seanj

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seanj
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  • UK 'racing' to improve contact tracing privacy without Apple and Google

    seanjseanj
    darkpaw said:
    Reasons why I'm not going to use this app:

    - The development of the app was given to a specific company. It was not sent out to tender. Now, you can argue that we don't have a lot of time and we needed it developed quickly, BUT...
    - The reported budget for the app was £250 MILLION... (Not sure on the veracity of that figure, but it's been widely reported. It may just be part of the deal between UK.gov and Palantir/Faculty.)
    - It is being developed by both Palantir (run by the right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel) and Faculty...
    - Faculty is an AI startup run by someone called Marc Warner...
    - Marc Warner's brother is Ben Warner...
    - Ben Warner was recruited to Downing Street by Dominic Cummings (if you don't who DC is, he's basically an unelected advisor to our inimitable dickwad, Boris Johnson)...
    - Ben Warner was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign.

    Further:
    - Dr Ian Levy is Technical Director of the National Cyber Security Centre. He put out a blog post pretty much saying, "Everything is fine. We won't grab your data, no-sireeeee, and we absolutely won't expand the remit of this app, until we absolutely feel the need to do exactly that". Within hours, NHSX said they'll expand the remit of the app where necessary. So-called "mission creep".
    - The app ONLY works for NHS England, so spending any time with someone from, say, Wales or Scotland, won't work because they won't be using the NHS England app; they'll be using the NHS Wales or NHS Scotland app.
    - The app will NOT work with the Apple/Google solution which means if you go abroad, neither your device nor anyone else's will match, so will record zero interactions.

    So, no. I won't be downloading this app.

    The Apple/Google solution would've been exactly what we needed, and it works across borders. Apple even provided the source code necessary to create a functioning app. Sadly, our government thinks it's the dog bollox when it comes to everything, so they've gone off on their own.

    You wonder why the UK currently has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe? Because our government is pathetic. Our MPs are idiots. Our Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said he wanted to test 100,000 people a day by the end of April. 30th April comes along and lo and behold we hit 122,000 tests! Oh, sorry, no, we hit 76,000 tests. The other 46,000 tests were actually just mailed out and hadn't actually been used. They did this to save his political career. In the days following the 30th April we tested 66,000 people then 56,000 people.

    The UK is an f-ing joke.
    Ladies and gentlemen, we have a conspiracy theorist in the house! This is the kind of vitriolic fake news communists in the U.K. spout all the time these days. Not surprisingly the public voted for Brexit, destroyed their party in the recent general election, and why the government has the highest poll ratings and confidence ever.
    command_fwilliamlondonelijahg

  • UK 'racing' to improve contact tracing privacy without Apple and Google

    seanjseanj
    robin huber said:
    Even Brits say their government has no credibility when it comes to creating apps. 
    The government has credibility...
    Its the civil servants that it employs that have no credibility when it comes to IT.
    williamlondonelijahg

  • Apple hit with another lawsuit claiming iTunes music piracy

    seanjseanj
    Punultimate said:
    It's interesting how you have such in depth knowledge around the guilt in a case that was only recently filed and feel so assured that Apple is at fault.  The music industry is a spider web of licensing, cross licensing, where rights and frequently sold and acquired, regardless of who originally wrote the music.  Sounds like you just don't seem to be a fan of Apple yourself from your tone.
    Sounds like you’re one of these people who believe in “my country right or wrong”.

    Its perfectly possible to be an Apple fan while also acknowledging that the part of Apple that does the legal vetting of submissions to iTunes is too lax: the same is true for other music stores like Amazon, etc. Because of the cost in checking rights they simply trust anyone who claims to have the right to sell a particular song.
    Personally I’m tired of reporting pirate material to them. Often it’s blatant, being made from a vinyl recording and encoded as a 128kbit mp3 before being sold as an aac.
    The problem for Apple/Amazon/etc the legal cost in confirming the ownership of song recording is prohibitively expensive compared to likely revenue. If they were to check properly, these music stores would only stock huge selling established artists like The Beatles, Springsteen, Taylor Swift, etc.
    williamlondontommikelenumenorean

  • Britain's NHS rejects the Apple & Google COVID-19 exposure notification technology

    seanjseanj
    redraider11 said:

     They can’t do privacy better. That’s the point. The fearful public will elect for this thinking, ignorantly, that the government has their best interest at heart and then when a new party or people are in charge that wish to expand its use for more nefarious motives, they will. This virus is the perfect opening all governments have been waiting for to infringe in our rights. Not that the British or other Europeans really ever had rights, but you get the point. 

    It’s kind of the same thing when we passed the Patriot Act after 9/11. Everyone was fearful and wanted something done. All that got us was spying on Americans under Bush and expanded on under Obama. If people think that won’t happen here, then they’re fools. 
    You have a very dismissive and superior attitude towards your fellow man, believing that a fearful public will unthinkingly install. Yes not everyone has a university education, yes there are some that have jobes that aren't intellectually challenging, but generally people are more critical in their thinking then they are given credit for. A fact that repeatedly seems to suprise politicians who take the public for idiots.
    But you are showing your ignorance as this app needs to be installed by the user. However the computer viruses don't need permission to be installed, they install themselves. Thats why macOS has never had any viruses. It has however had malware that tricks the user into installing it, so at best this app could be described as malware.

    I suspect the reason why this App is using a centralised approach is so that the NHS can identify and track where local outbreaks are occuring in different parts of the UK. Which is very understandable for the health authorities in tracking the virus. However if this app does impact on battery life I can foresee people removing it from their phones, just like any other power-hungry app. (Viruses don't let you install them.)

    Clearly you also know nothing about history. The Magna Carta was a landmark in the establishment of the rights of the citizen versus the state, not just in Britian but internationally - your Declaration of Independence drew upon it. But the recognition of an individual's rights haven't stopped there. Britain and most European countries have the United Nationas Declaration of Human Rights embedded in their law, allowing the individual to use the judiciary to strike down any laws passed by the legislature and enforced by the executive that infringe on these basic rights.
    True in the UK we don't have "the right" to wander around with assault rifles and enough ammunition to start a small war...
    But then we've only ever had 1 school shooting. Ever.
    StrangeDaysavon b7singularity

  • Lawsuit alleges Apple involved in 'flagrant' music piracy on iTunes

    seanjseanj
    ihatescreennames said:
    It's odd to me that almost every (every?) one of these "iTunes is pirating my music" lawsuits seems to come from artists (or their representatives) that have 1) older music or 2) nearly unheard of music or 3) a combination of the previous two.
    The pirates go for niche music genres in the hope they won’t get caught. Pirate music from a main stream international superstar on a huge label and you can bet that label will slap Apple with a desist letter pronto. But pirate music from a niche genre, perhaps originally published on a label long gone bust, and possibly performed by an artist, and you’re probably going to get away with it.
    Sure the sales will be small, but they’ll build over time, and they won’t get taken down.

    I dj in Latin music, predominantly salsa/mambo if the 1960’s and 1970’s. It’s a big scene. And there’s a significant amount of pirate music in the genre. There’s a label called Circulor that you’ll see against a lot of “The Best of ...” anthologies. It’s a pirate label based in Columbia.
    The musicians/songwriters see none of the money paid on iTunes for these songs.
    jony0ravnorodom