Posts by Wellyboot 2264 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2018
>>>North Ayrshire council said 97 per cent of parents had given their consent for the new system, although some said they were unsure whether their children had been given enough information to make their decision.<<<
I'd like to see the parental permission slip used for this, did it mention a facial recog system or merely a new system? I'm quite certain it didn't offer any alternative other than not feeding the children.
it is low hanging and was spotted long before the interweb.
Fixing broken logistics chains is standard military planning, in every war the primary strategic targets are supply routes* feeding the enemy front line. DNS is just another target and the front line a bit more ephemeral.
*critical points like factories, bridges, tunnels, rail marshalling yards & ports for the last two hundred years, communications hubs (telephone exchanges) were added a century ago.
'Malicious' doesn't cover things that result in a benefit for mankind :)
I tend to use a 'restart in x mins' command when doing things that will pull the rug out from under you if they go wrong, If that's not normal practise with remote routing changes at FB then this outage was inevitable.
>>>That is, as Keith puts it, "absolute bollocks."<<<
A more succinct description of big techs prevailing attitude to standards on the web is hard to find.
A pure 'web standard'* browser would be a nice thing for any dev to prove basic compatibility before they add the go-faster stripes for use with different userland browsers.
*maintained by the standard bodies, it doesn't have to be fast (just work) - can't be that hard a task.
Using an in your face 'you will pay more' price ticket only encourages me to spend my money elsewhere.
The long established method of having only one price and offering vouchers to loyalty car owners doesn't get up our noses quite so much even if the outcome is the same.
>>>taxes will approach 100%... The ultimate communist dream.<<<
There are no taxes in the communist ideal, everything belongs to the state, you are given what the state decides you need. You 'need' shelter with a little warmth, a change of overalls, and enough water & calorie intake to sustain the work you have been allotted.
SDN requires low level protocols working end-to-end, at the lowest level these are near enough cast in stone because everything has to work together. All the routing protocols were created when bandwidth1, cpu & memory availability was low, expensive and mostly using dedicated circuits to allow QOS & security.
Now that streaming multiple hi-def video feeds using inline encryption on public circuits doesn't squeeze hardware capabilities SDN2 can easily build flexible networks on the fly by automating VPN and routing protocol connections without worrying too much about bringing anything down.
From a security standpoint, there are fewer points of entry for any network offset by the far worse level of compromise achieved should one be breached. Good CIOs these days should be expecting a breach and looking to achieve the shortest elapsed time possible from problem isolation to fix.
1 leased line with just POTS dialup, 2B1D-ISDN very nice, full T1/E1 utter luxury!
2Single vendor unless you really want to learn how many assumptions are being made by different systems (give it a decade or so).
The multi year, over running, massively over budget project to tie these decades old systems together.
As provided by one of the well known incompetent outsourcing crews.
Prediction - project will be announced in the next year for delivery in 2025 with the first cockup story arriving in 2024.
Returning much of America to an early 19thC. subsistance level as the massive reduction1 in spending cascades through the economy bankrupting many businesses followed by their banks2 that can't be bailed out because there's no government system in place to do it3.
What a gift for all the less democratic countries out there.
1 $Trillions
2 Then yet more businesses leading to more banks...
3 Unless a 90% cut in federal taxes wasn't also part of the plan and the remaining federal employees include all the current treasury dept.
There are laws that cover every eventuality already, "Breach of the peace" would work here it covers almost any situation where harm could be inflicted.
There has been a long list of offences added recently, mostly to show something is 'being done' but tbh the ability to gain a fair conviction is more important than the specific name of the offence.
At Uni the lecturer* for database theory was talking about how he set the cost when pitching an ad-hoc (simple-ish) quote during a client meeting - Make an educated guess then if the IT director is present - multiply by 5, if a non-IT director is there - multiply by whatever is need to reach a healthy 5 figure number (1980's).
This is because they've tipped their hand as to how important they rate the issue.
*He was an IBM mainframe DB consultant in between lectures.
What's stopping the police simply asking* for the list of account contacts? FB already use in their algorithms, it'd be a lot quicker and more accurate than doing it themselves.
If you don't create the information in social media it can't be used against you when an unknown (to you) acquaintance of a friend of a friend is caught doing something naughty while you're not far away.
You can control only your contact list and every one of them has their own list that you can do zip about.
* with a warrant.
In UK courts, 'proof beyond reasonable doubt' that the online account information came from was under the sole control of the accused would normally be enough to allow its use.
Once something is in print (FB post / tweet / whatever) the law doesn't differentiate very much and the poster has a high bar to cross in proving it's not indicative of their intent or actions.
Everyone is deemed to be competent*, being tricked into admissions or actions just adds stupidity to the charges.
*until proven otherwise
There is a good argument to be made for 'proof of virtue' before* anyone can stand for public office,
however that would require legislation and I trust politicos as far as they obviously trust us.
* but as the maxim says, power corrupts.
All but the last group in your list have had national security implications in the not too distant past and as such were/are monitored by the security services due to the very small minority intent on doing actual harm, everyone else in these groups carried on with no impact on their life. - example - being a Communist/Labour activist didn't stop Jack Straw qualifying as a barrister (or bringing in the the R.I.P. 2000 act while he was home secretary*)
On the other hand local councils performing intrusive investigations into members of the public for 'offences' that only carry a fine is overstepping any reasonable boundary and any investigations arising from councillors personal animosity towards anyone should result in plod taking a serous interest (too often it doesn't).
*Irony lost on so so many.
I'd say It's a good idea employ real people to police how the users are interacting with their product, Common* sense can be used for the edge cases where automatic system fall flat and art graduates need jobs just like everyone else.
*Yes I know it's not that common.
Yup, Beardy beating everyone else to 80km was the driver.
The massive hype about being first then selling off a big % of his shares does fit with beardys normal mode of operation.
Though TBF the climb out was only a bit outside the envelope resulting in being outside the controlled airspace at the top of the curve, basically waaay above any other civilian operational altitude.
FAA are playing hardball because since the 737-max self certification fiasco everything is by the book.
>>>how do they get you to vote for <<<
FB doesn't care who/what you vote for, they just want to KNOW who/what/where your interests are. They really don't care about you or your politics in the slightest as long as you're online they can sell your eyes.
Any social fallout1 caused doesn't interest them either beyond it's ability to keep eyes on screen and extreme events attract more eyes.
The only thing that might worry FB is goverments imposing solid transparency & accountability rules onto them, but as they'll have so many politicos dirty secrets on file2 they're probably safe.
1Intolerance, abuse, threats, toppling statues, violence, storming the capital etc.
2J.E.Hoover or the Stasi could only dream.
Potentially;
A) Spend vast amounts of cash & time tailoring the software to suite and hope it works.
B) Kneecapping the entire business with a wholesale procedural change and hoping it can continue to operate while everyone learns the new ropes.
At least with the first option a stop decision will usually result in no big discomfort to the daily grind* while stopping the second is stopping the business.
*something is in place and working
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