Re: Apparently it's hard to run a secure currency.
The difference is, cryptocurrencies allow you to be your own bank (well, except the loaning part)
How weird... I thought I could do that with my cash too!
Posts by DropBear
4735 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013
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Supposedly secure Dogecoin service Dogevault goes offline
Get BENT: Flexy supercapacitor breaks records
The ULTIMATE space geek accessory: Apollo 15's joystick up for sale
Hungry for humbler Pi? Check out kid-friendly LED-laden Pibrella
Star Wars Episode VII: The Ancient Fear of, er, a cheese-tastic title?
Spain clamps down on drones
Wednesday 7th May 2014 14:52 GMT 
They did pretty much the same thing in Romania not long ago: http://www.romania-insider.com/new-romanian-drone-regulation-raises-questions-among-users/113749/
The general thinking everywhere seems to be "we just don't like anything disturbing the status quo - these thing are getting on our radar lately so let's ban them!". Regarding enforcement - nobody gives a s##t; the law is there just as yet another convenient book they can throw at you whenever they feel like bashing in your head - much like many, many, many other laws that only see use whenever an agent of The Man feels you're inadmissibly uppity today and must be taken down a peg.
Epson takes on Google Glass with wired 'augmented reality' glasses
Cold War spy aircraft CRASHED Los Angeles' air traffic control
Scariest NSA revelation yet: Spooks are RUBBISH at CIPHERS
Did cosmic radiation nuke $25 satellite swarm? 100 snoozing Sprites face fiery death
The amazing .uk domain: Less .co and loads more whalesong
Tuesday 6th May 2014 10:10 GMT 
Ok, I see how different ".com" / ".org" / ".net" domains might have seemed like a good idea at the beginning, in the times of keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.usa - but by the time everyone else was getting on board, I just don't understand why anyone would insist on such an artificial distinction? Straight country-based TLDs are working wonderfully fine in my opinion - whether I'm looking for Coca-Cola or the Anvil Shooting Club of Bwlch, the last thing I want to do is wonder which one of the above TLDs they might use! How did this whole "co.uk only" malarkey come to pass? It's an honest question...
Australian government apps access smartmobe cams but 'don't film you'
Monday 5th May 2014 13:08 GMT
Re: Android app permissions
So if you want true privacy on a phone, you better be ready to do your own coding
And why the hell would I need to do that? All it takes is a compass app that requires access only to sensors, not to also to network, phone state, camera, audio, messages, contacts, and size of underwear...
Monday 5th May 2014 12:05 GMT
Re: Android app permissions
Negative. Quite a few apps have something like that either directly at the bottom of their Play Store descriptions or on their own site's FAQ - knowing they really do need all that access for everything they want to do gives me exactly zero reassurance that's indeed the only thing they intend to use it for. In fact, I don't want them to do whatever they said they needed it for at all, but that's never an option, is it?
Monday 5th May 2014 11:51 GMT
That's exactly the problem
I'm quite willing to believe most apps have legitimate reasons to ask for everything they are asking for - the problem is that I cannot afford to simply trust them to be kosher, which is exactly what they all expect me to do, getting all offended when I simply answer "hell no". Unfortunately, the permission system is so piss-poorly conceived that most of the time there really is no way not to ask for, well, basically everything assuming one wants to provide all the functionality modern "connected" apps all tend to want to.
Even more unfortunately, there are increasingly no other kind of apps but those - you're welcome to carefully screen your apps for minimal permission needs, only to find that there is no app doing what you want asking only for the strictly necessary things to accomplish it. They all want to be able to show you familiar faces (read contacts), helpfully schedule things (calendar) for you and guide you (precise location) wherever, accept spoken input (record audio - I'M LOOKING AT YOU, FIREFOX...), allow you to look up stuff and upload photos or scan (network and camera), offer helpful suggestions for everything (accept incoming connections), whether you actually want all that stuff or not. The example of QRdroid (a barcode code scanner) that offers a "private" version which asks for a lot less is sadly the exception rather than the norm.
As it is, I've come to deny updates to pretty much ALL Google apps as all of them were steadily asking for more and more (in the name of tighter integration I'm sure) - it might be a futile exercise in this case but that doesn't mean I just have to give in. But I might not have that choice next time I buy a phone and get all the things I refuse to update today, as the baseline...
HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER
Monday 5th May 2014 13:01 GMT
Use WPA2? Fine, I won't argue with that - but where, pray tell, should the VPN be directed to connect? Definitely not all home routers currently in use come with that built-in (given the owner has any idea he does have it at all)? Who says there even is anything permanently 'on' on the home LAN - there might be no router at all? Heck, there might not be any home LAN at all for some people...!
Firefox, is that you? Version 29 looks rather like a certain shiny rival
Wednesday 30th April 2014 11:53 GMT
Re: Nearly
The arrogance of the Firefox developers (you just need to look at their responses to anything criticising the new interface on the Mozilla forums
Is that like the arrogance of the Opera developers vs. anyone criticising that Opera on a mobile (uniquely among mobile browsers) requests every single existing permission, and possibly even some non-existing ones? Hmmm, I remember an old quote broadly along the lines of "nobody willing to become a politician should ever be allowed to" - I'm starting to wonder if the same applies to leading a software project...
Wednesday 30th April 2014 08:53 GMT
Re: adblock etc...
@phil dude: I use Adblock Plus under Chrome as well, it works just fine. Also, both in Chrome and FF, ABP can be set to block basically all "social media / sharing" buttons and such, basically most of the off-site stuff that often takes many seconds to load. The easiest way to get it is to go directly to ABP's website - the "social" blocking thing is listed under "features" (it basically installs a specialized blacklist).
Grad student creates world's thinnest wires – just three atoms wide
Nod Labs forges one (Bluetooth) ring to rule them all
What HAS BEEN SEEN? OMG it's a thing that looks like an iWatch
Trolls and victims watch Supremes for definition of meaningless patents
Google's self-driving car breakthrough: Stop sign no longer a problem
Tuesday 29th April 2014 09:18 GMT
Re: Existing Solutions
Sergey Brin, and others that see self-driving cars as a solution for people that are "under served by the current transport system" are missing an achievable existing solution: public transport
Oh, you mean this existing solution...? Yeah, I can see how it's welcoming some of the 'under served' ones... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-14/public-transport-troublemakers-to-be-handed-on-the-spot-bans/5198664
Top tip, power users – upgrading Ubuntu may knacker your Linux PC
Tuesday 29th April 2014 08:42 GMT
Re: Grub problems.
It just worked (tm)
Count your blessings, then. Upgrading the 8.04 LTS Mythbuntu to the 10.04 LTS resulted in failure to boot - the grub boot list somehow got "updated" disk IDs that obviously found no disk to boot. Then the upgrade from that to the 12.04 LTS... you guessed it - failed to boot, because apparently something "suddenly" didn't have the right permissions anymore.
Ultimately I fix this sort of thing (with the appropriate amount of disgust, to be sure) but I sure do wonder how the heck the Average Joe - towards who Ubuntu is marketed - is supposed to deal with failure to boot after an upgrade. I mean I'm sure it's no big deal at Boeing either if one leaves a screwdriver in a jet engine or something...
Awkward? Elop now answers to ex-junior Nadella as Microsoft closes Nokia buyout
Spy back doors? That would be suicide, says Huawei
Friday 25th April 2014 23:59 GMT
Re: A good point
And as pointed out in the article, it's as likely that there are NSA backdoors as Chinese backdoors in Huawei kit.
Agreed, but on the other hand there's nothing stopping Huawei themselves to audit their own code should they wish to - now that they have a reason to be suspicious too - and weed out potential foreign backdoors. As long as they can find them, of course.
Reg probe bombshell: How we HACKED mobile voicemail without a PIN
Thursday 24th April 2014 16:08 GMT
Well, my voicemail is certainly unhackable - I don't have one. I immediately turned it off (as basically does everyone else I know) simply because leaving it on is widely considered extremely bad form around here since it costs a caller money once the voicemail picks up, even though the call was practically a bust. We don't really see any point in leaving a message if the called party is not reachable; by the time he/she gets it, the point will likely be moot. If not, the missed call indication is generally enough and therefore a call-back is expected anyway.
Apple patent LOCKS drivers out of their OWN PHONES
Despite your fancy-schmancy security tech, passwords still weakest link in IT defences
Wednesday 23rd April 2014 09:02 GMT 
Nope.
