* Posts by ratfox

3721 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2007

Qualcomm wins Apple patent case, loses Apple patent case, wins Apple patent case, loses Apple patent case...

ratfox
Devil

Jarndyce and Jarndyce, anyone?

The post is required, and must contain letters.

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

ratfox
Paris Hilton

So they will be fined under the GDPR, right?

...Right?

Apple: Group FaceTime allows up to 32 people! Skype: Hold my beer

ratfox
Angel

Re: FaceTime

It's true that a communication app deliberately cutting off half of the world is a... courageous product decision.

Q&A: Crypto-guru Bruce Schneier on teaching tech to lawmakers, plus privacy failures – and a call to techies to act

ratfox

Compared to IT people? In the US, they are. US Senators are apparently paid $174K, which is essentially a starting compensation at Google's headquarters after a PhD.

IT people in the UK are severely underpaid, though.

Let's face it. We need to face up to facing off with face-recog tech, say US senators: Bipartisan AI privacy law proposed

ratfox

Re: Let's ensure ..

There are countries where hiding your face is forbidden. I believe it's long been the case in Switzerland, and there's been a recent attempt in France.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

ratfox
Windows

Re: Nice

Dude, just calm down with the capitals. It's hard to take you seriously when you act like a caricature. If you want to emphasize, your silver badge gives you the right to write in italics or bold; it's much better for everybody.

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

ratfox

Re: "the item the author of the article fails to address"

If YouTube did not exist or was perfectly policed, the video would have been shared differently, and still be available to those who really want to see them, though. You will need China style censorship to stop that.

That's Numberwang! Google Cloud staffer breaks record for most accurate Pi calculation

ratfox
Happy

Can we celebrate this properly on 31/4?

By all means, please do celebrate Pi day every 31st of April... But it's going to be hard.

Personally, I prefer to celebrate Pi day on 22/7. Not only the order is correct, but it's also more precise.

They're BAAACK: Windows 10 nagware team loads trebuchet with annoying reminders to GTFO Windows 7

ratfox
Angel

My father is still on XP. He's heard it might be safer, because nobody's targeting that anymore

Crew Dragon returns to dry land as NASA promises new space station for the Moon

ratfox
Paris Hilton

I wonder if the people who think the first moon landings were a hoax are going to believe those.

That said, what is the point of returning to the moon? I get the point of doing microgravity experiments on the ISS, but isn't the moon just a dead rock of no particular interest?

Amazon may finally get its hands on .amazon after world's DNS overseer loses patience

ratfox

The fight is over who gets full control of the .amazon TLD. ICANN would not need to get involved about anything lower. There's already a bunch of companies that have their own TLD, like .google and .apple and .microsoft; the list is long.

ratfox
Coat

At long last, will ICANN get no satisfaction?

Getting my coat, that's what I say!

Swiss electronic voting system like... wait for it, wait for it... Swiss cheese: Hole found amid public source code audit

ratfox

Re: Are they going to vote on whether to adopt electronic voting?

Probably, considering a petition of only 50'000 signatures is enough to demand it.

Freelance devs: Oh, you wanted the app to be secure? The job spec didn't mention that

ratfox
Devil

This will, of course, hinder any attempt at developing a secure cryptographic algorithm.

In general, the rule on how to program your own encryption is: Don't. Even for experts, this is hard.

Racist self-driving car scare debunked, inside AI black boxes, Google helps folks go with the TensorFlow...

ratfox
Angel

today's potentially commercially viable self-driving cars [...] also have another vision system: lidar.

Well that's Tesla out then...

Google finally touts $150 pint-sized Linux dev board with Edge TPU AI math copro brains

ratfox

Re: Liability

Booking terms and conditions? Is that a thing?

You'll never guess who's giving Google a right shoeing lately. Talking about barring Chrome, Search as defaults... any other nations watching?

ratfox
Pint

Oh, so that's what they mean by "pub with no beer"?

ratfox

Aren't there any countries where it is forbidden for Google to put its search engine as default on Chrome, or Chrome as default browser on Android? If Russia did not do it already, maybe they should consider it. I believe they're the only country in the world where there is a close competition between Google and a local search engine (Google is getting trounced by the locals in China and Korea).

It would be interesting to know what is the actual effect on market share. I think that Bing is not having much success even though it's probably the default on everything Microsoft...

Adi Shamir visa snub: US govt slammed after the S in RSA blocked from his own RSA conf

ratfox

Re: couldn't get one or couldn't get one in time?

I assume that the huge backlog is related to the shutdown. God knows how many people apply for a visa every day, and when they stop working for five weeks, you must have interesting buffering problems such as "the applications don't fit in the building anymore".

