* Posts by phuzz

6715 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2010

'Don't tell anyone but I have a secret.' There, that's my security sorted

phuzz Silver badge
Paris Hilton

I'm pretty sure a French politician would get in more trouble for not having a mistress.

phuzz Silver badge

Well that explains things. I was assuming that the video was of the politician having an affair, and I was having trouble understanding why that was frowned on in France. However, if it was him "spiralising the old courgette" (as Dabbsy so memorably puts it), that makes more sense

Life in plastic, with a classic: Polymer £20 notes released into wild sporting Turner art

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Re: Offensive?

Why not use the left-overs from liposuction? It's not beef or pork, so there won't be any religious problems, and technically it's not an animal product, so the militant vegans shouldn't get annoyed either.

I'm a bloody genius me :)

London's Metropolitan Police flip the switch: Smile, fellow citizens... you're undergoing Live Facial Recognition

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Re: Corona masking

Especially if the mask was printed to look like the bottom half of, ooo, let's say, Cressida Dick's face.

phuzz Silver badge
Coat

In the future yes, but for now just wear a normal surgical/dust mask, and if anyone asks you can just say "corona virus innit mate".

Assange lawyer: Trump offered WikiLeaker a pardon in exchange for denying Russia hacked Democrats' email

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Re: Human Rights, where Assange is concerned

You link doesn't say anything about 'medical isolation' (isn't that just quarantine?).

The only evidence for the inmates being the reason he was released from solitary comes from the rarely-reliable wikileaks twitter feed, and does beg the question; why would the prison authorities listen to the prisoners?

If the prison governor is going to listen to the inmates, then that suggests a level of compassion that is unlikely, and also that they would have moved Assange out of solitary anyway. It's almost as if they took two events (Assange being sent to the medical wing, and the prisoners complaining), and said that one caused the other with no evidence other than wishful thinking.

phuzz Silver badge

"extradition to the USA should be illegal under the current Human right laws."

Ah yes, human rights. I'm sure our current, caring, sharing, Tory government will have human rights at the forefront of their minds...as they hand over anyone the US asks for. Of course, they also believe that the only humans who should have rights are the ones who went to the right schools, and run the right companies.

The only question is, will they repeal human rights legislation, or just ignore it, because they certainly won't obey it.

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

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Re: Adversarial attacks

I suppose you could have an 'accidental attack', perhaps if a leaf had got stuck to a road sign, making it look like it said '80' (for example).

But yes, it is a bit of a tautology.

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

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Re: Judgement

Too many different lobbies throwing money at politicians?

Well you didn't think they worked for you did you?

Brit telcos can keep £218m licence fee repayment from Ofcom after penny-pinching regulator loses Court of Appeal case

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Re: "The repayment of these fees will enable us to invest in the country's digital...

They are investing. Of course they do seem to all be investing in 5G in city centres, rather than filling in blackspots in the countryside, but coverage is actually something that mobile networks in the UK compete on. (This may confuse US readers, who aren't used to competition in telecoms).

Larry Tesler cut and pasted from this mortal coil: That thing you just did? He probably invented it

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Newton - MessagePad

For me it's been a dogsend

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but it made me giggle.

Going Dutch: The Bakker Elkhuizen UltraBoard 950 Wireless... because looks aren't everything

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Re: "as your mum once told me"

"Unfortunately my old work won't let me take the keyboard and mouse I've used for 3 years even though I know it will get chucked in storage and never used again."

Make friends with the IT flunky in charge of chucking your keyboard, and I'm sure they'll ensure it gets chucked into a waiting bag...

Vodafone: Yes, we slurp data on customers' network setups, but we do it for their own good

phuzz Silver badge

It's not possible in all circumstances, but companies like Vodafone and Talktalk don't manufacture their own modems, they just buy them from other companies and slap their own branding on.

So, sometimes, the (eg) Vodafone router you received, is just a re-badged Huawei unit, and you can just flash the default firmware to get a non-vodafone device.

