Posts by abend0c4

Re: Security risk

An ink cartridge is just a little plastic container with some ink.

Actually, Canon and HP cartridges usually have an integral (thermal) printhead whereas Brother and Epson printheads (piezoelectric) are usually integral to the printer.

The security issue comes, ironically, from the choice to include chips on the cartridges. There has (allegedly) been a case of third-party cartridges exploiting a bug in a printer's firmware (by carefully crafting a response) resulting in the printer subsequently rejecting cartridges from other sources. That of course is not an argument against third-party supplies, but a condemnation of the poor design choices and implementation of the printer manufacturer, but it appears to have been spun as a positive for aspiring monopolists.

Re: Hmm

So the President can fire those under the Executive Office but not those under Congress

It's not so much about hiring and firing as failing fully to implement the programs funded by Congress. There's always been some wiggle room as the detail of implementation is within the competence of the executive. Nixon brought it to a head by refusing to implement a bunch of programs mandated by Congress which resulted in the Impoundment Control Act which made more explicit the circumstances in which the executive could simply not spend the money authorised by Congress.

There are those in Trump's circle who argue the Impoundment Control Act is unconstituional, but the last time a case came before the Supreme Court it was upheld.

If Trump could find a way of spending the money and achieving the required outcome without actually employing anyone then of course there wouldn't be much of an argument. But he's actually doing the opposite: firing the staff to prevent the money being spent and that would seem to be at odds with the law as it is currently understood.

Of course, the hope is that once everyone is fired it will be too late for the courts to remedy the situation - assuming the Supremes follow precedent, which is no longer something that is given - as people will be reluctant to come back on probationary contracts from which they can immediately be fired again.

Re: Trade agreements

It's all for show - but the spectacle is progressively less engaging as it is constantly repeated.

Shock and awe is a limited tactic that should be used sparingly to achieve actual and lasting results. Trump has no goal except to build up his profile as someone who is prepared to throw America's weight about. At present, he's doing it over trivia and by the time he actually wants something substantive, the rest of the world is simply going to give a collective shrug and deploy the usual retaliation.

Re: Why doesn't UK Gov run its own cloud?

Arguably, the cloud business is sufficiently mature for there to be some open standards for service provision that would facilitate migration between different providers and possibly provide an opening for alternative operators.

I'd have thought this would be an opportune moment to start funding such an effort, leaving the question of whether the standards might be advisory or mandatory hanging in the political air.

Re: otherwise Putin will never go for any peace treaty

There's not going to be any treaty that brings meaningful "peace", at best we'll see a conflict that's temporarily frozen until conditions improve for Russia to resume it. Concessions will not alter that situation. The only practical option is to ensure conditions remain unfavourable.

It sounds like he's noticed that an HR company may not have a bright future once humans have largely been eliminated from the workplace and they've outsourced the development of their alternative business plan to the underpants gnomes.

Re: Not sure why misalignment happens

"Proving our thoughts true or false" is - not something we usually require of each other

We've established the "scientific method" over generations precisely because we do require that for consequential conclusions. AI is entirely pointless if all it amounts to is a machine that tells you it prefers Tuesdays.

Re: Wake up call!

the island that flatters itself as a "bridge"

A bridge is something passive that gets walked over from both sides. And thereby, presumably, becomes flatter and flatter without any effort on its part.

Re: Least favoured partner

Do they really have anything anybody else wants?

Defence. But the world's greatest negotiator has already taken that off the table, so your point stands.

Re: Without an understanding

We don't know, of course, what was specifically requested, but the chatter at the time was that HMG wanted worldwide access and there was some fairly strident pushback from elsewhere, in particular the USA.

So this really looks like a lose/lose for the UK: Apple users lose their privacy and the government lost their extraterritorial campaign as well as advertising to the miscreants they wished to ensnare that they are under surveillance.

Re: The slow death continues

And another one after that when that, too, proves unsustainable?

At some point you need to place a value on the services that you consume. If that value is zero, you'd presumably be better off doing something else with your time. If not, welcome to capitalism!

Re: NASA budget

Congress does not, at present, seem to be terribly bothered that the various agencies for which it has approved budgets are being systematically gutted.

The Senate and the House seem divided over how to progress the next funding bill, but they both seem more interested in further debt-funded tax cuts than on what's actually going on in government. They're falling over each other to come up with Trump's most-favoured plan.

The checks and balances can only work if the relevant parties do their jobs.

People use the telephone because their digital support channels have failed

The thing is, the people sitting around developing "user stories" for digital channels don't have much imagination beyond their own personal circumstances.

