* Posts by Cuddles

2337 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2011

Apple in XS new sensation: Latest iPhone carries XS-sive price tag

Cuddles

Re: Yawn....

"Surely I'm not the only person underwhelmed by this? The only one that looks at this and sees nothing more than incremental change?"

To be fair, the jump to $1500 for a phone is a pretty big increment.

"The whole smartphone market really has reached the point where it's flat, dull, and stable"

People tend to comment on it now being a mature market, but I'm not convinced it wasn't born mature. My very first smartphone was an HTC Hero. Obviously the underlying hardware and software has improved since then, but I can't point at anything missing that would distinguish it from a modern phone. Hell, it has a removable battery, 3.5mm socket and accepts SD cards, so it's actually well ahead of many of them.

It's not really smartphones and the market that have changed, but rather society. When smartphones were new, people saw them as exciting shiny things, and were happy to buy new ones regularly because they were even newer and shinier, even though they didn't actually bring anything new to the table. Now, they're just ubiquitous tools. Upgrades are no more or less meaningful than they used to be, most people simply stopped giving a shit.

Boffins bash Google Translate for sexism

Cuddles

Re: What's the problem here?

"Since when has "they" become singular?"

Since about the 14th century; it has been in continuous use ever since and is accepted by pretty much every modern style guide. It is always good for a laugh watching wannabe grammar nazis fail at the English language while trying to correct others though.

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

Cuddles

Nonsense

"It's a fact of life for gamers: If you want to be able to compete, you need the best hardware to give you an edge."

Being competitive has pretty much nothing to do with hardware. You can get practically any game to run perfectly well on old, low-end kit as long as you're willing to drop the graphics settings a bit. Expensive, high-end hardware only matters for making things look shiny. Which is what the vast majority of gamers actually care about since it's only a tiny minority that actually compete in any meaningful fashion. About the only bits of hardware that actually matter are the keyboard and mouse. And given that wired versions are universally preferred due to the increased latency of wireless ones, I don't see any competitive players wanting to stick an entire wireless network in between them and their computer.

Latency aside, there's also the rather more important issue of coverage and reliability. Actual competitive gamers travel around the world carting all their kit with them. No-one is going to want to risk turning up at a tournament only to find they can't connect to their remote subscription service and so are unable to play at all. No, it's painfully obvious this is not aimed at competitive players at all, it's entirely directed at casual home gamers who keep seeing articles like this claiming they need to shell out thousands of dollars just to play a game, and so are fooled into thinking an expensive subscription service is somehow necessary. Just follow the money - Nvidia are one of those hardware sellers who would supposedly be worried about this. Obviously they are not worried about it, because they know perfectly well that the subscription costs will actually be significantly more than the cost of buying a computer yourself.

Safari, Edge fans: Is that really the website you think you're visiting? URL spoof bug blabbed

Cuddles

Re: Edge has fans???

"I only use Edge when forced to do so by Microsoft product tying (SharePoint) in their desperate bid to win back market share."

Product tying with Sharepoint? Works perfectly well in Firefox and Chrome when we're forced to use it at work.

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

Cuddles

Re: Long or Short

"No idea where you got 21.4 million km from...."

It's almost as though two similar-sounding words that differ only by a single letter can occasionally be accidentally substituted for one another when writing. It's a shame this is such rare occurrence that we haven't invented a word to describe such typos.

Neutron star crash in a galaxy far, far... far away spews 'faster than light' radio signal jets at Earth

Cuddles

Re: Relativity - Great! But what about String Theory, Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

"But it is ONLY hypothesised to exist as an explanation for these observations"

Well yes, that is how hypotheses work. Would you prefer it was hypothesised to exist for observations we don't actually have, or for ones which it wouldn't explain? That wouldn't make an awful lot of sense. Science really isn't all that complicated. In essence:

1) Make some observations;

2) Come up with a hypothesis that can explain them;

3) Figure out what other consequences said hypothesis might have;

4) Continue making more observations and checking if they match what's expected.

That's it. See something, try to explain it, see if that explanation works, GOTO 10. I've never understood why anti-science types constantly complain about things like a hypothesis only being invented to explain some observations we've made. That's the whole bloody point, and is the only vaguely sane way to approach things.

"What is dark matter? The stuff which explains the rate of expansion of the universe. What explains the rate of expansion of the universe? Dark matter."

