* Posts by DavCrav

3894 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

Bug-hunter faces jail for vulnerability reports, DuckDuckPwn (almost), family spied on via Nest gizmo, and more

DavCrav

Re: "16 cameras placed around that home"

"Oh, bullshit. When pulled over (rare), I always let the officer know that I'm transporting firearms (not rare at all). I'm still alive, and intend to stay that way."

Sorry, of course, this advice doesn't apply if you are white and middle class. I meant to say, "Don't try it if you live in the US and are black". Happy now?

"Note: do not try this in the US. You are probably being recorded, and will be charged with attempting to interfere with an officer performing his/her duty."

Of course, the bodycams will only work if you are doing something wrong. If they do shoot you, then they will stop working suddenly.

DavCrav

Re: "16 cameras placed around that home"

This is like the one where a cop pulls over a guy for speeding, and asks if he has any ID.

"Yes, it's in my glove box with my gun," the man says.

The policeman runs back to his car and calls for backup. Another three cops arrive, and the man leaves the car, looking puzzled. They check his car and find nothing in his glove box. "You don't have a gun, why did you say you had?" they asked him.

"What? I said nothing of the sort. That other police officer must be a liar. I bet he'll say I was speeding as well!"

Note: do not try this in the US. You will die.

Jammy dodgers: Boffin warns of auto autos congesting cities to avoid parking fees

DavCrav

Re: Charging streets?

"Have them go slowly down streets with overhead power. Perhaps even with a power pole standing up at the back and and earth plate under?"

And since they seem to crash a fair amount, big thick rubber bumpers all round the outside?

DavCrav

Re: the incentive to implicitly coordinate with each other in order to generate congestion

"Traffic jams don't save gas if you actually need to get somewhere."

Jams, no. But go-slows, possibly. Depending on your engine efficiency, since wind and rolling resistance scale super-polynomially (but sub-exponentially), slower speeds save petrol.

DavCrav

Re: PROWLERS OR PREY?

"but semi gridlocked parked vehicles are going to be easy pickings for car thieves, and their owners aren't going to be a sprint away if an alarm goes off."

Of course, stealing a self-driving car might be fun.

"Take me to my house."

"Thank you for letting me know where you live. Taking you to police station."

"I said take me to my house."

"Confirmed, taking car thief directly to police station. Communicating with police self-driving cars to provide a lovely escort for the journey."

DavCrav

"The solution is to take all the money dumped into 18th century commuter technology which is becoming less and less useful for many people, and put all that money into roads and parking facilities."

Indeed, tear down all those country pubs set up for travellers by horse and cart. What, you meant bicycle lanes? Give over.

DavCrav

Re: When will Self Driving arrive?

""If Elon Musk is to be believed"

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha"

Is Tesla private yet? How much was it, $420/share? Current share price is $312, so I should get some. He couldn't be lying, could he?

While US fires criminal charges at Huawei, UK tells legislators not to worry, everything's fine

DavCrav

Re: Who's afraid of the big bad dragon

"The US always has to have a big bad enemy to blame the world's ills on."

Not the whole world's ills, no. But a reasonable percentage of the world's problems are caused by China, yes. We had more or less got rid of concentration camps in the world, but then China had to go and make the largest in history. As one example.

Gripe to UK, Ireland, Poland: Ad tech industry inhales, then 'leaks' sensitive info on our health, politics, religion

DavCrav

"I don't know why the big tech companies have such a hard time understanding GDPR. Even managers can grasp the fundamentals."

They understand it just fine. They are ignoring it, in the same way as plenty of people speed on roads every day. For globo-mega-corp, GDPR is like speed limits.

Apple: You can't sue us for slowing down your iPhones because you, er, invited us into, uh, your home... we can explain

DavCrav

Re: Yah, Yah, Yah.

"Choice of a slower phone and longer battery life? Every time. I want to make telephone calls."

You must be one of the few people who actually uses their phone as a phone.

DavCrav

Re: "Apple had no duty to disclose the facts regarding software capability and battery capacity."

