* Posts by Youngone

1575 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2009

Critical US mass spying program scrutiny lost amid partisan nonsense

Youngone Silver badge

Controlled by Who?

I am pretty sure the NSA, and probably other agencies will continue to do what they want, without effective oversight regardless of what the law says. If challenged they will obfuscate (highly dubious interpretations of the law that they themselves developed sounds exactly like obfuscation).

It's not like any of this data gathering can stop people attempting to explode bombs in subways, so why do they bother?

It might just come down to empire building among the various secret police forces proliferating in the US, after all, even if the programmes might be illegal, they still need a lot of money to keep alive don't they?

Huawei Mate 10 Pro: The unfashionable estate car wants to go to town

Youngone Silver badge
Pint

Come on, someone ask the important question !!!

Is that Dead Pony Club pale ale any good?

La La La, I can't hear you: FCC responds to net neut concerns

Youngone Silver badge

Hang on a minute

I can't understand what everyone is getting all upset about here.

If you want congress (or any other branch of the US government) to pass some laws which your people have drafted, then why don't you just pay them to do it?

It's not like it costs a lot of money. A few million usually gets the job done.

For goodness sake, it's not like there's any secret to the process.

FCC boss Ajit defends axing net neutrality by… attacking Cher

Youngone Silver badge

He's a lawyer who has worked in various insider roles in Washington, so he might very well have political ambitions.

He is almost certainly not an idiot however and I'm sure he knows exactly what he's up to.

If he doesn't get some sort of safe Republican seat somewhere I'm sure he will be doing well from "consulting" fees from some communications industry body or other.

Judge stalls Uber trade-secret theft trial after learning upstart 'ran a trade-secret stealing op'

Youngone Silver badge

An already extraordinary trial has just got bigger.

Crickey, has it what!

Someone is lying, and if I have learnt one thing from cop dramas on TV it is that the judge does not like that at all.

2001: A Stob Odyssey

Youngone Silver badge
Pint

Re: Another from the 90s preserved here:-

See, that's why I read the comments.

That link will give me hours of larfs when I ought to be doing something more productive.

Have one of those ------------------------------------------------------------------>

'Water on Mars' re-classified as just 'sand on Mars'

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Water on Mars turns out to be damp squib

Damp squid. It's damp squid.

Not that I put those of us who use english correctly on a pedalstool or anything.

Oracle stockholders don't like exec mega-awards or gender pay gap transparency

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Corporate Greed...

The lazy buggers should stop slacking off then. Those executive bonuses don't come from nowhere.

Also, I quite see Mr. Ellison's point refusing to disclose his political donations. If you want influence, buy your own.

Hey, cop! You need a warrant to stalk a phone with a Stingray – judge

Youngone Silver badge

What about me then?

I don't live in the US, but if the police there are using these devices then I would bet a whole dollar that my local constabulary are too.

Despite that, I have never heard mention of them in the press here.

I wonder why that is?

Drone maker DJI left its private SSL, firmware keys open to world+dog on GitHub FOR YEARS

Youngone Silver badge

Drones`

I was given a DJI drone as a present recently and I can't say I'm surprised at this.

The device itself feels really well made and does fly well, but goodness the software is rubbish.

Hardware headwinds hurt Cisco as revenue dips two per cent in Q1

Youngone Silver badge

Giving stuff away

I have been watching various online sales "Webinars" lately about Cisco's Meraki gear, and every time I watch one they send me a free bit of kit which can't be cheap.

Why a switch needs to be "Cloud Connected" I have yet to ascertain.

Coming live to a warzone near you: Army Truck Driver for Xbox!

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Maybe the UK should just face reality

@ Bob Dole (tm)

While your digs at the UK are a bit out of line, getting rid of the military is not such a bad idea.

Costa Rica abolished theirs in 1948 after a civil war, and have never looked back.

A Coast Guard type service and various Police type services would presumably still be needed, but who is the UK going to fight?

There is no Empire to defend anymore, and killing foreigners on behalf of the US has proven a really poor idea. (See, I can do that too).

I am going to go right ahead and assume that this will be an unpopular opinion based on the number of extremely detailed posts from the various commentards.