Dark matter has nothing to do with the expansion of the universe*. Dark matter stems from observations that there often appears to be more mass present in some places than we can actually see. Galactic rotation curves are probably the best known observation - stars towards the outer edges of galaxies are almost always seen to be orbiting faster than they would if the stars and gas in the galaxy were the only mass in it. Dark matter isn't some bizarre invention out of thin air, it's just by far the simplest explanation - there appears to be more mass than we can see, therefore there's probably more mass that we can't see. Note that this doesn't even need to get the weirdness of relativity and quantum physics involved; orbits can be largely explained by Newtonian mechanics and observations made using Newtonian telescopes.

It only starts getting complicated because obviously the first thing everyone thought of was that it was just regular matter that we couldn't see in the form of things like brown dwarves and diffuse gas clouds, but after looking into it it turns out that can't actually explain things (essentially, if it was just lots of little things too faint to see, there would have to be so much that we'd be able to see it). And then as time passed a whole bunch of other, entirely separate, observations were made that not only suggested there was more mass around than we can see, but also tended to agree on how much, where it is, and that ordinary baryonic matter can't be present in the quantities required.

Which is why we now have more seemingly weird theories about what it could be. No matter what we look at or how we look, we consistently see indications that there's much more mass out in space than we can see directly via the electromagnetic spectrum. It can't be made out of baryonic matter, therefore it must be made of something else. We've ruled out lots of something elses so far, but we're still not sure what it actually is. Hence, dark matter. You certainly could call it sky pixies instead if you liked, but that wouldn't change the observations or the best answers we've come up with to explain them.

* OK, that's not quite true. One of the many lines of evidence pointing at dark matter is the observation that the rate of expansion of the universe is consistent with there being a lot more matter around than we can see. Dark energy is an entirely separate theory related to acceleration of the rate of expansion, but dark matter is required as well to actually fit the observations.

Cuddles

Re: Relativity - Great! But what about String Theory, Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

"they have never been detected"

What exactly do you think "detected" means? Dark matter is theorised to exist because it explains certain observations. In exactly the same manner, electrons are theorised to exist because that explains certain observations. Neither of them can ever be picked up in your hand and looked at with your own eyes, but both absolutely have been detected in any meaningful sense of the word.

"There are other theories that do NOT need dark matter and dark energy but they are (in general) ignored because ..."

They're ignored because they don't work. The first and most fundamental hurdle for any new theory to pass is to explain the observations we already have. So far none of the alternative ideas to try to explain dark energy, and even more so dark matter, have managed that.

"Same with String Theory. It can never be proven (experimentally) because strings would be smaller than the Plank Length (and thus can never be seen/resolved)."

Again, sheer nonsense. Confirming things in experiments does not mean being able to pick them up and look at them, it simply means that observations agree with the predictions made by a theory. It doesn't matter how small and impossible to directly see something might be, if its existence explains an observation that can't be explained in any other way, then that is evidence for its existence. As it happens, you're actually correct that string theory can't be proven, because there is actually no such thing; string theory (and its replacement M-theory, string theory is obsolete) is actually a large class of theories. You could get evidence for a specific one, or group, but it simply doesn't make sense to talk of proving string theory as a whole.

"Electric Universe"

Bwahahahahahaha.

Cuddles

Re: Just a side note

"Antimatter is just an atom, whose core contains the electrons while the orbits are filled with protons - in "normal" matter it is the other way around."

Not even close. Antimatter is an entire second set of fundamental particles that are the "opposite" of regular matter, and which annihilate with each other when they come into contact. It has absolutely nothing to do with atoms - a positron is the antimatter counterpart to an electron regardless of whether either is part of an atom or travelling freely. There is no such thing as an atom with a nucleus made of electrons; nuclei are held together by the strong nuclear force, which does not affect electrons.

"Dark Matter on the other hand is currently just a place holder for something yet unknown."

Better, but still not really correct. Dark matter is a placeholder name for something that behaves in every respect exactly the same as matter that we happen to be unable to see. Various other phenomena have been proposed, but not a single one can actually match all the observations. Given our track record of discovering new kinds of matter that weren't previously suspected to exist (ie. literally all of them), the idea that there's at least one more kind really isn't as outlandish as some people seem to think.

"maybe it is (whatever it is) so far beyond our reach that we will never know."

Utter nonsense. If it has any measurable effects, it can be studied and figured out. Throwing up your hands and deciding it's too difficult is for religion and philosophy, not science.

Benchmark smartphone drama: We wouldn't call it cheating, says Huawei, but look, everyone's at it

Cuddles

Re: VW

"I’m all in favour of a doped up sports league. Cyclists off their tits on performance enhancers, runners barely able to piss for drugs and so forth. See what that real limits of the human body are when chemically boosted."

