Posts by JassMan

Got that itchy GandCrab feeling? Ransomware decryptor offers relief

Since this is only available as .EXE ...

Does that mean that penguistas and lovers of veblen goods are free from the malware, or that Windoze is the only recognised OS on the planet.

Brit spooks slammed over 'gentlemen's agreement' with telcos to get mass comms data

Give them an inch...

So much for all those government re-assurances.

I'm sure we promised that the snoopers charter was fully equipped with checks and balances and that no one need worry about spooks taking the law into their own hands.

Still, guess its nothing new and spook agencies all over the world do exactly the same.

Martian microbes may just be resting – boffins

There may be more than than just microbes

Even on earth we have have animals such as Bdelloid Rotifers and Caenorhabditis Elegans which can stand desiccation so why not Mars? I think there are a number of fungal and algal spores which are also viable for growth after dehydration/rehydration. Just because the number of known biological entities on earth capable of this trick is quite low, doesn't mean that there are no multicelluar lifeforms on Mars capable of reviving after being dried out.

Scientists change their minds, think water may be all over the Moon

Re: Did you know that giant steps are what you take

Pedant alert!

The police were the band and Sting was the lead singer. I don't believe that going single has given him multiple personality disorder. Even if it has, it would be a miracle that he could be seen playing all the instruments himself totally live simultaneously. Yes I know that some people thought he was christ re-risen (possibly Sting himself) but a more likely solution is that he employs session musicians.

Extra bit of pedantry!!

re: the ps. cough in english is generally pronounced coff and Nabokov being a Russian or Eastern European name would be pronounced nabocoff, which sounds like a reasonable rhyme to me.

Billionaire's Babylon beach ban battle barrels toward Supreme Court

Good ole Oracle, eh

Is being able to piss off large numbers of people a prerequisite to being in Oracle's upper management or is it something they have to train for?

Helicopter crashes after manoeuvres to 'avoid... DJI Phantom drone'

@EveryTime

Since all helicopters fly in a vortex ring (the trick being not to be at the epicentre of that ring) there is no guarantee that a drone would have been blown away. Even if a drone approaches below the level of the helicopter, the ring causes anything close enough to be recirculated. Just watch videos of helicopters landing on a dusty or sandy field.

Having said that, there is always the possibility that the instructor forgot about the dangers of "vortex ring state" especially on uneven ground (as referred to in the article) and ended up not going where he expected. Much easier to blame a drone than say you forgot about the intrinsic danger of moving slowly when near the ground.

Interestingly if you search for vortex ring crash, you get just as many DJI Phantoms shown crashing due to "vortex ring state" (not continuously moving out of the vortex) as you do helicopters. Videos that do show choppers crashing due to vortex ring often show them landing heavily on the rear end of the skids before toppling.

Re: It's time... @SkippyBing

They may be stronger than you think... See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zI_VpTFp8 which shows almost the same chopper flying into a powerline which, having a high tensile steel core would do much more damage than a bit of plastic with very small motors attached.

US govt staffers use personal gear on work networks, handle biz docs on the reg – study

Private computers aren't always the least secure.

It all depends on the individual user. I am sure that many readers of el Reg could set up a private computer to be MUCH more secure than systems set up for government agencies by outsourced IT departments whose only interest is keeping shareholders happy.

I'm betting that Edward Snowden's personal laptop was tons more secure than CIA network systems he was working on.

Hua-no-wei! NSA, FBI, CIA bosses put Chinese mobe makers on blast

Re: Deeply Concerned

Yep! You could read "governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power..." as meaning they don't trust anyone who isn't a megalomaniac.

You're decorating it wrong: Apple HomePod gives wood ring of death

I'm absolutely shocked

What is the world coming to? Apple producing a product without an "i" in the name! Even the original Macintosh had an "i" just not at the front. Surely it should have been the iHomePod.

Also pretty shocking that they produce an item which damages natural products such as wood. Some pieces such as rosewood are becoming increasing rare and increasingly valuable. If I had a table worth 3 or 4 grand I would be seriously disgruntled that an overpriced speaker had ruined it.

Has anyone tested to see if you get cancer from holding it your hand since it seems to be so toxic?

