* Posts by VinceH

3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009

White hat banned for revealing vulns in news sites used by London councillors

VinceH
Facepalm

Yes, in that that's what he metaphor.

Oh, hang on, no, that's a double entendre, isn't it?

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

VinceH

Re: Sci Fi becomes reality

In that case, it may be something I haven't read (or something I've completely forgotten about).

Mind you, had the subject come up a few days ago I might not have remembered The Preserving Machine, either. I just happened to be browsing some old titles a couple of days back and remembering which ones I'd read as a child and what they were about.

VinceH

Re: Sci Fi becomes reality

Philip K Dick's "The Preserving Machine" springs to mind, but (having not read it since, probably, the late 1970s, when I may have been too young to fully appreciate/understand it all) ISTR it was more about turning music into animals as a way of preserving it.

Animals which then began to evolve.

Win 10 Anniversary: 'We're beginning to check in final code' says Microsoft

VinceH

Re: There is absolutely no way

"How about listening to your customers "

That's one of the problems - with the telemetry, they are listening to their customers - but in a creepy, unwanted way.

You can’t sit there, my IoT desk tells me

VinceH

Re: I see how this is shaping up

"The only result of all that is that we will be trained to do as the computer says without thinking about it, because some numpty programmed it that way. Advertiser tells the Computer says jump to say 'buy', and we will jump buy."

FTFY.

Science non-fiction: Newly spotted alien world bathes in glow of three stars

VinceH

Re: One to read...

Nightfall

(That's the short, not the Asimov/Silverburg novel)

App-V birthday to you, Win10: Virty tools baked in Anniversary update

VinceH

Re: The Beginning

"There is nothing wrong with your operating system. Do not attempt to adjust the settings. We are controlling the configuration. If we wish to make it more useful, we will add features. If we wish to make it less useful, we will remove functionality. We control the applications. We control the connectivity..."

5 years, 2,300 data breaches. What'll police do with our Internet Connection Records?

VinceH

Re: Theresa May is Watching You

Project Orac

Theft of twenty-somethings' IDs surges

VinceH

Deja vu

I'm sure I've seen something along the lines of the linked video before - people being presented with information about themselves and being surprised by it - but I'm not sure of the context, whether it was a YouTube thing, or a small piece in a TV programme, or something.

And in both cases - this video and the one I remember seeing before - I am saddened to say that my surprise is somewhat lacking.

By Jove! NASA's Juno prepares to slip into orbit around Jupiter

VinceH
Coat

Re: MON/Hydrazine

In this case it's Jovian Flew.

Martha Lane Fox: Brexit is all about MEEEEeeee!

VinceH

Re: Martha Fox - is she still a thing in the news?

Google doesn't need to. Every time I saw the initials MLF in the article, my mind's voice pronounced them with an 'i'

Man sues YET AGAIN for chance to marry his computer

VinceH

Re: ReL Windows computers aren't marriage material because

If it wasn't for the mention of Apple, I'd be inclined to think he wants to put his dongle in Microsoft. (NSFW)

Brexit-bored Brits back to bashing the bishop after ballot box blues

VinceH

'I do wonder what sort of person sits down at their computer, opens up google, and searches for "porn".'

Something that has always amused me is when I was analysing my website logs back in the late 1990s, it turned out someone had found their way to my website after putting "where can I download soft porn" into a search engine.

Yes, someone was searching on the internet for soft porn.

All of those words with the exception of 'porn' would have been on most of the pages of my site - so it's easy to see how it happened, though I'm not sure how many pages of results the visitor went through to find my site!

Those Xbox Fitness vids you 'bought'? Look up the meaning of the word 'rent'

VinceH

Re: "problem is that Microsoft has billions still to burn before they finally fold"

"My preferred choice for online purchase is : I pay for something, download it and IT IS MINE FOREVER MORE. If that is not how it works, then my money is most likely staying in my pocket."

That's my attitude as well. If it's a digital purchase, I want to download it so that I can use/watch/listen to it as often as I like, when I like - not stream it, which puts the goods at risk of $company not just moving the goalposts, but removing them and replacing them with a basketball net.

