* Posts by Number6

2293 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Brit infosec firm lets hackers think they've stolen something

Number6

I've seen the technology in action. Some companies clearly pass their press releases through it.

Hey guys. We've got 1.2 BILLION stolen accounts here. Send us your passwords, 'cos safety

Number6

Moving on to my next website...

Any site that wants me to give it the password to another of my accounts and I close the window. I guess I could give it a made-up password just to confuse things.

Apple wins patent on charging iThings THROUGH THIN AIR

Number6

Unless you can focus the field, magnetic charging is incredibly inefficient over significant distance because it's subject to a square law. It will be interesting to see how Apple have managed to come up with something novel, given the existing prior art in the field.

NASA tests crazytech flying saucer thruster, could reach Mars in days

Number6
Joke

Who needs solar cells, they could use cold fusion to power it.

UK.gov wants public sector to rip up data protection law

Number6

Not Good

I used to think a unified government would be a good idea, but having seen how readily the government leaks data and abuses the information, I think I prefer the current inefficient model where they don't share it. My response is to do my best not to give them any information that I don't have to, although even that is probably too much.

BOFH: The Great Backup BACKDOWN

Number6

If all else fails, just ask the NSA, they've probably got a copy of your important data.

Microsoft's Euro cloud darkens: US FEDS can dig into foreign servers

Number6

Ownership

Clearly MS need to outsource their Irish server farm to a locally-owned company. That way, they're renting the servers and the US has no claim on them.

Number6

Law of non-reciprocity

One already is. Earlier this month the British government passed a law asserting its right to require tech companies to produce emails stored anywhere in the world. This would include emails stored in the U.S. by Americans who have never been to the U.K.

I look forward to seeing this in operation. Should provide a fair bit of entertainment.

PEAK LANDFILL: Why tablet gloom is good news for Windows users

Number6

Re: In defense of Casio...

I have a Casio watch that's now over 30 years old. It's an LCD watch in a plastic case and it still works provided I replace the battery occasionally. It's been retired in favour of a Pebble, but then the Pebble was a gift so it still goes down as the last watch I ever bought. It wasn't that expensive, either.

Nice computers don’t need to go to the toilet, says Barclays

Number6

I use the self-service checkouts for a small number of items with barcodes. If it's a fruit-and-veg shop then I always go for a human operator as they probably know the codes for the produce without needing to look them up. The self-checkouts at my local supermarket seem to have a problem with my bags though, I always seem to have to get them verified before I can start the process.

As for automated stuff, what about voice-recognition software. Activating a credit card, it asks me to enter my card number with the dial pad, which is OK, but then it asks me to speak my date of birth. After it's failed a couple of times it lets me enter that via the dialpad too. When my wife tried activating a card, it recognised her first time. She has an American accent, mine is British. I've had arguments with the PG&E system too, that also seems to struggle with British accents. What all these systems need is a quick and easy way to get through to a human, for those of us who know that the automated system is not going to cope.

Number6

Re: Starbucks

I think you should try some weird and wonderful names and document the spelling variations. It's possible that the baristas just have trouble spelling Alas-Dur.

Thirteen Astonishing True Facts You Never Knew About SCREWS

Number6

Re: My day screwed

Isn't a nail just an anorexic screw?

Indian techies-in-training face down MAN-EATING LEOPARD - and WIN

Number6

I think it was more likely to be trying to log in to its Spotify account.

WTF is ... Virtual Customer Premises Equipment?

Number6

Re: STFU bitches, In the US, you don't get a firewall/router

I wish Comcast-supplied modems had a "modem-only" option configurable by the user. I can't even switch off their DHCP server, which means it's a pain to do my own DHCP/DNS. I know there are reasons not to do double-NAT, but my irritation is getting to the point where I'll do it anyway and live with any problems. It's also very hard to get an eMTA modem that supports IPv6.

Number6

Re: So much wrong with this.

I use DHCP on my local network with static allocation of IP addresses to known MAC addresses.By the time you add in phones, PCs, game consoles, laptops, printers, virtual machines (doesn't everyone have one?) etc, it's very quick and easy to have twenty or thirty devices on a network.

I used a couple of Sheevaplugs as DHCP/DNS servers in a master/slave arrangement. Setting it up taught me how it works, and when one of them died for some reason, the other kept things going while I fixed the broken one.

18,000 Apple employees could get bite of profits with class-action lawsuit

Number6

So Apple settle for, say, $10 million. $9 million of that will be for lawyers' fees and the other $1 million will be split amongst the employees, about $55 each. That's normally how these things work, isn't it?

Motorist 'thought car had caught fire' as Adele track came on stereo

Number6

Re: @NUmbers

These 'DIFFERENT COUNTRIES' may have completely different road rules.

