Posts by Peter X

Voyager 1 cracks yet another barrier: Now 150 Astronomical Units from Sol

Re: Light years

20 minutes hours in 45 years.

But yeah - it does put it in perspective!

And it's off! NASA launches nuke-powered, laser-shooting, tank Perseverance to Mars to search for signs of life

RIMFAX

First up, +1 to everyone involved in this - it's awesome!

However, regarding "RIMFAX", I guess we have to accept some bits of tech have to be developed years in advance and may actually be a bit out of date by the time they are used; I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping for something a bit better than faxed copies of crater rims... ;-)

Imagine surviving WW3, rebuilding computers, opening up GitHub's underground vault just to relive JavaScript

Re: Without kit it's crap

Plus, you've got to code something to read the QR encoded data anyway.

Apple: Don't close MacBooks with a webcam cover on, you might damage the display

You're not thinking different enough... behold, the Apple Balaclava!

(...ponders for a few moments... )

Scratch that. What would Steve do? Yes, an Apple Turtleneck... but with an extra long neck that you can roll up to hide your face.

I should work in marketing! :D

Oh what a cute little animation... OH MY GOD. (Not acceptable, even in the '80s)

Re: All of these tales and comments...

"Windows can do it properly. Why don't people use these protections?"

So even an idiot can make it work (users happy), but it is - at least theoretically - secure (manglement happy).

If there's a lesson to be learned in these torrid times, it's that civilisation is fleeting – but Windows XP is eternal

Re: Not the successor to Windows Me

Also forgetting 98SE

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

"dummy value"

It was mentioned a few comments back, but ... and I apologise in advance if I am inadvertently insulting or causing distress to anyone... but what is wrong with "dummy value"?

UN warns of global e-waste wave as amount of gadgets dumped jumps 21% in 5 years

Re: So start legislation...

^ this.

Also re printers, mandate that they use open-standards for their interfacing. It prolly isn't so bad now, but I was miffed a few years back when I had to replace an old Canon LBP simply because it was a "Win-Printer" dating from ~2000 and absolutely would not work with anything other than Win9x or Win2K/XP. No MS-DOS, no Mac and certainly no Linux. And no way to resolve this... I'd spent waaaay too much time naffing around with VMs to keep it going as long as I did!

Also, routers. They should be user-flashable, and again, document stuff so someone might stand a chance of creating an open-source firmware. And they should use standardised PSUs too... just for good measure.

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

Re: A new vLHC? What could possibly go wrong...

Potatoes?

In Hancock's half-hour, Dido Harding offers hollow laughs: Cake distracts test-and-trace boss at UK COVID-19 briefing

Re: "......worst death toll in Europe"

I'm totally resisting the temptation to point out that the majority only voted for Brexit in 2016 when the general public (and prolly the politicians too) knew far less about what it actually involved. And I'm not going to mention how in the 2019 election, the Tories + Brexit-party vote only amounted to 47% of votes cast; thus, one _could_ conclude that perhaps there's no mandate for a hard-brexit... which I mention purely because it looks like we might be heading that way. Nope... not going to mention any of that at all! :D

However... I would simply like to point out the amusing-if-it-were-not-so-grim, startling demographic overlap between brexit voters and COVID-19 death victims... in so far as both skew towards the older age groups.

Thus, I am of the opinion, the worse COVID-19 is managed by this government, the more they should reconsider their objectives vis-a-vis brexit. Seem's fair no?

Re: "......worst death toll in Europe"

That's the annoying thing. We "the people", quite rightly critique gov.uk on their crappy performance, and then they just find somewhere that's worse and say "look, we're not _that_ bad".

But here's the thing - where do *WE* expect to be? Surely, the UK should have managed this as well or better than other countries? If we do not expect that of ourselves, what does that say? (and by extension, that attitude most bode very badly for our future brexit strategy).

IMHO gov.uk have handled this piss-poorly.

There's no excuse for where we find ourselves.

If they can't figure this out, then they really should consider their positions and call an election.

And I know that last bit prolly sounds like a pipe-dream, but exactly why should *WE* be putting up with this incompetence?

