Posts by Chronos 1257 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007
Bowden cable to the throttle body, a mechanical key that you can turn off when the engine disobeys your input, a second set of Bowden cables attached to levers on the back brakes for emergency use and a third pedal, I dunno, call it a "clutch" that disengages the engine from the gearbox completely as a last resort.
Ancient kernel versions infested with binary blobs, uPNP enabled out of the box, web interface with glaring vulnerabilities accessible from the WAN, no SMB egress filtering, backdoors in stock firmware, "telemetry," insecure browsers running malicious js/vb/skiddie-language-du-jour, Windows 10 p2p patches distribution punching holes in the firewall and so on.
How many more vectors do you need? Consumer IT is one big maelstrom of beta testing, spyware and experiments in Darwinism - and these same TLAs are making it worse by keeping the tasty vulns to themselves for use in projects with twee uppercase names.
So no, Feds, nobody is buying your "caring" advice.
They know which channel you're watching, what is playing on that channel and it gives them a further interest to add to your profile. If the TV is "smart" they could also possibly get a rough, WiFi derived location from the exchange. You're not thinking like an ad-flinger.
Filter ultrasound on the handset;
Add _nomap to your SSID;
Firewall the "smart" TV by MAC.
Or just forget all this nonsense and read a (real) book.
In other words, you are not Trump and repeating your opinion endlessly does not make it any more relevant.
But we do that impression so well, don't we? I mean, come on, Boris is so close with the hair and vacant expression, even if his accent is a bit Etonian, that they could almost be body doubles for each other.
It's embarrassing, it really is. Globally embarrassing.
Why is there no clown icon? Or better still, a clown car with wobbly wheels, the doors falling off and steam coming out of the radiator. That would seem to me to be an apt metaphor for the current situation.
This is a legitimate, objective and reasonable concern. We could do with a bit of shorthand so, for example, if your VoIP ATA is on 2a03:dead:beef:1::1/64, ::1::1 would be easier to type and remember. Of course, this does sort of fall down when using SLAAC but things that have SSH running on 'em shouldn't be using SLAAC anyway.
I can't deny v4 addresses are easier. The reason I so vociferously support IPv6 is to preserve the fundamental equality of hosts connected to the 'net. Without that, it's not the Internet any more. We've run out of contiguous v4 space and none is going to magically appear from nowhere, not even from AFRINIC's meltdown. Unless v6 is at least tried, the Internet as we know it will cease to be and it'll become just another two-tier them'n'us system.
In summary, I give you Gary Feldman to play the theme tune.
"An IPv6-only mail server is not likely to be able to receive mail from most of the world, so what's the difference?"
EHORSECARTORDER
If IPv6 were widely deployed, this would be a non-issue. Using it as an excuse not to deploy is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Have you lot all got secret stacks of /16s that you want to (ugh!) "monetise" in the near future, or what?
Phew, a bit of front-line common sense. I had to check for a moment to ensure I was actually on ElReg as it seems the commentards aren't getting this at all.
Considering we've all been banging on about net neutrality for ages, even though people on this side of the pond give less than an airborne fornication for the US and its rules, this seems a little strange. What about peer neutrality? It was - and still should be, although I don't know how far up the tree the AOLers have been promoted at this point - one of the things that made the Internet possible. And by "internet" I don't mean the Big Blue E™ but the free exchange of ideas and knowledge and the free choice of protocols and infrastructure over which to do so.
Now I hear that not only is there a risk of a two-tier system emerging, it's actually happening. I know PlusNet trialled CG-NAT a while ago but I seem to recall it was dropped. Sadly, exactly the same thing happened to IPv6, it was trialled and then they bottled out.
If we want a world where the same bunch of corporate robber barons who micromanage our lives also control the only sites to which we can connect with our second-class connections, carry on ignoring IPv6.
