Posts by doublelayer

Decentralized IPFS networks forming the 'hotbed of phishing'

Re: safeguards?

It doesn't use HTTP underneath. It's its own protocol. Port assignments are probably random; I don't think they have any assigned port, though they may customarily use a small set of them. You could block all ipfs: URIs, but that would only work for programs that have native IPFS support, and doing so may be difficult depending on the functionality in your firewall.

These links appear to be using an HTTP client which retrieves the content over IPFS and displays it in a browser, so you'd have to block the commonly-used gateways to prevent it.

BT accused of 'misinformation' campaign ahead of strikes

Re: That claim that it's 8% for their lowest paid workers...

That's true, but the executive compensation won't really get there. According to the article, the CEO received a £775k raise and the CFO a £440k one. If we took those both away and divided it among the 39000 workers that participated in the vote, that would give us £31.15 per worker. If we divided that among the 58000 people who received the initial raise, that would be £20.95. I get the optics on this, but the money for larger raises would take a lot more than just cutting the executive's compensation. If they refused a raise, the difference to the workers would only have been cosmetic.

BT does have profits to dip into. I'm not going to defend their use of them, as I both don't care about them and would like workers not to suffer. I have to point out though that, depending on their business, they might need those for other purposes. If they have large capital investments to make, as network companies often do, their profit might vary a lot. If they have a lot of investors expecting profit to grow, putting a big dent in it might result in those investors changing the company to one with an even more severe cost-cutting system. There are always tradeoffs. For all I know, they weren't important in this case and the company could have done what they're being asked.

Chinese booster rocket tumbles back to Earth: 'Non-zero' chance of hitting populated area

Re: To quote Tom Lehrer

It seemed unlikely to me that you could make a good case for defamation on the lyrics, especially in the U.S. where both men were living, so I looked for details on the case. Lehrer denies it. Several articles call it a false rumor. I'm not finding a single source that has any proof about it. I'm afraid you may have been given unreliable information.

Meta proposes doing away with leap seconds

Re: In space, no-one can hear your alarm...

At that point, we will have a lot more things we have to do. My guess: you'll have a universal time counter, which may still be UTC but in any case it will work the same. Each planet will have its own seasonal calendar for things that are climate dependent. Anything without climate (E.G. closed space stations) will use the most common calendar, probably Earth's. Weekdays will be aligned. Planets that don't have a 24-hour sun cycle will have very annoyed inhabitants until we can figure out how to make our brains deal with the unbalanced sleep cycles. Of these predictions, the last is likely to cause the most problems, and is independent of what the clocks say. I think that, by the time we have working travel to these planets where the people can survive long-term, we'll have a better method of measuring time and keeping it coordinated across planets.

Re: Do we need leap seconds?

"Our months don't coincide with the phases of the moon, so why should our year coincide with the Earth's orbit around the Sun."

Because the sun controls the climate, and it's kind of useful to have data about times of year that don't change. We currently can look at climate data and know that July is a summer month in the northern hemisphere and a winter month in the southern, so we can add new data to an average for that month and have useful numbers. If we eventually have to calculate that July is now a spring month in the northern hemisphere but it used to be a summer one, so the data for this July should be averaged with the old data from May, at least until July 7th when we should start averaging it into the data for old June, that would be a bit annoying. Similarly for things that are scheduled in the year. If you want to have a scheduled summer holiday, it would be complicated to keep moving it as the calendar slid the months into times you didn't like.

We don't need to do that with the moon because the moon's control over conditions here is lower. Full moon versus new moon is, for most people, not really important. Those who do care about that can use calendars based on it, or more often have lunar information written on their calendars. If it was doing things everyone cared about, like the sun is, we'd probably still be using it with ours.

Re: Do we need leap seconds?

"And while we are at it, drop time zones and use CET everywhere. So what if school starts at 03:00 in some countries and at 17:00 in other countries?"

Well, it makes scheduling things harder. When you go to another country, you can calculate in your head to figure out when people normally wake up or eat lunch, instead of using the same numbers. If you want to describe how you were called at the middle of the night to an international audience, you can just say "I got a call at 20:30" and let them figure out where you probably were at the time. Not to mention that, for those fortunate enough to be in Europe or Africa, you get to be asleep when the days change, whereas those on other continents switch from Tuesday to Wednesday while they're in normal daylight hours. We have reasons to describe the time relative to a day, and the sun's out at different times for different places. Time zones work pretty well for that.

