* Posts by Dan 55

15337 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009

Inside Internet Archive: 10PB+ of storage in a church... oh, and a little fight to preserve truth

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: distributed knowledge?

Doesn't ipfs.io do this?

Of course the danger with that is is that it's a start up so it's transient.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: distributed knowledge?

About a year ago they were talking about setting up a full backup in Canada.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Loophole

Does it still take notice of present day robot.txt files which can be used block URLs from the past?

That'a not a particularly good decision.

Does UK high street banks' crappy crypto actually matter?

Dan 55 Silver badge

The main website could use cyphers which cover everything and do any redirection with user agent detection but the online banking website could forego older cyphers.

(I didn't downvote.)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Banks may try to prove negligence by saying something like "the thief used your PIN therefore you told him or wrote it down in your wallet or it was obvious (your birthday)" and "you didn't use VbV or MSC when buying online". Why should using an ancient browser be any different?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: IT security enforcement

Well Lloyds still seems to be going.

What it comes down to is they're all too big to fail. They will get there in the end, but years late, by which time there'll be newer standards which they've not caught up with.

Dan 55 Silver badge

If you use the latest and greatest browser, then your connection will use the highest available encryption, so is not at risk.

Unless someone MITMs it down to something weaker.

Perhaps IE6 users on XP should have a server just for themselves which they have to specifically ask for access and agree to some scary clauses saying it's all their fault if there's fraud.

Windows Update borks elderly printers in typical Patch Tuesday style

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: KB2952664

Why would it even try to mess with the printing subsystem?

Is it because Windows is a curate's egg?

Who the hell knows what affects what any more. Certainly not MS who put out the patches.

The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The Quantum of Firefox

XUL was a great idea that was never fully realised. It allows you to create full-featured cross-platform local or remote GUIs that match the platform's native look. You can tell when apps have a Qt, GTK, or Swing look, but can't with XUL. Pretty much the holy grail of any Web 2.0 website, only not crap.

The reason why it was allowed to die is Mozilla never really got a community off the ground and then employees with XUL knowledge left so they couldn't maintain it themselves and decided to knock it on the head.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Speed isn't as important as Addons

If you want a plain URL just type it and hit enter and ignore the suggestions below. At least that's what I do. Seems to work for me.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I went for the mobile version

Remove pocket crap in Settings > General > Home > Top Sites.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Speed isn't as important as Addons

Don't get the hate for the Awesome Bar, it fishes pages out of bookmarks and history based on URLs and page titles. Better than sending everything to Google and what it finds is usually relevant as you've visited the page before or taken the trouble to bookmark it.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: I went for the mobile version

Well getting rid of the API that gesture addons need won't stop that, it'll just mean you're stuck with crazy page gestures without being able to define your own.

So it seems no more gestures to instantly move to the top or the bottom of the page or switch or close tabs.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Coat

Re: The Quantum of Firefox

Oh no, I can't cope with the Spectre of yet another Firefox fork. I hope that's just fake news From Russia with Love.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Wish Firefox would just focus on the simple things

If you use Firefox Sync you can rearrange them into folders on a synced desktop computer. I think.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Why did Mozilla lose ground? Because Google's search page pushed Chrome, they did a deal with Adobe so that Flash and Reader pushed Chrome, they did a deal with Antivirus developers to push Chrome, and they did a deal with anyone else they thought they could do a deal with to push Chrome.

Just a few million down the back of the sofa.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Everything's gone. Everything.

Settings > Updates > Never update.

Exit.

Download and install Firefox 56 from here.

Restart, hopefully your addons will be back.

From there you can choose to go to Pale Moon or Waterfox (import FF profile, copy addons, I think Waterfox has better addon compatibility) or Firefox ESR (profile not 100% compatible, backup first, if it crashes refresh Firefox and restore addons from backup as explained in the link).

Dan 55 Silver badge

I went for the mobile version

I don't have many addons on the mobile version so I thought it'd probably be okay... and it turns out I'll need to find replacement addons (if they exist) for Android Text Reflow, Clean Links, Quick Gestures, and Self Destructing Cookies, i.e. everything apart from uBlock Origin.

It's got a white address bar and turns the notification bar white too, which looks terrible, and the icon design isn't particularly good either. It looks like they've lurched from a copy of Chrome to a copy of Edge.

On the other hand, on my not particularly impressive phone, it flies like shit off a shovel compared to version 56. Computers are still running Firefox ESR though, there are far more addons I can't do without there.

Belgian court says Skype must provide interception facilities

Dan 55 Silver badge

It's technically impossible your honour

Just ignore the fact that we do it already for the NSA.

