Posts by Robert Helpmann??

Not all bad

I don't understand the recent fascination with phablets, 6" size of a phone is a design fault, not a feature.

@Gordan, because people come in all sizes, having a phone to match that variety is a good thing. I don't know about others, but I shop all my phones at least in part based on whether my fingers can hit the tiny, tiny buttons. Having said that, put a strap on this thing and I would have a nice chunky watch.

“Life Mode” will free you from constant distractions, such as the non-stop stream of notifications. Unlike in a conventional Flight Mode, you can choose what gets through, and when.

This is a selling point that I hope gets taken much further. Application management on Android phones has long been an irritant to me. It would be so nice if there was a console where you could manage access rights, notifications, et cetera for different apps all in one go, by group or otherwise instead of the current base setup where you have to go into each app's settings and select each bit. Ugh! Kudos to Palm for getting this bit right.

Re: Cygnus, which is shaped like a swan

This is why we don't have time machines. Otherwise, we'd have people from the future coming back in time to give us an ear-bashing all day, every day.

I think it is more likely that future historians regard this period as toxic and avoid it completely. This was most likely caused by some of them showing up to say nasty things and then being exposed to cat videos. Once the rot had set in, future society wouldn't have them back.

Re: Tea

Its just WRONG!!

Made by people who thought the Harry Potter stories were documentaries.

Re: Not a good look here.

why have you never trusted the documents folder?

Why would anyone think that placing all their data on the same volume as the OS was a good idea? And for those old school command line users, trying to find files under the C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents folder is a bit cumbersome. Relying on defaults may be convenient in most cases, but there have been too many times that doing so has led to my being bitten that I am willing to blindly trust that it will all work out OK if I do. Once or twice is really all that took.

Re: 60 to 70% accurate?

Hyper partisans see themselves as being only slightly left or right of center - they believe they are part of the "silent majority" in the country.

A good way to approach this is to look at your opinion and try to find views that are more extreme in a variety of directions. If there aren't any, you're probably out on the fringes. If you are more lazy, you may find the first chart in this article helpful. If you are both lazy and an extremely right-leaning partisan, you will find the second chart to be more your cup of tea.

Re: "fucking chip"

...I know of a sex toy manufacturer who would be very interested, for both straight chips and back-doored chips.

I can only provide one up-vote, but see icon for bonus. Happy Friday!

Re: One thing is clear

A lot of Russian propagandists post on The Register. And have that subtle touch Russians are famous for.

It would seem that is the status quo for the internet as a whole. They'll let just anyone on these days.

Re: Moons of the moons?

Great! Now we have another category of celestial body the IAU currently has no definition or even name for and will screw up when they get 'round to it. Allow me to be the first to propose exosubmoonlets (extrahyposatellites had too many syllables) defined as an object that orbits a moon¹ such that the center of the orbital system is inside the mass of the moon.²

1. Moon: [proposed] An object that orbits a planet³ such that the center of the orbital system is inside the mass of the planet.

2. If the center of an orbital system is outside the mass of its members, they are in a committed relationship, binary or otherwise. This leads to the possibility of coexosubmoonlets which is very exciting and will probably have a small, militant and vocal online presence any day now.

3. Planet [proposed] A non-stellar object orbiting one or more stellar objects but not orbiting another object as well. Note: Planets come in many sizes, shapes and colors and should not be judged or discriminated against because of this; they are all still planets.

Re: Interesting...

I'm unable to find any credible evidence online that points to the involvement of North Korea.

Try looking.

Re: @iron

True. But if one can plug a bunch of privacy leaks in any type of network interaction, why would one not?

I think what was being spoken to is example as it was given in the article rather than the actual need to correct this particular vulnerability. Both are good points. Yes, we should correct flaws where we can, but we should also be cognizant of areas we do not have control over and avoid them when it matters. Good security is really more about implementation - behaviors - than the tech supporting it.

Re: "Everything blamed on the firm they bought the app from."

While I am mildly sympathetic to your view I have to point out that this is not true of the BlackBerry apps for Android.

I appreciate the point, and while there may be a few similar out there, they are truly few and far between. They should be looked at as the exception proving the rule.

Re: Centrifugal force

"There is no such thing"

Wrong.

If it's just inertia viewed from a certain frame of reference, then it isn't a separate thing, is it? Why call it something different when it isn't?

Re: The title is no longer required.

There appears to be more pictures now than a book of nursery rhymes...

Challenge accepted!

The Port of San D / Wasn't too handy / With AV or countermeasures

Given a ransom / That was quite handsome... / To pay or give up their treasures?

Still shaking their heads / They bring in the Feds. / Will they make this go away?

The exploit was APT, / For cash they'll be strapped / And files in the locker to stay.

It's Friday, a time for really bad poetry (I'm being generous with the term, I know) and making light of someone else's misfortune.

Re: Call me cynical

There is, however, no conspiracy theory on that as of yet, ...

Well you've started one now!

Never let an uncastrated stray dog in your house...

Ouch! The implied corollary to this is... ouch! But I suppose it would put an end to the other allegations in a post hoc fashion.

Re: Which single law was broken?

That information was linked in the article, but for this particular issue (emphasis added), just keep reading...

"California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón today announced a $148 million nationwide settlement resolving allegations that Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber) violated state data breach reporting and reasonable data security laws in connection with its 2016 breach of driver and customer data. Uber is accused of exposing 57 million users’ data and paying hackers to cover up the breach rather than reporting it to proper authorities. "

It doesn't stop there, of course. This page has a number of examples:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-laws-Uber-has-broken

More telling is that there is a Wikipedia page set up for this very topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_protests_and_legal_actions

Re: Approx

MPG? Bah! BPF is the correct unit of measure! That's Brontosauruses per Funbag.

