Re: Streisand Effect
LMDDGTFY
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=what+is+the+internet
Posts by m0rt
988 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2015
Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...
'Happy to throw Leo under the bus', Meg Whitman told HP after Autonomy buyout
IEEE says it may have gone about things the wrong Huawei, lifts ban after US govt clearance
Black Wednesday: DXC hosting services wonky for almost 8 hours after core switches go rogue
Apple reckons mystery new material will debug butterfly keyboard woes in latest MacBook Pros
We like transparency and we're a CA, hackers hack all night and we log all day
Silence of the vans: Uber adds 'Plz STFU, driver' button to app for posh passengers using Black
Quit worrying about killer robots, they are coming whether you like it or not – and they absolutely will not stop
Prez Trump's trade war reshapes electronics supply chains as China production slows
Here's what Autonomy told its salesmen they were allowed to do
Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register
If the thing you were doing earlier is 'drop table' commands, ctrl-c, ctrl-v is not your friend
Tuesday 7th May 2019 11:01 GMT
Re: "I won't even have to take a backup of the database"
Actually, that quote from Lu Tse, when not paraphrased, was:
"There is no such thing as too many backups as long as you removed the incriminating evidence...anyway whose round is it as it can't be mine as I was giving consultancy advice and that doesn't come cheap, and there had better be salted nuts too..."
He was a wise old bird.
Too wise to not quote him fully
'Lightweight' UPS-style flywheels to power naval laser zappers
Internet industry freaks out over proposed unlimited price hikes on .org domain names
Friday 26th April 2019 07:45 GMT
Companies/Economics blah blah blah
So much for the 'democratic power' of the internet.
'Aw it isn't fair, we run this but can't make the same kind of money XYZ do with their johnny-come-lately TLDs - lets do something about this...' and of course the money roles up into the few at the expense of the many. As it ever has been, the fucking huge ponzi scheme that we are all born in to, for the most part.
I use a couple of .net domains, one I have had for 19 years. If they come for .net, or rather *when* they do, I lose that. So all the independent of big company emails become difficult to run. So we all just use google/microsoft or whomever for our email. At least it makes it easier to control the burgeoning population of this planet, hey, Government wonks? *
Screw 'em.
Bastards.
*Where the hell is Amanfrommars? This is right up his street for commenting.
Not another pro-Brexit demo... though easy to confuse: Each Union Jack marks a pile of poo
We've read the Mueller report. Here's what you need to know: ██ ██ ███ ███████ █████ ███ ██ █████ ████████ █████
Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age
MoD plonks down £2m on table in exchange for anti-drone tech ideas
Google plonks right-wing think tanker and defence drone mogul on AI ethics advisory board
P30 pic pyrotechnics in Paris: That's one Huawei to set the smartphone world alight
Wednesday 27th March 2019 13:25 GMT
Re: Have to agree
Agree .
The ability to take decent night sky shots is something that appeals.
However, I just wish a phone company would include a 'Red screen' mode for nighttime use. The number of people who would find this invaluable other than having to shove a filter over it would be quite a segment, if a small one overall.
UK.gov admits it was slow to intervene in Verify's abject failure to meet user targets
Friday 22nd March 2019 12:01 GMT
Re: Pushing the boulder up the hill
"in the rest of the UK the Conservative government is viewed with suspicion"
No. The *government* is viewed with suspicion, regardless of party. Both those who are into conspiracies and those who believe the government, whoever is in power, is hamstrung by a bloated and incapable civil service which would result in mission creep, lost data, service provided by the lowest bidder, etc.
In any industry or walk of life, when the end recipient of a service is made the focus, the entire flow and end result are to that recipients interest and it works. This is not how the populace feel about the encumbent party because ultimately they renege on promises and change the goalposts which means the end result rarely is what was promised. There is an obvious glaring example of this currently.
This won't change without a massive paradigm shift and a clear set of guidelines signed up to statin what government should and shouldn't do. Which we kind of thought existed but then they get ignored.
F-AIRI-nuff: Pure Storage takes its machine-learning platform hyperscale
That's Huawei I like it: Chinese giant's cloudy arm dumps 19-inch rack for newer model
Just look at Q! Watch out Microsoft, the next Android has a proper desktop PC mode
Friday 15th March 2019 11:26 GMT
Re: pholdables
Phlappables?
Philophones?
