Posts by Kiwi 4368 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2011
And how did you block the Apps / OS on your friends' mobiles?
That's easy. I don't have friends who use that :)
Them having my publicly available phone # and email addresses aren't exactly a matter of concern. You could have those details too if you just knew the right question(s) to ask. I did make them freely available online after all :)
Nope, long way from being out of toothpaste. Only use the tin foil when making garlic bread which is only when the bakery is out (Pizza hut still don't know how to make it, even after all this time! (that said, their pizza offerings are nice but still not nearly as good as what I can do!)
Reminds me, better start whipping up the dough. Guests coming for dinner tonight..
Not with me. FB's known IPs and URLs get blocked at the DNS level (I use PiHole+OpenVPN as my first port-of-call, plus some manual additions to PH). Then pop over to the hopefully-trustworthy Nord and hopefully am presenting lots of different faces (though not running via Nord today).
Hopefully enough to keep my data away from prying scumbag eyes.
I took a pro-active method to dealing with this ages back. Never had FB.
But I still get the same effect with the few bits of advertising that get through, including on YT recommended videos - which I'm not normally signed into and these days I generally use a VPN.
However, I suspect it might be a lot of "that video was going to be suggested anyway, and normally you wouldn't have noticed it, but because the conversation is in recent memory it suddenly becomes more noticeable".
And how many of our conversations are seeded by recent local events? Car maker has a big problem found in their cars and people are getting rid of them like my moggy gets rid of excess hair strands. Obviously more people are going to be buying new cars so the makers increase advertising. We'll also talk about this. Then along comes the add and "Oh hey, we were just talking about that. They must be listening!".
Try Waterfox or Duckduckgo's browser on Android.
Or the Adblock browser.
I like WF as it seems to allow you to set a default of "Request desktop site". On my 10" tablet I can hold it at arm's length and completely block out my 46" that's across the room, so why would I need to view a 'mobile' site designed for a much smaller screen?
DDG has the obvious privacy elements, fairly decent tab handling and a quick "clear all data" option. But it doesn't have an always-on default of requesting a desktop site.
Run my own "ad-blocking proxy" here (OpenVPN + PiHole).
Don't mind static ads, even picture static ads. Hate video ads (including animated gifs) and it's thanks to them on El Reg that I started blocking ads.
At times I've had very limited bandwitdh, either speed or amount. A static text ad uses 0.0001% of a page whereas video ads might be 90%. But I'm not there to watch video ads and they are so annoying there's many brands I will never visit because of their annoying video ads, so I am doing people favours by blocking them.
Agreed.We use http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman/ to block ad servers at the DNS level. So fuck them.
PiHole on the DNS server here, and OpenVPN + PiHole for when I'm elsewhere. With a few added extra blocks.
But thanks for pointing me to an alternative - nice to know of other options :)
You might be too young to remember the demonstration of the values of the Chinese government at the brutal Tiananmen Square Massacre..Beautifully worded sir!
Dammit! I should've checked I'd copied the text I hit ^C on. What I meant to refer to was :
"Except in this case it's the priest saying not to leave your child with the rabbi because you can't trust those ..."
That is what I meant to say was 'beautifully worded' :(
You might be too young to remember the demonstration of the values of the Chinese government at the brutal Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Yes. I'm sure the yanks are just perfect by comparison! No sanctioned killing of thousands of people in their borders under less-than-ideal circumstances!
Anyway, would you leave today your children alone with a priest who was often moved from a city to another?
Yes. There's lots of reasons priests and other church-folk move around. But that's not only completely irrelevant to this, it also would actually be some evidence that people could point to.
No evidence of any wrongdoing by Huawei. Lots against US corporations eg Google and Apple, and Microsoft - 2 of which at least have been proven again and again to break all sorts of tax, privacy, and child-protection laws, at least one of which slurps sensitive data and ships it back to their own servers (more than one I'm sure). Where are the calls for these companies to be banned?
There's a finite amount of water in circulation. If you irrigate you are basically converting water from rivers lakes or groundwater into plant mass or water vapor through transpiration.
