Posts by BazNav

50 US airports to be surrounded by 5G C-band-free zones

Re: Cheap land for sale, buy now!

But what about the residual chemicals from deploying the chem trails?

IBM researcher suing for age discrimination blames CEO Arvind Krishna for his ousting

Height discrimination

the vast majority were over 50"

I may have misread that

UK MoD data strategy calls for social media surveillance on behalf of 'local authorities'

Re: Is this even constitutional?

Who knows what they really mean but this is possibly a case of "impenetrable MoD-speak"

If you look at the blah above the bullet points they are talking about "a soldier in hostile territory" ie someone else's country, and once you go overseas on military operations there are a different set of laws you have to adhere to. The reference to "local authorities" in this case is probably not about the local council but the military/security authority (person in charge) of the area.

The paper could be about a sinister power grab my the military but is more likely to be another example of why normal people should review all documents produced by senior officers before they're released to the press and general public

UK.gov is launching an anti-Facebook encryption push. Don't think of the children: Think of the nuances and edge cases instead

What are the police doing now?

"Around 100,000 individuals are reportedly on the Sex Offenders' Register at any one time, while government officials suggested to the press that potential child sex abuse offenders on Facebook are greatly in excess of that number."

So the argument is that there are >100K potential sex offenders on Facebook without E2EE and the police are doing little to nothing about it unless they are really bad. If E2EE comes in then all that changes is that the police can't do anything (without a warrant) rather than just choosing not to do anything.

Or maybe the police are overstating their lack of action to highlight how bad their inability to act would be

Just when everyone thought things might be looking up, Dido Harding admits interest in top job at NHS England

Re: If only...

Well that's just not cricket

Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

Re: Pot calling Kettle

But isn't the core of Epics argument that the store owner is insisting that if you buy a magazine in their shop then you have to give them a hefty cut of any items that you buy from the magazine for the rest of time?

Hong Kong floats doxxing laws that would let it force big tech to take down content

Sexist laws

The legislation states: "a person will commit an offence if he discloses..."

Which means that as long as a woman does the doxxing then they've not broken the law.

East London council blurts thousands of residents' email addresses in To field blunder

Re: Apology accepted

Misquoting today's Dilbert for what is going on in council HQ:

"We spaffed thousands of people's email addresses on to the interwebs. Write a press release saying we are sorry and it will never happen again."

"Is any of that true?"

"Part of it is."

"Which part?"

"We spaffed thousands of people's email addresses on to the interwebs."

Fridges... in... Spaaaaaaace: Engineers book ride on the Vomit Comet to test astro-refrigerator

Space pen vs pencil

To me this seems like a massive amount of over engineering, like inventing a pen that will work in a zero G vacuum opposed to using a pencil.

They're in space and outside is very close to 0K. The only reason to have a fridge is that you've warmed up a little bit of the universe so that people are comfortable in it. Put the fridge on an outside wall with a heat sink to the outside, if you don't want the fridge to get too cold then have a method of swapping out a chunk of conductor with a chunk of insulator.

Or if you have access to some really clever people then there's probably an equation or something that will tell you the cross section of material that you need to provide the appropriate amount of cooling based on the efficiency of the fridge's insulation. But where's the fun in that

FBI deletes web shells from hundreds of compromised Microsoft Exchange servers before alerting admins

Only servers in the USA

I wonder how the FBI determined that all of the servers they accessed where within the USA? I'm pretty sure that there are a bunch of servers that resolve to USAian IP addresses that are not within the US courts jurisdiction, e.g. foreign embassies. But I'm sure that the FBI checked on the details of every server in detail before 'helping' and any overstretch was purely accidental.

Blockchain may be the machinery of mischief, but it can't help telling the truth

Re: "There's little point in stealing physical objects if they can't be traded without their NFT."

But the NFT doesn't prove which version of the artwork is original. Evil genius steals the original painting and shows it off. Someone now has the NFT without the painting that it references. Even more evil genius buys the NFT on the black market, gets and evil art forger to make a passable copy of the paining and then sells the copy with the original NFT.

Which one is the real painting according to the art world - the one the original artist created or the fake one sold with the NFT?

I can't see any way that you can incorruptibly tie the NFT to the original artwork which makes the whole thing seem like a load of hype with little in the way of real world application

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

Re: “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage ..."

"brush it away by saying that it was satire"

I'd love it if Fox tried to use satire as a defence and the judge ruled that for now until the end of time they had to start every story they ran with a disclaimer that it is most definitely not news, not true and is only intended as satire. And fined them $2.7bn

Negative Trustpilot review of law firm Summerfield Browne cost aggrieved Briton £28k

Fixed fee vs hourly rate

Recently I've had to deal with two lawyers on different matters.

