Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: but I'm presuming the manufacturers know a lot more than I do

That last bit's easy. Honor are also releasing 2 foldy phones. Guess it was in the same press release?

Re: Should I ever choose...

I don't believe your government are telling you what software you can use.

Kaspersky are being banned from operating in the US market. It would be an offence for them to sell software to you, but not for you to buy it off them. Although of course that will make it harder for you to buy it, if you really do want to.

This is what we have governments for though. Foreign relations and product standards are perfectly reasonable roles for government and I believe your Constitution allows the government to regulate the market and gives it sole control of foreign policy.

This is also for perfectly good reasons of policy. The Russians are being far more aggressive than the Soviets were during most of the Cold War. They clearly believe they're engaged in political, intelligence and economic warfare with the West. Russian intelligence and hacking activities have been at a very high levels in the last 15 years. Particularly recently. But the Russians have carried out quite a few assassinations in Europe (and tried a few that have failed) - in a way that just didn't happen in the Cold War where there were tacit (and sometimes explicitly agreed) rules established. Putin and most of his cronies being ex-KGB know those rules - and have chosen to break them.

Since the big invasion of Ukraine in 2022 hacking of our infrastucture has also gone up massively, leading people to suspect that they're planning to make attacks. As well as actual attacks on pipelines and undersea cables. And some possible physical attacks on factories - though some of those are hard to attribute (and may be random events). I'm pretty sure that GRU did blow up a Czech arms depot in 2016 though - which was shipping weapons to Ukraine. As well as murdering a Bulgarian arms dealer involved in another deal with Ukraine (or the same one I can't remember).

So Kaspersky are a potential threat that has to be at least considered. It's even possible that our intelligence agencies know something already. It's been pretty clear since the US and UK decided to release intelligence on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that they've got some decent sources somewhere. Probably technical, as some of the info they released could lead back to an actual agent and get them killed (or locked up for the rest of their lives). But equally it could just be precautionary.

What I find ironic is companies trusting Microsoft Defender - made by the same company that created the problems in the first place...

If Microsoft were the only company to make insecure software, you might have a point. As that's far from the case, your point is silly.

Unless you're alleging that they put security holes in deliberately. In which case trusting their security software would be pointless.

Re: Dead men tell no tales

A few years ago, my brother woke up to find his then 8 year-old son had come into the bedroom and was trying to manoeuvre his phone and thumb into the right position to unlock it. In this case it was because he had a family iTunes account and his son wanted to download an app.

I'm guessing with face unlock it's even easier - he could have just pointed the phone, and got away with it. Don't know if face unlock works to authorise the app store in the way you can set thumbprint to.

In this case though, your face looks different when you're dead. Because all the muscles relax. Plus the brief period of rigor mortis - but I've only ever seen bodies before/after that stage. They don't look the same as when they're asleep - but don't know if that's in a way that computer face recognition would notice?

Re: Strange winds they have in Korea?

Winds can be different at different heights. This is how you can steer, sort of, hot air balloons. Or you just wait for it to be blowing the right way.

One of the initial gas attacks in WWI in 1915 went horribly wrong, because the wind changed. At the time they weren't using shells - but gas projectors. Basically a fancy name for a tank with a tap on it. The german idea of PPE was a piece of cloth soaked in chemicals that you strapped over your mouth. It only worked for a short period of time and didn't protect your skin or eyes. But could be re-charged by pissing on it. German troops were often reluctant to advance into allied positions, even when everyone was incapacitated - until they were issued better gas protection.

The Navy plan to have all their ships fitted with lasers by 2027. I think the frirst one is supposed to happen next year.

As the ships have already got Phalanx and most have either 30mm or 40mm cannon fitted as well - it seems that the Army would be the better place to get them. In my opinion the army should also get themselves some sort of gatling gun / cannon air defence system as quickly as possible. We do have Stormer, which can knock drones down with £20k Martlet missiles - so it's not as cost-inefficient as using expensive SAMs - but guns is cheaper.

Re: Which doesn't exist in the British parliament as that is round

Those lines don't actually stop them fighting. They just suggest it would be impolite.