When 2FA means sweet FA privacy: Facebook admits it slurps mobe numbers for more than just profile security

ratfox
Meh

Re: Google too

2FA using SMS is dangerous anyway; nobody should be using it. It's only a matter of time before there is a massive number of accounts stolen, and then security people will as usual be able to say "Told you so"

UK tech has a month left to bare gender pay gaps, but less than a fifth of firms have ponied up

ratfox
Meh

This is the "pay gap" that ignores the job title right?

I understand that it is harder for women than men to get high paying jobs, but I think it should be treated as a separate issue from getting paid differently for the same job. This statistic is confusing because it conflates the two, and half the people read "pay gap" and think it means different salaries for the same job.

When the bits hit the FAN: US military accused of knackering Russian trolls, news org's IT gear amid midterm elections

ratfox
Paris Hilton

an employee's iPhone automatically launched iTunes when connected to a USB cable, prompting synchronization and Windows updates on the host PC, which apparently allowed the takeover of the connected computer.

Naive question here: Can an iPhone really force Windows to update?

YouTube's pedo problem is so bad, it just switched off comments on millions of vids of small kids to stem the tide of vileness

ratfox
Paris Hilton

"YouTube is putting these children at risk by not removing these videos."

Wait. Do they mean that YouTube should take down all videos of children eating ice cream, because somebody somewhere will manage to get excited by these dangerously titillating exhibitions?

That can't be the solution. This is on par with asking women to cover up, lest they induce men to temptation.

Pay row latest: We aren't biased against Big Tech, says Uncle Sam as it rolls eyes at Oracle

ratfox
Paris Hilton

I recall that Google was also sued by the DoL a few years back. Google also complained that they were innocent and that the DoL demands were overbroad. Anybody knows how that story ended?

Nuisance call boss gets 8-year ban after trying to dodge firms' £700k fines

ratfox
Happy

Re: Yep.

According to the article, the new rules mean that the person in charge can now personally be fined up to £500'000...

Three-quarters of crucial border IT systems at risk of failure? Bah, it's not like Brexit is *looks at watch* err... next month

ratfox
Angel

Re: What possible delay?

No worries, the EU member states have said they will agree. But only if there is a second referendum. And I think Spain is going to ask Gibraltar in exchange.

So you see, no issue at all.

I say, that sucks! Crooks are harnessing hoovers to clean out parking meters in Chelsea

ratfox
Paris Hilton

Re: Plow

According to the dictionary, plough is not pronounced as snow, but as in cow.

Microsoft 'welcomes dialog' over HoloLens use by the military, but doesn't have to listen

ratfox

Re: Lethality

Or Lethalerino, if, you know, you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Decoding the President, because someone has to: Did Trump just blow up concerted US effort to ban Chinese 5G kit?

ratfox
Alert

Re: I like Americans...

From all the way here, they are...

Cut open a tauntaun, this JEDI is frozen! US court halts lawsuit over biggest military cloud deal since the Death Star

ratfox
Trollface

Re: Blakes 7

Whenever I see people mixing geek references, I assume it is trolling. And 99% of the time, I'm right. — Morty

ratfox
Boffin

Common APIs are not everything

There are probably constraints which are harder to realize in a multi-vendor solution. For instance, I believe there is a requirement that the entire operation should be air-gapped. And then, having data in multiple data centers would certainly cause performance issues, unless they all agree to build said data centers next to each other... Meaning they would never agree and keep suing each other on whose tax incentive gets priority, etc. And they would always claim the problems is caused by the other vendor. And they would sue the Pentagon to get a bigger share.

Honestly, I can't blame the Pentagon for wanting nothing of it.

US telcos' best pal – yes, the FCC – urged to dump its dodgy stats, crowd-source internet speeds direct from subscribers

ratfox
Angel

I don't see how blocking porn on a government network is a problem, especially considering the amount of bandwidth it can consume. I mean really, who cares.

Aah, the Schrodinger porn traffic. The one that consumes so much bandwidth (10-30% depending on estimates), and yet nobody cares about.

Anyway, it's good to see the FCC cares about net neutrality!

Visited the Grand Canyon since 2000? You'll have great photos – and maybe a teensy bit of unwanted radiation

ratfox
Happy

Probably some anti-government type planted those ages ago and has been expectantly following cancer rate statistics ever since.

OK, Google? Probably not! EU settles on wording for copyright reform legislation

ratfox
Angel

While we still can

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

From Red Planet to deep into the red: Suicidal extrovert magnet Mars One finally implodes

ratfox
Paris Hilton

So how much money did they get?

Whatever it was, I'd guess it was quite a lot, compared to the nothing that they delivered. Sounds like the venture was a great success...

Lovely website you got there. Would be a shame if we, er, someone were to sink it: Google warns EU link tax will magnify media monetary misery

ratfox
Paris Hilton

Yep, Google knows what's the value of traffic to websites. It's pretty much their entire business model.

