* Posts by Nick Kew

2841 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2007

Oracle? On my server? I must have been hacked! *Penny drops* Oh sh-

Nick Kew

Re: 128K of ISDN

28.8? Luxury! My first modem was 1200 baud down, 75 baud up (enough for me, but not for a touch typist). And it got much worse from there when I had to switch from prestel to one of those new-fangled ISPs.

Nick Kew

Those days of hosting

I think my first hosts (of a physical server, once I'd upgraded from a vhost on shared hosting) themselves had about 128k ISDN connectivity. It seemed quite fast back then.

One day my server just vanished from the 'net. Turned out the host had gone bust, and my kit, like theirs, was in limbo at the mercy of liquidators. Until my colleague who knows about such things got in his car and physically rescued it.

Ah, the Good Old Days!

Boffin: Dump hardware number generators for encryption and instead look within

Nick Kew

Re: Ultimate Source of Entropy!

So not amanfrommars then....

... demonstrating that you can identify patterns (thus proving that entropy isn't suitable for an RNG) without anything so ambitious as guessing the actual poster.

Nick Kew

Re: Very platform dependant

Citation required.

Seriously, I'd be interested in anything reputable that purports to be an auditable test. I'd've thought it was one of those problems where you can prove a negative but only speculate on a positive.

Nick Kew

Re: Why would you avoid using the HWRNG?

I read it not as "avoid using the HW", but rather "avoid relying on the HW". Subtle difference.

Of course for the purposes of a test run for an academic paper or even a back-of-envelope calculation ("Just tested it" comment above), results that avoid it altogether play an obvious role. For real life, you take all sources you can get!

The main issue with any proposed approach is the difficulty measuring entropy from a RNG. No matter how good your test and attack tools are, they could be missing a weakness someone else has cracked. Debian-vs-OpenSSL history kind-of demonstrates there's a genuinely hard problem.

UK pins 'reckless campaign of cyber attacks' on Russian military intelligence

Nick Kew

Re: Invading Crimea?

Crimea has been Russian for centuries.

And voted 97% to become Russian (again) in the 2014 referendum. That was of course after the second time their elected president in Kiev had been ousted at the instigation of the West, and with the experience of the country having been a total basketcase under the previous western-facing government.

Perhaps we should also recollect that Kiev was historic Russian capital before either Moscow or St Petersburg. There's a lot of history to this.

Nick Kew

Re: I've no sympathy with the Putin dictatorship

@DavCrav

On the subject of Afghanistan, I recommend reading "Caravans", by John Michener. Set in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of WW2.

Published in the early 1960s, so no question of hindsight about the Soviet invasion or what's happened since. But still seems to anticipate a lot of it.

The word "Taliban" isn't used, but their presence and influence is strong and clear. Though at that time, they hadn't been armed and internationalised.

Educated Western-facing Afghans feature peripherally, and have an interesting message for the protagonist (who is a junior US diplomat): these [taliban] are a problem that must be sorted. Please come and sort them, because if you don't then the Soviets will.

Interesting background to what subsequently happened. The only thing he really failed to anticipate is that when the Soviets went in, the West would respond by weaponising the real loonies.

Where can I hide this mic? I know, shove it down my urethra

Nick Kew

Storage capacities were measured in gigabytes - albeit not large numbers of GB unless $$$ - when USB first emerged.

Brit mobe operator O2 asks cut-off customers: Have you tried turning it on and off again?

Nick Kew

Not that many rebooting at once. Only those actually affected, presumably!

I'm an O2 customer, and never noticed any hiatus. My only change yesterday was to put it in "airport" mode in the evening for an event where a call would've been unwelcome.

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

Nick Kew
Angel

The last satnav constellation anyone will need

'Cos under aussie law, there'll be a backdoor to the encryption. So those countries that don't already control a constellation can just tap into it.

If it ever happens. And works ...

Nick Kew

Re: does the landlord refund you all the money you gave to pay the rent?

Within the limits of that analogy, wouldn't it be more like not being refunded for the new bathroom you fitted?

In the UK, a tenant doesn't get any recognition for improvements to a house or flat. Though a tenant might get charged for any alterations. And improving a place means means it's worth more, so expect the rent to rise. Even if you have a landlord who would naturally play fair, they'll have to have the strength to stand up to the agent who recommends the higher rent for the improvements.

What do Zuck, Sergey, @Jack and Bezos have in common? They don't want encryption broken

Nick Kew
Facepalm

EPARSE

Lizzy O'Shea of Digital Rights Watch is acting as Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet,

Erm, I'm getting cognitive dissonance there. You've introduced the "Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet" as having a lot of big and important members behind it (oo-er, missus), now you imply she's one woman.