"So how many other software systems have fallen over on DST changes? Remember Windows 95 doing that?"

Although in this case, I think eliminating DST might work as a solution. Leap seconds are kind of annoying in the same way that leap year rules are; if we could ignore them, that would be convenient, but if we did, things would start getting a little messed up and we'd spend more time calculating for it than we did just designing the system to handle it.

Apple-1 prototype hand-soldered by Woz up for auction, bids expected to reach $500k

Re: I am the despair of the antique auction trade

"So I guess you're not interested in the second Antikythera mechanism I just found that I'm willing to sell you for $100, since like the first it is all rusted up and doesn't work?"

Other than for me to sell it instead of you and get the profit, no, not interested at all. I don't see much value in having a chunk of rusty metal sitting in my house. I'd consider buying a working Antikythera mechanism as a curiosity, but not for the price it would actually cost to build one. It's only about functional or artistic value to me, and although it has historical value, my stuff isn't a museum collection. In fact, when something has historical value, I want it less because having it makes it unavailable to a museum which can use it properly. I would score low on a sentimentality index.

T-Mobile US to cough up $550m after info stolen on 77m customers

Re: Maybe too common-sense an approach here, but...

I think some of that is for credit checks, because instead of asking people to pay for service and them deliver it, they want to play games by lending people a locked phone until they've paid it off. I'm not sure if you can easily sell a phone locked to a provider that the provider probably has all the details for, but since someone could try to take that before paying for it, the company collects data to see if they're likely to be able to pay. It could be done a lot more simply, but that's my guess as to the excuse they'd provide for having it.

I think the US still allows people to have a phone contract anonymously, but another reason could be registration of numbers. I know some countries are significantly stricter about having each phone number (and probably device too) associated with a verified person. Possibly they collect that data even if not required to in case such a restriction is added. Similar to the last one, I dislike this approach if it turns out to be their reasoning, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear them say it.

Cheap cellular data list is out: And US doesn't make top 200

Re: Poor basis for comparison.

"And yet, the US is in 202nd place."

That's what the exchange rate would imply, if that was an important factor. If the US plan cost $100 and the UK plan cost £70 last year, the report that year would have rated them as costing the same. If neither price changed, the US plan would still cost $100, but the UK plan would now cost $84.35. The UK's price would have decreased (using straight currency conversions), and therefore they'd look cheaper.

While this is true, it's not the largest factor behind the US having terrible prices. If they're just using exchange rates, it's not really helping the US's prices either.

Re: How??

"How can they compare packages that are, in effect, "infinite data" and for which, in theory, the per GB price is approaching zero?"

I haven't read their report yet, but I'd probably see if those packages eventually throttle speeds or give the provider the right to do so. That's been used in some countries and puts a flexible cap on some plans. Since they were focused on the median, they could have considered those that were really unlimited as infinitely cheap and pulled the median downward, but not to the extent that it made the median zero.

This credit card-sized PC board can use an Intel Core i7

Re: As a raspberry pi alternative…

I suppose that depends on your use case for the Pi. It's certainly going to use more power, but still below desktop-level power. If the Pi doesn't run fast enough for what you're doing, this might be useful. Since the Pi's power usage already basically prevents it working well with a battery (unless you want to carry around a battery that's a lot bigger and heavier than the computer it's powering), the likely setup for powering the boards will look similar. If speed is important, an extra 10-20 watts might be acceptable to users.

Re: Is this one of those machines...

I think the manufacturers of those often like to take all the parts from a board like this and solder them to a board of their own making so that, when something fails, you can't fix it without getting a replacement from them. The hardware's likely the same though, and since Raspberry Pis became so popular with signage companies, maybe it will end up being more common than I predicted.

My smartphone has wiped my microSD card again: Is it a conspiracy?

Re: About a billion web pages have been authored to help

Well corrected. I didn't consider that since the limited capabilities mean that it's rarely done, but it's still supported. I'd like to edit my sentence from "can't write to it" to "doesn't write to it in almost all cases".

Re: About a billion web pages have been authored to help

"Possibly, but I suspect unlikely. When did you last have a SIM card fail?"

