Posts by John Brown (no body) 25401 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
No, but they're watched carefully curated demonstrations with crafted questions showing expected responses.
On the other hand, while it will likely be frustrating for people with a clue and who have an "out of band" problem, automated chatbot like front line service desk will probably deal with a large portion of callers to the satisfaction of both sides. After all, a lot of 1st line is scripted with the operator not allowed to deviate, have little to no training and yet still deal with many, many calls to "switch it off and on again", "check the cables are plugged in" etc. So, not really that much of a change other than possibly having to learn new ways to short circuit the process and get to 2nd line :-)
The "people installing fibre" that will be going are the contractors doing the large roll-outs, trunk lines and the like, which they expect to be more or less finished and certainly scaling down in 10 years time. The people you see out in the streets wiring up and fixing the cabs etc. will still be around, although they claim the newer kit is more robust so should need less maintenance and therefore fewer people to do the fixes.
"in excess of 80% of UK residential properties will be passed by openreach by the end of 2026"
The operative word being "passed". Like the poster upthread reporting the fibre and junction box being within 20 metres of his house but absolutely no chance of tapping in for that small group of houses.
At current numbers, assuming you aren't allowed on line unsupervised until the age of 10, and by the time you reach the age of 80 you longer care or are dead, you'd need to visit approximately 18,000 websites per hour to reach the end of the Internet in those 70 years :-)
Of course, there's more new sites coming online then dropping off each year, so it'd be a never ending, ever extending, task.
Phishing attacks already using the .zip TLD
Earlier this week, we investigated existing registrations using the .zip TLD and confirmed that there is already evidence of fraudulent activity.
At the time of writing, there are fewer than 5,000 registered domains using .zip. 2,253 of these have an A record, pointing to 838 distinct IP addresses. We have discovered phishing attacks on five of these domains so far, none of which are still live at the time of writing.
"Back in the day"..., .com was in use by CP/M (8 bit, 16 bit used .cmd), and earlier, when little Billy gates was still in short pants, DEC was using .com, long before MS and their version of DOS came along. It seems even tech journalists are getting younger these days, let alone the commentards :-)
...and why limit to 3 letters anyway? There's many, many TLDs out there more than 3 letters nowadays. .zip is a three letter word if your in the clothing or cable-tie business, but I don't see a need for .mov. That's not a word, it's an abbreviation for multiple words of vastly different meanings so won't have the same cachet with all all people.
Does, for example, a US company actually need specific identifiable data on, say, EU citizens, or is the genuinely anonymised and/or aggregated data really all they need? Do they need to know exactly where *I* live and what websites *I* visit, or do they really only need to know that a certain number of people *like* me, in a particular region, visit certain types of websites, all the processing being done inside the EU and only the results sent to the US? I suspect that most of the granularity of individuals data is actually useless to almost everyone other than the people doing the initial data collection and so has little to no need to ever leave the country of origin.
So-called targetted advertising, as all readers here are aware, is rarely properly targetted and, if anything, is more likely to show stuff you previously had a passing interest in, or bought, than to show stuff you might be interested in soon. Because I used a car insurance comparison site, a number of car insurers send me snail-mail about a month before it;s due, but even when online with script/ad/cookie blockers off, I don't see any car insurance ads. Maybe my precautions are actually working? Maybe the "browser fingerprint" and other tech to get around blockers simply doesn't work as advertised?
The funniest one, of course, the "Also bought..." on shopping websites (looking at you, Amazon). I go there, buy a Raspberry Pi (I can wish LOL), an HDMI cable and a boc of chocolates for my wife (she can wish LOL) and the next person looking at a Raspberry Pi sees "People who bought this item also bought a box of chocolates" WTF? So what? I suspect that is very unlikely to attract an impulse buy from someone whereas "Also bought..." links to suitable Pi accessories more likely would.
BeReal Has 73.5 Million Active Monthly Users
This is a new social media company based in France. Dunno who owns it, I'm not that interested, but it's based in and headquartered in the EU. At the very least, they can't claim ignorance or "operational difficulties" in terms of GDPR compliance since GDPR pre-dates their founding and is most definitely in their jurisdiction :-)
"In August 2022, BeReal reached 73.5 million active users. Additionally, 20 million of those users access the app daily. That was a significant jump from July when the app had 21 million monthly active users.
BeReal had 13.89 million downloads in the Apple App store in September 2022. This is nearly double the runner-up, TikTok, which had 7.51 million downloads in the same month."