Re: Some devices are unpatchable.

... just throw it away and buy a new one.

What are they? Telecom companies?

Re: Just an attempt...

To prevent the cities from extorting...

In my experience, when someone uses the word "just" in commenting on a technical matter, they don't have a clue what they are talking about ("Why don't you just turn off AV and firewall for all these web servers so they will run better?") or they are straight up lying ("Don't worry. It's just the tip."). If your thesis is that all taxation is extortion and therefor what has been done by the various local jurisdictions is wrong, I would place your comment in Column A. Otherwise, just* stop with the BS.

* For the sardonically impaired, this does not a constitute a technical matter.

Re: Stop mirroring the media

While I don't think Trump has done more than any other president, he has definitely accomplished more than any other president since Reagan. Especially for the common workers in the USA.

Alexandr? Is that you?

Default to Secure

...the extra security doesn't hurt and just may avoid letting a previously clean address out into the wild.

If instead of treating security as a optional bolt-on component it was the default for applications to secure as much as they reasonably could, the world would be a better place. How much effort is it to send encrypted information instead of clear text? How much trouble would that save if encryption was the default?

Not Jason Bourne

The Bourne Codecracker?

My feeling is that Ruth Bourne is more bad-ass than her fictitious namesake. She has my admiration for the work she and her cohort accomplished.

Ant, worm or other bug

What caught my attention was the amount of time real world training actually takes. Unless the same AI can power multiple robots, these systems will have to learn at exactly the same rate we meatbags have to, or even more slowly. Other machine learning scenarios involve many hours of trial and error or guided learning done in parallel. That does not seem to have been the case in this example. There is also the possibility of direct transfer of learning as the technology progresses.Once one system has learned a skill, it can be given to similar systems without their having to go through the same learning process.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Obviously a gun is involved in every mass shooting - otherwise it wouldn't be called a shooting.

Yeah, because if cameras are involved, it's just a photo shoot; if lots medicinal shots are being given, it's a mass vaccination; if it's many shots being poured, it's a bar crawl; if rockets are being shot into the air, it's a pyrotechnics display and if it's simply a bunch of idiots shooting off their mouths, it's politics.

Source of Little Horrors

I'd open source the little horrors.

Yes, but what would you do if you start finding Notepad open on your computer every night with just a single line showing?

----> "Feed me, Seymour!"

Re: Clarity Needed

For most retail establishments, security guard = loss prevention employee. In all cases, the loss prevention aspect comes first. If you want to identify one of these plain-clothes store detective types, get a few friends to go to a store with you, grab a random assortment of merchandise and wander toward the exit chanting "Shrinkage! Shrinkage!"

Re: Impressive consequences

Like finding a trout in your milk.

You've had that happen too? Good to know I'm not alone after all.

Re: And we can avoid...

We need to hold people accountable but if you make penalties for even slight infractions truly Draconian, people just won't report problems.

If we follow the original spirit of the term "Draconian", compliance will be achieved relatively quickly by the survivors. While your point about the harshness of the penalty needing to fit the infraction, it does help to take a cue from Draco and make sure that expected behavior is stated explicitly and prominently so there is no possible defense of ignorance. Training always needs to come first and only after should it be followed by enforcement.

Re: GCHQ IC Enterprises Bods Ringing NSA Belles and Pleasure Robots

OK, throw me a bone here. I went through this post and removed all lower case letters and it still doesn't make sense. Anagram solvers simply buckled under the load. What could I be missing?

TSSCANPFEVEAQPDARPAAINCYTALRIANVDFTERACGIAIGPGODRCVCAAASOFIBCIWAIGEEACCSFACRPMRRPBBPNDDTSTRTDITSETCCTHPMKS

Re: How come they can't learn bash, perl ?

Well that's pretty obvious....

Yeah, because there's all this stuff that couldn't be added into the existing command line interface and run from batch files. We definitely needed a new interface and it really needed to be completely object-oriented. What will they do next? Change the OS GUI? Replace MS Office menus with something completely different that requires everyone to relearn the product from scratch? Change the OS GUI again? The mind boggles!

Don't do financial stuff on the Internet.

Your concerns seem at odds with reality. In as much as there is a way to handle security in any realm, it is hard to argue that it is worse online than IRL. While it is worth calling out companies, applications and web sites that get it wrong, the fact that there is scrutiny on them is more than you get out of physical access to money these days. Ever hear of card skimmers? Hacking ATMs? Perhaps you ought to just hide your money under your mattress or may switch entirely back to barter until the monetary Wild West is sorted.

TL;DR?

Woah! Anti-virus??

McAfee True Key is not an AV product. At no point in the article is one mentioned directly. The only indirect reference to one might be the bit that says "...any other McAfee signed binary can be used to exploit the vulnerability as long as the binary depends on a DLL outside the list of known DLLs."

Re: Problem-solution dichotomy

I'm a bit hazy on why one would want to drive off with a Tesla. What, exactly, does one plan to do with it?

Sell it for parts, especially the battery. Given the speed at which Tesla doesn't provide service or replacement parts, the various bits you can pull out of a functioning car are going to be worth more than the car itself and have a lot lower chance of getting potential thieves caught.

Re: Keep Calm and Carry On

My tea cosy is far superior. It protects my head from frost, Check! mind control rays Noted!* and physical damage, due to being padded. Good! Plus I can use it to keep my tea warm. All at the same time? Impressive!

* Someone will be there to chat shortly.

Shoot me now. Please, someone.

With my IoT wireless connected smart gun?