Posts by First Light

Man arrested in Northern Ireland police data leak as more incidents come to light

A whole month

The PSNI didn't tell the 200 people affected by the theft for a month, and then claimed no information was taken from the device.

But that issue is moot considering the officers' info was released later anyway.

From the Graun:

Last weekend it emerged that about 200 police officers and staff were not informed for almost a month about the theft of devices and documents with data potentially affecting them, the PSNI said.

A police-issued laptop, radio and documents were stolen on 6 July from a car parked in Newtownabbey that is understood to belong to a superintendent.

Todd said in a statement last Saturday it was believed the laptop and radio were deactivated “shortly afterwards”.

“We are confident no data has been lost from these devices and they are of no use to any third party,” he added.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/16/man-arrested-after-northern-ireland-police-data-leak

Sextortion suspects on trial after teen victim dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound

Re: Modern Yoof Culture

Id sat they do it now because it takes less time. Everything has to be instantaneous. Even if it's only 2.3 seconds faster than actually typing..

Lawrence Livermore lab repeats fusion breakthrough – yep, still kinda works

Dame Ion

Has to be the best name for a nuclear scientist.

Cops cuff pregnant woman for carjacking after facial recog gets it wrong, again

In front of her kids

They cuffed her in front of her kids, who are now traumatized for life, because "technology" and lazy cops.

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

Re: Not impossible

Apparently Brazil and Chile are also popular.

The "Ancient Aliens" people believe that UFOs stop over at Chile for all their rare earths. I know that because I managed to sit through an episode : )

Meanwhile, here's a scientific response.

https://www.eso.org/sci/publications/messenger/archive/no.67-mar92/messenger-no67-56-57.pdf

Twitter name and blue bird logo to be 'blowtorched' off company branding

Re: Moron alert. Again

The Saudi Kingdom Holding Company might have something to say about that.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/saudis-kingdom-holding-company-to-maintain-twitter-stake

Tesla's Dojo supercomputer is a billion-dollar bet to make AI better at driving than humans

Re: Sell more cars

Tesla should by rights be paying people to take their cars and contribute to the data.

Instead people will pay money and risk their safety to train Tesla's AI?

Crazy.

Re: Training your AVs at the fun-fair.

More like "dodgy".

Twitter ad revenue has halved since Elon Musk took over

Re: Not convinced

The lawyers have started to pay attention.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/13/trump-finds-no-new-lawyers-mar-a-lago-documents-arraignment

Germans beat Tesla to autonomous L3 driving in the Golden State

Re: Only up to 40 mph on the highway where everyone else is driving at 75 mph?

Yes, a sensible idea! If after a few years, it works really well, the restrictions can be relaxed. This type of driving will be a gradual development, not a "miracle" rush-job.

For other parts of the world not blessed with California's semi-arid conditions, even greater restrictions will be necessary. For example, tropical countries during monsoon, rainy parts of Ireland (i.e. most of it) etc.

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

Re: Eric?

Like the kid in IT who leaked all that classified intel?

India official fined after draining reservoir to recover phone

Not for this type of petty tyrant.

The GOI guesstimates that only 0.5% of the population can swim, and fewer are scuba divers.

So this is not a realistic solution in India, especially in inland states like this one.

Eating disorder non-profit pulls chatbot for emitting 'harmful advice'

Staff laid off because too many calls?

They're firing staff because they have too *many* calls? Most nonprofits would try to expand their services and seek more funding, pointing to increased usage, which is considered a success by funders. I would think having lots of callers would make their helpline staff more essential instead of less so.

In reality these services should be government-funded anyway and not left to the vicissitudes of the nonprofit world.

That Meta GDPR fine is €1.2B. Plus biz must stop sending EU data to US

It's utterly embarrassing for those of us from the Emerald Isle. The Irish DPC is a case of regulatory capture at it's most acute.

Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar

Re: I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

There are plenty of Maya in Guatemala and elsewhere. Around 5 million.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maya-people

Elon Musk actually sits down and talks to 'government-funded media' the BBC

Then they should have declined. He set the parameters of the interview in a way that is anathema to proper journalism.

