Posts by Khaptain

Boffins devise technique that lets users prove location without giving it away

Who would implement this

I cant imagine Google, Apple etc would want to implement this as it would directly/indirectly impact data sales for themselves or for the other data thieves down the line.

Dems are upset about DOGE's IRS hackathon, but the IRS says it never happened

Read the comments an laugh

Like many of the comments now, it appears as though 5 year olds have taken over.

Breaking news, its not a crime to think critically. Actually read the article and then try and understand whats actually going on rather than spouting mind numbing comments that provide no one with any further knowledge.

US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

For the Saudis,maybe , maybe not

I wonder if the Saudis are just being the Middle Man here and that those processors might end up being pushed on elsewhere ?

China turns on ‘minors mode’ that ensures kids only see wholesome socialist content online

Common sense or not ?

The article actually reads as though this a common sense move.

I presume that the CCP will use it as a propagandist tool but for the moment we can't see the content so we don't know yet. All government would probably exploit the same move, not just China.

TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech

All Governments want this

This is not a Rep/Dem or a Labour/Conservative thing, it's a common element amongst most 1st world governments.

I can understand that there is need for some online regulation but most of the proposals appear to push the limits to an unreasonable level.

We need laws that work for us, not that will eventually work against us.

Bezos cost Amazon more than Jassy did in 2024 compensation stakes

Re: Simple

Well here is a list of some people that you might know that didn't complete university, they have no degree but are reasonably successful ;-)

Steve Jobs

Mark Zuckerberg

Bill Gates + Paul Allen

Michael Dell

Larry Ellison

I could keep going but these are already excellent examples of why college Education is not a guarantee of anything.

No one can stop you from trying to succeed and that is the 1st conditions required in order to succeed.

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

Re: "Not too bright, huh?"

"Something I doubt most of the Brexit quitters "

The people were cheated from the beginning; there was a great deal of social and emotional blackmail being used to sway the votes, at least in Scotland. Along the lines of : "If you dont vote this way we can't guarantee you will have jobs." Scare tactics are not what I call honest facts...

I don't know about the English/England but I can only presume that similar tactics were also used.

The media has become weaponized to a point where it has become contradictory to use them as a source for anything else but lies.

Raspberry Pi not affected by Trump tariffs yet while China-tied rivals feel the heat

Re: OEMs

In my mind, OEM , as the name suggests, is simply the Bonafide maker of a piece of gear..

Example, I own a Honda motorcycle, when I buy spare parts, a quick shifter for example, I have a choice , the OEM parts will be made and guaranteed compatible by Honda or I can buy alternative products which Honda won't guarantee as being compatible.

I agree that Honda is not probably the actual manufacturer but they put their stamp on it and guarantee it.

Generative AI app goes dark after child-like deepfakes found in open S3 bucket

Technology for the evil

Like many of the non tangible technologies , AI, Bitcoin etc the forces of evil step out of the woodwork in droves in order to benefit from new forms of mal.

I find it hard to believe that the creators of such technologies did not understand this from the get go.

And worst of all it makes it even harder to catch them as the crimes could be commited from anywhere on the planet , 24/24.

Humanity knows no end to its madnesses.

UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

Who will arrest the crims

For every officer watching the videos that's one less officer on the streets.

Microsoft ducks politico questions on Copilot bundling and lack of consent

"Milward made no promises about the length of time for which Microsoft will offer Classic subscriptions"

The extortion methods used by MS have never really favoured the client so no surprise here.

Attackers swipe data of 500k+ people from Pennsylvania teachers union

Re: Raaaaaaahhhrrrrrrr!

"Am I the only one who sees bad, stupid, and wrong things about all this?"

Nope definitely not the only one.

Euro techies call for sovereign fund to escape Uncle Sam's digital death grip

Re: Too little, and way too late

The attacks on Huawei, Kaspersky etc. are recent examples from this play book.

Careful because you can't blame Trump for that.

Re: Too little, and way too late

It's not a Trump thing, it's an American thing, regardless of who is in power.

RIP Mark Klein, the engineer who exposed US domestic spying ops after wiring it up

Honesty, a lost cause.

It seems that truth is no longer a value, it's just another variable to be manipulated according to whoever is in power.

It's neither a left , not a right wing thing, it's a generic state abused by those behind the scenes.

It's truly difficult to believe that an actual democracy, created by the people , for the people is ever truly attainable.

I had never heard of this story before today. Kudos to El Reg for publishing the article.

The NHS security culture problem is a crisis years in the making

Shambles for management

So what the article is basically saying is the the NHS needs a complete overhaul..

Those at the top are only thinking about their next paycheck and bonus..

Then it's time to start spraying some weedkiller and clearing up the garden

And I certainly don't see what any other country had to be envious about.

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

Maturity

Isn't there a saying that one can determine the maturity of a company in relation to the usage of Excel for these kinds of tasks.

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Here's hoping the unthinkable

Apple's lawyers will play the attrition game, they cann play for a long time, and Starmers will be out of office before any form of result has been achieved.