An Internet of Trouble lies ahead as root certificates begin to expire en masse, warns security researcher

Re: hopefully a response from the industry to start fixing stuff

There should be legislation that says if they stopping supporting a device, they are required to open-source the design and software so that the consumer can fix the problem themselves. Yeah, I know in practise most won't but it means that, say, a webcam that has been manufacturer obsoleted will at least have eBay value to someone who can manage to update it. Plus, the threat of having to do this might encourage manufacturers to actually update stuff.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

That's what always confused me about Mad Max.

The oil has run out and yet ... there are still chippies?!!!

But surely that won't go ahead if we hard-brexit?

As anti-brutality protests fill streets of American cities, netizens cram police app with K-Pop, airwaves with NWA

iWATCH. Surely they've taken it offline because Apple threatened to sue them?

UK's Ministry of Defence: We'll harvest and anonymise private COVID-19 apps' tracing data by handing it to 'behavioural science' arm

Re: Quelle Surprise!

It's worse though - apparently the people they've recruited haven't had proper training, haven't been told what questions they need to ask, haven't got the equipment (no, not sure what they need) to do the job.

So, as per usual, Bojo's claims of it being a "world beating" system, and it "will be in place" by the beginning of next month seem... optimistic... if I'm being charitable.

But I'm not feeling even slightly charitable, so I think I'll call it what it is, which is a crappy "system" that's been bodged together at the last minute to make it appear like the incompetent shower we have in office, are actually doing something. And even then, it needs a good slather of Boris-Brand-Waffle(TM) to make it possibly, vaguely, look like it might possibly work. Which it won't.*

* Went a bit unexpectedly Charlie Brooker at the end there!

Tech's Volkswagen moment? Trend Micro accused of cheating Microsoft driver QA by detecting test suite

Meanwhile, in Redmond

I can't help imagining that somewhere in Redmond, there's someone strolling along, all innocent, hands clasped behind their back, whistling. And thinking, "Well, I'll just stay out of this one..."

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

If it was installed on the far side of the moon, would that be okay?

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

NEWS SCOOP!

Raspberry Pi's discovered training forcingENSLAVING Spot robot into carrying them for rides around Singapore park!

I spy a Pi4 atop a... lesser Pi of some sort.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

No, I think the AC was just saying that you'd need to order "Denied Tea" or "Denied Coffee". Yep, it sounds weird at first, but in a few months time.... NEW NORMAL! ;-)

It strikes me that there are so many varied uses of colour, both in a positive and negative context, maybe we should just give up calling people black or white, and just have brown and pink people? And then all other uses of "black" or "white" can remain as they are?!!

The Adobe Flash Farewell Tour 2020: LibreOffice to axe export support for .SWF in version 7

Re: All 4

I just had a quick try with an iPad-like UA, but it (All 4) just wanted me to download the app. :-(

...so, PirateBay it is!

And still, I can't catch up with anything on Channel 4, since the "All 4" website will only use Flash, and it won't work under Linux. Unbelievable!

House of Commons agrees to allow Zoom app in Parliament, British MPs will still have to dress smartly

I can accept it as a stop-gap solution, but I'm concerned that there's an issue of "record" here. If someone asserts that the Rt. Hon. So&so said X-Y-Z on a given date, and the Rt. Hon. So&so disputes that they said anything of the sort... how can anyone prove otherwise?

Surely we need something with *real* end-to-end security, and something where the central server isn't outside the UK.

Google pre-pandemic: User-Agent strings are so 1990s. Time for a total makeover. Google mid-pandemic: Ah, we'll reschedule to 2021

Re: "Version numbers, platform details, model information, etc. [..] with every request"

I've often wondered if there shouldn't have been a HTTP-header-compression scheme that tokenized things like "Mozilla/5.0" since pretty much everything says that since... for-ev-ah... and we all know it's a lie! :D

French pensioner ejected from fighter jet after accidentally grabbing bang seat* handle

Re: I see lots of good luck here

+ cleaning the front seat.

Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...

Re: Dog fooding

What's annoying is, there will still be a bunch of them, in a few months time, complaining about Huawei and their risk to British security.

UK enters almost-lockdown: Brits urged to keep calm and carry on – as long as it doesn't involve leaving the house

Re: "One form of exercise a day"

All in the name of preventing death... Hmmm....

Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 earbuds: They're good – though for close to £300, they really should be

Re: Waxy build-up

I've had to had my ears syringed a few times over the last few years and always had to use olive oil for 5-days + prior to having it done. But these days they won't even do that and instead, I have "micro-suction" done... but whilst it's done at my local GP, it's performed by a private practitioner and thus I have to pay for it. Which is annoying.

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

Presumably the victims here could go after their domain registrars who presumably are trading in the UK and therefore fall under GDPR? It'd be up to them to pursue either their own suppliers or the DHS.

I'm not seeing a reason why they shouldn't do this so I'm surprised at the number of negative comments.

Don't use natwest.co.uk for online banking, Natwest bank tells baffled customer

So not nwolb.com then?

I have https://www.nwolb.com/nw/default.aspx bookmarked? Despite it obviously being the shitest domain they could've used.

They can't collect your bins or fix your roads. They let Google stalk visitors to their websites. Yes, it's UK local government

Re: Why do public sector websites have adverts at all?

It's still annoying though. Surely they have a menu system, site map and search facilities for this? Advertising is showing you stuff do aren't looking for in order to "up-sell" you something... so it makes no sense even for signing up for school meals.

Remember when Europe’s entire Galileo satellite system fell over last summer? No you don’t. The official stats reveal it never happened

Re: "how unreasonably low a target uptime of 75%"

We're always pushed for time, there are always improvements and extra work that can be done, and we have to ship a product at some point. Sometimes you have to call it and run it, and move onto the next thing that needs covering.

So you're basically saying that your performance chart is currently solid green? :D

US court rules: Just because you can extract teeth while riding a hoverboard doesn't mean you should

Re: Alaskan treats

Ahhh... but do they have Argos?

Updated your WordPress plugins lately? Here are 320,000 auth-bypassing reasons why you should

Re: Are WordPress plugin developers the worst, or ...

^ this.

But if anyone needs it, here's my current list of OVH banned IPs (it's _always_ OVH that keep hammering away):

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 5.135.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 5.196.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 37.187.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 46.105.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.38.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.68.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.75.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.77.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.83.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.89.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.91.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.161.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.178.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.195.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.210.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.222.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 51.254.0.0/15 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 54.36.0.0/15 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 54.37.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 54.38.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 54.39.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 66.70.128.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 79.137.0.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 87.98.128.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 91.121.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 91.134.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 92.222.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 94.23.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 139.99.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 142.44.160.0/22 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 144.217.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 145.239.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 147.135.0.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 147.135.128.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 149.56.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 151.80.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 158.69.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 164.132.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 167.114.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 176.31.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 178.32.0.0/15 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 188.165.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 192.99.0.0/16 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 193.70.0.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 198.27.64.0/18 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 198.100.144.0/20 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 198.245.48.0/20 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 213.32.0.0/17 -j DROP

iptables -A badbot-ovh -s 217.182.0.0/16 -j DROP

I am broot: The Reg chats to French dev about Rust tool that aims to improve directory navigation

Re: Stopped reading at "command line tool" ...

When I say muscle memory, I'm talking about the ability to (in this case) press a key or combination of keys, without even having to engage the conscious mind. If you need to use a mouse to click on something, it may certainly be something you don't think about, but you *do* focus your mind simply be virtue of *having* to look where the mouse pointer is to click on something.

Things like walking, running or riding a bicycle are things that end up in muscle memory. GUIs certainly get easier once you are familiar with them, but I'm pretty certain that isn't quite muscle memory.

But... it's possible your (and other peoples) minds are wired different to mine.

Re: Stopped reading at "command line tool" ...

And in which way does an "interactive", semi-graphical command-line tool help you in writing your scripts, opposed to - say - a true graphical one?

Hands are on keyboard.

