* Posts by Robert Helpmann??

2583 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2011

So, that's cheerio the nou to Dundee Satellite Receiving Station: Over 40 years of service axed for the sake of £338,000

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Don't mix up dreams (free) and expenses (cost £££).

Stop calling them dreams and start calling them advertising and it's sorted or at least a lot easier to justify in the minds of some people.

Hey kids! Want to send teacher on a Zero-G flight? Unleash those mad cool video skillz

Robert Helpmann??
Devil

Too much like me

My plea for "just one more" parabola didn't go down at all well with those strapped in with heads between knees.

I would totally do the same, even especially if I felt like those poor bastards.

Taj Mahal and SneakyPastes: Kaspersky reveals pair of attacks menacing Asia, Middle East

Robert Helpmann??
Unhappy

The Good and the Bad

"They consist mainly of persistence mechanisms and simple instructions despite their different forms (...known software with open source code that can be backdoored...)."

One of the good things about open source is that more eyes on the code can improve it in many ways. Unfortunately, black hats have eyes too. While I do not like security through obscurity, complacency is the bane of open source. I'm curoius what the implementation was here. Perhaps adding the backdoors and just posting compiled code for download?

It's alive! Hands on with Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Option 3

This usually keep them in contention with a dodgy product long enough for them to either get better or starve the competition to death.

Or to buy out the competition. There were many companies that started up with the business model of "do something Microsoft-adjacent in order to get bought out." This obviously still happens, though not as much with Microsoft any more.

FBI catches heat, HS kids catch a hacking rap, and Albany catches a ransomware infection

Robert Helpmann??
Joke

Re: New Jersey, New York

I'd bet a very small fraction of the US population can name the capitals of all 50 states.

It's roughly equivalent to the proportion of 5th graders in the general population.

Missouri's isn't St Louis or Kansas City (though the latter would be a confusing choice, and both have the disadvantage of being located on the border).

It's not a disadvantage to live on the Missouri side of the border as much as it is unfortunate that folks in those cities haven't managed to escape yet.

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

Robert Helpmann??
Pint

Inquiring minds want to know...

...what's on tap there. With pics as part of a pre-pub warm up booze session.

Altered carbon: Boffins automate DNA storage with decent density – but lousy latency

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Basic vs Practical Research

This medium would seem to have promise, but I doubt it will be used in a data center. It is never going to be fast, which means it would only be useful for long-term storage. There are a number of solutions, though, that will last longer than this is likely to and are most likely faster than it ever will be. I wouldn't look to this to revolutionize the storage world. At the same time, developing this might lead to new technologies that will allow us to do things we cannot today, haven't even considered... or not. The point, I think, is to learn what is possible first and figure out a real world use for it later. Good luck to the researchers!

Let's spin Facebook's Wheel of Misfortune! Clack-clack-clack... clack... You've won '100s of millions of passwords stored in plaintext'

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Pinch Me

This is the same biz that this month lied about how many teens were using its market-research-slash-surveillance app, and has repeatedly lied in the past, so take the statement with a pinch of salt.

There's not enough salt in the ocean to help me swallow the FB line.

New Zealand cops cuff alleged jackasses who shared mosque murder video, messages online

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

No, we don't ban videos of the holocaust. Apply thew same scenarios. These people shared the videos with "bring on the cull" or being happy about the body acount etc etc.

This points to the importance of accounting for intent and context in evaluating these acts rather than relying on content alone. While censorship can be and often is abused, using this to push the agenda of the person who killed these people is equivalent to yelling Fire! in a crowded theater.

McAfee – the completely sane guy, not the biz – told to fork out $25m over 'torture, murder' of his Belize neighbor

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

What's in a Name

A few years ago, I designed and deployed a McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator module for a customer whose contract I was on. I wanted to title it "John" but had to go with something more prosaic. Lesson learned. I will use "John" as the internal name for anything of this nature I write so it will live on in the code even if the display name is different.

In a humiliating climbdown, Facebook agrees to follow US laws

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Laugh of the day

In this case, however, a lot of people could be described as clueless because there was no way that they could find out how Facebook and its friends were slicing and dicing the personal data of their users for fun and profit.

Other than the well established and well published history of the company getting up to similar shenanigans over its entire corporate life? Just knowing FB has access to all sorts of intimate details of their users, that they make much of their money from advertising (directly or indirectly) and that they have been caught out more than once abusing their market position is enough that a clueful person would be able to work out that FB should not be trusted on any level. You don't need to know the exact details of how they are doing wrong to know that are doing something wrong.

Sorry, Linux. We know you want to be popular, but cyber-crooks are all about Microsoft for now

Robert Helpmann??
Unhappy

Re: Really?

