* Posts by ratfox

3721 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2007

US regulators push back against White House plan to police social media censorship

ratfox

Re: Except ...

Note that the constitution has been amended multiple times, though.

Dropbox would rather write code twice than try to make C++ work on both iOS and Android

ratfox
Headmaster

Alright, let’s make it more clear. This site, El Reg, is, IIRC, written in PHP

You are mistaken! It is written in Perl. Not sure if that is better or worse than PHP. For sure, PHP is a terrible language, but... I mean... Perl?

Got room for another probe up there, Google? Jobs sites ask EU antitrust tsar to look at how search giant ranks them

ratfox
Paris Hilton

Those aren't ads, though, are they? Google is not asking or receiving money to show the job offers in the widget. At least... Not yet. I'm guessing that what has the jobs sites worried.

It's official – Google AI gives you cancer ...diagnosis in real time: Neural net can spot breast, prostate tumors

ratfox
Devil

Re: Proof of concept

I want to be treated by a doctor, not a guy who's googling the problem

Maybe don't check too carefully what your doctor is doing on his computer next time you visit...

Choc-a-block: AWS sues sales exec for legging it to Google Cloud. Yup, another bitter battle over non-compete clauses

ratfox
Paris Hilton

What if he signs a non-compete clause in Washington, then works for a competitor in California, where non-compete clauses cannot be enforced? Are there interstate extraditions?

In any case, it's interesting that Amazon, despite its overwhelming lead, feels the need to do this for a sales exec.

Googlers hate it! This one weird trick lets websites dodge Chrome 76's defenses, detect you're in Incognito mode

ratfox
Holmes

O RLY

"The only way to prevent this attack is for both Incognito mode and normal mode to use the same storage medium, so that the API runs at the same speed regardless," Li wrote.

if (incognito_mode) { write_to_memory(); wait(10); } else { write_to_disk(); }

I'd write it properly on multiple lines, but the forum separates them into paragraphs.

If you could forget the $125 from Equifax and just take the free credit monitoring, that would be great – FTC

ratfox
Paris Hilton

Meanwhile, the rest of the world wonders what "credit monitoring" even means. Is this a North-America only thing? I saw vague reports in UK, but it doesn't seem very relevant. My assumption is that it's somehow a consequence of the lack of ID cards. Or maybe it's just due to having a credit-based economy.

UK taxpayers funded Grand Theft Auto V maker to tune of £42m – while biz paid no corp tax and made billions

ratfox

Re: Tax Avoidance?

I assume this is the classical trick, where the UK-based business is paid like a third-party for the work they do, as if just any group of people picked from the street would create a product of the exact same quality.

What we see is that the creators of the game generating the income are British, and happen to be owned by an American company. What the accountants see is that the company producing the game is American, and have outsourced the work to a random outfit that they pay just enough to not go bankrupt.

The pro-privacy Browser Act has re-appeared in US Congress. But why does everyone except right-wing trolls hate it?

ratfox

"it would make the process for gathering and using user data opt-in"

Sounds to me that this would fix the issue in US like GDPR fixed it in Europe: By making people click a lot of pop-ups.

Soon Google will have more bit barns in Texas than you can shake a stick at: Second facility planned for Ellis County

ratfox

I recently saw an interesting estimate that Bitcoin miners alone consume more electricity than all of Google.

ratfox
Boffin

It is actually more efficient when data centers are relatively close to the users. That pretty much kills it for Iceland.

That said, the days are long gone when data centers operated at frigid temperatures and spent half their power supply on air conditioning. Nowadays, they are unbearably hot, and spend less than 15% on cooling. Choosing a cooler climate to save on cooling is less important than choosing a location with cheap energy to save on the actual bit crunching.

Big fat doubt hovers over UK.gov's Making Tax Digital, customs declaration IT projects

ratfox
Paris Hilton

What's the reason for all these failures?

Seriously, imagine that these projects had been done in a country where you expect things to work, like Japan or Switzerland or Germany or wherever; what would have gone better? What are the mistakes that would have been avoided?

Awkward! Bernie tells Bezos-sponsored event he'd break up Amazon and other tech titans

ratfox
Paris Hilton

moderates vs extremists

Last time, the Republicans chose the far-out extremist rather than the same-old moderates, and the Democrats chose the same-old moderate rather than the extremist. According to all logic, the moderate should have grabbed the center and won, but it seems like logic does not always apply.

Now that extremists seem to be doing well in the Democrat primaries, people are worried that their candidate will be too extreme to be elected. I'm wondering if being prudent rather than bold is really the right strategy here. Maybe people just don't want to vote for somebody who says that nothing should change.

On the other hand, on a strategic point of view, it could be very good for the Democratic to have extremists proposing insane plans, even if they get rejected.This might well open the Overton window.