Anyway - didn't apple get there first with foldable phones?
Overhyped 5G is being 'rushed', Britain's top comms boffin reckons
Holy sh*tsnacks! Danger zone! Edinburgh Uni's Archer 2 super 'puter will cost a cool £79m
Raiding party! UK's ICO drops in unannounced on couple of dodgy-dialling dirtbag outfits
'What's up, Skip?' asks paraglider – before 'roo beats the snot out of him
Radio gaga: Techies fear EU directive to stop RF device tinkering will do more harm than good
Monday 11th March 2019 11:38 GMT
Re: What's the problem....
"My point is that we actually have reached the point where insecure devices can cause harm and destruction and we need to start thinking about that because there are billions of them out there."
But then regulation has done little to stem the tide of insecure stuff. Indeed, insecurity is a bigger problem with 'sanctioned' devices and install than, I would certainly argue, opensource. (See OpenWRT).
DCMA did little to prevent privacy, infact what you did see was abuse of that act to further the interests of corporations with little regard to the intent of the original proposal.
Your point about insecure devices being plentiful actually means we should start insisting on decent security and putting that into law, not useless 'shut your eyes so you can't see this secret' style of regulation.
Meizu ditched hole-free phone because it was 'just the marketing team messing about', not because no one really gave a toss
Foldables herald the beginning of the end of the smartphone fetish
Thursday 28th February 2019 11:45 GMT
Re: fetishisable glass slab
"A lot of the phone designs seem to be driven more by the manufacturers than the customers."
Amen to that.
Marketing departments and their statistics drive what they consider to be the R&D into next must haves, then those come out, and the results end up meaning that they drive the next must haves...and so on. Until, (and I will self flagellate for this after), some disruptive tech comes along.
Oh Hai, foldable phone!
Anyone seen the Motorola Razr?
https://liliputing.com/2019/01/this-could-be-what-the-new-moto-razr-folding-phone-looks-like.html
What is really funny is the article in the BBC about phones with keyboards.
*Waves at Gemini*
Maybe, just maybe, someone is going to produce a phone that meets all these obvious magical criteria.
Removable Battery - plus good battery life.
Updated OS for at least 3 years.
Card slot
3.5mm socket.
Foldable or not - that seems too much to hope for because, well, marketing board of Sirius Cybernetics I assume.
IBM so very, very sorry after jobs page casually asks hopefuls: Are you white, black... or yellow?
Tuesday 26th February 2019 09:22 GMT
"Naturally, I was shocked to see this on an application from what I generally consider to be a respected and top technology company,"
I don't think I know anyone in the IT field who thinks that about IBM.
i remember once meeting them regarding a weird error that was introduced with an OS upgrade to the I Series. If you coded something one way before the upgrade, it failed to work after the upgrade. If you coded it to work after the upgrade, it failed to work with the current OS. So you had to upgrade and change the code at the same time - which on a Mini computer was a little bit of a problem considering all the production systems that were run on it.
So we go to IBM - present some managers, and our account manager with the evidence and they say that they hadn't come across it before, they would look into it and see how do address this. After the meeting we get a tour, and are shown the first line support. We start speaking to a guy working there and we happened to mention why we are there.
"Oh yes!", he said. "We have quite a few clients who have complained about this particular problem..."
Artificial Intelligence: You know it isn't real, yeah?
Friday 22nd February 2019 10:57 GMT
'letting an AI rip on the unbalanced data simply trains it to be similarly biased. Hiding a field labelled "skin color" does not compensate for anything when the AI's algorithms charge ahead identifying the same patterns of biased social profiling by the justice system anyway.'
I would go as far to say that bias is the society the 'AI' was created in, and I quote 'AI' because that is another can of worms.
The bias is there, in the many areas of media, government, people in areas and so on. Funny how we are seeking a completely neutral, for a given value of neutral, approach to decision making. A neutral decision making process is easier the simpler the process.
Take a court system.
If you assign a sentence to a particular crime, and that sentence is weighted by previous convictions, age of convicted etc, then that should take place regardless of anything else.
Now if you are trying to automatically bring in a Mercy factor, or mitigating factor - based on upbringing, lack of chances etc, and you have a person who is from a wealthy white background - they will be penalised because now we say 'you had every chance yet still you did X'. This may be true, but in the context of the crime, is this also just?