Re: Which doesn't exist in the British parliament as that is round

Helcat,

I'm not sure what you mean? Are you referring to the lobbies in the House of Commons? Where the right lobby is where you go to register a vote in favour of the motion - and the left lobby is the No lobby? So you might hear the Speaker say, "the Ayes to my right have it!"

Or are you referring to an earlier system of dividing when Parliament tended to meet in the old Whitehall Palace?

I'm pretty sure the left/right thing is from France. The Left were where the more republican parties sat - the right for the constitutional monarchists - and the non-constitutional monarchists too I think. Those on the left tended to be more radical in terms of their economic politics too - hence we ended up with left wing and right wing. Even at the time that didn't work, as you had so many issues swirling around. From whether to have a republic or a constitutional monarchy, whether to have free trade, low taxes and minimal government intervention in the economy (classical liberalism) or redistribution of land and property and help for the poor - and even whether to have a ten day week and change the names of all the months as part of a revolutionary calendar and then replace religion by starting a cult of the Supreme Being. Revolutionary politics got weird, and nasty.

LOL only a Yank could think Labour have been left wing post 1997.

Allow me to introduce you to one Jeremy Corbyn. Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020.

Re: Which doesn't exist in the British parliament as that is round

I'm not sure why he thinks Parliament is an oval - but the thing about Left and Right coming from the Assembly in Revolutionary France is correct. That was literally all the labels originally meant.

Coming up with political labels is an odd process.

Re: I still will not buy a HP printer

JimboSmith,

I tried to buy a TV off them before Christmas. Went to my local one two or three times at non busy periods when I was in the area. Managed to get help from non TV staff - none of them ever found a TV person. So I went to John Lewis. I could buy online and save some cash, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted and being visually impaired have a requirement to be able to read the onscreen display. Which means finding a staff member to find the remote control. Although I suppose I could just get a Humax set-top box to do all that, and have the telly be a complete dumb screen. Plus some have horribly over-saturated demo programs on in the store, so getting the two you like set up showing some football at the same time says a lot about the picture quality.

I think I upset John Lewis guy by telling him there was no difference between the one I bought, and the £200 more expensive (and smaller) one with the fancy super mega quantum pixels. I did explain that I can't see properly and can barely tell the difference between the normal and HD channels. I couldn't tell HD from 4k if my life depended on it. But HDR is lovely - when some director decides to film only by candlelight...

Re: This is the third flight.

On the first flight, the software was fucked up and fired the thrusters to the point they were going to run out of fuel - until NASA mission control noticed and stopped it.

If I remember correctly they had problems with the fuel valves on the second mission. They got damp, and corroded. Nobody expects it to be humid on the pad in Florida right? They launched anyway but I don't think the mission was without its problems.

We're told that 5 of the 8 thrusters failed at some point, but that it was a software issue. Which was rectified. However the astronauts in this article said that they had degraded performance during docking, that they could feel. Which suggests that it wasn't fully fixed. Thrusters that might stop, and require a system reboot to get started again is one thing. Bad - but relatively predictable, maybe even relatively safe. Thrusters that fail due to software and then come back with reduced performance are even less safe and predictable.

I'm a bit suspicious. They have to say it's ready for an emergency return. Because the only alternative to that would be to send a crew Dragon up to rescue them (or at least be on standby as a lifeboat). Unless there's spare seats in the one that's already up there? It's obviously safer to leave them up there and learn more about the problem than to return to Earth immediately. There's a Dragon supply capsule going up in August, so presumably they could bung in flightsuits for them - if the Boeing ones aren't compatible?

Are Boeing going to have to do another test flight repeat - at their own expense?

You are allowed to do both you know.

And it should be pointed out that the US has consistently spend more on defence since the Cold War ended than its NATO partners in Europe - and yet its economy has also grown faster than ours. Particularly being faster to come out of recessions - and that compounds up over the years to better standards of living for everyone.

Re: Utterly pointless

At this point, the US getting rid of its nukes makes the world an awful lot less stable. Unless you believe that Xi Xinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are forces for global stability.

The current global order - let's call it the post WWII international settlement minus the collapse of the Soviet empire - has been reasonably successful. At least in terms of avoiding major global powers fighting wars with each other. Also in terms of economic growth too. Particularly the era of globalisation kicked off in the 90s - which has lifted more people (in both absolute and percentage terms) out of poverty than at any time in human history.

