Posts by iowe_iowe

Google Lens now can spot problematic skin spots, or not

Can be benign

Some uses of AI in this space could actually work - but only when combined with experts. for example, high quality digitisation would mean dermatologists and pathologists can share opinions and collaborate in real time, without having to wait for physical biopsies and slides to arrive; beyond that, the "simple" assessments (99%+ accuracy benign or malignant) could be removed from human assessment, maximising expert time on the complex, nuanced cases..

Later, samples can be matched with outcomes, but this has repercussions for GDPR and Personally Identifiable Information relating to health records, as well is IP and record stewardship. The urge to monetise these knowledge sets would be strong and should be rejected...Hannay Fry (of Rutherford and Fry fame) recorded an excellent piece on this on BBC sounds - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001mdn2

UK blocks China from licensing Manchester Uni's robot vision tech

Nice to see

At last, an example of a dysfunctional government doing its job

EU eyes tech giant revenues as Digital Services Act clears hurdles

Good!

It just feels right and just that there is one organisation out the that actually gives a stuff about big data slurping from profit driven hypercompanies with no moral compass....

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

GOP-ping

I can't decide whether the man is a genius or an idiot. He's certainly rich. As we face existential risk for the coming generation(s), the idea that someone with so much of a platform could reintroduce Trump to social media is really depressing...

Intuit sued over alleged cryptocurrency thefts via Mailchimp intrusion

leaving your wallet in a pub

Crypto and NFT's both fail the smell test for me. As someone who occasionally leaves my wallet on a pub table, the idea of putting serious personal wealth in something that is simultaneously so ephemeral, and planet-buggering, seems insane.

Oxidation-proof copper could replace gold, meaning cheaper chips, says prof

Some hope for humanity?

It's innovation like this that helps you believe that we might - just might - wake up and fix the mess we made...

Microsoft claims breakthrough in quantum computer system

Da bomb

Feels like we're at the same point as Turings bomb in the '40s, but with quantum computing: wildly impractical now, but give it WW3 and a couple of years...

America's 'Team Telecom' backs switch-on of Google and Meta's US-APAC undersea cable

Re: Re a Galactic Intervention Verging on the Heralding of Myriad Future Psychotic AI Episodes?*

7514 posts and every one of them unintelligible.

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Mega-comets lurking in solar systems, spewing carbon monoxide

Big unit

As another big unit that expels large volumes of noxious gas in the dark, I identify with this comet.

The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers

its not where, but what.

Maybe the question should be around what we're using vast exabytes of storage and teraflops of computing for. There must be loads of ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial) data doing nothing other than occupying storage. Plus vast server farms dedicated to crypto currency mining, using the equivalent power consumption of a medium sized country. Plus big tech harvesting, storing and processing thousands of data points on every connected person on the planet, solely to serve up tailored adverts. Plus all the "dark data" held by various govt agencies..

No easy answer except to take personal ownership of your data and to keep it close, and jealously guarded. And bin out crypto.

HPE sees 'no indication' its tech was sold to Chinese military, seeks answers from Uncle Sam on sanctions

lions led by donkeys

HP have always been a company whose success is despite their leadership in the last 20 years. Someone, somewhere inside HPE will know why the US Govt is suspicious. We will have to wait a few years to hear the whistle being blown...

Euro-telcos call on big tech to help pay for their network builds

telcos vs big data

Big tech will win. Big tech always wins. Big tech knows everything. Cars are exciting, roads rarely are.

Panasonic admits intruders were inside its servers for months

five months?

After acknowledging at least five months of unauthorised access, some access to a file server is unlikely to be the extent of the problem. At least they did the decent thing and got a third party involved to put the stable door back on its hinges and bolt it. It'll make an interesting case study in about two years time..

Meanwhile keep a close eye on your breadmakers, people..

five months access?

After acknowledging at least five months of unauthorised access, some access to a file server is unlikely to be the extent of the problem. At least they did the decent thing and got a third party involved to put the stable door back on its hinges and bolt it. It'll make an interesting case study in about two years time..