I don't think that's as likely. Even though the contacts are similar, a SIM has very little data on it. A phone can read that when it first becomes available during boot, store the kilobyte at most it needs in memory, and never go back to it until the next boot. Nothing would happen if the card subsequently becomes unavailable, and since the phone can't write to it, there's no chance of a hardware problem during one of those. An SD card can both be read and written and does so periodically while the phone is on, so it has more chances to have a disconnect when needed. Combine that with poor handling in software and it could be part of the problem.

As I recall, it was an eMMC, so it didn't even have the advantage of being removable. At least if it was an SD card, a repair wouldn't require ripping out the single point of failure, sorry I meant car systems console. Still, they could have put two flash chips in there: one to store the system files that only gets rewritten with an update, and one for writing lots of stuff to. That way, if the one they're repeatedly writing fails, which is basically guaranteed), at least the system will still work for the safety equipment they chose to run through it.

My Big Coin founder is – you guessed it – a $6m crypto-fraudster

Re: Crypto currency - Eh?

As popular as your argument seems to be, you could use that to argue against basically every investment. Every time you turn cash into a paper commodity, you're getting "an IOU". If you buy a share of stock, you're getting a statement from a company that you own something, and that will become worthless if the company becomes bankrupt. If you buy a bond, it's basically the same except you're expecting money returned instead of owning something to resell. If you put it in a bank, you're getting a promise that it should be there possibly with interest when you come back. If you buy an option or other derivative, it's even more complex with more people involved. If you trade it for an international currency, you're trusting the government of that country not to crash it. If you buy gold, you're trusting that people will still want gold when you want to sell it (and with gold your chances are high, but other valuable commodities have become a lot cheaper and wouldn't have done so well). In each case, you've chosen to give some cash to someone else in the hopes of having more cash later, and you are trusting the processes that implement the security not to wipe out your investment.

You may well argue at this point that all those things are better than cryptocurrency, and in many ways you'd be absolutely right. However, the way you characterized cryptocurrency applies to a lot of other things, and I'm guessing you have put your cash into several of them already. If you want a reason not to like cryptocurrencies, there are hundreds to choose from. That wasn't it.

Re: "Is that illegal?"

The laws around what kind of information means you shouldn't trade and what things are covered are long and complex, and as a bonus, every country does it differently. However, whether you consider cryptocurrencies to have worth or not, there are people who buy and sell them with real money, thus there is a market and the possibility of insider trading. The defendants' lawyers can argue that cryptocurrency isn't included in the laws on trading if that's the case, but prosecutors usually check that before they file charges. I should note that securities aren't the only thing where there are prohibitions on insider trading. Commodities are covered by other such laws in many places.

I've been fired, says engineer who claimed Google chatbot was sentient

"whenever I type something into Google 99% of the time it comes up with EXACTLY what I was thinking about! How do you explain that then!"

Oh, that's easy. One of two options is true: 1) you only do relatively basic searches and things Google's parser already got manually written to handle or 2) you're magic. For the rest of us, if we're looking for something more obscure, it doesn't always work with a generic search term and it requires tailoring the query to get useful results.

Also, were you under the impression that Google search uses this chatbot to interpret search queries? If you were, that's wrong. Their search algorithm is a lot longer and contains more rules.

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

Re: “US tech companies are saying, …

I think, based on the averages, that's a fully loaded cost for the employee. Depending on the company, that might not only include benefits above the salary, but taxes paid by the company, office space or equipment for the employee, time to manage the employee, and other costs they think will grow by hiring another person. That said, if you have skills that are wanted and others don't, some companies do have a lot of money they don't mind throwing at someone who can solve their problems quickly. That average certainly gets pulled upward (and downward) by some outliers.

After 40 years in tech, I see every innovation contains its dark opposite

"You are moving across country based on nothing more than the correct house?"

That's not what they said. They are moving across the country and they are looking for the correct house, no causation. This means they're almost certainly not moving for the sake of moving, as they appear to already have a location they're going. Whatever reason they have for going there doesn't really matter. Maybe they're hoping to see something they like available now so they can buy it more quickly. Once they do, they can have a place to move into right away. If they didn't do that, they'd have to move out to a short-term location and shop around in an even more rushed way. They could see a lot more places in person, but if they can filter out many with pictures, they're saving time and avoiding the chaos of moving twice.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone who sees that, goes for the in person tour planning to buy right away, and finds out the reality gets very annoyed at whoever created those images. Unlike with the real picture that happens not to include the important thing, adding completely fake things is outright lying to the customer which they don't tend to like. I'd imagine that uses that blatant will earn the realtors a lot of wasted time and they'll stick to more subtle methods.

Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

For one thing, this guy did not write the article. The names are different. They're different people.

However, their points are not contradictory. The freedom and accessibility offered by the internet doesn't mean that I should read everything, and one of the things that makes the internet so valuable is that I can quickly find resources that are relevant to my interests. I do not have to go through every site in existence to find those talking about what I want to read about, and the same policy can hold in a library. The attitude that was lamented would be analogous to arguing that books I don't like shouldn't appear in the library at all, but Liam didn't say that. A feature that makes it easier to find what you want can be useful if there is a lot out there you don't want.

You can liquid cool this Linux laptop to let the GPU soar

This machine can take desktop-class CPUs and GPUs. This would enable it to have similar speeds as a desktop when it's attached, probably, and it keeps running if portability is required. Sure, not everyone needs that. Many could deal with a desktop that doesn't have any portability support. Many others just don't need that kind of computing at all. However, if you do want that kind of speed and portability in one package, how else are you going to do it? The only alternative I can see is making the laptop even bigger to add more air flow, but I'm not sure how much that would help.

North Koreans spotted harassing SMBs with malware

Re: Fix

Well, it didn't serve you well this time. In fact, the only OS they mentioned having malware on it was Linux. And it wasn't a security hole in Linux, in case you were going to change the target. In that case as in many of the Windows malware cases, the vulnerability was in the users, administrators, and configs created by both which allow software to do things it's allowed to do but not desired by the users. Perfect security is impossible.

Being declared dead is automated, so why is resurrection such a nightmare?

Re: RE: HM QE II

I don't think a governmental structure whose legitimacy is "I own this country because my dad did before me" was considering justice very much. In the case of the UK, since it's probably never been abused in modern history and for almost everyone has been superseded by democratic structures, this can remain a curiosity. In countries where it's actively in use, it is exactly the unfair structure you imagine.

I know dealing with the death of a loved one is a terrible process, and I sympathize with what you're going through. However, that doesn't stop those who have been incorrectly declared dead from having a different bad experience, which was the author's point. Short of the economic and medical problems listed, it is also a frustrating process that seems extremely illogical and therefore probably leads to lots of annoyance and wry humor while solving it. I don't see why identifying and discussing this problem should earn the disapproval you have expressed.

Thousands of websites run buggy WordPress plugin that allows complete takeover

Because hiring a competent web developer is expensive, and most users just want "a simple website". Just some static text and a few forms that are more complex than they think they are. I am not a web developer, and I never will be one, but I still can't count the number of times someone has asked me to write a form for their website without thinking it through. For some reason, to the nontechnical mind, a form is as complex as its frontend. They often say things like "How hard can it be to have an order form: you just collect a list of items, an address, and a credit card number, and you can use PayPal for that last one".

They don't want to call a web developer every time they want to add some static page, and they don't really want to pay a team to develop a CMS for them. This leaves them with a set of existing CMS options, and they all end up having similar levels of difficulty and similar security problems. That is, the central systems will probably end up being generally acceptable, but they won't do much except for plain pages, so the users will start pulling in plugins to make the design more appealing and the pages needing active content function better. Now they have many chances for disaster.

Re: Built In

If the editing doesn't happen on the server, it's likely to happen on a different server unless the editor is implemented as a desktop application that syncs changes (or is being done by hand). If it's just another server, the attacker only has to find that one. Access control means a lot of web hosting systems or companies would probably go with the simplest option, even if it is easier to attack. Most WP plugins aren't really about editing; they're ways to implement behaviors that would ordinarily require writing code. Tons of them are for processing form input of some kind, sometimes including a page for users to check on the results. Those are going to need to run backend code on the webserver, and if storing anything, write access as well. You can implement that correctly, but with thousands of options, it's virtually guaranteed that there will be some who won't.

You would probably say, and I would entirely agree, that it's better to write that with a competent developer instead of finding someone's plugin to do the job. Unfortunately, there are too many people who have a website but not a developer or the means and/or interest to hire one, so that's not going to catch on as it should.