So, maybe Facebook/Twitter et al no longer have the "pull" to threaten to leave the EU if the EU doesn't dance to their tune? Maybe the Zuck saw this coming and that's why Meta was created. Facebook may be the biggest part of Meta, but the structure allows Facebook to shrink or fail while protecting Meta and it's other subsidiaries. Others have grown "too big to fail" and still failed :-)
Easy fix?
The Patriot Act. Meta would need to create a fully independent EU based company to run it's services within the EU with no connection to the US based Meta. MS tried to do that in Ireland and the US still came knocking on the door with legal threats to hand over data as it wasn't independent enough by their rules. The EU and Ireland were a bit miffed about that and it dragged on and on until some sort of compromise was worked out in favour of the US.
Fair enough, a poor choice of words on the part of the article author then (who may be using the term because possibly it was in the press release). I think some people took "law enforcement" to mean cops, FBI etc though, so whoever chose the words in the first place is the one causing confusion despite being technically correct. It's a bit like calling the consumer protection department, or social services, "law enforcement". Technically, that's what they do, but you'd not normally call them "law enforcement" officers :-)
In particular, Cornetman stated "The last thing we need are police that can go anywhere and do anything.", conflating civil enforcement of workplace safety regulations with cops busting in wherever they feel like for any reason they choose. That's the sort of confusion I was trying to help clear up.
I think using the term "law enforcement" might have been a poor choice of words on the OPs part. Whoever is responsible for enforcing health and safety in the workplace should have the right to carry out unannounced inspections and/or investigate accidents in any workplace. It's concerning that the Bill as written only seems to offer this power over p[laces that are 30% over the average. Surely it's their job to not only investigate all workplace accidents, but to put in place enforceable measures to lower the average as much as possible. Maybe it's a "freedom" thing? Companies are people and are "free" to act as they will, even if it causes injuries to others without "interference" from authorities? It's like there is an acceptable baseline of death and injury before action is taken to sort out the mess when the reality is that everyone should be working to minimise those number as much as possible. The most worrying thing is that in some (many?) cases, the workers accept that as normal and defend the situation.
"he right to request a written description of the quotas"
Doesn't seem to worded in such a way that the "warehouse owner" has to actually comply though. Although keeping a record of all those who make the requests might be a good way of deciding who goes out the door first at the next round of redundancies or fired for "performance" reasons,
Not in the UK. If anything, libraries are closing or reducing services. There ain't a university in every town and even if there were I doubt they'd offer use to the general public. Even ordinary printing is charged to students at 5p per page (I think they get a "free" monthly allowance of about £10 or so, depends on the university. On the other hand, one of our companies services is providing managed print services and IIRC 5p per page is what we charge our customers to cover amortise the printer cost and maintenance as well as make a healthy profit, so I suspect UK universities are not in any way subsidising normal paper print cost, let alone any kind of 3D print facility. I suspect that will limited to students in departments that actually have a need for 3D printers.
On the other hand, I take your point that they are available in some places as well as online. I was simply pointing out that they are not as easily available as some people seem to think, there seemed to be an implication that many people own 3D printers at home. They are still pretty niche items, but have there own little communities, like in the early 8-bit home computing days, so people who do own one know lots of other people who also own one, which may skew the perception.
"Think of the great PR glow in which a company could bathe if it announced self-printable replacement parts."
Until someone points out how few people have 3D printers (or even access to one) how much they cost, how much the part will actually cost to make etc., :-)
Maybe when you can pop down to the equivalent of the local photobooth, hardware shop or other retailer and run one off for pennies and making sure they use the right kind of material for the part (rigid, flexible etc)
Great for handy hobbyists, less so for mainstream and, where the vast majority of broken mice, keyboards, headsets, webcams etc come from, mainstream businesses and offices where the time cost alone for someone to process the order is magnitudes more than just replacing it anyway,
"More and more hotels are adding charging. It doesn't have to be all that fast since guests will be there for 8-10 hours."
So long as they have enough of them, great. Or they may be that 3am alarm call to let you know you car is charged and you need to move it because we just gave a 3am alarm call to another guest who needs the charger now, thank you very much for staying at $hotel and we hope you are having a great night! :-)
And not forgetting that London first called it a "congestion" charge, and made exceptions for EVs. As more " clean air" and ULEZ appear, they can easily be charged into congestion charge zones. They are all ANPR monitored. It's just a tweak in the s/w deciding on who gets charged and how much. I suspect that's one of the reasons our company switched from company cars to car allowance, ie non-privately owned vehicles are likely to be next on the hit list after lorrys/vans/buses/taxis. My car, now privately owned, is currently exempt, but for how much longer I wonder?