It's called the Olympics.

Cuddles

Re: Isn't this easy to fix?

"Benchmarks are a silly idea... But buy a phone that plays the equivalent of GTA V at 120fps on Ultra (or whatever), and you get... a phone that'll play that game like that."

Which is... drumroll... a benchmark. Benchmarking is simply comparing tests run under standard conditions. Comparing how well computers can run GTA5 is no different from comparing how well they can run Geekbench. The only difference is that with dedicated benchmarking software, you can be sure of running exactly the same tests in exactly the same way every time, while running a messy game makes that much more difficult. The tradeoffs are that badly made benchmarking software might not be representative of real world use, and that since there are relatively few testing suites around it's easier to cheat as was done here.

The reality is that no testing method is going to be perfect, but simply complaining about benchmarking in general doesn't make sense. Benchmarking software attempts to solve a real problem with comparing performance; the fact that it brings its own, different problems doesn't mean simply abandoning the whole idea will help since that still leaves you with the original problems to deal with.

Ideally what you want to do is along the lines of the testing TechReport does, which combines a variety of purely synthetic benchmarks, realistic benchmarks, and a selection of common programs and games including ones known to tax systems in different ways. For example, their most recent CPU benchmarks include memory and maths tests with AIDA64, Javascript performance in browser, WebXPRT benchmark, compiling with QTbench, 7-zip performance, Veracrypt disk encryption, Cinebench, Blender, Corona, Indigo, Handbrake, SPECwpc, Crysis 3, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, GTA 5, Hitman, and Far Cry 5. Six of those are dedicated benchmarking tools, six are standardised benchmarks performed with representative data sets in real programs, and five are best efforts at standardised tests in games.

Every single part of that is a benchmark, and even the more synthetic ones play an important part in the overall evaluation. The problem with benchmarks is not that they're a silly idea or that they don't mean anything, but that far too often both the people carrying them out and the people looking at the results are lazy and don't understand what they're doing. Looking at the results of a single benchmark is indeed meaningless, probably more so for a synthetic one but even realistic ones vary hugely depending on the task. There's no point looking at only the results for GTA5 if that relies heavily on single-core performance and completely misses memory bandwidth problems, and even adding a few other games in doesn't help if they all end up relying on the same aspects of the system (or importantly, if you just blindly throw games at it assuming that will make as good test, without figuring out what you're actually testing). The only way to do benchmarking properly is as above - test lots of different things in different ways, and for some of that synthetic benchmarks are the best tool for the job.

tl;dr - Benchmarking is far from a silly idea, and in fact pretty much every proposal for what should be done instead is just a different benchmark. The trick to doing it properly is simply to make sure you cover all aspects of performance, rather than just throwing one or two programs at it and calling it a day. If that's all you do, synthetic benchmarks are really no worse than anything else; you're not going to get a useful answer anyway.

Facebook flogs dead horse. By flog, we mean sues. And by horse, we mean BlackBerry

Cuddles

Pot, meet kettle

"Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, BlackBerry is now looking to tax the innovation of others,"

"(acquired from AOL)... (acquired from AT&T)... (acquired from BellSouth)... (acquired from HP)... (acquired from 3Com)... (acquired from HP)"

Hmm.

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

Cuddles

Re: For all your searching

"But I still go to Google for cases when I actually want to see stuff to buy as they seem to do better at returning UK based..."

Which is ultimately why all this tracking exists at all. If it was purely about moustache-twirling villains in big business wanting to make a few extra quid, even the general public wouldn't put up with it. But the thing is, at least some tracking offers real benefits in the form of things like more relevant search results, so the average person just doesn't see the problem. Sure, all your data is being sold to the highest bidder (and probably all the rest of the bidders too), but it's a few seconds quicker to find the cat video you're looking for, so no worries right?

Software dev-turned-councillor launches rubbish* chatbot

Cuddles

Re: FFS

"Fly-tipping is a problem created entirely by the local councils. Simply restore weekly bin collections, and allow unlimited trips to the council tip, and fly-tipping will go away again."

No it won't. Council policies can make the situation better or worse, but a lot of fly tipping is either commercial waste or domestic waste that can't be processed by the council anyway (such as the boats El Reg is so fond of - good luck taking one of those to your local skip). Not collecting bins as often or making it less convenient to get to the skip can lead to an increase in people dumping the odd couple of bin bags at the side of the road, but the big piles of rubble and things like sofas are all due to selfish bastards not wanting to pay to dispose of things properly. Absent a magic money fairy offering to pay everyone's normal business expenses, there's absolutely nothing councils can do about that.