It's an interesting (unanswerable) question as to whether the Cold War would have gone hot, without the threat of nuclear annihilation. But a Cold War with just the Soviets having nukes would have been a very different affair indeed - and the Soviet empire would have ended up a lot bigger - and probably lasted a lot longer.

So far, US security guarantees in Asia and Europe have limited the numbers of countries that have got nuclear weapons. Wish away the US nuclear arsenal and the world doesn't magically become a cuddly, happy, wonderful safe place. I'd be prepared to bet that things would become a lot less stable, and there'd be a lot more countries building their own nuclear weapons - and global stability would almost certainly take a turn for the worse because of it.

And of course, Ukraine gave up its nukes in return from sovereign guarantees from Russia, the US and UK.

The guarantees in question (Budapest Memorandum) were that those three countries promised not to invade or attack the three giving up their nuclear weapons (Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan) - not that anyone promised to protect them.

Re: Try Australia

May-be should you re-evaluate whether the entire Humanity thinks that way, or if the rest of Humanity has figured out that these Chinese restrictions are simply answers to US sanctions

Zolko,

To some extent, I don't care what anyone thinks, or what these Chinese moves are an answer to. I think the Chinese Communist Party currently pose an unaccepable risk to wellbeing of my country and our allies. That Trump might have been an arse - and made relations with China worse, but that when he lost the election sanctions didn't disappear because there was a fundamental reason for them. And that the EU, having complained about the US doing this is now pursuing similar policies.

By the way a quick search gives China's first ban on exports of rare earths to be 2010. When they banned exports to Japan for a couple of months over some kind of fishing dispute. That's long before Trump. China seems to have territorial disputes with most of its neighbours - although if you will claim the entire South China sea as territorial waters you will create some tension.

Some people say our policians were naive to allow China into the international trading system on such a large scale. And maybe they were. But tensions with China have shot up since Xi Xinping took over. He's the one who's publicly talked about being read to invade Taiwan by 2027, for example.

It would be better for the whole world to continue to trade freely with China. Globalisation in the last 30 years has improved more lives, and lifted more people in the world out of absolute poverty than any other development in human history. Continuing it would be great, and would be good for China too. But sadly for the Chinese people, they're lumbered with a Communist Party they have no easy way of getting rid of, and that Party is proving to be hostile to freedom in both China and outside it.

As China broke a treaty with the UK over Hong Kong - I think it's vital that my government have a better policy on China - that recognises the Chinese Communist Party for the vicious imperialistic thugs that they are. And that Western politicians in general do a better job of dealing with people like Putin and Xi - both to deter them from geting too aggressive and therefore to reduce the risk of us sleepwalking into a war, 1939 style. Neither side wanted WWII - it happened because they misread each others' intentions so badly. I doubt Putin would have marched into Ukraine had he known how much support we'd have given them, and if our politiicans were half as clever as they thought they were they'd realise that the fastest way to get him to leave again is to convince him that they can keep increasing support for Ukraine until he finally loses - so he'll get a better deal for finishing early. Though that's hard to do with cunts like Trump around, undermining the whole policy, and making it look like just waiting might give Putin a chance of better terms.

But it would be great if we tried to avoid the same deterrence failures with Xi Xinping. Then maybe Taiwan doesn't have to get destroyed and/or we can avoid a massive war.

Re: Try Australia

codejunky,

China first banned exports sometime last decade. The price shot up, but within six months had collapsed to half the intial price, and stayed there for a few years. But a lot of the non-Chinese production that came on stream then, closed again. Because the Chinese quickly saw their trick had failed - and so began exporting again. I hadn't realised exports had actually stopped briefly last year (according to the article) - but they've regularly threatened to do this - and given that all minerals are already owned by the Chinese government (you pay for a license to mine them) this "change" in the rules is just another in a long line of threats.

So, what to do?

ignore the issue. The market will eventually correct, like it did last time, if China pull the trigger. Companies can also keep small stockpiles of the stuff they absolutely need. But this alllows China to disrupt our industry for no cost to themselves. And there will be short-term disruption every time they do it.