The most exploited vuln in the firm's hall of shame was a remote code execution flaw in Windows' VBScript engine that could pwn users who opened a booby-trapped web page with Internet Explorer.

Q. Who does this?

A. Enough people to make it worthwhile to exploit, apparently.

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

Robert Helpmann??
Joke

A Simple Solution

Rather than go through all the effort of governments setting up their own web sites and still committing gaffes of this nature, why not cut to the chase and outsource their web hosting to Facebook?

Please pay attention to the icon, just this once!

NASA: We need commercial rockets! SLS: Oh no you don't!

Robert Helpmann??
Facepalm

It only takes one time

...up until the US realised that they couldn't afford Space Station Freedom**...

** Never allow Americans to name things, they're crap at it.

We make one mistake and all the Apollos, Geminis, Titans, Mercuries and so on are forgotten - one mistake that wasn't even used!

This headline is proudly brought to you by wired keyboards: Wireless Fujitsu model hacked

Robert Helpmann??
Alert

Re: Nasty problem

The next thing you know, I will have to worry about securing my wi-fi so the neighbors don't get into my network!

Bandersnatch to gander snatched: Black Mirror choices can be snooped on, thanks to privacy-leaking Netflix streams

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Oh no!

We are taking reality here pal, not boundless paranoia.

From recent history, we have seen the paranoid among us proven right. While there may be no apparent use for this - malevolent or otherwise - at this time, we have seen that what initially seems trivial can be blown up into something major. For example, most people didn't realize how invasive Facebook and similar would become, how corrosive to privacy, but we continue to see that play out to the detriment of many. Finally, I truly enjoy the irony of someone posting anonymously arguing against privacy at any level. Well played!

PuTTY in your hands: SSH client gets patched after RSA key exchange memory vuln spotted

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: PuTTY's days are numbered

At least you can compile and verify the PuTTY code. God know what's actually in the Windows OpenSSH code.

Code review is not the only tool in deciding if a given piece of software is secure, so it is best not to overstate the importance of open source vs closed in terms of security. Also, while the pros and cons of each are debated below, I would like to point out the consideration of increasing your attack surface by installing third party tools to do something that is already baked into the OS. In general, this should be avoided though YYMV.

Karpeles walks, Google and Microsoft board up Windows hole, and Android AV still sucks

Robert Helpmann??
Headmaster

A patch by any other name

...but what is the term for a patch that gets released before any practical bug can even be found?

Due diligence? A good job? The way things should get done?

Q&A: Crypto-guru Bruce Schneier on teaching tech to lawmakers, plus privacy failures – and a call to techies to act

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Bruce telling it like it is!

They can force the companies they work for to abandon lucrative US military contracts... If employees start to routinely demand the companies they work for behave more morally, the change would be both swift and dramatic.

While I am aware of differing opinions on the defense industry, being a part of it is not the equivalent of immorality. @JLV makes a good point on those Googlers' ability to hold mutually opposing ideas at the same time. It's so easy to claim that you aren't doing anything wrong if it's someone else taking the action while you merely provide the support needed to enable it.

How many Reg columnists does it take to turn off a lightbulb?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Aliens

I wasn't even *born* when this PoS came out...

My kids were brought up watching at least a representative sample of different shows from when I was young. They get most of the jokes from the previous era and appreciate where entertainment has got better and know when it has got worse. I call out this twit's parents as being negligent in his upbringing. Respect the classics!

My old-timer moment was when I tried to discuss the Tiananmen Square massacre with one of my younger colleagues who had never heard of it. I was there as a tourist immediately prior to that happening. Another coworker, who was a college student in Beijing at the time, and I were talking about it and getting blank looks from our 30-something year-old neighbor.

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Long way around the barn!

scrum master... I actually saw this on a job description earlier this week. My first reaction was WTF?! I looked it up because I didn't think it was a real thing, but that just served to cement my first reaction as my permanent one.

Forget that rare-earth element crunch – we can now just extract them from industrial waste

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: REEs, as the name suggests, are difficult to find and mine

From the article: "I think there's such a vast reserve there," said David Reed. The difference between a reserve and dirt being the economics of extracting something useful from it.

Yes! Pack your bags! Blossoming planetary system strikingly similar to ours found by boffins

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Late Heavy Bombardment...

That might not be a hopeful time at which to visit Earth 2.0...

I think I'll call it Bob.

Never thought we'd ever utter these words, but... can anyone recommend a spin doctor for NASA?

Robert Helpmann??
Boffin

It's just a big Crookes radiometer.

Not quite. Those only work in partial vacuum and rely on gas flow to cause movement. In the current situation, I think you mean to say that photon radiation pressure is causing the acceleration.