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

Cuddles

Re: An "AI powered cooking assistant"?

"Occasionally I might use a browser to view a recipe, and the timer function on my phone... so that's two apps. Can't think of a third"

I tend to use a notes app to do shopping lists, so I'll give them three. I'm baffled what the various devices needing remote control apps could be for though. As gets repeatedly pointed out every time this comes up, things like fridges and overs need you to actually be physically present to move food around, which means there's no possible use for remote control apps to be involved at any point.

What really confuses me in this case, though, is why exactly having to open three, or even seven, different apps is supposed to be a problem. The whole reason the modern smartphone has become so popular is because it's so easy to have multiple functions available in a matter of seconds with just a couple of taps. If I'm looking at a recipe in a browser and want to add something to a shopping list, it's literally two button presses to get there. It's a similar effort to get to a timer, or to a YouTube how-to video, and just about anything else I might want. Even if a cooking assistant app manages to collect all the possible functions you might want under one heading, how will it actually make things any more convenient?

Ironically, part of the problem may be that they're not actually pushing all this crap hard enough. It's possible to see potential convenience of a kitchen that knows literally every potentially edible item in the house, including how much is left, how long until it goes off, and so on. Even just in terms of apps, being able to select a recipe and have everything you need to buy instantly added to a list and maybe ordered for you at least offers some small benefit over having to type the words into a list yourself. But without total coverage, it's useless. What's the point in trying to sell me a smart fridge and oven if I still have to check the analogue cupboards and make a list myself anyway? At that point you're just adding an eighth app to the seven you think I'm already using - without full integration of everything, tacking on "smart" features in an ad-hoc manner makes things less convenient, not more.

Cock-ups, rather than conspiracies, top self-reported data breaches

Cuddles

Seems unlikely

"Cyber break-ins were smaller than all of these"

Smaller, or less frequent? Leaving a folder full of patient notes on the bus exposes a small amount of information to a small number of people. IT screw-ups, on the other hand, routinely expose billions of records to the entire world.

Huawei Mate 20 Lite: A business mobe aimed at millennials? Er, OK then

Cuddles

Re: Whenever I see these "overly diverse" SKU options

"They may look the same but if the SoCs are difference then they're different."

Which is why I specifically said "virtually identical phones" and not "phones that look a bit similar on the outside". The entire point of the article being that they are, in fact, virtually identical.

Cuddles

Re: Whenever I see these "overly diverse" SKU options

"I just have that shuddering feeling that "They're never going to support all of these for updates..""

That's an odd feeling to get when seeing a bunch of virtually identical phones. If anything, that makes it much easier to support them.

Cryptojacking isn't a path to riches - payout is a lousy $5.80 a day

Cuddles

Missing something

The trouble with the analysis here is that it seems to assume all the mining is done independently. $5.80 per day is profitable if that's all you get, but stick your code on 1000 sites and it looks a lot better. Which, according to this previous Reg article is exactly what's happening - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/15/coinhive_mining_money/ - there's code running on 1/500 of the top million sites, but it's all paying the same 10 people.

Ultimately, that's the big problem with the idea that legitimate mine-to-view could replace adverts on websites. As these articles point out, it's basically impossible for a single site to actually make money that way, it's only malicious networks covering thousands of sites that can make significant amounts of money, and they only manage that by not having to pay the costs of actually running those sites.

Security bods: Android system broadcasts enable user tracking

Cuddles

Does it matter in practice?

In theory, this is information that a user can refuse an app permission to access, and this exploit is a way to get around that and access it anyway. In practice, almost everyone just blindly accepts whatever permissions an app asks for. So while it's not ideal that the flaw exists and won't be fixed in older versions, it's not really going to make any difference since malicious apps don't need to sneak around trying to find information that they'll be given if they just openly ask for it.

HTC U12 Life: Notchless, reasonably priced and proper buttons? Oh joy

Cuddles

Re: IP67

"Who's going to drop their phone in water (but not too deep, and only clear fresh water not salt water, chlorinated pool water, etc.) and leave it there for minutes?"

Generally they won't leave it there for too many minutes if they can help it, but lots of people are perfectly capable of dropping their phone in the sink, a puddle, or something similar. IPx7 is the lowest standard to cover actual immersion for any length of time, so obviously that's what's needed to cover things like that. I'm sure it's great if you've never dropped anything or never go near any body of water larger than an eggcup, but those are both things average humans have to contend with in their day-to-day lives.

"And don't get me started on IP68, which "improves" IP67 by being exactly the same except 1.5 meters of water."