Pray tell, how long did it take for you to find out that an IPv4's octets cannot be greater than 255? Or that a /31 is useless? IPv6 addresses are simply a string representation of 128 bits. IPv4 addresses are the same but 32 bits. If you can't read hex you really shouldn't be messing with stuff like this.
I suspect that's why the initial design called for embedding the MAC in the last 64 bits padded with ff:fe, since that forced you to think in hex and discover how simple it is. Obviously, this didn't work for everyone.
And, if you really want to memorise addresses, you can always go static. Your site prefix is 2a03:dead:beef::/48. Your router is on 2a03:dead:beef::1. Your LDAP&KRB5 primary is on 2a03:dead:beef::10 Your DNS boxen operate split-brain serving one set of AAAA and PTR (ip6.arpa) records and recursive service for 2a03:dead:beef::/48 and authoritative, if needed, for foreigners doing lookups on your ip6savvy.example domain. Your firewall blocks anything forwarded in/out on [2a03:dead:beef::]:137-139,445 and keeps a state table of all other traffic out, only letting requested packets back in unless there's a service running. Your workstation in mission control is on 2a03:dead:beef::1337. Eventually it becomes utterly mundane, boring and just as logical as IPv4.
Where is does fall down is all the maddening hoops, MTU settings, tunnel endpoint updates and protocol-breaking new packet types it takes¹ to actually get a sodding connection to the outside world, fending off detractors and nay-sayers while network access providers continue to argue, bitch and moan about how difficult it all is despite the fact that Murdoch's merry band of fraction-wits managed it right across their network without anyone ever noticing.
If IPv4 is so simple, without looking it up anywhere. give me the list of bogon, multicast, loopback and RFC1918 prefixes. No, seriously, I haven't checked my bogons list in a while...
¹ Actually, if you run OpenWRT with the SIT and luci-6in4 modules, it's a doddle. Whatever a doddle is.
And your target demographic? Lemme guess, cat videos. Auntie Mabel reading her e-mail wouldn't know an IPv6 from an IP Freely.
For the rest of us, there's IPv6 or CG-NAT. The choice is yours but don't come crying to me when you can't run a simple e-mail server on your endpoint because it's behind multiple layers of unpredictable NAT and the incumbents have you stitched up like a kipper. Want your own domain? Want to access that NAS from the wider 'net? Need to run a VPN? KER-friggin'-CHING!
Follow the money, son. YKIMS.
The takeaway from this article is that FB devs don't really know exactly which permissions they're asking for so they're taking the cluster bomb approach, as in ask for everything. Android permissions are granular for a very good reason and, on Lineage, they're thrust in your face at every opportunity to give you a choice if you have privacy guard enabled by default.
One wonders just what other permissions they have "accidentally" requested on install if they can "overlook" a root request. Send premium texts? Activate the camera or mic? Dial 09 numbers?
FB is looking more and more toxic by the second.
. <- and that's the point
Upon reflection, the headline is a bit shit too, given that someone is quite recently dead in rather unpleasant circumstances.
Yet they missed the one where matey tried to make his own "oil" and ended up with lipoid pneumonia - which was again blamed on the vaping community when, in reality, it was just another sodding numpty with zero clue. There's enough information out there on the constituent parts of a safe e-liquid that even a mouth-breather with ten left thumbs could do it.
As for drug addiction, @lost all faith, the first time a vaper is caught mugging an old lady for the £10 of her pension she has left or, indeed, doing anything else harmful to others or self-destructive to buy some e-liquid, I'll admit there's an overlap. Until such time, mind your own sodding business.
Because your way of vaping is The One True Way, yes?
I vape at 15 watts on a DNA40 box mod and a modified Kayfun 3.1ES. I agree that 20 watts is all we need - we being you and I. Why should everyone have to conform to our narrow definition, though? It's this kind of one-size-fits-all oversimplification and micromanagement that ruins everything.
It's not as simple as that. For example if I run a pub and I want to count the number of beers you've bought so that I can charge you the right amount for your tab, I can. You can't withdraw consent for that and still expect to be served.
