US Homeland Security
Hang on a mo, how come the "US Homeland Security" of the US has jurisdiction over a US-Based Company ?
Is'nt Big Brother outgrowing his boots a little here ...
Posts by Khaptain
4041 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2008
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US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong
London's top cop dismisses 'highly inaccurate or ill informed' facial-recognition critics, possibly ironically
Tuesday 25th February 2020 10:27 GMT 
Nor quite as testosterone filled as Inspector Callahan, nor as chic as Inspector Poirot.
She is probably on the same par as Inspector Morse... Hard to imagine that John Thaw played two very different kinds of inspectors...my preference definitely being the first..
By the way, you have now filled my head with the Sweeney theme tune. Dah da da, Dah da da, tum tum ti tum, tum ti da da...
Tuesday 25th February 2020 10:13 GMT
The smartphones go far beyond the capabilities of a simple camera. Worse still, it's the user themselves that choose to take it everywhere with them.
Who, where and when are givens, how can be extrapolated from the first 3.
All it leaves for the police to determine is the "Why". Given that 4 out of 5 elements are handed to them, it makes their job already much much easier.
Talk about making a rod for your own back: Pot dealer's seized €54m Bitcoins up in smoke after keys thrown out with fishing gear
Tuesday 25th February 2020 10:00 GMT
Re: Daft or smart?
He was clever enough to open 12 Bitcoins wallets, which means that he is at ease with a computer and the administrative tasks that involve opening a wallet, buying and dealing bitcoin etc... This guy was no fool.
In my opinion he would also have been clever enough to have those kept safely backed up on a USB stick of which only he knows the whereabouts. Not to difficult for him to do and also impossible for the police to prove that he didn't.
Fishing gear usually get wet, so hiding a piece of paper in a wet environment does not sound like a very good idea, unless of course it was intentionally a "red herring", ( pun intended).... Hell he could have even scribbled down a load of bollocks and intentionally wet it so it appeared as though it had been destroyed, hence creating a preformed alibi.
Samsung cops to data leak after unsolicited '1/1' Find my Mobile push notification
The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries
Monday 24th February 2020 10:28 GMT
Re: Beware survival bias
If you want many, many, many examples of watches and clocks that still work after a couple of hundred years then look no furether.
http://www.ville-de-la-chaux-de-fonds.ch/musees/mih
I've been to the museum a couple of times, it's worth the visit.
Whats most important about this article is that "Planned obsolescence" is most definitely not built into the fine pieces of art. Just like the Philippe Patek advert which goes along the line of "You don't actually own a Patek you just take care of it for your descendants".
Whereas Apple only care about you buying another Apple whatever.....
California man served with restraining order for allegedly 'stalking' Apple CEO Tim Cook
Brit telcos can keep £218m licence fee repayment from Ofcom after penny-pinching regulator loses Court of Appeal case
Wednesday 19th February 2020 20:35 GMT
Re: Not sure whether to laugh or cry
"It seems to me that a nominal fine -- payable to the courts and not to the telcos"
Agreed for the simply reason that heads of these companies probably each lunch and make yacht invitations on a regular basis. The money will simply be alternatively distributed between them ..
Skeptic, who me..?
When the air gap is the space between the ears: A natural gas plant let ransomware spread from office IT to ops
Wednesday 19th February 2020 20:29 GMT
Re: For this to be announced as a CISA bulletin implies some importance
"One also wonders how many of these incidents are not being publicized. We know banks/etc. don't like to publish the fact that their security is lax and has been breached. Same for industrial/corporations/governments."
That would depend on the home-ground country . Here in Europe the GDPR laws oblige the companies to admit to breaches very quickly or alternatively pay a "potentially" high price later.. ( We've not really seen any major fines getting handed out other than to the usual targets of Google/Microsoft). And of those fines that have been given out we do not even know of they have been paid...
In the states, and especially when dealing with government facilities, I am not sure how that would work. ( This is with the presumption that it is a Governmental facility)..
I also sincerely hope that these facilities are also not relying in DotNet or any other form of MS Library DLL for the actual hardware side of things, now that would be truly frightening.
How the US-China trade war is felt stateside: Xilinx trims workforce after lucrative Huawei sales pipe blocked
Monday 17th February 2020 05:54 GMT
So who is actually happy?
From my basic understanding of El Trumps politics cutting of Huawei was presented as a security measure. I was of the understanding that this then meant that a homegrown provider was going to make a handsome living by sweeping up the 5g contracts.
So despite the layoffs in the Xiling quarters is there actually an American based company who is currently smiling like a Cheshire Cat or is this situation just another El Trump Cluster Fuck?
