* Posts by Roland6

10624 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010

UK Home Office primes Brexit spam cannon for a million texts reminding folk to check passports

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: To get back to the issue

Trouble is that ETIAS isn't planned to be ready before 2021...

ETIAS is expected to be operational after three years of development, i.e. in early 2021

So if the UK exits before then, alternative arrangements are necessary...

Interestingly, if the UK were to sign T.May's Withdrawal Agreement (something Farage et al are totally against), it looks possible that the UK would transition directly to ETIAS as part of the final settlement...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: To get back to the issue

there isn't an overarching EU law telling us all what to do?

For this? No, not that I'm aware of. Why, does that surprise you?

Its wry humor, an English tradition often lost in translation...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: First problem, right here ...

Schengen is not EU...

It is up to the members of Schengen to decide what their rules are for non-Schengen visitors, a decision that doesn't involve Brussels (ie. EU). So effectively, when it comes to the free movement of UK people across the EU27, with Brexit the UK is giving away control...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Passport Renewal

>As a kid I was always very confused how a political organisation and collection of treaties has a flag

Bet you are really confused about the UN then...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Passport Renewal

>I've been asked if I'm eligible to work in the EU (for UK roles). I have been forced to lie by answering 'yes'...

As long as the question didn't include a date, you are not lying. This is because at the time of the question being asked you are eligible to work in the EU, at least until the 31-Oct and possibly beyond...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Credit where credit is due.

@H in the Hague - I think you (and others) missed the sarcasm and cutting humor in harmjschoonhoven's

post?

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: First problem, right here ...

>They cannot know because it's not up to them, it's up to the EU27.

But only if BoJo & Mogg agree to the WA before 31-Oct...

No deal means the decision (wrt to UK passports) is up to each individual member nation's government...

But since BoJo et al don't know whether they will or will not sign a deal, no one else in government can either and hence plan...

COBOL: Five little letters that if put on a CV would ensure stable income for many a greybeard coder

Roland6 Silver badge

While many IT managers would dearly like to migrate away to something a little more modern, the process is at once lengthy, risky and costly.

For the classes of problems COBOL solves, there aren't really any more modern languages than the latest release of COBOL that has been designed to solve those classes of problems.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: First language

> I'm not scared of too much typing ;-)

I suspect the one's who complain about how verbose a language is are the one's who don't even both with comments etc. and then complain about maintaining code written in "write only" languages.

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

Roland6 Silver badge

What happens if two different customers own separate domains of acme.co.uk and acme.org.uk. The article suggests that someone will get the auto-registration for acme.uk - but which customer will it be?

Depends, on Grandfathering

But most of the time acme.co.uk will trump acme.xyz.uk

That looks like speculative cyber squatting on a short abbreviation/acronym.

Depends, it might have been that registrars policy to reserve the .uk domain for all their customers for a period of time. Remember by doing this that registrar ensured their customers would be able to gain the .uk variant at a reasonable price rather than pay auction prices...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Just deleted £200 of .uk domain "renewals" from my shopping cart

@Ken Moorhouse - What alerted me to this was two things (1) This thread?!

I'm skeptical about people claiming "they didn't know" etc. particularly given this isn't the first article on this subject mentioning 123-reg...

Yes it is a bit annoying that you probably binned the notification emails because you took one look at the subject line and decided they were junk and thus deleted without opening or have only realised that emails from your registrar have been labelled as spam for these last few years...

Roland6 Silver badge

>However just checked my domains and they haven't added the .uk version of my .co.uk domain.

You need to do a whois lookup on your .uk domain as it is highly likely to not have the same expiry date as your .co.uk domain. Unfortunately with GDPR I see most of the other useful details are now cloaked, as in my case the .uk domain was still owned by 123-reg and was only transferred to my ownership on payment.

Malwarebytes back to square one as appeals court rules blocking rival antivirus maker isn't on

Roland6 Silver badge

@Persona - You do realise that was a negative comment like yours expressing an opinion that got Enigma wound up to go after Bleeping Computer...

Roland6 Silver badge

>Why would someone run 2 AV programs on their PC?

Because they are following good security practice and using one to give a second opinion?

However, this does assume that only one is actually doing the real-time scan and the other a periodic (eg. once a week) filesystem scan.

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: 30m quid on removing greenhouse gases?

>But if CO2 sensitivity is low, then the dire predictions from the cAGW won't happen, and can't happen.

Until someone looks and discovers Sulphur hexafluoride SF6...

What is important, is to ensure funds continue to be available to climate research, so that it attracts contributions from a wide range of scientists so that assumptions can be evaluated and tested.

Roland6 Silver badge

>pumped storage is ineffecient Ffestiniog Power Station has an average efficiency of 72–73% .

