* Posts by Teiwaz

4133 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2011

MPs' proposal to cash in on public-private algos given a solid 'maybe'

Teiwaz

How about instead, they make our Public Records available on the Internet, instead of having to pay-per-page to see it through multiple Freedom of Information applications, which will then only be returned to you in the form of photocopies and by surfacemail.

Seemingly our Public officials prefer the publics records remain as exclusive as the Public Schools most the senior bods attended

Teiwaz

Patting themselves on the back

They're very good at that, while expecting the latest over budget, unfit for purpose project rolls creakily out to fall over unceremoniously the first morning it's in use (remember those old b/w films of 'wacky races' style aircraft).

I don't expect the thought that the customer data free-for-all of the last ten to fifteen years should be another wild-west new tech anomaly like revenge pron, and not something to be adopted wily-nilly like the bright idea of using children to clear out running looms during the early years of the Industrial Revolution???

I am warily in favour of NHS data being judiciously and carefully used to improve treatments and care, but calls to monetise the information the government holds on the citizenry lacks any ethics whatsover.

I'm not confident of any Ethics frameworks from anyone who would consider such a betrayal of the populance they are supposed to serve.

Dust off that old Pentium, Linux fans: It's Elive

Teiwaz

OS programmers should all be sat down in a room, and shown a film about that "chess in 1k" on the ZX81.

It's not necessarily their fault - but involvement of the higher level 'lets make the system helpful to the point it tries to do most the thinking for the user (and missing the mark of course) types - i.e. marketing and etc.

I'm sure even Windows was nippy before the clipboards, messenging (or whatever that keeps feeding ads), update managers, telemetry and whatever else junk mistaken for essential services rammed in.

Guess who's still in charge of your gas safety, Brits? Capita

Teiwaz
Joke

Re: If ever there was a time...

"... to be grateful that I live in a flat with no gas appliances... this is it."

You are glad you use electricity for hot water?! The lifetime cost is about 3 times higher than gas.

That's assuming Commenter is not the original inspiration for the (more than slightly pretentious) lyrics to Jarres Téo & Téa.

Nvidia promises to shift graphics grunt work to the cloud, for a price

Teiwaz

Re: LAN parties.

But no one ever thinks of LAN parties.

Do people still do LAN parties?

Not a thing the masses ever did.

This Nvidia strategy is thinking Android and fortnite download level attention, not the Gamer Overclockers/tweakers.

Teiwaz

Taking away half the fun.

I'm sure lot's of gamers will enjoy having the hardware burden lifted for a subscription, provided they can actually deliver*

I do think they removing some the challenge and pride gamers usually have in painstaking put together rigs, the extra hours of configuring to squeeze the most out of their setup for (probably tiered series of packages) running at minimum service requirement for the sub usually solution.

* I can't seem to get non-stuttery low-res youtube videos reliably on a wired internet though.

* Imagine the the howls of frustration when people come home eager to the get their game on, and find the service down.

$200bn? Make that $467bn: Trump threatens to balloon proposed bonus China tech tariffs

Teiwaz

Re: "socialism ultimately fails because it runs out of "other people's money"

Sure, socialism usually doesn't solve those problems because it again creates an elite which hoards the money and leave little to others as well, so it will ultimately fail.

Thank you for confusing socialism with yet another corrupt oligarchy.

The fault lies not in the system, but in the flawed implementation.

Same with everything, the selfish and self-important do their utmost to game a system for the benefit of them and their little clique.

Activists rattle tin to take UK's pr0n block to court

Teiwaz
Joke

Re: Easily bypassable

Google Image search and searching for the (adult) human body part of your interest, will result in thousands of images being returned.

Yeah, but they are nearly all watermarked [STOCK IMAGE] now.....

Teiwaz

Re: Is porn that damaging ?

PARENTS should be educating kids about healthy relationships.

What would the parents know - we're in a sick society that still holds to illogical fallacies like 'sin' and body shame in some form or other - would be best for a break from broken adult guidance for a generation to clear some of the crap out of the human system.

Post-silly season blues leave me bereft of autonomous robot limbs

Teiwaz

I don't get it.

I suppose if you were a bona fide Teen during the 80's - you would think 80's music is just the bees knees.

There was some memorable acts/bands/albums, but equally truly awful cringing atrocities that make one itch for something to bludgeon the singer to bloody pulp yelling 'make it stop, make it stop, make it stop'.

Ditto for the 50's, 60's and 70's (and certainly any decade before or since).

Once people stop being teens, they stop paying attention to 'what's in' and eventually stop being receptive to new music with a once treasured music collection slowly fossilising on a shelf or in an attic somewhere, only to be pulled out in twenty years to inflict on offspring and mortally embarrass them in front of their friends.