"On the other hand, Rolls Royce never sold a single car on its technical specs. People buy the "newest Apple", not a "better phone". The problem arises just when they realize their apple turned into a lemon."

I have never seen Rolls Royce engineers offer to replace the plugs, and secretly remove two cylinders from the engine while they are at it either.

Should the super-rich pay 70% tax rate above $10m? Here's Michael Dell's hot take for Davos

DavCrav

Re: Income Tax - Smincome Tax

"The argument is that if you don't allow people to profit from business, they won't do business. Not that they need money to hire people, but money later is the incentive to hire people now. Otherwise, why bother?"

Unless the marginal tax rate is over 100%, you always get more money from working more. The idea that Zuckerberg wouldn't have founded Facebook if the tax rate on earning $10m/year is 70% is insane, because, you know, he'd still be a billionaire. Once the incomes get well above any amount you could need, standard monetary incentives no longer work. The boss of a company will stay that boss even if the tax rate changes.

Changing marginal tax rates affects people whose disposable incomes are below what they would spend if they had infinite money. Once that person buys anything they want, giving that person more money does not stimulate the economy, whereas taking some from them and handing it to poorer people does.

You can decide whether it's a moral thing to do, but lowering taxes on the already rich has no significant stimulating effect on the economy (once opportunity cost is taken into account).

DavCrav

Re: Also England

No problem. It was my office hour anyway, so I'm supposed to be answering people's maths questions.

DavCrav

Re: Income Tax - Smincome Tax

"Are you stupid or are you pretending in order to make a (terrible) point?"

I think he's pointing out claiming that low taxes encourage rich people to make more jobs in their companies is, to put it in blunt terms, complete bullshit.

DavCrav

Re: Also England

"Did I get something wrong?"

60/44 > 0.5.

DavCrav

Re: Also England

""national insurance" - being more than half the total income tax paid for a person employed and on average income.

Eh, what? NI is 12% of earnings above £160somthing per week An average income worker is in no way paying more than half their income on NI."

It's true that it makes no sense if you don't actually read all of the words. He said that NI is more than half the rate of income tax. At 12% versus 20%, and with a much lower threshold, this is definitely true.

DavCrav

"You may be happy with a doctor whose education was exclusively at state schools; but I believe you're in a minority."

I was educated exclusively at state schools, and I think I can correctly diagnose you to suffer from being a cunt.

Fine, we'll do it the Huawei, says Uncle Sam: CFO charged with fraud, faces extradition to US over Iran trade claims

DavCrav

Re: Coming out

"US tells the world not to or to face retaliation. "

To be fair, they are saying that a US part of Huawei was doing it, not even the bit in China. If the statements in the indictment are true, it's definite sanctions busting, even without the extra-territorial nature.

'Numpty new boy' lets the boss take fall for mailbox obliteration

DavCrav

Re: "total blame culture"

You know the motto: Move fast, break things, blame someone else.

DavCrav

Re: 100% honesty 90% of the time

"What stopped you from making good on the threat?"

His car was parked below.

Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills – lawsuit

DavCrav

Re: Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills

"Actually, it should probably read "Facebook don't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills" "

I would have thought if they were knowingly (as appears clear from these transcripts) providing services to children via credit card, which children cannot legally own, then they are knowingly processing unauthorized transactions, or at the very least knowingly processing transactions they had reasonable suspicion were unauthorized. I would be surprised if this isn't unlawful.

UK-EU infosec data sharing may not be KO'd by Brexit, reckons ENISA bod

DavCrav
FAIL

"Shortly after the Alps mass murder, Germanwings rebranded as Eurowings."

The announcement of the rebranding was in January 2015. The crash happened in March of that year.

Looks like Uncle Sam has pulled its finger out and appointed a Privacy Shield ombudsperson

DavCrav

Re: Another CEO in government

"Do any of these positions ever go to, you know, actual elected Reps or Sens or is the entire selection of government officials all down to the president?"

In the US system, I believe the appointment of officials is within the purview of the Executive branch (with some being ratified by the Legislature). The Cabinet, for example, are not elected, with the exception of the President and Vice-President.

