* Posts by DavCrav

3894 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

The best and worst of GitHub: Repos wiped without notice, quickly restored – but why?

DavCrav

Re: Backup - ever heard of it?

"It is not quite as bad as it sounds, since the way it works means that developers have a copy of the repository on their own machine. But it is still pretty bad."

Controversial American bigwig in London... no, not Trump: HPE ex-CEO Meg Whitman to give Autonomy trial evidence

DavCrav

"When the acquisition closed, Dr Lynch went from being the near-absolute leader of a mid-sized company to being one of many officers in one of the largest technology companies in the world. Dr Lynch struggled to work with his peers on an equal footing and to recognize that practices which might work fine in a company with less than US$1bn in sales simply would not work in a company with over US$127bn in annual revenue."

What does any of that have to do with the actual trial, which is, I think at least, about Lynch's activities before the buyout?

One man went to mow a meadow, hoping Trump would spot giant grass snake under flightpath

DavCrav

Re: Once again...

"lays waste to the environment"

Capitalism is doing a pretty good number on the environment as well, of course.

DavCrav

Re: childish

"It is not ok to insult someone[']s appearance, but only if they are left[-wing] snowflakes who can[']t take it. For those of limited thought[,] 'orange man bad' is about as much as they can handle without hurting themselves."

In general it isn't OK to insult someone's appearance, yes. First, Trump has repeatedly insulted others' appearances, and so he definitely moves into the 'fair game' category, especially given his own Mr Blobby physique, interesting hair, and inability to pronounce standard English words. For your information, I included the punctuation missing from your post. Of course, it is not necessary for you, since you are not of limited thought.

"It[']s like assault being bad unless the target is lefty approved. Or tax avoidance is ok if it[']s lefty approved. But then crying on the street because Hillary lost is pretty childish."

Again, I think the only cases where assault is reasonable is when someone who repeatedly assaults or incites assault on others is then assaulted, because it would fall under 'just desserts'. Even then, if we are talking about physical violence -- having a milkshake thrown in your face is not physical violence -- then I do not approve even if the target is an extreme politician.

I have never heard anyone justify tax evasion/avoidance by any organizations.

Crying on the street because Hillary Clinton lost -- examples, please? -- is a little over the top, but could be justified if you are one of the targets of Trump's campaign. You know, foreigners, women, the educated, etc..

DavCrav

Re: childish

"[I] Guess you don't like the American slang "Prez", because that's the only misspelling or grammatical mistake in my post. Of course, we could look at all the replies and have a field day. (Yes, I started that one with a proposition just to get your [hackles] up)."

FTFY.

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

DavCrav

"which produces the stinky flammable stuff"

Methane is odourless.

Ex-student, 52, suing university for AU$3m after PhD rejection destroyed 'sex drive'

DavCrav

"If it hasn't done that, he's been ripped off."

You do actually have to pass the bridging qualification.

Truth, Justice, and the American Huawei: Chinese tech giant tries to convince US court ban is unconstitutional

DavCrav

Re: Spying

"Remember folks, China is KNOWN for spying....

And the USofA isn't?"

Sure, but irrelevant. If A spies on B and B spies on A, it's still reasonable for A to ban B's companies from its own networks because of the spying. Then B can do the same, but they don't really have a leg to stand on to complain about the original ban.

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

DavCrav

Re: More madness

"We're fine with these fünny döts."

When Mötley Crüe toured in Germany, everyone was shouting "Muhtley Cruh!".

Quoting Crüe frontman Vince Neil, "[...] when we decided to call ourselves Mötley Crüe, we put some umlauts in there because we thought it made us look European. We had no idea that it was a pronunciation thing. When we finally went to Germany, the crowds were chanting, ‘Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh!’ We couldn’t figure out why the fuck they were doing that.”

IT bod flings £1m sueball at Met Police for wrongly listing him as a convicted fraudster

DavCrav

When a court blocks new evidence all they are really saying is 'We don't care if you did it or not, let's just get the verdict over and done with.'

