Posts by corestore 424 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2007
If we're sufficiently angry about this, can we tell Equifax "I don't trust you to hold my data; I require you to delete every piece of data you hold on me"?
It would seem a reasonable request in the circumstances - but is it possible? If not, data protection laws are worth very little. We need the ultimate sanction, as individuals, of being able to easily compel companies and organizations to delete all identifiable data they hold on us.
Since when does the FCC regulate satellite launches?! Wouldn't that be down to the... FAA or something?
And, there's a space treaty which has been in force for a long time and which places the responsibility for regulating commercial space activities on the country *from which they are launched*.
Americans sometimes have funny ideas about this stuff - I seem to remember a small kerfuffle a few years ago where the US purported to assert the right to regulate the sale of satellite images, even when they were taken from a foreign-owned satellite and offered for sale overseas.
You can absolutely buy foreign currency with a credit card in the USA. Just the first result:
https://www.travelex.com
So I don't see how, if you can buy Euros with a credit card (or indeed a bank loan), you can't buy cryptocurrencies with a credit card. It should absolutely be possible.
This kinda emphasizes the problem with cryptocurrencies at present.
It's the tulip bulb problem - by which I mean, people who bought and sold tulip bulbs had little or no interest in *flowers* or in *growing the bloody things*; they were simply vehicles for pure speculative bubble investment that had no relation to the bulbs actual utility in the real world.
Likewise, people generally don't buy cryptocurrencies to *spend* or to *use as currencies*; it's mostly pure speculation; their utility as functioning currencies is limited in the extreme.
That's a MASSIVE red flag.
What are the telcos doing to secure THEIR networks against such devices?! It's their networks that are being spoofed; they should by now have some secure authentication to ensure that phones ONLY connect to genuine cellphone towers, not Stingray and other devices of that ilk.
Google, Apple etc. moved quickly to make communications more secure after the Snowden revelations - crypto on by default, end-to-end encryption, crypto on the backbone etc. But what have we heard from the telcos about Stingray? Crickets. Why? El Reg should be asking them hard questions, and being persistent about it!
A breach of the terms of use should NOT be a criminal offence! He DID pay the fare and DID have a valid ticket; it just wasn't in the conventional form. But you can't tell *anything* about an NFC chip by *looking at it*; only by scanning it - which the ticket inspectors could easily have done, if they had wished to do so. Astonished he pleaded guilty.
...getting the developers of - just for starters - Signal - to comply with Aussie law!
Seriously, what are they going to do? Make mere possession of software such as Signal a criminal offence in Australia? Erect a Great Aussie Firewall on the internet to try to prevent people obtaining copies?
They couldn't find their own arses if you gave them a flashlight and a map and let them use both hands *facepalm*
"Seemingly, a problem with this code causes the OS to flip the wrong configuration bit in a hardware register, and write protect the firmware's data, triggering further failures."
So is this a write-only write-protect bit? Once flipped, a few lines of C code can't simply unflip it?!
If that is the case, I could swallow a few grams of silicon and *puke up* a better design.
Have a read of this. It's long and in lawyerese but your jaw will drop on numerous occasions when you see just how breathtakingly incompetent the FAA have been in pretending they can regulate drone operations previously:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160308050730/https://www.kramerlevin.com/files/upload/FAA-v-Pirker.pdf
(The result of this brief? Executive summary: The FAA got their arses completely handed to them in court and their case was dismissed with prejudice; they had insisted they could ban commercial drone operations based on illegal improperly made regulations - which would still have been illegal even if properly made because they cited authority that didn't exist! They're deluded and demented; how did they ever think they could get away with this?!)
I would honestly run up the skull and crossbones and start opening gas stations with after-hours automatic pumps in more remote areas - and let the law be damned. One of those weird old laws that wouldn't actually be enforced is my bet. What on earth is the rationale behind it anyway?!
