* Posts by Kiwi

4368 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2011

Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar

Kiwi
Coat

Re: Masthead change

I just noticed the seasonal masthead change. I like the snowvulture!

Not too fond of it myself. Too many snowflakes in it...

Kiwi

Re: Not IT related, but on topic ...

but was then tasked with menial tasks like making tea, collecting dry cleaning etc.

I used to enjoy such tasks. The tea wasn't so great a job but still a break from other stuff. But going out to get the dry cleaning.. Time off work on full pay, time out of the office, a chance to socialise with a couple of hotties in the immediate area.....

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: Can't we get rid of May?

Only 37%35% of people entitled to vote voted leavestay

FTFY.

The entire referendum was badly planned and the advertising by the leave group was criminally false.

Then your side should've got off your arses and done more to point out the truth to those who might believe their side.

And yes, had the tables reversed I would've been saying the same. You can't moan that "only 37% voted leave" when even less voted stay.

Those responsible should be prosecuted.

They're politicians and civil servants. Of course they should be prosecuted!

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: Can't we get rid of May?

In reality, the country voted by a small margin to Leave, with some drastically awful campaigning ( on all sides) and no real understanding of what leaving would look like, largely because the Leave campaign obfuscated all the arguments with outrageous claims (like that infamous NHS bus).

So why didn't the Remainers mount a larger or at least equivalent campaign to present their views?

Kiwi

Re: Can't we get rid of May?

Brexit: Bring it on! Let them have what they wished for. ( A bit tough on the just under half who voted to stay, but that's life.)

At least the just over half who voted to leave get what they asked for.

That's the screwy thing about basic democracy. 50.0000000000000001% wins.

Kiwi
Megaphone

Re: Can't we get rid of May?

I don't think anyone would have had a problem if the govt had said they needed a 2/3rd majority for exit.

Wow. So you have a population of 46,500,001 registered voters, and say 34,870,000 of them voted "LEAVE" while only 1,498,071 vote "STAY"

And you somehow think it's "democratic" or appropriate that 1,498,071 get their way while 34 million don't?

It messes with the head to think that there are such people who can actually manage the complex mental arithmetic that separates "inhale" from "exhale".

The matter is simple. It was a vote on a basic yes/no line (which yes, perhaps could've been handled better). If you wanted to stay then your job was to get out and get other people to join your side and vote for what you believed best. The leave side got a little over a million votes more than the stay side. These people voted for what they wanted (wrong or otherwise). If you really wanted the UK to stay in the EU then you had one simple job, convince others of your viewpoint. You failed in that task.

Reminds me of a mate who refused to vote in this year's general election. He did not get the outcome he wanted. Somehow other people are to blame, despite the amount of air he expended telling others how he did not intend to vote for the party he wanted because he believed they could do it without him. I could see it was a close deal so I encouraged people of both sides to register, encouraged them to vote for who they preferred, talked over the many issues as best as I could, and even offered help with transport to polling places. You have to fight for the outcome you want, and if you don't fight for it then assume the blame lies with you for failure.

If 500,000 remainers each got one of the non-voters to vote to remain, you'd have had your wish. That's not a very big ask really.

(And if you did fight for it, you have my appreciation and my apology for assuming you didn't)

Kiwi

Re: July and August must Go!

Everything else is embelishments used to justify, describe, or sell this idea to someone (like balthazar, the black king who was born 200 years after jesus death and lived hundreds of miles west of Bethlehem, who non the less arrived as one of the wise men from the east, long complicated journey I'm sure)

From many repeated readings of the Bible including the texts referred to, and a quick check of a search at biblegateway.com and other resources, there appears to be no mention of this "balthazar" character anywhere in the Bible.

Perhaps you've fallen victim to some of the many false falsehoods claimed to be in the Bible?

Millions of moaners vindicated: Man flu is 'a thing', says researcher, and big TVs are cure

Kiwi
Mushroom

Re: Britishese to Americanese

You realise, don't you, that the reason many Scottish and Welsh people reject a British identity is that so many English people treat "English" and "British" as synonyms...?

You only make that mistake once if you happen to know a suitably large and bulshie Welsh woman.

If you're really really lucky, you get out of hospital with enough life left to tell about it.

Icon --> we don't have anything close enough to the real level of violence!

5 reasons why America's Ctrl-Z on net neutrality rules is a GOOD thing

Kiwi
WTF?

Re: Fantasy land

I suggest you leave the fantasyland of San Francisco and the Bay Area and actually talk to people who work for a living.

How the hell would that make a difference to an article on net neutrality?