It will never be a perfect system. Just like the existing wetware isn't a perfect system. Human nature - we have consistantly shown bias toward the powerful. Whether that is down to money and background/status, or power awared in the particular societal construct people happen to fall into. (Soviet Russia etc).
In attempting to leave our gods, decry them either dead or never were, we are trying to create new ones to replace them.
Oh the irony.
Unearthed emails could be smoking gun in epic GDPR battle: Google, adtech giants 'know they break Euro privacy law'
Wednesday 20th February 2019 12:05 GMT
"As to the 'm0rtal' concept... all well and good, but that also requires legislative framework that only allows ad networks to server ads based on informed opt-in, and makes absolutely illegal the current indiscriminate tracking of every movement happening on the web. "
Actually it doesn't require that - tracking will happen regardless of what the law states, rogue elements and all that, but the ad giants who *want* to use this will and any that are seen to not use something, assuming it took off, would do so to be seen to treating targets fairly.
"Also the mechanism to pay users back for being advertised to is laudable, but introduces a link between actual person who's account needs to be credited with the 'advertising ID', a 'single failure' point that can be hacked and/or abused."
Yep - this was why the ID was so important which was seperately linked to an account somehow. A single failure point could be mitigated if the ID itself was paid in a similar way to crypto currency - so only the holder of the ID could then create a one time payment reference to another account.
The idea here being that there is something of a way forward. You can say 'all tracking is now illegal' and I hate advertising as much as anyone. BUt it isnt' going away. So why not work with it? Google get their income from advertising. A shit load of income. Their way of showing transparancy is also crap and GDPR is a direct result out of their attitude, as well as all the other players, both legit and rogue.
So this way gives a path and allows targets to gain something from this also. Want to advertise to me? Then pay me to see the ads.
It would be interesting to have a mechanism that tells you just how many advertisers have paid to send you adverts during a typical day online. If I earned, say a quid or two a day whilst on the web - then, why not?
It also means that higher value targets also get a proportion of the more expensive adword amounts etc.
It hits advertisers, and companies like google, where it hurts. Yes they offer a search facility, and made their name with it, but they also show me adverts in return for that. That is fine and their wont. But if they want to target me they can fooking well pay me some of their revenue. I would agree to that, if I could also just say - don't pay me anything, and you can't access my data as a result
This is a concept - I think it is possible. Companies pay money for access to suiutably profiled targets. As well as being able to opt out, potential targets should also get some of that money. I mean, why not? Just because it hasn't happened yet in this field, doesn't mean to say it shouldn't.
Wednesday 20th February 2019 09:07 GMT
I understand advertising is necessary. We get free stuff from advertising - and that should be very clear.
This linking of who/what I am, when it goes beyond a simple demographic, into very detailed information - now we are in a different land. So - my proposal is this:
Create a portal that allows people to sign up to. This portal is the 'approved' portal that has nothing other than an ID. This ID can be linked to an account on a different system for payments.
On this portal, lets call it M0rtal, (because ego), people can put as much detail on there as they wish. And then they can state what level of payment they require for access to said data, if at all (or the data just simply isn't given).
Automated online advertising bodies then, if they want to offer targetted advertising based on the ID, can use it as long as they pay the target a fee that allows the data to be read.
So - advertiser pays Automated advertising body, who also pays the target for seeing the advert.
Complete control is always with the target. Payments also go to target.
This is a rough draft, but it seems a sensible one. Advertising is here to stay. Sensible targetting advertising is fine. This 'we own you' attitude - that is not fine and is a little pyschopathic, if you ask me. This would be one solution that offers a way forward.
M0rtal should be a nfp - but paid for by the ad giants with complete transparancy.
Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams
Friday 15th February 2019 13:07 GMT
"OK, famous last words and all that, but I have yet to receive a phishing attack that wasn't obvious. The unlikelihood of the content; the impersonal yet over-familiar nature of the greeting; HTML email layout inspired by MySpace; spelling so utterly unconventional it would even warn off an app developer; the total lack of rudimentary grammar... The scammers may as well embed an animated GIF of the words SCAM ALERT flashing away at the top."
There is a belief that a lot of the mistakes are deliberate. The reasoning goes that the people who fall for these scams are less likely to be able to cause any subsequent trouble. You send out a million messages, and a small percentage fall for the old "I'm gonna tell your family on you..." thing and jobs a good'un.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