Meanwhile keep a close eye on your breadmakers, people..

Beijing fingers foreign spies for data mischief, with help from consulting firm

Re: Metrological data

Nope, maybe not a cyclist, but one of the hundreds of new cement manufacturing plants might. In 3 years, China used 6+ billion tonnes of concrete, 40% more than USA did in the whole 20th century.

Labour Party supplier ransomware attack: Who holds ex-members' data and on what legal basis?

Re: Nice Analysis

Surely there can be only one data controller, otherwise looks like a recipe for disaster..?

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

Re: privacy, what privacy?

Sorry - I think it kind of does... This statement from The European Data Protection Board was released on Tuesday:

The EDPB wishes to remind all stakeholders that the transition period for the United

Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union will end on 31 December 2020. This means

that as of 1 January 2021, the UK will no longer apply the GDPR to the processing of personal

data and a separate legal framework regarding data protection and privacy will be in force in

the UK.

Unhelpfully they don't say exactly what is then in force, but I would be concerned..

https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_statement_20201215_brexit_en.pdf

Re: services

Not sure about that, chap - I am reading this as stating that you need to be an EU Individual, in the EU.

The GDPR applies to:

a company or entity which processes personal data as part of the activities of one of its branches established in the EU, regardless of where the data is processed; or

a company established outside the EU and is offering goods/services (paid or for free) or is monitoring the behaviour of individuals in the EU.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_en

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

errr - I can vouch that pornography has been freely available since the days of token ring networks and BBS - so 80's

Blood, snot and fear: Why the travelling lone tech reporter should always knock twice

Re: Hope the hack is up to date with his TB jab

If you get to see a nurse instead of a doctor at your surgery, it's not a downgrade - they are usually specialists (COPD, Travel Clinic, etc) and know their stuff.. I think the triage nurse is only in hospital A&E. So only the receptionist to get past.

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

The ultimate Brexit, with many parallels.

Boffins don bad 1980s fashion to avoid being detected by object-recognizing AI cameras

I like the idea of maintaining anonymity from all the cameras out there, but I'm not completely sure why. Probably because we don't know why, and who's doing it?

GitLab mulls ban on hiring Chinese and Russian support staff because 'security'

Wow - so code repositories are target for subversion. seems obvious on reflection. having heard about it on el reg, it must be a thing that's already happened

If you're going to exploit work's infrastructure to torrent, you better damn well know how to hide it

Re: i don't know...

with creative thinking like this, and a well-developed sense of self-preservation, I'd say our hero is probably very high up the corporate ladder by now...

Bezos DDoS'd: Amazon Web Services' DNS systems knackered by hours-long cyber-attack

Just wait till the gloves come off, and the national players really show how they can mess up comms and infrastructure.

Zuck it up: Facebook hit with triple whammy of legal probes, action in Canada, US, Ireland

Re: I can't understand the fuss over CA

"Faecebook" - LOL

Smartphones gateway drug to the Antichrist, says leader of Russian Orthodox Church

Confirmation that the antichrist has FAANG's..

Typical! You wait ages for a fast radio burst from outer space, and suddenly 13 show up

I'm presuming they don't need to worry about a forced windows 10 creators update..

Taylor's gonna spy, spy, spy, spy, spy... fans can't shake cam off, shake cam off

That opt-out question is such a good one. I thought GDPR meant the default position was to assume "opt-out". The way website cookie/beacon/hidden pixel tracking works on most websites is that you have to go out of your way to "opt-in", which is often a really time consuming mission.

Should be illegal?

Re: The dawn of digital "checkpoints" for government control

it's pretty likely they have these access mandates in place already: the US govt have long had legal recourse to access these data, using the "government note" legal device (we demand the right to slurp your data, and you're not allowed to tell the public about our arrangement). We (the UK) share data with our US counterparts and in fact are very good at innovation in mass-data gathering and processing.

This may or may not have changed since Snowden alerted us to this sort of activitiy - good luck making sense of the legislation.