Poor-quality journalism

I'm not surprised, but am saddened, that the journalist facing Musk was unprepared. I have been watching BBC World News from various time zones and the low journalism standards are depressing. Whether or not it is government-funded, the interviewers and anchors are not that smart, not prepared and leave important questions unasked. It's actually cringe-inducing sometimes to see what interviewees can get away with. I'm not surprised he agreed to an interview. He knows how shoddy their journalism is now and he would never allow someone like Amy Goodman to interview him.

Criminal records office yanks web portal offline amid 'cyber security incident'

Curious

I'm wondering if some of those in the system were police informants, and whether or not that is indicated in the data, as would be their current, non-public addresses.

Or, if someone is "hiring". There is no end to the usefulness of a database of crooks, for myriad people and a myriad of reasons.

Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters

Re: Who dares, wins

Again need to point out Gwynne Shotwell is the brains behind SpaceX,

Winnie the Pooh slasher flick mysteriously cancelled in Hong Kong

I don't get

. . the supposed resemblance. But the thin-skinned response is ludicrous.

Microsoft: Patch this severe Outlook bug that Russian miscreants exploited

It's most likely the only way this thing is going to end.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Apology positioning

Someone on Twitter pointed out that Musk's original defamatory tweet was in his own feed, but his apology was a response in the feed of some guy who has 2000 followers. Deliberately trying to minimize the reach of his apology, while leaving millions of people with the misimpressions created by the earlier tweets. However, it didn't stop the nauseating sycophancy of fanbois reverentially praising his amazing generosity in apologizing.

'Brittle' Twitter suffers bad case of the Mondays: Links, pics, vids fail

Brittle?

You bought it, you broke it, you git.

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

Depressing news

As is the news that Walgreens will stop selling abortion pills in 21 states. The US is going backwards in time.

Low-grade civil strife between and within states is inevitable.

Funnily enough, FDA forbids Elon Musk's Neuralink human experiments

Re: What does FDA stand for again?

It also has authority to regulate medical devices under Title 21 CFR Parts 800-1299

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/overview-device-regulation/code-federal-regulations-cfr

China blocked 54.3 million items online in 2022, after snitches sent 170 million tips

India "Mother of Democracy"

If India is the "Mother of Democracy" as PM Modi insists then wny all the suppression?

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/time-for-world-to-know-india-is-mother-of-democracy-modi-101670435822087.html

Musk's view count antics are perfect cover for Twitter's paid API failure

Re: Who's left?

Or child sexual abuse images which they are failing to deal with properly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/technology/twitter-child-sex-abuse.html

Romance scammers' favorite lies cost victims $1.3B last year

Young 'uns

I thought young folks these days were supposed to be so much smarter than the rest of us when it comes to "computer stuff."

I do have sympathy for those who get caught, however. There have always been scams but it seems so much easier when everyone has their lives displayed for public view.

I think socializing online is boring. It's like some younger people need to be taught how to socialize offline.

Tesla admits it was asked to hand over Autopilot, Full Self-Driving docs to investigators

I'm confused

As to why TSLA's share price is now up to c. USD182 a share, even after this news.

Apparently MBA types think it's a good time to buy because the filing indicated expansion of the Nevada factory and they like increased sales numbers from the recent price cuts. Yet, it also revealed that Musk may sell more stock because of Twitter debt servicing. And those price cuts were necessary because of Musk's Twitter escapades. Perhaps they also missed this tech angle. I guess a good outcome of his stupidity is making the EV market more competitive.

https://in.investing.com/news/tesla-updates-risks-to-include-musk-selling-stock-to-satisfy-other-commitments-432SI-3503473

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/01/31/why-tesla-stock-trounced-the-market-on-tuesday/

Re: Umm?

Four of those eight years were the domain of a President who despises regulations and regulators and hollowed out many government agencies.The federal government as as whole is still picking up the pieces of that disastrous lacuna.

Well that escalated quickly: India demos homebrew mobile OS

Re: Interesting at least

Some Indian citizens such as journalists, human rights and environmental activists are at risk from their own government. At higher risk, in fact, than from Google.

We blew too much money hiring like crazy so we gave you the boot – Amazon

Re: Happy New Year! You're fired!

Trappist monks? We don't want them ruining the beer like they ruined their companies!

Happy New Year! You're fired!

Looks like the Water Rabbit year is starting out inauspiciously for some of our Chinese friends.