I can correct that in various ways, with meanings that are similar but not identical:

" ... is acting for ... " (the minimal correction in letters changed)

" ... is acting as spokesman for ... " (as above, more specific capacity)

" ... is speaking for ... " (limiting the occasion too)

" ... acts for ... " (generalises the context),

" ... speaks on behalf of ... " (generalise context, specifies capacity)

etc.

Who is proofreading as El Reg?

Send up a satellite to zap space junk if you want Earth's orbit to be clean, say boffins

Nick Kew

Re: It all seems a bit far fetched, to me

Similar thoughts crossed my mind.

For this to work as described would surely call for military-grade precision beaming. Could that be a clue as to anyone's motivation?

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

Nick Kew

Happy medium

I think I strike a happy medium there. I'll take the 'phone and sometimes use the maps, but I've never considered letting it tell me directions.

Back in the Good Old Days I used to go out deliberately without map and compass in any non-clear weather in my local stomping ground of the time[1] for a fleeting illusion of wilderness.

[1] One of the best times was when that stomping ground was the Peak District: Kinder was a favourite place to get lost in the swirling mists. Sadly far too small an area to get genuinely away from things.

Nick Kew

Re: Tea with milk

My biggest bugbear: I had to give up drinking tea on First Great Western. Which, due to where I live, means most of my train travel. For the exact same reason of the atrocity they now give you in the name of tea. I once asked about the cup of water and teabag before rejecting it, and they told me something entirely implausible about that general-purpose scapegoat Elfin Safety.

As for coffee ...

I spent quite a few years in Italy, so I grew accustomed to good coffee. That left me in the position where, when in a third country, my English tastes meant I found the tea foul, and my Italian tastes did the same for the coffee. Not a nice situation. Though thankfully that has improved quite a lot this century.

Swedish ISP spanked for sexist 'distracted boyfriend' advert for developer jobs

Nick Kew

Re: I advise everybody to use the photo in their next advert

We all know what Bahnhof means in German. But not in Swedish: their word is spelt (though not quite pronounced) the same as the English.

Nick Kew
Coat

Re: There is another interpretation of the meme

Surely in this context you mean "faectious".

I'd worry more about the sausage factory aspect of it.

Nick Kew

Re: I'm torn here

@Pascal - do you really think this image is "using a girl"? It's about the couple who are the butt of the joke. That's precisely the twist: it's not at all about the girl who appears to have turned his head.

Nick Kew

Damn, am I completely out of touch? I've just seen the image for the first time here on El Reg. Does that make my reaction to it more spontaneous than anyone else's?

I rather like it. A good chuckle. Catches an archetype.

Objectifying? Hmm, that's a bit of a stretch. Yes she's attractive, but only in the same way as women you'll randomly pass in your everyday business. All the more attractive for NOT being tarted up as a sex object. And she's not even in focus!

Sexist against men? Definitely plays on that stereotype. But too good, and too genuinely humorous, for that to be offensive, IMHO. The sexism would probably be gratuitous if it lacked those redeeming merits.

What about the girlfriend? OK, she's (also) the butt of the joke and could legitimately be p***ed off at the use of the image. Is that offensive or sexist? Surely no more than the ubiquitous image of the dumb male in advertising today.

If there's a real issue, it's whether the image is being used with or without permission of the protagonists, and (given the commercial use) were they paid royalties?

Open-source boffins want to do for the IoT edge what Kubernetes did for containers

Nick Kew

An open source collaboration is your best hope for something more generic. Open source[1] means everyone gets to scratch their own itch, which means in turn they'll want a flexible modular architecture that can serve many purposes. And yes, that's entirely feasible on today's smallest ARM CPUs.

[1] Unless it's too tightly controlled, in which case you either fork or ignore it.

Canadian security boss ain't afraid of no Huawei, sees no reason for ban

Nick Kew

Re: BlackBerry

They killed blackberry with bogus patents. It's the 'merkin way: outsource your dirty work to private-sector pirates (in this case, from memory, some bunch called NTP) and their henchmen the Courts. With the ultimate weapon of banning them doing business in the US.

Turn your enemy into a grey-suited lawyer-dominated company where technical innovation no longer stands a chance.

Open-source software supply chain vulns have doubled in 12 months

Nick Kew

Re: Hmm....

Indeed, much more interesting.

Or would be, if it were more than a dark hint. Who exactly is being accused here? Developer communities? Packagers? Distributors? And what are they accused of: malice, incompetence, insufficient oversight, being blackmailed, ??? Or is this just the case that's been my bugbear for years, of downloads from reputable sources but with no cryptographic signature?

Facebook sued for exposing content moderators to Facebook

Nick Kew

So am I, and I don't even get paid for it. Though the nasty stuff I see is just like general spam.