Qualcomm tells Broadcom: Pfffft! $103bn? You insult the very core of our cores

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Expected answer

I read the statement as:

"As the Qualcomm board do not expect lucrative jobs after the takeover, we cannot recommend shareholders sell."

Or something like that.

Judge bins sueball lobbed at Malwarebytes by rival antivirus maker for torpedoing its tool

Youngone Silver badge

Malware

Enigma's Spyhunter has garnered mixed reviews because it's a free malware scanner that charges a subscription fee if you want to remove any nasties it finds. Some users have also reported that it is difficult to remove once installed.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably malware.

Irish priests told to stop bashing bishops

Youngone Silver badge

Serious Matter

You're all being very flippant about a serious matter.

I have even seen a documentary on TV about Irish priests where one of them kicked the bishop up the arse!

Terrible behavior.

We're not saying Uncle Sam has lost control on Twitter, but US Embassy in Riyadh just did a shout out for oatmeal

Youngone Silver badge

Re: "Official Government Twitter Accounts"? WTF?

I'm not too worried about it, as in a few years Twitter will have run out of money and folded.

Although yes, it's a stupid idea.

Oh Snap! Rap for crap chat app brats in nine-month $3bn scrap flap

Youngone Silver badge

Everythings Fine

So Snap's losses are similar in scale to Ubers?

Everything will be fine then.

Giza geezers' muon-geyser visor reveals Great Pyramid's hidden void surpriser

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Re: What this guy says

The major disappointment is that there are no comments.

That is where the real gold is on those sorts of sites.

Verizon whips out Big Johnson to lure FCC into axing US states' net neutrality, privacy rules

Youngone Silver badge

State's Rights?

I thought the Republican Party was the party for state's rights, and "small government".

I have been lead to understand, however, that "state's rights" is just a dog whistle, and really means "we want to treat black people badly".

Manafort, Stone, Trump, Papadopoulos, Kushner, Mueller, Russia: All the tech angles in one place

Youngone Silver badge

Re: So, er,

I miss amanfrommars sometimes.

Youngone Silver badge

@ FozzyBear

To be fair to both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bush, the corruption is built into the US political system, particularly since the Supreme Court ruled that unlimited campaign finance was a feature, not a bug.

As for your own situation, as an interested outsider it seems to me that the problem with the Liberal/National coalition is that the various factions within it hate each other more than they hate Labor, so they're happy to undermine the other side's candidate and you've wound up with 30* Prime Ministers in the last 5 years.

*(Or whatever the number is, I'm not that interested).

Youngone Silver badge

Um, pardon?

I can't help wondering someone from Mr. Trump's office will be getting in touch with the various players in this saga, particularly the ones who might know some things about stuff just to let them know there will be Presidential pardons all 'round, if needed.

After all, various presidents have been know to override the legal system if it is in their best interest.

Iceland's Pirate Party loses four MPs in new elections

Youngone Silver badge

Iceland of the free

I love the Icelanders, they seem to be an independent lot, and do their own thinking.

I see they managed to get 8 different parties into the Althing which is good, no party having a majority of any kind, which is also good.

Family's legal battle over YouTube's role in Paris terror murders is paused

Youngone Silver badge

@ iglethal

I tried and failed to use hyperbole to make my point, and you are right, the destruction of the Iraqi government was what caused the mess we see now, but don't forget, Mr. Bush lied like a gentleman whose trousers were on fire about his reasons for going to war, and never mentioned the repression of minorities at all.

As far as I am concerned he should have invaded Saudi Arabia if wanted to avenge 9/11.

Youngone Silver badge

Maybe they would be better off suing George Bush II who, destabilised the whole region by destroying the government of Iraq for no good reason, leading to the rise of ISIS and the whole "war on terror" nonsense.

Not that I think they would succeed there either, but at least we might see if Mr. Bush can justify his actions.

Hey, big vendor: Oracle, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook blow even more cash on lobbying

Youngone Silver badge

Re: The best gov money can buy

@ ecofeco

You are certainly not wrong, but to be fair to Amazon, Facebook and all the others, they are just making use of the system as it is designed.

