Blog | Steve Woods | Language, Linux, Open Source

Seriously

06/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Security, Tech
The language used in official responses to news stories seems to have been rigid and formulaic in recent times, particularly amongst those organisations within or linked to the public sector.

Today’s edition of The Register reports that ACRO, the UK’s Criminal Records Office was taken offline due to a security breach. The site currently displays a holding page blaming ‘technical issues‘, a fine example of misleading bureaucratic language.

This is the site’s holding page as this post is published.

El Reg notes that manages ACRO people’s criminal record information, running checks as needed on individuals for any convictions, cautions, or current prosecutions. It with British police and businesses, as well as exchanging this data with other countries, particularly where people wish to move or emigrate to another country and a certificate of good behaviour is required from the British police. ACRO has access to data from the Police National Computer via an information sharing agreement with the Cabinet Office.

The data typically handled by ARCO includes name and address history, extended family information, a new foreign address, legal representation, passport information, photo and data PIN cautions, reprimands, arrests, charges or convictions.

Earlier this week, ACRO emailed users to inform them that it had “recently been made aware of a cyber security incident affecting the website between 17th January 2023 and 21 March 2023“, adding that “we have no conclusive evidence that personal data has been affected by the cyber security incident; however it is only right that we inform you of the situation. We are very sorry that because of your interaction with ACRO your data could have been affected, and we are working tirelessly to resolve this matter.”

The message went on to say that “robust measures” had been taken as soon as the breach was discovered. It won’t be the first time that pulling the plug on a website has been described by a public sector organisation spokesperson as “robust”, If your systems were truly “robust”, taking the site offline would not have been necessary.

After intoning the “robust” mantra, ARCO then goes on to say: “We take data security very seriously and will ensure that the matter is fully investigated…. Translating this into plain English, this means “Oh dear! We’ve been caught out!”

The fact that ARCO had not taken data security “very seriously” is clearly highlighted by two facts:
- Firstly, ARCO did not notice crooks were gaining access to its computer systems for more than two months; and
- Secondly, it has now freely admitted that it is going to take steps to find out how the breach happened and prevent its reoccurrence. A clear case of that old adage of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The public sector relies heavily on public trust to do its work. If it really does want to be taken seriously, tough measures need to be taken and implemented, not just for IT security, but in connection a very ancient and fundamental idea: that of honesty.
Speaking truth to power

05/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

The Twitter account of the British Government’s Home Office is normally a conduit for the worst ideas dreamt up by the alleged government’s most authoritarian and repressive ministry.

As such it tends to repeat and amplify the dog-whistle racism and xenophobia embodied in the hostile environment that has characterised its attitude to non-British people, particularly if they are not white, since the Home Secretary was one Theresa May, who later went on to do bad prime minister impressions in the Westminster Palace of Varieties.

The post of Home Secretary is currently occupied by one Sue-Ellen Cassiana “Suella” Braverman, a woman of no discernible talent other than being incompetent and nasty.

Braverman is currently on her second term of office as Home Secretary, having been initially appointed as such under the premiership of one Elizabeth Mary Truss on 6 September 2022. However, like her boss, Braverman did not last long in post, resigning because she had made an “honest mistake” (a likely story. Ed.) by sharing an official document from her personal email address with a colleague in Parliament, an action which breached the Ministerial Code.

On 25 October, Braverman was re-appointed as the home secretary by the prime minister Rishi Sunak, in direct contradiction of his promise of “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. Does someone who broke the Ministerial Code have any integrity or professionalism?

Since her re-appointment, has continued with hostile policies towards refugees and asylum seekers with a modern take on the reintroduction on the prison hulks of two centuries ago to house these people before they are deported to that shining beacon of human rights known as Rwanda.

Yesterday, the Home Office’s Twitter account finally admitted how dangerous the Home Secretary was, calling her “one of the greatest injustices in modern Britain” and calling for her end.

The post has since been deleted.
NSW takes gibberish to new level

04/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

It has often been remarked that Britain and the USA are two countries divided by a common language.

