* Posts by Adrian 4

2288 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2009

What did turbonerds do before the internet? 41 years ago, a load of BBS

Adrian 4

Not dead yet

BBSs aren't dead. Their spiritual descendents are forums : owner-moderated, often with a personal agenda, often for self-promotion. Although I can see their good points for certain uses, I'm unable to understand why email groups are pushed into forums because 'they're more modern'. They're not, they're just BBSs with a pretty web face and all the disadvantages - polled for updates, unintegrated with push delivery systems (that have been modern since the 80s), a home for cute features and draconic rule.

Dratted hipster UX designers stole my corporate app

Adrian 4

Re: or an un-improvable legacy interface designed a thousand years ago by a goblin

And what stops you resizing your browser window so it fills exactly as much screen as you want to scan ? And, you know, use some of that big screen for something else ?

Adrian 4

Re: It's not just designers

'Third question is "Why did you not teach your junior developers to follow the process you followed to 'battle out' the proper solution ?"'

DJV taught his junior all that, AND she remembered it. By letting her doing it wrong.

Adrian 4

Re: In defence of the guacamole-eaters...

I constantly read complaints of the flat UI thing. And I agree : when firefox came out with it I thought there was a bug that stopped the chrome (as they used to call the decoration) rendering. I don't like it any better now.

But there must be someone, somewhere, who thinks it's a good thing. Speak out, tell us the thinking, or you'll continue to get complaints.

US kids apparently talking like Peppa Pig... How about US lawmakers watching Doctor Who?

Adrian 4

Re: Clangers...

Or Roobarb and Custard ?

It's now 2019, and your Windows DHCP server can be pwned by a packet, IE and Edge by a webpage, and so on

Adrian 4

Re: Disk in continuous use.

I think Microsoft calls them 'Cannon fodder'

ftfy

Fun fact: GPS uses 10 bits to store the week. That means it runs out... oh heck – April 6, 2019

Adrian 4

I've got various ancient GPS receivers, usually as modules rather than complete devices.

Most of them are fine with the one or two rollovers they've already seen. Some work OK once given the current date.

They all tend to give accurate position and 1pps signal (if present) - it's only the UTC time they get wrong, and then it's out by exactly 1024 weeks. The actual GPS calculations are all done using that 1024 week cycle and UTC time is just a spinoff.

Some roll over at a date that isn't at the 10-24 week epoch : they know the data can't be before they were built, so anything in the earlier part of the cycle is automatically considered the 'next' cycle. I think NTP (where it's using GPS time as a stratum 0 reference) also adds the 1024 weeks if the receiver is giving it a stupid date.

There's a good chance there will be no problem on anything but the very oldest receivers, and if you do find one reading wrongly, set the data manually (if that's an option) - it may work it out.

The UK's Cairncross Review calls for Google, Facebook to be regulated – and life support for journalism

Adrian 4
Holmes

Watching the watchers

Surely the greatest need in journalism is to investigate governments. How's that going to work ?

Prez Trump orders Uncle Sam to step up AI efforts – we all know the White House knows a lot about artificial intelligence

Adrian 4

Re: AI

Fake Intelligence ?

Big trouble Down Under as Australian MPs told to reset their passwords amid hack attack fears

Adrian 4

It's good to know that the MPs are just like the average man in the street.

No secrets for anybody.

Lovely website you got there. Would be a shame if we, er, someone were to sink it: Google warns EU link tax will magnify media monetary misery

Adrian 4

Re: Wow

From the FA:

"One is Article 11, popularly referred to as the "link tax," which would allow online publishers to decide who can link to their news stories and to demand a fee for the privilege. "

It doesn't say anything about being compulsory. If publishers don't want to be indexed that's up to them.