Not quite true. The system I have (small scale I know) catches water that used to run off. I'm diverting a small portion of that lost water to storage tanks.
Later, I use that water to water the ground. A small amount gets used by the plants, some finds it's way deeper under ground, most returns to the air via evaporation. But the interruption in the water cycle is minimal, and by controlling it better we see better results as well. Locally grown crops, less soil erosion, no more needing treated municipal water for the gardens among a few of the many benefits.
Better soil and garden prep also reduce the amount of water needed, and controlling when the water falls on the soil also makes a huge difference.
This works in much the same way at scale as well.
but there is also an energy cost, which is the main point of my argument.
Last year we had (for us) a rather 'extreme' drought, 90 whole days without rain! My own city was on the very brink of water cuts (whole suburbs having their water cut for a day or two at a time) when the rain finally came.
Being someone who'd just re-discovered gardening and was working to piss someone off (who was making all sorts of claims about what could/couldn't grow here) I took a lot of interest in improving my soil's resilience to drought and how to get the most I can from the least water available.
I've learned a lot, including how the right ground prep work saves a hell of a lot on water. And I use solar pumps to give me a enough pressure for things to work.
There's lots of good material on places like youtube and various gardening blogs. I can use less water in dryer conditions and still get good yields, with a simple system where the harvesting and initial filtering side of it are all from the rainfall alone.
Oh, and we no longer have to worry about soil erosion, which was a big problem on the land I've been allowed to use for this.
But you can't irrigate wild coffee plants, especially if they're not known or mapped.
If they're not known or mapped, how come we get scare pieces telling us they're about to go extinct?
Maybe in the year 1,400 30,000 coffee species went extinct. We don't know because they weren't known or mapped, but the world turned over a new day just the same.
When I was at school, I was told that the worlds fossil fuels would be completely depleted by 2020 and we'd all be stranded without fuel for the cars, might starve as transport collapses and that we'd all freeze to death without heating.
In '98 or '99 a co-worker started cursing loudly while reading the news paper. He'd just put in some very expensive gas heating/cooking equipment into his home and there was an article stating that, without any form of doubt, 'natural gas' would be completely gone by 2006.
13 years after the 'never be any more of it found again' point and there's still plenty coming out of the ground, and production here in NZ has increased.
That, and the "Ocean levels will rise by 100 trillion miles by 2000!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!111111111!!!1!111!" crap is one of the things that got me starting to be a bit more sceptical. I'm a coastal dweller on an island nation BTW, living in a city that is by and large millimetres above sea level. Maybe by the year 23,000,000,000 we'll see some of this catastrophic sea-level rise?
If a climate scientist wanted riches, it would actually be far more profitable for him to help the fossil fuel industry prove there is no human-caused warming.
How do you imagine that would work? There's much more money in pushing this humans-caused-it BS.
To fix things is simple. Burns lots of shit so there's plenty of CO2 to feed the plants, but make sure you remove anything unhealthy. We need more CO2, but the other byproducts from pollution I don't want. Be reasonably energy efficient, but scrapping your current petrol car with 20 years life for a EV with probably less life isn't efficient (scrap your car when it's past it and then get the EV), look after your water resources but make sure you grow plenty in your garden (minor carbon sink but tasty, and cuts down on waste if your kitchen scraps go back into the mix!).
Temps will rise, and will fall, and will rise again. We may make a tiny increase or decrease, but not a big impact. But the resources we squander? Some are gone forever.
And get well away from so-called 'renewables" like wind which is a massive fake. (wave/tide, hydro etc not so bad). More nuke would be good.
I come form being a wind-loving anti-nuke Greeny, challenged to sit down and do some maths/research.. The overall numbers aren't in wind's favour.
The key words "in the wild". Pretty sure there's no more Fresian cows in the wild, but also pretty sure they're not at risk of extinction. Then again, the Fresian breed I knew a few decades back may be long gone.
I'd also hazard a guess that a lot of the 124 'species' have not been around that long, and never existed "in the wild"!
When all forms of coffee are gone try to wake me.