I recently needed to pay in a cheque on behalf of an elderly relative. Not possible using the banking app because I'm not the account holder. The only bank branch within 10 miles was closed owing to being vandalised. Can't do it at a Post Office because I don't have printed paying-in slips. Can't order those via the app either.

And then I needed to pay in a cheque to myself. Not possible using the banking app because it was a company cheque and not a personal cheque and the app doesn't recognise the format. I did get through to the help line and was told I'd have to go to branch. The was open and which had a cheque deposit machine. I then got an e-mail from the bank chastising me for using the machine instead of the app.

The aim of these digital channels seems to be to offer only 50% of the full range of services and keep the remaining users at arm's length so that their dissatisfaction never appears in the metrics.

Re: The Supreme Leader will do as he is told

One of the reasons there is nothing approaching a united European response is that voters across Europe have already been choosing Trump-lite candidates. The interesting test will be the upcoming German elections: will the fondness of the Trump administration for the AfD turn out to be a liability after his most recent statements or an asset?

In the meantime, there is an increasingly likelihood that the supply of technology will be one of the least of our near-term concerns.

As the company no longer exists no action can be brought against them

As they were not a medical company, but a software company, the medical data must have come from somewhere else. It's possible the "somewhere else" might be responsible, It's also possible, if the defunct company had been entrusted with secure erasure, that the liquidators might be responsible if these were treated as valueless assets to be casually disposed of. But I suspect the expenditure of effort to assess any potential liability might be seen as burdensome by the regulator.

Re: Why

In the bit of southern Europe where I currently live, you need to send a copy of your identify documents (passport, residence permit or identity card) for even the most trivial of transactions, even to join clubs and societies. There must be dozens of copies of my passport sitting in people's email archives or stuffed inside binders in open offices. But the imperative is to have the correct document, not to have a genuine document and so the security of the documents is not really a consideration.

The same thing is gradually happening in the UK. If you require potential employers or landlords to verify people's right to live or work in the country (for example), they need not only to do that but to be able to prove subsequently that they have done so. In the absence of a secure government system for doing that, they're going to hang on to the evidence because the penalties for breaches of data protection rules are considerably less than the penalties for failing to check on their eligibility to work.

Re: 4g is fine

For the most part, the operators aren't the source of the advertising and aren't getting a cut but they get to pay for the network equipment.

In fact, they've got their fingers burned in spectrum auctions for 5G on the assumption it would unlock pent-up demand only to find they couldn't sell it at a premium price and are struggling to roll out the new technology (as evidenced by the Vodafone-Three merger).

I can see the network equipment vendors have an interest in creating constant "upgrade" paths, but operating networks is not the cash cow it once was.

Of course PDF derives from PostScript which was a fully-fledged programming language from which many of the features were stripped to create the safer and more "descriptive" Portable Document Format. And then JavaScript was added to compensate for the features that almost no-one missed. For most practical purposes, PDF works fine without JavaScript.

Re: 100V

My reel-to-reel recorder had a removable sleeve on the capstan to adjust for frequency as well as a tapped transformer to adjust for voltage.

They don't even have to be in the UK. They employ very few people yet require huge investments in infrastructure.

The only compelling reason would be security (control of data and vulnerability of communication links), but presumably that's not the entirety of the potential market.

Re: So for $25 million granted, we got 2 chargers,

A 'universal' charging network that mirrors the current petrol/diesel one would be a lot simpler

But the aim is (allegedly) to reduce the role of the federal government. The failure of the NEVI seems largely to be down to the states who were responsible for the implementation, not Washington that simply provided the funds but doesn't have the power to intervene in the actual construction. Arguably that's an incentive for Washington not even to attempt such interventions, but electors expect their governments to deliver stuff, even if the system is broken.

If you're going to have a joined-up country, particularly in the face of massive corporations that have economic interests in competitive barriers resulting from incompatible standards, you need a central government with teeth. Which, of course, is why the US government is presently being defanged.

It's very easy (as was the case with Brexit) to whip up negative sentiment about remote bureaucrats issuing diktats, but if you want things to be "a lot simpler" you probably will regret their passing as your local bureaucrats and their vested interests are likely even worse news.

Re: Human Right

how hard can it be?

Without a picture, we'll never know.

Re: Works pretty good actually

That sounds about right to any sensible person

Surely, no true Scotsman would disagree.

And where has the vast preponderance of Firefox's money come from?

If Google is forced to hive off Chrome - or indeed forbidden to buy the default search engine slot - as some regulators are contemplating, it might prove difficult to fund two mainstream unbundled browsers. Of course, the regulators may not survive the current political maelstrom either, but Firefox is actually a beneficiary of the status quo.