DavCrav

If I were preparing a defence, and there were several reasons why I was innocent, why should I be required to pick just the one? I think a defence of

1) I was out of the country,

2) that picture looks nothing like me,

3) the person sounds nothing like me, and

4) you are also out of time for prosecuting me,

would look pretty convincing. I wouldn't like to decide which of those to pick if taken to court.

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

DavCrav

Re: Only in Nan[n]y[-]State Britain...

"Starts- Guns cause death, take all my guns, please! Only criminals will have guns! We'll all be safe then!"

Almost no criminals in the UK have guns. And almost all of those are fake, in fact. And those criminals that have guns are smuggled in from countries with lax gun security. So it's more an argument to stop all trade with countries with stupid gun laws than anything else.

And the rest is nonsense.

Tesla driver killed after smashing into truck had just enabled Autopilot – US crash watchdog

DavCrav

"If that does not immediately make you turn the damn system off, I don't know what does. If it can't see a huge truck, it isn't going to see a small child, or a motorbike."

It's worse than this though, because it didn't see a huge lorry doing exactly the same maneouvre that ended with the first Tesla death. You would hope this had been fixed.

If you hear podcasting star Joe Rogan say something dumb, it may not be his fault – an AI has cloned his voice

DavCrav

The perfect time for HMRC and the banks to start rolling out 'my voice is my password' identification.

DavCrav

Sounded like a normal person to me, but then I've never heard of whoever this famous person is. And I'm not American, so I'm less attuned to their idiosyncrasies.

Banhammer Republic: Trump declares national emergency, starts ball rolling to boot Huawei out of ALL US networks

DavCrav

Re: National Emergency

"FYI Trump is behind Clinton in the total number of these at this point, and about even with Bush and Obama."

Blah blah. What are these national emergencies though?

Obama: flu pandemic, and sanctions against various countries, like Burundi, Russia, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, CAR, etc.

Trump: sanctions on Nicaragua, then BUILD MY GODDAMN WALL.

Trump uses executive orders to stop Muslims entering the US, Obama did it to sanction the Yakuza. No obvious comparison.

California court sentences ex-Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain to five years in clink for fraud

DavCrav

Re: Hmmm

" I know historically why the US didn't go this route (king packing court and all) "

Historically? I thought that happened last year.

DavCrav

" it was useful in breaking the FIFA corruption case. But I'll admit that's a rare example."

Useful is not the same as good. It was also bullshit that the US prosecuted the FIFA guys. Just because they were baddies does not make the law right. As demonstrated when it is used against the goodies.

DavCrav

"A fair cop, apparently."

The US legal system finds a man guilty of 'being near a US company that fucks something up while foreign'. Yes, a fair cop.

When wire fraud for someone outside the US turns up on the docket, expect the case to be utter bullshit through and through. The argument that some data went over a US cable is absurd.

Legal bombs fall on TurboTax maker Intuit for 'hiding' free service from search engines

DavCrav

Re: Dear USians

" let our government ruin you instead."

Is that intended or a Freudian slip?

DavCrav

Re: A lot of commies in here

"Why is free tax filing software suddenly a God-given right?"

Why is the ability to extract taxes from the populace a God-given right? It isn't, but part of the social contract is that you shouldn't go around forcing the poor to pay money to rich bastard companies in order to fulfil their legal obligations. When you remember that these companies spend significant amounts of money to influence laws specifically to make it difficult to do your own taxes, it becomes clear that they are so far in the wrong it's brutally obvious. Well, unless you are so kind of weird corporatist who thinks unchecked power for the rich is a good thing. (Libertarians generally do not think that, as they tend to at least believe in a rules-based system.)

And this is particularly telling:

"The dirty truth is that most people should not be filing their own taxes."

Most people should be, and the system should be set up in such a way that that is possible. And is, in sane countries.

DavCrav

Re: Sorry - did I miss something?

"Sorry - did I miss something?"

Yes, you apparently did. If you have a free option, as a result of an agreement with the IRS, and then try your best to hide it while manipulating people into spending hours filling in information when they think they are on the free site, only to turn around and try to charge them for the exact same service they should be able to obtain for free, then that is sharp practice at best and should be an offence if it isn't already.