Can you tell me what it is you're taking so I know what to avoid?

Kiwi

in any case, the NRA has done plenty of studies on conceal/carry permits vs crime rates, and it demonstrates that private citizens carrying weapons is a DETERRENT to gun crimes.

So why is crime in the US so much higher than places that don't have such laws? Especially areas with comparable if not much higher rates of personal gun ownership?

Kiwi
Pint

how my vehicle handles in extreme situations

******************************************************

key point. way to many drivers on both sides of the pond have no idea how their vehicle responds in emergency situation.

[..]

since then with every vehicle I have owned I spent time learning its capabilities.

[..]

I know exactly how the rear suspension will handle at a given air pressure (I have rear air bags on suspension for towing) and whenever I get new set of tires I spend many miles testing how they react.

I learned much of my driving on farm land, so I got a crash-course in traction control. In that I was privileged but that is something people can learn easily. Of course, that knowledge doesn't translate as well as you'd think because all sorts of factors come into play as you yourself have noted! (motorcyclist per chance?)

A friend of mine got himself a bike with an odd noise in it, and through finding a US forum for that model he stumbled upon a whole world of safety stuff that we never get in NZ (despite many of us trying to get the governments to improve safety the right way, they insist on stupid measures that at best don't work!). He and I started braking practice1 together and it's a real eye-opener to learn the differences in many vehicles between braking hard at 90kph and braking hard at 100kph, especially when the differences in road seals (tarmac vs volcanic chip vs gravel vs packed sand vs mud) and weather and other things start to come into play.

It's great to know there are other people around who take their driving seriously, and do a proper job of it! I was beginning to think there were very few of us! (actually, sadly, there are far to few of us but always glad to find another :) )

1 Braking practice : Find an empty car park or other safe area. In stages, get up to speed and slam on the anchors so-to-speak. So see how it performs at 30kph when you brake hard, and increase the speed in stages till you know it's going to be safe to hit the brakes hard at 100kph. Use an area with lots of room because until you know how things react, you can be in for a nasty surprise eg ABS doesn't work on 1 front wheel at higher speeds, throwing your car way off course. As you learn your vehicles characteristics, add in things like sudden evasive steering and so on. Again work it up SLOWLY. Add in obstacles (cardboard boxes other safe-to-hit stuff) and take it on gravel/wet grass/sand etc.

Also, practice this every other week or so.

In doing this, you learn your car's handling quite well, and you learn a lot more about how to handle ANY vehicle in bad conditions (though it doesn't always translate well; a SUV will perform very differently to a sedan) including slippery conditions. And as I've said a couple of times already, you teach your body how to react so you don't have to think about it at all. So-called "muscle memory" makes your feet put the right pressure on the brakes or the gas, makes your hands turn the steering and so on to the right angles to get where you want to go. All you have to think is "Oh shit! where's that gap? Oh there it is, I'm through there and safe!".

Kiwi
Pint

Re: @dan1980

I call bullshit. You'd be pretty pissed if they treated your 100Mb of streaming video call the same way as a 100Mb of zipped documents in my email attachment.

You're quite right. The documents may well be something of actual importance and should be treated as a very high priority and delivered quickly regardless of the day or time. Your video is most likely idiots filing cats being hurt in what they think are funny ways, so if it takes a week to download who cares? There's much more important things to do in life.

Kiwi
Facepalm

Re: @dan1980

And for the telephone, that came when police and fire services were hooked to them, meaning you can call them in emergencies.

Yes, I'm sure calling them was first and foremost in Queen Vic's mind when she and Mr Bell were phoning around the countryside.

AFAIK, no Internet service operates in true life-or-death emergency capacity yet.

Actually many do these days. Did you not know that most phone traffic in many countries is carried over POTS only as far as the nearest link to an internet-based backbone? Calls between landlines are now routed over the net at least in most developed areas (rural areas and developing nations may differ). So your calls from your home to the local fire station will most likely go over IP for part of the trip if you live in any reasonably modern city.

If you call from a cell phone, it could be IP all the way. If your phone service is over fibre now, then it is IP from the box your household phone is plugged into, routed over the internet before it even leaves your home.

Kiwi
Pint

Not even when (not if) you get blindsided by a reckless, speeding drunk driver?

Quite right. I have literally "been there done that".

And I avoided the crash because, with training, constant practice to reinforce the training and keep me up on how my vehicle handles in extreme situations (means getting out to an empty car park (and gravel and grass etc) and throwing it around), and keeping my eyes and ears open, I was able to notice them coming and NOT be in the same place as them.