Dev's code manages to topple Microsoft's mighty SharePoint

Re: Exchange

Depending on what's being organized, that makes sense. First, it puts the subfolders into a sorted order even if the labels are not in alphabetical order. Sometimes this is unnecessary. Sometimes it is desired. Second, it allows people to be sent to a place with a numbered key, not a full path. With text labels after the numbers, it retains the ability for them to find things if they don't have a numbered key. I don't do it, but I can see some reasons why others could want to and get benefits from doing so.

Amazon gave Ring video to cops without consent or warrant 11 times so far in 2022

Re: Depends

You need to learn how warrants work before you start asking such questions. To start you off, the answer to your question is no, and there's a difference between a search warrant, an arrest warrant, and permission to go into a building. Some need court orders. Some don't. In some cases, what would ordinarily need a court order can be done in a different way. Failing to follow some procedures results in consequences when presenting evidence at a trial. These are things you might want to read about in more detail. Laws are very different by country, and textbooks are written to describe all of it.

Some scope information would be useful

The 11 occasions is not a number I expected; I wouldn't have been surprised to see a number in the thousands. However, it could still mean a number of things, and I would like it if Amazon clarified which of these it is:

1. 11 times that a user wanted to send footage from a camera to police but needed Amazon's help to do it.

2. 11 times Amazon provided access to a camera without the user's approval on receiving some kind of legal documentation (in which case what kind).

3. 11 times that Amazon provided footage from a camera without really asking any questions, and it could have been thousands except the police aren't well aware yet.

4. 11 times Amazon provided access to a bunch of cameras at once, and it could have been thousands etc.

5. 11 times Amazon provided access to a lot of cameras, and it could have been thousands, and those places still have ongoing access along with however many people got it last year.

6. 11 times someone filled out the form to log a completed access request, but the form takes two hours to complete, isn't checked, and isn't required after granting access.

Re: Depends

Yes, or at least it should be, but that's where they start using other things. For example, the other tenet that if the owner consents, they don't need approval. If they can say that Amazon's the owner and Amazon consents whenever they get a message, they can use that to avoid going to a judge. This leads to the overreach you correctly predicted.

Re: One up on Stalin

The article says it's the range for the microphone. For a camera or motion sensor, you're right, but although microphones that can cover those distances are common, they're not necessary in this device and are not always present (although microphone sensitivity is not measured purely in distance, so I'm not sure what measurement they were actually using).

Weird Flex, but OK: Now you can officially turn these PCs, Macs into Chromebooks

"Yeah, it's a Mac Mini Server, so it's rocking a chunky i7 with 16GB of RAM on an SSD, but it's 10 year old hardware and ran fine."

I challenge you to find some OS that doesn't work fine on that. A decade-old I7 is still pretty good, and the other specs are exactly what you need. If it agrees to install on the machine, it will probably work fine. Sure, neither modern Mac OS (after 10.15) nor Windows 11 have installers that agree to install it, but if you bypass those restrictions, it will still run fine. Unless it breaks, that system has years of life ahead.

Re: Specs

You don't need it for a lightweight Linux distro, but since everything in Chrome OS runs through Chrome, you will need it. When you implement lots of system behavior in JS and keep several sandboxes around because there's no real privilege system going on, it uses up memory a lot more than a normal system would. 4 GB of RAM is enough for basically every operating system, including Windows 10 or 11. To earn the label, a lightweight system should be able to run in significantly less.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

Some of that is true, but I don't think they have to port all their products to Linux in order to support open source. You also draw different conclusions than I do about some of these.

- Visual Studio (any version) still doesn't run under Linux, Microsoft would prefer developers develop using a Windows box.

Visual Studio Code does run on Linux. I don't use it there, possibly just because I got used to a Linux workflow before that existed and I haven't bothered with new habits, but they wrote an IDE that runs on Linux just as well as on other things. It's not the same as their older one, but it is there, does work, and was written by them.

- Linux for Windows subsystem, another attempt to provide a way for developers and dev ops to stay on Windows if they need access to some Linux commands or features.

Yes. Isn't that kind of useful if you are using Windows? That doesn't stop you going to Linux, and if you're not familiar with it, it makes learning about it, the first step of switching to it, easier. I don't think they have to act to kill Windows to support open source.