Avaya hangs up on users with fewer than 200 SaaSy contact center seats

Re: Avaya is toast

I hope not, Avaya bought out Nortel in 2009?

200 Seats

I don't understand this, 200 seats is a truly large call center, I can't imagine that there are that many that exist. So why are they intentionally reducing their user base ?

We use Avaya but thank God we do not use the cloudy version as we are nowhere near 200 seats..

Avaya have an excellent Call Center system but if that's the way things are going to go we will have serious problems. There are very few good solutions available, Avaya and Genesys basically own the market.

If you dread a Microsoft Teams invite, just wait until it turns out to be a Russian phish

Re: Oh, it's so much more convenient ....

Alternatively , some other low IQ people are employed to write comments on El Reg that have nothing to do with the article in question. It makes them look stupid and brings the level of the articles down to meaningless.

This is an interesting article but some prefer to hijack the articles to blurt out nonsense based upon their political bias. Truly very low level trolls..

Have at least a modicum of respect for the writer of the article that took the time and effort to provide something educative. ( In some articles the El Reg writers do push political bias but this was not one of them).

Now in the words of many great Scotsmen, Fuck Off..

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Re: Yes what we had was corrupt, and it was mostly OK

I would argue that there are far more than 77 million.

Many , many people here in the UK, Europe share the thoughts and ideas and we are starting to see a major push back now.

I don't want to see hard right or hard left anywhere. I just want to see some mild conservatism, the adult kind , that brings back family values and stability to a nation. I want to earn a wage in relation to my merit, I don't want to be see ridiculous bankers being overpaid and I don't want government handouts to those that don't intentionally work.

The extremists and utopians on either side are not welcome.

DeepSeek's iOS app is a security nightmare, and that's before you consider its TikTok links

Re: Wrong Audience

The Chinese are still youngsters compared to Facebook, but they will catch up and will probably overtake...

But as you said, anyone dumb enough to install these apps... Unfortunately, "dumb enough" is actually a very large percentage of the population.

India's banking on the bank.in domain cleaning up its financial services sector

Indian scam industry

I am sure that we all seen the videos of those Indian Scammer call centers. I am quite certain that changing the domain will simply provide the scammers with a new guise.

"Hello, this is your bank calling, due to the recent changes in the domain system we need to connect to your computer to update your software.". Etc, etc

France, UAE to drop €50B on AI mega-datacenter. Still nowhere near America’s $500B bet

Re: Build your own infrastructure

Aren't STMicro an Italian company ?

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

United Kingdom, France, I can at least cite these as I am European...

There area lot of Governments elsewhere in the world that need to start doing the same thing.

A healthy government is good for its people. Lazy Government brings only a sea of bad choices, low GDP and low moral.

Microsoft throws more cash at its carbon guilt by replanting Brazilian rainforest

Stop building more junk

Dear GAFA's just please stop building all of these unnecessary infrastructures, don't stop planting trees though, and do humanity some actual good. Something that would actually make a difference.

I don't care too much about all this green stuff but there comes a point when things become fruitless and futile.

It's at a stage now where it is impossible not to dislike all of these large IT companies, they have become the bane of society.

Parallels brings back the magic that was waiting seven minutes for Windows to boot

Cheap Mini PC

"Parallels presumably plans to improve this feature, because as it stands Mac-using folk who really need to run x86 flavors of Windows or Linux could do far better with a cloudy remote desktop, an old Intel or AMD box, or a cheap mini-PC."

Yup those cheap N100 style boxes on tat-flinger Amazon , or Ali-NotSoExpress are very small/transportable ( you could just remote into the box so you don't even need a screen) and would orders of magnitude faster than Parallels.

Hulk smash Musk and Zuck! Actor Mark Ruffalo and non-billionaire pals back network tech underpinning Bluesky

Re: ...as one person took over what we had believed to be a global public square...

That has always been the case on all the platforms. Musk didn't change anything..

Miscreants 'mass exploited' Fortinet firewalls, 'highly probable' zero-day used

Question

"In these attacks, the unknown criminals somehow gained access to Fortinet FortiGate firewalls with internet-exposed management interfaces."

Why are there "internet-exposed management interfaces" ? What is the rational behind publically facing management sites ?

Not a trick question I just can't understand why someone would do that but I can only presume that there is a valid reason, I just don't see it.

Pornhub lockdown and fact-free Zuckbots – welcome to 2025

Re: I find it amusing

" Musk, and suckerberg"

They are low hanging fruit and easy to stop ( I have never had an account with either or any of the social media sites)... If you want more, then stop using Google, Amazon, Netflix, Social Media of all kinds, free weather apps or your phone, Waze and the list goes on..

Is it really the plan to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal? It's been a weird week

Re: "it is all about the money"

No I don't agree, I grew up in Great Britain, and since leaving 40 years ago I have lived and worked in several countries , most of that time in Europe..

