* Posts by Anonymous South African Coward

3212 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2010

Protip: No, the CIA will not call off a pedophilia probe into your life in exchange for Bitcoin

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

You, sir, are to be commended for wasting the time of ne'er-do-wells :)

Keep it up, and keep us informed of your successes! :)

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Run for it!

<i.Recursive algorithms the preferred method of killing a computer.</i>

Bah.

More than one way to skin a c*t (kill somebody's purdy compoota) :

1. Hard reset tool (hammer)

2. 240V directly onto any exposed terminals

3. Remove heatsink and let the CPU die a hot and bothersome death (not always effective)

4. Insert family of rodents into computer box with lots of food and water. Nature will take its course.

5. Iron fillings. Lots of these.

6. Empty a tin of Coke directly on the motherboard and do not wipe up. Bonus points if the motherboard is operational at the time of outpouring.

Others are there, but you get the gist.

Software algorithms will only make it perform undesirably, and can be fixed with the right PFY/knowhow.

Hardware algorithms will make it stop performing permanently. :)

Take your pick.

PS - block of cheese in the mainframe + family of rodents = great fun

New twist in underworld of alleged code, data theft: Two, er, boffins accused of trying to steal, uh, a river model

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Basically now a he-said, she-said type of thing with the truth sandwiched somewhere in between.

Church roofs? Nyet, say Russian scrap thieves, we're taking this bridge

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Coat

Glad to hear that nicking railroad and other stuff is not limited to south africa.

Ready to emigrate to Mars where there's no ne'er-do-wells yet.

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Bah, us Saffer guavamint is one jump ahead of that lot - by making visa requirements very strick and confusticated.

Pharma-testing biz Eurofins Scientific says it fell victim to 'new version' of malware

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Over the last weekend...

... I received two emails "from <your domain>" "your <email> is holding (12) messages" and "clutter behind the scenes (12)"

pretending to be some kind of mail-filtering service affiliated with my mail service - but with the retrieve/release links going to some dodgy-looking domain-names - so actually some kind of phishing/malware.

It's a new ruse, but likely quite effective.

We also got those kind of emails. Luckily the persons who got it asked IT first.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

One way to piss off an already overstressed sysadmin is demanding information and the such in the middle of a crisis.

Leave the IT team be, they're doing what they can, and moreso with an unknown equation.

IEEE says it may have gone about things the wrong Huawei, lifts ban after US govt clearance

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Reverse ferret?

I'll just clear down the database before break. What's the worst that could happen? It's a trial

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Coat

Re: "Trial" system...

Now that was real fun probably...

Ye olde pubbe with good dosh be waiting, let's skedaddle outta here.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: BTDTGTTS

Wanted to reboot one node on a Microslop HA cluster, but used the shutdown command instead.

shutdown -s -t 00 instead of shutdown -r -t 00...

Luckily a tech was onsite to power the server up again.

Das geeks hit crowdfunding target: IBM mainframes are coming home

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Pint

Excellent story and start to a new week!

Here's to these brave guys!

I'm hoping El Reg will keep up a weekly/monthly column with information on the restore process done so far :)

Facebook ordered to open internal docs for investors livid about losing cash following data slurp scandal

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Faceboob must die.

Oh, the massive sky dong? Contrails from 'standard' F-35 training, US Air Force insists

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

And the Dong has a luminous nose.

LTO-8 tape media patent lawsuit cripples supply as Sony and Fujifilm face off in court

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

The spokeswoman added, "To date, Fujifilm has not offered LTO8 for sale."

whut? then why the squabble?

IMHO a patent can be enforced only if the patent holder makes use of it, produces items which will then fall under the patent

no items or production, no patent protection needed, so why bicker about it then?

I say, Eaton boys are flogging spare capacity on data centre UPS systems to keep lights on in Ireland

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

the house of hufflepuff can be used to spin wind turbines

huff

and

puff

but yea, that is the drawback of renewables.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Had to go to cApe Town (only Capies will understand the capitalization) from Pretoria, I trundled up to security, put my bag in for scanning - and they confiscated my screwdriver and torx bit set. Blah, forgotten to take it out at home.

Lesson learnt. Tools is a definite no-no as is certain knife thingies.

Gaze in awe at the first ever movie of a solar eclipse from recording long thought lost forever

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Fascinating

Was about to say fascinating, but you beat me to the post. Baaaaaah.

:p

But I digress.

Quite fascinating, to see that they had the means to capture a solar eclipse back then. Must've been no mean feat what with all the equipment etc required, and the long journey involved.