- PowerShell for Linux, another attempt to keep folks on Windows. It's fairly useless in a pure non-Windows environment. What it is good for is giving Windows dev ops and administrators a familiar _Windows_ environment to use when working on and with Linux servers.

Which helps Linux, because now it's easier to use for people who ordinarily would have just bought another Windows Server license. Also, I don't quite understand why making a scripting system that Windows users are familiar with also work on Linux is harming Linux or even helping Windows; incompatibility wouldn't usually help people switch.

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

Yeah, they did port many of them. Not that you'd necessarily want to use them, but if you want to run Teams on Linux, it's there. If you want to run Office365 on Linux, it works. If you want to use their development tools which were formerly Windows-only or at least only supported on Windows with flaky Linux implementations with frequent development lags, they've ported many of those. I choose not to use a lot of the software Microsoft has that runs on Linux, but it is there.

In addition, when they don't port something, that's their decision. There isn't a native Office for Linux. If there was, I wouldn't buy it, and I'm guessing nor would many of you. If the Linux users will predominantly decide that LibreOffice is good enough and that we don't want to run Microsoft Office, maybe it makes sense why Microsoft didn't bother to go to the expense of porting it.

Re: judge it by what it's doing today

"Perhaps this article is asking me to trust Microsoft:"

I doubt it. Don't trust Microsoft any more than you would trust another massive company that does thousands of different things. I think the article is merely speaking against a decades-old stereotype that is no longer very relevant. You can even still hate Microsoft if you want, but for reasons based in what they're currently doing, not things they did in 2002 and haven't been forgotten.

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

"They'll be out there making sure that their software only runs properly on MS Linux. Nothing like a bit of vendor locking to keep the money coming in."

How easy it is to demonize something when you make up all the facts. Your statement about what they'll do requires them to make an OS they haven't got at all and break the multiplatform stuff they do. Despite the fact that they could have done this already and once did: their OS is Windows and they had various things that only ran on it. Had they wanted to enact your lockin proposal, they just had to keep all their applications Windows-only. Yet they ported many of them.

There are lots of things Microsoft actually does that are legitimate points of complaint. Making something up, deciding that they'll definitely do it, and using that to argue against them is a really bad argument.

Crypto lender Celsius in Chapter 11 deep freeze

Re: I am misunderstanding something (please dont shoot)

The deficit is just liabilities minus assets (5.5-4.3 billion). If they liquidated all their assets right now, that's how much stuff they wouldn't be able to pay back. If they were forced into dissolution, that's basically what would happen, with a court and a bunch of lawyers deciding exactly which people weren't getting their money (usually with most groups only getting a fraction of what their owed). Therefore, the assets cannot be liquidated to decrease the deficit. They could be invested with the hope that they'll gain value faster than the debts do, but that's one of the ways they got into the current mess.

As for returning the assets to the users, not exactly. The users have 4.7 billion invested and the company has 4.3 billion to give out. If they used all of it to pay the users, they'd have a 400M shortfall. They also have 800M they have to pay to non-users, and the non-users wouldn't be happy if they got wiped out. They would sue to block that plan in the hopes they get more, and a court would probably uphold the challenge and force a bankruptcy proceeding to properly divide the cash. Who gets paid often relies on contract details. For example, there is a concept of senior and junior debts which determines who gets paid first if there's not enough money for everyone, and some of their loans may have explicitly set that up. Other ones won't, which is why bankruptcy takes a long time.

Re: The forgot a basic rule of banking

You're correct, but I think they were using "money" just to mean "value", as in the creation of money by a bank does not correspond to an increase in value unless someone creates external utility through their spending of it. Since we don't really have a unit for value, money has often been used as the closest blunt measuring tool, and with that modification in terminology, their points are understandable if a bit simplified.

Microsoft tests CD ripping for Media Player in Windows 11

I think the floppy compatibility is already in. After all, they still never allocate A: or B: automatically. They're probably still somewhere in the code since it was a relatively simple set of requirements.

Big Tech bosses call for computer science to be taught in all US schools

Re: The big tech firms leaders are unqualified to pontificate on what's needed in education.