However, let’s not forget that the spread of English around the world resulted in the development of different varieties of English around the world, all with varying degrees of (in)comprehensibility.

A prime example of something beyond the comprehension of your ‘umble scribe turned up this morning in his social media feed. It contains a fine example of some prime official gibberish from the state authorities of New South Wales in Australia.

If you, dear reader, can make any sense of it, please feel free to use the comment form below to provide a translation into British English; furthermore, please feel free to add any punctuation which you deem will aid comprehension as the original notice has none. 😀
An honour indeed

23/03/2023 Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media
Happy 25th, curl!

22/03/2023 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Version 8 of the curl command line too has been released, German It news website reports. This coincides with the software’s 25th birthday.

The release of a new major version (8.0O of curl (Client for URLs) has been released just in time for the software’s 25th birthday. The data transfer command line tool has barely changed. The new release has far more to do with publicising the birthday of the software and its libcurl program library. This was explained by curl’s initiator and maintainer Daniel Stenberg when announcing the release. In moving to a version 8Stenberg also wanted to avoid ending up with a curl version seven with point releases running to three figures (7.xxx).

Little has changed within curl itself with this release: 8.0 is just the first release of curl that no longer runs on systems without working 64-bit data types, as can be gathered from the release notes. Otherwise, the new version contains 130 bug fixes, including six vulnerabilities of which Stenberg classifies five as “low” and one as “medium“. Furthermore, there are rewards ranging from $480 to $2,400 for those who successfully squash curl’s bugs.

To celebrate the release, some of the project’s figures have also been released. There have been 215 releases, whilst 41 contributors (of whom 23 were new) collaborated on version 8.0. A total of 2,841 persons have contributed to curl’s code; mostly only once, as Stenberg comments in his Youtube video.

Curl itself is a very popular command line tool for sending and receiving data with URL syntax, whilst libcurl is a transfer program library which handles most internet protocols and is used in many third party applications.
Corsica: linguistic colonialism in action

20/03/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

On Tuesday 9th March, the Administrative Court in Bastia overturned those articles of the rules of procedure of the Corsican Assembly and the Corsican Executive Council that provide for debates to be held in both Corsican and French, Corse Matin reports. The Court regards these provisions as infringing Article 2 of the French constitution, according to which “the language of the Republic is French“.

Former prefect of Corsica Pascal Lelarge, had lodged an appeal in this matter, requesting withdrawal of the decisions adopting these two rules of procedure, in view of the fact that references to the notion of the Corsican people and the Corsican language as a possible working language for the Corsican assembly, undermine to the French constitution.

“An unthinkable situation”
Gilles Simeoni, President of the Corsican Executive Council, and Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, President of the Corsican Assembly, issued the following statement:
This decision is tantamount to depriving the elected representatives of Corsica of the right to speak their language during debates within the Assembly of Corsica, the Executive Council of Corsica and acts of public life. Accepting this situation is unthinkable for us.

Even regardless of the appeal to be lodged against this judgement, this court decision and its reasoning only confirm the absolute necessity of a constitutional revision, in particular to guarantee the Corsican language the status of joint officiality, an essential condition for its survival and development.

With the rules of procedure of the Corsican Assembly having been adopted unanimously, at the next session we will propose that all groups adopt a common position in the face of the legal and political situation created by the judgment of the Administrative Court in Bastia, which is subject to an appeal.
Barton Hill litter pick

19/03/2023 Steve WoodsBristol

Saturday 18th March was a fine warm day and your ‘umble scribe had received an invitation from a friend Eric in the neighbouring district of Barton Hill to participate in the regular monthly community litter pick, which I’d committed to doing as I’d forgotten about the previous event due to strong drink having been taken the night before.