I'm sure I could cope with Facebook nasties (boredom aside): I'd have more problem arguing with people disputing my decisions (which tend towards freedom of speech over nannying busybodies).

On the other hand, I'd seriously struggle to work as, say, a paramedic or a prison officer.

Nick Kew

Re: The 1%

No, in reality it'll be a lot less than 1%.

It just looks more, because the really bad ones are something you notice, and stick in the memory.

You see the same in other walks of life: think back to last time you got infuriated by the tiny-but-conspicuous minority of idiot [select category of road users] doing idiotic/terrifying things, and compare the inconspicuous thousands just going about their business.

Nick Kew

Re: Get rid of the lot

Social media reflect life. Get over it.

Only without less curation than older media. At least, until the moderatrix[1] sees one's comment.

[1] That's historic. I don't know who moderates here these days.

Nick Kew

@Fuzzy

I was going to say that about juries. No choice. And for some of us (among whom reg-reading INTJs might well be prominent), there's the potential for long-term trauma over ones own guilt in reaching a verdict one suspects to be wrong, once the reality-distortion field created by the career Liars in court has worn off.

As for gruesome everyday scenes, the career to worry about would be emergency services. Police, fire service, ambulance service/paramedics. Or indeed social services.

How an over-zealous yank took down the trading floor of a US bank

Nick Kew

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

I don't feel like grey beard yet..

That's OK. We welcome diversity here. Beards of all colours and even non-beards welcome.

I agree with Korev: there are times when a greybeard icon would be useful here. And of course it would be open to honourary greybeards as well as us literals.

Nick Kew
Coat

An excusable event

Insofar as coopting any server as an entertainment machine is excusable.

Nick Kew

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

"Plug in a keyboard and press F1 to continue booting" would therefore have been a better and unambiguous message.....

I think the reason that message was "funny" is precisely that it generally happened when a perfectly good keyboard was indeed correctly plugged in all the time. The problem lay elsewhere.

I was using mostly sparc workstations around the time of the story. But I don't recollect ever yanking a keyboard out, so I can't say one way or t'other whether anything bad happens. I suspect it depends on what is listening to the keyboard, and how it reacts on losing it, hence some seeing huge overreaction while jake saw no problem.

I want to buy a coffee with an app – how hard can it be?

Nick Kew

When I pay for coffee (i.e.: not at work), I invariably go to my local, independently owned (and the owners are often behind the counter) shop.

All very well if they're open.

Town where I used to live and still regularly visit: strong foodie reputation, lots of independent cafés. But if you want a refreshment between about 5pm and pub-o-clock, the only option is Costa.

Nick Kew
Stop

Re: Soda jerks

before I've even had the chance to raise my eyes to the "menu" to find out what they sell.

I can't do that. I'd need to be on their side of the counter, and probably standing on a chair or equivalent height, to read the bloomin' board on which it's written.

Most places will provide a menu on request - if they're not already lying around on the tables. Just occasionally they won't. At worst, asking for one (after standing in a queue where a person with better eyesight would just have read the blackboard) leads to "it's all up there", and impatient incomprehension of my need for anything else.

Nick Kew

Ahh yes, that old stalwart of badly implemented GUIs

Like ssh and pgp implementations that give you a pop-up to enter your passphrase.

A bit of lag, or another application popping something at you, and it becomes very easy to fall victim to what we sometimes call ECHAN on IRC.

Nick Kew

No sympathy

You're clearly spending far too much time in Shoreditch. Try the Real World.

Enigma message crack honours pioneering Polish codebreakers

Nick Kew

Re: Polish contributions

It seems odd how so much relatively recent history, is still being discovered.

Not really. Wartime secrecy and deception morphed straight into both cold-war intrigue and the politics of zionism and modern Israel. Lots of powerful players with enmities, suspicions, and propaganda Agendas that have changed over the years but are still with us. A historian is faced with obstacles ranging from state-enforced secrecy to weaponised taboos.

Got any ecsta-sea? Boffins get octopuses high on MDMA – for science, duh

Nick Kew

Re: "California two-spot octopus"

Hmmm. Would octopedes imply a plurality of molluscs, or rather a plurality of feet?

Come to think of it, isn't "octopus" itself a misnomer. That is to say, shouldn't it be eightfeet rather than eightfoot? And that's leaving aside the question of whether it's reasonable to describe their tentacles as legs: perhaps one could get there via some arachnalogy[1]?

[1] arachnid analogy.

Deliveroo to bike food to hungry fanbois queuing to buy iPhones

Nick Kew
WTF?

Sneering

Not sure why the article is sneering at Deliveroo. It's just pulling a perfectly reasonable stunt. Can't imagine they'll really get business out of it, but it's amusing enough.

We might validly criticise or condemn Deliveroo's (non-)employment practices: I don't know enough about the reality of it to comment. But sneering at a harmless tongue-in-cheek stunt?

