Posts by doublelayer

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Re: It's a Global Market

Theoretically, that could be possible. But that's not currently the law; it is still legal to sell Huawei equipment and to operate that equipment that is currently possessed. The only thing that's currently illegal is for businesses to sell or buy from Huawei. For the FCC to mandate that carriers disable access to Huawei devices would take either a new law or the FCC going far outside their typical permit, as they are usually allowed to forbid equipment only if that equipment is allowing violations of radio frequency regulations, which these devices aren't. While the FCC has proven itself willing to do stupid things, this would be another step forward and it would instantaneously be challenged in court. I expect that, when the U.S.-China trade war eventually winds down, Huawei will be taken off the list and will once again be able to buy software and sell hardware in America. They might still not be able to sell parts of a communications system to U.S. carriers, but they'll be able to license Google services and sell phones to consumers.

Re: It's a Global Market

Sure, but I don't know what your 3.5 million refers to. If you're talking about the population of the U.S., that's 330 million, and they can still buy Huawei equipment if they want to; it's businesses who can't. The number of people who use Google Play is quite a bit larger, but the number of people who want to use it is unknown. Even if they were limited to just the Chinese market, it's already a really big market. I think they'll be fine.

Re: if they provide a good alternative to the Play Store

I fully expect those resources in a matter of weeks after the phones are launched. Sadly, I also expect that there will be identically worded posts with APKs with malware included*. This is a perfect opportunity for criminals, and I think they'll be taking it.

*Or, depending on your view of Google Play Services, additional malware included.

Re: Maybe not such a bad thing

I am very happy with FDroid. However, first, Huawei doesn't need to assist it; they're already doing fine and, second, it wouldn't help with the app problem. The general user wants a relatively small set of apps, including their banking and shopping apps, apps from companies they use frequently, and maybe some games. None of those companies are at all interested in making their apps open source. FDroid is great primarily because it requires all the apps on it to be open source and to submit to analyses of potentially unwanted functionality that get listed right there in the results list. That's why I always try to find an app there before anywhere else, and why nearly every popular corporate app won't dream of listing itself there.

FYI: FBI raiding NSA's global wiretap database to probe US peeps is probably illegal, unconstitutional, court says

Re: Read the 14th amendment

That's true, but as a subset it can mislead people into thinking that the law only applies to the subset. For an example, Linux machines are a subset of computers. But if I said "The Python programming language is generally supported on all Linux machines with sufficient resources", which is true, it may sound as if I'm saying that it is less likely to run on BSD, Windows, or Mac OS machines, which is not true. Your original statement was factually correct, but not phrased in a clear way. I appreciate the correction having been made.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

Re: TCP/IP

As I read it, the protocol will not, in and of itself, require internet access. The IP connection could be to a LAN only, and the devices could then receive instructions from another device on the LAN. However, whether the manufacturers choose to let you do that is up to them. They could easily require a connection to the internet in order for the devices to pay any attention to commands and you couldn't do much about it. Still, if this gets implemented, there will probably be at least a few devices that don't require access online to be remote-controlable.

Re: they kinda missed a trick here?

Nothing stops them from doing that, but that's pretty much what they're already doing. There's no need for them to adopt a new standard if they want to keep doing that, and I'm sure many devices won't abandon single-backend policies on their products. Those companies who do adopt this, on the other hand, are probably banking on making money by selling more devices that can interoperate. They're probably also banking on customers not blocking the extra data flow that reports back to them as well, so it's not as if this new protocol fixes that problem at all. But at least it should be easier to control the devices using local machines and keep using things after they've been abandoned by their manufacturers.

Put the crypt into cryptocoin: Amid grave concerns, lawyers to literally dig into exchange exec who died owing $190m

Re: What's the point?

The problem with that plan is that, if the money was stolen by someone in connection with his death or he faked the death, all the evidence is in exactly the same place and time, namely the days around the theft and the death, whether fabricated or not. A description of a person might work if you have some idea where that person is and enough details to identify them later on. However, we do not have any good idea where he could be now, and he's had plenty of time to disguise himself. Even without having put a lot of effort into a disguise or obtaining plastic surgery, the generic description of a person as provided for most people would be of no help at all when our search area is the entire planet.

Logically, the best course of action in determining where the money is is to try to track that money. Whether it's him who has it or someone else, they can best be identified by tracking where the money is being spent.