My inquiring mind now want to know when was the first-ever porn movie made? Should be interesting, maybe one of El Reg's staff can have a look at it? Or even @alidabbs, seeing he did a column on sex quite recently (today).

As for the question :

I wonder how many other gems like this are hidden away moldering in some dusty archive.

Sadly, we will never know.

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

"Hiya Skipper! It looks like you're preparing a complex presentation due in an hour's time, and I've got several updates all lined up and raring to go. Off they go, it should not impact your work at all." -last famous words of Binky before it gets chucked out of the window on the 13th floor

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

There was an age when UI's had gorgeously crafted icons and was a joy to use, and it was easy to see which button was live or not.

Nowadays you have to guess and poke Button A before poking Button B in order to see which one's live or not.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: The future is called Powerpoint

Wasn’t there a concept of document oriented computing a few years back? You don’t open a document with an application, you tell an application to deal with this document. Or something. It hasn’t come to pass anyway.

Taligent/Pink ?

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Seamless updates with no interuptions?

Seamless updates with no interuptions? That'll be Linux then.

Only interruption I've had once on Linux Mint when running updates was to have Firefox close itself and restart when its turn for an update rolled round.

Apart from that single incident, never had any issue with updates ~ but I prefer to do it manually so I know that it is updating, and not get a nasty surprise.

Billywindows, on the other hand, updates when it want to, and it is absolutely infuriating when it need to reboot... and... takes... bloody... ages... to... run... windows... updates...

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Seamless updates "invisibly done in the background; the update experience is deterministic, reliable, and instant with no interruptions".

Yeah right, pulle the other onne, it has belles onne. Instant updates? Reliable updates? Yeah right, you can only have one of these two.

Secure by default since "the state is separated from the operating system; compute is separated from applications; this protects the user from malicious attacks throughout the device lifecycle".

Ne'er-do-wells ALWAYS think outside the box. This mean they WILL find a way to bollox it up. Get real.

Always connected. "All of a user's devices are aware and connected to each other."

And what if I decide I want to remain OFFline? Or that I'm in an area with notoriously poor connectivity? Or is that Skynet becoming self-aware?

AI-powered with "cloud-connected experiences that use the compute power of the cloud to enhance users' experiences on their devices. These experiences are powered by AI, so a modern OS is aware of what a user is doing tomorrow and helps them get it done."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave"

Multi-input. "People can use pen, voice, touch, even gaze – whatever input method a user wants to use works just as well as the keyboard and mouse."

But will these be reliable and consistent across various updates/upgrades/revisions?

Multi-form factor. "A modern OS has the right sensor support and posture awareness to enable the breadth of innovative form factors and applications that our partner ecosystem will deliver."

Baaaaaaaaah, it will be "one size fits all" to cut down on costs and maximize revenue.

Chinese software nasty enslaves stadium-load of servers, puts them to work digging up digital dosh in crypto-mines

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Sheep and chicken farming in the boondocks is starting to sound better and better by the day...

Two weeks after Microsoft warned of Windows RDP worms, a million internet-facing boxes still vulnerable

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Basic security

Just something to add to my list - most AWS VM instances make use of RDP. I have to assume that others (Azure etc) also have the same drawback, and that you'll have to set up RDP on your VM in order to access it remotely.

Gonna be achy breaky heart time soon...

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Basic security

Why on earth are there over a million public-facing open RDP ports in the first place?

Because of various reasons.

1. PHB decreed that it is too much of a schlepp to VPN first

2. Techie got booted and a beancounter is running the IT show

3. n00b IT techie thinking that a strong P455w0rd will keep them ne'er-do-wells out for good. Muhuhaha

4. Some pissed-off IT guy somewhere did this on purpose to nuke the company's network

5. Router does not support PPTP VPN or PPTP VPN passthrough, so they're using RDP passthrough.

6. Some researcher did this on purpose to see if their product can migitate a bad event.

PROTIP : The brilliant idea of changing the RDP port from default 3389 to something else DOES NOT HELP. A portscan will sniff it out and your ass will see a six-pack whoopass.

Infosec bloke claims: Pornhub owner shafted me after I exposed gaping holes in its cartoon smut platform

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Keep it up for long enough, and soon enough world+dog will make use of vulnerabilities on your network, but will not warn you of any.

There's a scarily good 'deepfakes' YouTube channel that's quietly growing – and it's freaking everyone out

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Interesting channel

Hilariously, someone in the comments of one of the Fight Club clips suggested that they do a face swap of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off.

ROFL

For real? Or was it somebody taking the piss?

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: Now that's not SciFi...

Wizard's First Rule.