Quite, but by the same token I wouldn't expect you to follow me around town totting up the number of pints I have at other pubs, either. We also have a choice, to drink elsewhere where you can pay for a round as you get it at the bar with anonymous cash money. If you try to process the data on those transactions, especially around here, you'd probably end up taking your next meal through a straw and shoving your toothbrush up your arse in the morning as that's where your teeth now reside.
The CRAs don't limit their slurpage. You don't have a choice. This is what we're hoping the GDPR rectifies - and not just with the CRAs.
Payslips, employment status and all the other metrics that worked just fine before Big Data came along and took informed consent away. The fact that you still want to sell loans to people does not justify this massive, uncontrolled and invasive gathering of data on everyone. In fact, it's more like a protection racket than a business. Nice credit rating you have there. It would be a shame if something fucked it up, eh? Buy this monitoring service to keep an eye on our balls-ups that could cost you dearly...
On that note, there should also be a duty to inform whenever a financial or other institution sends or requests data from one of these places. Relying on a subject access request to find out what lies they've collected, who you're linked with, how bad the fallout from the identity theft incident four years ago was and what addresses they've decided you're liable for the debts therefrom without any oversight is not acceptable. It's very much like having to go cap-in-hand to Crapita every two years when you don't need a TV licence to prevent them pestering the hell out of you.
In other news, it's going to be fun watching the card issuing biggies deal with GDPR. So, Visa, how do you use that purchase history data these days?
What do you propose as an alternative to credit reference agencies?
Why do you think we need an alternative? The root of this Big Data mess we're in right now stems from the total inability of some people to mind their own sodding business coupled with the overwhelming desire of some people, who I describe a compulsive consumers, to obtain things they don't need with money they don't have. Really good for The Economy®, piss-poor for anyone worth less than seven figures.
We're frittering our privacy and our futures away for a few shiny trinkets. The last time people accepted this, the entire population of a continent was almost wiped out by smallpox contained within those trinkets while losing their autonomy and ancestral lands to a bunch of invading Europeans who, while less in numbers, were technologically superior. While this may not have such dramatic effects, it's still not sustainable and the parallels are clear.
CRAIN: A long document that simply says, in garbled legal-speak, "4Q, peasant, we do Important Stuff™ and we'll just continue to do whatever we like."
It will be interesting to see how long this particular stance can withstand millions of disaffected people who are fed up with these companies and their entitled viewpoint.
And disk mounting
Well, I am compelled to agree with most everything you wrote except one niche area that systemd does better: Remember putzing about with the amd? One line in fstab:
nasbox:/srv/set0 /nas nfs4 _netdev,noauto,nolock,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=1min 0 0
Bloody thing only works and nobody's system comes grinding to a halt every time some essential maintenance is done on the NAS.
Candour compels me to admit surprise that it worked as advertised, though.
If they removed logging from the systemd core and went back to good ol' plaintext syslog[-ng], I'd have very little bad to say about Lennart's monolithic pet project. Indeed, I much prefer writing unit files than buggering about getting rcorder right in the old SysV init.
Now, if someone wanted to nuke pulseaudio from orbit and do multiplexing in the kernel a la FreeBSD, I'll chip in with a contribution to the warhead fund. Needing a userland daemon just to pipe audio to a device is most certainly a solution in search of a problem.
it's because it does something we need to do
Is it really necessary to bling up your site to convey information or is it just ego and skewed priorities of form over function that has created the need for executable code being flung hither and yon and minimally acceptable bandwidth being 10mbps?
...they'll turn around and whinge that desktop sales are declining. At this point, it's very hard to think of a compelling reason to upgrade anything, given that Intel's entire CPU portfolio is full of holes. Look no further for the reason the desktop seems to be "dying." It wouldn't surprise me if the MBA types decided to incorporate a death timer into some of these designs in a vain attempt to stir up a bit of long-term revenue - it wouldn't be the first time foot-shooting has happened in the tech sector.