(And no, it's not that I don't care about this stuff - I do care about the environment; but I have no remaining patience for bullshit panic-pieces!)
I'm reasonably confident that haveibeenpwned.com is trustworthy but I'd not disclose full credentials on the basis of "I think it's probably a trustworthy web site".
Oh, I can see it now!
In normal, safe, un-threatening text "Please enter your email address to check if you have been pwned".
Non-threatening "Please wait while we check"
Very large, flashing, super-scary "YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS BEEN HACKED! URGENT ACTION IS NEEDED! ENTER YOUR PASSWORD SO WE CAN CHECK IF THAT IS SECURE!".
And the sad thing is I know so many people who will do it because the site told them to.
Maybe we need a new line of computer furniture. With built-in shackles and spikes, custom designed to cause unpleasant feelings in those who are likely to give their details away. Carefully custom-designed so those who revel in pain don't get the sort of pain they enjoy, but other pain instead.
Gmail itself has tightened up their security very well in the last year or so, now doing sanity-checks on geo-location.I discovered this via an alert from Google.
Nice when it tells you of stuff from out of your city. Not so nice when it says 'Someone from Wellington" and you happen to live in Wellington. Did it just throw a hissy fit when one of the machines polled it, or was it someone else? What's the IP address?
That would help. Then again, while they say "Wellington" they could mean "Brazil" - Google's claims about my location (even when using a NZ ISP) has not always been known to be within 2,000 miles of where I actually am.
Everyone I know with an enforced automatic password change has a list of the passowrds posted on their monitors.
I've done that, nothing wrong with it.
If you have the full user name plus PW, that may be an issue. But only if undesirables can see it. If no one undesirable is going to see it then not a problem.
Hence why I shall not partake of the opportunity to vanity-surf.
Just because a password has been seen doesn't mean it's not safe. In time every human-possible password will be 'seen' (at least in theory). Matching them with a user name or email is another matter.
I'm certainly not testing my bank ones without firing up some torified or other hide-me browser/connection.
"...this is a huge scam to harvest email addresses and passwords entered by people from the same source IP address (to link them together) which to be fair would be a brilliant one..."
Years back when I was managing a few forum pages, I wondered if it would be worth logging failed login attempts along with the failed credentials. Never bothered but I can bet I would've been given people's email acc passwords and/or passwords to other sites they often visit.
I would also bet that 1) I am not the only person to have thought of this and 2) it has already been done.
Hey there,
Noticed the old "your topics" side bar seems to be missing?
Is it because my posting level fell below enough to keep my badge, or has it been removed? If the latter, please bring it back!
Also, assuming there's no way to do this, can we have a way to set our default view? I'm used to the "Thread" view now and although I probably wanted Nested Thread a while back I actually would like to stick with the old for a while.. (And while you're at it, git orf muh lorrwn!!)
Personally, I'd like to see these businesses abandoning these countries
Me to. I'd very much like to see them leave my country as well!
I'll even provide the plane. Ok it's not passed it's airworthyness tests but you'll be OK so long as you don't hit any turbulence. Unfortunately I could only find a cheap pilot who really is OK even though he seems too doped up to know where he is, and the bearings on the hydraulic pumps look just about shot, but I'm sure you'll be OK.
And when the site is not one that you can simply ignore?
Sounds like you take your training from....
If a site falls under these laws and breaches them, file a complaint. Or notify one of the 'watchdog' organisations so they can file a better complaint.
Or just don't be too worried about it if you've got nothing to hide.
I do have stuff to hide though. Who is in my bed tonight belongs only between the 5 of us. Same for who is over for dinner.
What we discuss is our business, no one else's. It might be garbage about some crappy TV show, but one of us might have a health issue or relationship issues or be looking for largely unvisited plots of land locally and cheap disposable shovels. That's our business, not yours and not Googles. Where and when I travel is also something I wish to keep private. Not your business unless you're paying me, it's your vehicle, or you're with me.
If I chose to tell you something, it's still none of your business unless you become involved, and whatever I tell you is no one else's business unless I specifically tell you it's OK to share it with others, even if more than one person are present when I tell you.