Sheesh, I remember my dad telling me about a station with an automatic petrol pump on the A9 in Scotland back in the 1960s - a long and, at night, notorious dry stretch of road in terms of petrol. Saved his arse on one occasion when he miscalculated his fuel consumption at 2am! This was in the days when credit cards were still fairly exotic and rare - so it took pound notes! If Scotland could do it 50 years ago, America can do it today! :D
"he's arguing that HIS information on how traffic and traffic signals work is just as valid as that of an actual certified Professional Engineer"
No, he's arguing - **with evidence** - that the engineers who implemented the system left bugs in it.
*facepalm*
Are the telcos doing to protect their customers from such devices?
After the Snowden revelations, various companies - Google, Microsoft etc. - moved publicly to help protect their customers privacy from the spooks - encryption on by default, encryption on the backbone, end-to-end encryption etc etc.
What are telcos (and indeed phone manufacturers) doing to combat Stingray? The square root of sweet fsck all as far as I can see. Do they have ANYTHING, or anything in the works, to ensure that customer devices ONLY connect to, and exchange data with, genuine cell towers???
It's THEIR networks the spooks are spoofing; they have both a right and a duty to secure their networks so they can't be spoofed! But over the years since Stingray has been known about, what have I heard? Oh, crickets. El Reg should be asking the telcos hard questions.
Increasing general taxation isn't very popular - unless it's perceived as very FAIR.
Abolish fuel tax. Increase income tax fractionally to make up the shortfall. Poor people will pay less. Average people will pay about the same. Rich people will pay more. People will see the fairness in that.
I have triple citizenship (long story!) including US. The US healthcare system in a soundbite: "Never in the field of human healthcare have so many paid so much for so little" - me!
The unfairness is that it's paid by the same rate by rich and poor alike! That's not how a fair tax is supposed to work and I'm astonished so many people don't see it! Poor people should pay little or no tax; rich people should pay a lot of tax. Who would object to that as a principle? Why has it been ignored for many decades when it comes to fuel tax?
I have no idea why Brits (and to be fair many other countries) tolerate the confiscatory levels of taxation that currently apply to fuel. I suspect the 'boiling frogs' analogy applies. It defies all logic; roads are a common good; a necessary service best provided by government. Since they benefit all (directly or indirectly) they should be paid for by all, in a fair manner - paid for by revenue from taxes such as income tax where the poor pay little or nothing and the rich pay their fair whack (at least in theory). Taxes and charges HAVE to be related to ability to pay to be fair.
Fuel taxes (and things like the ridiculous 'congestion charge' or road pricing) are paid at the same rate by rich and poor alike; that's bad and wrong and evil; ALL products sold at retail shouldn't carry any more tax or duty or charge beyond basic VAT or sales tax - and that should be kept low. And, as Mr. Khan indirectly points out, it can cause a big problem for government revenue when people switch to an untaxed fuel! But the fair and correct solution is the opposite to the one he proposes; put a penny on income tax and abolish all fuel taxes.
No. I checked. They have only two rules:
- it must be a UK address
- you must be able to receive mail sent there
You don't have to be the owner of the car, you don't have to be a UK citizen or even hold a driving license, you don't even have to be resident in the UK; you just have to supply a UK address where they can write to you.
And THIS is exactly why the DVLA haven't had my actual real home address for many years, and never will have again. I register my cars at an address which is entirely 'air gapped' from my real life, so to speak - and anyone obtaining the address from the DVLA will learn precisely *nothing* about me, other than that I can receive mail sent there. I would urge others to pursue a similar course of action.
This is bad and wrong. Before you get all huffy and grumble about 'Apple' and 'Billions', think about the *principle* here.
Apple complied with all Irish laws. They paid all the taxes that were due under Irish law. They did nothing wrong and nothing illegal.