German anti-cartel bods tell IBM to 'warten' as T-Systems deal probe extended by two weeks

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

IBM want to move into other markets, away from Big Iron?

DXC Technology seeks volunteers to take redundancy. No grads, apprentices, and 'quota carrying' sales folk

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Automation? What automation? If there's only salespersons and n00b techies in the company, who's gonna care about automation?

That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Trollface

What an excellent idea to sow some disinformation. Courier some "highly technical and sensitive" documents from Pointe A to Pointe B, and hope that Pointe C will happen in between with some sneaky lifting and copying of said "highly technical and sensitive" documents.

Then climb on your high horse and cuss the courier responsible out for the mess, to make it look more authentic.

Then sit back and bask in a Jobbe Jolly Well Donne.

trollface, coz that's what I'll do to sow disinformation amongst my enemies. Muhuhahaha.

Tesla's autonomous lane changing software is worse at driving than humans, and more

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

A Tesla spokesperson retaliated and said: “Navigate on Autopilot is based on map data, fleet data, and data from the vehicle’s sensors. However, it is the driver’s responsibility to remain in control of the car at all times, including safely executing lane changes.”

Try to tell that to the drivers... this reminds me of the autocruise and Winnebago incident.

Guy in winnebago goes on long road trip. Engages autocruise. Goes to back of winnebago to make coffee. Winnebago leave road and crashes. Guys sues manufacturer and wins. Only in the US of A.

People will NOT understand the limitations of technology, and will think that nothing will go wrong.

If servers go down but no one hears them, did they really fail? Think about it over lunch

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Sadly not an option if you're pressed for time, otherwise I would've done that.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Us Saffers usually cuss the manufacturer out if an item is shipped with an European 2-pin plug, but not a South African 3-pin plug.

Which means a shufty to the IT store to find a suitable cable, and later on, after a quick shufty at the local hardware shop and armed with a screwdriver and pair of pliers, cut off said European plug and affix a new plug to said cable, then toss it into the IT spares cupboard (for later use, when another dimwitted appliance arrives with an equally dimwitted EU plug), and toss the useless European plug bit away (into the proper recycle bin).

As for 110v voltage appliances, never had that issue as everything was set for 240V. Lucky me. Yay.

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Political hot potato.

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Trollface

crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrAple kebords isssssssssssssssssssssuxs

Uber JUMPs at chance to dump load of electric bikes across Islington

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Will never catch on in South Africa, the bikes will skedaddle off to the nearest township, to be stripped off all usable parts.

Want to train a dragon? You'll need 500 million files, 730TB of data, 54,000 CPU cores...

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Here there be Dragons.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Whut? No loose floor tiles?

I am disappoint.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Re: whether if they'd had their sidearms they could have shot the lock off instead

Reminds me of the forth protocol (the book) when the forces need to enter the house, and a Wingmaster was used to punch the hinges out.

Why telcos 'handed over' people's GPS coords to a bounty hunter: He just had to ask nicely

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Boba Fett is coming to planet Earth, as he heard that locating wanted persons is very easy.

AI can now animate the Mona Lisa's face or any other portrait you give it. We're not sure we're happy with this reality

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Trollface

MMmm... politicial campaigning....

Minecraft's my Nirvana. I found it hard, it's hard to find. Oh well, whatever... Never Mined

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Ready Player One coming to a local to you soon.

No Huawei out: Prez Trump's game of chicken with China has serious consequences

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

This is going to be very interesting, especially to other countries in Africa, that does business with both the West and the Middle Kingdom.

I'm not looking forward to it, especially when the governments will be pushed to go either Western or Middle Kingdom... as we are set to run into supply problems.

Of course smugglers will save the day... but we will have to wait and see.

Twist my Arm why don't you: Brit CPU behemoth latest biz to cease work with Huawei – report

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Interesting Times...

Oh, there goes the Luggage, and Rincewind's riding on it. May be a good time to skedaddle outta here as well...

we need a pratchett icon.

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
Pint

Bit late to the party, never worked with big iron, but it looks cool.

Here's to them to get it up and running!

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

Hotdog Stand... how iconic.

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

FREEEEEEDOM!!!!

It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's lunar landing 'dress rehearsal'

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/events.html

Bloke accused of conning ARIN out of 750,000 IPv4 addresses worth $9m+ to peddle on black market

Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

The directors – who varied from Yong Wook-Kwan to Ahmad Al Bandi to Brian Sherman – were, it is claimed, entirely fictitious.

Wot? No Roger Amchip, Charles Omputer, Viktor Alve or Cecil Apacitor?