I might occasionally opt for something that is only streamed, but when I do I am fully aware that I might one day lose access - and the price I am willing to pay therefore reflects that.

VinceH

Re: There's an old saying

"Stop giving using Microsoft money products"

FTFY!

(And yes, I am still using a Windows computer, unfortunately)

You can be my wingman any time! RaspBerry Pi AI waxes Air Force top gun's tail in dogfights

VinceH
Coat

Re: The Goverment bid....

Don't panic! According to the headline it's using a RaspBerry Pi, and the article says it's a RaspberryPi - so I think the Raspberry Pi is safe from that possible future.

Meet the grin reaper: Password manager now snaps login SELFIES

VinceH

Re: Photos?

"I don't think this is anything new, groundbreaking, or useful over system that already exist (like just getting an email / notification whenever I access my account - even my server host does this "You just logged into your manager control panel. If this was not you...")."

Quite so. As you say, the photo isn't necessary - a simple confirmation request will achieve the same thing*. I'm inclined to think, therefore, that the photo aspect screams of, at best, gimmick. At worst, it's smoke and mirrors - a veil to make people less inclined to think about it to assume there's face recognition involved.

* And both are useless if your phone is stolen. You can still get in by use of the password - actual security - but if your phone's unprotected, then the photo or confirmation methods would provide you with less security than a padlock made of cheese.

The best way to find oxygen on Mars? Friggin LASERS, of course

VinceH
Coat

I did not know they had sharks on board the rover.

Curiosity: The Mars rover equipped with lasers and 'manned' by sharks.

Ransomware slams corporate Office 365 users with macro storm

VinceH
Coat

Re: audio system to read out its ransom note.

Probably something like this, perhaps?

Down and out in the Middle Kingdom: Beijing is sinking

VinceH

"I'd swear that hill on my walk to work is getting steeper and steeper!"

"That's because it is!"

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

VinceH

Re: 'EU' -> 'UK' -> 'K'

We should just call ourselves the Land of Make Believe. Or Fantasy Island.

51% of us voted on the basis of fantasy, so that makes sense.

'Leave EU means...' WHAT?! Britons ask Google after results declared

VinceH
Facepalm

Re: Seriously...

"51.9%, actually"

No, that's evidence that while a person can be clever, people are stupid.

Icon for the people regretting their choice and wishing they could change it.

Judge rules FBI can hack any time, any, place, anywhere

VinceH

All will be revealed in season 5, I guess. Started airing at the start of last month in Overpuddle, I believe.

Zuck covers up mic and webcam because sharing isn't always good

VinceH
Facepalm

Re: Bad CMS! Bad!

You do realise there's a link to it (albeit via Twitter) in the article? But good point, though - not showing the [relevant part of] the actual picture should be a facepalm moment for El Reg.

Open letter from EPO staff pleads with country reps to fire president

VinceH

They need to be careful, in case he gets so far up himself he starts saying "Off with their heads!"

[Method of detachment of head from body...]

Holy kittens! YouTube screens go blank

VinceH
Big Brother

Re: "Funny" error messages

"Who the fuck is we?"

The various TLAs.

Bees with numberplates will soon be buzzing around London. Why?

VinceH

Re: Thorax?

"I don't think that student got very good marks."

Quite right. It doesn't contain a U.

VinceH
Coat

Re: Is that 2 bee?

"I am not a pencil, I am a free bee!"

Microsoft joins battery-saving browser bandwagon with Edge claims

VinceH

Re: He who controls the OS...

Yesterday, I was presented with a laptop on which Microsoft were quite obviously trying to save power.

How? Windows 10 was being terribly efficient by not bothering to populate the task bar with anything, and not making the start menu accessible.

VinceH

Re: Great

"A similarly large majority would, in fact, answer "google" when asked what browser they use."

Quite. Conversation yesterday.

Me: "Type this into the address bar..." <starts reciting URL>

User: <Starts typing into the Google search field.>

Me: "No, I'm giving you an address. You don't have to search for it."

User: "Oh, so I can go straight to it in Google?"

Me: "What? It's nothing to do with Google."

User: <Opens a new tab in Chrome, clicks address bar> "See, Google."