Observing the driving, one wonders whether they have any rules. Having said that, I haven't seen many dented cars so it clearly works for them. It's definitely one of those places where being a pedestrian is challenging - a green man at the lights does not mean there won't be a string of cars, bikes and scooters heading your way.

Oh, and you presumed wrong, at least on recent timescales.

Number6

I'm in Shanghai at the moment. Here, the hard shoulder is used by people who need to overtake (including coaches). Or park. I don't think I've seen it used for a real emergency yet.

Black Hat anti-Tor talk smashed by lawyers' wrecking ball

Number6

With a subject like that, I was expecting the article to talk about how the lawyers went t'werk on the presentation.

Manic malware Mayhem spreads through Linux, FreeBSD web servers

Number6

Re: No PHP and dropping.

I remember one scanner that used to look for a file called "thisdoesnotexist" or similar. Except on my system it did, and provided a 30MB download of random data (this was back in the days when dial-up was still more common).

Number6

Re: What century are these guys in?

My Linux machines tell me when there are new updates available but I have to install them manually. Mind you, I have the work Windows laptop configured to do the same, it's one of the things I do automatically whatever the OS. The one place that made auto-update a group policy, I made a point of shouting loudly at the IT staff whenever my machine rebooted overnight and lost whatever work I'd left it doing.

Brandon Gray aka Namejuice suspended by ICANN

Number6

I used to get this sort of junk. I was giving serious consideration to a complaint to the Mailing Preference Service, given that I was registered with them and didn't have any business relationship with the domain scammers concerned. Then I decided it was just easier to put it in the bin, or write "not known at this address" and put it back in the post box.

Microsoft: You NEED bad passwords and should re-use them a lot

Number6

Re: Unique Passwords

That was one of the holes in an Enigma cipher; a letter could never map to itself. Declaring that the character following a character cannot be a repeat of that character is probably also a weakness.

Number6

Password Entropy

This is where the xkcd comic needs an airing.

Remember when Google+ outed everyone by their real names? Now Google's sorry

Number6

I am probably better known on-line by one of two handles, one of which is close to my real name, the other is not. I've been associated with it for many years though, and more on-line people probably know me by that name than my real one.

USA to insist on pre-flight mobe power probe

Number6

Re: No big deal

My phone is usually on at security anyway.

Number6

Re: How much explosive can you fit in a mobile?

If you do it at 30,000ft probably not much if you can get it close to the fuselage. It's only 2mm of aluminium alloy. Mythbusters did some tests - a depressurised aircraft needs a lot more explosive to cause critical damage, one that's pressurised needs very little because the pressure differential does most of the work once you start the airflow.

When they did tests on the Comet airframe it was done in a huge water container on the basis that water doesn't store up all that energy in the same was as air when under pressure, so when the fuselage ruptured, it wasn't explosive decompression.

Number6

The UK appears to require a fair bit of data, based on flying there from Germany a while back.

Number6

Re: I wonder

What happens if you've got it in flight mode? It's powered up OK.

More to the point, I normally put my phone into flight mode at my home departure airport and leave it in that condition until I get back, in order to avoid roaming charges (there's no one I need to talk to that urgently when out of the country). So if I'm at a foreign airport and they insist I register it with the local network and I incur charges as a result, I guess the snowball has more chance in Hell than I would have asking for a refund.

Number6
Big Brother

Last October I took a bare hard disk drive through Heathrow security and they had me extract it from my luggage to dust it down for explosives. Earlier this year, again carrying a bare hard drive, I just took it out of the bag and put it in the tray with my laptop. That went through with no problems.

Sounds like an ideal way for them to slurp data for free - if you can't power up the drive yourself, they can offer to connect it to their system, which would probably read as much as it could during the test period.

Wannabe Startup CEOs Hate This Guy: Potato Salad man and the $60k

Number6

Of course, if he'd care to try alternative salads, he could become a tosser.

When PR backfires: Google 'forgets' BBC TV man's banker blog post

Number6

Re: and so, ad infinitum

It's a new game - now we have to guess who asked, based on searching for the people in the comments section and seeing if the link appears or not.

Number6

Re: Dear Barbara.....

The Grauniad (is it still called that?) is going to town on a similar theme with Dougie McDonald asking for three links to articles about him to be removed. In the UK if you do the appropriate search the articles have long gone but there's a whole slew of others in their place about his attempt to get the links removed.

OMG, sorry about 'poor comms' on Facebook secret emoto-meddle tests. Laters!

Number6

Re: I lie to them

That's OK, I have an "internet birthday" which is consistent but not the same as the one on my birth certificate. So it may seem OK to them but it's off by a few years (and months/days).

