* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Teletext Holidays a) exists and b) left 200k customer call recordings exposed in S3 bucket

Alister

Re: [S3] users have to actively turn off security

I'm quite sure that most of the time, what happens is a DevOps developer sticks some data in a bucket, finds he/she can't access it externally, and so turns off security because it's getting in the way, instead of talking to someone with a clue and arranging access in a secure manner.

Alister

many companies still leave their S3 buckets unsecured

You still make it sound like S3 buckets are inherently insecure, and companies need to do something to secure them.

This is NOT the case, by default an S3 bucket is set up with no access, and users have to actively turn off security to make them publicly accessible.

Apple blinks on iPhone repairs, touts parts program for independent tech mechanics... sort of

Alister

Apple is not the only source

Oranges are not the only fruit?

Anyway You are wrong, for pork, Apple is the only sauce.

UK.gov: Huge mobile masts coming to a grassy hill near you soon

Alister

Re: Beanz meanz heinz

Baked bean cans don't have the correct resonant frequency, paper cups are the correct medium

Alister

You're right, it does. I apologise.

Alister

A taller shared mast is preferable to multiple shorter masts all within a couple of hundred meters of each other.

Wrong. See David Pearce' post above

Alister
Facepalm

Re: Proposal to mobile telcos.

Did you forget the joke icon

I didn't think it was necessary. However you've proved again what a humourless lot commentards can be.

Thanks for biting.

Oh, and my callsign starts G1 but I'm not posting it in full on a public forum.

Alister

Re: Proposal to mobile telcos.

It might also encourage more people to take up Amateur Radio

Why would you do that? They take up valuable spectrum which could be sold off for lots of money...

Alister

Given the prevalence of windmills on every skyline now, being Nimby about a phone mast seems pointless.

GDPR...rrrse! Mass-mail fail as German biz asks UK resellers for consent to use their dealer data

Alister

Re: Don't worry

After Oct, 31, GDPR won't apply anymore in UK will it?

It will for those companies who want to deal with the rest of Europe.

What am I saying! After Oct 31st the United Kingdom (what a misnomer) won't be talking to Europe ever again, of course not. But we will write our own bigger and better GDPR with lots of Union Jacks and unicorns.

Alister

Re: Muphry....

@Mark 85

That's Murphy's Law, which is indeed very old indeed. Jake was talking about the intentional typograph of Muphry's Law, which is an internet meme.

Alister
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Re: Muphry....

Don't you just love English? It's the crème de la crème of all languages, and the lingua franca of The Internet.

There's a je-ne-sais-quoi about English which your bon mot highlights admirably, in what other language could one describe the schadenfreude of watching someone struggle with a rucksack, for instance.

:)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Alister

No, it's a fear of Ephebian Philosophers

Alister

Zenophobic

Is that a fear of Buddhism?

Army Watchkeeper drone flopped into tree because crew were gazing backwards

Alister

This, and the previous reported incident, suggest that how ever much the developers of the Watchkeeper software tried to anticipate and build in safety features, auto-abort sequences etc, the damn humans always managed to interfere and stuff it up.

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

Alister

Re: Quick: someone post anti-USA stuff on Trump's feeds

I thought Trump was orange

Yep, he's the quintessential "person of color" :)

(Well, him and George Hamilton)

Alister

Re: Non-White Furriners

@Cederic.

Why don't you go and google the use of "furriner"?

Widely used either humorously or satirically to suggest a dialect pronunciation from a certain subset of the population...

Oh and then go and google "sarcasm", as you don't seem to understand that either.

Graybyrd was not deriding someone for their skin colour, he was pointing out that Mr Trump seems to do so.

Alister

Re: Sorry ...

Ah, classic victim blaming now?

You might as well just say "He's Palestinian, he deserves it"

Alister

Re: Twitter?

@NeilPost

Clearly you don't get sarcasm, you idiot.

Eight-hour comms lags and shock discoveries: 30 years after Voyager 2 visited gas giant Neptune

Alister

their double entendre's

Ooh look, a greengrocer's apostrophe in the wild!

