* Posts by Version 1.0

5379 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

No, the head of the World Health Organization has not emailed you – it's a message laced with malware

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Unhappy

Re: Gullibility

I just saw three of them arrive in one mailbox - they sailed through all the email scanning, people are worried and they get an email about health safety measures ... they will be clicking on the button to open the file.

Captain Caveman rides to the rescue, solves a prickly PowerPoint problem with a magical solution

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Back in the days of high speed 300 baud modems

I took a DEC 11/23 from work to the local CP/M user group with three VT100 terminals so that they could see multitasking - it was fun, they could not believe that it was possible on a computer that just rolled into the room on four casters. For the demonstration, I fired up Adventure and let them play it.

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

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FAIL

I would expect a surge too

I'm seeing a little uptick in "Urgent New PO.docx.exe" files caught at the mail server this morning. I expect that we're going to see home PCs hacked and the corporate data and money leaking in the next month.

Dell publishes data centre cleaning guidance, suggests hiring pros to disinfect enterprise kit

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After cleaning the server room I always wash my mouth out with Talisker, it's worked for years and I've never had any infections although I occasionally have a little headache the following day if I have to do a lot of cleaning.

Russian state-sponsored hackers have been sniffing Middle East defence firms, warns Trend Micro

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Joke

Re: Capt'ain Obvious

Why hasn't the NSA filed a copyright lawsuit against Russia over their theft of EternalBlue.

Former Googler Anthony Levandowski ‘fesses up to pinching trade secrets about self-driving cars

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OK, so he's guilty but ...

... when are we going to see these self-driving cars? Reading the news all I see is self-accidenting cars. Remember the capacitor chemical theft about 12 years ago? They all blew up too.

Oh-so-generous ransomware crooks vow to hold back from health organisations during COVID-19 crisis

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Thumb Down

So you get infected with ransomware, call up the friendly crooks and they fix the problem for you? And in the process they get a copy of all your data ...

America: We'll send citizens cash checks amid coronavirus financial hardship. UK: We'll offer £330bn in biz loans

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Unhappy

Re: 2009 called.....

I sympathize with you but have you never done anything silly, or bad, yourself?

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Traditionally, in America, the Republicans spend the economy into a decline while making corporations richer and are then defeated in the next election. The Democrats then take over and restore the economy by taxing the wealthy. The Republicans then win the next election and spend again.

Closed source? Pull the other one... We love open source, but not enough to share code for our own app, says GitHub

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Terminator

Open Source Won ... and you lost.

While I have always supported Open Source applications and made a lot of my code available, the end result of open source is that when you release the application, you don't make any money anymore - everyone respects you, thanks you (and occasionally criticizes you) but in the end it's just hari-kari, the application environment cannot be reincarnated - you have to move on to another dimension in time and space, if you want to eat.

Forget James Bond's super-gadgets, this chap spied for China using SD card dead drops. Now he's behind bars

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Devil

This is the story, but was was the Plot?

Nobody in the movie business would buy this story, it's only the tip of the iceberg - send it back to the writers for a rework to develop the back story.

What was happening behind the scenes? Clearly a lot more than this little dribble of information "reveals" - I think there's probably enough happening behind locked doors to make the story into a 30 episode series.

Looming ventilator shortage amid pandemic sparks rise of open-source DIY medical kit. Good thinking – but safe?

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Joke

Apollo 13 anyone?

Can we make these at home? Looks like parts from an upholstery cleaning device, maybe hooked up to an air-filter and some kitchen wipes? Remember Apollo 13 where they had to make an air scrubber after the oxygen tank blew up?

Come back, AI. All is forgiven: We know we've mocked you in the past, but we need help analyzing 26,000 papers on COVID-19, coronaviruses

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Big Brother

When a new virus pops its little head up you will find a lot of people studying it - there was a lot of off-line discussions about CORVID-19 prior to it getting posted on Facebook, the majority of discussions saw it as a serious infection but not a big concern, there was research starting into vaccines too. Once it appeared on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram everyone on social media realized that this could be the end of the world and that everyone would die and it would be the politicians fault.