HMRC: We 'rigorously tested' IR35 tax-check tool... but have almost nothing to show for it

Adrian 4

I used the tool when agreeing a contract with the Royal College of Art. It decided (quite correctly, given the unambiguous conditions) that I could operate as self-employed. But the RCA insist on running it as 'casual labour' anyway, presumably because the extra cost to both of us of doing that isn't worth the potential hassle if HMRC fail to keep their promise of 'standing by the results'.

HMRC needs to be held to account for their ineptitude and FUD. No wonder nobody trusts the government.

Almost £5k for a deskslab: Microsoft's Surface Studio 2 hits UK

Adrian 4

I don't normally correct this sort of error, but you might not realise that MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is best known for afflicting the control of muscles and nerves .. it doesn't usually mean that the sufferer lacks good judgement.

Apple puts bullet through 'Do Not Track', FaceTime snooping bug and iOS vulnerabilities

Adrian 4

It's a pity the browser authors didn't name and shame the sites known not to respect DNT. They could easily have made more fuss about those that ignore the users' request.

But then, Youtube is one of those sites. It gets a warning from (e.g.) https://learn.adafruit.com/time-tracking-cube

Chrome devs attempt to slip muzzle on resource-guzzling browser beast with 'Never-Slow Mode'

Adrian 4

Re: Better solution

"Chrome was introduced a decade ago with performance in mind. It's hard to recall that at the time the newcomer was considered fast and nimble."

So was Firefox, wasn't it ?

Probably time for another new start.

OK, it's early 2019. Has Leeds Hospital finally managed to 'axe the fax'? Um, yes and no

Adrian 4

I don't see that virtual faxes are much of an improvement over paper faxes. You're still sending images instead of semantic content, with all the problems of searching, indexing and storing that implies.

And while we're at it, can we cull the people who write a Word document and email it as an attachment when plain text would have been entirely adequate ?

Oh dear! Amazon's facial recognition is racist and sexist – and there's a JLaw deep fake that will make you want to tear out your eyes

Adrian 4

mashup

Since I've no idea who either of them are, the mashup looks perfectly reasonable.

Maybe you could do someone well known - Trump and Hillary, perhaps ?

UK's ICO slaps £120k fines on Arron Banks' insurance biz and Leave.EU campaign

Adrian 4

What's the point ?

I appreciate that this is mostly about misuse of personal information, but there's also an element of voting fraud by misleading the public.

What's the point of fining them for that ? Fining them doesn't correct that result, nor does it stand much chance of discouraging future behaviour - It's small beer compared with actual campaign costs and can easily be considered part of the cost of obtaining the result they wanted.

It needs prison sentences, banning from future political activity, a corrective information campaign and a rerun of the vote.

Musk shows off the latest power plant for Starship, replaces Tesla CFO with a millennial

Adrian 4

Is millenial that clearly defined ?

Does it mean 'born in 2000' ? Or 2001 ? Or after 2000 ? Or under 18 in 2000 ?

Or 'younger than me' ?

Swiss Public Prosecutor will probe WIPO's misconduct allegations against CIO, says his legal counsel

Adrian 4

Patents themselves have become unfit for purpose. They no longer provide temporary protection for the patent holder in exchange for disclosure to society as a whole but are instead abused as trading cards to protect large institutions from innovation.

It's hardly surprising that the officers overseeing this failure are themselves the target of corruption, and that it sometimes succeeds.

Facebook cuts off independent political ad reviewers, claims security concerns

Adrian 4

How is this done ?

"deeming computer-generated clicks illegitimate and requiring physical mouse clicks before the details behind an ad are made available"

Why would the browser allow a website to determine that ?

Apple files yet another appeal against $503m FaceTime patent payout

Adrian 4

Wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy the company, instead of paying all those lawyers ?

Did you know? Monday was Data Privacy Day. Now it's Tuesday. Back to business as usual!

Adrian 4

Good comparison.

"Velasquez added that consumers need to be motivated to become informed. She likened privacy to health, noting that it tends to be ignored until it causes pain. Your doctor can warn you to live a healthy lifestyle, but many people won't pay attention until they experience chest pains, she said."