That has been obvious since the oil industry wrote George II's energy policy.

CEO of $300m-a-year ad upstart Vungle cuffed for allegedly sexually abusing toddler son

Youngone Silver badge

Words fail me also.

Those charges are so specific this guy is either a monster or going through a very messy divorce.

Telstra said its 7-incher was really an 11-incher, left customers frustrated, unsatisfied

Youngone Silver badge

Re: They ripped off normal people

I subscribed to the AFL service that is only available to those living outside of Australia, and I watched it on my 65" TV, using a very useful Kodi add-on written by an expat Aussie living in London (I think).

So far so good, AFL gets paid, and I get to watch the sport I like legally, it worked really well, and the quality of the stream was great.

Now the season is over, I would like to stop paying, but can I find the 'cancel service" bit?

Can I hell.

You can yacht be serious: Larry might be planning his own version of America’s Cup

Youngone Silver badge

Re: "I’m going to build my own theme park. With blackjack. And hookers."

I really hope he's pulled the funding out from under the America's Cup, because as a New Zealand taxpayer I'm sick and tired of paying for these rich people to go off sailing.

I would like nothing more than for the whole thing to go away.

Snap, crackle ... patch! Apple kicks out iOS 11.0.2 to tackle crappy calls, fix email glitches

Youngone Silver badge

OK, it's been 10 minutes, still on 100% battery.

Good update.

Youngone Silver badge

The suddenly awful battery life is my only problem. I have had exactly zero Exchange issues with my 50-ish iPhones (I support a bunch of users), but the battery thing is not great.

I will let you know when the update finishes.

Microsoft shows off Windows 10 Second Li, er, Mixed Reality

Youngone Silver badge

This is great

It looks to me like a division of Microsoft has been given some of the money Windows and Office make and told to go away and spend it.

From my point of view it's quite funny seeing a huge company figure out what it's going to do next and failing so hard and so often.

Oath-my-God: THREE! BILLION! Yahoo! accounts! hacked! in! 2013! – not! 'just!' 1bn!

Youngone Silver badge

Re: How did they get to 3 billion accounts?

I suspect they had that many accounts because they hosted email for others.

My ISP supplied email account was actually hosted by Yahoo! until this breach happened, they have since bought their email system home which is nice.

At the time they forced users to change their password also. I guess they didn't believe Yahoos! assurances that it was only "some" accounts.

Tech VCs sue Uncle Sam over President Trump's immigration chill

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Foreign Business Folks Hire Foreign Workers and Relocate, Foreignly

I think the clue might be in this bit:

"“We are already seeing evidence of other countries actively recruiting talented foreign-born entrepreneurs..."

Of which my country is one.

Here is one example.

The TL;DR is that a Cabinet Minister overrode the advice of the Immigration Department and made him a citizen, despite there being an Interpol red alert out on him.

He may have donated money to political parties, but is not a criminal despite agreeing to give up $40 million to make some money laundering charges go away.

There's this guy too.

He's not actually a criminal, but was made a citizen after spending less than two weeks here.

Did he make payments to NZ political parties? We will never know.

If you would like to compete with us to lure these "talented foreign-born entrepreneurs" be my guest.

We went to Nadella's launch of Hit Refresh so you didn't have to

Youngone Silver badge

His Poor Parents

his dad was a Marxist economist and his mum was professor of Sanskrit –

And they now look at each other and wonder where they went wrong.

Twitter: We also made a shedload of cash from Russia's trolling during US White House race

Youngone Silver badge

Does anyone else find it odd that American businesses feel the need to appear in front of these pointless Senate committees?

I wonder what would happen if Twitter answered every question with something like:

"That's commercially sensitive and I will not answer".

It all smells like political theatre to me.

Don't get the idea that I have any affection for Twitter though. I still don't see what the point of it is.

Angst in her pants: Alleged US govt leaker Reality Winner stashed docs in her pantyhose

Youngone Silver badge

Too late now

Don't talk to the Feds without your lawyer.

If they can't charge you with anything, they will charge you with "Lying to a Federal Agent" instead.