It's not impossible to avoid these things if you have your eyes and ears open, and your brain engaged. And if you practice + know your vehicle you don't have to think about how to react, you don't have to think about how much pressure to apply to the brakes to get the maximum stopping power, you don't have to think about how much to turn the steering to turn suddenly to get out of their path, you've already taught your system exactly how to get where you want to go. Add a positive use of "target fixation" into the mix and there is very little chance you'll ever need to use those safety features.

I've done a lot of Friday and Saturday night riding through main-road rural New Zealand. I've had plenty of experience at avoiding drunken idiots.

(actually add watching your food/fluid intake to my list in the previous post - if you're busting for a piss or trying desperately to keep the curry you had for dinner from coming out early, you're not focusing on the world around you - and if you ever do have a "pucker moment", it just got messier...)

Kiwi
Black Helicopters

(I don't think I've even see a roll cage in a stock road vehicle!)

Wow, the crap drivers who think they're hot are out in force today!

For those less crappy drivers, I'll explain myself a little better (I hope).

The first thing you must rely on to protect yourself from a crash is YOURSELF. Be alert. See it coming. Take action. Stop to help any other victims (if any). Drive on in the knowledge that you and your passengers are safe and well, and your vehicle also came out unscathed because you didn't drive in a straight line hoping your protection in your car would save you from the truck coming towards you in the wrong lane, you took action and the truck never hit you.

I've been close to head-on crashes. Close. Through training and maintaining those skills I avoided being in a head-on. Through training I could already see a number of probably escape routes before I saw the truck suddenly veer, through training I knew exactly how my bike would perform under braking (I do the same for cars - PRACTICE often so I know it's actions and it never surprises me), through training I knew how hard I could swerve, and through observance I knew the truck driver was never getting back into the right lane for him and that lane was clear so I could use it.

Train so you're prepared, practice so you know how to handle your vehicle, plan for your escape routes, and watch the road so you can see what's coming. And always remember your most valuable resource in your car. It's not brakes. It's not skills. It's not an alert driver (though that should always be). It's not air bags. Nor is it roll cages.

It's TIME. If you have time to react and time to avoid the crash, you'll be fine. Coming up on a line of traffic that might be stopped? Start slowing. Coming up to a tight corner where the oncoming traffic might not be in their lane? Slow down. Passing a line of stopped traffic where some idiot might pull out into your lane without warning or looking? Slow down. Give yourself TIME to react.

Then you won't ever need air bags, or roll-cages, or even seatbelts.

Also think of what could happen around you and take steps to minimise any risk. Mostly that means keeping a sane following distance and allowing more if the person behind you is one of those stupid idiots who tailgate.

(And yes, I do wear mine in the car, same as I always wear my helmet - I've avoided a couple of major events, dozens of other incidents where I could've been killed and would've been hurt, and quite literally thousands of minor incidents where at most I would've had bent metal and bruised body to deal with - but it is possible that something would escape my attention or there would be something I could not avoid)

Kiwi

By all means then, uninstall your seat belt, air bags, roll cage, etc. and get back to us

My car has no airbag (except the occasional M.I.L) and no roll cage.

I learnt to drive, and make sure I drive well. I also work at watching the road and things around me to be able to see trouble before I'm in it.

That way, I don't need things like roll cages.

My bike doesn't have any seat belts either. They're not needed if you use your brains when you're driving.

If you really think you need all the things you listed to stay safe while driving, then please GET THE FUCK OFF THE ROAD because if you're scared to drive without them, you've obviously far too dangerous to be allowed behind the wheel.

(I don't think I've even see a roll cage in a stock road vehicle!)

New battery boffinry could 'triple range' of electric vehicles

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Whatever happened to Hydrogen?

Never mind my Tesla 3, I'm still waiting for my 2008 Hydrogen-powered BMW. They (and Toyota) promised me!

Have they stopped drilling wells, looking for hydrogen?

I'd forgotten the ads BP used to run here about how they were developing hydrogen as a fuel in conjunction with some of the car makers.

I'd always planned to crack my own hydrogen. It's not hugely hard, though compressing the resulting gas and storing it aren't so easy. All you need is a source of electricity (finally a use for wind turbines! A lot of hot gas around those things!) to drive electrolysis to break water into hydrogen+oxygen, and to drive a compressor to store the hydrogen into a tank till you want to fill your car. You can also bottle the oxygen if you want.

I had a friend who used to point out that it should take as much energy to break the two apart as you get by joining them, so having an electrolysis plant in your car could never work. That's when I came up with the idea of a home-based wind or solar power to effectively give you "free" fuel.