If we know with certainty that it is, in fact, that man who stole the money and faked his death, we will still need to track any accounts that may hold information and those connected to the wallets to find him. If we know with certainty that he is dead and therefore someone else stole the money, our best chance of identifying that person is to check on his accounts for pertinent communications and monitor the accounts connected to the money. Either way, the course of action is the same.

What's the point?

This investigation can end one of two ways:

There's a body there, and it's him:

Meaning: The money was stolen by someone else, and we don't know who. Let's see if we can track any records of their activities to identify and find them.

There is someone else's body there, or they've found a way of faking a body being shipped around the world and buried:

Meaning: He almost certainly was the one to steal the money, and is somewhere else. As his identity is now believed dead, he's not using that identity anymore. Let's see if we can track any records of his activities to identify and find his new identity about which we have no details.

Either way, the answer will be to try to track the person who has access to the stolen funds. It doesn't really matter if we know that it is or isn't him, because whoever it is is going to be hiding somewhere and not announcing their true identity. Until the person is found, nobody can get their money back and no charges can be pressed.

Re: Having identified where the money went ...?

I would have assumed that he converted the money or some of it into a nontraceable cryptocurrency (zcash, for example) or something physical so he could live well without making any other withdrawals for a while. But given that it took these people several months to figure out that any money was missing, it's also possible that he has been withdrawing regularly and they haven't figured it out yet.

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Re: Helping out...

But you probably give that number to people or enter it on forms from time to time. If not, you might not need that number. My mental phone book is sadly pathetic. I can give you the phone number of friends I had in 2007 when I placed calls by manually dialing on a land line, but people I've met since then, including those I call or send messages to frequently, are only known by my contacts database. I have that backed up, but maybe I should try memorizing the numbers.

Lobes carry the load, says IDC: 'Hearables' sector accounts for half of all tech clobber sold

Earworn wearables

Come on. A smartwatch is more than a regular watch. It's a watch that does more stuff and dies really fast. It's distinct. The things being called earworn wearables or hearables now, on the other hand, are just earphones. You put them in your ears, connect them to something else, and they make sound based on what the thing you connected them does. It doesn't run apps or let you program it or have any function without a connected device. No special name needed.

I wonder what people would think of a real wearable based around an earphone. I have a feeling the lack of a screen would make it rather unpopular. The only thing that comes to mind is a set of earphones that have a voice assistant built into them rather than requiring a separate phone to do that. While it's not a thing I or probably anyone here would want, it sounds like a thing Amazon might experiment with for a while.

Google Chrome will check for leaked credentials every time you sign in anywhere

Re: what happens when Google's master key gets compromised?

The approach they claim to use wouldn't work most of the time. While it works fine if the passwords were originally in plain text, it doesn't work if the hashes were salted at all or used a hashing algorithm other than the one Google's decided upon. Chrome wouldn't know the salt or algorithm to use, meaning the sent data wouldn't be matchable to whatever is in the database. Google has a lot of employees intelligent enough to understand this. Logically, they considered it. My guess is that they made the system work and now are being a little evasive in explaining exactly how it works.

Re: Is this *another* attempt to smother me in Gmail shit ?

I wholeheartedly agree. However, I don't know of a reliable external email system that hasn't recently gained the desire to have your mobile number for verification (verification, I say. Not advertising or data selling. Stop questioning us, you puny end-user). My main email is through my own mailserver, but I need an external email which runs the accounts for the domain name and mailserver, so if there's a good one out there that isn't likely to start demanding extra details, I'd like to identify it.

How much cheese does one person need to grate? Mac Pro pricing unveiled

Re: Use

That may be, but the original question was whether they have any point. They may not be the best machine out for video editing, but it's conceivable that someone could use it for that. In addition, a lot of video editors are attached to Apple equipment and software. I'm not saying they need to be, but if they are, this could be the machine they're looking for. It's certainly overkill for anything I do, but that's because I can offload tasks that need a lot of CPU or GPU power, as I rarely need to have so much power right at my fingertips.

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

Re: But on the other hand...

I'd agree with you if they had tried to hide what their item was made of, but nobody did that. The ingredients are always in the name, usually as the first word. The reason words like burger and milk are used is that they describe what the food item will be like. Almond milk is designed to be similar to dairy milk but be made of almonds. There is absolutely no ambiguity that almonds are involved and that, therefore, this is not dairy milk.