Teiwaz

Sing???

Instead, passengers must sing throughout their journey

Reminds me of slightly uncomfortable evenings with irish co-workers who wanted everyone to sing in the pub of an evening - solo and non-karaoke.

Renditions of 'Sit on my Face (and tell me that you love me)' or 'I like Traffic Lights' is usually a good cure for being asked to sing again.

People's confidence in orgs holding personal data is... on the rise?

Teiwaz

And the Survey said......

Some 16 per cent reported having a good understanding of how their personal data is made available to third parties and the public, and 18 per cent said they had a good understanding of how their personal data is used

Most of them heard that it happens, feel they have no control whatever over it, and promptly dismiss it as someone elses problem as they can't be bothered to alter their lifestyles even for a token response.

I bet the survey asked if they knew, but didn't check the substance.

Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)

Teiwaz

Re: Reg without comments

It'd be a dull and dry and read like a whitepaper.

Teiwaz

Just one dialog.

Lets face it, Google would prefer no user specific user control and people just typed a term into a single box and accept whatever result they thought you meant and benefits them the most.

No fuss, no bother, less confusion (and thought) and any idiot and his wallet could use it and Google could benefit.

Typing an address in and going straight there bypasses the search page and those sponsored links don't get seen.

Buy more, Buy more now. Buy more, and be happy - THX1138

Voyager 1 left the planet 41 years ago – and SpaceX hopes to land on Earth this Saturday

Teiwaz

Re: My best and only program.

My best and only program.

My only piece of code was combined with the other half produced by someone else 25½ years ago. She will finish her Double Masters degrees at the end of this year and I am very proud of my work.

Di you even get a T-Shirt out of it?

Teiwaz

Re: Land where?

Land where?

Am I the only one who thought SpaceX was going to land on Voyager 1?

Now that ....

What's that now? Space-X are sending up something to mate with Voyager?

Is Stephen Collins still up to it?

Teiwaz
Happy

Re: Telstar

[

Telstar. It's great to find that name still in use, but now my head's filled with warbly electric organ music.]

Argh! Now my head is filled with warbly electric organ music!

M

And with that timely reminder, I'm now listening to the Mahna Mahna song ('coz I like it)

No, no, you're all wrong. That's not a Kremlin agent. It's someone with 'inauthentic behavior'

Teiwaz

Re: Bah!

*Ponders whether Arsebook, Twitface, Pornogram et al can be classified as monopolies*

#StandardOil

Oily, certainly.

I always feel in need of a good Exxon Penguin scrub after coming into contact with any of them.

Teiwaz

"Both are keen to work with the FBI to crack down on abusers because only the Feds can provide them with the tools they need to tackle problem posts."

They've got issues*, but unwilling to take the initiative to crackdown themselves fearing a financially damaging backlash.

Sometimes a 'Mandatory' or 'cooperating with the authorities' stance is convenient, sometimes it's not.

Backlash or no, they can deny some of the responsibility. Nothing to do with needing any tools.

The old 'I was just following orders' defence is alive and well.

Belfast's networks are hella fast, London's are in the bog

Teiwaz

Re: Belfast Rocks

Well at least the N.I secretary finally saw fit to dock the MLA pay by 7000.

Personally, the moment they couldn't agree to run the place like adults, it'd been docked.

The Executive has been stalled and broken since Jan 2017, they should have been fired by now.

The only reason the U.K. Gov is unwilling to stage new elections is fear of loosing the DUP prop holding the lame Conservative Gov up.

Teiwaz

Re: Belfast Rocks

Also the model for future government.

So fupped up, it no longer functions due to disagreements over elementary things like setting a budget and the population learns to get on without it....

....but, given the opportunity to vote in the same idiots or maybe trying for an alternative, vote idiot every time.

HTTPS crypto-shame: TV Licensing website pulled offline

Teiwaz

Capita provide the secure payments side, I believe IBM host the rest.

Yes, I feel dirty defending Capita!

Well, there's the reason then. Nobody left who has a clue at IBM?

Teiwaz

Re: redirecting HTTP to HTTPS

Comp Sci awards the degree in the first year now?

I have heard mutterings about Degrees getting easier (and reduced the length of course while probably increasing the fees), but this seems like drastic short-cutting to me.

Brit teen pleads guilty to Minecraft-linked bomb and airline hoaxes

Teiwaz
Trollface

Re: And the worst part of it all...

...was that he had to set foot in Luton to go to court. Poor sod.

First they was Escape from New York...

Then there was Escape from Los Angeles...

...Now Escape from Luton ???