Just Android things: 150m phones, gadgets installed 'adware-ridden' mobe simulator games

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Snow Heavy Excavator Simulator

Having seen some of these games aps in action, I am not sure how to differentiate between them and malware. I started to say "other malware", but I guess that some individuals actually want these on their phones and download them willingly unlike the add-ons described in the article. There's no arguing with taste.

'It's like painting with atoms'... Watch how boffins form armies of simple micron-sized bots from a silicon wafer

Robert Helpmann??
Facepalm

Re: No, but...

It's getting more and more deranged.

And with this, we have ventured into the surreal. The bulk of your post proves this point while this single statement, if true, should not come from someone deranged, which would in turn beg the question of what the rest of it was if not that...

People need to get sick and die - that's what's supposed to happen - the human race needs to change and evolve

Natural order be damned! There are more ways to achieve growth than through the evolutionary process and the idea that you should get sick and die only holds water as long as there are no viable alternatives. As soon as there are, what you are supposed to do is choose.

Freelance devs: Oh, you wanted the app to be secure? The job spec didn't mention that

Robert Helpmann??
Thumb Up

Re: Quality

Time to let the "everybody must learn to code" meme die like the dodo.

So we should isolate the perpetuators of the idea from the rest of the world and hunt them down while siccing pigs, dogs and rats on their progeny? Seems reasonable to me.

TalkTalk kept my email account active for 8 years after I left – now it's spamming my mates

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: You brought up an interesting point

Why would a brute force attack be effective! That's shody security on TalkTalk's part (a theme here, it would seem)? What have they done with the logs showing which IPs the illicit access took place?

From hard drive to over-heard drive: Boffins convert spinning rust into eavesdropping mic

Robert Helpmann??
Thumb Up

Re: I'll file this in the ...

It's a good example of how you can use a sensor - sensors are everywhere.

This! You have summed up the utility of this research perfectly. The experiment is merely a proof of concept that points out an entirely new class of exploit. While the implementation may vary from device to device, it is likely that the same code used for signal filtering can be reused across many.

SpaceX Crew Dragon: Launched and docked. Now, about that splashdown...

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

"What could possibly go wrong?"

Exactly the wrong words to close out an article on space flight. Yikes!

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Sorry, but...

I've yet to meet any portable electronics that can't be destroyed by a sledgehammer.

I had to decomm a bunch of non-functioning equipment for my first sysadmin job. This meant hauling it from all over campus and putting it in a disposal bin after filling out the appropriate paper work. The bin was located next to a retaining wall down a flight of concrete stairs. I could either dump materials directly in from above or from a door in the front if they were already on the same level. One of the items to be disposed of was a CRT monitor. I had always wanted to chuck one down a flight of stairs and my chance had arrived. I threw it directly onto the screen. It bounced. There were some scuff marks, nothing more. I did not, however, perform the sledgehammer test, but I would place even odds on the monitor.

After last year's sexism shambles, 2019's RSA infosec bash has upped its inclusivity game

Robert Helpmann??
Happy

Re: Re Monica Lewinsky

I see what you did there...

Really? If you have something to say, just spit it out.

Danger mouse! Potent rodents 'see' infrared after eyeballs injected with nanoparticles

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

I worked in the rat lab when I was in grad school. We destroyed animals that were used in training students and for acedemic research. The school would not give the animals away due to liability concerns. It was quite amazing the number of animals that "escaped" to the students' homes before their executions.

It is also worth noting that animals used for scientific research are typically bred specifically for the purpose and are not intended as pets or food. While this does not prevent researchers from becoming attached to them (especially the aforementioned students), it is worth understanding what ethics review boards have to consider.

Qbot malware's back, and latest strain relies on Visual Basic script to slip into target machines

Robert Helpmann??
Paris Hilton

Re: VB Script

Who on earth actually use VB Script for anything useful...?

Hackers, obviously.

In the cloud, things aren't always what they SIEM: Microsoft rolls out AI-driven Azure Sentinel

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Just trying to understand

...nearly limitless cloud speed and scale...

It's early and I had to break this down to process because not enough caffeine:

...nearly limitless...

So it has limits. Check!

..cloud speed...

It's the new Project Tartan cloud. It moves at the speed of plaid. Check!

...and scale...

And it's a fish. Got it!

Spooky! Solar System's Planet NINE could be discovered in the next NINE years (plus one to six), say astroboffins

Robert Helpmann??
Headmaster

Here's Your Sign

There is no sign of the Solar System's hypothetical “Planet Nine” yet...

I thought the issue was that all we have are signs but no direct detection.

Vodafone exec dons tartan tam-o'-shanter, clutches bottle of Irn-Bru, in snap shared with firm... just before Glasgow staff told of redundo dates

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Managespeak

We are moving some people into larger centres of excellence across our consumer, digital and technology operations.