The conveyancing solicitor was on a fixed fee and was an absolute nightmare throughout and I still didn't have confirmation of the purchase until I got a call at 09:15 on the day of the move to say they were sorry but they'd forgotten to tell me everything had gone through.

The other solicitor was charging by the hour. She was really good and kept me well informed throughout the process.

I guess it just goes to show you get what you pay for. If you want the conveyancing solicitor to care about your purchase then pay them by the hour.

Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button

Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?

They'll have an inquiry, determine that 3 clicks isn't enough safety and then redesign the interface to require 4 clicks.

Tim Berners-Lee asks everyone to do new biz a Solid and let him have another crack at fixing the Web's privacy

National Utility Service

I think countries would jump at the chance! It is TBL's idea so it must be a great idea and full of freedom etc!

But what you really get is a national identity service via the backdoor without the government having to argue (and fail again) for implementing it. If you can get big tech to pay for it even better.

In a few years companies will start to let you use it as valid ID, then the government will let you use it as a form of ID and a short while later it will be the only ID you can use. Which neatly allows correlation of all your personal data with all the private data the government holds on you.

Facebook tells academics to stop monitoring its political ads for any rule-breaking.... on privacy grounds

Are Facebook taking ownership of the Ads they fling?

They can't play it both ways;

either they are responsible for the ads they fling at their users, they can try to impose their stupid rules on scraping BUT they're also breaching the Computer Misuse Act if they send any ad with malware in to any computer in the UK

OR they are just a broker for the ads and aren't responsible for the content in which case they can't stop you scraping something that they're not responsible for.

Governments need to stop companies playing both sides of every argument. If you state something in a legal case then that is your position fixed, you don't get to change it every time!

You there. Person, corp, state. Doesn't matter. You better not shoot down or hack a drone. That's our job – US govt

Re: This is solvable

You can mess up a drone with high frequency sound, and drone barriers using this tech have been demonstrated: https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/thursday/us-17-Wang-Sonic-Gun-To-Smart-Devices-Your-Devices-Lose-Control-Under-Ultrasound-Or-Sound.pdf

I would be interesting in seeing which of the laws they mentioned this violates

Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: 'GPL condom' for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel

Dishonest or binning?

They might be using the same chips in different cards but it doesn't mean that all the chips are equal. Chip binning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning) is a common practice to get some use out of non-perfect high end chips by using them on lower end products which shouldn't be used for the really high stuff, so you won't notice that they aren't perfect.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

Re: The 737 MAX is doomed

Can I suggest 737 SuperMax? Named after the location all the people people involved in certifying the aircraft should end up.

We'll pay £400k for a depth charge-proof robot submarine, says UK's Ministry of Defence

Re: Thats our whole navy ...................

Fortunately this is the real world not a game of Harpoon.

Whilst you are right in your assessment of what you would need to protect a carrier during a conventional conflict we're not in a conflict. The deployment is there to make a political statement not to beat the whole Chinese military in a stand up fight.

And if a war did start during the deployment then the Chinese have spent a lot of money on Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) technology. When they are throwing anti-ship ballistic missiles at you it doesn't really matter how noisy you engines are.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

I don't know enough maths

but I've spent enough time around lawyers to understand that you have to comply with what is written not what someone may or may not have intended.

If the (bad) law ends up saying that you have to assist the authorities in gaining access then if you set up a server dedicated to cracking your chosen encryption scheme you can honestly say that you are assisting, and if the authorities come back in 200 years time there's a fair chance you will have succeeded in breaking the encryption.

Once again, racial biases show up in AI image databases, this time turning Barack Obama white

An end to police racial bias?

So if the police put in a blurry picture of a BAME suspect then they get a high definition picture of an imaginary white suspect back? Surely this will work to counter-balance any potential discrimination or structural racism and make the world a better place. Or its just a complete piece of junk that should have been tested properly before being released on the world.

Yahoo! owes! us! one! billion! dollars! in! back! taxes! say! US! govt! beancounters!

I'm not sure Delaware know how to negotiate

"Altaba offered $1.5bn"

then some time later -

"As such, it asks the court in Delaware to “render judgment in favor of the US and against Altaba for the 2016 through 2019 income tax liabilities set forth above, in the amount of $1,091,764,855.”"

So Delaware were offered $1.5bn (of the $2.88bn they wanted at that point) and after years of expensive lawyers they've managed to bargain it down to only asking for just over $1bn. I wish my ex-wife's lawyers were that good

The Great British anti-5G fruitcake Bakeoff: Group hugs, no guns, and David Icke

Re: They are the virus

Despite all the down-votes i got for the original post, I agree with Dave 126 - it should be fairly easy. But no one in the world has yet come up with an effective way of legislating for it especially when it is something that you then want to happen in real time.