This makes sense if you didn't think the party system would exist, and therefore the Executive wouldn't have a body of people in the same party from which to choose a cabinet.

DavCrav

"The US may have finally complied with the European Commission's repeated requests to name a permanent Privacy Shield ombudsperson, The Register understands."

This is the Trump administration. There are no 'permanent' positions.

Intel applies hobnailed boot to countries where its men and women workers aren't paid the same

DavCrav

Re: Sure

So you don't think there should be increments within a given salary band? The longer you have been on that level, the more likely it is you will have been given an increment, whether or not they are automatic. If I perform the same as a woman, and we both get the same raise, but I've been in the job longer than she, I will have obtained more raises, so will be paid more at that time.

UK.gov plans £2,500 fines for kids flying toy drones within 3 MILES of airports

DavCrav

Re: Knee jerk reaction

"Citation needed to say that they have improved things as well..."

OK, how about the CDC? From this page

What Do We Know?

Most drivers and passengers killed in crashes are unrestrained. 53% of drivers and passengers killed in car crashes in 2009 were not wearing restraints. (My note: only 15% of drivers in general are unrestrained.)

Seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury. Among drivers and front-seat passengers, seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45%, and cut the risk of serious injury by 50%.

Seat belts prevent drivers and passengers from being ejected during a crash. People not wearing a seat belt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle during a crash. More than 3 out of 4 people who are ejected during a fatal crash die from their injuries.

Seat belts save thousands of lives each year, and increasing use would save thousands more. Seat belts saved almost 13,000 lives in 2009. If all drivers and passengers had worn seat belts that year, almost 4,000 more people would be alive today.

DavCrav

Re: Knee jerk reaction

"Depends on your definition of success - it hasn't made the roads any safer.."

[Citation needed]

And you probably won't find one, because seat belts are the easiest and cheapest safety measure for cars, and have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Looming EU copyright rules – tackling Google news article scraping, installing upload filters – under fire from all sides

DavCrav

Re: robots.txt

"Up to the news site to decide if their content not being visible via big name search engines is a good idea in terms of click throughs / monetization."

Isn't that a bit like saying that the Highways Agency can come and help themselves to your stuff in your front room, unless you say you don't want a road to your house?

We need to be absolutely clear about this: Google can either 1) do what it wants, or 2) be a monopoly. It should not be allowed both, as that will lead to massive abuse of power. Like, for example, taking people's stuff and slapping ads on it, then threatening with wiping them off the (public) face of the net if they disagree.

DavCrav

Re: ....unless they can prove its not copyrighted

"Maxwell didn't invent electromagnetism. Patent and licencing does apply to inventions which come about due to a better understanding of electricity, light and magnetism."

Fine. The Daimler and Benz families happily accept your donation to their wealth funds for your use of the CarTM. The current fee is £1/mile. Happy now?

Also, says you. Why shouldn't Maxwell make some cash from his discovery? We are changing laws and handing out eternal rights for money cash moolah, scientists should be able to dip their wick.

DavCrav

Re: ....unless they can prove its not copyrighted

"On the one hand I agree with you, on the other.... well, if I create something completely new and own the ip for it, why should you be entitled to presume it belongs equally to you and to my decendants?"

Let me be less facetious with an answer. There is a different between property and IP, which is why it has the I at the front. IP is not property. IP is non-enviable, which means that if I 'steal' your IP, you still have it. So since IP cannot be stolen (without some form of memory-wiping drugs), it isn't property. This is why we distinguish between the painting itself (which can be stolen) and the idea of the painting (which cannot).

It is ludicrous to suggest that IP should be owned in perpetuity. For example, you like chairs? How about paying the descendants of the first chair maker to sit down? Every product has an inventor, who in the world of perpetual IP would rake in fees. Each person that contributed to the development of the computer, the motor car, the aeroplane, etc., would be due a royalty every time one was made, maybe even used? And each could presumably say no, we won't license the IP for rubber to be used any more, find a new compound. You could make something like rubber 'essential', so set FRAND-like terms for it, but as time goes on more and more cash would have to be set aside to pay all previous inventors.