Subsidise an industry. When the government pays for this, it's probably going to end up paying above the market rate. And there's no incentive to innovate to lower prices - from whatever companies we subsidise. But it's not actually a lot of money - so it's not a terrible idea. It's what the EU are doing - and I think maybe also Japan and South Korea?

Stockpile. Have a G7 stockpile to tide us over for say 2 years, until production can ramp up. This is a one-off cost, unlike a subsidy.

Or have a tariff. This stops it being an irregular problem, that the Chinese government can turn on-and-off when it suits them. It also punishes China directly - in a very minor way. But shows them that there are costs to dicking around - and that we're getting sick and tired of them causing so much trouble. China were invited into the WTO in order to incentivise them to join in the global economy, get rich and have their place in the world. But, particularly under Xi Xinping, they want to take more than their place. They don't just want to grow their economy, they keep trying to fuck up everyone else's. And it's clearly deliberate. In the way they subsidised their solar industry to kill off Europe's for example. Hence the EU tariffs on electric cars now. Plus they want to have the rare earth monopoly and exploit it to again, fuck with our electronics industries. The export ban last decade was to any company that didn't build its electronics in China - at which point they were fine with selling the rare earths. So what we need to do is impose costs on the Chinese economy for their government fucking about like this. In the hopes of disuading them. Also, because we need to have a sensible China policy. Hoepfully something less than the new (and even less stable) Cold War we're stuck in with Russia. If we can't get our governments to come up with sensible policies to show China that we are capable of action in defence of our own interests - then Xi Xinping will assume we're weak. And then we he goes too far, in a move threatening to destroy the global economy, and decides to invade Taiwan - he'll believe we won't try to stop him.

So we need robust China policy now, to estblish a working relationship where both sides know how far they can go, and what might lead to war. Otherwise we risk miscalculating our way into a war with China in the next decade. Because China is now so vital to our economic interests we're going to be forced to rebuild some of the Cold War state that we've let atrophy. We clearly need more weapons production, to support Ukraine, but also the kind of export control regimes to hopefully slow down China's massive armaments build-up. And finally a bit of an industrial / supply-chain policy to allow us to cope when the Chinese start messing with our economies to deter our politicians from stopping them invading their neighbours.

People whine about how the US is the self-appointed world's policeman - although they also often moan when the US doesn't step up to that role. But the world would be a much worse, and more dangerous, place if the Chinese became the dominant world power. So sadly I think we're going to have to have joined up military / security / industrial / supply-chain policies for the next few decades. The easy days of the 90s are gone - and international relations are expensive and important again.

Phil O'Sophical,

The EU are also attempting to build a supply chain for rare earth production. I'm not sure how successful it's being mind, but China have been threatening to do this on-and-off for ages - and even did it for 6 months a decade ago.

If China permanently cuts off the supply of rare earths it is a problem that would solve itself in a year or two. The issue is that the Chinese government know that - even if panicked Western journalists keep writing the same articles every few months, and clearly aren't. So the Chinese have to switch the supply on and off to make it financially unviable to process the stuff outside China. The answer is to ease the environmental regs (to reduce their cost advantage) - which is a bad idea - or to subsidise the processing of the stuff outside China, or to hold large stockpiles so we can rebuild the industry if it ever happens. I suspect if we put tariffs on China's exports of rare earths, the problem will solve itself. There's then a financial incentive to process them - and seeing as they're mostly not that expensive (and used in small quantities) it won't impose huge costs on industry.

Irongut,

Did you notice that the EU put large tariffs on the import of Chinese cars just two weeks ago?

Trade war with China is inevitable. Not because of bad policy by Western governments (though there's been plenty of that) but because of the way the Chinese government behave by subsidising their own export industries to try and destroy their rivals in other countries. Plus, under Xi Xinping, the Chinese government are getting increasingly aggressive, and the less reliant we are on them, the better.

Re: Try Australia

Rare earths have been processed before. It's just messy. It's possible, as China have been doing most of it recently, that they have an advantage in efficiency - but that's just a cost issue - the same as the current reason rare earths aren't processed - which is the cost of environmental regulations.

The last time China banned exports (a decade ago), they crashed the price. Because processing came on stream in the US, and other places.

