* Posts by Khaptain

4022 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2008

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Hit once by this ok. Twice, more fool you

Exactly, if the Boss can't be reached then he's not a Boss.

And we now go live to Apple v Corellium, where the iTitan is still lobbing copyright fireballs at the virtual iPhone upstart

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: How did they manage to get the entire OS

In relation to the article and most notably the mention "illegally copied the mobile operating system", what does "Illegally Copied" actually mean in this case ?

"Made derivative versions by modifying the software", I would like to know how they successfully modified a Binary Image to such an extent that they could fool it into believing that it was running on a complete platform. Not a script kiddie kind of venture, that takes some serious hardware/software knowledge and a Hell of Lot of reverse engineering, time and a bucket load of patience.. Not for the faint of heart...

And that's before mentioning that the Hypervisor could simulate the BIOS, IOs, Interrupts, Timing etc of the entire IOS familly. Again, that's no mean feat..someone had to create/write that Hypervisor These guys obviosuly come from a very serious engineering background..

This leads me to believe that they were possibly Ex Apple Engineers or stemmed from one of the major Chip Manufacturers that supplied Apple.

Khaptain Silver badge

How did they manage to get the entire OS

One wonders how they managed to get the entire OS ? I would have presumed that the Fruity Ones were very very carefull with their code.

Is this ex-employee stuff or something more devious ?

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

Khaptain Silver badge

Zen Wisdom - Required for contemporary survival.

"Ignore it or take the piss out of it."

Can easilly be applied to most of what the various media are continually spewing out..

Latitude 9510 lappy has a speakerphone so you can tell the conference call all about your 30-hour battery

Khaptain Silver badge

Specs look Ok

Easy to lug around, I don't know about that, it's a 15", 1.5Kg ( weight I presume is without the charger, so probably closer to 2kg) ...That's moving towards a machine that I would not like to carry every day....

And whats with the 1080p on a 15" screen, couldn't we get somethinh a little more interesting, especially for dev or multiple RDP sessions...

I do like the idea of 30hrs though... It would at least allow for a reasonable gaming session on the train without having to worry about the day ahead.. ( have to travel 2hrs out and 2 hrs back by train twice a week)...

Still prefer the Lenovo X1 Carbon, even though it's only rated at 15 hrs.

The Register disappears up its own fundament with a Y2K prank to make a BOFH's grinchy heart swell with pride

Khaptain Silver badge

1st PHB

How does it feel to be the original PHB?

Cheque out my mad metal frisbee skillz... oops. Lights out!

Khaptain Silver badge

I'll hazard a guess at the Director of Processing.. Could be like a CDO ( Chief Data Officer).

It's ony a guess because I really don't know either, must be a banking thing.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Be careful what you wish for

"ll that's terrifying. Fancy if some miscreant managed to turn my lights on without me wanting!"

Hang on a mo. If that same miscreant turned of your Freezer for a couple of hours, turned on your oven at full blast for 8 hours, distributed your live security feed to Youtube or Twitch, sold your login details to the local mafia etc etc etc.

In fact there are many use cases that you really don't want to accommodate.

Khaptain Silver badge
Trollface

Re: I already have an IoT standard

When I rode a bike, I just looked out the window before leaving the house It worked for most occasions, it just wouldn't let me know if it would rain on the afternoon or not. Best of all I could take my method with me, even on vacation..

British bloke accused of extorting victims for 'Dark Overlord' hacker crew finally gets his free trip* to America

Khaptain Silver badge

The Dark Overlord Face

His mugshot fits in with the title...

I wonder if his future fellow cellmate(s) will call him the Dark Overlord or simply the Dark Hole ? ( I use future as this is the States, he's not rich or famous, so we know he's going to jail).

I didn't understand though if he was, or can be, also put on trial in the UK for the same offenses ? Normally you can't be charged twice for the same offense in the same country but can you be charged for the same offense in two different countries ?

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Ouch

"If the file is at all competently encrypted "

Encryption is only worthwhile when solid passwords/passphrases are used. I wonder how many people actually use a serious password for their Key Store....