You might wish now to distinguish between different types of IP, between 'useful' stuff, which is owned by everyone and inventors cannot perpetually assert their rights, and 'useless' stuff, which can be owned in perpetuity by its creator. But this demonstrates precisely why it makes no sense: the act of creativity is the same, so why should one be denied what the other enjoys? It sounds like nothing more than special pleading on behalf of those who make 'useless' stuff.

DavCrav

Re: ....unless they can prove its not copyrighted

"On the one hand I agree with you, on the other.... well, if I create something completely new and own the ip for it, why should you be entitled to presume it belongs equally to you and to my decendants? If I wanted that, I could open access in my will. If I choose to leave something exclusively to the benefit of my family down the generations, well, that is my right - we do it with fundamental stuff like DNA and also with wealth, connections / networking etc."

The descendants of Maxwell thank you for choosing ElectromagnetismTM for your data transmission requirements. The current fee is £1/MB.

DavCrav

"There may be an element in the Peanut Gallery who demand everything free, but I'm surprised at you conflating those with Copyleftists."

So these would be copyleft lunatics then? The wording from the article sounds to me like he means copyleft extremists, not that all copylefters are lunatics.

EU will have agreed a tech tax by March, says French finance minister

DavCrav

Re: So...

"The companies that earn that much money, Google, Facebook etc have the funds to hire accountants who'll do whatever they can to make it look like the company doesn't make the profit required for the tax. "

That will be much harder under these proposals. For example, Google's sales are in Ireland even though customer is in UK schtick would be illegal. And this is turnover rather than profit, which is much harder to hide.

Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?

DavCrav

"Waiting for /u/bananafacts now..."

Blah blah, bananas were invented in Britain, Ireland has one of the largest banana companies in the world, etc. Good enough?

DavCrav

"We have NOT had 2 referenda [sic] on being part of the EU, we had a say on the matter 40 years ago about joined a trading bloc called the EEC, nothing more. If we had known then (I use the proverbial “we”, personally I was still in cloth nappies at the time) what we were signing up to, would we have still voted yes?"

By the sound of it, the best way to satisfy both referendums (it isn't referenda, it's not a Latin noun) is to leave the EU and stay in EFTA/CU.

DavCrav

"That depends - parts of the country have already had 2 referendum votes"

All of the country has had two referendum votes. One in the 1970s, one a couple of years back. One yes, one no. So far it looks like the country has changed its mind once, so why wouldn't it change its mind again? And why shouldn't it be allowed to do so, given it was already allowed a second referendum in case it had changed its mind?

DNAaaahahaha: Twins' 23andMe, Ancestry, etc genetic tests vary wildly, surprising no one

DavCrav

Re: Furthermore...

"While yes, the article confirmed the sisters actually are identical twins, what you stated is incorrect. [snip]"

Thank you for, in great detail, explaining why I was right after all. I guess my point, although apparently overlooked, is that the tests are not only wrong, in the sense that identical twins should give exactly the same answers, but also meaningless, in that siblings should give the same answer if it were possible to do what the product says it does.

DavCrav

Re: Furthermore...

"Perhaps they are fraternal twins who just look exceptionally similar? That is a possibility."

And, drum roll please, if these tests worked, they should still give the same answer for any person whose parents are the same. The fact that the article confirmed through a proper DNA test that they were identical notwithstanding, one daughter cannot be 13% from somewhere and the other 3% from the same place, if they have the same parents.

So we have two options:

1) Not only are the DNA tests from the proper place wrong, the mother wrong for thinking they were identical at birth, but also they must have different fathers, despite being twins, which might be a little bit tough, or

2) These tests are full of crap.

Huawei's horror show 2019 continues as Taiwanese research institute joins banhammer club

DavCrav

Re: Accusations

"Come on, it's not that difficult to check, now is it ?"

Not just difficult, impossible. How do you conclusively prove that it isn't compromised?

For example, if I give you a string of 1s and 0s, how do you prove that there isn't a hidden message in it? Indeed, every message is hidden in it, given the right key.

DavCrav

Re: Accusations

"Huawei is under no obligation to obey American sanctions.

