Posts by MashedPotato

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

Dogs are an expensive luxury and their welfare should be prioritised by their owners and considered prior to purchase. They are for life (the life of the dog).

Discord to start assuming all users are underage unless they prove otherwise

Hell No

I feel the discordant vibes of my cognitive dissonance manifested by the dispair of sharing my passport with a disreputable donkey.

Stop dragging feet on AI nudification ban, UK government told

Elon's pants

On 11th January 2025, The Guardian website has an image taken from X/Twitter of Elon Musk in a bikini.

It has not yet been taken down, despite the obvious

UK government exempting itself from flagship cyber law inspires little confidence

Re: Cyber Essentials ----

IASME does not help. They want all devices to have supported operating systems. So ... the canonical MRI scanner that can't be updated without spending £££? Sorry hospital, computer says no"

"but we have ISO 27001 which trumps CE+ and is risk-based, not stupid-based" ... "computer says no"

"but we are not an SME, we are a huge company so CE can't apply to the whole enterprise" ... "I say it can (despite being stupid) and if you can't then computer says no"

"big old UK company was hacked even though they had CE+" ... "let's force HMG to require it still because ... reasons"

"we use O365 or Google as email " ... "never heard of cloud ... penetration test please"

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

Womp Womp

Womp Womp. So much of the rot on Github exists purely for the aggrandisement of the ego of the person who decided to fork. Hey, I'm not going to add to an existing repo, I'm going to invent my own version. Which will eventually die because I get bored. We don't need a million versions of video encoders, we just need one, so don't invent a new one for your onanism.

Womp Womp. If you want software, pay for it. If you don't want to pay then don't be surprised when the hobbyist gets a life.

Womp Womp. Either put up or shut up. If you care so much, become a maintainer. Become part of the solution instead of a malingering guttersnipe.

Womp Womp.

One-fifth of the jobs at your company could disappear as AI automation takes off

Used to work with a graphic designer ..

They got laid off. Gemini is "good enough" for internal slides and presenting at conferences. Still need a human for newspaper-quality graphics. Suspect not for long.

Landlord quirks leave thousands of flats stuck in the broadband slow lane

Re: Landlords!

"some landlords are..." Fixed it for you.

Many (or likely most) people don't really really need ultra super (expensive) and fast. They need reliable with low latency. Fast is a chimera, beloved of politicians and vendors with KPIs. Obviously exceptions abound, but from my personal lived experience: 50mbps Talk Talk via copper was ample for watching videos, WFH, playing games (perhaps not CoD but that could be just me), we then upgraded to 120mpbs+ FTTP. Faster? Yes. Did anyone in the household of four notice a difference? Nope. I suggest to my learned friends that while it might be occasionally nice to only wait 1 hour for my specialist video to download, rather than four, it does not make a material difference that justifies the additional cost. TBH once when Talk Talk were in their frequent rubbish periods our connection dropped to 25mbps and even then we didn't notice until the BT Openreach engineer pointed it out and told us that if the supplier router detects an error it automatically drops line speed to keep it active. It was only when the speed dropped to 14mbps that it really hurt, even then we could surf but watching videos was miserable.

Peace

Bug bounties: The good, the bad, and the frankly ridiculous ways to do it

Beg Bounty

We are plagued by these extortionists who weekly assert that they have found a critical vulnerability, which is nothing more than an SPF compliant issue, or disabled DMARC or perhaps reflected cross site scripting. None of which is important in our systems, all of which generates noise. Inevitably the initial email asks for money "in line with industry good practice. And then the threat that in order to protect personal data if we don't pay up the extortionist will have to go to the information commissioner to ensure full public disclosure.

The only people worse are the extortionist ratings companies that provide no value to anyone, yet tick an audit box and squeeze fees from unsuspecting clients. "oh you have RDP, we don't think RDP is good practice therefore we rate you D+, you need to remove it". I think we know best whether FTP, RDP, or whatever other specious protocol they decide they don't like is suitable for our environment, our risks and our business needs.

A plague on all their houses.

Microsoft starts boiling the Copilot frog: It's not a soup you want to drink at any price

Kryten ....

... Was an admirable copilot

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

I write them down

All my passwords written in a book that never leaves my bedroom. My bedroom is very quiet so I know if I am being whaled. Passwords written in water soluble fountain pen ink so that the contents can be destroyed by dropping in a bucket of water in the case of the zombie apocalypse. The main advantage of the password book is that I can give it to my family who can now log in to my accounts if I am I ill forgetful senile or dead.

AI poetry 'out-humans' humans as readers prefer bots to bards

Re: Wordsworthless

You are a poet. And you know it.

All bark, no bite? Musk's DOGE unlikely to have any real power

Re: America 1776 - 2024

Safer for whom?