Confusion reigns over crypto vuln in Spanish electronic ID smartcards

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I wonder if it'll stop there

If the card was manufactured by Infineon (Germany) then it will probably have a vulnerability, as that's the manufacturer for Estonia and Spain's cards.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Here's how it went

There are self-service machines at police stations to do card operations on e-ID cards. The police turned all the machines off then realised that older non-vulnerable cards issued prior to April 2015 could still be used with self-service machines. Only they can't turn them on again because of the newer vulnerable cards. So instead people with older cards have to book an appointment to see someone at the police station who will change the PIN for them or renew the certificate on it or whatever.

People with newer vulnerable cards will not be able to renew the certificate on it or change the PIN because the people at the police station won't let them. Also people who get brand new cards (e.g. every five years) will still get a vulnerable one and won't be given the PIN. link

And it seems people can still use vulnerable cards over the Internet, maybe because the there's one certificate to rule them all and if it's revoked then older non-vulnerable cards could stop working.

And the newer vulnerable cards also have another problem - when they are used to sign something, they don't certify the date it was signed, so the two vulnerabilities could be used together with online banking (if it supports it). link

However this will probably blow over because hardly anyone uses the e-ID feature of their ID cards, it means going to the police station anyway or spending hours persuading IE or Firefox and Java to work with a card reader and hoping it doesn't stop working if anything gets updated.

IT Got me depressed

Dan 55 Silver badge
Mushroom

From that post I'll take a wild guess and say you don't actually develop, rather you're one of the hangers on that at the same time manage to make the job ten times more difficult than it should be for those who do the work. Typical PM who doesn't know how manage projects? Sales?

Pastry in a manger: We're soz, Greggs man said

Dan 55 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Spineless of them to give in

I'd like to agree, but apart from (to an extent) Buddhists and Christians

News from across the continent:

Did you hear the one about the women in Spain who reported the nun who stole her when she was a baby to the police? She got fined €43,000 for "insulting the nun" and when she couldn't pay got five months prison. She appealed to the government to pardon her and they decided not to. link (Spanish)

Never give religion a free pass. Not even Christianity.

World Vasectomy Day: 15k men line up for live vent-blocking

Dan 55 Silver badge
Alert

Time for a bit of Baron Munchausen

Cut off in my prime

surrounded by beautiful women all the time

A eunuch's life is hard

A eunuch's life is hard

A eunuch's life is haaaaaaaard

and nothing else

Google aims disrupto-tronic ray at intercoms. Yes, intercoms

Dan 55 Silver badge

Does it drag them out of bed?

If not, nobody's going to school.

Heads up: OnePlus phones have a secret root backdoor and the password is 'angela'

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "Angela", eh?

They should have used "Whiterose" for extra lulz.

(Link in case someone confuses it with the other white rose.)

Windows on ARM: It's nearly here (again)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Smart

What are you on about? Nobody was interested in RT because they thought they could run Desktop apps and nobody was interested in Windows 10 Mobile because there were hardly any apps of any kind.

Dan 55 Silver badge

VC did support Win32 on ARM if you changed a few settings first and Surface RT did run ARM exes if unlocked. link

Dan 55 Silver badge

It's not that bad for ancient exes where all it is is a GUI with fields and an event loop and does some magic calculation or talk to a database when you hit 'Go'. Somewhat grandly called enterprise software.

EU court advised: Schrems is a consumer in Facebook case, but can't file class-action

Dan 55 Silver badge
WTF?

So it seems like the ECJ just outlawed class action

Is this for social media platforms or for any company?

Thousand-dollar iPhone X's Face ID wrecked by '$150 3D-printed mask'

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Nothing to worry about

Denying the coppers is not really an option in many countries. At least they won't have rubber hoses or cigar cutters though.

IBM asks remaining staff to take career advice from HR-bot

Dan 55 Silver badge
Terminator

Hi, I'm Myca. How can I help?

- What job should I do?

- MYCA-12412: You are qualified for a job at the other side of the country.

- I can't work there.

- MYCA-93121: In order to help you along your next step down your career path, I have automatically generated and accepted your notice of resignation. You have received your P45 via email. Please hand in your badge, leave the building, and print it out later at your own cost. Have a nice day. You are now logged off.

- But, wait!

- MYCA-01213: Sorry, unknown user, you are not authorised.

Productivity through tech, UK firms. More cyber, more cloud, more ERP!

Dan 55 Silver badge

The government did build the ecosystem

UK providers for G-Cloud sprang up. Then e.g. HMRC buggered off to AWS and they went bust.