Meanwhile, using this term better indicates to a perspective customer what type of product they're dealing with. It'd be like if you prevented anybody other than Apple from using the word "book" in the name of a laptop, anyone but HP using the word laptop, or anyone but IBM using the word computer. Everyone could still sell laptops, but you wouldn't necessarily know whether a device was actually a laptop because that useful descriptive term wasn't allowed.

Re: AKA Libertarians

I really don't care what I'm called. My title is software engineer because that's what my employer decided to call us, though I doubt they had any reason for choosing that over something else. I'm a programmer. I'm also a developer. The word engineer is hard to define. At one point, it only meant people who dealt a lot with engines, in which case nearly no modern engineers would count. However, in its current usage, an engineer is someone who designs and builds something from a relatively low level. I think I qualify under that unofficial definition.

Re: Rename the terms?

I don't think it's "electrical" they have a problem with. I think that, based on their current stance, my title of "software engineer" would also be covered. It's patently ridiculous, but for some reason they're interested enough to fight the issue.

Re: AKA Libertarians

Since you aren't mentioning the topics in the article, only attempting to attack the case based on the source of a lawyer, I can only assume your comment "regulations that you or I might consider sensible safety precautions, but which they feel unnecessarily constrain corporate entities like "engineers" is meant to apply to this case.

In which case, you'll need to do a better job. These safety precautions... what are they? Having passed a test and paid for a license saying you're competent to engage in civil engineering? I'm fully in favor when the person you're making do that is a civil engineer. But there's a big difference between "civil engineer" and "electrical engineer". For that matter, my job title at the moment is "software engineer". Should I have to pass that test and pay for that license as well?

And while we're talking, your attack of this case based on a group who litigates other cases is not a very good argument. I'm sure that, if I reviewed all their cases, I could easily find one I disagreed with strongly. That doesn't make them automatically wrong here. For the same reasons, someone who has always argued cases to my liking isn't guaranteed to keep doing so. When you deal with a legal group of the scale of this one, you are bound to have cases you agree with and ones you disagree with. Having not looked into their previous cases, let's presume that I agree with you and disagree with the majority of their cases. That still doesn't make them wrong here. If you wish to prove this case has no merit or is actively wrong, you'll need to start talking about the case.

It may be out of sync with the US govt, but Huawei is rolling out its Harmony OS to more devices in 2020

Re: Makes sense.

It's probably helpful from a continuity perspective as well. Rather than design new platforms based on Linux or Android every time they start making a new smart television, they can stick with this and reuse some code. That is if they remember they've got that code, which has not been a hallmark of other IoT manufacturers.

That said, I wonder how much code can profitably be shared between a smartwatch and a television. While the kernel could be copied, the smartwatch has the problems of limited processing and very limited battery life, while the television is connected directly to the mains and has an excuse for a much more powerful processor. That doesn't mean they can't use exactly the same kernel for both, but one designed for a television might put heavy pressure on a watch's battery and one designed to preserve the resources of a watch might not be as snappy as users of a television would like.

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Re: The year of the Linux desktop

You might want to read the page you linked. According to that page, Red Flag Linux has been out of support for five years, and, while developed in China in the 2000s, has no link to the Chinese government. Quite unlike Kylin, which is currently supported in its native forms as well as a Ubuntu derivative and, while not officially a government-run project, is written and maintained by a university connected to the military.

Re: The year of the Linux desktop

You're thinking of Red Star, which is North Korea's official OS. China has a few things, most notably a Linux-based distro called Kylin, but people there are also free to use anything else, including traditional Linux and BSD distributions translated into Chinese. They don't need a government-written OS just to avoid an American-controlled one.

Re: Say it ain't so!

The man's name is Xi, not Li. And that's just the first thing you've gotten wrong. He's not somehow managing to represent the entire party, with everyone's views forming a part of policy. He's just the one in control of a large enterprise, similar to the way you describe American politics. Meanwhile, he is a dictator who does not need to concern himself with the views of the people. Most parts of the CCP are expected to (and do) support any decision he and his closest subordinates make, without raising issues of their own. If you still think that the party chooses their leader from some miraculous hive mind, read about how Xi got in power and what happened to those other candidates who were under consideration (hint, it wasn't so much fun for them).

I'll grant you that the American people are more likely to give credit or blame to the person at the top, while in China credit goes to the party and blame is best left unacknowledged. That doesn't mean either approach is good. With the former, a leader can get the credit for things they had nothing to do with, leading to support they haven't really earned. The latter, however, is a symptom of the destruction of many fundamental rights and is far worse.