The EC now says those laws themselves were illegal - laws made by the Irish government, which has sovereign and complete responsibility for the laws in their country. THEY made the mistake; why should Apple pay the price??!! If there's any penalty to be paid, it should be paid by the Irish government - NOT by Apple.
If the EC can do this to Apple, they can do it to ANY company - big or small. Think it through.
Talk about pedantic; you entirely ignored the second part of the sentence referring to AJA internment - which made it bloody clear exactly what I was talking about.
I fail to understand how punishing criminals equates to 'second class citizenship' anyway; all countries do that in some form or another. UK has 'second class citizens' by your definition too - like that chap in the news not so long ago who got an 'order' requiring him to inform the police before he had sex despite the fact that he had never been convicted of anything!
You pick the *one single exception* which is written into the constitution; yes the president must be a natural-born citizen. Otherwise this is slam-dunk illegal. Government can't treat natural-born and naturalized citizens differently.
The disbarring voting thing applies to felons and doesn't distinguish between natural-born and naturalized so that's a complete red herring.
I'm a naturalized citizen and best of fucking luck; you'll need it if you try that with me. We don't DO second-class citizens; that last time we tried that was when we put Americans of Japanese ancestry in internment camps. All citizens are equal - natural-born or naturalized - and have an absolute right to enter the USA. Try this and SCOTUS will tie you in a pretzel.
Massive DING there. And one of the biggest and best examples of why that should be is... internet censorship. Long ago the government outsourced the creation and maintenance of a secret list of 'banned' websites to the Internet Watch Foundation; almost all ISPs use that list to block websites. But since it's in the hands of a private organization the list is exempt from FOIA requests and cannot be independently investigated to see what's on it. That's absolutely bloody scandalous. Censorship is bad enough (IMHO) - but secret censorship is revolting.
"Some publishers even specify a fine – up to $25,000 in some cases"
I hate it when every jobsworth with a clipboard and a yellow waistcoat pretends they can 'fine' people.
A fine is a form of punishment which may be imposed by a court after a criminal conviction as an alternative to prison.
What these people attempt to do is issue *invoices*. Only the nature of the paper used makes them unsuitable for toilet paper.
This smacks of trying to police something that every single person concerned knows is utterly unpoliceable and unenforceable - but nevertheless gives a handy charge to pull out of the folder on occasions when the government decides it wants to make an example of someone; that's clearly the reason it's on the statute book at all.
Big DING there. Nail, head, BANG.
A large part of the reason Japan is so determined to continue whaling is - IMHO - precisely because most people are pushing them so hard to stop! No-one likes being told what not to eat! Especially not in such a bullying judgmental way. Ignore them, leave them alone, and they'll probably give it a rest within a few years. Keep pushing them and they'll only get more stubborn.
Not sure why some people obsess over the diets of others. I'd sooner eat wild caught sustainably hunted *anything* than most 'products' of modern intensive farming. And it *does* appear that whale hunting at current levels of currently hunted species is sustainable.
I probably won't win many friends with this comment but it is what it is!
Problem I've encountered is software unable to distinguish between altitude and height-above-ground.
If I want to fly a DJI up the side of a mountain (which I do when filming volcanoes!) I will fly up the slope in a kind of terrain-following style, never exceeding a height above ground of - say - 50m - but the bletcherous ghastly firmware is too stupid to realise I'm not flying straight up in the air and imposes an altitude cap of 500m above takeoff altitude irrespective of the fact the bloody thing is STILL only 50m above the ground! It's no wonder people have to hack them!
That's more than a bit off. Creating code that's smart enough an engine can tell if it's been tested is pretty bloody impressive. Deserves reward rather than punishment; the punishment should fall on the company which took that code and misused it in production vehicles. Writing the code was no crime. IMHO.
Why do they think they NEED to store that information long-term? It's transitory by nature!
As always, the best thing an organization which cares about the privacy of their customers can do is **not store the data in the first place**. If they haven't got it they can't be compelled to hand it over.
"The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers." - ESR
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