UK.gov: NHS should be compensated by firms using its data goldmine

Teiwaz

Re: Is the data not ours? Do NI payments mean we paid for the care and have data protection?

I presume we're talking statistical data, not personal data here.

A presumption is as good as an uninformed assumption, and that's basically the nub.

The government prefers to waffle and be vaguer than a shifty 'fell-off the back of a lorry, honest guv' dodgy trader on these matters too often.

People rightly suspect them of shenanigans because of this vagueness.

I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

Teiwaz

Re: So-called "AI"

I mostly agree with you, but some applications of what is termed AI are things the brain couldn't do either efficiently or at all.

True, but I can't think of any examples in the Consumer Market.

Teiwaz

Imagine how much food waste there will be if your fridge has an absolute adherence to the dates printed on the label.

Plenty of people have that problem these days. Living with 'young 'professionals' in shared housing for a while you see awful lot of stuffed dumped (in the wrong bin I might add) that's a mere day passed and nothing wrong with it. When I was a kid, there was an open jar of jam that'd been in the cupboard at least six years, we just scrapped the blue off every time.

Teiwaz

Solution looking for a problem

All this is really just a solution looking for a problem.

Smart isn't. it's a data collection opportunity looking for a cheese tempting enough to the mouse.

Or the right wooden animal that the townsfolk wheel it in the gates and share their lives with it.

There's no problem beyond what Marketing idiots can convince themselves is a problem, and SMart was never really intended as a solution to much of anything in the consumer space. Except maybe boredom and the search for a new useless toy.

Teiwaz

Last year with was all IoT. My boss got an "Smart" Kettle that he can switch on remotely. The one thing it can't do is tell him whether there's any water in it or not. Which I thought would have been a basic requirement.

That's not a kettle that's a remotely activated explosive device (potentially).

You could at least take out a teacup or two and a stretch of kitchen counter.

Free the teabag 8!!!

Teiwaz

Re: Personality

All these AI devices are missing genuine people personalities!

So are the people 'thinking' (and I use that word loosely) them up.

Probably also anyone 'excited' (also loosely) about the potential of owning one.

Google is 20, Chrome is 10, and Microsoft would rather ignore the Nokia deal's 5th birthday

Teiwaz

Saints and fools

Even the saintly British politicians have taken a look at the search giant's practices and said the parliamentary equivalent of "steady on, old chap".

This article is either a) written by an American or b) written for syndication to the U.S (shamelessy, and much like the recent Doctor Who and that last Torchwood story).

Can anyone look at a pic of the likes of May or Johnson (for American readers, not 'a johnson') and still say 'saintly British politicians' without breaking out in a disbelieving smirk at the sheer gravity of their fib?

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

Teiwaz

Re: Obviously...

I making a point of immediately binning any CVs submitted as a .odt file, the last thing we need are hippy's and Linux fanbois!

Idiot. Everyone knows Linux Fanbois would be using LaTeX

Teiwaz

Re: What's this Silverlight thing?

Ah, Silverlight, even it's mommy disowned it before everyone else.

Huawei's Alexa-powered AI Cube wants to squat in your living room too

Teiwaz

Re: Short of asking the fridge door to open, there isn't much you'd want to "ask" or "tell" a fridge

Short of asking the fridge door to open, there isn't much you'd want to "ask" or "tell" a fridge

How about to clean* itself?

* Dirk Gently and his Housecleaner will know what I'm talking about.

Until they manage that, I'll stick to something 'dumb'. At least it's still easy to buy a fridge without 'smarts' unlike TVs.

Teiwaz

I agree with Pen-Y-Gors

What is this 'zen' cube that isn't with a shitty mono speaker and eats sim cards.

I actually read the article, and I'm not sure what it is.

I'm guessing if you don't know what it is you don't need one*.

Mozilla changes Firefox policy from ‘do not track’ to ‘will not track’

Teiwaz

will it still be worth it for Google to keep financing the Mozilla Foundation

It's not in Googles best interest to be seen as the only choice in browsers. Edge and Safari are not enough to stave off the kind of scrutiny they'd come under if Firefox was struggling or non-existent.

Teiwaz

Re: It's about time

Then how come it works SO well that Chrome overtook Firefox

Chrome was ahead for a while if you were ignorant or didn't care about the drawbacks to using it. It's still competent (if you don't care about the drawbacks). Too many tab crashes for my liking though.

I'd occasionally use Chromium and Waterfox before Firefox fixed it's speed issues.

Teiwaz

Re: It's about time

you know, a UI with a MENU (and not a fat-finger-burger-button

Design trend-wise, I'm afraid that ship sailed - mostly because of Android and Google we have this crap hamburger flatness and too much whitespace.