But pumped storage wasn't intended to be efficient and won't be efficient because of the need to pump water from the bottom reservoir back to the top reservoir.

>battery storage is great 90%+ efficiency

I would treat this figure with caution as it is a reference to the ability to recover energy stored in the battery and not the energy needed to put that energy into the battery, nor the energy consumed in input/output voltage conversions.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: A waste of time and money

>Burning whale oil is renewable, right? Right.

Yes, but totally unsustainable.

Todays whale population is a tiny fraction of what it was before the advent of commercial whaling.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Why are batteries...

>Not quite as simple as changing AA batteries!

Even these aren't always simple. Many of the rechargeable "AA" batteries were slightly larger than the non-rechargeable ones, which could cause problems.

The EV battery issue is solvable, through the application of International Standards. There is really no reason to not have International Standards for EV batteries and charging. Yes, the Americans and the laissez-faire free marketeers wil complain - just as they did over GSM and 3GPP, but as the Internet and containerisation for example, have shown, even defacto standards grow the market.

Also given currently we have effectively two types of fuel: Petrol and Diesel, the octane grades of which are defined and they are delivered to vehicles through Standardised nozzles.

I suggest that it is pointless and wasteful to have multiple standards for batteries and charging - Tesla drivers must be a bit daft, if they can't see the stupidity of having to always seek out the "Telsa" charging bay, instead of doing as per every ICE vehicle owner and stop at a convenient service station that stocks 'unleaded'.

Funny isn't it that Hollywood has got there already, I don't remember a single science fiction film where a crew weren't able to take the batteries/fuel cells out of one space craft and drop them straight into their totally different space craft...

Roland6 Silver badge

>Just over 100 years ago there weren't any filling stations in the UK (or much anywhere else either).

Surprising, is it not, how all those filling stations and their supply networks were built without government largesse...

Roland6 Silver badge

The pot will be managed by "private sector partners" with £200m in government cash being matched by private investors

What can possibly go wrong?

Bet there are going to be quite a few highly paid pen pushers from all this and the on-the-edge-of bankruptcy Conservative party will find an 'unexpected' source of funds - sufficient to run an expensive election campaign or two.

Also once again the government is not using their funding to retain a stake in the network. Given this is effectively high risk VC funding the government should be taking at least a 50% share in any revenues and business growth arising out of their match funded investment. Once again Tories using taxpayers mnies to scr*w taxpayers.

700km on a single charge: Mercedes says it's in it for the long run

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: No Need to Panic

>My washing machine and dishwasher have timers, I set them to run overnight on cheap electricity so they finish about the time I get up.

Unless you are running a laundrette and/or have other high use electrical applicances running (eg. stoage heaters, hot water tank), I suspect your annual electricity bill is larger than if you used the standard tariff.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: can squeeze 700km from a single full battery charge

@JassMan - I think you are confusing power and energy.

Actually, probably more accurate to say totally confused as in my (admittedly brief) web search neither were really up front about their battery details. I think this is going to be one area which will need some form of government driven internation standard, so buyers can compare apples with apples.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: can squeeze 700km from a single full battery charge

>"from a single full battery charge"

I think we are going to see much more of this misleading phrase, as vendors adjust battery capacity to fit a price point or to grab a headline:

Mercedes-Benz:350kW of "charging system" aka batteries to deliver 700km

Telsa Model S: 100kW of batteries to deliver 595km

It is clear the Tesla is the more efficient vehicle being capable of delivering 5.95km per kW, compared to the MB 2km per kW.

Snoops can bypass iOS 13 lock screen to eyeball your address book. Apple hasn't fix it yet. Valid flaw? You decide

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Low risk - hmm ...

An additional place for personal data leakage, is the use of the connect using Google/LinkedIn/Facebook to gain access to some sites content. These naturally want to browse your contacts/addressbook...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Low risk - hmm ...

>I know of several people who store passwords in their contact lists.

>Yep it is a stupid idea and they should use a proper password manager

Not really stupid in concept, in the past I've stored allsorts of stuff in my contacts, such as the key code for the car park at my local sports ground...

However, back in the real world...

I suspect what many people don't realise is just how many app's - explicitly on Android (but probably also on iOS) want to access/browse your contacts ie. look at all information contained in your contacts list. Think about that for a moment, an app looking through all your contacts nicknames etc.

I suspect however, what is required is a combined contacts and passwords manager, with a 'public'contact view and a confidential information view.

Roland6 Silver badge
FAIL

Lesson 1: Do not report security vulnerabilities during beta testing...

then Apple retracted, apologized and told me that it was not allowed to thank by giving gifts for security reports during beta period.