Making a tank in your car that's safe to store it after an accident is up to you.

I still want to test electrolysis in the vehicle - I'm wondering if feeding hydrogen and/or oxygen into the air filter would improve the fuel burning efficiency enough to more than make up for the losses in the system itself. NOT over-unity, not expecting that, but wondering if it'd make a more efficient reaction thus an overall efficiency gain. I'd test it by filling the tank and driving about 100k with the device off, back to the same service station, fill the tank again, turn the device on, drive the same trip and fill up again. Compare the fills. Same route at roughly the same time in the same wind/air temp/traffic conditions, trying to match acceleration etc as well (so no aggressive overtaking). Air temp affects the volume of the air (colder means more air into the cylinder, which gives a power increase) - a few things to account for. I expect it'll be a net loss but hey. Will finally prove some maths one way or another for me.

Kiwi

Re: How many battery "breakthroughs" is that this year?

NiCad? Pffft ..... in my day we had to get by with a potato and a couple of nails.

Potatoes? Luxury! In my day, if we wanted energy we had to sit outside in the sun, barefoot, facing uphill, BOTH ways, in the snow!

Kiwi
Facepalm

Re: Phone Batteries

I wouldn't hold your breath, as yet, every story re battery improvement technology has, so far, failed to deliver.

I know. It's a bloody nightmare having to cart those earthen jars around that're full of (insert suspected acidic chemicals of choice here) just to get a tiny amount of power from each one.

Don't get me started on the piles of them needed to crank the car engine over!

(Perchance you're too young to remember the "phone batteries" from many decades past - huge cylindrical things that would be somewhere around the size of a milk bottle IIRC (pint bottle, give or take), which would give a tiny bit of power for a small fraction of the time you wanted it to last for? Today's batteries do exactly the same, only for about 1/1000th the size!)

Hackers' delight: Mobile bank app security flaw could have smacked millions

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Do VPNs really help?

In addition to names of banks an attacker will know the names of commercial VPN sites.

It's a good question. It does scale the problem the attackers have, but I'm not sure by how much.

I have OpenVPN installed for this reason. It shares certificates between the device and the server, not username+password (you can set it to do that but I prefer cert-based auth). From my understanding, if the certs don't match from both ends the connection fails. They'd have to be able to fake the server's cert to get the thing to work in that case.

Kiwi

Re: Public WiFi

OK, my problems are fewer since I don't travel abroad but when out & about, if I want to use my phone banking app, I switch off WiFi so I will only ever connect via 4G. I'll only ever use public wifi for something where network security isn't necessary.

RaspberryPi (or similar) +OpenVPN +PiHole. Or you can install OpenVPN&PiHole on an existing system.

Connect your phone/tablet/laptop/whatever to that while you're out and about, and you're done. Personal VPN to your home network, and PiHole seems to be quite a good ad+bad domain blocker.

Funnily enough, no, IT admins who trash biz machines can't claim they had permission

Kiwi
Flame

Re: I've, umm... done most of that stuff

ainly depending on how much smoke was coming out of the house at the time and whether I'd called the fire brigade first.

I probably wouldn't call the brigade first.

1) I'd be yelling for others to call them.

2) Having recently had to dial 111 in an emergency, I was quite pissed off at the number of times the dispatcher verified my name and other details BEFORE getting onto the accident at hand. What could've been precious seconds were lost. The first thing the dispatcher should be doing is getting the address of the incident and the service(s) needed, then get more details. Fires can spread quickly and if you do intend to go in and rescue your neighbours, you don't want to be wasting 20 bloody minutes verifying the spelling of your own name for the umpteenth time.

3) Have been reprimanded for being idiotic/brave before. I'll do it again. If it appears to be the difference between life or death for someone andit's something I am confident I can do, I'll do it (eg when I am a strong swimmer I'll dive in to save someone else, if I am out of practice I'll look (quickly) for other options - no good me going into the water if I'll just need saving myself (of course, if it's an unconscious person I can at least get them upright and breathing while waiting for us both to be pulled out).

Kiwi
Big Brother

Re: I've, umm... done most of that stuff

common sense and the law are not always in step

FTFY

You're welcome.

Quentin Tarantino in talks to make Star Trek movie

Kiwi
Pint

@Chris G - John Travolta?? Have you forgotten Battlefield Earth already?
.

I had.

You bastard.

Where's the mind bleach....

Intel to slap hardware lock on Management Engine code to thwart downgrade attacks

Kiwi

Re: This is false security

Plus, if the ROM chips were socketed, there would still be the option to physically swap the chips if emergency updates were needed without leaving everyone wide open to attack and snooping. Anything has to be better than the current arrangement.