So I wonder who started those posts?

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Unhappy

Science papers are normally published in journals and unless you have purchased a subscription to the journal all you see is a short summery and a request to subscribe. The actual details of the research are not available to the public unless you purchase them or spend a while on Google searching for other referances that may have leaked released a PDF copy for students course studies.

I guess potentially the move to on-line courses, caused by COVID-19, could help general research.

Facebook does the right thing for once: Joins Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube to clean out dodgy COVID-19 info

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Re: Twitter

It's so difficult to report bad things on the Internet, and actually see a result, that I don't bother any more. It's way harder to report it and get it stopped/removed than it is to post it.

Zoom goes boom, Teams tears at seams: Technology stumbles at the first hurdle for this homeworking malarkey

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Childcatcher

I was asked to help a neighbor get setup to work from home this weekend to handle the corporate billing and payments, she had a load of questions they wanted answered so I sat down at her laptop and logged in ... into Windows Vista Business Edition.

We discussed it and she went off to buy a new laptop.

Health workers are top of phishers' target lists thanks to data value

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And they follow the rules until they get an email that promises a new order, custom delivery or a virus update that just needs them to go to a link. How many people know that an image (.img) attachment is not a picture?

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This has been going on for a while

We're in the medical industry and we've seen a big uptick in virus deliveries, spam and infection attempts since November.

US prez Donald Trump declares America closed to those flying in from Schengen zone over coronavirus woes

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fixed your typo

Well in fairness to Trump, COVID19 does affect the elderly the hardest. So he's got to do what he's got to do get reelected.

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Louisiana has currently had 14 cases of the virus since the start of the outbreak, but Baton Rouge has had only 4 shooting deaths this week so the local view is that there's nothing to worry about.

In case you want to flee this wretched Earth, 139 minor planets were spotted at the outer reaches of our Solar System. Just an FYI...

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What we see isn't all that might be there

The potential is that there could be another asteroid belt further out. There have been suggestions for a long time that there's a larger object out there to explain some minor discrepancies in the inner orbits of planets, could there be just a couple of billion tones of small debris? A disturbance in the outer ring, or the formation of the outer ring, might explain the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago that reshaped the Earth.

This is going to be a very interesting research area for the next 20 years.

Broken lab equipment led boffins to solve a 58-year-old physics problem by mistake

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Joke

But that is Australia

I bet they spin the other way in Europe.

Resellers facing 'months' of delays for orders to be fulfilled. IT gathers dust on docks as coronavirus-stricken China goes back to work

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The mortality rate will not be known for a long time

The figures always look bad initially because it's easy to count the numbers that die, but impossible to count the numbers of people who have the disease and take a few days off before going back to work. Yes - it's bad if you die but it appears that the majority of people have few symptoms beyond feeling like they have the cold and the flu, cough a bit, feel sick for a bit and then get better. Until testing becomes widespread these people do not count as infected so the bad numbers always look worse initially.

US Congress: Spying law is flawed, open to abuse, and lacking in accountability – so let's reauthorize it

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Legal versus Illegal?

"...the illegal attempted “coup” of the duly elected President of the United States..." so it's OK if it's a legal attempted coup then?

That defines Republicans.

Microsoft nukes 9 million-strong Necurs botnet after unpicking domain name-generating algorithm

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Re: MS at least try to be the good guys every now and then

Microsoft's first attempt a security was shouted down everywhere, OK, so Vista wasn't a perfect solution but it was a start and everyone was running around saying that it was a disaster because it made users actually have to work at security.

But it's not just the computers and users that are the problem, every computer is connected to the internet and the standard ISP supplied access device has issues too and anyone can hook up to the internet and try and break into your computer.