Countries seem to have fallen into two camps; either allow wide free speech and accept there will be idiotic rubbish mixed in there that you then have to go back and remove, or tell the people exactly what they can say thus getting rid of all the crackpot theories but also a lot of personal freedom. As soon as you pass a law to limit people posting crackpot ideas you have to put someone in charge of policing it and that will ultimately be a political appointment, and I for one don't really want Donald Trump choosing the people who choose the people who get to decide what can be posted on line. I'd prefer to just carry on ignoring anything that David Icke says.

Re: They are the virus

The real problem is how do you separate out the next Copernicus or Darwin from all the David Ickes?

If anyone comes up with a solution that allows people to move on the collective understanding of humanity against the entrenched ideas of the current establishment whilst simultaneously quashing all of the dangerous "alternative facts" which are being used to undermine the collective wisdom of the current establishment then I'll give them an up-vote.

Lords: New IR35 off-payroll tax rules 'riddled with problems, unfairnesses, unintended consequences'

Re: unintended consequences

Google agrees with you but I was told a different story about the origins - that it was to do with builders using plumb lines to find a vertical, you can't find the vertical until the lead weight stops moving so if you keep gently swinging the lead you can drag out a really easy job for a long time

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

You can only obey orders if they are given

I don't have the full details but I suspect that the top brass never ordered the captain to not have the party because if that came out it could be really bad press too - "Admiral refuses to allow brave submarine crew out into the sunshine after 9 months at sea!!!!"

So they 'suggest' that the captain might not want the BBQ, that way all the risk is on the captain and they can either take the credit for allowing the captain to exercise common sense or blame him for ignoring the direction of a senior officer.

As Lt Col Phillip Smith would say "What is the first rule?" "Never order anyone to do anything if it might come back and bite you on the arse"

Capita to place bit less sauce in outsourcing execs' share awards packets

Easy life

I'd quite happily take home £500K for wiping 80% off Capita's share price.

In fact I'm pretty sure I could do that without even going in to work for a year

And they said IoT was trash: Sheffield 'smart' bins to start screaming when they haven't been emptied for a fortnight

Re: How is that going to work?

More likely they'll use it as an excuse to empty bins less frequently. They'll wait for more than 50% (if they're being generous) of the bins to be full before scheduling a collection. Then they'll levy an extra charge on all the people who's bins were filled faster than the average as they are the problem residents who are unfairly taking more than their fare share of council resources

'Sophisticated' cyber attack on UK Labour Party platforms was probably just a DDoS, says official

I thought the Russians usually targeted parties opposed to their world view. What policy could labour have that would make the Russians think Boris was better for them?

237 UK police force staff punished for misusing IT systems in last 2 years

Re: Staff,staff, staff

If you are outside of your working hours and arrest someone can you claim for overtime?

RAF pilot seconded to Virgin Orbit for three years of launching rockets from a 747

Re: Not a promotion is it

Seems like the equivalent of a Ferrari F1 test driver being seconded to be a DHL driver to help them improve how they deliver packages

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

Re: Is this just an English thing ?

I see a linguistic car crash on the horizon. One set want to use 'they' as a gender neutral singular pronoun and the far right set are already using it as a derogatory plural pronoun for anyone who isn't them, e.g. "They come over hear......"

If Syria pioneered grain processing by watermill in 350BC, the UK in 2019 can do better... right?

Re: "automation in retail and banking had led to fewer jobs..."

I for one quite like being able to go to a cash machine and get money out at 2am on a Sunday morning to pay for a kebab rather than going home hungry because the humans don't get in to work until 9am on Monday morning.

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Read the indictment

Because it is funny!

One of the acts of conspiracy is that 'Manning copied a Linux operating system to a CD' and the US Government classifies Linux as 'special software.'

Pretty sure we're all going to jail

Cyber-insurance shock: Zurich refuses to foot NotPetya ransomware clean-up bill – and claims it's 'an act of war'

Re: War? Nope

They don't have to prove that Russia is at war with the USA, they need to prove that Russia is at war with Ukraine and that the damage caused by NP was collateral damage in that conflict which will probably be much easier to argue.

Opens up interesting legal arguments; collateral damage used to be easy to work out - 'was your chocolate factory close to where the bad guys were dropping bombs?' In a cyber war it could become - 'was your network connected to the same internet as everybody else's networks?'

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

A few years ago I saw a demo of a counter drone version or RAM-PRAS (made by Cunning Running software) that is designed to show you all of the places that meet those criteria. I wonder if someone is rushing through a purchase order right now?

What happens next

What happens next will shed a lot of light on who was doing this. If they're never seen again then we'll probably never find out. If they wait until the military and the police have left then start flying again at Gatwick then it's probably personal and somehow linked to Gatwick specifically. If it's environmental protesters or someone who wants to cause maximum disruption then they'll do the same at Stanstead tomorrow, then Luton just after Christmas and Heathrow over New Year.

Whoever it is doing this has demonstrated a degree of planning and operational security awareness, so I doubt it's over.