Ex-Which? bod's £3bn Safari sueball has second shot at Google over UK data laws

ratfox
Paris Hilton

a salary of £50k "for up to four years" to act as public frontman for the lawsuit

Seriously? That's a nice salary for acting as placeholder while the lawyers talk. I'd have done it for much less.

Bulb smart meters in England wake up from comas miraculously speaking fluent Welsh

ratfox

Re: "unhelpful even for many residents of Wales"

For small values of very large.

You can't say Go without Google – specifically, our little logo, Chocolate Factory insists

ratfox
Angel

Frozen

Let it go, let it go...

UK MPs find 'no technical grounds' to exclude Huawei from 5G networks

ratfox
Devil

Re: Respect !

But it's going to be great if we immediately cease dealing with all countries who enable serious human rights abuses. At last !

Good luck living alone.

ratfox
Happy

He's probably going to believe it's the New one

We have the best trade wars: US investigating French tech tax plan over fears it unfairly targets American biz

ratfox

It's absolutely clear to me that the UK was hoping their low corporation tax would attract all the multinationals, who would then sell all over Europe and pay tax in UK. They just never saw Ireland coming.

Investor fires shot at 'sinking ship' Google in battle over privacy-menacing Google+ bug

ratfox
Trollface

the world’s fifth largest social media network?

Wow, Google+ must have been way more successful than I thought... Except that in a few seconds, I can think of Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, Twitter, Weibo, Snapchat, Linkedin that are more successful, so I don't know how they get that number. And I'm not even counting dating apps like Tinder.

38 billion reasons to say goodbye: Ex-Mrs Bezos splits from Jeff with 4% of Amazon shares in tow

ratfox
Go

Re: Fair's fair

Yes. It's always refreshing to me when a couple is able to separate and decide to go their own way without drama; but when there is such a fortune involved, I find it downright inspires respect.

But it is a bit funny to see him congratulating his wife on deciding to give most of her money to charity, considering he does not exactly have the image of a philanthropist.

Reports of cyber attacks fall, says UK.gov survey: GDPR? Fewer nasties? More targeted attacks? We just don't know

ratfox
Trollface

Probably related to Brexit

YouTube mystery ban on hacking videos has content creators puzzled

ratfox
Angel

How things have changed

It used to be there were dozens of videos telling you how to steal the World of Warcraft account of somebody else... It was simple, you just had to identify yourself by sending your own username and password to totally_real_wow_password_recovery@hotmail.com

Google's Fuchsia OS Flutters into view: We're just trying out some new concepts, claims exec

ratfox
Go

This is really cool

I know very little about OS design, but I find it very interesting to see somebody attempting to create one from scratch, "The Right Way", with the depth of knowledge to understand long-term requirements and common pitfalls, and with enough power and resources to make it succeed.

Essentially, this could potentially have as much influence on the history of computers as the creation of Linux.

Oracle goes on for 50 pages about why it thinks the Pentagon's $10bn JEDI cloud contract stinks

ratfox
Happy

Re: "AWS's JEDI team was wholly unaware of Mr Udhi's employment"

for a single $80 hammer.

I see what you did there!

ratfox

Re: A choice of Evils?

And every time you have a problem, the different cloud providers would point the finger at each other... If you have only one provider, they don't have that luxury; they have to deliver.

Former UK PM Tony Blair urges governments to sort out online ID

ratfox

It's a little bit weird to most of the world that the UK and the US technically have no database of their citizens.

Of course, they do have pretty wide databases, if only for tax purposes, and soon it won't even be possible to fly in the US without a "Real ID"...

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

ratfox
Paris Hilton

I kind of wonder if they decided they had made enough money, and decided to leave while the going was good and before the lawsuits happened. In fact, I wonder just how much money they made if they sold it $50 and the payment systems couldn't handle the load.

The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff

ratfox
Paris Hilton

Aren't those standard marketing tactics?

"Sale ends tonight", "Last room available at that price" are pretty much standard. I'm not sure whether "Influencing users' behavior by describing the experiences and behavior of other users" is intended to cover user satisfaction surveys and customer reviews?

Most of all, "Using visuals, language, or emotion to steer users toward or away from making a particular choice" is so vague that it describes literally any advertisement ever made.

Black Hat USA axes anti-abortion congressman as keynote speaker after outcry – and more news from infosec land

ratfox
Unhappy

I don't think that the best way to fight a political opinion is to ostracize people who have that opinion. That's how we end in a fragmented society where everybody belongs to a small opinion bubble and refuses to speak to others.

Making enemies is like casting your garbage in the sea. It will come back one day, smelling worse.

Anyone else find it weird that the bloke tasked with probing tech giants for antitrust abuses used to, um, work for the same tech giants?

ratfox

To be fair, his predecessor Wheeler was actually pretty tough, even though he used to lobby for the industry. He even introduced Net Neutrality rules!