No it isn't. IPx8 covers immersion to any depth greater than 1m; it's up to the manufacturer to decide what depth that is. Things like cameras and watches are frequently rated to tens of metres. It's essentially an open-ended standard that is essentially just anything better than IPx7 but with no upper limit.

"WTF let's add IP69 and go for 2 meters!"

IPx9 covers high-pressure jets, not continuous immersion. Immersion to 2m is already covered by IPx8.

Cuddles

Right decisions?

"HTC has made all the right design decisions here. This unit is larger (6-inch)"

So, not all the right decisions then.

Chinese hotel chain warns of massive customer data theft

Cuddles

Re: Inside job / 8 bitcoin per record

"Anybody else think that 8 bitcoin is a tad expensive for info on one ID ?"

The article doesn't say that's the price for one ID.

None too chuffed with your A levels? Hey, why not bludgeon the exam boards with GDPR?

Cuddles

Re: Could be humbling

"That's not the error rate, it's an irrelevant statistic for the gullible. The error rate runs between 2 and 30% depending on the board and examination."

You were wrong when you first claimed it, now you're just straight up lying. The error rate is the proportion of errors in the entire sample, ie. all exams that were given a mark. What you are whining about is the proportion of grades that were appealed because there was reason to suspect an error occured, in which the appeal was subsequently upheld. Obviously that is much higher because the vast majority of marks are not suspected to have significant problems. In addition, it's already been pointed out that even that percentage has not ever reached 30% so you should probably stop repeating it.

"No, the marking scheme is objective and markers are moderated. Few, if any, appeals should be successful."

That's just plain stupid. Ideally all appeals should be successful because people would only appeal when there has actually been a problem. As it is, some appeals are unsuccessful because people aren't always correct about that. What you actually mean is that because marking is moderated, the overall error rate should be low and few appeals should be successful compared with the total number of grades given, ie. it should be in the region of 0.04% rather than 30%. Which it is.

Cuddles

Re: Could be humbling

"don't swallow the massaged headlines either look at the xslx - some boards are issuing grade changes in 30% of appeal cases."

So? Appeals are only made if someone thinks there's a reason to do so, so there should always be a high proportion that are successful. The report even specifically notes that more information is now available to exam centres, which has resulted in far fewer grades being appealed, but those appeals are better targetted and more likely to succeed. What matters is how many successful appeals there are as a proportion of the total number of exams. 0.004% isn't usually considered a terrible error rate.

US watchdog OKs robo-doc AI that spies eye disease all on its own

Cuddles

Re: What about all the other diseases?

"What's the point of an automated system when a specialist has to look at it anyway to diagnose other diseases?"

A specialist has to look at what? Why would they be trying to diagnose anything else? The current situation is that diabetics get regular screening for this one specific condition they are at risk of. The proposal is that they will continue to get exactly the same screening, but with a computer instead of a human looking at the images involved. Nothing else will change at all. They don't currently call a specialist in to test for hundreds of other random diseases just for the hell of it, and they will continue not doing so in the future regardless of whether a computer is involved or not.

Cuddles

Re: What about all the other diseases?

"Macular degeneration, for one."

What about them? This is a diagnostic device for screening for a specific condition. Complaining that it doesn't detect every possible illness in the world is just ridiculous. That makes as much sense as complaining that a blood test for ebola can't detect a sprained ankle. If you want a magic machine that can diagnose absolutely everything, you're in the wrong reality.

"And what happens if someone dies because of a missed diagnosis. Who do you prosecute then?"

No-one. Diagnoses are never perfect and should not be expected to be. Unless you have a good reason to suspect actual negligence or malpractice, you have absolutely no business thinking about prosecuting anyone. The insistence some people have on assigning blame every time doctors fail to be perfect in every way is probably the biggest problem faced by the medical profession.

Cuddles

"Meaning that 13% of patients with the disease are not detected. That's not great, and I'm surprised they are proposing to remove the doctors entirely. Could it be that the doctors are even worse?"

Of course. Comments like this always seem to appear whenever medical things are discussed, and it seems most people just don't understand how messy and difficult biology is. In this case, a quick look at the first few papers I found gives sensitivity anywhere between 70-90% for specialists, and as bad as 40% for regular GPs, so it looks like the machine is really pretty good even if it may not be perfect.

It's also worth bearing in mind that this is routine screening - diabetics are recommended to be tested every year or two (depending on the country). Since the problem is gradual degeneration rather than a sudden acute condition, even if it's missed early on it's still likely to be caught before things get too serious.

Net neutrality haters spam Californians with annoying robocalls

Cuddles

Re: Six of one...