Sorry, but anyone thinking the answer to the human aspect of the password problem is 'properly enforced policies' is a raving lunatic. Full stop. It really doesn't matter at all how much safer weekly changed very long strings of obscure letters and symbols would be as long as there's not a snowball's chance in hell anyone could feasibly remember even one of them for five minutes - let alone the army of them needed for 'proper password hygiene' across the countless places one needs to log into every step of the way on the web today.
The entire concept is hopeless. The best version of it y'all ever going to get is the one you see right now, as bad as it is - if we don't like that, we'll have to give up the notion of people memorizing arcane strings and find something better. Oh, and to anyone arguing I don't get to highlight these shortcomings without proposing a better alternative I can promise a very special place of their own in my heart...
US Supreme Court supremo rakes Aereo lawman in oral arguments
Wednesday 23rd April 2014 08:21 GMT 
Well guess what 'your honour'...
...claiming that 'Aereo's retransmission of broadcasters' content is a "public performance"' is equally meant solely to shoehorn and twist their activity into something that is forbidden by law. There's no reason for the broadcasters to claim it except to acquire unwarranted protection under the Copyright Act.
So what now, oh Wise One...?
Oz crime-busters' calls for data retention get louder
Dorian Nakamoto gets $23,000 payout over Bitcoin invention saga
Japan airport staff dash to replace passcodes after security cock-up
Japanese boffin EYES up big bucks with strap-on digi-glasses
Wednesday 23rd April 2014 07:26 GMT 
So when are we going to go from "talk to the hand!" to "talk to the avatar!"...?
I mean, how is this not fun:
- "Yo, dude, wassup?"
- "Hello mr. ABC, I'm sorry but you don't seem to have an appointment set up with mr. XYZ at this time..." (insert obligatory "...so set one up!" / "can't do that, Dave..." reference)
Systems meltdown plunges US immigration courts into pen-and-paper stone age
'Maybe I'll go to Hell, but I think it's a good thing' says plastic Liberator gunsmith Cody Wilson
Tuesday 22nd April 2014 14:48 GMT
Re: A better alternative
...they didn't seem to make a connection between crime and punishment at all. It seemed as if the mindset was that getting locked up occasionally was just one of those things that happens...
Not nearly as stupid a thing as it might sound at first glance. Consider that we're most likely talking about a demographic that doesn't sit pondering "hmmm, should I do all that lawless stuff I do, is that really a good idea? I might be caught and punished if I decide to proceed!" because not doing whatever they shouldn't be is simply never even an option considered. Not in a "being coerced" sense, but in a "cannot conceive living any other way since I'm unable/unwilling to give up the advantages" sense. Once one sees being a criminal the only realistically possible option, getting locked up occasionally is indeed just one of those things that happen, a risk of the trade, like potentially getting flattened by a falling tree is a fact of life for a logger - it just means one made a mistake or had bad luck...
Opportunity selfie: Martian winds have given the spunky ol' rover a spring cleaning
Ditch the sync, paddle in the Streem: Upstart offers syncless sharing
Snowden-inspired crypto-email service Lavaboom launches
Thursday 17th April 2014 14:14 GMT
Re: Upfront announcement of an intention to break the law?
...what definite way is there of destroying hard disks in a few minutes? Other than a bomb of course...
Oh, I can think of at least one - remote activated thermite. Fiery mayhem simultaneously melting and demagnetising the platters inside, nothing but a bit of smoke outside (given a suitably ceramic-y enclosure) - much neater than a bomb.
OpenSSL bug hunt: Find NEXT Heartbleed, earn $$$ – if enough people donate cash
NSA denies it knew about and USED Heartbleed encryption flaw for TWO YEARS
Russian deputy PM: 'We are coming to the Moon FOREVER'
Obama allows NSA to exploit 0-days: report
OpenSSL Heartbleed: Bloody nose for open-source bleeding hearts
Monday 14th April 2014 11:08 GMT
Re: Noone Looks at Old Code
Part of the problem is complacency with old packages
Possibly so, but I squarely blame this one on Not Being Paranoid Enough: a classic case of the developer implicitly trusting other parties to cooperate / play along nicely (or putting it another way, data to be valid). And that's always, always, always an idiotic thing to do. Not assuming that every single piece of software and every other system you interact with is out to get you is simply irresponsible coding. Whether or not they actually are (and if so, why) is beside the point - assuming the worst will make your code much more robust and resilient, even if possibly somewhat less efficient; but I find that a small price to pay.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