The Menubar is still there though, press ALT and it's there (well, it is for me on Firefox 61.0.2 on archLinux).

Campaigners call for immigration exemption in UK's Data Protection Act to be scrapped

Teiwaz

The government will have this exemption confirmed in the act, by amending the GDPR

They can't.

I expect they'll try though. It's depressing to watch and extremely embarrassing to read another fudged statement and slightly different worded bill get rushed through only to be shot down again.

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

Teiwaz

Re: @ Chinashaw

The Irish Border is an EU issue not a UK one. The UK will just continue with no border and let the EU work out how to handle the issue without upsetting the Irish by imposing customs between Eire and the rest of the EU. Should be entertaining to watch.

The Irish Border is a UK problem while Northern Ireland is still a part of the UK (while there is still a UK, the whole Brexit thing seems to be an English idea). A hard border between North and South could well kick off the troubles again.

Nothing has been healed there, merely stitched together, as the population keeps voting the same idiot parties in (but then, people keep voting the same idiots in everywhere, as the alternative idiots are assumed to be more dangerous, and the alternatives are judged to small/ineffective/untried).

Teiwaz

Compare that "greatest alliance" with the United States: its parliament is ineffective compared with Congress

Wait, Congress is effective...?

Of course the EU is mostly not very Democratic, most of the member states government don't want to give much in they way of electorial power to the EU Parliament either.

The UK system is also flawed when the only slightly larger group can dominate policy, and is also run by civil servants (and of a much narrower mindset and educational background).

Teiwaz

Re: UK has the resourcesy

Isn't the European market actually bigger than Never Twice Same Colour land? More likely marketing execs in the US don't even realise there are other countries out there let alone know what their standards are.

Neither know in many cases, nor care from what I can see.

I think it comes with being encouraged to believe they are living in the greatest country on earth from an early age.

Anywhere else must just be 'howling ghosts'.

Teiwaz

It does seem to have a distinct whiff of 'Last Days of Hitler' about it. Sitting in the bunker with the Red Army a mile away, planning for the counter-attack and ultimate victory. How did that turn out?

Don't forget obsessing over the fantastical architectural make-over.

I suppose this time round it's Rail-links, Customs Systems and Sattelite Navigation arrays....

Windows 95 roars once more in the Microsoft round-up

Teiwaz

Re: Excellent!.....

.....now where are my Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry discs.......

I think you could play most of those already with ScummVM (later Monkey Island games didn't use Scumm system though).

Smut slinger dreams of AI software to create hardcore flicks with your face – plus other machine-learning news

Teiwaz

Does the first part of this article count as "deep-fake news"?

Deep-Throat-Fake news.

Teiwaz

Well, now porn biz Naughty America wants to sell this sort of caper to horny netizens.

They're packaging the wrong poduct.

If the first adopters wanted fake celeb sex vids, that's what the rest will want. If there was a market for 'paste your own cum-face' - that's be the first thing it was abused for.

When pornography photography was invented, the first [ab]use of it was selling piccies other people doing it, not setting up photo salons so you could have piccies of yourself 'doing it'.

Before photographs, 'illicit' illustrations features the countries lords, ladies and leaders 'doing it'.

A better seller may well be paying celebs for their footage and offering to sell 'you face 'dubbed' onto partner of 'celeb of your choice'. Not that many celebs would go for it. But theirs always look-a-likes.

I'm not saying some won't jump for the current offer, but I don't think it's a big seller.

As porn site pounds hard on piracy laws, Cox pulls out prematurely

Teiwaz

Re: Sounds familiar

Sounds like quite a lot of the internet, if you ask me, including some quite well-known names.

If the well-known names are the well-known names I think you mean, it's far, far, more than quite a lot of the internet, it's in excess of most of the internet.

But everyone of consequence knows the average plebs content has no value (except for who watches it when, who with, where and by association what could be successfully advertised to everyone involved and partially involved whether they are willing or not).

Southport: Come for a round of golf, stay for the flesh-eating STIs

Teiwaz

Re: Kielbasa Fest

"451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

Well, if you will follow a link to an amateur-hour U.S site

Android data slurping measured and monitored

Teiwaz

Re: Blessed are the poor

for they are rich in personal data.

It's fools gold, looks pretty, lots of data, but worth much less than a years take from 'fingernails-for-cash.com'.

Teiwaz

Re: 'The nature of some data may also surprise. App developers receive your age and gender'

The only way to successfully avoid that is to strip out Google services framework completely

Correction : The only way to successfully avoid that is not to have bought a phone with Googles Android on it in the first place.

Andoid devices have been a Trojan for Google to get inside your walls almost since they first came out.