"IMO they could just as well said "California politicians" with similar effect, but the SF angle is slightly more alarming to most people in the country, so that's what was used."

It's the California State Assembly voting on a Californian bill that will affect only California. Blaming it on Californians probably isn't going to be particularly alarming to residents of California.

If you have to simulate a phishing attack on your org, at least try to get something useful from it

Cuddles

"we can't use anything as realistic in these exercises as the real phishers do, so most of our people can tell its a phish as it looks amateur"

I wonder how much this actually makes things worse. It's essentially teaching people that phishing looks like obvious fakes, potentially making them more likely to fall for real phishing which doesn't have the same restrictions.

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

Cuddles

Re: All a bit unnecessary?

"I rather suspect that the moment a war against an opponent who is even slightly clued up about positioning systems goes hot, that opponent will start doing their very best to both jam the signals."

It probably depends on whether said opponent is also trying to use the same systems.

"I am however surprised that the EU is not more mercenary in its approach. The UK cannot get automatic access as a member state, but pay-for access given a set of conditions such as partial upholding of EU military goals and not attacking EU allies could surely be arranged."

Unfortunately it's not the EU's approach that is the problem. Several non-EU countries have already negotiated such access. The key word there being "negotiated". As with so much of the nonsense surrounding Brexit, the problem is not actually inherent to Brexit itself, but has been caused by those at the top basically refusing to acknowledge that anyone could ever have a different opinion from them. If they'd started off with "Technically we'll lose access once we're no longer in the EU, what would it take to come to a deal similar to Israel/Norway/Switzerland/Ukraine/China*/etc.?", it would most likely all be sorted by now. But for some reason just stating "We want this, give it to us now." hasn't had quit the same result. Especially since when the EU replied with a simple "Nope", everyone has apparently been at a complete loss what to do next other than blindly repeat the same demand over and over again.

* China dropped out fairly early on to do their own system, but it should say something that even they were able to get a deal as a Galileo partner despite all the worries about Chinese companies being security risks.

Cuddles

Re: All a bit unnecessary?

"As I understand it, the issue is specifically Military usage of Galileo."

That's the story that gets spun a lot to justify it. It's nonsense.

"Specifically that they won't have the ability to make encrypted queries to the satellites (so could be tracked)"

There's no such thing as making queries to GPS satellites, encrypted or otherwise. The satellites simply broadcast a signal that can be picked up by any passive receiver. There is no way to know who might be doing that or to track them in any way.

"they won't have access to the more accurate data which is only opened up to the military"

This is the part actually given as justification. It is not true. The Public Regulated Service is identical to the commercial one, with exactly the same accuracy. The only difference is that the commercial one can be turned off, while there is a commitment not to do that for the military one. Unless we go to war with the EU, there is no meaningful difference between the two.

As is so often the case, the real reason is simply money - the government doesn't want everyone involved in building satellites to up sticks and head to the continent, as Airbus are already doing. Losing access to the PRS goes hand in had with losing contracts to build parts for the satellites, since they both rely on being either in the EU or negotiating to become a partner, and losing those contracts means losing a lot more in the future as industry and experts move away. This "feasibility study" is just the latest desperate attempt to persuade everyone that the UK will totally still be relevant for space industry and there will be real money coming along any minute now if you'll just stay and give us another chance.

Ah, um, let's see. Yup... Fortnite CEO is still mad at Google for revealing security hole early

Cuddles

Re: Who do you believe? - 'Wired' say the 'Play Store' is a Malware magnet:

It's not a question of who to believe. Of course the Play Store is a malware magnet, for the same reason that Windows has historically been a malware magnet - it's where the vast majority of the targets are, so it's where the criminal focus their efforts. As long as that central target repository exists, you can avoid most of the bad actors by simply not using it. But that doesn't mean things would necessarily be better if it weren't there, since you'd then just be in a wild west where people with no clue what they're doing downloaded any random crap from anywhere. Those of us who have had to help out family members who have managed to fill up their entire browser with toolbars know just how well that can work out.

The problem is that you ultimately have to compromise in some way. Locking down a device so that a single central authority can control what can and can't be installed can potentially provide good security, but at the cost of user freedom as well as making an obvious target for attack. Allowing anyone to do whatever they like results in anyone being allowed to do whatever they like. Whether Android's attempt to do a bit of both is better is a subject for debate, but it doesn't seem inherently worse than either extreme.

Intel rips up microcode security fix license that banned benchmarking

Cuddles

Re: Open source works

"but possibly more than even this, is that all of the other guys were happy to use the patch with that licence as it was."