At 10 am three of us – Eric, Shona and your correspondent – all equipped with gloves, litter pickers and bags all set off into the Urban Park, mainly to concentrate on clearing its fences, hedges and shrubbery of wind-blown litter – mostly plastic carrier bags and sweet and snack wrappers. – although we did encounter recyclable materials such as bottles and cans which were duly placed in separate bags. One worrying development was the large nitrous oxide catering cylinders (note to users: I have no personal beef with you wanting to have a pharmaceutically-induced giggle, but please dispose of the waste properly 😀 ).

Photo courtesy of Shona Jemphrey

Anyway at the end of an hour that went very quickly, encouraged by smiles and kind words from passers-by, the flowers and blossom that were blooming, we’d collected 5 bags of grot for collection by Bristol Waste and retreated to the Wellspring Settlement for a cuppa before dispersing for the rest of the day.

A final footnote. Whilst in the Urban Park it was good to note that repairs to the poor quality surface around the play equipment area were finally being carried out after at least 3 years’ lobbying by concerned local residents.
Czech government using open source web analytics

17/03/2023 Steve WoodsGDPR, Open Source, Privacy, Security, Tech

Joinup, the EU’s open source news site, reports that the Czech Republic is to begin using the Matomo open source web analytics tool on the Czech citizen portal and gov.cz websites, where it will replace Google Analytics.

This change will ensure that the data by the sites collected will stay within the EU and, as the Czech administration will be using its own instance of Matomo, it will retain full control of the records.

The change was triggered by an open letter sent by the Czech the digital freedom watchdog luridicum Remedium after it noticed the Czech state vaccination system website was using Google Analytics during the COVID-19 crisis. The Czech Data Protection Authority and public sector strategic partner NAKIT then pursued the matter and replaced Google Analytics with Matomo on Czechia’s Ministry of Health website. This move later led to further action and the country will continue following this trend on public sector websites.

Previously named Piwik, Matomo has been in development since 2007 and is presently deployed on 1.4 million websites, including those of NASA, the European Commission, the United Nations and Amnesty International.

The Czech decision to choose Matomo follows those of other European countries seeking to keep control of their citizens’ data. Last year the French and Austrian data protection authorities determined that Google Analytics was not compliant with EU data privacy standards, in particular because Google’s data transfers to the United States are contrary to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
LibreOffice Base Guide – now in Czech

16/03/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

The blog of The Document Foundation, the organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite, reports that the user guide for Base, the suite’s database development and administration tool for relational database management systems has now been translated into Czech.

Czech LibreOffice community member Zdeněk Crhonek (aka “raal”) writes as follows:

The Czech team translated the LibreOffice Base Guide 7.3 – and it’s now available on the documentation page. Our team consists of three translators: Petr Kuběj, Radomír Strnad and Zdeněk Crhonek, along with localized screenshot maker Roman Toman, and Miloš Šrámek, who prepared machine translations.

Learn more about or join the LibreOffice Documentation project.
A bridge too far

15/03/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

The M4 motorway is the main road connection across the Severn estuary between England and South Wales.

Originally it crossed the river at Aust via the Severn Bridge/Pont Hafren, replacing an old ferry service .

After the completion of the Second Severn Crossing, the section of the M4 from Olveston in England to Magor/Magwyr in Wales was re-designated as the M48.

In an act of Whitehall arrogance, the Second Severn Crossing was later renamed the Prince of Wales Bridge with no public consultation, almost as if to prove that Wales is still England’s oldest colony.

Repairs are due to be carried out to potholes on the new bridge and this was duly reported on the Bristol (Evening) Post/Bristol Live website, as is also shown by the following screenshot.

A small problem occurs here. Knowledgeable readers will at once discern that the bridge used to illustrate the link from the site’s home page to the article is actually the 1960s Severn Bridge, not the Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor Bridge. Has Reach plc also dispensed with picture editors as well as sub-editors in a dual bid to reduce both costs and the quality of its so-called ‘journalism‘,

Finally it is worth noting that this story does not appear on the Post’s Reach stable companion for South Wales, the Western Mail/Wales Online website (affectionately known as Tales Online. Ed.).

“An unthinkable situation”

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