Nick Kew

@katrinab

Not many tramps with iphones?

How would you know? Do you make a study of tramps' inventories? Can you tell an iphone from AN Other gadget at a distant glance, or do you peer up really close?

Tech to solve post-Brexit customs woes doesn't exist yet, peers say

Nick Kew

Re: Loads of tech exists

We don't doubt that lots of tech exists.

But it can never be the solution to the NI border. Tech can serve to implement a solution, but there has first to be a political solution to implement.

They can't agree a political solution because the EU's red line is the integrity of its standards such as food safety, and the brexiteers red line is NOT to be bound by any such standards.

Nick Kew

Re: Yesterdays news

which is what the EU is currently insisting upon

No they're not. It's just one backstop option for them.

If the UK junks EU standards (very specifically food standards, the big Red Line that has prevented a full free trade agreement with the US over many years), then all that stands between the EU and mass-smuggling of growth-hormone-filled beef is the capacity of the roads and rail between Belfast and Dublin. Or else a proper border with customs checks.

So no open border unless NI maintains regulatory alignment - or at least equivalence (what happens in the rest of the UK is not the concern of the EU here - hence the particular focus on NI). Which is precisely what the US trade lobbyists (aka brexiteers) absolutely won't stand for.

Flying to Mars will be so rad, dude: Year-long trip may dump 60% lifetime dose of radiation on you

Nick Kew
Go

Re: Anti-ageism

You could be on to something there. Certain old people not merely put up with but pay vast amounts of money to be confined for long periods in a small space. Could Mars be, for the pioneers, a more exclusive cruise destination?

Holy macaroni! After months of number-crunching, behold the strongest material in the universe: Nuclear pasta

Nick Kew
Alien

Pastafarian

Have you just beheld His Divine Noodliness?

Oz government rushes its anti-crypto legislation into parliament

Nick Kew

That's not quite true: companies have a history of producing country-specific versions of products. So you'd just want to avoid the Oz version - and indeed they'd do their best to prevent you getting the Oz version from outside Oz.

The more relevant question is how much you trust the company itself. Has it inserted an NSA backdoor in return for not being given the Kaspersky treatment?

Biz! Formerly! Known! As! Yahoo! Settles! Data! Breach! Cases! To! The! Tune! Of! $47m!

Nick Kew

Is it me?

Am I totally out of touch never having heard of "Altaba" before today?

Are they trying to confuse us with the names of successful companies? If it's not Alibaba, must be Alphabet. No, it's not Alphabet, must be Alibaba. Oh, erm, Alright, nevermind, Al-wossname, must be google ... erm ... wot woz the Chinese google again ... erm ...

Leeds hospital launches campaign to 'axe the fax'

Nick Kew

@Ledswinger

... and because we have a monumentally bureaucratic and inefficient system. Not to mention one whose priorities are horribly warped (no link because story of victim killed by NHS warped process has no writeup available).

Sysadmin misses out on paycheck after student test runs amok

Nick Kew

Re: ADA!

What a great instructor. Introducing you to real-world problems like that. Did he also manage to ensure that TFM had gone walkabout whenever you needed it?

Nick Kew

Should've ...

Should've kept this Ada away from students: tick. Keep her virtue intact.

Some comments here are evidently from the young, to whom that is and always has been elementary first principles. But it was a different world back then. People on computers and networks were interested, not malicious. Security as we know it today wasn't even a twinkle in the bursar's eye - let alone the sysop who was in the job for the exposure to otherwise-far-too-expensive toys.

Nick Kew

Re: Why...

(based in what was then said to be the longest corridor in Europe)

I suspect there are a lot of those.

I heard the claim made of Newnham College (Cambridge) when I had occasion to navigate it. I thought it a slightly dodgy claim: it worked by aggregating a lot of sections that wouldn't necessarily all be considered as a single corridor. Anyway, not a place I can imagine as a venue for what you describe, even if someone hadn't already outed you elsewhere :)

Who's hacking into UK unis? Spies, research-nickers... or rival gamers living in res hall?

Nick Kew
Coat

Who? When?

during ... the UK working day

So that's neither students nor academics, then.

Linux kernel's Torvalds: 'I am truly sorry' for my 'unprofessional' rants, I need a break to get help

Nick Kew

these CoCs are a load of unnecessary drama

Are they?

Perhaps they serve a useful purpose. Give the idiots something to argue incessantly, while the rest of us get on with our work.

If the hot air is filling your developer forum, you may want to exercise a little diplomacy. Give them a new forum, and make it clear that's where Really Important Things happen. Or create your own new forum, with a name that makes it look a bit too specialist for them.

Nick Kew
Joke

Re: I blame the source code management...

Mycho, I hereby charge you with subversion.