Re: China already has one...

"They [China] use it [Kylin] in maybe 50% of all computers"

No, they don't. According to market share figures source, Windows is by far the most popular desktop OS in China, with Kylin specifically not even appearing on the charts and Linux in general being at a low level, just like in many other countries. While Kylin is available and stable, it's premature to conclude that it has great popularity in China. With this restriction presumably also applying to using Windows as an OS, that might change soon. However, this restriction only applies to Chinese government, so we'll see whether that extends to the populace at large at some point.

Apple sues iPhone CPU design ace after he quits to run data-center chip upstart Nuvia

That would be nice. I wonder, however, if they're talking about other, more enforceable contracts. Two that come to mind are proprietary information protection contracts, if he is using any of the plans he developed while there, and a general employment contract, if they can argue he used company property or spent time at work acting against the interests of the company. The latter might sound like a noncompete, but it's a little different in that it only applies to what you do while ostensibly performing your job. I don't know if they're trying to argue on one of those bases because I haven't bothered reading the linked documents and the article described the situation but didn't go into detail on the arguments. Even if they do, they may have trouble enforcing that, especially if their data capture was from non-corporate devices (and if that's the case, let them fail badly).

Apple tipped to go full wireless by 2021, and you're all still grumbling about a headphone jack

If you're getting frequent disconnects, my guess is that either you are near a source of bad interference, such as a power line, or one or both the devices have an old bluetooth chip that doesn't support newer versions of the spec. The improvement in bluetooth over the past decade has been surprising and admirable. Not that it's perfect now, but for many use cases, it is pretty good. Only your use case will decide whether you can, or would want to, use only wireless audio devices.

FTC kicks feet through ash pile that once was Cambridge Analytica with belated verdict

Re: Yet another demonstration of the importance of Active Defense.

Why do you find that less than convincing? It would have gone like this:

Prosecutor: In conclusion, this is the evidence against the defendant, and it clearly proves their guilt.

Judge: Defendant, you may now contest any of the points raised against you to disprove them, place them in context, or explain to the jury [replace with judge if not a jury trial] why the evidence does not prove you guilty.

Defendant: Doesn't bother explaining anything because they didn't show up.

Jury: Looks at evidence proving guilt, decides "guilty".

They had a chance to appear and disprove the evidence. They chose not to take it. Unless the prosecution's evidence was completely lacking, and it wasn't, it's little surprise the decision went the way it did.

Consequences?

So, logically this would mean the people committing these crimes would be indicted with some fraud charges and a few other things, and an extradition request would be on the way? No? Oh. So some of this is on the U.K. government then? So the U.K. would be arresting them and charging them in local court? Not quite? So it's a civil penalty? The people will be sued and, if found guilty, they'll have to pay some fines? Not that either, really? Well they'd at least be prevented from running another company or at least required to submit extra oversight documentation that is required to be checked frequently? Wrong again, am I?

Advertisers want exemption from web privacy rules that, you know, enforce privacy

It's not our responsibility to fix the business model of places. If we think they are violating our rights, we can take them to task for it. If we think they are doing something that we don't want to be legal, we can change the law to make it illegal. It does not matter if their refusal to do something we're willing to accept causes problems for them.

There are plenty of ways to make money online without resorting to data harvesting with dubious levels of user consent. The simplest though not the most effective is to put up a page asking for money. You can step this up by making that page nonoptional if you want to use the site. Or you can run ads that are about the content being shown or from advertisers willing to send out their message without knowing everything there is to know about the readers. Or there is that coin-mining code, although that may be detected as malware. Or trying to get your readers to buy something else once they're attracted enough to you. All of these have been tried, and all work.

Nokia 2.3: HMD flings out €109 budget 'droid with a 2-day battery

While USB type C is newer and gaining in popularity, I've seen plenty of things sold in 2019 which still use the micro USB connection. Orientation has never been particularly important to me, and I have a wonderfully large collection of micro USB cables, so it's not very important to me which of those two ports they choose to use. In fact, if I was pressed to make a choice, I might have to go with micro USB only because there are a few different types of USB type C cables that can't easily be told apart from a look at the connectors.

Apple: Mysterious iPhone 11 location pings were because of 'ultra-wideband compliance'

I had assumed that anyone living so close to a border would have worries about the financial problems with jumping from one country's provider to another, and would have disabled their roaming or at least customized it not to roam to the nearby provider. Therefore, the provider actually giving service to their device would be the one from their country and that information could be used to determine what restrictions there are on UWB usage. Perhaps that was an overeager assumption, but I'm still not sure how much precision Apple needs for determining available UWB settings.