Or you might end up with a bricked modem that Voda refuse to support, you takes your chances...

Among those pardoned by Trump this week: Software maker ex-CEO who admitted hacking into rivals' systems

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Re: Don't let the swamp dry out

"the other guys who did the same thing"

citation needed

OK, which Dombås stuffed Windows 10 to bursting at Swedish flatpack flinger?

phuzz Silver badge

Re: How to spot the couples headed to divorce court?

You're dating the wrong people.

One of my friends made it into Ikea, grabbed the item she wanted, and was back at the car within eight minutes. On a Sunday.

Shipping is so insecure we could have driven off in an oil rig, says Pen Test Partners

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Pirate

Turns out the plot of Hackers was just twenty five years early.

Hack The Planet!

Steve Jobs, executives shot down top Apple engineers' plea to design their own server CPU – latest twist in legal battle over chip upstart Nuvia

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Re: CPUs? Apple stopped making servers even though there was a demand

"though the user's files would need to already be in the cloud"

What, and give Apple a chance to charge them for that storage? Yep, I can see them doing that.

C'mon SPARCky, it's just an admin utility update. What could possibly go wrong?

phuzz Silver badge

I usually start to type rm -r /blah/blah, then realise what I'm doing and put a 'z' at the start, so it reads zrm -r ..., so even if I accidental hit enter, no harm will befall me. Hopefully.

Of course, the other day I ran an rsync with the --dryrun flag. Those paying attention will notice that it really should have been --dry-run. Fortunately it gave me a syntax error instead of running.

Oracle staff say Larry Ellison's fundraiser for Trump is against 'company ethics' – Oracle, ethics... what dimension have we fallen into?

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Re: You have (the right) to remain silent

It sounds like he's using his own money, and doing it in his own time, so it's really nothing to do with his employer.

Of course, if he did something like, (eg), using the company private jet to fly out there, that would be a different matter.

If your boss wants to be a scumbag on his own time, there's nothing you can do. Except quit and go work for someone you do respect of course.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Ummmm

They only charge just over cost price for the cardboard box they throw all your stuff into!

Windows Terminal and Azure Data Studio both get a tickle from the Microsoft update fairy

phuzz Silver badge

Re: "being a Windows component that is tied to Windows versions more of a possibility"

Video drivers are one of the few hardware drivers still pretty deep into the kernel, so it's not totally surprising they need a reboot (my AMD drivers do most of the time at least). Similarly, if you want proper support for recent Intel integrated-graphics in Linux you're going to need an up to date kernel, so it's not like any other platform has definitively solved that issue.

The virus curing the mobile industry's chronic addiction... and sparking an impressive algorithmic price experiment

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Re: Expect the biggest fire sale ever

Now down to ~€60

phuzz Silver badge

AT&T insists it's not blocking Tutanota after secure email biz cries foul, cites loss of net neutrality as cause

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Incompetence or Malice?

With AT&T it's a really tough call.

Not a Genius move after all: Apple must cough up $$$ in back pay for store staff forced to wait for bag searches

phuzz Silver badge

I worked at a shitty PC builder (fuck you Evesham Micros!) and IIRC we weren't paid for the 30s it took to be searched on the way out.

Mind you, most of that thirty seconds was spent chatting to the guard, who would take one look in our bags and let us past, ignoring the bulging pockets of many of the staff.

I think management there thought that a 15% 'wastage' level was normal, for some reason. A box of MP3 players would be delivered, and be almost empty by the evening, despite no orders coming in...

phuzz Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: It took seven fucking years?

If you're doing a minimum wage job, you almost certainly don't have a lot of choice about getting a new job.

So you can either quit and get no pay at all, or you put up with whatever crap your employer gives you. There's no other options.

"That's kidnapping, no matter how you try to gloss it over."

No, that's part of the employment contract which was almost certainly explained before the employees signed to say they understood. Sure, a good lawyer would probably rip it to shreds, but you can't afford any lawyer on $15/hr.