Security in the internet today is like making everyone walk around naked all the time and then complaining about the backroom chatter.

The Internet of Things is a security nightmare, latest real-world analysis reveals: Unencrypted traffic, network crossover, vulnerable OSes

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Facepalm

But the current government postion is to ban encryption.

"...US government's ongoing efforts to demonize encryption for leaving law enforcement in the dark and AG William Barr's public opposition to encryption, technical experts expect the guidelines will force technology platforms to avoid encryption..." - El Reg

IBM's outgoing boss Rometty awarded $20m+ in 2019 for growing revenue 0.1%

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Re: WTF?

“Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.”

― Frank Zappa

AMD, boffins clash over chip data-leak claims: New side-channel holes in decades of cores, CPU maker disagrees

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Re: Impact?

All the early Z80, 8080 multitasking problems were all in the people writing code who had grown up on single task systems and never considered multitasking before. I used to demo multi-masking to 8080 and Z80 coders and they were always amazed that it was even possible, let alone what the implications were. LOL

Meltdown The Sequel strikes Intel chips – and full mitigation against data-meddling LVI flaw will slash performance

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Pirate

Re: One day, not to far in the future,

These days, corporate management and sales control the development of new products - ask them which they want developed, a secure processor, or a super fast processor - you know what they are going to sell...

Security? "It will be a while before anyone hacks it and in the meantime we'll sell a hell of a lot of the fast processors." Welcome to today's world.

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

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Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

The Arks are ready but we're waiting for the sanitizers

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Angel

Re: The Radio Series and Only the Radio Series

I bought the albums and they are wonderful!

Australian privacy watchdog sues Facebook for *checks notes* up to £266bn

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Thumb Up

That's Australia - Facebook needs to F.O.C.U.S.

Jenny Talia documented this attitude on youtube - F.O.C.U.S.

UK.gov sits down with mobile big four to formalise plans for rural shared 4G network

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My google Fi phone works virtually everywhere in the UK.

One for the super rich fanbois: Ultra-rare functional Apple-1 computer goes on auction

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Re: Fully Functional ?

Has anyone checked for software updates?

More than a billion hopelessly vulnerable Android gizmos in the wild that no longer receive security updates – research

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Unhappy

A company Googles size makes money buy forcing consumers to keep buying their products - that's why security is an issue, security issues help sell gear, stopping updates helps sell gear, writing bad code that needs updating regularly helps sell more gear when you stop the updates.

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Happy

This is how you make money

Manufacturers are busy selling products that "die" after a while so you have to upgrade and buy a new one. It's like smoking cigarettes - you use it, enjoy it, then buy another one. You make a lot more money buy selling shitty stuff than good stuff.

Don't be fooled, experts warn, America's anti-child-abuse EARN IT Act could burn encryption to the ground

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I don't have a problem with this

If I wanted to transmit anything secret then I'd do it in plain text encoding - banning encryption will not solve the problem. So what's the problem? It's us - society that creates conditions and environments where people think that all kinds of abuse are justified in one way or another. Child abuse is wrong - but we're all OK with a society that thinks that "austerity" has no side effects and that rich people will always be good people. Nobody ever discusses what is "good" anymore, we're only told that some things are bad ... if you get caught.

'Optional' is the new 'Full' in Windows 10: Microsoft mucks about with diagnostic slurpage levels for Fast Ring Insiders

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Happy

Re: Is it still impossible to stop the spying?

Yes, it's possible - there are two options, you can either reinstall Windows XP or put the motherboard in a microwave for 10 minutes ... popty ping - all spying has ceased.

MPs to grill Post Office and Fujitsu execs on Horizon IT scandal after workers jailed over accounting errors

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Re: Kafka has nothing on this.

Software is full of bugs these days - is it because we are very good at finding them nowadays, or are we crappy coders? Maybe both.

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Re: Kafka has nothing on this.