"While it will be painful to say goodbye to many of our talented colleagues . . .”

Ugh, stop lying. It won’t be painful when you get a bonus for being “courageous” enough to fire people

Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs

Beard competition

Forgive me for the superficiality, but the beard on the right needs to look a bit more like the beard on the left, imho.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Ransomware severs 1,000 ships from on-shore servers

Just what we need

to increase the cost of living even more with higher expenses for transpo cyber security. It will get passed on to us.

The Maersk attack was massively successful, IIRC their proprietary software was still intact at only one office in the world, where the power had gone out before the attack happened. Otherwise they would have lost everything.

FTX audit finds $415m in crypto mysteriously vanished

Re: Little high, little low

Life had just begun,

And now I've gone and thrown it all away ...

Re: dried frog pills for all manner of strange ills and even stranger matters

Oh dear, GB "news"?

That's naughty of you.

And no mention of Brexit of course.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

Not in a strong wind

As someone who has flown (as a passenger) frequently in blustery Irish weather conditions, there is NO WAY I would want the plane autolanded. And blustery weather is the norm over most of the country. I want two human pilots up front and in charge, thank you.

Re: reducing the crew cost of operating the plane

Shocked at all the downvotes. Your questions are entirely reasonable.

FAA grounds all US departures after NOTAM goes down

Re: So...

* The cleaner pulled a plug

Ireland fines Meta $414m for using personal data without asking

Embarrassing . . .

As an Irish person, I find this kowtowing to foreign (usually US) companies highly embarrassing. I'm also shocked that the DPC is contemplating going to the Court of Justice over this, it's a bloody disgrace.

The NOYB link below has even more egregious details about DPC's behaviour. It looks like the job of enforcing the GDPR should go to another country.

https://noyb.eu/en/breaking-meta-prohibited-use-personal-data-advertising

FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty on eight charges

Re: Seems a bit late?

Yes it's probably more a question of legal posturing to get information on what the government has, to then negotiate for a deal. Of course he's guilty, and he knows it, it's now a question of how many years he will do in Club Fed.

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

It's not an improvement if the driver reclines their seat and chooses to fall asleep believing the car will handle the driving. If the police hadn't stopped him, he most likely would have ended up in an accident.

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

Re: Advetising is grossly overestimated

I think this explains the simile:

In the US "going south" is a metaphor for failing.

People from NJ (and states to the North of it) "go south" to Florida in their thousands for retirement to get away from cold winters, however that's a literal going south, not a metaphorical one.

You could also say that Florida itself is a state of madness and I suspect many would agree . . .

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

FSD ≠ Autonomous

According to the Graun, "Tesla has repeatedly said its advanced self-driving technology requires 'active driver supervision' and its vehicles 'are not autonomous'."

So WTF does Full Self Driving actually mean then? Because it sure sounds like it means you can bingewatch that endless Turkish Netflix show Diriliş: Ertuğrul (448 episodes!) while not paying any attention to the road whatsoever.

And after all the drama at Twitter, do investors and regulators still trust Musk's judgement? If I had a Tesla I would continue to let other drivers have the Fully Self Delusional experience for some time before using it myself.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tesla-crash-full-self-driving-mode-san-francisco

License to launch: UK space regulator gives Virgin Orbit satellites the go-ahead

Re: liicences, nor licenses

I would prefer British English also, at least for articles about non-US stories. However it appears that ship has sailed.

FTX CTO and Alameda Research CEO admit fraud, pair 'cooperating' with Feds

That must hurt

Ms. Ellison was SBF's on-off girlfriend, so I guess that's finally over. She claimed to enjoy a "Chinese imperial harem" model of polyamory. I wonder what model she will enjoy in prison.

It strikes me about all of these characters that they were massively overconfident. Did no one ever tell them they weren't half as smart as they thought they were? I suppose they're only figuring that out now, but I suspect they will continue to find others to blame for their mistakes. Also looks like SBF's Stanford Law professor parents will support their little darling no matter what, even paying for his legal defense. I guess that's where the delusional self-confidence and lack of concern for consequences comes from.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/19/polyamory-penthouses-and-plenty-of-loans-inside-the-crazy-world-of-ftx

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ftx-collapse.html