Have you ever worked a shit minimum wage job? You have zero power. The company can replace you with some spotty teenager any time they like, while your chances of getting a new job before the rent comes due are slim (and any job that will take you on short notice is going to be worse). The companies know this, and many will relentlessly exploite their workers as far as they can, then sack them and replace with the next bit of meat for the grinder.

phuzz Silver badge

I've had equally shitty bosses in the UK, although admittedly none of them ever tried to tell me that the bullshit was for my own benefit.

Git your coat – you've pulled: Standalone command-line interface for GitHub hits beta

phuzz Silver badge

Great, now all I need to know is what the gh version of:

git fetch origin

git checkout master

git reset --hard origin/master

is, and I'll be all set.

Microsoft brings the pane: You'll be looking at Xamarin and React Native to design apps for dual-screen gizmos

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Unhappy

Re: Having had...

Microsoft was too late to the mobile party

Oh now look what you've done, you've made Windows CE cry. It's been around since 1996 and you had to say something nasty like that.

Judge Vulcan-nerve pinches JEDI deal after Amazon forks out $42m to pause Microsoft's military machinations

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Trollface

Re: It was the end of history....

Pretty sure that pic is from Firefly.

You'll never select all and mark as read again after this tale of peril... Oh, who are we kidding? Of course you will

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Was that an anechoic chamber?

If they were in there all night, they were probably playing music really loud to stay awake.

Internet's safe-keepers forced to postpone crucial DNSSEC root key signing ceremony – no, not a hacker attack, but because they can't open a safe

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Re: Yep.

"As with cryptographic keys, you cannot make something impossible to break/crack with brute force."

Yes, but the difference is, you can't make a safe that will take longer to break into than the entire age of the universe.

You, FCC, tell us again why cities are only allowed to charge rich telcos $270 to attach 5G tech to utility poles?

phuzz Silver badge

Re: So what?

No no, it's more important than 'national security'. The security of the telco's profits is at risk!

As everyone knows (and if you don't, you soon will citizen!), profits must come before people. It's written in the constitution, in that special section that you don't get to read because you're not rich enough.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Hang On A Minute...

It's one you put, you know, 'there'.

B-but it doesn't get viruses! Not so, Apple fanbois: Mac malware is growing faster than nasties going for Windows

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Re: Malware infections on PCs and Mac are so passé

Apparently some people don't use ad blockers.

Did you know that there's ads on Youtube too? They're really annoying, to the point where I'm surprised that anyone watches anything on there without an ad blocker on.

Microsoft ups the ante with fix-fixing patch that leaves some Windows Server 2008 machines unable to boot

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Disable auto-updates, miss the SHA-2 patch from last year, try and install a random update manually, and then complain that it's Microsoft's fault it fucked up.

Sounds like a fun time.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: unable to boot

Boot into safe mode and remove the last patch. We've all had to do it from time to time...

Dual screens, fast updates, no registry cruft and security in mind: Microsoft gives devs the lowdown on Windows 10X

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Gimp

" the Win32 container is new, though apparently it borrows technology from the Windows Subsystem for Linux"

Firstly, to whoever said "the new version of Windows will basically be Linux with a Windows skin", you're not far off.

Secondly, this clearly leaves the door open for WSL to run on Win10X, quite possibly as a container. This way you'll be able to run packaged Linux apps 'natively' on Windows (sort of like backwards Wine), and you all know what that means right?

It's the year of Linux on the desktop!

(not sorry)

Crypto AG backdooring rumours were true, say German and Swiss news orgs after explosive docs leaked

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Perhaps I misunderstood but ...

"Enigma machines were mechanical and, presumably, later variations on the theme were electromechanical."