Private Eye reported it very early on and diagnosed it as a software problem - but the Post Office refused to even consider that it might have been their fault and didn't even investigate the issue - they just claimed that because their accounting software showed a discrepancy then it was evidence that postmasters everywhere were stealing.

But it's a corporate problem really, we need to punish the corporate officials be making them retire with a golden parachute - maybe they could get a new job managing Brexit now.

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

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Re: Some people lie, some people cheat, ...

Right, but these days, even if it's illegal, law enforcement has no ability or funding to actually enforce the law. It's a worldwide "austerity" effect - we have scammers everywhere and unless they steal from rich people they are very rarely prosecuted for internet crime. Yet we hound other people just because some body thinks they stole a couple of paracetamol in Wales. But steal on the Internet or via a phone call and nobody is interested at all.

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

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Re: Would you dare?

It's hard to know what actually happened - the CIA are pretty good at that - but it smells like some of the bosses are getting blamed for the leak and want to get a conviction and move on while ignoring the actual cause. There's a long history of this type of action in most spy agencies.

Fella accused of ripping off Cisco, Amazon, iRobot, others to the tune of $2m by fraudulently demanding replacements for tech gear

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Unhappy

825 years

Why not make them work for Amazon for 825 years to repay the money they stole? Too much like slavery I suppose so they will be getting free (but lousy) accommodation for the rest of their lives ... in jail this will probably only be a 10-15 years.

Microservices guru warns devs that trendy architecture shouldn't be the default for every app, but 'a last resort'

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Facepalm

Re: All-or-nothing deployments

And those "incremental changes" can remove parts of the application that you use and depend on functioning, we're always told that "its an upgrade" even if it renders the cloud app dysfunctional for the purpose that you purchased it.

Brexit Britain changes its mind, says non, nein, no to Europe's unified patent court – potentially sealing its fate

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Facepalm

I believe that the official line is that we need to leave the EU and all European influence on UK laws, European influence over Britain has been going on for over 2000 years now - it's time to return to the days before those damn Europeans invaded ... will the next political baby be called Boudicca?

We're taking back control - we need to start prohibiting every other country from speaking English, it's OUR LANGUAGE, not theirs, we need to take back control - that's the direction that we're heading.

Can it get any stupider?

Coronavirus conference cancellations continue: Google and Microsoft axe WSL and Cloud Next

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Re: So that's another Microsoft product that is susceptible to viruses

I just did a search and a message popped up on the screen saying that they had detected the Corona Virus on my computer and I should download a anti-corona app to fix it... it's worked great ... oh wait, my bank is calling ...

In the E in HPE stands for Eroding revenues... Intel chip shortage, hardware supplies, coronavirus punish IT titan

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the E in HPE stands for Encoding revenues

There, fixed it for you.

A bad cash crunch on the books means a nice tax return a lot of the time.

UK.gov lays out COVID-19 guidance as the tech supply chain considers its own

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Facepalm

It's just flaky news

What do we "know" about the virus? Virtually nothing, it appears to be widespread, possibly much more so than we've observed and while some people have died, most of the deaths would have been expected had they caught the flu or measles. While the governments are all running around taking a shit in public, they are all busy blaming someone else for the virus transmissions.

Most likely we will know all the facts in about two years, until then you can panic if you want but it doesn't help. Sure, wash your hands and don't wipe your nose on someone else's sleeve - but that's what we should be doing anyway. Nothing new about this.

Flaky news, little bits falling off from time to time, what's true and what's not? We'll figure it out eventually, if we're lucky.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

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Re: raw hex

Once upon a time you could boot an IMSAI or a PDP by loading the bootstrap in binary from the front panel.

Drones must be constantly connected to the internet to give Feds real-time location data – new US govt proposal

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Re: Another perspective

Ahh.. modern trust in in technology... thinking that this plan will work and never be disabDE%^Y(I... NO CARRIER

Ops sorry, my cell phone just loaded a new update.