Tech giants' payouts go to everyone but affected citizens. US Supremes now urged to sort it out

Re: Is it really "economically infeasible"? @David 123

Are you being naïve? Yes. Once the bank details of every victim has been added to the list in order to make the payments, the value of the list increases tremendously. Even the clerk of the Court may be tempted to try and sell off a copy of the list. Heck, all those details will need to be copied onto the original list and the work would probably be outsourced to India. Underpaid Indian workers are also not immune to the temptation to sell lists of people data.

Re: here's a crazy idea...

Yup. In cases like this the courts should assume that every victim will have had an hour of their time wasted by whoever bought the list. Then ask the defendant how much they are paying their lawyers per hour to defend the case. Each victim would then be paid a reasonable sum for loss of privacy and the total involved would deter anyone else from selling these kind of lists.

UK worker who sold customers' data to nuisance callers must cough up £1k

@AC £500 is a joke

The real joke is the £50 victim surcharge. It should have been £50 to each of the 2724 victims.

The ICO also needs the power to ensure that for every innocent victim on these lists, that there is a repeating copy of all the details of every director of every company involved in in using said lists.

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Probably the old lb vs Kg problem

Kerb weight of a Roadster is about 2870 lbs but someone probably programmed the delivery module that it had a 2870 Kg load instead of 1305Kg.

Registrar Namecheap let miscreants slap spam, malware on unlucky customers' web domains

Re: Namecheap @phuzz

The problem is that the owners of kirkville.com are not registered on Namecheap but Tucows, yet Namecheap allowed a bunch of shysters to register a subdomain on a domain to which they had no rights. This isn't even a technical problem but an admin one. Namecheap had no rights to allow abuse of the original domain.

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

The race to the bottom

If the world works as Microsoft want to to, everyone who uses this tool to BS their way into a job, will get that job over someone who really knows how to do the job. Thus resulting in a world where everyone achieves a position dictated by the Peter Principle and all industries collapse.

What it should do, is check how much management jargon you are using in all you have ever typed, and only if you avoid that jargon, should it help create a CV which gives you a chance of being shortlisted. If it determines you are full of BS, it should send details of your true usefulness, via a secret email, to each prospective employers to whom you write a covering letter to accompany that CV.

Oxford Uni boffins get things rolling at new electric motor factory

Re: So whats special about Yasa electric motors?

The clue is in the name. YASA stands for "yokeless and segmented armature" which reduces the weight considerably and makes them very power density as well as high torque.

Samsung shows off Linux desktops on Galaxy smartmobes

I hope by Linux they don't mean Tizen

I have a Samsung Z3 Tizen phone but in reality you get all the worst bits of Android and none of the good bits of a TRUE Linux. Even Android apps which it claims to run, have to be re-packaged in a special wrapper to make them run on an App Compatibility Layer which locks you in to getting everything from the Samsung Tizen store. I still haven't found a single useful app which has survived more than 3 weeks before I removed it because of bugs/unwanted annoying "features". Some apps, once installed are impossible to remove and keep insisting there is an update available, but, on clicking update report "service unavailable".

One of Samsung's justifications for having a severely locked down version of Linux is that it makes it more secure. They seem to use this supposedly heightened security as a reason for not updating any of the core parts of the OS.

No, Samsung, you really do owe Apple $120m for patent infringement

But what about batteries

Surely any gains by Apple in this case will be more than wiped out if Samsung countersues for infringement of their patent on exploding batteries.

IT at sea makes data too easy to see: Ships are basically big floating security nightmares

Re: Die Hard: Offshore @ Archtech

That's because the US warships are quite capable of ramming other ships or even stationary lighthouses which failed to move out of their way. The container ships don't need to ram, they just need to be in the vicinity of a US warship.

There have already been 4 incidences in the last 12 months.

UK data watchdog swots automated marketing call pest with £260k fine

Re: RE: AC

With an old style dial phone so their index finger really knows they have made some phone calls.

Microsoft's AI is so good it steered Renault into bottom of the F1 league

It'll never work

If the AI sits on Win10, it will never have time to collect input data from thousands of channels because it will be continually checking to see if someone has deleted the local administrator account.

Either that or it will keep trying to upload gigabytes of Renault's highly confidential realtime performance data back to Redmond over the first unsecured WiFi it can find so that they can improve the user experience.

Mad scientist zaps himself to determine the power of electric eel shocks

Re: Shock in watts?

