Posts by Robert Carnegie 4557 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009
Is it possible that every other reader is too mature to pretend to believe that when Ingenuity is in flight mode, radio communication is turned off... like flight mode on my cellphone?
I've been here some time, so I say no.
You're all pretending to be too mature to pretend to believe etc.
Vote as your conscience allows, but I know the truth. ;-)
I downvoted because you didn't give a reason to have adverts on a web site that apparently only you use, intentionally. As for consent, since it is your web site, presumably you already consent to everything that it does.
I suppose that I could find your web site, accidentally, if Google knows about it. If it is a hosted Wiki, for instance.
Then you would have to have consent control on any feature of it that amounts to me providing information to the web site, instead of the other way around.
Otherwise, I suppose that "Authorized users only" and a login or PIN prompt as the front page would be enough to legally keep me out and let you in.
That just leaves that (1) running a web site may be not your main job or skill set and some of this stuff can be hard, and (2) what if you are temporarily working at the hardware key logger factory in the testing department.
For (2) you could create a separate account in your web site, stevie_when_at_keyloggers when you log in from that job.
For (1) you could just put all the data for your personal use onto Facebook and let them do the admin. But then using that in the workplace may be frowned on.
I think you'll find, all the cookies are pre-allowed unless you select to choose what to allow. Even when choosing offers you then Yes, No, and No by default.
And I read those carefully just in case it is No to Necessary cookies and Yes to All the targeted advertising. Or in case they have a new name for it like "Facilitated communications" that turns out to mean "We sell your browsing history to criminal transplant organ dealers".
A site could assume no consent if you are not clicking from one page to another, and not bother the user. They choose not to do that. (I'm thinking once you use an internal link on the web site, that would be the time that you discuss the relationship.)
A site could install rootkit software on your computer and capture everything that you see and do from then on. It is very illegal to do that, but they could.
They could fill your computer with cookies but that's also illegal in the EU, and presumably in the UK for now.
They can refuse service to EU users. That happens.
A broadly standard design offers "Cookie me lots" and "I have reservations" buttons. Click on "I have reservations" and you may get a small list of yes/no options to set, an "I've decided" button, and "Cookie me lots" is still there too, which isn't fair. I've even seen over 100 buttons to select or reject each of a web site's advertisers. That is usually enough for me to leave. You can almost guarantee that some of the 100 buttons no longer work.
Sites where I refused consent often ask me again some time later. A cookie nominally has a defined lifespan, expiry date, and presumably, refusing consent puts a "Refused" cookie in my browser, until it expires. I haven't examined that, but I think it may be a month lifetime, or less. And of course I also get the prompt in a different browser or a different PC. They could make it fifty years, but they don't. Maybe it's fifty years when you say Yes.
The Opera browser, which I use, has a mode since 2019, happily optional, to consent automatically to these cookie requests. Yes to everything, unless I misunderstood the announcement. Vida Vivaldi, though I'm sticking with Opera for now.
I voted Leave because I firmly believe that the "Christian" nations of Europe, plus America of course, aiding, abetting and supplying perpetual wars in the Middle East is morally wrong and unfair. I want to leave the Middle East alone, and have our wars here in Europe.
It's puzzling and the research or the article may be simply wrong, but a reading that makes more sense is that if God had made Her mind up and made it known, then the matter would be decided.
Which way is still unclear; the God of Jerusalem wants all nations to come together there (which historically hasn't worked out well), the God of Babel wants us to be divided and uncooperative.
I keep wanting to find out what Northern Ireland thinks of Orange Catholicism.
One or more of Arthur C. Clarke's futuristic novels featured a religion called Chrislam, which sounds like a bad idea by the second syllable. I think it used virtual reality indoctrination, you could visit heaven, like being inside a Jehovah's Witness magazine. And they were either against space travel generally, or against stopping colossal asteroids crashing into the Earth and killing everyone, specifically.