Some publishers might actually prefer a paying model, because then they could bid to be on top of competition. For big publishers, the current all-free model is the worst: It makes it cheap for small indies to get discovered by users, when they wouldn't stand a chance otherwise. That I understand, big publishers actually benefited from Google News being shut down in Spain. The traffic went down for the industry as a whole, but the majority of what was left went to big sites, because they were better known to users, and they had more money to pay for ads.

Whether that leads to quality news... Maybe? Less clickbait... more BBC... but also more Daily Mail... Hmm.

Apple puts bullet through 'Do Not Track', FaceTime snooping bug and iOS vulnerabilities

ratfox
Meh

Oh the irony

Do Not Track removed because it might be used... to track users. The fight for privacy truly seems hopeless. What's next, users identified by their adblockers?

Grumble Pai: FCC boss told by House Dems to try the novel concept of putting US folks first, big biz second

ratfox
Devil

Re: I doubt Pai is smart enough ...

I suspect it literally doesn't matter to him. He's just waiting for the consulting job with the cable industry. He might even get a higher salary than now.

El Reg talks to PornHub sister biz AgeID – and an indie pornographer – about age verification

ratfox
Joke

Re: Google

"Why do porn sites have a +1 button?? I don't want people to know I'm on Google+"

ratfox
Happy

Re: Google

Don't be silly, Google would never want to have anything to do with something so unethical.

Global server motel, with a supermarket in the parking lot, banks $10bn profit from $233bn sales (Yes, it's Amazon)

ratfox
Happy

You're being too harsh! After the hard Brexit, the biggest loophole used by Amazon (a shell company in Luxembourg IIRC) will not work anymore for the UK.

So you've got that going for you, which is nice...

Siri, how do you wipe that smug smile from Qualcomm's face? Apple wins patent skirmish with chip nemesis

ratfox
Headmaster

The theory is that each company has enough patents that it acts as a sort-of nuclear standoff, but in Apple and Qualcomm's case the "mutually assured destruction" scenario hasn't proved sufficient

The problem with the "mutually assured destruction" theory is that for the standoff to be successful, each side must be able to inflict devastating damage on the other side without gaining much from it. However, even though we often joke that only the lawyers gain from these fights, most of the money that a company stands to lose is directly given to the other company, so it's (mostly) a zero-sum game.

If each company think they can with $1 billion from the other in patent payments, then it's worth it to spend a few millions to the lawyers just in case you win your lawsuit and the other side loses theirs. The mutually assured destruction principle would work if, say, 90% of payments were swallowed in taxes and/or legal costs. Then each side would risk losing $1 billion in order to win at most $100 millions, and it would be an efficient deterrent.

Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, deal or no deal: Doesn't matter – all integrator CGI sees is dollar signs

ratfox
Devil

Vultures circling

While rats are leaving the ship...

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

ratfox
Facepalm

This is why "canaries" are used on certain websites. If they are ever forced, under threat of imprisonment, to comply with certain agencies, they stop posting certain signed updates that say things like "We have received no such requests from law enforcement today". No updates - they've been compromised and are unable to talk about such things.

Just saying, but the idea that this would fly in front of a judge is laughable.

If you are forbidden from telling people something happened, you are not to let them know that it happened. It doesn't matter whether you tell them directly or indirectly, by starting or stopping sending out messages, turning the light on or off, whatever. If they learn about it thanks to you, you're in for it.

I studied hard, I trained for years. Yay, now I'm an astronaut in space. Argggh, leukemia!

ratfox

Re: Kinda makes sense...

Couldn't it also be that those who got sick more easily did not come back for another round?

ratfox
Unhappy

And people wonder why aliens haven't come to visit...

I helped catch Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht: Undercover agent tells all

ratfox
Pint

Thanks for the article

Wasn't there a story that one or two of the agents in charge of catching DPR and seizing Silk Road ended up trying to purloin some of the Bitcoins as well?

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

ratfox
Joke

"Hello! Do you have a minute to talk about Dracula?"

"No- wait, Dracula?"

"Yes!"

"You're vampires?"

"Yes. We have pamphlets."

"Vampires have missionaries?"

"Where else would new vampires come from?"

"I assumed you bit people."

"There are many hurtful stereotypes. May we come in?"

Apple: Trust us, we've patented parts of Swift, and thus chunks of other programming languages, for your own good

ratfox

Re: ignoring the fact of Prior Art ?

You can of course have patents invalidated if you bring up prior art, and (probably) pay for various proceedings and lawyer fees.

What more do you want? Damages? Ha ha, no.

I can hear the light! Boffins beam audio into ears with freakin' lasers

ratfox
Joke

Hearing light? That's nothing

This guy can see noises