They may be banned from selling in the US but that doesn't mean US authorities can prosecute officials from another country for breaking US rules."

And once again, this nonsense. I assume you mean the crime that she has been arrested for, which is, more or less, fraud. She (allegedly) lied about the corporate structure of Huawei in a call with US investors, to induce them to unwittingly break the law. That's a crime in most jurisdictions.

DavCrav

"China's government has come to Huawei's aid."

Well, if you call kidnap and (threatened) murder coming to someone's aid, yes, I guess.

“We urge relevant parties to cease the groundless fabrications and unreasonable restrictions toward Huawei and other Chinese companies, and create a fair, good and just environment for mutual investment and normal cooperation by both sides’ companies,” Hua said.

OK, China first then. Drop your ludicrous trade barriers, release your hostages, and then we can talk.

Want to get rich from bug bounties? You're better off exterminating roaches for a living

DavCrav

Re: Eh, what...?

"Ehhh.. what?!? Whyever not? Surely freelancers need to get more money than employees in order to rebalance the risk/reward ratio to compensate for the lack of guaranteed income?"

Absolutely. That's why the guys who work for Uber and Deliveroo make so much...oh wait.

DavCrav
Headmaster

"The UK government, she said, is not going to start a bug bounty program"

Fine. Will it start a bug bounty programme though?

Googlers to flood social media with tales of harassment in bid to end forced arbitration

DavCrav

Re: "requires employees to waive any rights to sue or appeal"

"I don't think the US law is all that different from the UK; where a contract requires arbitration, that process will be required to be completed first, and grounds for overturning an arbitration finding are (1) fraud or corruption; (2) partiality; (3) misconduct in selection of evidence; (4) straying outside of the bounds their powers, by either going too far or failing to reach a conclusion."

It's my impression that forced arbitration is more or less unlawful in the UK. It's nigh on impossible for a company to stop an employee taking them to an employment tribunal.

Goddamn the Pusher man: Nominet kicks out domain name hijack bid

DavCrav

"It appears he is a "domainer", and buys and sells domains."

That sounds more like he did it in bad faith than Pusher, to be honest. I would not have been so hasty in writing this article to suggest that Pusher is completely in the wrong here.

If I could turn back time, I'd tell you to keep that old Radarange at home

DavCrav

Re: Running backwards ?

"The internal crystal controlled oscillators, not so much. How often do you have to reset your digital watch, or kitchen clock because the time is too far off?"

I have to reset my car stereo's internal clock regularly. I believe this is due to a slight drop in power every time you start the car, from ignition. Over time this half a second builds up and it's a few minutes out.

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

DavCrav

"If found for the claimant, then that would put the UK govt"s claim of an act off war on very shaky legal basis..."

Why? A US court doesn't get to pass judgment on press releases of the UK Government.

DavCrav

Re: Irony ?

"I'm struggling to feel too much sympathy for them, truth be told. They were hardly a vulnerable customer."

Do you only feel sorry for vulnerable people, when a company behaves like a total dick towards someone? So I'm not a vulnerable person, but I feel people should feel some sympathy if a company burned my house down and told me to fuck off.

"Also, if their business nous is so bad that they bought a shit insurance policy"

It isn't a shit insurance policy, the insurance company are -- what is the word? Ah, yes -- lying.

Q. How exactly do you test car seats? A. With this sweaty 'robutt' that twerks for days and days

DavCrav

Re: Low resolution

I suspect it's also that people drive to the exercise venue when it's cold, and run outdoors or run/cycle to the exercise venue when it's warm.

Huawei sales director nicked in Poland on suspicion of 'spying'

DavCrav

Re: Niot convinced

"They probably refused to install some stuff?"

So they arrested one dude from Huawei, and also just for fun an ex-member of the Polish intelligence community?

I really don't understand you lot. If a Western person is arrested for spying, he's obviously a spy. If a Chinese person is arrested for spying, it's obviously because he refused to spy for the West.

Maybe, you know, Chinese people also spy? Otherwise, that really big agency in Beijing is full of people who are rubbish at doing their jobs.