How about if all the information about a person was considered as sensitive as the data doctors have access to, and handled as carefully ? There are failings, occasionally, but they're uncommon and punished heavily.

IEEE joins the ranks of non-backdoored strong cryptography defenders

Adrian 4

Re: I use waffle as my encryption

But lawmakers are well ahead of you there. They've been using waffle for years. Do you really think you can get it past them ?

Requests for info, gag orders and takedowns fired at GitHub users hit an all-time high last year

Adrian 4

Re: Puzzled

Or you could just push it somewhere else.

If you're not told of the reason you can't assume you're doing anything wrong : the gag order might just be to avoid criticism.

Just keep slurping: HMRC adds two million taxpayers' voices to biometric database

Adrian 4

Re: Irksome

No, as with most such organisations, we're not the customers. We're the product.

France wants in on the No Huawei Club while Canuck infosec bloke pretty insistent on ban

Adrian 4

Re: equipment is "controlled by telecom operators, not by Huawei"

Ours are mostly French, Spanish and Chinese, aren't they ?

UK.gov plans £2,500 fines for kids flying toy drones within 3 MILES of airports

Adrian 4

Re: Knee jerk reaction

You misread the OP's point. Seat belts might well make the occupants of cars safer. There's no reason for them to make the actual roads (or the unprotected other users of them) safer, and perfectly reasonable theories as to why they might do the opposite.

Just forget what Gartner said about AI in June 'cos CIOs are all over it now apparently

Adrian 4

"Maybe Gartner was wrong in its summary of AI last June. Or the CIOs were. Or both were. Or maybe the 3,000 CIOs from 89 countries that Gartner spoke to for the latest stats are wrong this time round."

Or maybe Howard is talking out of his arse ?

Sure sounds like marketingspeak to me.

"background in statistics and data management." would be more useful for manipulating figures for PR purposes than creating an intelligent machine.

I used to be a dull John Doe. Thanks to Huawei, I'm now James Bond!

Adrian 4

Re: Roll your own?

You could get one of these.

https://hiconsumption.com/2018/10/makerphone-diy-mobile-phone-kit/

I realise they couldn't make a DIY phone as slim as a Wha-Hey but green terminal blocks instead of even JST connectors do seem a bit extreme.

Microsoft partner portal 'exposes 'every' support request filed worldwide' today

Adrian 4

Re: Good stuff

They aren't.

Issues are only ever experienced by 'a small number of users'.

It WASN'T the update, says Microsoft: Windows 7 suffers identity crisis as users hit by activation errors

Adrian 4

Doesn't seem unreasonable.

Dodgy software is trying to work but may have faults.

Windows has components which are deliberately designed to disable it.

Both are capable of being faulty, and it appears that if Windows has faults everyone will forgive it.

So which has the stronger incentive to be correct ?

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

Adrian 4

Re: Can't fix stupid

Stupid is an evolutionary handicap.

Maybe the US will get the first ever Darwin award for a whole voting population.

Adrian 4

Re: "Democracy depends on politicians being able to keep their promises to the people"

"True democracies have this sharing of powers exactly to avoid nuts like Trump could do much arm unrestricted, just promising the Moon without being able nor to reach nor to pay for it."

Though having a funding system that allows a wilful president or some uncooperative politicians to shut down non-political government functions for their own selfish purposes seems like a fairly major design fault.

They should be able to switch off their own salaries and choose not to approve new items of expenditure (like the wall, which, if it was a campaign promise, was not made on the basis that taxpayers would pay for it), not shut down existing infrastructure.

Adrian 4

Re: How many Shuttles could have been kept operative..

This sounds like a job for ... STARMAN

Excuse me, sir. You can't store your things there. Those 7 gigabytes are reserved for Windows 10

Adrian 4

Tablet-PC things are screwed anyway.

I bought an Asus Transformer with windows 8.1 on it. Even after a factory reset, it didn't have enough space to update itself to the free windows 10.