Apple and Microsoft's odd couple collab on iCloud for Windows is more Hall & Oates than Walter and Jesse

ratfox
Paris Hilton

I wonder how does iCloud compare to the others cloudy drives in terms of prices...? The only thing I know is that your holiday pics are likely to blow the free tier.

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

ratfox
Alien

Note that you need a magnetic anomaly as well (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One)

ratfox
Terminator

Re: Could it be

Vibranium!!1!

Microsoft Bing is 10: That thing you accidentally use to search for Chrome? Still alive and kicking

ratfox

Re: Yes, amazing use of AI but it still doesn't know where I am...

It's the traffic. Google has a lot more data on what people click on, so it's easier for them to know what people are looking for.

Bing is okayish in English, because they have a large enough market share to have data, but in other languages the quality reflects the low usage.

What's a billion dollars between friends? Uber tosses match on mound of cash in first results since going public

ratfox
Boffin

Re: But How

The % revenue they are getting from their drivers is negative. I.e they are actually paying drivers more than what customers are paying. Because they want market share. They hope that eventually, they'll have so many customers that they can raise prices, or lower costs with self-driving cars. Well, investors hope that. Executives are already rolling in cash, so they don't care whether it ultimately works or not.

Murdoch-backed adtech startup Unlockd ditches Google lawsuit: That'll be £200k, ta very much

ratfox
Trollface

Apparently being backed by Murdoch doesn't mean much these days. I suppose divorces are expensive...

WikiLeaks boss Assange acted as a foreign spy, Uncle Sam exclaims in fresh rap sheet

ratfox

Re: This will be fun to watch...

It is also my understanding that criminal law does not make a difference between foreigners and citizens. Though I suddenly think that in one case in particular, which is treason, the law is probably more strict with citizens than foreigners... I guess?

Irish data cops are shoving a probe right into Google's ads

ratfox
Facepalm

No, that's definitely not happening. The advertisers define in advance how much they bid in different circumstances, and Google resolves the auction themselves.

In the first place, there's basically no advertiser that has the infrastructure to handle that kind of QPS.

ratfox
Paris Hilton

I assume that by this point, Google is considering yearly billion-dollars fine from the EU as "just the cost of doing business".

If I understand correctly, the claim is that Google is "broadcasting" data such as screen size, language settings and user interests when choosing which ad to display? I don't quite get who is "receiving" the data, though. I would have thought that the ad auction is happening on Google servers and third-parties never see the data. Or is that displayed later in statistics of who clicked on the ads?

Revealed: Facebook, Google's soft-money 'blackmail' to stall Euro fake news crackdown

ratfox

Re: And that's why research should be funded by government grants

Companies don't build roads and infrastructure that they let you use for free

Companies don't guarantee your rights or your freedom

Companies don't protect you from criminals

...

G Suite'n'sour: Google resets passwords after storing some unhashed creds for months, years

ratfox
Windows

Constant vigilance!

It's only paranoia when no one is out to get you.

50 years ago: Apollo 10 takes an unplanned spin above the lunar surface – and sh!t gets sweary

ratfox
Boffin

Re: Charlie Brown at the London Science Museum

Due to the distances involved by the moon orbit, that person was nominated in the What If...? xkcd book as the human that was furthest away from any other human in history.

(Probably, unless somebody got lost on a boat somewhere around Tasmania before Australia was inhabited)

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

ratfox
Mushroom

The real problem is Elon Musk claiming that Teslas will be able to drive themselves without anybody inside by the end of the year. It seems incredible to me that he can assert this without being sued, if only by Tesla investors.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

ratfox
Thumb Up

Re: more convenient that having it on the front.

I also prefer the fingerprint reader in the back. I admit I find inconvenient to pick up the phone in order to use the reader; but I have no such issue in the car holder because mine leaves the back open and easy to reach. At some point, somebody will put a reader on both sides...

Photo 'memories' storage biz Ever uses family snaps to train facial recognition AI

ratfox
Devil

See, when Google does this we're not surprised. We expect them to pull stunts like that.

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

ratfox
Angel

Re: Bit of a blunt argument Sir!

I think he wrote the speech with Ronald Reagan in mind, and then he realized he would have to switch to the British equivalent.

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

ratfox
Pint

All the best to you

Wow, that's the like end of an era. I think you've done more than anyone to define The Register.

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this beer.

US foreign minister Mike Pompeo to give UK a bollocking over Huawei 5G plans

ratfox

Re: 51st state

all that parent has to do is simply apply for citizenship status for their child by way of supplying documentation of birth and custody and then it's just granted.

Not quite. The citizenship is granted automatically, even without applying for it, whether the parents want it or not. It is not possible to refuse. The child cannot even renounce US citizenship until they're 18.

People may try to hide the fact they're US citizens, but if the IRS finds them out, they'll still have to pay income tax.