Netflix picks fight with internet exchange industry

VinceH

Re: $22,000 a year – a "pretty good hourly rate,"

When I saw that figure and that conclusion, I initially thought the same and wondered if there was a zero missing. Then I spotted the words "board members". He's saying, therefore, that they do no other work for the company than sit on board meetings, and that they are getting that $22K for not many hours at all.

How's your driving, Elon? Musk tweets that Tesla Model S 'floats'

VinceH

Re: I would like to know

"Don't stall, that is all."

I used to off-road, and my brother still does. I have a photo somewhere of him on the bonnet of his vehicle part way across a point where a river crosses our route, after someone had thrown him a strap to attach to the car - having done just that. 8)

Telco bosses' salaries must take heat for cyber attacks, says MPs' TalkTalk enquiry

VinceH

'The Parliamentary committee's report reflects this, recommending that “CEO compensation should be linked to effective cybersecurity” and also recommended that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) “should introduce a series of escalating fines, based on the lack of attention to threats and vulnerabilities which have led to previous breaches.”'

CEO compensation - no. Fines - yes.

The problem with the CEO's pay being affected (i.e. reduced - or possibly not increased next year) is that they'll be paying tax on that salary. Reduce the salary; reduce the tax - so this "punishment" is effectively a tax deductible version of a fine.

(Also, the company's bottom line is improved by the limited salary - they'll have to pay corporation tax on that, obviously, but consider the rate of corporation tax versus the rate for the tax band that Harding will be in.)

Let the CEO have their salaries, let them pay their tax dues on it. *Then* make them pay a fine out of their net income.

Tor torpedoed! Tesco Bank app won't run with privacy tool installed

VinceH

Re: "preventing free speech and internet security"

"Free Speech is not guaranteed by Tesco."

No, but it is also not something they are responsible for restricting or preventing. They do not have that right, and they also have no right to decide what you can and can't run on your device.

This isn't terribly far away from refusing to let you access online banking if you don't have cRapport installed.

You Acer holes! PC maker leaks payment cards in e-store hack

VinceH
Unhappy

"Acer did not say how many customers had their details swiped."

Don't worry. I'm sure it will only be "a small number of people" who have been affected.

Tim Peake to return to Earth after six months floating around in space

VinceH

Re: Speed?

Out of curiosity, I thought I'd check. The article is very simplified in terms of the descent and deceleration.

According to this, the descent is slowed from 755 feet per second (226.5m/s) to 5 feet per second (1.5m/s).

1.5m/s is 5.4km/hour - so rounded, 5km/hour is correct. However, the devil is in the detail.

The 'chutes aren't the sole method of deceleration: There are two pilot parachutes and a drogue which bring it down from the the 755 feet per second to 262 feet per second (78.6 m/s). The main 'chute then brings it down to 24 feet per second (7.2m/s) and finally (and quite literally at the very last second) some small engines fire to reduce the speed to that final 1.5m/s.

Fascinating stuff.

VinceH
Coat

Re: Speed?

It slows down a lot over the course of those 10km.

For it to take two hours to descend those final ten kilometres (i.e. at 5km/hour) would require an instant deceleration from the speed at which it is travelling to that 5km/hour speed the moment the 'chute opens.

At least, that's how I think it works. But then, I'm not even a brain surgeon, so rocket science is way beyond me.

Kill Flash now. Or patch these 36 vulnerabilities. Your choice

VinceH

Re: completely irrelevent but love that movie

Brilliant film. And a good few years since I last watched all three. I have since picked up a cheap copy of the undoubtedly crap remake of the first (or is it the second, which was as much a remake of the first as it was a sequel) - so watching all four might be on the cards soon.

Or I might hold off until I have my hands on the series.

Lester Haines: RIP

VinceH
Pint

Given the time he's spent on it, and the sad fact that he'll never see the project come to fruition, that would indeed be a very fitting tribute.

Boffins decipher manual for 2,000-year-old Ancient Greek computer

VinceH
Thumb Up

Re: Old news

"I remember watching a documentary some years ago about this."

The Two Thousand Year Old Computer perchance? An excellent documentary - the sort of thing that makes the licence fee worthwhile.

Edit: While looking for the lego version on YouTube, I found the documentary itself there.