Deceiving people into either wasting their time or spending money with you is called a con. And it makes these companies con men.

"one side did something sensible"

What? Do you think finding low-income vulnerable people and deliberately ripping them off is sensible? I mean, it is if you are a psychopath, but whatever.

Timely Trump tariffs tax tech totally: 25 per cent levy on modems, fiber optics, networking gear, semiconductors…

DavCrav

Re: What is it with Trump and Taxes?

"Ask yourself this: WHA"T would have happened if Republicans had treated Obama "that way" ???"

Reps: We want to see your tax details!!

Obama: I have already released them.

DavCrav

Re: Man's a fool

"NO, we did not "know" something that is BLATANTLY FALSE."

It's blatantly false that Trump is a fool? Even his own staff say he cannot read more than a page of text, and will only read a document if it relates to him, he gets bored and distracted otherwise. He agrees with whoever is the last person to talk to him about a subject before he makes his decision.

Do you disagree with the eyewitness testimony of his staff?

DavCrav

Re: It hurts the Chinese...

"The arrogance.

Presumably, the Chinese say the same about the west but I'm sure you're correct as "might is right"."

Our definition of behave is play by the international rules of reciprocity and not lying through your teeth. Their definition of behave is to kowtow. It was that way in the 18th century and it will be that way in the 21st.

The Chinese century is the century of darkness and jackboots.

DavCrav

Re: *NOT* Emabarrassed American!

"China is an exponent of globalization nowadays"

No it isn't. It might talk about free trade, but it is deeply mercantilist. The pitch is massively sloped in their favour it isn't even funny.

Zavvi tells customers: You've won VIP tickets to Champions League final! And you've won tickets, and you've won tickets, and you, and...

DavCrav

"Or maybe it would as these days the value of personal data provided to them might be a consideration in itself."

I didn't notice this bit you slipped in at the end. That's a very good question. I think GDPR would bear on such a question, because it explicitly prevents you from using the data in a way that would give it value, unless the party consents. So if consent for using the data for marketing purposes was not asked for at the time of the competition, then it would be hard to assign a monetary value to that data, as it cannot be used.

Even then, I believe that a competition like this is classed as either a prize competition or a free draw anyway (depending on what they had to do when entering), and so does not form a standard contract. The message saying that you have won is a 'mistake', clearly, as there should be only one winner, so despite being told you have won, you haven't.

DavCrav

"If there were no conditions attached allowing them to withdraw it I'd have thought that that would conclude an agreement. "

Under UK tort law, promising you free stuff does not mean I have to follow through on it. Case law is very settled on this.

The only exception is with promissory estoppel. If people immediately booked non-refundable flights and accommodation before getting the e-mail saying it was an error, they could claim compensation for actual loss, and at this juncture it might be cheaper for Zavvi to purchase tickets and just hand them over.

But the claimant needs a 'reasonable' expectation that the promise is also real. If I say I'll give you a million pounds if you are right about some trivia, and then you are, you are not entitled to it. If you quit your job in the expectation of receiving the million pounds, that would be when promissory estoppel would come into play, but in this case unless I were a billionaire and frequently handed out millions on bets, you would not have any reasonable expectation that I would in fact give you a million.

Usual IANAL applies here. This information is for entertainment purposes only etc.

DavCrav

"Is there anything in their T&Cs that says they can't be held to this?"

Certainly if you haven't entered the competition, you don't get to claim it, because there's no contract to breach. Saying "have a free car", you say "yes please", and I say "I've changed my mind" is not grounds to sue for breach of contract, because there's no contract.

US government internet and spectrum overseer resigns, along with legislative director

DavCrav

Re: Trump is burning the White House down

"But this would be a good thing, wouldn't it, if there's a multitude of presidential candidates from diverse political backgrounds, instead of just two, neither of whom were really wanted?"

The party system would still exist. Just all governmental checks and balances are burned to the ground now. Don't like a Congressional subpoena from now on? Just say 'no' to it, and make up some excuse later.

