You say bug, I say "misdocumented advanced security feature with unconsidered consequences". @UnknowingFool says "oh, but that part of the documentation's just missing from the version for the general public, here in the security forces we had full correct documentation".

Interesting thoughts. Great example where you're only getting a partial story and it's coming through a journalist who doesn't know enough to ask the right questions.

Presumably the firmware is getting temperatures wrong, heating to the target temperature where it should actually heat just above the minimum and let the charging current do the rest of the battery heating.

Thanks. It's a bit of an indictment of moderation on here today that your comment is not voted higher than the one you responded to. Both Germany and China make lead acid batteries that would be useless in this application. Both of them also make new chemistry wide temperature range lithium batteries.

Clearly the batteries delivered are somehow different and the ones delivered to Vermont weren't appropriate. This shouldn't be a question of the officials though. The basic function of a bus is to drive around the place and if it's sold in Vermont that means driving around the place in the cold. A bus that fails that is not of "merchantable quality" (look up the Uniform Commercial Code) and so the company that made them should have to fix them and until they do they have a duty pay for replacements.

Now, US judges are no doubt allowing companies to weasel out of the UCC. That is a big problem.

Once again a reminder of the risk of using Microsoft software (and many other, but not all, proprietary systems). Now it's an "unspecified code error", so I'll speculate a bit, but there's plenty of history here, so we can guess the truth.

There are ways for external software to interface with Exchange / Office 356. In fact, AI systems could happily be built to work directly with IMAP and other standardized interfaces. That's what Microsoft would expect external software companies to use and they would almost always mean that simple correct configuration of the mail server would stop that software being able to see the contents of these mails at all.

Instead of giving their own software the standard interfaces and allowing everyone who uses it to have control in the standard ways, Microsoft wants Copilot to have an advantage over the competition. They allow non standard, special interfaces for Copilot whilst the competition have to stick with the standards and suffer slower development. The user suffers from more complexity (two separate interfaces), more bugs and, like here, total loss of control and security. Microsoft sells out the user for more of their own sales.

One real sign that you are right about this is that the actual insiders chose to create a separate Trumpcoin, fully separate from Bitcoin when they wanted to use crypto for serious fraud. That is not a vote of confidence from people who actually have access to US government internal information.

For a currency transfer even that rate of variability is not a problem. You can simply divide your currency transfer into tiny segments and immediately (no more than minutes) convert to and from the cryptocurrency.

That doesn't make sense, though, with Bitcoin because transaction costs are so high. Crypto can only have a chance of success once Bitcoin burns.

Sure, but if consumers don't get them, we will have to pay over the odds.

Right, but we (the computer/software/developer/CAD/graphic design type people) care. 8k is completely lost in motion blur and almost useless for watching films on anything but a full home cinema. On the other hand, it's really useful if you want to have static text or compare detailed photo images. We want cheap 8k monitors because it's much more convenient to have three 8k monitors than six 4k monitors. We have failed to fool the TV manufacturers into delivering what we want. If we can work out a way of fooling people it's needed like we did with 4k then we should do so. Tell them about the importance of home TV? Make films specially designed to show moire fringes on 4k TVs? I'm not sure what the tactic is, but if anyone can work out how to do it, clearly this should be a priority.

I'd like to think this is a tongue in cheek comment, but I think it has a bit too much truth to count as a proper joke or sarcastic comment.

That's my point about the timing being after the embassy decision. A "sinophobe" would have done it just before the decision, hoping to force the rejection of the embassy. However bad Starmer's trip is now, it would have been infinitely worse in that situation. Makes it much more likely that this release was delayed by Sinophiles than the other way round. Also, from China's point of view it gives them an excuse to fail to deliver favors expected after the embassy decision.

Lots of weird things, however the weirdest is that this comes out just immediately after, not before, they approve a huge new Chinese embassy. Likely it's been held up as a secret deliberately to not interfere with the process?

The entire point of the category of "suspect" is that the police have more power over a person where they can show "reasonable suspicion" than they have over someone who is not a suspect. Think of the standard "think of the children" scenario. A van was seen next to the place where a child was kidnapped. Do you want the same set of rules to apply to all vans as the one that is "under suspicion"?

If you try to say "nothing proven; no right to investigate", the simple fact is that this will make it almost impossible to recover kidnapped children. If you say "we need the right to investigate, but we can't make a difference for suspects" then you will end up with the right for the police to do investigation on everybody.

The reasonable compromise is that; when there is a clear reason for suspicion, the police can investigate further. When they do that, they need to record the fact and get authorization. The mechanism for that is a warrant.

The US constitution protects against unreasonble siezure. That is already a clear exception for reasonable seizure which is the whole point. I am okay with that.

Here I agree with you that even this is a problem. When a war with China comes as seems likely and people need to evacuate or transport food, China will be able to use those mechanisms to disable many vehicles across the US. This will cause major problems. There should not be a requirement for people to purchase equipment that could be used against them by an oppressive government. For the same reason they should not be forced to include software that could be used by an oppressive government to monitor them.

Intercept is not the same as "read" or even "attribute". They can record traffic. If that traffic is properly encrypted at one end and decrypted at the other with keys that only the user has access to they they can't access the traffic. If the traffic is correctly put into a trustworthy Tor node which has sufficient traffic levels and then sent through the onion network they cannot work out who is communicating with who.

That means that the only information that you have to give away is the fact that you are communicating and a maximum limit on the amount.

This is specifically what we are discussing. If you want to learn more then the term you need to search for on google is "lawful interception". the concept is that it is under the control of a judge and requires a warrant. A major problem occurs when the same mechanisms are given over to those that should not use them.

If you are using Microsoft software then that is already a much bigger problem than the fact that you have decided to trust Microsoft. Having a FOSS operating system does not guarantee privacy or security, but it is a basic entry requirement for the possibility of it.

At some point you have to write and read that SD card. When you do that it is just as vulnerable as the computer you do that on.

The whole point here is that, with a permitted court order and warrant it doesn't break any laws because the law will allow it. That's not a problem. Every day you go into shops which could break "trespass" laws if it were not for the fact that you have permission. Since you do have permission it doesn't. Law enforcement goes

This is an interesting discussion. I don't see hacking as inherently more problematic than, for example, spying on suspects using the many methods that police already do use. However if hacking causes insecurity for other people that's more of a problem.

What I think should be illegal is keeping secret vulnerabilities which might compromise a noticeable proportion of systems in the country (note, I didn't say "large", I would consider 1% of systems "noticable"). The NSA and GCHQ have been doing this when, if they had been publishing vulnerabilities much earlier and more aggressively, it's possible the extra pressure on software companies would have made our systems much safer and more secure. That's a problem.

I disagree about the clean legislation. This involves forcing non-technical normal citizens to put themselves at risk by carrying software with them at all times which is designed to work against them. Imagine requiring that all cars had explosives on them so that, in the case they were used for a bank robbery the police could blow them up remotely. That would cause immense problems to make sure that not only could they not be triggered accidentally, that the police couldn't kill random people by mistake, but also that other people couldn't take advantage of the system and the supply of explosives that it provides and use it against the society. Nobody would consider this sane.