Translation: We are firing people and expect they will find better jobs with our competitors.

Bonus points for choosing IBM for cloud services.

Cops told live facial recog needs oversight, rigorous trial design, protections against bias

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: 98% false positive rate?

To follow this up a bit, one of the reasons that facial recognition has had such miserable results has been due to the data set used in baselining. I do not know about the UK, but in the US it is typical to provide your fingerprint as part of getting a state ID. It is not a big leap to assume your next ID photo will be included in the data gathered at that time. With the data set approaching 100% of the population, the accuracy of these systems should be greatly increased. What then?

So. To the question we really wanted answering: How real is 5G?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: But why?

Q: Why do I need 1.8 Gb/s to my phone ?

A: So you can burn through your data faster and incur additional charges.

IBM so very, very sorry after jobs page casually asks hopefuls: Are you white, black... or yellow?

Robert Helpmann??
Trollface

Re: Big Blue ?

IBM has long rejected all forms of racial discrimination...

Are IBM employees going to show public outrage at Will Smith wearing blueface for the upcoming Aladdin movie?

Crowdfunded lawyer suing Uber told he can't swerve taxi app giant's £1m legal bill

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

It's stories like this that occasionally pull on my atheist strings and move me a little towards agnosticism, albeit briefly.

The very existance of lawyers ought to sober you right up, then.

This image-recognition neural net can be trained from 1.2 million pictures in the time it takes to make a cup o' tea

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: You can't make a cup of tea in 90 seconds

The answer somehow ought to involve a shark-mounted laser, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make that work.

Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has got the horn for space rock Ryugu – a sampling horn, that is

Robert Helpmann??
Headmaster

Re: SCI?

I had a similar thought about the Sampler Mechanism (SMP): as an acronym, it fails. Either it is a shortened version of sampler, in which case there is no need to specify that it is a mechanism, or there needs to be an additional word that starts with the letter P tacked to the end.

SpaceX's Demo-1 green lit for launch as Virgin enjoys a brief ménage à trois aboard VSS Unity

Robert Helpmann??
Pint

Congrats!

... to Beth Moses, Dave Mackay and Michael "Sooch" Masucci on earning their wings. May they continue to fly high and come home safely.

In a galaxy far, far away, aliens may have eight-letter DNA – like the kind NASA-backed boffins just crafted

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Bah!

...before we all mutate so much we have to take up residence in giant metal pepperpots with toilet plungers for hands.

This eventuality may be avoided as long as we resist the urge to nuke ourselves into this situation.

WTF PDF: If at first you don't succeed, you may be Adobe re-patching its Acrobat, Reader patches

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Better and better

...Microsoft quietly reduced that list to just two Facebook domains... a Microsoft spokesperson told us: "We are nearing the point where Flash is no longer part of the default experience in Microsoft Edge..."

So at what point will they also block Facebook to further improve customer security?

Oh Snapd! Gimme-root-now security bug lets miscreants sock it to your Ubuntu boxes

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

FTFY

...Ubuntu users who do install the update should also take a moment to make sure they have updated removed their versions of Flash Player...

When making changes, it is genereally a good idea to take a moment to review the scope of what should be done and act accordingly, especially when it comes to making machines more secure.

Bad news for WannaCry slayer Marcus Hutchins: Judge rules being young, hungover, and in a strange land doesn't obviate evidence

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: "while talking to an unnamed associate over a recorded prison telephone line"

it doesn't get called aspergers round here

It was removed from the latest version of the DSM, so it doesn't get called that by mental health professionals either, at least not in providing a diagnosis that may have bearing in court.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine not a boot stamping on a face, but keystroke logging on govt contractors' PCs

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Sure

Most government systems make it clear that your presence there is monitored and nothing you do on them should be considered private. The privacy issue issue is a red herring. What if I said "Let's install software that will take up plenty of system, network and storage resources; cost lots of money while providing little return and will open up plenty of opportunities for leaks and abuse"? I doubt I could offload much of my product if I were to be honest about it. However, if I bypassed anyone with a clue and went straight to those responsible for procurement, I bet I could sell a ton of this crap.

US kids apparently talking like Peppa Pig... How about US lawmakers watching Doctor Who?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Doctor Who

She's annoying, her portrayal of the Doctor lacks any authority. Colin Baker had a similar problem.

While I disagree with you concerning the current portrayal of the Doctor, I also had hoped that it would be a different actor in the role. As it had been established with Capaldi that there is a reason for the faces worn by the character, I wanted to see Michelle Gomez again... because whatever you think about which Doctor was the best, Missy definitely had it going on.