CryptoQueen on the run from Feds, lawsuit after her OneCoin slammed as 'an old-school pyramid scheme on a new-school platform'

DavCrav

Totally secure! You can't steal our digital wallet, because we don't have one.

DavCrav

"Unlike authentic cryptocurrencies, which maintain records of their investors’ transaction history, OneCoin had no real value," the FBI's Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney said in a statement."

This William Sweeney needs a new keyboard. When he typed out that sentence the letters 'u' and 'n' mistakenly appeared at the start of it.

Hate e-scooters? Join the club of the pals of 190 riders in Austin TX who ended up in hospital

DavCrav

"They can be but this is misleading. In terms of mileage per trip it is roughly

pedestrians << bicycles << cars << passenger aircraft"

This is true, but that was for context. These scooters are several orders of magnitude more dangerous than any other form of transport on the roads or in the air. Going from pedestrians to bicycles to cars doesn't change the orders of magnitude that much.

And accidents per bpm are a reasonable method of deciding which form of transport to make for a particular journey, if the two methods are available. So cars and motorcycles can be directly compared, and motorcycles are comparative death traps.

Not as much as these scooters, though.

DavCrav

""20 people were seriously injured per 100,000 e-scooter trips taken in the city."

That doesn't actually sound like a lot. What's the comparable rate for pedestrians / bicycles / cars etc?"

Massively lower. If you were seriously injured every 5000 trips in a car, given that you easily make 500 trips a year, you would be seriously injured every ten years.

Other means of transports' statistics are measured in KSI (killed/seriously injured) per billion miles.

Brit broadband download speeds are still below the global average, hoots Ofcom

DavCrav

Title is, let's be honest, a lie

"Brit broadband speeds are still below the global average! hoots Ofcom"

No they aren't, they are way above the global average. The correct way to do a global average would be to do the following:

1) Choose 1000 people at random in the country;

2) Find out the maximum real (i.e., not advertised) broadband speed possible for those people;

3) Take the median.

Notes:

a) If the person cannot obtain broadband, they score 0. The method outlined in the article ignores such people, so inflates those countries with small but fast broadband penetration.

b) I, for example, do not pay for the most expensive package, which would be more than ten times the speed. So I get a piddling 20Mb/s because here I don't need more, and wanted the cheapest package possible that allowed a bit of streaming. I used to have 100Mb/s, but downgraded to save money.

Autonomy's one-time US sales chief can't remember if he took part in grand jury hearing

DavCrav

"I don't think he's forming a good impression of the prosecution case."

I think he might be forming the opinion that they don't have one. This is going to make extradition proceedings for Lynch quite difficult, because if, as I suspect, this gets thrown out with some harsh words about the US 'evidence', this will be brought up at his extradition hearing.

NSA foreign spying, biotech snooping, Hamas hackers bombed, airline cams, and much more from infosec land

DavCrav

"So much so it'll only take years to come up with some sort of basic framework. Basic framework set down, add a couple of extra years for the necessary changes."

Which should have been done before anyone was allowed to put the Internets in a light bulb or a toaster. Internet-connected fridge? No.

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

DavCrav

Re: Management's job

"What happened to "The buck stops here."?"

It does stop here. But management are on holiday at the time.

Hey, those warrantless smartphone searches at the US border? Unconstitutional, yeah? Civil-rights warriors ask court to settle this

DavCrav

Re: As a non citizen..Nothing new. Its always been that way. Everywhere

"Since 2000,"

How about since 2002? I cannot believe you just happened to choose that date.

This is the problem with cherry-picking statistics. You can include 2001, but you have to weight recent years, say the last seventeen for example, more heavily than ones nearly two decades ago.

One example would be to use exponential decay, so the last one or two years (say) are worth n times the previous one or two years. Probably n=2 is too much, but n=1 is not correct. With n=1.5, and two-year window, 3200 deaths become equivalent to 1.4 deaths today.

I mean, otherwise, Nazis are vastly more dangerous than cars in the UK, because since 1938, millions of UK citizens have been killed by Nazis, and only a few hundred thousand have been killed by cars.