Call us immediately if your child uses Kali Linux, squawks West Mids Police
Can AI-enhanced virtual sports presenters do the job? It's a big ask
What's the German word for stalling technology rollouts over health fears? Cos that plus 5G equals Switzerland
Thursday 13th February 2020 06:36 GMT
Bring them on
In the last 3 weeks Swisscom VOIP services, this now equates to most landlines, has gone down for 1.5 hours each time. Even emergency services were impossible to contact.
The only network that continued was the mobile network. If anything people in Switzerland need to consider what is the alternative to not having 5g in the near future...
Aw, look. The UK is still trying really hard to be the 'safest place to be online in the world'
Ever had a script you just can't scratch? Excel on the web now has just the thing
Meet Clippy 9000: Microsoft brags about building Earth's largest AI language model, refuses to let it out of the lab
Tuesday 11th February 2020 08:52 GMT
Re: And I give a s**t because?
You might care the next time you want to use the Desktop CleanUp wizard; Clippy 9000 is going to ask you which kind of soap you have preference for and would you mind if the special offer for Product X might actually interest you for your personal usage : <click on this link to visit a sponsor>.
Artificial Intelligence will always be artificial for one simple reason. We don't even know how we work so how the hell can we expect to create something in our image...
Whoa, France. Take it easy. Wow. You're out of control. Fining Apple 55 minutes of revenue for secretly slowing down iPhones? Maniaques!
Hear, hear: The first to invent idiot-cancelling headphones gets my cash
Android owners – you'll want to get these latest security patches, especially for this nasty Bluetooth hijack flaw
Friday 7th February 2020 08:17 GMT
Re: Who would not do this?
"Surely nobody leaves their Bluetooth open like that?"
Not for any longer than 60 seconds they don't. ( Unless there is a hidden option to increase the scanning timeout)..
I would also presume that not many people actually spend their time "discovering" bluetooth devices just for fun.... In general you pair up your headphones , speakers, car radio etc, once and then forget about it... What's the chance that the aforementioned hacker would be in your proximity exactly at that moment..
NASA's Christina Koch returns to Earth as the longest-serving woman astronaut – after spending 328 days in space
Friday 7th February 2020 08:12 GMT
Question : What's more import ?
In this day and age of being Politically Correct why are we making such a fuss about his person being a woman.. The achievement in and of itself is remarkable, regardless of their sex. Would it not be more correct to simply congratulate this "astronaut / person " on the their accomplishment....
It really is double standards everywhere these days, even today on El Reg their is an article about GitLabs requesting female staff to wear short skirts and heels too an event and the comment section makes an uproar about treating people this way and yet here we congratulate "women" rather than just congratulating a person...
Or are we required to use the term "woman" when it is something positive.
Personally, I wish Christina Koch a welcome return and well done for having achieved such a task...
Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees
That's what makes you hackable: Please, baby. Stop using 'onedirection' as a password
Wednesday 5th February 2020 15:49 GMT
Re: one direction
"I have however, been considering developing a rectal recognition app to open my phone"
Depending on your state of hygiene or how many curries/beers you had the night before, it might not be a very stable method...
I would suggest that you use a written form of the physical act..some suggestion
Rectally Recognizable
Anally Artistic
Bisturbing Diarrhea
Twitter says a certain someone tried to discover the phone numbers used by potentially millions of twits
Tuesday 4th February 2020 08:03 GMT
Re: Just curious
"why are we not hearing about more trollish twits being cuffed for making death threats and online abuse?"
I can only presume that it would result in the Plod, TLAs having to admit that they have access to this information which would create a potential media nightmare for them. It's better for them to lurk in the background and wait for bigger fish...
There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?
Thursday 30th January 2020 11:29 GMT
Re: “A country torn apart by nationalism, corruption and warring factions”
The US or the UK both appear to be having the same problem..
To Brexit or not to Brexit.
To Trump or not to Trump.
Everyone will lose in the end because the political dichotomy that has become the contemporary norm is just a means of ensuring that the populace remains in permanent conflict....
Google says its latest chatbot is the most human-like ever – trained on our species' best works: 341GB of social media
Thursday 30th January 2020 08:29 GMT
I can't think of many things that I would like less than communicating with a ChatBot....
Couple of words spring to mind : Cold, Lifeless, Clueless , Funless, Loveless, Careless, piece of shit...
You know , talking to real people is really not a problem... Even some stuck up, conceited arsehole would be far more interesting to "communicate" with than a very expensive, and almost useless, chatbot.
On top of that, they scraped the text from Social Media websites, how can that be considered as a good example dataset ? Social Media website are usually full ranting and raving rather than any real conversations....
Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers
Tuesday 28th January 2020 09:22 GMT
Re: A fad?
Sorry Danny
But you are not representative of the majority of gamers, you can only speak on "your" own behalf for the types of games that "you" play.
