Updated link, see Unofficial anthems.
Posts by Allan George Dyer
2547 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
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Hong Kong's state-sponsored SEO on national anthem strikes the right note
You may well struggle, about the only achievement I can see is the Streisand Effect success of the HK Government bringing this to wider attention. This started last November when Glory to Hong Kong was played at the South Korea’s Rugby Sevens, possibly entirely accidentally. The Government and pro-Beijing politicians went ballistic, but mistakes at sporting events kept happening. The sporting teams are being threatened with disbandment if there are further errors. Have sympathy for them. In the latest incident, it appears that the Hong Kong Ice Hockey Association followed the instructions and sent the link provided by the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China but that led to a Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau webpage on National Anthem which only led to the anthem when browsed in Chinese, unfortunately, the Hungarian organisers used the English version of the page and were unable to find the anthem. Perhaps the HK Olympic committee and government departments should be a bit more international in their thinking, or, at least, web-site testing?
However, this isn't a creepy change of "official truth". Hong Kong is not a Nation, so it doesn't have a National Anthem; since 1997, the March of the Volunteers has been played at official events, and that has not been controversial. There have also been various anthems adopted by the people to represent their city and identity unofficially. Glory to Hong Kong is simply the latest of these.
What is creepy is that the government often says HK is, or it wants HK to be, a financial, arts, technology, innovation Hub, but discourages any behaviour that might make it stand out from the Mainland.
FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet
CEO arranged his own cybersecurity, with predictable results
Superuser mostly helped IT, until a BSOD saw him invent a farcical fix
Signal adopts new alphabet jumble to protect chats from quantum computers
Intel slaps forehead, says I got it: AI PCs. Sell them AI PCs
Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt
Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'
BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!
One person's trash is another's 'trashware' – the art of refurbing old computers
AI menaces superbug by identifying potent antibiotic
Electric two-wheelers are set to scoot past EVs in road race
Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM
Re: "we pushed that system out of the data center into the parking lot"
Does that explain the overhang on the old Regent Theatre in Norwich? I've wondered why it was like that. Bit of a problem for the house underneath, if they had had a film fire. Presumably they never did, given that the house is still standing.
No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final
Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid
US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder
Catholic clergy surveillance org 'outs gay priests'
Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building
Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too
Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next
Lawyer mom barred from Rockettes show by facial recognition tech
Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you
Re: What!?
I was having difficulty remembering a different password for every site, but then I got an anthill, gave each ant a name and used those as passwords. It even works for frequently-changing passwords, the Queen is always laying new eggs.
For my online banking passwords, I plan to get a beehive, to be more secure.
No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them
This maglev turntable costs more than an average luxury electric car
California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles
Very old idea
see this documentary.
How Wi-Fi spy drones snooped on financial firm
Re: I think we're reaching a point...
@AC - "if you have everything in one building (people, kit, processes and so on) you are a much bigger target...just let people work from home, decentralise your confidential information storing platforms and for fuck sake get rid of the massive buildings"
Yes, send all your workers home, then the attacker doesn't need to invest in a drone, they can sit in the neighbours' garden and launch an attack from there, and with all those workers, there are so many more neighbours to check out. Surely that is a much bigger target?
Isn't the lesson "don't rely on eggshell security"? Kudos to the team that noticed the "unusual activity", none for whoever thought the right MAC address was sufficient to allow sensitive network access.
UK politico proposes site for prototype nuclear fusion plant
Re: A centre for industrial decline?
Is that what they're calling it now? A cruel euphemism.
"We've designated your town a Centre for Industrial Decline."
"WTF - you've closed all the factories and mines, and made everyone unemployed."
"As I said, we've designated your town a Centre for Industrial Decline."
Microsoft says it's boosted phishing protection in Windows 11 22H2
Wait, What?
"a future without passwords for authentication. Microsoft is embracing tools like biometrics – including fingerprint and face scans – and device PINs as alternative"
Doesn't Microsoft know that a PIN is a type of password - one that's easier to guess because it uses a much reduced character set? If they said, "we want to move to 2-factor authentication, with a simpler something-you-know factor" it would be more honest than this "passwords BAD, we are doing something DIFFERENT" hype.
Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof
Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting
IT services giant Wipro fires 300 for moonlighting
You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups
Re: Stack popped reading that procedure....
@Martin Gregorie - Nice description. Makes it easy to see that from step 5 to step 10 there is only a single copy of F, which is the weakness of the procedure and probably contributed to the snafu. The classic solution would be using a Grandfather-Father-Son rotation (should we call that Grandparent-Parent-Child now?), so there would still be two older copies in the event of any mistakes. Alternatively, use a single scratch disk to make a second copy of F after step 3. Or do both.
But how to justify getting all those extra expensive disk packs? Telling the boss, "it's in case I make a stupid mistake" would probably be career limiting. However, the backup is when the disks are most heavily used, read and written from end to end, and therefore the most likely time for a fault.
Kylin: The multiple semi-official Chinese versions of Ubuntu
Re: Traditional, Simplified or Both?
"I can't tell the difference unless they are side-by-side"
To be fair, quite a few are the same, there's not much to simplify in 一二三.
"I don't have any hardware suitable for testing handwriting input" How well it copes with the available device(s) would be an important question in itself. I've tried with a mouse before (dreadful) and the most popular Windows-based pen input devices have (or had, maybe it's changed) no Linux drivers. For many people, handwriting input on their phone has become their preferred method, they might respond well to the same experience on a desktop.
Smartphone gyroscopes threaten air-gapped systems, researcher finds
WhatsApp boss says no to AI filters policing encrypted chat
Re: Time for WhatsApp to put its money where its mouth is
@AC
(1) using email as transport doesn't give me any assurance about the identity of the sender. If there is something additional (e.g. a GPG signature) giving that assurance, then that probably relies on published, persistent keys, which you claim are an attack entry point.
(2) no, I'm not. I wouldn't use ordinary email alone for something that sensitive. Your point was?
There is a path to replace TCP in the datacenter
Re: Translation.
@Doctor Syntax - "easier than having to worry about whether your printer is local rather than in head office 2000 miles away"
So no worries walking 2000 miles to pick up your printout?
Printing is one of the few tasks where knowing the location of the device serving you is always going to be significant.
icon - I'll just pick on the poorly-chosen example and ignore the significant points.
Outlook email users alerted to suspicious activity from Microsoft-owned IP address
While I agree simple country filtering can block most miscreant attempts, there is a danger of locking some people out of their accounts permanently. I've recently relocated to a different country, and while I tried to update my address for the most important services before leaving, there are others I didn't get round to. Then there's the accounts where I need to receive an SMS on the old number before I can login to update the details... even with roaming, the message might take longer than the 10-minute window to arrive.
So, make the default safe for most people, but have a fallback mechanism for the edge cases.
UK signs deal to share police biometric database with US border guards
@Barry Rueger, SundogUK
What if you're both right? While the vast majority of firearm murders are inner city gang related, they are still outnumbered by accidental shootings by acquaintances and family members using legal weapons.
Is there a name for subtly changing the category of a statistic to claim your debate opponent is wrong?