Mystery database left open turns out to be at heart of a huge Groupon ticket fraud ring

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Fake accounts? You sure?

>Even more curious, when the team tried to track down the owners of the exposed email addresses, they got few responses, indicating the vast majority were fake accounts.

I wonder if the team tried them against Troy Hunt's Have I Been Pwned DB.

Certainly, this adds a new dimension to Have I Been Pwned, a DB of known fake email addresses and associated passwords that have been used by criminals...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Fake accounts? You sure?

I would love to have a simple way of populating Chrome's password store with fake logins (real login in password manager), as I suspect that some webpage malware has been able to access the password store - given the old passwords that I'm threatened with.

The gig (economy) is up: New California law upgrades Lyft, Uber, other app serfs to staff

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Knee Jerk

>And does the US have no social safety net?

So what is the social cost?

No bones about what you have said, just that social costs tend reflect the view of the individual citizen, namely: poorer job security, having to take the first job offered, higher levels of financial stress etc.

Sorry, but my mistake, I should of put a "tongue in cheek" emoji against my politician jib in my original comment.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Knee Jerk

AB5 is a one size fits all fix to a problem that needs to be addressed.

Well reading through AB5, it does seem to contain a lot more detail than the UK's IR35 rules, the only question is whether it can be codified into a simple on-line questionnaire so that employers and employees can readily understand whether their arrangement is inside or outside of AB5.

Mind you, given government revenue is at stake, I'm sure the US authorities will be as tricky as the UK's HMRC and judge many arranegements that appear to be outside are actually inside and backdated employee taxes are due.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Knee Jerk

@I ain't Spartacus

Q: And what is the social cost of firing people without any safety net?

A: In a country that has a flexible labour market and is growing from recessions faster, they should find it easier to get into another job.

I see you totally missed the question and answered a different question, you must be a politician in real life!

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Bug bounty platforms

Additionally, I question whether the bug bounty platforms require the same level of commitment to the platform as Uber et al expect from their drivers.

I suspect the issue is that those running the bug bounty platforms have been looking at what Uber do with the intent of going the same way...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: "On what basis could they challenge the law in court?"

This is partly how it plans to challenge the law: insist its operation doesn't fall under the law, then fight to ensure it does not fall under the law.

So Uber isn't really challenging the law, it is simply challenging whether it applies to them...

Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Brave new world

>Anyone else remember this BT ad from the mid 80s, trumpeting their efforts to keep phoneboxes in working order?

Expect to see an updated set trumpeting xyz's efforts to keep public EV charging stations in working order.

MPs would love to hear all about how UK.gov plans to ratchet R&D spend to 3% of GDP

Roland6 Silver badge

>They should be investigating gov.uk plans, not uk.gov plans.

...

The USA spent $553 billion on R&D in 2018.

The total UK GDP was $2,828 billion

Thus 553/2828*100 = 19.55%

Try this the other way round: 42/20,513*100 = 0.2%

I conclude they were looking at the correct figures...

Roland6 Silver badge

> It's a shame that governments tend to think no further than the next election, but I honestly wouldn't know how to fix that.

Well going back a few decades, a UK government decided it was much better to get someone else, who wasn't subject to the vagaries of Westminster politics and emotive UK tabloid reporting, to oversee such funding. Naturally, if people complained the Westminster government could wring their hands and say "we have no control" we have to do what they tells us to do. And so the myth of losing our sovereignty to the EU bogeyman was born and fed...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: How far overseas?

Well I'm sure some bright spark will be able to monetise the two year visa extension to overseas students and using Sir Humphrey logic, explain how that is both overseas aid and investment in R&D and so shift figures around to show the government really is investing more in R&D...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: So what we're saying is...

Getting a littel ahead of yourself there, no point in committing to create a plan, if there is no funding for the creation of said plan...

Aside: For a real world example of this I refer you to this article: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/transport/2019/09/12/3bn-rail-plan-would-see-32-more-shropshire-trains-a-day/ and the comment from "Roger".

Psst. Wanna brush up your supervillain creds? Get a load of this mini submarine

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: How would we know?

I was thinking of the Beatles and trying (to hard) to link it in.

The RNLI was just a means of justifying why the sub should be in a colour other than black. I think the yellow wellies and oilskins would colour match a yellow submarine nicely...

However, I thought the early RNLI inflatables were yellow (70's/80's), before everything was standardised on the modern orange colour scheme, but then I could be totally wrong and just getting confused with the yellow wellies etc.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: How would we know?

As the RNLI are involved, I assume it will come in any colour you like as long as its yellow;

stealth colours subject to government approval...

Mozilla Firefox to begin slow rollout of DNS-over-HTTPS by default at the end of the month

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Cloudflare?

>DNS is the backbone of the internet.