This stuff is so simple. I despair for our race when so many have so much trouble with such simple concepts!
Irony is that duckduckgo is heavily java script dependent, so if you run with JS disabled by default (as a basic security precaution) then duckduckgo will not work.
Really? I never knew that. Works fine for me.
Too many sites use JS unnecessarily when there are non script alternative methods available.
On that we agree. There is very little need for JS on most sites, and most pages don't need it at all.
Why are you on a laptop - are you sure the mic isn't recording? Your phone? What about your modem? your mobile operator, your subway rides...
Yup. No microphone, physically disabled unless I switch it on (and yes, I know what a microphone looks like and no, it's not easy to hide one elsewhere on the board). I know my phone isn't, 1) it's a dumbphone, 2) it's not got a data plan, 3) it's not in the same room as me.
The modems are a long way away in another building, and pretty sure by now someone would've found a microphone on them. Network-wise I use several other layers.
The nearest subway is a few thousand miles away, and the local public transport ops have no way of knowing who I am.
There is an odd doohickey on my early 90's car engine that I don't recognise and haven't bothered to look up. Maybe that's a hidden microphone? OH NOES! DAYZ SPEYEINK ON ME!
The most 'interesting' things I do is post the odd subversive comment here or on the local rag's forums. If I was every to have anything more interesting to discuss, it'll be in an outdoors environment some distance from the nearest electronics. If we're really worried we'll wear a scarf over our mouths.
"Not possible to check content but possible to detect frequency and volume. So it should be fairly easy to check if it's sending all the time or just when receiving a command"
I'm a bit late with this but..
On a decent ADSL connection, how long would it take to upload 5 minutes of audio recorded at say 128k? What if it's at 96K - still decent enough for conversations to be clear.
How much background traffic does the device do? Does it 'poll for updates' every hour, and how much data is sent?
What law is there that prevents the makers from having it NOT give any lights when it is working, and what prevents them from writing a bit of code that makes the device upload random (or not) junk when idle? If I wanted to test if it was uploading everything or not, I'd have a traffic monitor on it and see how much it uploads when there are conversations (not using the trigger word) vs when there aren't conversations in the room. If there's virtually no traffic in both instances I think it's safe (until LEO orders a change, or until a certain other trigger is reached). If there's a constant low level of traffic then I'd assume that it's sending bits of the conversations during the day at quiet times, or it's sending junk to fool anyone watching for traffic spikes. If I was writing something I knew could cause trouble, I'd find a way to smooth over the bumps in the data. And of course when it is communicating with base in response to a command, I'd send every bit of extra data I could get away with at the time :)
Perhaps you can explain how someone who has the ability to see and hear, follow complex instructions, show the dedication needed to train themselves to reach a high enough level to be "professional gamers", work in a team environment where they have to show decent hand-eye co-ordination along with hand-ear co-ordination and following orders/working with others in a pressure environent - all this and yet "professional gamer" is the only job they can possibly hold? And how did they afford the kit to become "professional gamer" without already being paid well enough to own such hardware?
You are one weird kid if you even remotely believe what you write.
BTW, new a great guy once who was a pro gamer. All his money from gaming went to his kit, but he also had a full time job to pay for his addictionprofessionalism. Also gave it up quickly as it made a real mess of his RL relationships.
I asked the lady what happened when she started up the computer in the morning. "Oh, nothing special" was the reply, "just the usual stuff when it starts".
I had one of those too few years (and beers) back. No backups of course, yet somehow it was my responsibility. Even though they'd never been a customer of mine before that day.
Even worse, they "had to do work on the computer" before bringing it in, despite being told that they must NOT use it if they want me to have any chance of recovering their data.
Somehow I was responsible for their lost data, despite not being the stupid twit who wiped things despite clear warnings that all data would be lost!
I need to go and lie down for a few hours.
managers are incompetent techies who got promoted to move them on from a role in which they were useless.
Reminds me of a quote I think in one of the Narnia books (or another CSL book) about a teacher who was so useless she had to be promoted to get her out of the classroom.
Or something like that.
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