It's hard to find a true figure but estimates were around 92 Million PS4 units being sold by the beginning of 2019 whilst only 4 Million headsets were sold
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284297/sony-psvr-4-million-sold-sega-cd-kinect-comparison-ps4-playstation
That's definitely a "far cry" ( pun intended) from mainstream acceptance.... Unless of course you have some figures that prove the contrary...
Like its Windows-noob-stabilisers OS, Zorin's cloudy Grid tool is Linux desktop management for dummies
Tuesday 28th January 2020 10:15 GMT
Why bother with the Windows look ?
If you want Windows, stay with Microsoft !
If you feel that moving to Linux is necessary then why not just accept what Linux has to offer. Linux distros already have a myriad of similar desktops. The only thing disturbing about the move is becoming accustomed to the different names for similar applications.Open Office" will never be called "Microsoft Office" so we can't cheat with simply renaming things, one has to learn to use the names as they exist ..
What does Zorin truly offer other than a "monthly subscription" ? It honestly looks like an expensive solution to a non existant problem.
Windows takes a tumble in the land of the Big Mac and Bacon Double Cheeseburger
Monday 27th January 2020 15:04 GMT
Re: To be fair
"The same (IMO) is true of fresh baked bread and also coffee, at least when purchased from any high street retailer "
That's the exact reason that Boulangeries are still alive and kicking in France and much of the continent. Their bread not aonly smells good but tastes good.
Coffee can be a difficult one though, OK the British vesion of coffee is really bland, I agree but in France, Italy or nearby you are far more likely to find a good Espresso in accordance with your personal preference. ( Although there are also some bloody nasty Bistros who provide pathetic coffee as well, but they can be avoided with experience)
Cisco Webex bug allowed anyone to join a password-protected meeting
Mysterious face-recog AI startup Clearview sued, capabilities questioned after scraping billions of web pics
We need to make it even easier for UK terror cops to rummage about in folks' phones, says govt lawyer
Thursday 23rd January 2020 15:49 GMT
Wipe Password
Idea for the darker thinking devs of this world.
Create an application that allows a password to unblock the phone but completely wipes the contents beforehand...
Along the same lines as the secondary code used on many alarm systems, it unlocks the alarm but silently informs the surveillance agency of an infraction/threat..
Ooh, watch out Google. You've got competition. Verizon has a new 'privacy-focused' search engine
The Foot of Cupid emits final burst of flatulence in honour of fallen Python Terry Jones
Thursday 23rd January 2020 06:25 GMT
Institute of comedy
These guys were responsable for creating the most absurd, outrageous and damned funny comedy that we have ever seen.
The Pythons were incredibly clever people, it wasn't slapstick because it was just too absurd. It went far beyond that in a very delicious manner.
Rip Terry.. You will be missed but you left a legacy that will never be forgotten...
If the words 'new', 'AI', 'for', 'the', 'physical', 'world', 'accelerate' and 'Facebook' scare you, click this headline
Good folk of Forfar: Alan Hattel would like you all to know he's not dead despite what it says on his tombstone
A-high: Prototype drug squad bot to patrol Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc for dodgy ads for opioids
Looks like the party's over, folks: Global PC sales set to shrink as Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off, says Gartner
Image-rec startup for cops, Feds can probably identify you from 3 billion pics it's scraped from Facebook, YouTube etc
Monday 20th January 2020 15:04 GMT
Re: Self Worth and Esteem
"So, you (or your kid) is in a sports team and a photo is shared in a group, and then by a member shared outside the group"
This would be the same scenario as the local newspaper publishing a similar photo and with the names of all the players in the subtitle. There would be enough "public" information as to be capable of identifying who is who. Dates, times , locations,all team members and any special achievement that day. Once it's public, it's public.
So in the future it is important to make a request that no images of you, or your kin, go public without complete agreement from all parties concerned...
if someone chooses to publish without your agreement then they are breach of GRDP laws... Otherwise it's your reponsability.
Monday 20th January 2020 13:40 GMT
Re: Legality
"Social media is a very new thing and people have yet to really adjust to the technology "
What ? It's been around for almost 10 years and with all the scandals that we are all aware of using ignorance is simply not an acceptable excuse.
"or understand its deep implications."
Why do they not understand, simple, it's because they refuse to accept that Free is not Free after all. We have be told countless time that we are the product, this is nothing new..
"But they don't really have the tools, power or ability to manage this level of mass exposure."
Yes, they do, they either choose to keep the data private and not publish to "public" sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.
If you wash your laundry in public then it should only be expected that the villae knows what colour of underwear you own.. No one needs to tell you this, it bloody obvious...
Publish silly content to a massively public website like Youtube and suddenly you they don't realise what public means.. Please explain to me why suddently people become unaware of what they are doing...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