The article carefully distinguishes between Churchgoers (mostly Remain) and Anglicans (mostly Leave). Churchgoing Anglicans appear to be a contradiction in terms and, obviously, a minority.
That Boris Johnson is a bit of a Henry the Eighth, isn't he? Bastards. He's got lots of them. No one knows how many. He also has several illegitimate children.
On the question of suppressing ANSI color effects in Linux statements, searching for (ansi color filter) was fruitful. Things like "ansifilter", "strip-ansi", and clever spells in sed appeared. You also can substitute colors with some methods. What I don't know is whether these methods work with interactive processes. But it seems that you can bland out some of what's on the screen by filtering.
Something else from the novel "Cyberbooks" I think - a character has a voice activated lock on his garage or something, it does not ever recognise his voice until he loses his temper and screams at it in apoplectic rage, Humiliation that he well deserves. It'd be a bugger on your office PC though, if we're still going to have those.
1 random letter is worth at least 4 letters of a random word, and I like to type as little as possible. ;-) RaNdOm CaSe slows me down more, so no thanks, and I can mentally cache 5 letters at a time (problem: I think Sainsbury online shopping doesn't allow spaces), though some of my txetm odnar has me struggling to remember where the next key is on the kebyarod. English doesn't have rules like "x after t except after e".
A slight catch - typing English words is about 1 bit of randomicity per keystroke. Actual random letters mean a password of a certain length is much better than if it contains dictionary words.
Having said that, you can make a long passphrase but just use the initials of words as the password. It still may be not as random as you want, though.
Also, you probably will encounter systems that don't allow real words or repeated letters but do insist on mixed case, numbers, and punctuation in the password. The other day I found that Microsoft SQL Server was enforcing this. It doesn't really help if it does not stop you setting onetwo12! which it can't really (ish).
And you may have to change them every month, grr.
I favour theyw illne verge tthis O varied where necessary with 0 or O! and possibly a leading capital if so enforced. The actual letters should be random and kept on a little card very safely.
Yeah, I'm still looking for news of support e.g. the rest of this year, though maybe theoretical i.e. if no updates are required then there will be none. What I can look up, that I know of, is which versions were supported recently, when an update came out.
It crosses my mind now that iOS 12 has been updated to include the SARS-COV-2 exposure notification function - my phone says hello in Bluetooth to yours when we meet, then if I get sick, I tell my phone to broadcast that it and I probably have been infectious, and your phone remembers that we met - and so while Apple and Google have been happy to say no to some more oppressive British government ideas about that, they probably wouldn't drop support for devices which people are using for that purpose, until SARS 2 is well dead, or has gone from "pandemic" (spreading everywhere) to "endemic" (just everywhere).
And we might have to patch the OS to stop a virus exposure notification virus.
I always ask when I can: is there a basis for the general public to know that an iOS version is eligible for updates, besides (1) it is the latest version and there isn't a new iPhone due in the near future, or (2) it got an update not very long ago?
I haven't seen it published, and I'm on my second iPhone, a 7, from second hand retail because I assumed - wrongly it seems - that only the latest major version and the phones or devices that run it were maintained. But there's a lot of unsupported phones in the second hand channel.
Thank you!
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/27476753-english-norwegian-joke-book
"A man had been in prison for twenty years. When he left, they gave him his old clothes. In the pocket he found a ticket from a shoe repair shop. Perhaps the shop is still there. Perhaps they still have my old shoes, he thought to himself. So off he went and sure enough it was there. 'I've been on holiday for a long time, I wonder if you have my shoes?' asked the man. The old man went into the back of the shop and came back after two minutes. 'They'll be ready on Thursday.' "
I found the search words glass, volume, deceptive, to work in Google - though most buying results are antiques on eBay. Or, you can get "reusable ice cubes" which are a plastic cube or other shape - or solid stainless steel - to freeze then put into drinks; I expect you could glue one or two inside a glass, and it wouldn't be obvious.
Or, browse for glasses which look like they look like they contain more than they do. Or practise discreetly inserting your thumb into the glass while they refill it.