Yep, its a real shame that he didn't set up the experiment to include a storage scope so he could record the time element. Looking at some of the videos, it looks like the fish can sustain up to 2 seconds of pulses at an approximate 50% duty cycle although probably not a square wave. It does look though as if this little fish could possibly produce more energy than a 0.8J fence.

edit: Just found a video ( youtu.be/VGbj9Up4dvs ) showing one goading an alligator then killing it. Unfortunately for the fish, the gator dies with a death grip on its neck. The main thing is, it keeps shocking the gator continuously for just over 45 seconds, so several 10s of Joules involved.

Volvo is letting Android 'take over underlying car software' – report

Interesting

It seems that Volvo are also a member of the GENIVI consortium. Are they trying to play one set of developers off against the other? "Add these features or we won't use your software in the next model."

Icon because genivi and android are both based on linux.

Beaten passenger, check. Dead giant rabbit, check. Now United loses cockpit door codes

Re: "t took a few thousand deaths for the airlines to get their acts together."

The Germanwings incident shows yet another example of the stupidity of airline regulations. You can't even carry on a thread cutter with a 1/4inch blade for embroidery because it has a sharp edge yet there are AXES already on board so that the crew can try break down the cockpit door. Any genuine axe murderer would have a field day.

'Judge Java' to sueball-slinging smut studio: Test your pirate-hunting tools or walk the plank

Re: it's all too obvious

Not everyone has a reason to obfuscate their browsing habits. Maybe in this the geolocation actually worked but they didn't bother checking the owners of those addresses until after they had lodged the court papers; Pretty stupid I know, but you can never discount the stupidity of get rich quick lawyers and top management.

They probably found that half the 35 they dropped were cast and crew wanting a copy to add to their CVs and the other half were law enforcement checking the film to see if any laws had been broken.

Boeing-backed US upstart reckons it'll be building electric airliners

Unless batteries vastly improve, it'll never take off.

I can see why why you wanted to remain anonymous. There are already fully electric planes in full production. One example is the Pipistrel - http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/alpha-electro/overview. Admittedly at the moment the range is limited by 1hour flying time, which is presumably why Boeing are working on the hybrid route. Airbus have also had a fully flying "eFan" prototype for over 2 years and announced a year ago that they were also entering the small commercial arena - https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-considering-19-seat-hybrid-electric-aircraft-427715/.

Looks like Boeing are playing catchup. Farming out to a smaller developer is probably more a matter of agility rather than risk avoidance (but that was probably factored in).

All aboard the warship that'll make you Sicker

With 2 ships at less than £287M

Sir Phillip "de le vert" could have had one refitted as a luxury yacht and not have had to rip of the BHS pension fund by so much. Then he wouldn't have gotten into so much hot water. Call himself a business man :; Pah!!!

Ex-army sergeant pleads guilty to using private browsing mode

Since when has it been illegal to use private browsing in the UK?

The merkin courts abuse the Sarbane-Oxley law to add extra charges for "destruction of evidence" but is there an equivalent law in the UK?

Next they will be throwing you in prison just for setting a limit to the cache size because you are running out of disk space. What happens when you really have run out of space? Do you have to transfer your old cache to your new disk so that the plod can see everything you ever viewed since the internet began?

Quadsys Five walk free after hacking rival company

They didn't exactly walk away free

IANAL but they still got a prison sentence and a criminal record - the sentence is just suspended. If they break any more laws in the next 2 years, they WILL have serve that sentence (with time off for any good behaviour). Also if they fail to do the unpaid work, they will be in contempt of court and the sentence for that often exceeds the punishment for the original crime.

Apple's Breaxit scandal: Frenchman smashes up €50,000 of iThings with his big metal balls

They seem to be confusing "worth" with "retail value". Since they haven't been sold before destruction, the worth of the iphones is the factory door cost, plus transport charges, plus re-order effort. Since they leave the factory at about $16 and shipping cost is in the order of 10s of cents, there is no way he could have done 50,000 worth of damage. OK the macbooks etc., maybe cost 100 to 200 ex-factory but he still would have done more damage to the display cabinets.

Even though all the destryed iThings are velbon goods, the punters are just as happy to buy the next one off the production line. Its not like any of these overpriced pieces of tat are in anyway unique.

Internet of Things security? Start with who owns the data

Simples

If I buy an iFridge, iKettle or other IoT device, the data is mine. If the maker of the device or some other 3rd party wants access or instance to improve my health, they can licence that data from me. The terms of that licence should be negotiable - do I accept that they can share that data with their partners, do I want to receive publicity in place of paying for added value, etc?

If they add data beneficial to me they may put a price on they added value and I may or may not choose to pay that price.