"We can blame it on RoHS. Tin whiskers!" Sure, in an encapsulated package. That'll fly.
Meltdown, Spectre, IME, PSP, is there any wonder people are keeping adequate, anti-feature immune kit running for as long as they possibly can?
Precisely what I was going to say. Don't we spend enough time swatting nuisance marketing messages from our field of vision already?
Technology, especially the Internet which was built from the ground up with host equality, should serve the user rather than some massive conglomerate pushing useless crap to buy with money we don't have yet. No wonder people are in debt up to their eyeballs.
My rule of thumb for quite a while now has been "if they need to advertise it, I don't need it."
Sales are sliding for one reason alone: No compelling reason to upgrade. It's starting to hit smartphone sales as people wake up to the "latest model at all costs" scam. Surface, Chromebooks, even the Gemini is no solution to this. Spectre 1&2 and Meltdown have kicked the industry while it's already down as there's no point buying new hardware until both Intel and AMD have completely redesigned the speculative branch execution portions of their silicon. Even then the smart people will wait for several iterations while they work out the "oh crap, I forgot that bit did that too" gotchas.
Add ME and PSP to that and you have a completely stagnant market, a minefield nobody in their right mind wants to walk through.
The players have brought this upon themselves. The desktop, as a concept, isn't going anywhere. I personally will be frigged if I'm trying to do all I do on a bloody phone-alike, no matter how big and keyboardy it gets. The sales figures are simply a result of people becoming wise to the lack of real world performance gains, anti-features and baked-in security and privacy violations.
As for Windows, only 2k and 7 are worth even thinking about. 8 through 10 are complete dogs' breakfasts and XP was a hint at what was to come with its Fisher-Price UI. SatNad is just flogging the last nerve impulses from the rapidly putrefying beast of burden. If PCs weren't sold with Windows pre-installed we wouldn't be having this discussion.
'Seem' - Ayup.
You've been watching a "Please wait while setup frigs around" spinner for two hours while patronising and/or condescending snippets of Microsoft blowing their own trumpet fade in and out on your screen. At this point, a snail attempting to navigate a salt covered superglue spill would "seem" fast.
You will find out when we've copied the front end interface to the AI that runs the HomeSecBot to the new host. We just have to lower the pitch a bit and give it a slight accent. In the meantime, please continue having hope that things will change. It makes those tears of disappointment so much sweeter.
...with a side of derision, if she's lucky enough to be remembered at all. Unfortunately, we still have the Old Grey May-or who, when it comes to tech, the Internet and all things privacy, is just as bloody bad.
Of course, as John Smith 19 pointed out to me yesterday, it's the bureaucrats in the back rooms that drive this policy. The figureheads are just the fall guys when it all goes TITSUP (total inability to swindle uneducated proles).
And in most countries politicians come and politicians go. It's the bureaucrats behind them that have the pathological compulsion
When I use the term "government" it naturally includes the faceless, unelected cronies and Sir Humphreys who persist like a floating turd when you don't have a pointy stick. I'm well aware our "democracy" is a sham, designed only to make the electorate think they have a choice, legitimise the continued erosion of personal sovereignty and waste public resources for private gain.
It's why I refuse to vote until they give me a "sod off, get some new people in" option. It's a futile gesture, of course, but it makes me feel less like a hypocrite.
Why does it seem that only politicians (and their spooks) and people with a surfeit of money want this? It just seems to me that if they're so afraid of people talking to each other privately, there must be a bigger problem here. Oh, sure, terrorism, criminals et al but those subsets aren't going to play by the rules anyway and they'll probably go back to using sneakernet cyphers - if they haven't already.
I suspect the ultimate goal is to extend things like RIPA to light up a beacon over anyone using privacy-enabling protocols and assume their guilt. That is a huge problem because it undermines two of the most important aspects of the UK legal system: Innocent unless proven guilty and mens rea. RIPA is already treading on one of those.