"It's curious how they can do the decent thing in some scenarios, and yet in others royally screw over the customers"
It could a corporate cultural thing. There was a big story on BBC news yesterday regarding supermarket food prices. They told the viewers everything they needed to know, including the "hedging" supermarkets do by buying on term-contracts so there will be lag in price falls. They also mentioned at least twice in the report that prices were lower and falling faster in Europe. They even finished on that line. What they didn't mention is that in Europe, supermarkets buy on current spot price or fairly short term contracts such that their prices roll up and down with the seasons and markets. The UK is the outlier where the supermarkets all work on the premise the customer is happier with long term stable prices, not the seasonal or market rates at that moment. It almost felt like the BBC was blaming Brexit for higher prices here than in the EU :-)
Anyway, that's just a long winded way of saying maybe Tesla don't see the point in hedging on electricity futures when they have a fairy captive customer base and whatever Tesla pay per KW/h will be passed on with a markup anyway, so why bother? Most of their customers can afford a very expensive car and won't be bothered about a few pence per KW/h price variation anyway. When prices rise, non-hedged suppliers prices rise first, but if the high prices last long enough, the hedgers prices stay high for longer when the non-hedgers can drop more quickly and steal customers.
Dunno about where you are, but there are nowhere near as many filling stations as there used to be 'round my way. And with the push for EVs, that's gonna get worse over time, especially if the country you live in has an upcoming ban on future new ICE car sales. It could see a return to trips to the local chemist/pharmacy for a few 1 gallon cans of petrol for the die-hards :-) There's already back-street dealers selling red[*] diesel in some cities around the UK, sometimes even with the red dye neutralised.
* Low tax fuel in the UK for agricultural and marine use only, has a red dye in it. Very large fines if caught using it in vehicles on the public road since, amongst other crimes, it's tax evasion.
As for the charging aspect, it's going to be a growing problem, though generally we're not there as yet. I sometimes see all the chargers in use at motorway services on normal weekdays, so imagine it being a problem during holidays even now, but I'd guess most people driving EVs are charging at home or work and maybe doing some topping off at the supermarket car parks and such-like. Rural users mileage may vary quite considerably :-)
"again it's a CAR not a COMPUTER.. "
Are you sure? They say that about mobile phones too, but many people rarely make actual phone calls on them these days :-)
But yes, it's not a computer. It's a highly complex and quite large mobile LAN of many computers with a WAN connection, none of which YOU control. :-)
"Even with a normal car now, I'd disable any kind of internet connection that wasn't running through my phone and if I couldn't do it, I wouldn't buy the thing in teh first place"
That will become increasingly difficult over time. Probably not impossible, but difficult for what will eventually be a niche product. Like a dumb phone or a dumb TV and increasingly as or more expensive than the connected ones because of the smaller market demand.
"In all seriousness how much of this hyperconnection actually helps the users, and how much is there only to exctract more profit out of the people?"
When "things" don't work at all because some non-essential part has failed is when you know you are being screwed over. The most obvious to us El Reg readers is the multi-function printer where the scanner stops working when the ink/toner runs out. Yeah, came across this AGAIN on a customer site just yesterday.
Not sure why you got the downvotes. It seems to me that electric bikes equivalent to proper motorbikes, mopeds and/or scooters are an ideal way to go with electrification and I'm wondering why they've not already gone mainstream/mass market, especially in the Asian countries mentioned in the article. It seems like a no-brainer to test and develop the power train technology on a smaller and cheaper scale than with cars. The whole "connected" and "self-driving" stuff is superfluous to the requirements of the vehicle, things which can be added at a later date when the tech has matured. Currently, the few electric motorbikes all seem to be high end, large, expensive things that few people seem to want and, in the markets referenced in the article, unaffordable. Maybe what the world actually wants is the equivalent of a Honda 125 with an electric motor in the hub of the rear wheel, batteries where the engine, gearbox and fuel tank currently sit and the option to add "power panniers" for extra range. No connectivity, no autonomy, not even self-balancing unless it can be done cheaply. Just simple, basic and easy to produce in numbers. The tech even already exists. Just scale up the current "throwaway" e-scooters that are clogging up pavements the world over!