The whole premise of the article is silly. The stuff isn't rare. The stuff isn't hard to extract. It can be extracted from existing mine tailings - or extra steps added to existing ore processing. It just isn't done, becuase its expensive.

I think the correct answer here is probably to put tarrifs on China's exports of rare earth. That way, there's an incentive for companies to do the work locally - and not stop as soon as China relaxes the export restrictions. This is the umpteenth time China have threatened to do this, and they've actually done it a couple of times.

Re: two-thirds of British children aged six to 18 didn't even know what a floppy disk is

And the symbol for filter data is a pair of underpants.

Re: The next....

Perhaps he's angling for promotion to Emperor?

Minister of tech - so he can build the new Imperial Battle Station (that's no moon!). If he can also fire lighting out of his fingers - then the job's his!

Re: Not surpising

The EU are trying to build a European supply chain.

I know Tim Worsral tried to put a deal together to process Czech mine tailings for their high rare Earth content. But it was cheaper to just buy Chinese.

Re: "experts"

Doctor Syntax,

But the experts don't always get it right either. And are sometimes subject to groupthink and office politics - where they try to exclude the awkward ones who disagree with the expert consensus. Even if those people are also experts.

So you need a process to oversee decision making that allows for a wide variety of inputs - and then is followed by scrutiny.

Otherwise we might as well just have a technocracy and have the civil service run the country. Which is as pronen to errors as any other system of government.

I rmember reading Slide Rule by Nevil Shute at university. And the bits on the R101 disaster were interesting. His comments being that when the Air Ministry were judging the airworthyness of the commercially built R100 they ended up farming it out to their internal airship experts. Who were on the team building the rival government airship R101. So they were giving their information to the team who were literally in competition with them - the government having ordered a commercial and government airship to test against each other. But they were the experts available.

I can't now remember if he had knowledge, or just speculated, that when it came to the airworthyness of the R101 - the same thing happened. The Air Ministry deferred to the guys building it to mark their own homework. A lot of those experts then died on the airship they'd created, as it wasn't airworthy. Perhaps if they'd got in Barnes Wallis from Vickers (chief designer on the R100) to comment - they might have been saved. But exertise sadly doesn't always counteract human failings.

Re: It's actually good.

Doctor Syntax,

You have a good point about statutory instruments. That I was thinking about as I posted my comment above - and probably should have thought of more.

It's very hard when you try to look at other peoples' political systems, because the differences are often so tricky, and have such surprising effects.

So a lot of our legislation makes provision for the follow-up statutory instruments - which can be changed more quickly and easily. But give more power to ministers and the civil service, as they're far less scrutinised by Parliament.

One of the problems is that no political system operates how it's supposed to. So you then start applying sticking plasters. I think for a long time now, Congress can't agree to get stuff done - and so the Executive arm is increasingly making rules. But the problem with that is that these rules can then change as soon as there's an election. And you get one Presidential administration spending its first days over-ruling all the executive orders of its predecessor. Legislation has both the advantage (and disadvantage) of being slower and harder to overturn. Makes things more predictable, even if they're predictably wrong.

Re: It's actually good.

diodesign,

But in practicality, can the court system really handle the load? Can watchdogs really afford to enforce rules if they're just going to be challenged in court every time?

Not my county or legal system, so maybe I shouldn't comment. But US courts are precedent based. So the people being regulated should in theory only get to challenge the regulation once and then there'll be a definitive interpretation. Which other cases should then defer to.

Of course the US have a constitution, and a Supreme court who like to wait 50 years and then change their mind on what the constitution says. Which is rather different to how things work in the UK. But if you give governments the right to interpret the law, they're always going to interpret it in their favour.

This should (were the political system working properly) force Congress to pass laws that do what they are supposed to.

I don't know the details of the fishing case, so I shouldn't comment. But it seems pretty outrageous that a government department can just magic up the right to charge people to enforce a law - when the legislation doesn't specifically say that they can. You expect to pay a fee to get your license to do something, you don't then expect an inspector to turn up to check up on you and say, "while I'm here - you're paying my wages and buying me lunch." Although it's a bit different if that legislation had been around for ages, and so everyone knew the score when they got into it.