Naturally, government and big business will still be allowed to keep secrets. The rest of us will be in the fishtank, watched by the privileged few. They may as well lock us all up at that point as the whole country will be an 18th Century panopticon.
If you want a hobby, Ray, go fishing. With your money, you won't even have an argument over supper about the cost of those fancy floats.
As much as I detest Facebook and its big data peers, accusations of money-grabbing coming from that lot is about as ironic as it gets, especially when the people they're grabbing it from have no choice but to cough up to support shitty projects and Crapita|Atos|<some other bunch of bell ends> whose sole purpose is to leech off the public purse, fuck up the NHS and infest anything remotely government affiliated with a horde of clipboard-wielding numpties spouting buzzwords, arranging utterly pointless meetings, introducing rules that have no basis in reality, tripling the amount of paperwork, screwing up IT systems with needlessly complicated pet projects and generally getting in the way of the poor bastards who actually have to do some work.
Vampire squid are predators. Big data, government and large contractors are more like parasites such as tapeworm, stealing all the nutrients and giving sod-all back except stomach cramp and a slight nausea.
Yes, I am aware of the power options. It was more the faff of colour screens, blinkenlichts for no real benefit and suchlike that I don't really care for. In a way, the Darwin was the epitome of thoughtful design: It had everything you needed and nothing you didn't.
That said, the one improvement they have made in the DNA75 and upwards is integrated charging. Not having display feedback on the DNA40 is the one thing that lets it down. Evolv has also broken the Provari mentality where everything is at least a triple figure price-tag by doing quality switched regulation at realistic prices. Even if they stick MP3 playback, Blue teeth and a puff counter (I hate those things; I do not need a bloody odometer on my PV) onto one of their boards, they've still done the world a favour.
Oh, and while I'm ranting about progress, what the giddy frig were Svoe Mesto thinking with the Kayfun v4?
Quite a lot of the heavy end of teh battery pack market at the more extreme end use 3 or more 18650 batteries which can deliver over 200 watts.
Yes, Reuleaux et al. Me, I stuck with the humble DNA40 in a die-cast box (vented, natch) with a single cell, 500mA charger board and a Kayfun¹ on top. Even then, it's sitting at 15W. I had a Reuleaux but I swapped it for one of my DNA40 boxes as it was still sat at 15W and carrying something you could beat an attacking hippo senseless with just wasn't comfortable. I now see Evolv have gone to colour screens, programmable wire profiles and LiPo packs. Not my cuppa at all, I'm afraid.
To each her own, though, although if they don't understand how to spec the cells for their mod, they really should stick to kits and prebuilt coils rather than stuff it up for everyone else.
¹ Modified Kayfun. They wick oh, so much better with Subtank style holes in the vapour chamber wall when wicked with Muji. Centre-punch half way up in line with the juice channels then a 4mm titanium nitride coated bit straight through. Zero dry hits in two years.
....filthy habit... ...own fault... ...addiction... ...not harmless... ...chemicals... blah, blah, blah.
Do, please, fornicate elsewhere.
a) This was most likely a generic 18650 in an HG2 frock pushed over its limit. Counterfeiting 18650 cells is trivial except for Sony VTCx cells which have the cell designator and batch number laser etched into the casing, If you know what you're looking for (top insulator, vent cap support shape, crimp style, charge/discharge curve) you can spot a fake but it takes experience.
b) It was in an e-cig. Big, fat, hairy deal. Not relevant.
c) Those of us who, either due to peer pressure or gullibility, got lured into the smoking game as kids really do appreciate the escape route. Every morning I wake up without having to unload the previous day's 40 roll-ups worth of gunk off my lungs is testament to how much cleaner vaping is. It's called harm reduction. Look it up sometime if you can find any books after you've shamed all the libraries into closing down because some kid had his asthma triggered by book dust.
But, most importantly, vaping is not smoking.
Really? Because, from my perspective, they are getting more viral advertising from the subtext that they're not caving in to political pressure from anyone to weaken their security that I rather think they'll do quite well from this.