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

Alister

Re: A bit out of date?

Brakes, wheel bearings etc, and all the usual body electrical items will all still require servicing or replacement.

My god, it's full of tsars: A gun-toting Russian humanoid robot is on its way to the International Space Station

Alister

Re: Pathetic

Yes, when you compare it to the Boston Dynamics offerings, it looks poorly coordinated and probably unable to deal with any uneven terrain.

Alister

Re: Pathetic

On the other hand, would you really want to let loose a fully autonomous robot in the cramped confines of the ISS? I would be quite happy that it's remotely controlled or pre-programmed only.

Alister

Re: "the bot will be carrying out menial tasks"

Yes, like inserting malware into the guidance system, sabotaging experiments, covering the solar panels with a special fluid that gradually turns opaque in the sunlight . . . you know, menial tasks.

Do you have a problem with Russians or Russia, Pascal? Why would they do any of the above?

Got a burning desire for a Hololens 2.0? Microsoft insists its math coprocessor won't be too hot for headgear

Alister

Got a burning desire

I think my dyslexia is particularly bad this morning, I first read the headline as

Goat burning desire for a Hololens.

As browser rivals block third-party tracking, Google pitches 'Privacy Sandbox' peace plan

Alister

Privacy is Paramount

Perhaps they meant the Film Studios, or the Hotel?

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Alister

Re: Alister

You think Hydrogen refueling is going to be easier than electric car charging infrastructure.

No, I never said that. I think Hydrogen used as a fuel has its own problems.

I'm simply trying to refute some of the ridiculously overblown claims of some electric vehicle evangelists.

Alister

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

If you look at the Stats you provide here:

https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/#region

They give a totally misleading impression.

Although it quotes 9425 locations, only 1657 of those are Rapid chargers which equate to the convenience of a petrol station, requiring 30 minutes or less to charge a vehicle. There are only 361 Tesla Superchargers which allow for your quoted 7min charge.

However, when you start to look at what that headline figure of 9425 locations really includes, there's a bit of a surprise. For instance, I live in the Peak District, and when you look at the map provided we find that although there are 5 charging locations within a 10 mile radius of where I live, not one of them is actually public - they are all tied to a hotel or guest house of some sort, and are marked as "restricted". There isn't actually a public charger nearer than Derby, 35 miles away.

But they count towards the misleading figure you are so fond of spouting.

Alister

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

See other posts, there are more charging stations that the public can access in the UK than fuel stations.

You keep saying that, it doesn't make it true.

A petrol station on average will have 8 pumps on site, quite a few have more. So that's at least 8 vehicles that can be refueled at a time.

An average EV charging site might have 2 chargers, or 4 if you're very lucky. Not all of the chargers available work with all EVs, some EV charging accounts only work with specific chargers.

And despite what you say, there are not more EV charging sites than petrol stations in the UK, that's a lie.

Alister

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

Battery electric works in nearly all standard use cases and already has a national supply to every home (almost), road, street.

Except that we don't have the charging infrastructure in place, nor the grid capacity to cope, if all vehicles were electric powered.

There is such a long way to go with hydrogen including a whole network and delivery mechanism to set up.

See above.

Hydrogen will always have greater inefficiencies and losses than batteries, regardless how it is made.

Electrical battery technology is one of the most polluting and least efficient ways of powering a vehicle, when you take into account both the manufacture and later disposal of the batteries, and the low working lifetime.

Alister

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

in a petrol fire you at least have some change of escaping from the car. However, in a hydrogen explosion you are well and truly toast.

That's not necessarily the case, a petrol fire is quite slow, and tends to stay where the fuel is. A Hydrogen fire is much quicker, and will quickly dissipate upwards as the gas expands rapidly.

Alister

Alternatively,

Bring back horse transport.

Every place of work should have stabling facilities, and there should be fodder and water provided at supermarkets, service stations, schools etc.

All inner-city transport should be horse-drawn - delivery vans, buses and taxis, for instance.

The waste products can be used to fertilise our crops, and worn out horses can be used for glue, furniture and food, and the carcasses are bio-degradable.