ROBO-PLOD! 'Droid snatches scumbag's shotgun in standoff

Re: Perhaps it's a north american term @ Prst. V.Jeltz

I think it was invented a little pre-murica. They were in use outside any medieval castle several hundred years before North America was colonised by anyone carrying a firearm. From Wikipedia:

"In medieval military engineering, a berm (or berme) was a level space between a parapet or defensive wall and an adjacent steep-walled ditch or moat.[1] It was intended to reduce soil pressure on the walls of the excavated part to prevent its collapse. It also meant that debris dislodged from fortifications would not fall into (and fill) a ditch or moat."

As in all things where we are 2 nations separated by a common language, we think of it as the space in front of the wall where muricans insist that it is the defensive wall itself.

When you've paid the ransom but you don't get your data back

What planet do these people live on?

"Quizzed about their motivation behind a decision to pay the ransom, most companies (37 per cent) said they were worried about being fined if data were lost. Other reasons included encrypted data being highly confidential (32 per cent) and an easy-to-pay, low ransom amount (29 per cent)."

worried about being fined if data were lost. : its not been lost, you just can't read it, stupid

encrypted data being highly confidential : so confidential that even hackers will have trouble reading it

easy-to-pay, low ransom amount : I also have a nice bridge across the Thames I can sell you for a song

Re: Is it legal to pay this?

Maybe yes maybe no, but they should consider suing for misrepresentation. Actually they should have insisted on paying by PayPal, then they could get the money back when the key failed to decrypt.

Network Management Systems are a 'treasure map' for hackers

Users of these products

"Users of these products are urged to ensure they are running the latest versions of the software."

In these days when even the assumed most bomb-proof (been running for a decade without a problem) programs turn out to have attack vectors, users of any products should ensure they are running the latest versions of the software.

You're guilty but broke, judge tells Wash.io – the 'Uber of laundry'

I bet that the board didn't miss out.

You can be sure that the directors, CEO, CFO etc were all paid their fees on time before the money ran out, and that the fat performance bonuses were paid in full. Probably even had time to sell their shares.

Fujitsu's billion-dollar ARM supercomputer delayed by up to 2 years

They missed a use for the new beast

"The Post-K system will be used to model climate change, predict disasters, develop drugs and fuels, and run other scientific simulations."

Being 8 times faster than the world's current leader, it is obviously intended to become the world's first piece of sentient silicon. Welcome your new master.

Spinning that Brexit wheel: Regulation lotto for tech startups

Brexit means Brexit

Says our beloved leader, but now she is saying that she will not guarantee any of the pledges made by the lying politicos who convinced the slightly dimwitted amongst us to vote to leave the EU. I can see her point, in that most of those pledges and promises of what would happen when we leave were unsustainable. Since she is now offering a form of Brexit which is not what the very small majority voted for, then surely she should offer a new referendum based of the new likely terms of exit.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot I don't like about having a European superstate but on balance I would say Jeremy Corbin probably got it right by giving the EU 7/10. That's a lot better than the 3/10 muddle the bunch of exit negotiators are going to come up with.

NHS 'paperless roadmap': Fewer dead trees, more data control

Surely they would save more money by ditching Windows XP

Obviously not by upgrading to Windows 10 because then they wouldn't be able to sell off patient data, since Microsoft would already have hoovered it all up and sold it on, as allowed under the latest EULA. But if they insist on using Windows, they should be able to run most of the old software in compatibility mode under Win8.x. Better still, they should bite the bullet and swap to some form of Linux probably with XFCE since this would give them most of the look and feel they are used to.

Has anyone done any testing with Wine to see if any of these mission critical apps which only run under XP can be made to run under Linux?

'I'm sorry, your lift has had a problem and had to shut down'

No obvious OS but it was a talking lift

I was once stepped into a lift at BBC TV Centre Spur when it said "8th floor going up". This was worrying in two ways: I wanted to go down since I was already on the top floor, secondly that top floor was numbered 7 so the lift seemed to have been in some alternate reality. Luckily, it took me to the 3rd floor where I wanted to go. However, I was starting to worry that my life had been more blameless than I thought and that the lift had decided to take me on shortcut to heaven by crashing through the basement.

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

Re: Ripp-off Britain

Its not just the mobile phones which are a rip-off. @Hans1, like you I live in France and pay 36€ for my ADSL connection. I find that with telephone and TV bundled with this that it is unmatchable value compared to any offer available in UK once your low price period ends. I have also found that the 0€ mobile offer is sufficient since you have unlimited texts. Even if you exceed the 2hours of voicecalls/month the charges are so reasonable, they are not worth worrying about.

I can't wait for the offer of a free upgrade to freebox mini with its built in femtocell.

'Fake CEO' Chinese chap cuffed in $54m fraud probe

Re: Effectively unstoppable

The COO of a Corporation I used to work for was made redundant when our Technology division was outsourced. 6 months after he left, I discovered that his email accounts were still open and that he was still on the list of persons allowed to sign off £10M on his single signature. Plebs like myself and colleagues who actually generated all the income had to have 5 other signatures in order to spend more than £100. Either he was incredibly honest or he didn't realise how inefficient the admin systems were on his leaving. The company was either very lucky or if he wasn't honest, he was good at hiding his tracks.

SpaceX Dragon capsule lands in Pacific carrying 12 moustronauts

So long and thanks for all the fish

Hopefully these mice aren't related to the ones monitoring Deep Thought before it is destroyed by the Vogons.

Watch the world's biggest 'flying bum' go arse over tit in a crash

Re: DoctorNine It's a ship.

Admittedly I don't know the details of this particular ship but I have flown on an Airship Industries Skyship 500 and the pilot assured me that all the other airships he had flown used ballast to change the pitch attitude. Not surprisingly they use air, not water, as they don't need to carry it around with them when it not needed. Basically, there is a large bladder at each end, with a very big fan pushing air in when required. This has 2 effects:-

1) air is surprisingly heavy when you have enough of it (or light in a hot air balloon)

2) the volume occupied by the by the bladder pushes on the helium balloon thus reducing the lift at that end of the ship.

I was slightly surprised when he showed me the bladder evacuation system which consisted of a rope and pulley which lifted a big flap and let the air out again. Simple but effective. On the Skyship, the pilot achieved 30° of pitch up which I think was mainly due to the bladders since it has no aerofoils.

LinkedIn sues 100 information scrapers after technical safeguard fail

If I wanted a job at any company

I would email/phone them directly. I wouldn't put all my private info on a site and hope that they saw my details amongst 100K others and somehow decided I was the one they wanted. Especially one owned by those well known security specialists, M$hite. Anyone who gets spammed after putting their details where all and sundry can read them deserve all they get. Not that spammers shouldn't be hung, drawn and quartered after having the red hot poker treatment, but that is a different topic.

Nokia taps former Rovio man Rantala to market relaunch

If the real Nokia were to start making Jolla Sailfish phones

I would buy one. The Jolla phones need a real name behind them so that users have more confidence as well as some management control to ensure they produce one working product instead of spreading their efforts trying to produce tablets, licenseable software etc. If they can produce a full featured smartphone for €169 with a production run of only 1000, they should be able to produce a worldbeater on a production run of say 250K as long as they can get some R&D money to sort of the deficiencies. .

Three times as bad as malware: Google shines light on pay-per-install

Thank goodness Linux tells you which packages are being installed

I was getting a bit blasé about checking all the various packages which are retained, changed, removed, installed, each time I install something new, but after reading this I will be double checking everything.

Email proves UK boffins axed from EU research in Brexit aftermath

Thank you Mr.Farage

It is all right for you to retire so that you get back to having a life, but your lies have ruined the lives of thousands of others. Thank you also Gove, Johnson etc.

Even if the government finds a way to ensure that funding continues until Article 50 is completed, this is a pointer to how UK science will be suffering within 3 years.

As Moedas said: "As long as the UK is a member of the European Union, EU law continues to apply and the UK retains all rights and obligations of a member state." My guess would be that Moedas regards funding as a privilege and not a right.

West country cops ponder appearance of 40 dead pigeons on A35

Why don't they just check the leg rings?

I was under the impression that most pigeons kept by fanciers and racers were chipped with an RFID in the way that many other pets are.

Even if the pigeons are not chipped, they should just read the leg ring. I think there are only 7 registers in the UK so they just need to read the alpha chars to determine which register to check.

SU Scottish Homing Union

GB Royal Racing Pigeon Association

IHU Irish Homing Union

WHU Welsh Homing Pigeon Union

NEHU North of England Homing Union

NWHU North West Homing Union

AERC All England Roller Club

I am not a pigeon keeper but it took all of 10 seconds to search for this info on the net.