As I've said before, pissing off various three letter agencies and the odd nosey bastard is probably the best feedback they could possibly get.
Sure, so well that DHCP was an afterthought - the RCF came only in 2003, five years later, - because they thought routers could assign addresses but didn't think about every other need DNS, dynamic IP-hostnames assignment
SLAAC could do all of those things. The reason DHCP6 happened was the exact inertia people are reporting here. SLAAC: It's new. It's scary. What does rtadvd stand for anyway? Brown alert!
So we ended up with two ways to do the same thing and now we have to support both on the gateway because the wonderful thing about standards is there's so many to choose from.
Now keep on and come back to us when you'll be a big bank, insurance company, multinational corporation with 24/7 mission legacy critical systems and you'll teach us how you managed to convince the top management to accept the risk.
...or even The Register.
% host www.theregister.co.uk
www.theregister.co.uk has address 104.20.251.41
www.theregister.co.uk has address 104.20.250.41
Oh, the irony.
Facebook is Free.
Jesus jumping shitballs, man, how can you be so blind? Facebook is only free if your privacy has no value. This is exactly what I take exception to, people quite literally maxing out their privacy credit account without any clear indication of what the credit limit is until the bill drops on the doormat, metaphorically speaking. You're already a suspect if you can't provide a Facebook screen name to the apes on US border control as a direct result of this sort of thinking.
Let's take it one step further, shall we? How about this scenario: People like you start spouting off that Facebook or some other corporate entity is indispensable. Eventually, other companies take that idea and run with it. Now your life insurance premium is based not on medical data but how many times you've posted the minutiae of your last hospital visit on Facebook. No profile? They assume the worst. Now Facebook has cost you physical money.
If you think I have a twisted mind it's exactly because of shit like this that I've learned to think like the opposition. I'd really rather not have to but it has become a necessity.
But most importantly: Stating that it is indispensable and discouraging from looking for alternatives is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- and exactly what Facebook wants you to do. So stop saying that for start.
Hear bleedin' hear! I need Facebook like I need an infected testicle. I've managed pretty well without ever going near it since its inception, along with all of its work-alikes.
Anyone relying on Facebook for their business isn't going to get my custom and that attitude is going to grow exponentially now we have something more than Zuck's "They trust me? Stupid fuckers" to tell people about.
The web is just telnet and sgml with shiny on top - doesn't mean it isn't useful
obOldGit: Yes, but it was more useful before the ad flingers arrived, it was a damned sight more secure before activequickflashscript and it was much more friendly before AOL started giving coasters away, some git discovered the blink tag and Geocities became a thing.
East Asia, Eurasia, who cares? The important thing is to keep that state of emergency alive and the proles on side. Couple that with laws you can't not break (wipe, re-encrypt the device with a UUID as the passphrase and then slam the poor unfortunate into the jug when they can't decrypt it) and you've a recipe for a very paranoid population who will accept just about anything for a sense of security, however false that may be.
What they want is the backdoors installed, but only them to have the keys.
...a situation that would remain extant until someone drops a USB key in a taxi on the way to see Madame Whiplash. I give it about five minutes.
This isn't a new blinkered attitude. They trotted the "millions of people in direct, unfettered, untraceable communication" argument out in the late 70's when the CBers were trying to get 27MHz legalised. One wonders what happened to the noble gentleman's blood pressure when someone told him that people can talk to each other in complete privacy simply by visiting each other.
The same stupidity is likely to continue for many, many years and will give people like us hours of golden entertainment, the likes of which we couldn't pay to have created. Give them a car that they can all pile into with wobbly wheels and doors that fall off and it would be the greatest show on Earth.
You want mad AIs from the get-go? Trying to understand politicians is a fast route to insanity as the AI decides humanity, from the subject group, is just too damn slimy for the rest of the Universe's good.
Stick with dogs. They're far more honest, produce less crap and won't sell you down the river for a consultancy.
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