Alleged dark web drug baron cuffed – after he flew to US for World Beard Championships

Youngone Silver badge

Yes, clearly a naughty boy, but I'm thinking the G men will need more evidence than what's in the article, it all sounds pretty thin to me.

Not that a lack of evidence will keep him out of jail.

FCC commish cites infamous porn ruling to slam shady US mobile competition report

Youngone Silver badge

Confused

Ms. Rosenworcel has not been paying attention and does not seem to understand the new role of the FCC under Chairman Pai.

Never mind, there are plenty of qualified candidates available who will do a much better job.

We will ask Comcast or Verizon if they can recommend anyone.

Scared of that new-fangled 'cloud'? Office 2019 to the rescue!

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Small-minded men

It will be a coolish day in Hell before we begin storing our Office stuff on anyone else's computers.

Apart from losing control of some very valuable information (formulas for various very valuable products being an example), we prefer to have control over where data is, and who has access to it.

Not scared, just cautious.

White House staffers jabbed with probe over private email use

Youngone Silver badge

Am I paranoid?

I am wondering if the attempt to get hold of

"details on any staffer who has used their personal email for government duties, or text messages, or phone-based message apps. In addition they want the names of anyone who has used encryption for personal contact."

is not so much because of the private email nonsense, but rather because there might be some evidence of Russian meddling in there somewhere.

As far as a solution goes, if the original miscreants had been prosecuted, then we might not be where we are now, but laws are for the little people in the land of the free it would seem.

Mom, mom! Make China stopppp! US govt gripes about Beijing's internet censorship to WTO

Youngone Silver badge

The massive multi-national I work for has quite the presence in China, and I have noticed several disruptions to our networks over there lately.

It would seem to be collateral damage though, because the links tend to come back up fairly quickly.

According to our network guys, it's hard to get any sort of straight answer from the local infrastructure suppliers as to what's really happening, so who really knows.

Also, as everyone knows, China will do what they want, and this sort of noise will be ignored.

Something good about Brexit? Errr, more teeth for Ofcom! – report

Youngone Silver badge

Re: More regulation?

@ Doctor Syntax

All of which makes me wonder who set up the whole Brexit thing, and who stands to gain the most from it?

Those at the top of HMG obviously, but who else?

Attention adults working in the real world: Do not upgrade to iOS 11 if you use Outlook, Exchange

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Works fine here

Works here too. We use Exchange 2016 on Windows Server 2016 and it's working fine.

IOS 11 on an iPhone 7.

IT fraudster facing four years' bird time for $10k blackmail

Youngone Silver badge

Rhyming Slang

Is it just me or should it be "Bird Lime"?

Itching to stuff iOS 11 on your iPhone? You may want to hold off for a bit

Youngone Silver badge

It takes too long

Phhhh... backups? Why bother, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh....

What do you call an all-in-one PC that isn't? 'Upgradeable', says HP

Youngone Silver badge

My boss will hate it

I have purchased a tiny Dell desktop for one of my users that fits on the back of a monitor nicely, uses standard connectors and costs about half what that does.

Price is the main concern where I work, and we won't pay extra for things to look good, although I accept others might.

VMworld schwag heist CCTV didn't work and casino wouldn't share it

Youngone Silver badge

Other Explanations

I'm not sure I would believe any of Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino's explanations here, also:

“is proprietary to Mandalay Bay” and cannot be viewed by third parties...

If any of the injured parties cared to I imagine they could ask a judge to give his or her views about that statement.

Scientists produce a map marking water hotspots on the Moon

Youngone Silver badge

Re: Hot and wet

Oh, great, thanks Big John, now I have to redesign my Aardvark detector.

What is the cyber equivalent of 'use of force'? When do we send in the tanks?

Youngone Silver badge

Re: "The United States needs to define a new set of international rules"

The part that caught my eye was: "The United States is more vulnerable than any other country in the world to a cyberattack, warns Haines, because so much of it is dependent on the internet".

Really? I thought, not like those Germans living in their caves, and those Koreans who barely have the use of fire (I could go on, but I think I've made my point).

No we Americans rely on the Internet so much more than them, but goodness we're so frightened.