Or more likely, they were happy to use the patch and just didn't give a shit about the license. As the article notes, Red Hat had happily ignored the prohibition and already published benchmarks before Debian started complaining. I imagine most others were the same - either they ignored it or simply didn't notice it in the first place. That's the thing that keeps coming up with software licenses and EULAs - most of them are unenforceable even when they're not actively illegal, and it's not just your average home user that doesn't bother paying any attention to them.

You want how much?! Israel opts not to renew its Office 365 vows

Cuddles

Re: re: UK Government Capability

"Makes you wonder what would happen when a firm that can't take NO for an answer meets that guy who can ONLY say NO?"

Ah yes, the age old question - Can God say no so many times that even he couldn't close a sales pitch?

Ex-UK comms minister's constituents plagued by wonky broadband over ... wireless radio link?

Cuddles

Re: A microwave link to populated areas?

"if you have more than 10 people you're likely to run into capacity problems with microwave links"

Fernham is a tiny village of about 30 houses halfway between Oxford and Swindon, and is a few km away from the nearest (really quite small) town. It pretty much is the Oxfordshire equivalent of a lonely hut on a mountain. The problem here doesn't seem to be the appropriateness of the connection method, but simply the competence in setting it up and running it.

Fire chief says Verizon throttled department's data in the middle of massive Cali wildfires

Cuddles

Re: "a given time period"

It's also worth remembering that all throttling is not equal. If someone is on a shiny FttP connection at 300 Mbps and gets throttled to 80 Mbps once they've downloaded a certain amount, that's probably not the end of the world since they're still getting the equivalent of a FttC service that's more than sufficient for the average household even if it's not quite as much as they'd like. On the other hand, if they're throttled to 56 kbps, that's low enough to make the modern internet essentially unusable; it may be technically called throttling, but it's equivalent to simply being cut off entirely.

In this case, as reported by the BBC at least, speeds were reduced to 200 kbps. It's not quite dialup, but it is slower than even 2G EDGE is capable of, and far less than is required to actually use the internet. If your electricity supplier decided you'd used too much power and restricted you to enough to power a single LED lightbulb, most people wouldn't consider that acceptable throttling since it's functionally no different from simply being cut off entirely. Similarly, many people are willing to accept bandwidth limits as long as those limits are reasonable and allow them to continue using the service in a reduced capacity. Cutting the service off in everything but name is not throttling, it's simply holding the customer to ransom.

Cuddles

Re: What do you expect?

"How can you possibly fault the vendor for delivering on the contract?"

From the article (you know, the one you suggest everyone else needs to read):

"Regardless of the plan emergency responders choose, we have a practice to remove data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations... In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake."

It's quite easy to fault the vendor when they freely admit they were, in fact, at fault.

Texas ISP slams music biz for trying to turn it into a 'copyright cop'

Cuddles

"the music industry argues Grande benefits financially from selling faster speed internet connections to copyright infringers. "The greater the bandwidth its subscribers require for pirating content, the more money Grande receives.""

Because obviously downloading music with file sizes generally in the 3-5MB range is the only reason anyone could ever want a fast internet connection. Nothing to do with streaming gigabytes of HDTV, or downloading games that are starting to top 100GB, and the idea of teenagers away from home for the first time downloading any amount of porn is simply ludicrous. No, the demand for faster internet these days is driven entirely by the occasional mp3 download of things they couldn't find on Spotify or Youtube.

Security MadLibs: Your IoT electrical outlet can now pwn your smart TV

Cuddles

Re: So long Grandma, thanks for all the fish

"an .. automatic defibrillator ?

That's an interesting idea. I think there's probably a law against it though. Internet-connected or not."

Why would there be a law against them? They're common and very useful medical devices. Usually they're small implants, so unlikely to be affected by anyone messing around with "smart" house electrics, although I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're started connecting them to the internet with all the vulnerabilities that tends to bring.

Aside from that, the big automated defibrillators are probably the most common form available, since they're usable by pretty much anyone without needing training. Again, they're generally self-contained units so wouldn't be affected by electrics, and in any case you only take them out and attach them to someone when actually needed. But they're very much a real thing, and making laws against them would be incredibly stupid.

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Cuddles

Not a great test

"The simulator, called OmniCAV, recreates a virtual version of 32km of Oxfordshire roads."

32km of gridlock around the Oxford ringroad is trivial for anything to drive safely on. I'll be more impressed when they can recreate a virtual version of roads on which the cars actually move.

