I’m the administrator of kbin.life, a general purpose/tech orientated kbin instance.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • I think my question on all this would be whether this would ultimately cause problems in terms of data integrity.

    Currently most amplifiers for digital information are going to capture the information in the light, probably strip off any modulation to get to the raw data. Then re-modulate that using a new emitter.

    The advantages of doing this over just amplifying the original light signal are the same reason switches/routers are store and forward (or at least decode to binary and re-modulate). When you decode the data from the modulated signal and then reproduce it, you are removing any noise that was present and reproducing a clean signal again.

    If you just amplify light (or electrical) signals “as-is”, then you generally add noise every time you do this reducing the SNR a small amount. After enough times the signal will become non-recoverable.

    So I guess my question is, does the process also have the same issue of an ultimate limit in how often you can re-transmit the signal without degradation.


  • Pretty sure this was made clear in the article but… I’ll outline the little I know on the subject as a complete layman.

    Currently we have been able to use quantum effects to create single runs of fibre that cannot be intercepted. That is, if the data is intercepted by any known means the receiver will be able to detect this.

    The shortcoming of this method, is that of course when you need to amplify the signal, that’s generally a “store and forward” operation and thus would also break this system’s detection. You could I guess perform the same operation wherever it is amplified, but it’s then another point in which monitoring could happen. If you want 1 trusted sender, 1 trusted receiver and nothing in between, this is a problem.

    What this article is saying, is they have found a way to amplify the information without ever “reading” it. Therefore keeping the data integrity showing as “unseen” (for want of a better word). As such this will allow “secure” (I guess?) fibre runs of greater distances in the future.

    Now the article does go into some detail about how this works and why. But, for the basic aspect of why this is a good and useful thing. This is pretty much what you need to know.











  • Well it is. If you get fined £50 a day for leaving your car parked in a no parking zone. And you get a notice your parking is being investigated. Do you a) Move your car to mean you “at worst” get the fine for the time you were there or b) Just leave it there, because “they’ve already got me”?

    Just because there’s a POTENTIAL for some comeback from prior infringements, doesn’t mean a good financial decision isn’t to pull out of the market to avoid future infringement actions. This is ESPECIALLY so, when there’s a new law with stricter enforcement available to the state regulator.

    My whole point has been from the start “Just trying to avoid being fined” is a financial business decision. They have multiple options. But the ones that matter are:

    1. Remove yourself from the UK market, thereby limiting exposure to future fines.
    2. Accept you will get more, significantly bigger fines and try to fight them in the courts.

    One carries less financial risk than the other. They chose the option with lower financial risk to them.

    I’m from the UK and it’s not a great situation for us. But, I also think businesses that have a genuine fear of ending up in Ofcom’s sights need to start making this kind of decision to the extent that normal people begin to feel the effect of the Online Safety act. Because that’s the only time they’re going to get the kind of backlash they need to respond to.



  • Yep, same. Well I actually remember finding the best ways to copy a game on a tape error free first. Some, without protection you could just save back to tape for a digital reproduction (and this also allowed tape to disk conversion). Actually those with non destructive copy protection could kinda be copied too if you knew a little Z80 ASM. Others, you needed to copy tape to tape and hope the quality turned out OK.

    But yes, then bringing your box of copied disks (Amiga in my case) into school and swapping with your friends was the way to go.


  • Which whether you like it or not, is a commercial decision. They cannot realistically vet people for age, because 99% of requests are unauthenticated. Who is going to make an imgur account just so they can see imgur images?

    So they made the commercial choice to avoid losing money through fines vs whatever revenue (ad based? I don’t know their model) they would earn from UK users.

    Now, ICO and Ofcom have their own reasons to play it down in this way. But, they’re also technically correct.