Enigma machines were electro-mechanical. Each of the code wheels was full of wires, and each time it turned it changed what was (electricially) connected where, thus scrambling the input.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: The two nations agreed to let Swiss spies in on their secret

The Swiss were unlikely to become direct enemies of Germany and the US, so why not chat to some of their top spies, let them in on the idea, and probably sweeten the deal by promising to let them in on anything that might concern them, all they have to do is look the other way...

What's the chances that the finances for the whole operation went through some Swiss banks as well, that way everyone gets their cut.

Jeff Bezos: I will depose King Trump

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Trollface

Re: To be honest ...

Your spelling is funnier.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: To be honest ...

"you KNOW Bezos would NEVER do this against a president of "the other party""

Mate, they'd sue anyone if they thought it would make them half a wooden nickel. If they could find profit in stealing candy from babies, then Amazon would be straight down the local kindergarten.

Voyager 2 gets back to sciencing while 'unstoppable' Iran promises world more 'Great Iranian Satellites'

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To be fair, everyone stole Nazi tech and scientists. All the cool kids were doing it.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: "Far be it from us to nitpick"

Ok, their two favourite things are nitpicking and being ignored by Apple, ok?

Game over, LAN, game over! Windows software nasty Emotet spotted spreading via brute-forced Wi-Fi networks

phuzz Silver badge

Re: How long would it take

As you climb it would get easier, because the higher up the corporate org-chart you go, the less time they'd have for such 'pointless fripperies' like robust passwords.

By the time you reach C-level they'll be running unencrypted wireless because 'their time is too important to waste typing in passwords'. From what I've heard of stock traders they wouldn't want encrypted wireless getting between them and their next bonus payment.

Who needs the A-Team or MacGyver when there's a techie with an SCSI cable?

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Move along ..... nothing to see here !!!

I don't think the side of my computer has ever been screwed shut all the way.

I might give one of the thumbscrews a half turn to stop it rattling, but that's the limit.

Super-leaker Snowden punts free PDF* of tell-all NSA book with censored parts about China restored, underlined

phuzz Silver badge

Re: 3.6Mb download, copy, paste, read

"Gee I wonder how many silent alarm messages get sent to various governmental authorities when anyone asks for the book at the local library?"

Knowing librarians, none.

These truly are the end times for TLS 1.0, 1.1: Firefox hopes to 'eradicate' weak HTTPS standard by blocking it

phuzz Silver badge

Re: "We decided on a global fallback"

As an example, older APC power distribution units like the AP7921 have a web interface that can only do up to SSL3.0. So my only choice is to either leave them http only, or keep an old copy of IE around to access them. Because yes, I have almost locked myself out of them before by enabling HTTPS. Ours are on a separate management network though, so we can leave them on http only without worrying too much.

(Here's the list of ciphers it supports, read it and weep: DES [56 bit], RC4_MD5 [128 bit], RC4_SHA [128 bit], 3DES [168 bit])

Forget the Oscars, the Solar Orbiter is off to take a close look at our nearest (and super-hot) star

phuzz Silver badge

Re: "Forget the Oscars"

Why did you bother even starting to watch films if they're obviously not your cup of tea?

I don't enjoy football, so I don't go to matches in order to leave in a huff at half time.

Starliner snafu could've been worse: Software errors plague Boeing's Calamity Capsule

phuzz Silver badge

Re: How things have changed...

As we all know, catching 100% of bugs is a tall order, even if you throw hours and people at it, but it was this bit that worried me:

Fortunately, the team noticed that second error while reviewing the code following the first, and uploaded the fix prior to landing.

They spotted the error whilst in flight, which presumably means they weren't specifically looking for it, and they certainly didn't have a lot of time to find it, which implies it was a pretty obvious bug.

It wasn't some really subtle bug that 'only happened on flight hardware when the moon is in the third quarter and a subroutine had run within the last hour but not cleared etc. etc.' This was a bug that someone managed to spot while the craft was in space, presumably not while specifically searching for it. This was a bug that should have been picked up by someone before that rocket ever launched, indeed, before that code was ever uploaded to the spacecraft.

That's a management problem, not a software one.