A modern product is an amusing half pint beer glass which looks like the usual tall glass cut in half vertically. Or get two, so that you can be served "the other half" at the same time.
To me the complexity of this sounds like a way to not tell salespeople what their commission actually is, and to not pay them.
The comedy sci fi novel "Cyberbooks" parodied that in the context of book authors. The premise is that an electronic book viewer was invented (before they actually were) and will revolutionise the publishing industry, but publishing fights back. A scene completely unrelated to this plot, as far as I could tell, has a publisher's accountant being scolded by their boss because their design of a legally required statement to an author would accidentally let the author do just a little maths on some of the numbers and work out how much money the author really should be getting. So the accountant is sent back to confuse it properly. (Something like that.)
Isn't the salesman's bonus effectively paid by the customer? They pay £ X + Y, they get product and services worth £ X, the salesman gets £ Y. So, reducing £ Y should save the customer some money. It won't, of course, but it should.
The other way around, sort of... selling the old family home, the agent offered to take a low fee plus a rather high proportionate commission compared to their usual terms. Collectively, we said yes. They and we did get a high price when it sold, but I wondered if they saw it, and us, coming.
I could have this wrong, but I think if you patched your Exchange server but it already had the malware put on it, it's still there. Until the FBI deleted it.
Some alternative possible (not necessarily legal) actions for them:
Rename the malware file from NAUGHTYTHINGS.EXE to NAUGHTYTHINGS.FBI to inactivate it. (But that file might exist already.)
Drop a copy of the EICAR not-virus named GOOGLE-FBI-CVE-2021-26855.EXE. Sometime, someone will notice.
Replace the actual malware with FBI-ARE-WATCHING-YOU.EXE which reports on attempts to connect.
"Allamagoosa is a science fiction short story by English author Eric Frank Russell, originally published in the May 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction" says Wikipedia, and quite like your story. Perhaps not coincidentally.
An item on a military starship's inventory is unidentifiable and not located, the "offog". With effort, a story is concocted of how it was lost. This causes greater trouble.
Ah, Wikipedia goes on: "James Nicoll has commented that it is 'apparently based on an urban legend'. In fact, it is essentially a science-fictional retelling of a traditional tall story called 'The Shovewood'."
Places where you spend money usually already have a terminal to access your bank account.
But yes: a system where you provide a key that allows lookup of your information, maybe backed up with you using your own device to release the information, does not have to give up all your secrets.
It could let them see a photo of the authorised user. This isn't really secret if you are there and they can see you anyway. It could reveal that you have some nice earrings if you were wearing them in the photo.
But then you need double sided printing. However, it's a good point that putting that sort of thing away from the bit that you might show to a friend, is safer.
If someone hasn't already suggested it below, it also would be nice for social media to scan images and blur or better, overwrite text and QR codes in a photograph by default.
Google Street View is a little hit and miss on erasing house numbers e.g. 96 Trafalgar Crescent, Rockall may or may not have a visible "96" on the front of the building. However, I probably typed "96 Trafalgar Crescent" to get there. In the course of business, I'm interested in whether the property appears to be a field of wheat or a smouldering ruin - either may be not the present situation but it will account for letters not being answered.
I'm pretty sure there are reasons to not parse an HTTP response while you're waiting for an HTTPS one to come - or not. However, you'll bookmark your http-//-my-device - or just the IP address - and use that.
That's a thought though - shouldn't a security conscious browser try to convert HTTP bookmarks to use HTTPS instead. Do they already? I don't think so, because I think that would be mayhem and I'd have noticed.
I imagine you only get paid when someone actually uses your network. Or, I could subscribe, but not let anyone actually connect. Or it may be more nuanced... anyway, users seem to connect to your network through an app, so, do you have to be home with your phone, for this to work?
There's a free (?) Windows utility called "AutoHotkey" - originally written for games keystroke macros, but I use it for certain tasks where I want one window to stay on top, but maybe out of the focus, while I work in another.
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