On the other hand, she already knew of the custodial sentence, and has done for quite some time. Both the judge and her lawyers will have made it abundantly clear to her in advance the possible outcomes. In those circumstances, she should have already been prepared to be "taken down" at the end of that process. It may be that, knowing her lack of remorse and her self-confidence and/or arrogance, she didn't expect to fail in this attempted stay, but that is entirely on her and is not a good reason to be nice and accommodating to her. I suspect if this was a low level criminal passing a few counterfeit notes down the local supermarket, s/he'd have to been given that leeway.
Well, the enforcement order lasts for 20 years, long after their sentences will be completed, of which it's quite probably they will only serve 1/2 to 3/4 anyway. Unless they are planning on taking minimum wage employment and living on the breadline, I'd expect there to be a percentage based repayment plan in place on all future earnings. I suppose a lot depends on who they are still friends with once they get out. They'll need to be very creative to get back to their previous lifestyle while trying to "hide" money as being theirs. Family might let them live in a mansion rent free and pay their bills for them I suppose, but it will all be scrutinised very carefully.
Or, sometimes the research produces tech that can then be repurposed into something else entirely. I was just watching an episode of Aussie Inventions That Changed the world. Some obscure astronomer wanted to detect the explosions of mini black holes. He and his team had to develop signal processing far beyond what the best supercomputers of the day could do. They never did detect the black hole explosions, but the digital signal processor they created was too good to waste. So they went off and invented WiFi with it{**} :-)
(Then the Yankee Pig Dog[*] corporations tried to rip them off and they got rich from the patent infringements fines and licensing fees)
* sorry, couldn't resist :-)
** grossly simplified explanation, obviously.
" I certainly wouldn't invest my own money in Helion"
But what if in 10 years time you're sat there thinking, "fuck, I wish I'd put a couple of grand into that at the beginning!!"
I wonder how many people "turned down The Beatles" and chose not to invest in MS, Apple, Google etc and were in an actual position to have done so?
I suppose it's a bit like long odds at the horsies. How much can you afford to lose? Even with long odds, you still need to know enough about the game to pick winners once in a while. Most of us would be picking the losers every time and end up broke unless the luck struck at the right moment. The Warren Buffets of the world got rich by investing in what they understand. A few got rich by taking a punt and hoping, but mainly investing in what they understand so they never lose everything. After all, who of us would have invested in lasers when it was little more than a novelty with no obvious real world commercial uses? :-)
...should "engage in dialogue" with Twitter in regard to the current lack of moderation and the apparent failure to follow the local laws. Maybe "discuss with them" the ramifications of not following the law and how upcoming changes in legislation might affect Twitters operation in Australia. When Australia gets either no response or just a pop emoji in reply, Australia can then assume that Twitter is all fine with whatever the government happens to decide to legislate for. Twitter may wake up and take notice when their domain is blocked for escalating non-compliance :-)
"The Land Of The Free" seems to apply at all levels in the US. It's not just Billy-Bob Nomates claiming he's oppressed by the local town/city and defending his "freedom", the States themselves jealously guard their own level of "freedom", ie sovereignty, from the Federal Government. Even when the Federal Government tries to put federal laws in place based on the powers they actually have, there will be States who will legally challenge those laws based on anything they can think of, especially when it's politically motivated red on blue or blue on red challenges.
"Just today a story about how Microsoft actually opens password-protected zip files to look at the contents. That's getting pretty damn personal."
Not only pretty damned personal, but the fact it's password protected is explicitly denying consent to allow others to look at the contents without authorisation. That ought to be the equivalent of a "Keep Out, No Trespassing" sign which under the right circumstance lets the owner shoot offenders. But, of course, as the article states, there are very few privacy laws in the USA so password protecting your data probably is overruled by the small print in the contract with the host or service that probably says they can do anything they want with any and all information you place on their servers. So, agreed, the Wild West never really went away.
"These SLAs create disincentives to proactively update the status... Publishing any indication of downtime has a major and direct financial impact, so automated anomaly detection and reporting is out."
This is also why there isn't even internal, company wide monitoring and informational status pages for the front line support staff. It's all about plausibly deniability. Clearly the SLA needs updating to force disclosure as no org is going to voluntarily disclose outages.
Something for the downvoters to read. Unless, of course, you think it's fake news, in which case, do tell :-)
"Another thing to consider is that the company could no doubt write off the cost of the branded merch as an advertising expense, so not only is the company giving employees stuff they don't want, the company isn't really paying for it either. Gee, thanks."
And, just for clarification, if they are writing off the cost, that's a tax break and therefore the recipient is paying a fraction of that cost in the tax paid from their wages. Triple whammy!
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