Re: In other news

Every large company will be sued by lots of people. Some with real concerns for which the company should (but probably won't) pay through the nose. Some with concerns that are valid but rather minor. Some with concerns that were valid but everybody's forgotten about them and they no longer exist. And some from people who want money, have identified a possible source, and are willing to try anything they can think of to get some because their time must be really cheap. I think you'll find that with many companies, and unless a specific case looks very damning or the company can't handle it, don't expect that to affect the stock price very much.

The regulation document linked seems to imply that most of these regulations occur at a per-country level. A database of country name and a set of parameters would take up fifty kilobytes if using a verbose XML format, and in a compressed format would fit nicely into this comments box. I only read a bit of the document, so it's possible there are other places, such as military bases or communications testing labs, near which UWB isn't allowed. Even given that possibility, a list of coordinates and distance ranges would be really small.

If the issue is only what country the device is located in, however, that information is likely available from the mobile network without requesting location data from the towers. While there is some possibility that someone is very close to the border with another country and their network thinks they're in another one, that strikes me as somewhat unlikely.

Windows 10 Insiders: Begone, foul Store version of Notepad!

Re: Ok, now

I'd like it to do neither. Just tell me that python isn't there, and I can either find it and put it in the path or go to download it myself. An OS doesn't need to try and guess what I want every time I enter something it doesn't understand, and if it does want to, a Ubuntu-style "You might have wanted one of these commands and if you did here are the packages you'll have to install" is better than deciding I meant one specific thing and taking me straight to the install process for that thing.

Notepad++ has made a few changes recently that I have to find and change back, but it's still the editor that best manages to act as a normal editor when you want that and have many extra features when those are useful. Many other editors I've used either lack the ability to do more advanced things with the text or try to show you every one of their options when all you want to do is type. There are other good editors, but notepad++ is one of my favorites.

Now does anyone know why my installation stopped keeping temp files around when. you closed it and no longer has keyboard shortcuts on any yes/no message box? I'm sure the first one is a setting I haven't found, and it's honestly not a big issue at the moment, but it's a little annoying.

Google ex-employees demand retribution for Thanksgiving massacre

Re: 'if you see something that you think isn’t right — speak up!’ And we did'

Good point. However, I think most types of unethical or illegal conduct would be difficult to explain without making it clear who you are. Fortunately, I have never had to report such conduct. I hope I don't find any in the future either.

That is true. We should go with what we know, and honestly state when we don't know something. In this case, we know the following:

1. The people concerned were definitely trying to organize other employees for collective action, and Google didn't like it.

2. The people concerned definitely put alerts on others' calendars. We know this because both sides admit it. The people doing that didn't claim they hadn't done it; they claimed that it was acceptable.

We don't know the following:

3. We don't know if the people concerned actually leaked information about the people whose calendars they accessed. Google says they did, they said they didn't. At most one of them can be right.

4. We don't know what Google's real reason for firing these people was. It's possible it had nothing to do with the spying and that's just the publicly-announced reason. It's also possible that Google did consider that the primary reason.

Given this, we can still express opinions and be justified in doing so about items one and two. These points are not contested. It's when we get further down the list that assumptions creep in. So far, I think most discussions are about those points we know to be true.

But frequently used in major corporate documents and cited as the corporate motto by executives of that corporate. Which is effectively what you need for something to be your corporate motto. It's clear, however, that the changing of that motto occurred years after any attempt to stick to it had been abandoned.

Mozilla locks nosy Avast, AVG extensions out of Firefox store amid row over web privacy

In that case, Avast is Czech, not American. Either way you go, it's a generalization on countries that doesn't work for the scenario.

Larry leaves, Sergey splits: Google lads hand over Alphabet reins to Sundar Pichai

I remember a science fiction short story I read in the early-to-mid 2000s where the world was set upon by a bunch of disasters and the main surviving connection was between bunches of datacenters with working backup comms and power. Google was one of the primary sources for information, connection, and community while the world got back on its feet, and I found that reasonable characterization for the scenario (at the time). I don't know if I've ever had my opinions of another company, person, or concept change so radically. Nostalgia's fun sometimes, isn't it?

Update: I found the story I was talking about.

