Posts by Paul Crawford

Re: Mozilla are only partly right

The problem with 'Cleanfeed' is the lack of transparency and the on-going urge for governments to feature-creep it beyond the original goal of stopping kiddy pornography (which AFIK is illegal in practically every country). First it was KP, then it was file-sharing, next it will be legal pr0n sites that don't follow the privacy-invading rules that the gov has proposed in response to red-top "readers". What next?

It would be very simple to allow, and indeed encourage, the KP filtering aspect of cleanfeed/IWF to be supported by any of the participants in the DoH system, but sadly it seems the lack of transparency and restrictions on access will get in that way.

But going back to basics, web browser DoH is a horrible kludge and a sad reminder that for many "internet access" is synonymous with web site, and ignoring ssh, pop/imap email, etc, etc. Really there ought to be a service in your router that translates UDP 53 requests to a secure query of the overall DNS system to avoid ISP-specific hacking about.

Oh well, there is always a VPN for that...

Re: Why are they all Misters

Ice cream selling with "extras" in Glasgow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdAGgUNyvyw

Re: Ann Widdecombe

And somewhere in Englad there is an idyllic village, without a banjo in sight, that is quite glad to have lost its idiot...

Re: JavaScript. just say no.

Enable it and watch your machine being p0wned

Napier Deltec

While it was horrendously difficult to look after and unreliable in service, it had a fantastic power/weight ratio in its day and is a marvel of engineering. There is an animation of the pistons firing and the three crankshafts' operation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic

Exactly. Also I though a major point of WSUS was to allow the rapid and near-automated deployment of a wipe/image cycle over a big estate of Windows machines? You know, just perfect for such a scenario...

Re: A Couple of Questions

It is a pretty obscure attack for sure, apparently needing to be within radio range to pull it off and obviously only works for a victim using said device. However, if something can be done then sooner or later it will be done.

The thing with radio range is often it works quite well through normal walls/floor/roof so it might be a viable and possibly less traceable (in terms of physical evidence, maybe more so if the device is not logging all commands, etc) way of knobbling a known high-value target if the killer can get an adjacent hotel room, etc. Or a high-gain antenna from across the street, etc.

Re: Probably rewriting it they rewrote it right...

Indeed, as a 69 times speed increase (no sniggering back there - not tested on "speciality" web sites at all) is not what you would expect from comparing languages of similar style.

Against JavaScript or Python a factor in the region of ten/hundred makes sense, yes, but not against C/C++/FORTRAN and similar where compiler/language differences of 2-3 times are all one might expect (unless the original implementation was a VERY poor design).

You can look for where they are hiding here:

http://www.lightningmaps.org/blitzortung/europe/index.php?lang=en

Re: Wishful thinking does not make good policy

Most of that "smuggling" is the same as the rest of the EU borders (or Scotland / England for cheap booze following the minimum-price law), not a whole lot different from shopping in your best-deal supermarket.

But once you get big differences, or worse still, different regulations about how much chlorine in you chicken (or KY in your pigs) it allowed, etc, then you get industrial-scale smuggling by people willing to kill/maim to keep it sweet. And those not doing it go out of business.

Re: The GE Nishika 3D Light Bulb

It's as easy as 6-6-6!

Fixed it for you!

Re: "The talk"

Comparing pr0n sex with real sex via food analogies (probably NSFW but actually very good):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q64hTNEj6KQ

Re: nuts

Exactly! Have 100 up-votes if you could!

I always told students that if it fails in simulation it is pretty certain to fail for real, but if it works in simulation that is only a sporting chance of working in real life as models are rarely accurate for all of a device's possible operations.

This would be the Brexit that is costing the UK (i.e. rest of us) £26B per year?

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1045243/Brexit-cost-how-much-has-brexit-cost-uk-june-2018-500-million-pounds-a-week

Re: considerably snappier file performance inside Linux

Citations please?

For graphics and battery life then you are probably right given the propitiatory nature of many hardware drivers and APIs needed to make them work to their best.

For file system and general performance it seems Linux is still a bit better than Windows 10:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=windows10-okt-wsl

For those not understanding your reference, here is a summary article on ACS:Law

https://torrentfreak.com/acslaw-anti-piracy-law-firm-torn-apart-by-leaked-emails-100925/

And the matching Hitler rant for Andrew Crossley's downfall:

https://vimeo.com/15463930

Re: EAT a fruitcake?

You can add some fruitcake to porridge to make it less bland and thus a bit tastier, a way of using it up and having a healthier breakfast. Just crumble some bits in with the oats before soaking/heating the water.

Re: Backup - ever heard of it?

The problem here that was pointed out is not the GIT repository as that ought to be local as well (so at least a 2nd copy, if not more should your team or in-use computers number more than 1), but that a lot of discussions and bug-tracking are only held on the github server and (I presume) lack any way to mirror that aspect locally. Something to be fixed?

Re: Reflective?

Yes, 'vent' was not the best choice as it might imply fluid flow - as you pointed out I meant radiate.

Not for Tom Jones

Re: @John Savard

If you quickly get to > 60% of your energy without fossil fuel then yes, but that is not looking likely for many.

Also electric *heaters* are not that great (due to the poor conversion from original heat in fossil fueled cases) but electrically driven heat pumps are a good idea, providing you have the necessary low-grade heat source for it (e.g. buried pipe, or enough garden area and noise tolerance for air sourced ones).

As Opera is now Chinese owned then most definitely.

But why do you use Opera? If it is to bypass pr0n filters and similar then not really such a big issue, if it is for accessing gov web sites and similar then the MITM approach they use to compressing https pages is a much bigger risk than encrypted page info passing a VPN point in a foreign location.

Re: No less true than when I first said it years ago

Exactly, it is just another backdoor.

No matter how you dress it up, a "ghost user" is still a means of decrypting without being one of the original parties based on some supposedly secret user-key, and so is subject to all of the same fundamental weakness as knobbling the cryptographic function directly.

Re: A bit (less) noisy now...

In a large room it would not be too unusual to have several power circuits. If you lost 1 out of, say, 4 breakers the change in fan noise (unless right next to them) may not be quite so obvious.

Re: Changing Wallpaper can have career enhancing effects

It could also kill remote desktops' usability.

I once has to support a system in Borneo from the UK via dial-up modem, and somebody had changed the desktop from plain blue to an image and it *literally* took minutes to redraw the screen as it was not as massively compressible as the plain backdrop.

Re: Species angst

I think this rather sad infographic covers what you need to know:

https://xkcd.com/893/

Re: A relevant study

That is quite an interesting paper and it comes back to the same point that while we might assume the wine you should by is the one you actually enjoy, not what someone else said you should, in reality the expectation/marketing can reverse that.

Re: Awrite doll

You missed the matching video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdAGgUNyvyw