* Posts by Chronos

1257 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007

Brit ISP TalkTalk scraps line rental charges

Chronos

Ex-bleedin'-actly. A turd by any other name still stinks...

I wouldn't mind so much if Openretch didn't keep stuffing several lines up every time they open a conduit, which then leads to a month of the modern version of the Adastral Park runaround trying to get your provider to even acknowledge there's a fault, much less run the gamut of OR's fault ticketing system.

Blighty's telly, radio watchdog Ofcom does a swear

Chronos

Re: Smeg...

Which is, if you know the etymology of the Dwarfer's favourite, quite disgusting. It always makes me laugh when I see a Smeg 'fridge. I'm always tempted to append an "MA" to it, just as I itch to put an A and E either side of some pillock's Ford Focus RS.

BBC to demand logins for iPlayer in early 2017

Chronos

A date of birth

and a postcode. Nobody said it has to be yours. As usual, somebody doesn't understand the Internet.

Having just paid for this year's telly tax, I'm left wondering whether it's going on Flop Gear or this white elephant. Either would be an utter waste of money but it would be good to know exactly which failure I'm paying for.

My headset is reading my mind and talking behind my back

Chronos

Re: Wear-a-Hypno-bubble

That's a bit too recursive for me, although it may explain why I keep getting a nagging urge for a circular scabby rat in a bun, AKA Burgerdonalds. One that I resist, of course. I'm wide enough.

Chronos
Thumb Up

Wear-a-bubble

Dabbsy, you cynical bastard. That could have been me saying all that, although not nearly so eloquently.

I must confess to having purchased a sleep mask with very thin speakers in it to listen to binaural recordings while sleeping. This is the very first set of "cans" that don't make my lugholes either sweat or ache after ten minutes. These are connected to a bluetooth dongly thing which is fed audio from a 'droid tablet getting its files and playlists from my DLNA server. All very modern, new-age and plug'n'pray, except it's not as getting it to this stage was an experiment in self-inflicted alopecia and you can't use them as normal cans because you can't see. They also make you look a bit of a prat but, at night time when the general public don't have to put up with you, that's fine.

That's it for wearables for me. If I ever feel the need to record a 5 mile whatever it was euphemism you invented I'll be past the point of self-respect anyway...

Running a DNSSec responder? Make sure it doesn't help the black hats

Chronos

Re: Rate limiting

@gerdesj: Thanks for that. I retract that statement. I'm obviously not as RFC-clueful as I should be.

Chronos

Rate limiting

It was a bit of a mistake to default DNS to UDP which can be spoofed trivially by anyone with raw socket access on an OS but we're stuck with it. Turning off ANY is RFC ignorant, therefore rate limiting would seem to be the answer - per host, preferably, allowing a couple of queries through then logarithmically adding treacle. Should stop any amplification shenanigans well enough, although it does potentially open another DoS vector via spoofed UDP.

Cyberpunks might not be crooks but they're really very rude

Chronos

Re: As a fan of the author William Gibson

Of course, the distinction between the punks and the "legitimate" authorities was blurred in most of those dystopian cyberpunk tomes as the authorities themselves were as bad if not worse than the cyber criminals depicted, so much so that you found yourself on the side of the lesser of two evils.

For another good example of the genre, try Chris Moriarty's Spin books. Even the protagonist loses her moral compass at the end.

Visiting America? US border agents want your Twitter, Facebook URLs

Chronos
Coat

Re: So....

Do your football fans do that as well? Whoda thunk...

Apple pollutes data about you to protect your privacy. But it might not be enough

Chronos

Re: The third way...

Or just using a custom build without Gapps? I use OwnCloud to sync up my calendar and contacts (calendar is synchronised via OwnCloud with Rainlendar2 on my desktops) and F-Droid for apps, sideloading those that I need outside of the open source scope.

Another advantage of a custom build, especially if you're able to build from source, is you get the bugfixes at the same time as AOSP/Nexus devices.

Imagination: Come back to MIPS, Wi-Fi router makers, we have an FCC ban workaround

Chronos

Who visors the hypervisor?

One of the reasons many of us run things like OpenWRT is security and the ability to roll updates when vulnerabilities are found. Given the industry's track record in this area, I remain unconvinced that this addresses the issue in any meaningful way. If your custom firmware is running under something which has ultimate control, privacy and security go out of the window if that layer is riddled with bugs. Looking around at some of the commercial offerings thus far, it's a safe bet it will be.

Euro Patent Office prez's brake line cut – aka how to tell you're not popular

Chronos
Holmes

That's no reason to have two layers of nepotism, and old boys' clubs.

The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

Chronos
Holmes

The PC...

...you have is perfectly adequate. You are not a Phombie (phone zombie, wandering around looking at a smartphone and not watching where you're sodding well going, wishing you had some brains) and you don't want Windows 10 despite Macrosoft more or less ramming it down your throat, so SALES are dead.

The PC's demise is greatly exaggerated.

UK.gov pays four fellows £35k to do nothing for three months

Chronos
Devil

Trial?

I hope this gets rolled out across government in general. You show me some lazy sod who's sitting there scratching his nads and I'll show you someone who's not causing any bloody trouble. (©George Carlin, sort of)

30 years on, Chernobyl wildlife still feeling effects of nuke plant catastrophe

Chronos

Re: Is Chernobyl paradise for nature?

Indeed - have you read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman? Quite a sobering book

That's a very clever title to appeal to those of us who grew up with Mr Attenborough's BBC programme. I'll try to grab a copy. Thanks for the recommendation.

Chronos
Thumb Up

Re: Is Chernobyl paradise for nature?

Which just goes to show you that removing humans from the equation, regardless of whatever else may be there. is always a net positive for nature. Now they want to use the 30km exclusion zone as a nuclear waste dump and buffer zone but, personally, I think it has far more value as a massive experiment in nature without human interference, if for no other reason than to teach the klaxon mob just how resilient life really is. Note the way they describe Pripyat as a "ghost town" with life all around them, even when they go out of their way to always film in Autumn so it looks as dreary as possible.

Oh, and try telling people in areas with large concentrations of granite what the "normal" background radiation level is. I'm sure some of us could do with a good laugh.

Stop using USB sticks to move kids' data, auditor tells Education Dept

Chronos
Flame

Stop leaving spare USB ports active on machines that handle sensitive data.

FTFY. This was SOP not so long ago. And rivet the case shut, too. Repeat offenders to be issued with machines that have a solid blob of epoxy where the USB connectors were.

You don't need spare USB ports on a corporate/government machine. Peripherals should be shared per office, installs done from approved images over PXE and input devices should be permanently attached and only removable by a technician. Sort your physical security first, always. Then layer on the software and wetware policies.

So you’d sod off to China to escape the EU, Google? Really?

Chronos
Big Brother

Re: Google gives everything away for free, so how in heaven can EU extort google ?

For the avoidance of doubt, "free" is simply a have now, pay later with your privacy deal. It's worth remembering, when June rolls along, that we didn't even have a right to the expectation of privacy before the HRA 1998. Ms May&co wants to repeal that[1] but even that would be a pointless gesture until the shadow of the ECtHR is removed. Be careful with that vote, folks. You may have someone's eye in.

OTOH, I can't help wondering if Call-me-Dave's special exception on closer political integration renders that a moot point.

[1] George Carlin once said a right isn't a right if someone can take it away. It's just a temporary privilege.

UK web host 123-Reg goes TITSUP, customer servers evaporate

Chronos
Coat

An extended team of experts

Over-stretched has-been drips under pressure. Yup, sounds about right ;-)

Sorry, just couldn't resist.

Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

Chronos

Re: Pastafarianism is under attack!

But He would then have to be the Flying Fusilli Monster. Doesn't really work, does it? Never mind, there's always Discordia to fall back on. Hail Eris on this Prickle-Prickle, the 31st day of Discord in the YOLD 3182.

Google HQ evacuated

Chronos
Devil

Obligatory...

Law enforcement searched for potential threats - and got 1,030,284 results. Many were adverts, the rest were completely irrelevant SEO chancers gaming the system.

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Chronos
Windows

The demise of the PC is greatly exaggerated

Even us lUNatIX appreciate a full-sized desktop. However, the headshot to MS' dominance may come in the form of Android N[ougat|utbrittle]'s windowing multi-tasking. Imagine you can take your 'phone, with it's eight ARM64 cores, oodles of RAM and 3D graphics, and plug it into (or sit it on top of, with an inductive charger and some optical trickery as a data link) a hub with mouse, keyboard, NIC and an HDMI link to a proper monitor.

It's pretty much do-able now but Android's multi-tasking is clunky. RemixOS does a fairly good job of previewing what a proper Android window manager could look like. Ultimate hot-desk. You can bet Apple won't be far behind, either.

That's assuming that anyone by that point can get to the office without getting run over because they're too busy staring at the bloody phone to watch where they're going...

A 'hundred million' Truecaller users vulnerable to privacy bug, security bod says

Chronos
Holmes

Quelle surprise

I had an uneasy feeling about Truecaller when CyanogenOS first mentioned they were including it. I still wonder about the legality of sending details of all entries in a user's contacts database upstream without those contacts' permission. Regardless of how much data is slurped, surely this is the underlying disease and the IMEI thing is merely a symptom?

'Millions' of Android mobes vulnerable to new Stagefright exploit

Chronos

Re: Cyanogenmod time

Not buying into the constant upgrade cycle and becoming a cash cow for vendors is one of the many reasons some of us run CM. If you don't like that, old son, tough titty. You may believe they have a deity bestowed right to profit but I think they can sod off, frankly.

The Moto X is a perfectly capable device. The ability to extend internal storage with MM/6.0.1/CM13 using an SD makes it even more viable for long term use.

Chronos

Re: Cyanogenmod time

Short answer: Yes, you will get the AOSP fixes in the Nexus monthlies fairly quickly.

Long answer: You will need to be running nightlies for this to happen quickly. There are all sorts of warnings about nightlies not being production ready but, IME, nightlies are about as stable as the old ZTE Blade releases were back in the day. Or build from source, but that's a whole other learning curve, not least of which is where to get the proprietary bits from before you're actually running CM.

Good choice of handset in the Moto X. The Motos in general seem to become stable fairly quickly, even in comparison to some handsets (Wileyfox, I'm looking at you) that have official CyanogenOS support.

If you go with CM13, you may come up against an issue installing OpenGapps with the CM13 recovery. The workaround is to use a CM12.1 recovery booted through fastboot to apply Gapps or search for a bundledawk version of the Gapps zip.

Get ready to patch Git servers, clients – nasty-looking bugs surface

Chronos
Trollface

Re: Time to get downvoted to hell...

@AC: Irony. It's a bit like silvery but much cheaper.

Ad-blockers are a Mafia-style 'protection racket' – UK's Minister of Fun

Chronos
Headmaster

Re: Takes one to know one

Martin-73 wrote: the principle of 'innocent until proven otherwise' applies.

s/until/unless/ It's a subtle distinction but a very important one.

Google robo-car backs into bendy-bus in California

Chronos
Terminator

I now have this awful picture in my head of a load of Koala cars in a bar swapping driving anecdotes. It's like that picture of the dogs playing poker, only more Googley.

Photographer hassled by Port of Tyne for filming a sign on a wall

Chronos

Re: Jobsworths.

What you're looking for is this:

Jobsworth.

Dangerous Android banking bot leak signals new malware wave

Chronos
WTF?

Huh?

Downvotes, see icon. Relying on GoOgle for your security is probably a bad idea without some careful oversight of what you install. F-Droid is A Thing™ and is more than capable of fulfilling most users' needs with open source goodness, built and verifiable from the source rather than just randomly accepting apks developed by world+dog over which you have zero control.

Okay, it's a 386 situation...

Terrified robots will take middle class jobs? Look in a mirror

Chronos

Re: Argh!

@Mark 85: Nic's not really harmful on its own. One of the reasons we wean ourselves down is cost, which becomes especially apparent if you mix your own. Interestingly, the LD50 (lethal dose @ 50% fatality) of pure nicotine and pure caffeine is very similar. Admittedly, nicotine is more readily absorbed on the skin.

As an aside, nicotine is not particularly addictive on its own either. It's when it interacts with the MAOIs[1] and other components of tobacco that it grabs you. The rhetoric has made "nicotine" synonymous with "smoking" which is rather unfair as it's the tar and toxins that kills.

Keep your atomiser moist and the temperature down below 410 degrees (Fahrenheit) and you'll be mostly toxin-free. There will still be a few TSNAs[2] in the base nicotine, as the extraction methods make this unavoidable, but they're such small amounts compared to smoking as to make them a negligible risk compared with continuing to smoke. Synthesising pure nicotine is hellishly expensive right now.

[1] Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors, a form of anti-depressant which, along with other compounds present, amplify the addictive properties of smoking tobacco.

[2[ Tobacco Specific Nitrosamines, carcingogens present naturally in tobacco leaf from which pharma grade nicotine is derived. These are also present in the same low concentrations in pharmaceutical nicotine preparations such as gum and inhalators.

[3] Chronos, an obsessive gobshite always going on about the advantages of vaping. Sorry about that. I'll shut up now.

Chronos

Re: Argh!

EastFinchleyite wrote: It came down to her saying "all men your age should be taking Statins"

This does not surprise me. Next time you visit a GP's surgery, count the items of schwag. Pens, stethoscopes, sphygmomanometers, mugs (not including us sitting there, although they'd brand us if there was a way to get away with it), shine-in-your-eye torches, tongue depressors, earhole probes...

We know full well why they prescribe everything they possibly can and hate anything that can be obtained without their help. We just won't admit it.

Chronos
Holmes

Argh!

Must resist rant about "public health" attacks on vaping and harm reduction....

Ballmer schools SatNad on Microsoft's mobile strategy: You need one

Chronos
Megaphone

Dear Uncle Fester

Nobody is going to buy a handset with Windows on it. The Lumias had amazing cameras but there was one little thing that let them down: You. Stick with USS Enterprise laptops where the saucer section comes off and leave telephones to the grown ups. Who wants to use the vast majority of a mobile data allowance on Windows' spyware "features" alone?