Shhh! Microsoft, Intel, Google and more sign up to the Confidential Computing Consortium

Alister
Big Brother

soon be obsolete, anyway

When the governments implement their various backdoors and banning of encryption, there will be no such thing as Confidential Computing.

Why would you need it? You have nothing to hide, and no need to fear...

Finally. Thanks so much, nerds. Google, Apple, Mozilla end government* internet spying for good

Alister

you just happened to overhear them...

El Reg had a Man-in-the-Middle on the Skype call...

US soldier cleared of taking armoured vehicle out for joyride – because he's insane, court says

Alister

Re: Name

When accused of driving a stolen vehicle, he replied "Yabut, I only borrowed it"

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

Alister

Might I suggest you break out your favourite search engine and do some research on Optical Transport Networks (OTN) before you continue to call some quite clever people "dickhead"?

Ahem:

Infinera provides its customers – including CenturyLink in this case – with the proprietary management channel enabled by default. CenturyLink was aware of the channel but neither configured nor used it

Alister
Facepalm

It took them three fucking days to kill off a packet flood, because some dickhead decided OOB management was too expensive.

There once was a biz called Bitbucket, that told Mercurial to suck it. Now devs are dejected, their code soon ejected

Alister

Re: Git

Just when I thought the therapy was working, you have to go and mention it...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Clip, clip, hooray: NASA says it will send Clipper probe to Europa, will attempt no landing there

Alister

Re: Nitpick

Agreed, Europa is more likely to be the top spot for "life as we don't know it"...

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Alister

He added that people should refrain from upgrading their phones every two years and go for SIM-only deals instead.

That's all very well, but none of the main mobile producers support old phone models for very long, and trying to run the latest Android or IOS on any phone older than say four years is going to be a struggle - if it's even supported.

The Pwn Star State: Nearly two dozen Texas towns targeted by tiresome ransomware

Alister

Currently, Vital Statistics remains offline

He was the village Chief in Asterix wasn't he?

Lenovo ThinkPad X390: A trusty workhorse that means business but it's not without a few flaws

Alister

Re: Why are these still popular?

Never understood the love for these dated looking, unstylish, overpriced, poorly specced laptops.

Ahh, a classic example of preferring form over function. Do you like crayons as well?

Breaker, breaker. Apple's iOS 12.4 update breaks jailbreak break, un-breaks the break. 10-4

Alister

Re: So, unc0ver is open-source ?

"Tabs are so nineties, darling, let's just single-space everything, Oh and get rid of the brackets, they're so messy"

Canadian ISP Telus launches novel solution to deal with excess email: Crash your servers and wipe it all

Alister

Our entire leadership team is committed to learning from this experience to augment the strength of our globally-leading networks

and not be such penny-pinching bastards...

KNOB turns up the heat on Bluetooth encryption, hotels leak guest info, city hands $1m to crook, and much, much more

Alister

Re: Timely

Make sure you stack them all next to the window, so everyone can admire them...

Alister
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Knob

and even though we've thought long and hard about making jokes about this, sadly, we've come up with nothing.

Class!

Apple fires legal salvo at Corellium claiming the virtual iPhone flinger is infringing copyright

Alister

The Register has asked Corellium to comment.

Good call - you're certainly not going to get a response from Apple...

'Hey Google, remind Greg the locks have been changed, and he should find a new place to live. Maybe ask his mistress?'

Alister

Re: Smart reply

Sorry to hear that.

It does remind me of the probably apocryphal tale of a lady in her 60s who received a text from a friend regarding the death of her friend's partner, and who texted back "So sorry to hear of Jim's death LOL"

She thought Lol meant "lots of love ".

Police costs for Gatwick drone fiasco double to nearly £900k – and still no one's been charged

Alister

Re: Bit unfair

when we don't yet know the perps or their MO

We don't yet know if there were any perps at all, as there is no compelling evidence that any drones existed.

World recoils in horror as smartphone maker accused of helping government snoops read encrypted texts, track device whereabouts

Alister

Keiren must be suffering quite a painful jaw now, the tongue-in-cheek is intense!