Buy Amazon's tiny $99 keyboard so you can make terrible AI music for all your friends

The piano sound effect they used was surprisingly bad. The accompaniment didn't fully match the piano notes all the way through, and you know they picked the best example they could find. Let's see whether they release any more examples when people don't start buying these.

Re: Oh well

I wouldn't recommend this. First, this is more expensive than a larger keyboard with relatively few features. The cheap ones with 49 keys (four full octaves) will undercut this price quite a bit. The main reason, however, is that every keyboard I've seen with fewer than 49 keys has also taken the liberty of shrinking the keys so they're no longer the size of piano keys. That is bad because smaller keys will wreck the muscle memory that can be key to advanced fingering techniques. Using keys that will be of the standard size as any other piano, keyboard, organ, or harpsichord means that it will be easier to play more complex pieces later on. If you'd like to introduce people to piano playing, check for the basic midi keyboards for as cheap as is available; they'll probably well outstrip this.

Internet Society CEO: Most people don't care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it

Re: I was under the assumption

I'm not a lawyer, so take this with the possibility that I could be incorrect, but I believe U.S. law mostly draws the line at end goals, but does not interfere very much with the means. Therefore, if a supposedly nonprofit organization decides to sell something they manage, but they use the proceeds for something allowed under nonprofit legislation and the organization's charter, then it's acceptable. If they just did it to increase salaries until the accounts are empty, that would put their position in check. Either way, by the time someone finds out if consequences can happen to these people, the damage will have been done to .org. If we are to prevent it, we will need to focus on legal challenges, and in my opinion ICANN is the most likely successful target for that at the moment.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

Sure, but someone will always accuse something of bias if it says something they disagree with. Even if no opinions are stated at all, which isn't really possible to obtain, bias can exist or be alleged to exist just in which facts are stated. I don't think you can find me a news outlet without many accusations of bias, unless nobody's reading it.

Given that, you have three logical approaches to try to deal with bias:

1. Read everything from everybody and work out the bias yourself. It's excellent if you have great mechanisms for dealing with incorrect statements or far too much opinion and have enough time to read everything.

2. Try to minimize the reports of bias per reader in the hopes that the thing people complain about least will be the most honest. However, I bet the ones you find are those things so ridiculously biased that nobody who doesn't already agree bothers reading it.

3. Try to balance the reports of bias so you can stick to outlets that are likely to be near the middle. Similar to the first option, you have to work out the bias yourself and decide where your filters lie, but you can do that in less time. Even with that, it's best to have at least a few media organizations rather than one.

For the record, I'm not in the U.K. and can't comment with much precision on the bias or lack thereof of the BBC. All my comments are meant generally.

We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer

Re: Beer...

I think you have a point, but it doesn't get to the point of your extreme or the one you responded to. The mistake wasn't really the manager's responsibility, unless the manager decided the person should admin without assistance despite knowing or being told that the person would not be capable. In this case as stated in the article, the manager put the senior admin in control and trusted them, and unless the manager had a reason to believe the senior admin would not be capable of preventing the junior admin from messing up, the manager acted correctly when setting up those roles. When it later broke, the manager didn't have any reason to think that was at all likely.

Simultaneously, it wasn't a selfish move by the manager to save the employees. True, it would have caused problems for him if the team lost one of its members, but most teams would have problems if they lose one of their members, even the most annoying or useless one, because now there's one fewer person to do the work and a replacement probably needs hiring*. The manager didn't give out the name because the problem was not worthy of firing someone who, seemingly, made an honest mistake and didn't get caught in time by the person who was in a position to do that. A manager is not automatically responsible for anything and everything that happens below them on the organizational chart, but neither are they free to let subordinates take consequences they don't deserve because someone said so.

A good manager makes the decision about what happens to their subordinates based on facts, not the demands or unsubstantiated statements of someone else. That means a manager will keep someone even if somebody doesn't like them, and may fire the person who doesn't do very much work even though some clients might like them.

*Unless the most annoying member of the team is someone who doesn't do any work, in which case everybody's happy when they go.

From July, you better be Putin these Kremlin-approved apps on gadgets sold in Russia

Re: I know this is article just part of the anti Russia propaganda

Clearly, my attempt at an example failed. I'll try again, attempting to be more concise this time.

Whataboutism is a cheap way of not answering a question by bringing up some other topic. It is likely that the other topic is worth discussing, but it's only brought up in order to throw discussion off the original question. As an arguing tactic, it's on par with an interviewee who simply refuses to listen to a question and starts talking about something irrelevant, but it's a more subtle version and thus is more often accepted.