I have never seen the level of disparity in any of the European countries as I have in the US.

Re: "it is all about the money"

It's always been that way.

The 1st time I went there , around 1988 , I was immediately surprised by how many poor people there were. I got first hand experience of what a trailer park was. I spent a lot of time in Arkansas, New Orleans, and San Diego. What was extremely apparent were the disparities between the rich and the poor.

I was disappointed, I honestly expected to visit a country where the largest majority of people lived comfortable lives. This was so far from the truth. Some people live good, the majority just live meh lives and the rest are on the streets or in trailer parks..

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: Why?

"What exactly is "new" outlook supposed to solve in the first place?"

Personally I believe that it being used in order to "nudge" you towards the web version.

I vehemently hate the "new" Outlook, we have in house plugins that wont or can't run on the new (cough web cough) version and I hate even more Microsofts method of forcing on us that which we don't want or ask for.

Look for the label: White House rolls out 'Cyber Trust Mark' for smart devices

Re: Reds under the garage door openers!

Yup, keys get lost, stolen, forgotten, forged, lock picked , no problems there huh ...

Re: Reds under the garage door openers!

"As for the data slurping, if the device/appliance/gadget insists it needs an internet connection when in reality is doesn't, boycott the vendor and go elsewhere"

This, exactly, there is a lot of choice today and building an almost air gapped home setup is fully achievable . Need to leave a port open for a VPN or control that's all.

Nothing needs to be outbound.

As for.being lazy and rich. That's just an excuse for saying that you are lazy and won't do the research. Learn to select or build your own equipment, it's more than possible with Arduino and a few components, you don't need the high end stuff in order to get good results.

Microsoft invites Chinese software vendors to sell on its marketplace and through its partners

Hostage takers

It now appears as though that the GAFAs have only one objective. To take you hostage and make you pay for your freedom.

To put a Cherry on the cake we now invite another nation to come along to the party and try their luck too.

Between the increasing costs of subscriptions, the fear of crypto lockers etc the future is not looking bright for many of us.

The year of the Linux desktop needs to arrive quicker and people need to stop with Social Media, we need serious alternative search engines that don't use Google in the background, and AI needs to be severely throttled. Too much power and wealth is going into the wrong hands. It feels more and more like being governed by the Mafia every day.

Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand 'surges 1150%'

Re: Really?

I can imagine that they would just fire up Chatgpt or similar and be able to answer anything thrown at them .

More telcos confirm China Salt Typhoon security breaches as White House weighs in

The Telcos and the governments run hand in hand, regardless of who is office. And as a reminder, Biden is still the president so look and see what he will do first before looking at the next generation.

Re: Please check for backdoors

That's exactly what I meant, I was probably a little too vague with my remark.

Please check for backdoors

"The Chinese gained access to networks, essentially had broad and full access.

With that kind is access , there is 99.9‰ chance that there are several back doors, quietly listening in the background.

The 1st will be relatively easy to find , the others a lot less so..

It would be interesting to see how the TLAs will handle this if it is one of their ilk that is being tracked.

That's just a conspiracy theory....

Blue Origin inches closer to the first New Glenn flight

Re: oh dear

I really don't like Jeff Bezos but I can still admire the work that his team has managed to achieve.

Biden’s antitrust crackdown on tech M&As may linger into Trump’s reign

Politic doesn't have to change ....

The article's title reads as though that all politics should inverse when the parties' changes. I feel that it is unfortunate today that everything is expected to be so dichotic.

Can't we just agree that sometimes people from opposing backgrounds/ideas can also agree about things. isn't it about time that we calmed down on all the divise rhetoric.

Australia moves to drop some cryptography by 2030 – before quantum carves it up

Theoretically Quantam computers could potentially help decipher SHA256 etc but we appear to be much further away that just 5 years. Just like cold fusion will resolve all of our energy problems.

One wonders if there are other vested interests...

China's homebrew Bluetooth alternative is on the march as Beijing pushes universal remotes

Re: So... Bluetooth...

"A more direct explanation is that, given the heavy handed restrictions on technology exports into China "

I do not personally believe that it is the restrictions that are causing the shift. I believe that it is China's intention to initially achieve indépendance from US based technology, to produce massive amounts of technology for only Chinese/Friendly State usage, (which they actually have already started doing). They will eventually pass us by with technology and will then refuse to share/sell what they have, they want to become the dominant player in the field capable of dictating all future outcomes.

And as far as "dystopian dreams mass surveillance ", it already exists here in Europe/US, it's certainly no myth. Remind us again about what "Palantir" actually does. And one can only presume that China has similar technology that has already been pushed even further..

In China you don't really want be caught sparking dissent of any kind. Here is a small reminder of an event that didn't go down to well :::.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Re: Everything has become so complicated

I agree with everything you said but the difference today is that there are a huge quantity of librairies that greatly reduce the complexity of many tasks..

Programming has never been an easy subject, take Assembler as an example , it's no more difficult today than it was when I started , lol ( it might be the exception though :-))