DavCrav

Re: As a non citizen..Nothing new. Its always been that way. Everywhere

"Statistically? I couldn't care less about school shooters, mass shooters, etc. because they're typically scared little wimps who can't get it up long enough to cause me or mine any problems. I am shit scared of terrorists who believe their god has ordered a Jihad for them to cleanse the earth of all western civilization."

Says 'statistically', then comes out with some non-statistical nonsense.

Statistically, you are much more likely to be killed by a Christian mass shooter in the US than a Muslim terrorist.

DavCrav

Re: downvoted for "black Americans"

""So if you're in the US, and you have dark skin, you're three times more likely to be shot by US security forces."

25% is less than two times 13%."

Suppose there are 1000 people, and the police shoot 100. (The numbers aren't important, just the proportions.) They shoot 25 blacks, 75 whites. But there are only 130 blacks in the population, so you have a 19% chance of being shot. There are 870 whites, of whom 75 are shot, which means you have a 8.6% chance of being shot. 19.2/8.6=2.23. So you are more than twice but less than three times as likely to be shot being black than white.

EU lumbers towards Apple probe as Spotify cries foul over App Store's 30% cut

DavCrav

"I'm not defending Apple here"

Well, you are.

"but I am defending the right to run a business and make a profit on your investment of billions of dollars."

Should car manufacturers take a slice of all profits on drive-throughs? Lorry manufacturers take a cut of the value of goods delivered on their trucks? Apple has injected itself as a middleman into a transaction between Spotify and its customer base, demanding a toll. It's standard rentier capitalism, and regulations are always necessary to stop it.

White House issues Executive Order on cybersecurity, including hacker Hunger Games

DavCrav

Re: Bad boss

"First was that you can't fix something until it's completely broken, and Trump will break it. That's a great response for a sociopath who doesn't care who is getting hurt while the government is broken."

It's also obvious bollocks. If I hear a rattle in my car engine, I take it to a garage to be fixed. I don't wait until rods start shooting through the engine block like bullets.

Now you can officially dox Scrabble players, thanks to the new dictionary definitions

DavCrav

Re: hackerazzo

"which doesn't gain anything in points, unless attracting the 7-letter bonus.."

Unless 'hacker' is already on the board, and there's a triple-letter square two *or three* spaces after. Then you can slide your z onto it.

"retiring the "ai" (sloth)"

Wait, how can a dictionary decide that three-toed sloths no longer exist?

DavCrav

Re: Scrabble Players?! OMG!!

"The "winners" start by finding the nearest dictionary to use as a final arbiter."

There's another group that fall into the category: the 'Have played Scrabble before and know that this is the easiest way to sort out any arguments' people.

Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again

DavCrav

Re: Keys

"And how exactly is it any of your business what we do in Yemen?"

That isn't even an argument. You're just a massive moron/troll.

International conflicts are necessarily of international interest. Even national conflicts that cause mass violations of human rights are of international concern.

DavCrav

Re: Keys

"If you need a history lesson, this is when the USA handily beat Great Britain."

Interesting that you got a shoeing for everything else but not this lie.

Look it up. Britain by most standards won the American Revolutionary War. a global conflict between the British and French/Spanish/Dutch Empires, with a side event in the US. Britain lost some bits of the US, but gained India.

So congratulations: the Spanish, French and Dutch and US forces manage to beat Britain in one part of the world. Well done.

DavCrav

Re: Keys

Why don't you fuck off out of Yemen then?

'I do not wish to surrender' Julian Assange tells court over US extradition bid

DavCrav

Re: The USA wants Assange for what he did

"Let the laughing killers keep firing bullets while you rush to get justice for a couple of women who had a bad sexual experience (with no preserved evidence and one of the women questioning the accuracy of the police recording of her statement)."

Rapist releases footage of shooting, along with thousands of classified but unnewsworthy documents. Since he released one video, he can go around committing rape, no worries.

DavCrav

"You may not consider Assange a "real" journalist, but I can see no fundamental difference between what he did and the Pentagon Papers."

Journalism is not dumping a bunch of stuff on the table. Journalism is investigating, collating, and then writing it up in a neutral fashion. That's just one reason why he isn't a journalist.