If you're so much more skilled, or know of people more skilled at making chips than Intel, perhaps you should set up your own fab and start making CPU's?

Think of how much good you could do with the money you'd make! And you can make it so any management engine can be disabled. Better, and much more secure chips that never need firmware updates! (not even when new hardware hits the market, or your competitors come up with a new feature you want to implement, or...........)

Kiwi

Plus, if the ROM chips were socketed, there would still be the option to physically swap the chips if emergency updates were needed without leaving everyone wide open to attack and snooping. Anything has to be better than the current arrangement.

Yes, because having your system vulnerable or down while waiting for the new chips to ship (and hopefully survive the wonderful security and handling procedures of courier/postal firms...) is so much better than quickly downloading software from the makers site and install it.

Code is hard. It's practically impossible (even if theoretically possible) to produce software of a significant size without issues. It could even be that your software ships 100% bug and security flaw free, but someone else finds another way in.

The "old rom chips" did not do anywhere near what is done today. I have somewhere around an ancient hub - 10mbs vs my GB switch. The hub cannot do the speed and despite being made with some very "old rom chips" is not nearly as secure as the switch.

I've got graphics cards with socketed RAM chips and all sorts of other old junk lying around. I have photos which these machines could never hope to display. I've got a 5mb HDD around somewhere (full height MFM), and hundreds (if not thousands) of photographs that said drive could not hold.

Things have moved on and are more complex.

That said, AMD and Intel could make a way for the nastier side of their systems to be disabled if a customer desires, or require a jumper setting on the mobo to enable the communications side of it - lots of ways they could reasonably easily make it so those who want it can have it and those who hate it can kill it. We're probably not even talking cents per board, which they can reclaim by charging the end customers dollars per board anyway.

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

Kiwi
Coat

Important and serious question..

So, this running data over a piece of wet string...

How easy would it be to notice if someone put a tap on it?

I'm here all week!

(Thankfully the week is nearly over)

Kiwi

Re: To dust off an old chesnut

Can you tell the difference between this and a Monster cable?

Well, this used salt water (I'm assuming water with salt mixed in).

Monster get their equivalent by taking the piss out of the idiots who buy their junk.

Kiwi
Paris Hilton

Re: It may be Wednesday...

t may be Wednesday...

... but this thread smells like Friday!

But it is Friday today!

Kiwi
Joke

Re: Acorn Econet got there first?

He giggles happily, gives me a site map and asks me if it's going to take more than half an hour because it gets dark early that time of year?

I think I met his NZ counterpart.

Amazing what a muddy field can do for one's piece of mind.

I'm quite sure they still haven't found his body....

(joke for those who missed the ICON, serious!)

Archive of 1.4 billion credentials in clear text found in dark web archive

Kiwi
Pint

Re: STOP. In the name of love.

Depends what they do with physical access - most routers will happily give you and ethernet connection without question. That might be the valuable thing. Or you could put in an ethernet/wireless bridge to which you can later connect at will.

If the issue is protecting the WiFi passcode then you are correct physical access isn't necessarily game over (although many devices have a physical button to let devices connect without auth for thirty seconds.)

WPS can (theoretically) be turned off (I say theoretically because I've never checked to make sure it doesn't work).

If you're paranoid, you can set your wired network up with no DHCP and even install a firewall box between the router and the rest of the network that only allows known machines to work, or in some other way messes with unknown machines.

E-W bridge may be a bit sneakier, depending on what tools the victim uses to check for such things. I'd expect that in most places "nothing" is used, only a few high security places performing scans on a regular basis. Is it possible to have one that won't show up in any logs in a more secure place? I was asked by someone recently (a housewife with the computer literacy of your average insect) about a device that was showing up on her Mac, which is just the wifi range extender she has (they're not entirely transparent to the network)

I can think of many ways to hide the hardware, but not sure how to always get them out of logs and the like. At least using static IP's (not DHCP) would make them invisible to most home routers, and probably most SM businesses as well (at least ones that don't specialise in IT)

Kiwi
Pint

Re: Such an enigma...

but fingerprints ARE more secure than passwords.

You sure about that?

How about you come round to my place for a coffee and we can talk more about it.

Don't worry about washing your cup afterwards, I'll take care of that.

It doesn't matter how much 'we' trust online banking, or anything else. It's here, it's being used, and we should probably try to improve things as much as we can

On that we agree.

Kiwi
Coat

Re: Length is Everything

Length is Everything

My wife agrees

I know! She tells me that each Thursday...