<I'm just heading off to spend Christmas in the bunker>...

Re: The dawn of digital "checkpoints" for government control

I absolutely share your concerns. What's even more ironic is that we're choosing (and paying) to have these things in our house.

With the government intelligence agencies' regulatory checks and balances being as clear as mud, and their relationships with the commercial data slurpers equally murky, the ignorance of the masses is depressing (my parents love these listening devices).

Can't wait for the "googamabook 5000 - wireless brain shunt", for instant ability to order toilet paper.

White House: Is it OK to hijack, shoot down, or snoop on drones? Er ... asking for a friend

Three years ago now, I was riding through the Nevada desert on a dead straight road at a little over UK M'way speeds. We had seen no other vehicle anywhere for at least half an hour, until we got stopped by a waiting county sheriff. Turns out we were tracked by drone. Stupid of us to think we could break the law, it's increasingly difficult not to comply.

Awkward... Revealed Facebook emails show plans for data slurping, selling access to addicts' info, crafty PR spinning

Re: I'm out of here!

watch it - pigeons are notorious users of twitter.

Manchester nuisance-call biz fined £150k after ignoring opt-out list

I tried to call both company directors for a comment, but they hung up..

Volkswagen links arms with Microsoft for data-slurping cloud on Azure

Cool - the opportunity to play Grand Theft Auto while you're driving a car....

Brits whinging less? About ISPs, networks and TV? It's gotta be a glitch in the Matrix

We'll leave it as exercise for the reader to speculate why this may have been. Perhaps fewer people know there's an Ombudsman service to resolve complaints. Perhaps people know, but the Ombudsman is perceived as ineffective. Or perhaps service is – dare we say it – actually improving.

- The second for me. I used to be cynical about Ombudsman services, but realised there'd be no point.

'Facebook takes data from my phone – but I don't have an account!'

unexpected consequences

As a devout blackberry Passport user, I've been accustomed to the gradual non-functioning of various apps including LinkedIn and Whatsapp as support was withdrawn from them. I'm beginning to feel quite smug when I hear about the data-slurping antics of the US mega corporations...still the best phone ever (IMO), if you're concerned about data privacy, since no-one but government agencies and compliant ISP's can be bothered to update such a small demographic of users, take a look. You can buy one for a couple of hundred quid..

US judge to Facebook: Nope, facial recognition lawsuit has to go to jury

I love seeing big data slurpers on the hook and wriggling!

Facebook previews GDPR privacy tools and, yep, it's the same old BS

Re: Wow

the last reply made by @doublelayer most interests me. I would have thought that moving data dominion from Ireland (GDPR) to the USA (using some diluted GDPR analogue like Privacy Shield) would not make a significant difference to our rights as EU-located individuals.

This is obviously not the case, however, as FB would not have bothered if that were true...

An unambiguous GDPR environment, interpreted and enforced by each country's Data Protection Authorities should put the fear of god into the big US-based data-wranglers.

Unfortunately, we're already working to dilute and re-invent the GDPR into our own UK version, for the benefit of our big US-based friends and for government (ab)use..

Home Sec Amber Rudd: Yeah, I don't understand encryption. So what?

Re: Rudd

Dilute the stuff - 10,000,000:1 - homeopathy principles say that this should make it more powerful, so you'd only need 0.00000041L for a 60Ah car battery. this answer has been approved by Jacob Rees-Mogg

Indian call centre scammers are targeting BT customers

Data Slurp

Yep completely agree. There are so many ways an ill-disposed IT worker with admin rights could get bulk data access - remote admin login to the CRM, then use software robots to suck up responsive data through the front end UI.

Give staff privacy at work, Euro human rights court tells bosses

Re: Court is right

An organisation that has its employees sign a document permitting monitoring could still be in breach of the law, since the employee / employer relationship is not usually considerate to be an equal one: There is plenty of employment case law that has emphasised that point, and having employees sign documents like this could be considered as coercion and abuse of power.