It's a bit ironic that you've misread what the quote you used means:

"seems to me that Edsger Djikstra [...] was arguing for a good grounding in readin', writin', and 'rithmetic [...] as THE basics for good programmers, and nothing else."

No, he said "most vital". Most vital does not mean nothing else. In fact it specifically implies something else, but not quite as important. If he meant nothing else, he would say "only vital", or since this was the most vital after mathematics, perhaps "only other". Proper use of language is very important, but you can't be good at programming just by being good at writing, and I'm sure he knew that.

Re: computer science and math

There's more to good computer science than just the mathematics. Those are very important and improvements to teaching them are welcome, but you need more. In fact, early programming probably requires more non-mathematical skills. Students getting into programming start by writing relatively simple programs. How often, when you're writing a simple program, does it have a lot of complex calculations in it when that's not the point? My guess is that your simple programs look like most others; they use relatively simple code to perform tasks automatically and have a lot more code related to obtaining information or performing actions rather than a data processing algorithm.

That's useful in teaching for a few reasons. The first is that it allows the students to do something usable. For those who aren't already interested in the subject, it's more helpful if you can demonstrate why people write programs rather than giving them the impression that it's just a big calculator. Second, it provides them more useful skills. If someone doesn't go into further study, they would be better off with understanding that allows them to script some commands and process results rather than the knowledge to write an efficient sort, but not get the information to sort. And third, it teaches them a thing which is crucial in programming. A person who can make a perfectly efficient algorithm but doesn't understand how the OS works doesn't write good programs, and they have to either partner with someone who does or learn it.

Teaching that will require slightly different approaches. Instead of building up from the components as suggested later in the comments (for instance starting with boolean logic and how you can change binary values into related ones), you start top down with the structures that already exist (what a file is, how it works, how you can perform operations on it, and eventually how it was implemented). We wouldn't teach woodworking by starting with the tree cell structure, nor would we request that everyone spend a year learning about the different kinds of timber and their uses before they nail together a box.

Start with IT skills

I'm all for introducing students to coding, and I think we have some good ways to do it, but if they think only about writing programs, they'll miss what the true basics are. Before you can write a good program, you have to have some better understanding of the systems you're interacting with, and for those who don't want to write code after all, those skills are very transferable. Students should have more understanding of how the systems they use are running, the ways to modify them, and the risks they bring with them. If we make sure they have a good basis in this, they'll also end up writing better code.

EU court says it can probe M&As even when one party has no European operations

Re: "even if one of the parties has no operations in the EU"

I thought the same. I could see a couple attempts if the thing getting bought doesn't have operations, because then the buyer theoretically wouldn't be changing anything about the European market, but it also implies that they might be expanding those operations into the EU, so there's still cases for regulation. It probably does make it harder to suggest a problem, but I see no reason it should prevent them from having authority.

FTC suddenly gets very stern about not-really-anonymized anonymized data

Re: Excpect the Supreme Court ruling that the FTC can't regulate that...

"The modern equivalent would be private ownership of armed aircraft, carrier groups and nuclear missiles."

Not really. Those are not just the high end of the military's weaponry, but they're significantly more expensive per item than the weapons you're comparing them to. Not to mention that there are people who own armed aircraft and ships, in some cases ships that can launch the aircraft. Fortunately, private ownership of nuclear weapons isn't yet a thing.

In addition to the comparison being flawed from an economic perspective, it's also very limited because it's not how new or rare the device is but instead what its powers are. It's like saying that someone with a mainframe in the 1950s is like someone with a top 500 cluster today; in both cases, they had the most powerful thing available for computing, but what they could and did do with it and the contrast with the average user is very different.

API rate limits at the core of Elon Musk’s decision to ditch Twitter

Correct, but there are other ways to do that. To sell right now means a payoff, but to build a successful company might mean a better return later. It's the board's decision which is best and the shareholders can replace them if they disagree. If the board had continued to repel Musk's offer on the basis that they thought the value could be higher, that would also have complied with their duty.

Global financial stability regulator signals crypto rules are coming soon

Re: How?

They can do various things if they were motivated enough, although I note this was mostly about stablecoins which is not what you were talking about. If they did something as basic as saying that cryptocurrency couldn't be bought or sold by companies under their regulations, that would stop most retail investing. They have many more steps they can take if they want a more drastic change. They don't have to destroy something absolutely, just cause enough problems that it declines.