Kiwi
Pint

Re: STOP. In the name of love.

@ShortLegs.

"The assumption inherent in his article is that all users will have access to a password manager all of the time." You don't have a smartphone?

Nope. And some of the places I've worked one would not be appropriate or allowed.

Or you can use Google's smartlock in Chrome, https://get.google.com/smartlock/ .

Fuck off. Use chrome? Trust google with my data? Might as well find the lowest possible criminal scum on the web and invite them round for a party, let them sleep in the house afterwards, and let them stay while I go out to work. With all my passwords and accounts written down in plain sight.

These methods have some drawbacks, but it's all better than the crappy horse stable thing.

Not when you're suggesting a "solution" from Google. BTW, what happens when they decide that they're not going to support it any more? Not much change of that happening though, not like google has ever removed a product with little warning before...

Also, in the article, the guy does say that:- "Ultimately, Passwords should die. As a longer term strategy, we are moving to kill the use of passwords as the single authentication mechanism, and enforcing multi-factor authentication as the default everywhere." Anyway, what do you do to solve the problems you list? I read your post, but I don't see you make a better suggestion. Some techie you are! ;-)

No no fucking NO. Unless you can come up with a trustable "dongle" or other thing that works in EVERY instance, that is small enough to easily transport, it's not going to fly. I have a pile of convenient gadgets, bottle openers, mini torches and the like I've received over the years that could go on my key ring (physical thing the car/house/bike/etc) keys are on. Not a chance they'll ever get there though, like a lot of people I prefer to keep my key rings to a minimal set, to the point that when I could afford multiple vehicles I'd swap in/out the vehicle keys based on what I was using. So for a lot of people keyring-based dongles would be a no go.

Phones aren't entirely secure, and liable to failure/theft/breakage/flat batery etc.

Until someone can make something convenient to carry that does the job across the board, 2FA will continue to crop up and quickly die. (though at least ID+building access cards can help in a lot of workplace related cases)

@Batfink. Lastpass is shite IMO. Stick with a local password manager. Which is why the Google smartlock thing isn't something I use.

I use computers in more than one place. If I was to use a password manager I'd use local+cloud (Nextcloud that is) and move the profile, or perhaps have it on USB but see above re keyrings.

@John, WiFi codes. Write the code on the access point. If someone has access to the AP, it's game over anyway.

Not really. Sure they could factory-reset it, but then a) it'd be discovered quickly and b) would be of limited use (your reset would wipe the ISP details so no WAN connection). The admin is fairly well locked down and I haven't yet found a way to break it, so unlike a lot of crappy ISP-supplied ones, just visiting the admin page won't get you anywhere even if you are plugged in by cable.

That said, I have stored the relevant info on the router in the past, in a place where getting to the router wasn't going to be easy for miscreants.

Kiwi
Thumb Up

Re: Has an analysis of the types of accounts been done?

Therefore my own internet usage history has created several thousand (knowingly) crappy-password accounts and several hundred strong (at the time) password-accounts. Horses for courses.

Same here. Not thousands maybe, but could be hundreds.

Plus, with my hatred of farcebroke but occasional like to find others, I've now had at least a couple of dozen single-sign-in (no not single-sign-ON) FB accounts that were used once, search the name, close the private window, never remembered the password again. Or the account name etc.

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

Kiwi
Pirate

Re: Lathes

I don't know about that. Recently had a tour of the high school my young 'un will be going to next year and they had all sorts of cool stuff in the workshops.

Did you notice the castor wheels underneath, where they roll the stuff out during parental unit tours and put it back into hiding at term time? Did you notice how the female parental units were steered into one room while all you male ones were steered into another (rumour has it the rooms the ladies see have large amounts of cotton wool everywhere, so while the menfolk are seeing nice toys they can only drool over using (and hope their sprogs come away with nothing worse than bone-deep cuts that miss nerves and arteries), the ladies see a very protected environment where a paper cut on a student results in the immediate firing and life imprisonment of the teacher)1

1 Implied stereotypical sexism not intended, even if it appears this post was written as such!

Put down the eggnog, it's Patch Tuesday: Fix Windows boxes ASAP

Kiwi
Linux

Had to re-install my Realtek audio drivers after the update today. Only did a clean build last week.

Takes me back to the pre-XP days, having to reinstall your machine from scratch every 6 months or so.

Although, usually in that case it was a build up of garbage and disk fragmentation making it slower that made it more desirable to rebuild, NOT having an update bork your drivers yet again that caused the need for a rebuild from scratch!