Are the CBI serious about this or do they just want to collect commission for selling Amazon and Microsoft?

Brit cops slammed for failing to give answers on digital device data slurpage

Dan 55 Silver badge

"10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

I'll do this one for free...

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM seized_device_table

Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

Dan 55 Silver badge

Most office users could do their daily jobs using wordpad.

They couldn't take screenshots of Putty, open Powerpoint, paste in there, save, zip, and send by Outlook instead if copying and pasting the text.

Really difficult to suppress the urge to ask them if they're taking the fucking piss.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Council Vote?

They voted before. Now a new coalition is in control and they've voted again.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Thirty Eight

Too well known. Go for Microsoft's XPS format for proper lock-in.

Dan 55 Silver badge

There's not much Java left in LO, and what's left will also be removed.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

Politics has everything to do with it

Linux on the desktop has never been in better shape and LiMux was declared a success (before the elections), so it seems extremely strange to row back now.

Strange unless you realise the new mayor, MS, and Accenture have been in a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship for a good few years now. link

When the users have to face working with Windows 10, the Start Screen, and UWP, they'll be begging to go back to Linux.

Android at 10: How Google won the smartphone wars

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Horsecrap

Play Services is not open source and is where the bulk of new Android* features are added.

* Well, closed-source Google Android features.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Horsecrap

I think google does a much better job than Apple personally. On 1st party devices, Google support in on par with apple, but android has a much better architecture for delivering updates. Apple need OS flash to fix a keyboard bug, Google deliver the system app via the play store, no OS update needed.

Earlier Nexus devices have stopped receiving updates whereas Apple still support devices of a similar age.

Google putting their keyboard on the App Store is only to try and get people with 2nd party phones to install their slurpboard. That obviously makes no sense with iPhones.

And as Google refuse to make AOSP Keyboard available on the Play Store, Simple Keyboard will have to do.

Dan 55 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Horsecrap

Android isn't insecure, it's very secure. This doesn't fit very well with the clickbaiters and anti-virus industry desperate to cash in, but it's the truth.

Android gets monthly patches, delivered in a timely manner to 1st party devices, (if you were stupid enough to buy 2nd party, or even 3rd paty device, that is not Google, nor Android's fault).

If Windows could only be updated on Surface, and OEMs took their own sweet time before sending out their own versions of those updates, and those OEM machines sold by shops who offered computers on credit held things up too by having to update their own bloatware as well before giving the go-ahead, nobody would be dare be silly enough to call Windows a secure OS. But that's what you're doing here.

Firefox 57: Good news? It's nippy. Bad news? It'll also trash your add-ons

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I always wanted to be an organ grinder's monkey

An old blog post - https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/ - has some details on why the deprecation happened.

They originally said that Jetpack extensions would mostly remain but it turns out that that's not true, they later decided to throw all old extension types out. I think Mozilla's guilty of drinking its own kool aid and they'll end up losing their core users, those that wouldn't ordinarily desert Firefox for any reason because of add-ons.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: API incomplete

Also the article says that "this change is not a surprise to Firefox extension developers. The roadmap has been published for well over a year now".

The roadmap was published but the API wasn't, that's a moving target and still will be after Firefox 57. The API call developers need to port their extension to WebExtensions might be coming soon or Mozilla might have no intention of adding it.

Two extension types are getting the chop, XUL and Jetpack, leaving only WebExtensions. That's a lot of extensions which will never get updated because Mozilla didn't manage to convince developers to migrate to a newer API with fewer features (think UWP).

I'm in no rush to update, I'll stay on Firefox ESR for a while.

Activists launch legal challenge against NHS patient data-sharing deal

Dan 55 Silver badge

Why stop at the entire continent? If we're going for stupid arguments, let's do it properly and have the local galactic supercluster.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Re downvote

If you say "no" then you are advocating a free for all system where anyone can use these resources with impunity.

Yay for strawman.

I can see the replies you wanted so much were a monumental waste of time.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Re downvote

as harsh as it sounds rules must be followed so if you want treatment then afterwards you will have to explain why you are here illegally.

They won't go for treatment, they'll just become a health hazard for everyone else. How does instigating a policy which could endanger other people's health even make sense?

And as for following rules, it seems the government isn't.

UK Home Sec thinks a Minority Report-style AI will prevent people posting bad things

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The only viable explanation for going off the straight and narrow and onto a bender.

I'll take an ounce of whatever Amber Rudd is smoking. It is obviously great gear. :-)

The finest hashtags known to humanity.