This is the final straw, evil Microsoft. Making private GitHub repos free? You've gone too far

Adrian 4

Re: As ever

You pay for open source products by contributing to them.

Unless, of course, you don't. In which case I guess you are indeed the product.

Low-power chips are secret sauce behind long-life wearables

Adrian 4

Re: Lower end

You missed the earlier quote :

".. whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Adrian 4

Re: Is the next step

I have a Seiko Kinetic (which was my dad's, so it's a few years old now). It does exactly that and was designed to use a supercapacitor. They updated the design to use a NiMH cell when the supercapacitors were found to have a shorter life than rechargables, but since then it's been running happily, even if left unworn for several days.

Pewdiepie fanboi printer, Chromecast haxxx0r retreats, says they're 'afraid of being caught'

Adrian 4

Re: Youtube channel subscribers

I'm not sure if the number of subscriptions affects what google pays out. Perhaps that's a factor.

However, it's more likely that you'll notice a new upload (because google can remind you) and therefore substantially increase their viewing figures. This in turn affects their income.

So it's a way to reward your favoured channel operator, if you so wish.

More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans

Adrian 4

Re: More fuel if any is required...

It's often been noted that encrypting your network access marks you out as a possible terrorist. With every porn viewer using a VPN, Her Majesty's Spies will suddenly find themselves having to burn a lot more CPU to read our mail.

Bored IT manager automates Millennium Eve checks to ditch snoozing for boozing

Adrian 4

Re: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

So .. he was bored by just doing the email, and did all the other communication methods unnecessarily to fill time. And then automated that because .. It was too much work ? Taking away the pointless job he'd created for himself ?

Seems like he needs some training in timewasting. It should be more fun than that.

Microsoft's 2018, part 2: Azure data centres heat up and Windows 10? It burns! It burns!

Adrian 4

Re: All that elderly code is one reason for the current woes of the OS (?)

The usual problem with elderly code is not, as BB rightly says, purely that it's old. It's because someone who doesn't understand or respect its quirks messes with it - perhaps to add new (and largely pointless) shiny, perhaps just to push it through the latest compiler.

Heard the one where the boss calls in an Oracle consultant who couldn't fix the database?

Adrian 4

Re: RE: Getting one over on the boss

The best ones are where there are old outdated procedures in the documentation, but everyone follows different ones (that aren't written down) because the old ones don't work.

Staff sacked after security sees 'suspect surfer' script of shame

Adrian 4

Re: Perhaps they should apply the same rules on PCs on the Parliamentary Estate

Rule XXXIV, isn't it?

ftfy

Your two-minute infosec roundup: Drone arrests, Alexa bot hack, Windows zero-day, and more

Adrian 4

Re: Drone arrests

Glad to hear they've released the non-perpetrators. I hope they get decent compensation for the Daily Wail's doxing and what must have been a pretty unpleasant episode. I wonder why the police jumped on them in the first place ?

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Adrian 4

Re: Genies and bottles

Autonomous flying-object seeking drones on guard at an airport.

Yup. That'll fly.

Adrian 4

Re: Tinsel might do the job or a net

I'm imagining what the pilot of a helicopter would have to say about suspending a rotor-jamming net underneath their aircraft.

Adrian 4

It doesn't really matter how much damage it would or wouldn't cause. If it were a military airfield in a conflict, they're be no problem : flights would continue unaffected and if one was damaged - very likely not fatally - at least the drone would be gone.

But a commercial airport ? If they keep flying and there's any damage, non-damaging collision, near miss etc. guess who'll take the heat ? The drone pilot ? A little. The airport operators ? A lot.

Adrian 4

Re: Don't they do risk management any more?

Of course they do.

But short-term risk management is aimed at not getting anybody important killed. It therefore consists of stopping flights and getting some people to hunt down the perps. Longer term risk management related to keeping people happy and the economic viability of the airport hasn't come into action yet.