It's not that a graphical interface is wrong, it's just that graphical interfaces have a tendency to add a tool bar and demand mouse interaction, which is good because of discoverability, but bad because it's much slower than just pressing keys (muscle memory works with the latter but not the former)... and yeah, you have keyboard shortcuts in GUI apps, but often, they're a bit of an after-thought.

But honestly, just use what you like! Command line things are often not so great if you only use them very occasionally because then the lack of discoverability is very much a negative.

Me, I like command line for certain tasks, such as file-management because they're fast, and I can use them over SSH. Plus, startup time... command line stuff is usually pretty instant. Starting even a light-weight GUI app typically takes at least the best part of a second, which is annoying slow when you're in flow.

The Six Million Dollar Scam: London cops probe Travelex cyber-ransacking amid reports of £m ransomware demand, wide-open VPN server holes

Re: Is CEO going to be in next honour list

True. But she got the NHS gig _after_ TalkTalk. So, somehow, out of all the people in the world the NHS could've employed, Dido Harding was the person they chose... and I imagine she went through a blind recruitment process so there's no chance nepotism had anything to do with it. <innocent-face>

Jet2 hacker who deleted every account on UK company's domain cops 5 months in jail

Re: Negligence

But they didn't allow interactive sessions for the service account... in the hotel though did they?! :D

Re: Good

Also completely agree with the sentence, but also agree Jet2 need to look at their IT strategy. I was concerned at this bit:

Without that admin account, the court heard, "repairing the damage was ultimately not possible."

So, presumably no disaster recovery plan?

Sir John Redwood backs IR35 campaign, notes review would have to start 'immediately' before new off-payroll working rules kick in

Re: Dear Vulcan

...or if he'd simply focused completely on IR35 and then we wouldn't be where we are.

Google tightens the screw on 'less secure apps', will block most access from June 2020

Thunderbird is fine. K9 doesn't do OAUTH2 yet

Thunderbird on my desktop is fine.

Are there any good alternatives to K9 on Android? Hopefully it will support OAUTH2 by the time Google pulls the plug.... but contingencies and all that!

FUSE for macOS: Why a popular open source library became closed source and commercially licensed

Licence

Is there not a licence that is open-source, but requires payment for commercial use? Otherwise, is Fleischer prepared to make binaries for open-source projects on MacOS that use FUSE?

Microsoft's Teams goes to bat for the other team with preview on Linux

Window sharing?

"The documents warns that window sharing isn't currently a thing in the Linux world and taking control of shared content isn't possible.".

Forgive my ignorance, but what is window sharing?

And also, why is taking control of shared content not possible? Also, what is it?

In tribute to Galaxy Note 7, BBC iPlayer support goes up in flames for some Samsung TVs

Re: Sorry but...

Channel 4

Lol @channel4. Any time I think I might watch something on 4OD (or whatever it's called now), it complains because it requires Adobe Flash.

Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

Re: Is it just me?

It strikes me that the problem is that there isn't any competition within the registries; would it not work better if it was possible to buy a .org (or other tld) from more than one organisation. Is that feasible?

Hateful isn't it?! So someone has a money printing machine. It works. it's making them money. But no, that isn't enough... I'm hoping there's a place in hell for such greed.

Move along, nothing to see here: Auditors say £100k grant to Hacker House was 'appropriate'

Re: Translation: open season

find myself wondering how little I would need to do to BS my way into superfluous government grant money

One suspects you would need to know about such an offer in order to apply for it. Are such things advertised widely in order to ensure a broad selection of competent applicants?

And following on from that thought, I wonder who else applied for the same grant? And did they get it?

Re: An innocent man

To me, the problem with the Garden Bridge wasn't that it was suggested, it was more than it cost £53 million to do exactly nothing. Clearly, *if* it was a vaguely good idea, it was going to cost *some* money to explore this concept, but £53M is *insane*.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame Lumley for any of that.

I'm not Boeing anywhere near that: Coder whizz heads off jumbo-sized maintenance snafu

Re: 737 MAX

It hadn't occurred to me before, but if say the Hudson incident had happened to a 737-Max, my guess is the outcome would've been considerably less "miraculous"?

(I'm assuming here that the sensors are correctly functioning in this case, but the same problem of a double-engine bird strike has happened).