In this case, the comment that got us into this was about western surveillance systems. That's worthy of discussion, and I think we all pretty much agree on our opinions towards it. But nothing specific was mentioned about the systems that connected to the topic under discussion. Instead of talking about the original topic of Russia's new law, or making an effort to compare it to a western system with which there are similarities, the issue of western surveillance was just dropped into the thread. I don't think it was done intentionally to distract us from Russia; I think it was just a comment that didn't include enough context on why it was important, but the effect is to send the discussion off course.

Re: This will start another black market

Telecom providers can only go so far, namely Android phones that they sell. They can't do anything about iPhones because Apple doesn't allow them (now), and they can't do anything about phones bought through other mechanisms, while the law still cares. I'm also sure that computers will be included in the class of devices, and those don't get sold by providers. So manufacturers will have to get involved, and probably retailers as well. I would like for there to be some type of protest by the citizens or the companies, but I don't expect it to happen. But please, please prove me wrong.

Re: I know this is article just part of the anti Russia propaganda

Not really. Whataboutism is a cheap arguing tactic that makes one bad thing outweigh any other bad thing committed by the other side. Consider this example using a political campaign:

Side A: A member of the team, let's call him Bob, is caught taking bribes. That member is fired, but it raises an entirely logical question about why that person wasn't caught earlier and what they might have done.

Side B: Makes these logical arguments, making people turn against side A.

Side B: Someone's caught stealing money. They deflect questions with "What about Bob?".

Side B: Suggests very unpopular idea. Questions deflected with "What about Bob?".

Side B: Well, it's not technically bribery, but a lot of money went in one side and a preferential decision came out the other side. "What about Bob?".

Side A: Has completed investigation into Bob's crimes, proven that this was the first time, and Bob's actions had no chance to have an effect. They think their troubles are over.

Side B: Their candidate seems to have committed fraud a few years ago. "You know, our opposition just released a report on that guy they had taking bribes."

Side B: Their candidate proposes warrantless access to all communications information at all levels. "Sure, there are questions about how to implement this, but what there isn't a question about is that bribery is wrong. Now, this guy Bob..."

Bob, not connected to side A anymore: Is given a fine for committing illegal activity.

Side B: A major supporter of the campaign has been in a complex conflict of interest situation and has thereby gotten millions in dirty money. "They're being investigated, but innocent until proven guilty and all that. Now about this fine that was recently given to Bob..."

And so on. The reality is that Side B may be much worse than Side A, but the discussion is all about side A because their one incident keeps being brought up. The problem with whataboutism isn't that it's bringing up the original problem, as that deserves discussion. The problem is that all the other things deserve discussion as well, and the issue that may be old and unimportant at that point is preventing that from happening.

In this case, the new event is Russia's law, which is really bad. Nobody here fully supports the surveillance systems put in place by western governments. But two factors are at play right now. The first is that Russia's law is quite a bit stronger than anything the NSA or GCHQ have managed to get through. The second is that the discussion about the thing that actually happened is being derailed to talk about the things that are already well established or things that don't at the moment exist.

T-Mobile US hacked, Monero wallet app infected, public info records on 1.2bn people leak from database...

Re: "All three strains of the spyware slipped into the [..] store before being spotted and removed"

I don't disagree with the original sentiment, but I bet it won't go over well because you're leaving out the other side of the coin. Every time a tech person does prevent a problem, nobody knows. Every time a user's action could lose them their files but something the IT department put in place prevents the loss, people continue on. But every time files are lost, whether the IT department could have done anything about it, they get the blame. Think of it this way: if a plumber does work well on your pipes, you won't need to call them in a while. But when your pipes break, you don't immediately blame the plumber; you just call them to come fix it. IT doesn't get that level of respect most of the time.

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

Re: We used to use paper for communication

There are many arguments, some good and some bad, about how much the social media companies are publishers and how much they're simply a place that permits communications. Having that debate is fun and interesting. That is, it's fun and interesting when the thing we're talking about publishing is user content. However, when we're talking about advertisements, the balance is tipped heavily in favor of "publisher". The companies have total control over what is said in an ad and who sees it. They get to approve or reject ads if they please. I seriously doubt that Facebook would allow an ad describing Facebook's ills and detailing ways to avoid it. While they're doing that, it's pretty hard to describe them as anything but a publisher.