Can't help thinking that DoH is a means to both control and reduce the number of DNS resolvers on the Internet. Be interested in knowing just how much money gets thrown at DNS resolvers . It would not surprise me that as a result of DoH the amounts being received by a handful of majors represent 90% of such revenues- just like ad revenues.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Dubious

>They're being told otherwise,

In this instance by the browser.

Which is a little troubling, given how difficult it can be at times presently to resolve DNS issues, adding another client side cache etc. ...

It's 2019, and Windows PCs can be pwned via a shortcut file, a webpage, an evil RDP server...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: "exploits in the wild"

Just because it isn't widely reported, don't be so sure your favourite alternative to Windows is any better...

Interesting article that didn't get picked up by El reg: Google finds 'indiscriminate iPhone attack lasting years'

The linked article is quite interesting: A very deep dive into iOS Exploit chains found in the wild

I'm sure in time we will see similar articles on macOS, Linux...

Thinking about processing a payment, Sage Group? Biz confirms mulling sale of Sage Pay

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Why?

Particularly as Sage has been in the subscription software business far longer than Apple, MS et al.

Suspect once Sage stops being a one stop shop, there will be many businesses looking elsewhere.

However, as the article noted, it is consistent with Sage selling its US payroll business, which also doesn't make long-term sense - which does raise a question as to when Sage will seek to sell off its UK payroll business.

Perhaps they are lining themselves up to be a "pure play software business" and get taken over by HPE...

In Hemel Hempstead, cycling is as bad as taking a leak in the middle of the street

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: At werdsmith.

Since I had two dogs on leads with me at the time (one pretty elderly with not much vision left) I was more concerned that he would run one of them over and hurt them.

Good to see you care about your dogs.

This weekend we held a set of races in a local park, despite the red tape, warning signs, marshals, people milling around on bikes and a hundred racers with head's down going for it, we still had a number of idiot dog owners walking their dogs off the lead (park reg's dogs on lead at all times) and letting them run across the course - "I always walk my dog here...". It is fortunate that we didn't have an accident, so the owners - too thick to appreciate it - will get to walk their dogs in the park next weekend.

However, I do agree, there is no excuse for adults riding on the pavement not being considerate of others.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Car drivers

> And for this the council actually PAY the organisers... ... to come here ... while our roads grow ever more cratered

Without the cycle race your roads would be even more cratered. For the various national races the roads have to be of a particular minimum standard, so the route will have been closely inspected and if necessary roads resurfaced.

Round my way, we are sad the Womens tour moved on after 3 years, our favourite cycling lanes are starting to degrade. The council is also having to find other ways to encourage people to visit and spend money in the shops.

Apple will wring out $18bn by upselling NAND to fanbois – analyst

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Off topic but..

Suspect if multi-modal communications (talked about back in 2000 with the launch of 3G) actually becomes a reality, it will be come the normal way of interacting, as it is easier to switch between voice interaction and screen interaction.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Perhaps you've not encountered the joy of rush hour at a major train station

>I'm sure getting the message about the leaves on the track via 5G is going to make a crowd very pleased indeed :)

Well:

1) It would be useful to know that the overhead lines are down, just outside the train depot, so no trains can leave the depot so services are suspended, before I leave home to rush to the station... [Scenario based on a real world event from a few years back.]

2) Knowing there were leaves on the line affecting one set of services can make the difference between sprinting across the bridge to platform 5, or getting a coffee and waiting for the delayed service on platform 1. Mind you, in this situation, you don't have time to mess with a smartphone, you have to make the decision based on retained knowledge and what the train boards are saying.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: think sports stadiums, train stations

>Or, you know, look up something on the internet whilst waiting for a train.

Like the live arrives/departure information... It is surprising just how many stations there are where this simple task is impossible either from the platform or from a car in the car park (waiting to pick someone up) using either the free WiFi or 3/4G - trouble is I don't see 5G solving this problem.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: AFAIK

>5g will give you a full 1tb or more throughput. If. You. Stand. Under. The. Antenna.

Doubt it, not because 5G can't deliver but the reality of why networks want to deploy 5G.

According to the specifications, my 2014 4G phone can handle up to 150Mbps - not been anywhere that has come close to delivering that speed. EE for example only offer 30Mbps download speed on their standard 4G service, pay extra for 60Mbps, which given for most users the most data intensive application is streaming tv/films...

Additionally, your device is going to need to run multiple radios and have the processor capability to process that amount of data - so battery burning and potentially hand/ear burning.

Finally, the purpose of 5G isn't so much to deliver high volumes of data to an individual user/device but to deliver reasonable volumes of data at a reasonable rate, to a larger number of users sharing a cell. So expect those very high download speed contracts to be expensive.