(Happy coz although I've done updates, I've been running this install for years across various Mint versions and also various bits of hardware - still runs faster than a fresh Windows install on the same hardware!)

Kiwi
WTF?

Re: IE and Edge - Forgot a word!

I thought it was built from the ground up? What a pile of shit.

I know, right? So hard to see how people could ever have gotten that idea.

I mean, MS says things like "As we announced recently, Microsoft Edge hosts a new rendering engine, Microsoft EdgeHTML." and "But Microsoft Edge has done more than just re-write the rendering engine. Here we describe the security mitigations baked into the Microsoft Edge browser." and "The largest change in Microsoft Edge security is that the new browser is a Universal Windows app.", and "Microsoft Edge is a brand new browser, with new goals and requirements." (all at https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/11/microsoft-edge-building-a-safer-browser/) - but there's NOTHING there that could imply that Edge is "a brand new browser" is there? And calling it "a brand new browser" and describing several new features and a new way the "app" runs in Windows of course in no way implies that it is "a brand new browser".

What a steaming pile of shit.

As are most posts that try to say MS never claimed or implied that it was a complete re-write from scratch Claimed? Maybe not. Implied? Often.

Kiwi
Facepalm

"...a fix for a Business Logic Error..."

Can we get one of those for the idiots over at MS?

Come on mickey$loth, it's almost 2018. This shit should long be done with.

Help files as an infection vector? SMB? STILL? Bloody hell.

Hey, how about tell the world to fuck off, shut your doors, and drink a bunch of "kool aid". Release the source though so those who really imagine they want to still use your crap despite all logic to the contrary can continue to do so and actually fix these bugs you should've dealt with a long time ago.

And come on businesses, get rid of them from your systems.. Start demanding the vendors of those small few products that you can't get for other systems actually make them for other systems.

The MS security nightmare needs to end.

Tired of despairing of Trump and Brexit? Why not despair about YouTube stars instead?

Kiwi
WTF?

Re: Seriously

Are enjoyable because people like games

I love games. I have lots of them on several devices, and I play some real-life games as well (from card games with friends to, well, all sorts of stuff)

I've yet to watch more than a few seconds of footage of someone else playing one. Ok, I think I watched a little bit of a couple to see if the game might be any good, where the game's makers didn't have any video of game play online. Still only a few minutes.

Why should I sit on my arse wasting away watching someone else play a game, when I can be sitting on my arse wasting away enjoying myself playing the game myself?

They're just funny, stop being ignorant

Somehow that reminds me of this Michael Jackson clip (youtube)..

Kiwi
Pint

Re: Despair over Brexit and Trump?

Yeah, liberals and lefties *LOVE* to use emotion-bombs 30 days out from an election to sway people's votes. It's "matter of course" for these *MANIPULATIVE* *BASTARDS*.

I know. All these nasty people chanting "lock him up!" just days out from an election, when repeated FBI etc investigations have already come out proving him to be innocent (or at least "no evidence in this case).

Glad CMIC et al never used emotive props during the orange-utan's presidential campaign, because if they did that'd make your post kinda hypocritical :)

Have a cold one and relax Bob. Either he'll go to trial and be found guilty, or the complanants will disappear/back down due to threats (a la chump) and he'll not be tried at all. And if he is found guilty, I'm sure his bestest chum would give him a presidential pardon.

(FTR, I also hope Weinstein or whatever his name is (and the others in recent cases) gets found not guilty - not because I like or support (or had even heard of) the man but because I hate the way all sorts groups are barring him/stopping their films/replacing their characters on the basis of mere accusation - while an accusation should make a hirer pause and think (in case the person gets the job then gets prison), but it should not be grounds for firing or stopping someone doing something they already do (unless there is a reasonable concern about risk - eg you wouldn't want someone accused of child molesting to remain at a crèche (without decent supervision at least) while the case is investigated) - basically unless there is damned good reason treat people as if they're innocent until convicted)

Spy-on-your-home Y-Cam cameras removes free cloud storage bit

Kiwi
Coat

Re: "No it's not. yes, there is cloud storage, no you don't have to use it."

no serious photographer I know (and I know plenty) would consider using it for their day to day photography.

If they're using software for their day-day stuff, then they're not a "serious photographer" by any stretch of the imagination.

A "serious photographer" will do it in the lens, or they won't do it at all. They'd not insult the name of photography with all this editing things later rubbish.

Oregon will let engineer refer to himself as an 'engineer'

Kiwi

Re: What is an engineeer?

