I thought at first (before spotting the problem) that the potato picture was a topical reference to this story:
Posts by Steve Foster
834 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Oct 2007
Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off
Beware the ghost of operating systems past: In which our hero is visited by an old friend
PSA: The 2020 monolith is a dead meme. You can stop putting them up now. Please
[Checks meeting agenda...] Where does it say 'Talk cr*p and waste everyone's time'?
Cutting the ties: European hosting provider OVHCloud to offer Google Anthos, no Google account needed
Re: I see OVH and think...
Indeed, I added yet another IP block to my firewalls today after receiving spam from a previously unseen OVH server.
I did bump into a way to list all the IP blocks registered to an organisation recently, but now can't quite find it again (something ARIN/RIPE/etc whois based, I think).
UK ISP TalkTalk confirms it will MullMull go-private takeover offer valuing it at £1.1bn
Virgin/O2 Combo
"Back in May, Liberty Global and Telefónica said they would merge their respective UK telecoms businesses, Virgin Media and O2"
The UK's Competition & Markets Authority wants to investigate this, though (it's applied to take it off the EU equivalent, as it's currently under that body's purview), so it might not happen.
A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong
We couldn't deliver prisoner rehab plans because Sopra Steria ballsed up our IT, Interserve tells High Court
Institute of Directors survey says most bosses expect no mass return to the office if COVID-19 crisis ever ends
No, absolutely not!
"The IoD called on UK government to provide tax incentives so small businesses have the wherewithal to invest in digital tech"
No, stop it. "tax incentives" add complexity to the tax system, are generally badly defined, rarely achieve the stated goal, and usually introduce new loopholes that can only be exploited by big companies/multinationals. We've enough idiocy in the tax system already - it'd be much more useful to work on getting rid of such.
Corsair's K70 MK.2 does nothing a cheaper keyboard can't, but the steep price gets you top-notch components
Spain's highway agency is monitoring speeding hotspots using bulk phone location data
Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April
Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday
'My wife tried to order some clothes tonight. When she logged in, she was in someone else's account ... Now someone's charged her card'
Microsoft sides with Epic over Apple developer ban, supports motion for temporary restraining order
Someone please have mercy on this poorly Ubuntu parking machine that has been force-fed maudlin autotuned tripe
Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: 'GPL condom' for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel
Brit unis hit in Blackbaud hack inform students that their data was nicked, which has gone as well as you might expect
From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home
Digicert will shovel some 50,000 EV HTTPS certificates into the furnace this Saturday after audit bungle
Email seems lost in the post? You might be a Tsohost customer
Microsoft sues coronavirus phishing spammers to seize their domains amid web app attacks against Office 354.5
Re: 07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-SIZE 20971520
That's my server announcing that email of up to 20MB will be accepted.
That seems like a reasonable limit in the modern world - not too small to interfere with normal traffic, not too big to choke the server.
IME, the UCE that does get through actually tends to be quite small (well below that 20MB limit) - it's not often that junk comes with huge attachments.
Re: Something about motes and beams...
Other [genuine] email from MS servers comes through ok, so I don't think it's TLS-related (though it's a good thought).
And even if MS did want to only transmit over TLS, their servers should end the conversation cleanly with QUIT, not just drop the connection.
Mostly, it's their hypocrisy that peeves me.
Something about motes and beams...
...it'd be nice if they could stop the silly DoS crap originating from some of their *.outbound.protection.outlook.com servers.
Stuff like this, where they just connect and then drop the connection over and over:
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) EHLO GBR01-LO2-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-Welcome, mail-lo2gbr01lp2055.outbound.protection.outlook.com [104.47.21.55], pleased to meet you
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-AUTH=LOGIN
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-AUTH LOGIN
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-SIZE 20971520
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250-ETRN
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) 250 HELP
07/07/2020 13:04:41 - ( 2911) Error: [10054] Connection reset by peer
Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost
Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript
Boffins find that over nine out of ten 'ethical' hackers are being a bit naughty when it comes to cloud services
Re: It is happening now
It certainly is.
The number of attempts to log in to my email servers via SMTP, 2ry SMTP, IMAP and POP3 are through the roof.
In the past, it would be the same IP trying over and over (though there's still plenty of that), but it's now also common to see an IP try once and then disappear. And lots of those IPs are part of cloud providers networks.
Not only that, but the spam is also coming from an increasing range of IP addresses.
I've had to further reduce the limit on failed login attempts, as well as begin firewall blocking of IP ranges wholesale.
Not so nice, we investigated them twice: EU opens double whammy of inquiries into Apple's biz practices
Re: I don’t quite understand this
More like 3rd-party manufacturers being obliged to sell their accessories (eg tyres, wiper blades, seat covers, fluffy dice, etc) for Ford vehicles through Ford dealers, and pay Ford a hefty fee for the privilege.
Or, say, music companies being forced to sell their music (to be played in a Ford vehicle) through Ford dealers, and again, paying Ford a hefty fee for the privilege.
In Hancock's half-hour, Dido Harding offers hollow laughs: Cake distracts test-and-trace boss at UK COVID-19 briefing
Bloke rolls up to KFC drive-thru riding horse-drawn cart only to be told: Neigh
WTF?
I've never been much interested in burgers, even before there was a McDonald's on every damn corner, so have never consumed any of their "offerings" (though I have been inside their premises occasionally in the company of others who did partake). I'm much more partial to pizza, though I'm aware that's almost certainly even worse for me in health terms.