Facebook 'manipulated' 700k users' feelings in secret experiment

Number6

I just got more irritated and pissed off with Facebook for not giving me what I want to see in my newsfeed, which is ALL posts that I've elected to receive, most recent first. In other words, with none of their fancy filtering to try to determine which ones I might want to see applied. It was lonjg ago that I decided that I don't fit anyone's standard profiles, and FB is not an exception to that.

Higgs boson even more likely to actually be Higgs boson - boffins

Number6

Of course, when they figure it out, the universe will be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Just like last time...

DON’T add me to your social network, I have NO IDEA who you are

Number6

Re: Great ariticle

I'm not sure how that plays with the paid premium membership that allows you to see everyone who viewed you

I assume that LinkedIn will sell anything if someone will give them money for it, so I assume the person paying will get to see the full details even if I (as the freetard) have asked LinkedIn not to.

Number6

I use Facebook for social contacts, LinkedIn for work-related stuff. There are very few people I have on both.

Perhaps I should sign up to ButtPlugg and refer all the scammers and marketdroids to connect to me on that one.

Tor is '90 per cent of the net' claims City of London Police Commish – and he's dead wrong

Number6

A good example of policy-based evidence-making.

Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?

Number6

It could guess - if everything had an RFID tag (cheap), it could detect that you've removed the milk from the fridge, and load cells on the shelf will detect the change in weight based on the removal of the item.

It's safer than a fridge that is too smart - imagine something going mouldy at the back of the fridge - you remove it and the fridge detects that you're now out of evil green mould and orders more.

CIA rendition jet was waiting in Europe to SNATCH SNOWDEN

Number6

Your Twitter feed mentions men in black suits turning up at your offices. Are these suits actually white like the jet in question?

BOFH: On the contrary, we LOVE rebranding here at the IT dept

Number6

I still remember Dogbert's "Brown Ring of Quality", which appeared to be a piss-take of the new Lucent logo at the time.

SCIENCE explains why you LOVE the smell of BACON

Number6

Re: Proper Bacon

Thanks, but for perishable foods I'd prefer a local place. Too much scope for things to go wrong with the delivery process from the other side of the US.

Number6

Proper Bacon

Properly-cooked bacon should bend, not shatter. That seems to imply a bit of thickness, too, so it doesn't dry out and become brittle.

To the Reg SF team - where in the Bay Area can I buy proper English bacon? At the moment I have Canadian bacon from a good place in Mountain View. They used to do English but stopped. It's far enough away that I buy in bulk so I only have to go there once a month. Today I pointed to the lump of Canadian bacon on display and said "I'll have that, sliced thick. Yes, all of it please".

Number6

Re: Yank my chain

Can consider American Football, and compare that with a real game of Rugby.

Rugby players bring their own padding.

The fresh Mint of dwell there: This is a story all about how 17 is here for a while

Number6

I've stuck with the Mint LTS versions since 9. Apart from a couple of Mint 9 VMs for compatibility, I'm running Mint13 KDE on desktop machines and LXDE (start with XFCE and install LXDE on it) on laptops and netbooks. I'm looking forward to the KDE release of Mint 17, although it's still a couple of months away. Hopefully they've improved the installer, I'd like it by default to let me set up LVM and per-user encryption from the initial set-up menus. It was a bit of a hassle getting this machine moved over, although now I know how to do it manually...

I used to run Fedora, but got fed up with the need to upgrade so often. It's a chore to shift LTS releases but it also acts as a form of spring cleaning so I'm not so bothered by having to do it.

Microsoft's NEW OS now runs on HALF of ALL desktop PCs

Number6

Re: Downvoters

the tiny minority who really use Linux for everday computing.

I'd use it a lot more if some of the large non-MS companies would port their stuff to Linux. At home I run Linux and fire up a Win7 VM on the few occasions when I have to deal with something that needs it. At work I'm stuck with Windows but I've installed a Linux VM which I use for most things. At my previous company I re-wrote most of the dev tools from C# to C++ with Qt (surprisingly easy) so I could use my Linux netbook.

HP reveals Apple-powered Android 'SlateBook'

Number6

Can it be hacked to install proper Linux without all the Android spyware? If so, it's probably worth the extra $100 over the Chromebook.

'Failure is not an option... Never give up.' Not in Silicon Valley, mate

Number6

Re: 'Be Lucky'

A good leader gives credit for the work to subordinates to make them feel warm and fuzzy, but pockets the reward.

Snowden shoots back: 'So you DO have my emails, after all'

Number6
Coat

Re: The NSA are proven liars

Don't be too hard on them, they're the only part of the government that listens to us.