The Mad Men's monster is losing the botnet fight: Fewer humans are seeing web ads

Chronos
Thumb Up

Re: Perfect storm

Usenet's still there. Come on back. We could do with a few more sensible people.

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

Chronos
Facepalm

Oh dear gods, no!

They keep the tracking stuff in one central location? Jesus unicycling Christ, that's even worse than what we have now. For a start, you just *know* that stuff is going to be slurped to death by everyone with five eyes and that's before it becomes a one-stop shop for every creepy bastard on the web.

No thanks. I'll keep maintaining my own defences, I think.

Oh, and lions aren't brave. They're just hungry and driven by instinct when something made of meat wanders by.

EE, O2, Giffgaff, BT Mobile customers cut off as mobile networks fail

Chronos
Devil

BT

Bungling...

I will leave you, dear reader, to decipher the other word in the acronym.

Got a Nexus? Google has five critical Android security fixes for you

Chronos

Brother Maynard

...lobbest thou thy MMS of Antioch toward Android 'phones which, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

We need a Holy Hand Grenade icon.

/me sods off to check the CM repo for fixes

Dust off those White Space devices: New rules finalised by Ofcom

Chronos
Devil

Re: Hmm.

Should be a barrel of laughs to watch the fallout, though.

Popcorn?

UK digital minister asks for input on strategy, lauds 'sharing economy' biz success

Chronos

Re: So the British government wants to help digital businesses???

Commswonk wrote: 3: Protection of homeowners / renters against persistent disregarding of TPS protocol

4: Making owners / directors of UK companies who use non - UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

5: Ditto owners and directors of UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

These three need a prerequisite: 2.5: Take the TPS away from the Direct Marketing Association, make Ofcom run it and make it mandatory, backed by the ICO and some fairly serious fines.

Chronos

Re: Is it just me...

Of course it is. Silly me. b != B. I've found myself a traffic cone, painted a big D on it and I'm going to stand in the corner with it on my head as penance.

Chronos

Re: Is it just me...

Commswonk wrote: And that mb doesn't mean Mb. (mb is another favorite hate of mine!)

Millibytes? Sounds like it could be a useful unit after Openretch have been playing with your cabinet. Or was Ed Millibytes another Ed who didn't get the Internet?

Chronos
Facepalm

The most important thing they can do

Step back and learn about the technology, history and culture they're trying to take over. Not only is is less amenable to the BS that was used in days past to justify interference, those who have made it into what it is today get rather offended when they're sidelined to make way for a "cluster[fsck] in East London" as if the Old Street Roundabout area started it all instead of actually being a Johnny-come-lately artificial development only brought about by being run-down and cheap but serendipitously having nearby, easily extendable fibre infrastructure.

Kids' TV show Rainbow in homosexual agenda shocker

Chronos
Facepalm

Cue

Bagpuss promoted sex toys - all those references to the marvellous mechanical mouse organ and Yaffle's book-end.

How about we just stop listening to these religious nutbars who are so concerned about, or more likely jealous of, what other people do in the bedroom? Is that an option?

Expert welcomes UK’s digital health recommendations

Chronos
Flame

"impactful"? Seriously?

I think these people are just making shit up as they go along.

Paris, jihadis, tech giants ... What is David Cameron's speechwriter banging on about now?

Chronos

Re: We need to have a mature debate

massivelySerial wrote: "We need to have a mature debate" ... NO! I literally don't want to hear what you have to say you totalitarian bastard. Nothing good comes after that political key-phrase.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, you have to remember that some of these people actually do believe they're protecting the general public. So I invoke C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Linus Torvalds targeted by honeytraps, claims Eric S. Raymond

Chronos
Headmaster

Extended Service Release

Please don't feed the "celebrity."

Hi, um, hello, US tech giants. Mind, um, mind adding backdoors to that crypto? – UK govt

Chronos

Re: Not that I'm condoning this ...

You're sniffing around the edges of key escrow again. We did this a decade or more ago and it was as wrong then as it is now.

KeePass looter: Password plunderer rinses pwned sysadmins

Chronos

Re: When spelling is important.

Whichever it is, the lesson is clear: Never leave your password manager's database unlocked if you're not using it. As I read the article, the password manager isn't the issue; it's a case of PEBKAC and insecure memory. It's also Windows only as it's talking about dll entry points but don't let that stop you from closing your KeePassX database, just in case. If it can be done there, it can probably be done elsewhere as well.

This may also be a good time to set a nice, strong password on your browser's password store, too.

The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!

Chronos

Guns and Merkins

Sod 'em, I'm more interested in the sarcastic ammunition that is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I can think of a few Usenetizens upon whom to use that particular put-down at this very moment. Powerful stuff when used correctly.

That said, following your lurid description of the average geek, Peppa Pig's dad would have probably been a wiser choice - with added Lynx, natch.