VinceH
Pint

Re: Bah! (@ AC)

"THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!! for that link."

Indeed. Now added to my feed. That AC deserves many of these -->

Users fear yet another hack as TalkTalk services go down

VinceH
Trollface

"whats the chances that TalkTalk have taken their servers offline because of the TeamViewer hack?"

Actually, no. I'm not a customer but I did (in a round about way) report a fault to them in the latter half of last week: I sent an email to a Tiscali address, which got rejected because a TalkTalk MX somewhere between me and the destination - I send through my domain hosting company's mail servers - was blacklisted for spam.

This amused me because Carphone Warehouse bought Tiscali and rolled it into TalkTalk before offloading them, making Tiscali is part of TalkTalk, so I commented about it on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the people that do their Twitter feed caught wind of it and quizzed me on the details, then said they'd pass it to their email team for investigation.

So they've probably taken the whole network down to get that MX de-listed.

VinceH

Re: BT Here but.....

Because he said something positive about a company that some people don't like?

This is how the EU's supreme court is stripping EU citizens of copyright protections

VinceH

Re: Copyright a hyperlink?

The problem is that the situation the article is discussing are where the hyperlinks are to stuff that is itself subject to copyright, and which has been published without the owner's permission.

So the logical answer seems to me not to make those hyperlinks subject to copyright, but to find anyone who publishes them guilty of a crime of, say, "facilitating copyright infringement".

VinceH
Facepalm

Re: I don't fully understand...

'Your argument (possibly made more in hope than expectation) is "Not illegal. Because internet."'

Says the guy who's response began with the words:

"Uh. Because it's the internet"

Microsoft's paid $60 per LinkedIn user – and it's a bargain, because we're mugs

VinceH

Re: Amazingly LinkedIn just got worse

"Alas, that won't help. As far as I can tell, they're hanging on to the data you delete"

At this point I smile at the nonsense I've put on my LinkedIn profile. Some of it is real, but most of it is just silly - such as being a member of the Pie Eaters Association, and that my first job involved monitoring clients' pie purchases and stock levels.

Every time someone I know tells me I should take it more seriously, I add some more stupidity.

Fresh hell for TalkTalk customers: TeamView trap unleashed

VinceH

Re: My favorite

"I've played along with a scammer, trying to do everything he asked me to do. I didn't tell him I was using a Linux box, with no internet access, it took about an hour before he finally twigged that he was being taken for a ride."

The one time I tried that it didn't work very well. I was at my parents place when I answered the phone, and when I started acting a bit dim the guy spoke to me by name: But not my name, my youngest brothers' name, which caught me off guard and ruined the whole thing.

And it's only now that I've put two and two together: My brother was a TalkTalk customer at one point.

(He often gives my parents' number as a contact number due to his mental health issues).

I wish I could remember exactly how long ago it was so I could correlate it to the TalkTalk HackHack - but the truth is while I'm thinking earlier this year, it may be that the timing of events in the news may be affecting my recollection.

VinceH

Re: This is interesting

"In fairness to TalkTalk (that stuck in the back of my throat a bit) - I've had 6 phone call attempts to "assist me with issues using TeamViewer" and 11 email attempts asking to add such and such a person on TeamViewer - I've never been a TalkTalk customer and the emails have come through Hotmail.

So I don't think it's just confined to them."

Well, in fairness to your poor suffering throat, the TeamViewer problem that's been in the news recently doesn't start with phishing emails that try (from the sounds of what you describe) to get you using it or whatever. That problem is people that already have TeamViewer installed, and someone manages to access it remotely - no phishing necessary.

So I think you're commenting on a different (if slightly related) issue.

VinceH

I doubt if there will ever be enough popcorn for this.

Brexit threatens Cornish pasty's racial purity

VinceH
Joke

Re: Heathens!!

Well colour me surprised. I had no idea the real thing is crimed around the side and not the top - so I've been buying and eating (and very much enjoying) fake Cornish pasties... in Cornwall.

The place is obviously filled with treacherous imposters. There is only one solution - we should separate it from the rest of this great country, and force it to become an independent nation state. If it wants to, it can apply to join the EU in its own right.