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal biz gets £35k legal costs delayed

Cuddles

Re: dura lex sed lex and caveat emptor

"Me wonders if some people may have been a bit economical with the truth when handing out random directorships"

If they're officially directors, they must have signed a contract appointing them as such. Anyone who signs a contract giving them legal and financial responsibilities without knowing exactly what it says (and getting a lawyer to help with that if needed) has only themselves to blame.

I wish I could quit you, but cookies find a way: How to sidestep browser tracking protections

Cuddles

Multiple layers

"For each one, there was at least one way to bypass promised protection."

Which is why it's a good idea to use more than one approach to blocking things. Firefox with everything disabled that can be, plus uBlock, Ghostery and Noscript is probably relatively safe. Any one of them might be able to be bypassed, but it's unlikely they can all be bypassed in the same way.

Making money mining Coinhive? Yeah, you and nine other people

Cuddles

Re: Links != visitors

"They did use Alexa ranking, I assume to estimate traffic..."

No, they simply used the Alexa top 1 million list as one of their datasets, along with .com, .net and .org. More to the point, while they looked at unique users (or at least unique tokens, they do note that people could be using more than one) and link destinations, they don't say anything at all about where the links were actually placed, which is obviously the important thing for figuring out how much they might be used. A single page full of thousands of links created by one person could easily give that person 85% of all Coinhive links, but it wouldn't mean they're making the most money from them. Reality is unlikely to be quite that extreme, but a campaign of spamming links around forums and comment sections on small sites could easily give a similar effect.

Cuddles

Links != visitors

85% of links might be created by a few people, but that doesn't mean those people are actually getting anything out of it. If most of those links are being unknowingly inserted into whatever sites happen to be vulnerable, most of them likely see very little use at all. A single link on a really popular site could easily be making more than all of those 85% combined.

TSB takes on 250 complaint-wranglers to absorb £200m outage fallout

Cuddles

Re: Only now?

"You'd think they'd have realised at the time they were going to need extra hands to help this."

They did. They used to have 54 people in complaints. They have hired a bunch more and now have 260. They have realised that wasn't enough and are now hiring an additional 250.

Bitcoin backer sues AT&T for $240m over stolen cryptocurrency

Cuddles

Re: So much for the "what you have" 2nd factor...

"there is no "what you have" element in this type of 2FA."

True, but it's worth bearing in mind that that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or useless. Something you know and something you have are the traditional factors used for 2FA, but they're not the only ones possible. In this case, the second factor is rather "something you have access to". In some ways it's less secure than a physical thing, since access can be transferred to someone else potentially without you even knowing. But in other ways it's potentially more secure - theft of physical things happens a lot, but stealing a locked phone doesn't get you access to the phone number.

In particular, in a case like this which appears to be a clearly targetted attack, no amount of security is really enough. If he'd had a physical authenticator instead of using SMS, someone could have just hit him over the head and taken it.

India's Cosmos bank raided for $13m by hackers

Cuddles

Shutting the wrong stable door

"The Indian bank... has suspended online banking in the wake of the incident."

A bunch of money was stolen by withdrawing it from ATMs and once again abusing SWIFT. The bank has therefore blocked all its customers from using online banking, despite that not having been involved in any way.

Drama as boffins claim to reach the Holy Grail of superconductivity

Cuddles

Not technically wrong

"150 gigapascals - over a thousand times more than the pressure of the atmosphere"

While it's true that 1.5 million is over a thousand, that's maybe not the best way to describe it.

Vodafone's spending pays off - but EE hangs on to UK network crown

Cuddles

Not quite accurate

"despite coming bottom for data performance (taking the wooden spoon from O2), Hutchison’s 3"

"O2 bagged the wooden spoon in every category"

These two statements don't quite agree with each other. And, as the graphic in the article shows, the former appears to be the incorrect one, with 3 rather appropriately being ranked 3rd for data.

Samsung Galaxy Watch: A tough and classy activity tracker

Cuddles

Re: Half a Review?

"Please stop ignoring Garmin as a thing El Reg. It is a thing. It makes the best bits of tech that are dedicated to exercise."

Also Suunto, who do watches basically equivalent to Garmin's with generally better GPS but worse interface. It's almost as though companies dedicated to watches and sporty things are better at making sports watches than mobile phone companies who keep trying to get people to strap phones to their wrists. It's the battery life that still makes me laugh. Apparently the new Galaxy watch is amazing because it can last a week. Meanwhile Garmin and Suunto watches will happily last a month or more if you're not using the GPS, and still manage over a week with continuous GPS use if you're not using the high accuracy modes.