interesting to see how many companies move to a far more WFH friendly stance in the next couple of years.

UK judge gives Google a choice: Either let SEO expert read your ranking algos or withdraw High Court evidence

Is it me or is there a pattern of Google discovering non-US judges tend to be less willing to let them play fast and loose?

It sounds a lot like Google are trying to submit evidence hidden in incomprehensible jargon deliberately and are trying to block anyone who might know about the field from actually viewing it. That is not going to fly this side of the Atlantic.

But then they have form for a fairly contemptuous attitude to courts this side of the Atlantic.

Grsecurity maker finally coughs up $300k to foot open-source pioneer Bruce Perens' legal bill in row over GPL

Re: Bottom line

They might fight, there is a strong body of legal opinion that technically they are right and they are not infringing the GPL. It’s not a popular opinion but it does exist.

Re: So, let me get this straight

While that is how the case played out, that argument hinged on Perens status as for his opinions: does his opinion have any weight in law?

The defamation argument attempted to argue that as an expert in the field his opinion had legal weight. If the court had accepted this argument, the court would have been forced to consider the correctness of his opinion, as it would have been considered exempt from the “first amendment” defence. Most professions aren’t entitled to claim their professional opinions are first amendment protected if they are wrong.

Re: So, let me get this straight

Except that was precisely the ruling from the court, which explicitly refused to comment in any way on the accuracy of Bruce Perens opinion of the law, emphasising that he is not a lawyer, and the statements were clearly and explicitly marked as opinion.

Or having found an excuse to avoid providing a ruling on the GPL they grabbed it and ran away as fast as possible, which is probably a sensible thing to do.

Could WFH web traffic topple a Brit telco? Pfff, scoff operators. This has nothing on Liverpool v Everton streaming

What is your upload? It is fantastic having very high levels of asymmetry in the connection when streaming Netflix, far less so when trying to video conference. I have consistently ignored virgin as a WFH customer for precisely this reason: BT openreach resellers offered as good upload cheaper.

Also, where is the ping to? Could the problems be the other end, with your colleagues on 10mbit BT lines expecting poor performance? What type of connection is the 10mbit line?

Look ma, no Intel Management Engine, ish: Purism lifts lid on the Librem Mini, a privacy-focused micro PC

Re: If they are touting security ...

Well, as it is not possible to 100% disable the Intel Management Engine, despite LibreMs marketing claims, I am not sure it makes any difference. At least some of its functions are critical to keeping the system running. The HAP bit, which is what LibreM are setting, supposedly disables all the non-essential functionality but Intel have refused to ever confirm or deny that, and frankly are probably not trustable even if they were to.

If you truly want a Management Engine free system, your options are either very old AMD, even older Intel, Via (IIRC) or non-x86.

BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work

I wasn’t aware BT offered anything faster than VDSL, in which case streaming over 100Mbit/s is extremely implausible given the standard speed ceilings for that technology.