Indeed, thinking about it, I wonder what the effect on the nations' waistlines might have been had the government instructed all takeaway food outlets to close for the duration of the lockdown! (I know I'd have eaten less pizza, for a start)
EU aviation wonks give all-electric training aeroplane the green light – but noob pilots only have 50 mins before they have to land it
Lettuce Encrypt, Encrypt We Must: Hobby projects change name after Let's Encrypt fires off trademark complaints
BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report
Re: That's sure to jump start Tesla sales...
"Black Cab"'s are now Chinese (LTI got bought out - by Geely, IIRC).
Morgan's numbers are so low as to be a rounding error on a rounding error. Aston Martin isn't significant either. And of course, Land Rover is Indian now (being owned by Tata), although still built here.
The Nissan Leaf is currently assembled in Sunderland.
Re: Restructure the Market
"Complicated to administer and police."
Not really, it just goes into the VAT regime, which is the motor trade's problem. HMRC (at least the Excise portion) have traditionally been fairly effective on that front (some notable issues aside).
"Just keep knocking up the taxes on petrol and diesel and you'd achieve the same effect."
Well, that ought to be happening too. The difficulty in doing so is that it's pretty damn visible to taxpayers, so the governments of the day (of whatever flavour) tend not to be overly keen on doing so.
Re: Restructure the Market
"Sure, provided you're comfortable with punishing the poorest who are least able to avoid your new taxes. I'm not completely sure I am."
By and large, I would expect that the poorest are not actually buying new cars at all, so pushing up the cost of ICE isn't likely to affect them (at least, not directly).
[Road charging is] "completely incompatible with privacy."
Not necessarily. You could certainly make it so if you wanted to do so (and I can see that there are some who would like to do so). However, the EU countries using road charging seem to be doing so without major problems, and without (AFAIK) totally compromising privacy. I don't see why we could not do likewise (non-functional public bodies notwithstanding).
Re: Restructure the Market
Exactly. Fuel duty is going to dry up as a source of income. That's another reason that VED needs to be restructured (allowing EVs to pay nothing really is not a viable option).
If you want to encourage the switch from oil to EV, in a gradual way and not have a mad rush to switch at the last minute, forcing the price of ICE up and EV down is necessary. Doing so in a clearly defined manner that is affordable and doesn't simply introduce further problems down the road seems like the logical thing to do.
I agree that road charging is probably required, and that's not necessarily a bad thing if implemented sensibly (eg we ensure a contribution from foreign vehicles using our infrastructure that way).
Re: Restructure the Market
VED is such a mess right now (with multiple differing schemes) that it just seems sensible to bundle fixing it in with larger changes.
While I get your point about the seriously wealthy not caring one way or another (as you say, the VED is almost immaterial to them), you do want it overall to be as fair as possible, and to be constructively arranged (even if it's principally "virtue signalling").
At the moment, the effective message of the various schemes is "hang on to your old diesel"!
Re: Free parking for electric cars
Removing the cost of using the existing infrastructure from electric vehicles is ultimately self-defeating (the country cannot afford to give up those forms of income in the long-term).
Plus, such discounts are generally regressive, as the current price differential between petrol/diesel cars and the EV equivalent is such that EV purchases are mostly made by the wealthiest (ie those who can most afford to pay for the infrastructure are the ones least in need of such discounts).
There are several factors to consider:
a) the profits on the car sales (which definitely goes overseas),
b) the service-based UK car jobs (dealerships/showrooms, garages, logistics, etc),
c) the car financing profits (may/may not go overseas, depending on source),
d) avoiding reintroducing the pollution from cars (the air quality has improved massively during lockdown)
I'm not sure where the overall balance would sit, and how (or whether) you can actually value (d).
Restructure the Market
My 2p...
1. Introduce a fossil fuel car VAT supplement, starting at 2%, ratcheting up by an additional 2 percentage points every year until it hits 20% - ie gradually double the VAT on any vehicle that is in any way powered by petrol or diesel.
2. Introduce an electric/AF car VAT discount, starting at 20%, ratcheting down by 2 percentage points every year until it's gone - ie remove the VAT for now, gradually reintroducing it. You could cap this at (say) £6k maximum if thought necessary.
3. Drop the existing EV grant.
4. Rework VED so that all vehicles are on the same scheme (there are currently 3 or 4 different ones running in parallel), such that:
a) all vehicles pay, b) those that pollute more pay more, and c) those that impose extra wear and tear on the network or consume extra capacity [think heavy and/or XL vehicles] pay even more. For example, a base VED of £50, plus a fossil fuel component tied to emissions [one element for each of CO2 and NOx, plus room to add others if we find further pollutants], plus a % "XL" levy (say, 50% extra for over 2 tonnes or L>4.5m or W>2m or H>1.5m, and 25% discount for "compact" cars [<1T or small enough to fit 2 in a standard parking space]). It's probably appropriate to implement this new VED with lower starting rates that are ratchetted up by fixed increments for a few years before switching to inflationary rises, to avoid huge overnight hikes for those currently enjoying negligible rate VED on older petrol/diesel vehicles.
OK Windows 10, we get it: You really do not want us to install this unsigned application. But 7 steps borders on ridiculous
"deterrent to installation"
"It's a deterrent to installation for sure, but the whole rigmarole can largely be prevented by signing code with a certificate"
"It's a deterrent to installation for sure, but the whole rigmarole can largely be prevented by downloading with a real browser instead of Edge"
There, FTFY.
Contact-tracer spoofing is already happening – and it's dangerously simple to do
Re: Unhearing government
Indeed, if I get a call from my bank (to my mobile number), the first thing they do is ask me to answer security questions (something their own advice says is bad).
I always say no, and explain why (the explanation is for the benefit of the staff person calling *and* their trainers [who use the recordings of those calls :p]).