But if you are calling yourself an engineer... you'd better be able to conceptualise a solution, design it (with tolerances), make the tools to make the prototype, and make the prototype (sharpening drill bits as and when needed).

Hey, I can do all that! Cool! So, I can start calling myself an Engineer now? No? How about "Conceptual Design Engineer"? Not willy-wavy enough? Let me think a minute.....

And no, never would. To mechanical and structural engineers I'd consider it an insult to call me one, and with electrical "engineers" (those who wire up houses) and civil engineers, I'd consider it a punishable-by-death insult to call me one*...

*Based of course on my experience with the utter fucking mind-blowing stupidity I've seen with civil engineers and electrical engineers - some of whom are responsible for loss of life in this country (and we were really lucky a year ago not to have had more

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: What about after hours service?

you couldnt buy fuel after 5pm on Friday until 8am on Monday without drving 10 miles to the nearest big town. So you looked at the little needle or took the lid of the fuel tank and looked in, and made sure you had enough to get to the pub on Saturday night and work on Monday morning.

I'm old enough to remember those days as well, though of course not in Surrey. And yeah, you planed your life around things like that. Shops closed on a Sunday, make sure you buy what you want beforehand or do without (or borrow from the neighbours), things break down you fix it, do without, or see the neighbours. Everything (except the telly) stopped completely on the weekend. And shortly before I came along even the telly was barely on, only a single channel and only a few hours a day.

I was helping a mate with his garden recently wondering why so few people kept them these days. The answer is kinda clear. These days people will spend an hour or few on "social media" after work. Years ago that hour or so was spent doing stuff around the house, often chatting with neighbours (or the family) while it was done. You could easily spend an hour in the garden each evening because you seldom had anything better to do with your time!

("So few" refers of course to those who actually have space for a garden, I realise many don't)

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Oregon is a nanny state

I see no advantage in "being able to pump your own gas". Self service was only to benefit operators, not customers.

Not entirely true.

As a motorcyclist, self-service can allow me to remain on the bike should I desire to do so1, but also it comes down to the simple fact that I won't let someone touch my bike unless a) they also ride and b) I trust them enough. Not for fuel or anything.

This is borne from experience - I've twice (and only twice that I placed myself at risk) had pump attendants do damage, one scratching the paint as he dragged the nozzle over the tank the other as he pulled the nozzle out, forgetting to let go of the handle, and sprayed petrol over the instruments. Besides, I have the experience to fill the tank to the top without spilling a drop, and I have the knowledge+experience to allow for the weather and my riding plans; ie if it's a hot day and I'm not riding far I'll leave an air gap2, but if it's a cold day or my next stop is a good 30 minutes away I don't need to worry about leaving an air gap. Paying at the pump without leaving the bike can help here, as I can close the cap as soon as I've finished and be on my way a second or two later, with a full load of fuel and no worries about expansion (I also chose my stops carefully so as to avoid things like being caught in traffic with an "over-full" tank)

1 Rather ill advised but not necessarily a bad thing. If you have an accident and for some reason something catches fire, it's a lot easier to get away from a burning bike when you're not on it than when you are. However, I have not heard of this actually happening. Static is very unlikely to be a problem as the rider is not leaving and returning to the vehicle.

2 The petrol, the tank, and any air in the tank expand. This can lead to petrol leaking from the cap under some pressure, which of course can proceed to drip onto hot exhausts which apparently could ignite. I've done the "dripping onto exhaust" but have been fortunate enough not to have witnessed the ignition.

Leftover Synaptics debugger puts a keylogger on HP laptops

Kiwi
Mushroom

Re: Here's what you need to do...

1. Take any HP equipment you or your family own and smash it sufficiently so it's beyond use. There, that's better.

I thought that was the default state of their consumer-grade laptops anyway? Though not so much smashed as cooked due to a) stupidly designed cooling system and b) even stupider lack of thermal cutout...

No need to smash it. Just let it run for an hour or two and it'll make sure the electronics are all nice'n'toasty for you.

Kiwi
Paris Hilton

Re: YeeeeeeeeeeeeeHAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!!!

Bad design (maybe), bad pedal layout (maybe), but bad software? Fake news.

Question. Did this issue affect other car makers to the same extent? Even 90% the same extent? Hell, I'll settle for 70% the same extent, on a per car/per capita type basis.

Just Toyota? But surely if this is driver error you'd see a similar rate across similar styles/price ranges of cars.

I still haven't figured out how you can have your floor mat UNDER your pedal when you first put your foot on it but SOMEHOW the mat gets between your foot and the pedal without you noticing.

(El Reg we still need that "something fishy" icon!)