If you are anything like me, or a lot of others, you will be using the Key Store many times per day, I would hazard a guess that I use it around 20 times per day on a normal day. Because of this , I am not using a 27 letter, upper, lower, special characters, non repeating, non dictionary password. I can only guess how long it would take any of the 3 letter agencies to try a couple of million known passwords and get past by password. I wonder how many other are in exactly the same boat.... Hence my reasoning for not stocking such a thing in the Web/Cloud.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Ouch

"And it's by Bruce Schneier. This may be my new password solution..."

Can't vouch for Iphone but it works great on Android and with windows you only need to learn the following shortcuts on a daily basis:

Ctrl+B = copy Username

Ctrl+C = Copy Password

Ctrl_V to paste into your application/browser as usual

Ctrl+H = Hide or Show passwords on main screen.

Been using it for many years...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Ouch

"Uses a single file you can sync with Dropbox, Nextcloud etc"

Why on earth are you storing such things in the cloud ? Store a version on "your home" NAS/PC and sync with any suitable sync tool...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Ouch

Keepass is just fine..

Web or Cloud versions of password managers are a complete no no... even more so when it involves an American company...

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: don't see why we have no European Alternative to Google

"One possible reason is that, to put that in place, you'd have to match Google's investment in data centers to a certain extent, and that means billions of euros that need to spent without any immediate return."

Huwaei has the money, so that's not a problem.. and the Chinese usually have a lot of patience, so the immediate returns might not worry them too much....

They have undoubtedly already invested millions into manufacturing their current and future SmartPhones and I imagine that they don't want to lose their investment. So, I can imagine that a new Huawei store might actually come around or alternatively whatever they call their personal OS might actually come to light far sooner than expected.

Khaptain Silver badge

Maybe not such a bad thing

"confirmed its upcoming P40 and P40 Pro handsets will ship without Google Mobile Services"

Is this not enough to get developers developing without the need to incorporate Google's Monopoly ?

I imagine that any increase in alternatives to Google as being a good thing ( Ok , an example where the Chinese govt might a stronghold might not the best first choice) but it could be the beginning of better things for all.

I really don't see why we have no European Alternative to Google, it's not as though we don't have the necessary grey cells... OK MS bought out Nokia, but what about Siemens, ST Micro, Thales etc ( Can't think of any British companies still viable)..

Google security engineer says she was fired for daring to remind Googlers they do indeed have labor rights

Khaptain Silver badge

< There is absolutely no reason a worker in Bangladesh, for instance, should be paid less than a worker in Silicon Valley, for the same work.>

Of course there is a good reason, we in the dominant western world require that poor people exist elsewhere in order that we can be supplied with cheap goods that we don't want to make ourselves. We were forced to abolish local slavery but fortunately, for us, everyone turns a blind eye to overseas slavery. Capitalism requires a certain level of ignorance amongst the proletariat especially amongst those at a distance...

Our comfort comes at the price of someone else's discomfort, it's as simple as that.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

Khaptain Silver badge

Need to sell books

Can't think of anything useful about this book other that her need to sell it for personal profit.

She appears to be following way, way behind a band wagon that left the county years ago...

I would argue that some of those words are probably more held as complements more that than insults...

Cool 'joke', bro, you could have killed someone: Epilepsy Foundation sics cops on sick flashing-light Twitter trolls

Khaptain Silver badge

What are we supposed to understand here ?

First you request the cost of sending potentially lethal animals to someone, then you say put people in jail for being intentionally criminal...

Appears to be a bit contradictory, unless of course there is a subtlety that I didn't quite understand.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Khaptain Silver badge
Pint

The user replied: "The same electrician who changed that plug rewired my house last week!"

This comment made my day :-)

Cheers to all it's Friday and oub time is a coming...

Microsoft enables phone calls from your Windows PC (as long as it's paired with an Android)

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Erm

"is that because the toilets flush the opposite way?"

Either that or because the Kiwis think backwards...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Why?

<Why do I want to make calls from my PC when I have a phone?>

Because MS are proabaly bringing out a new device in the near future and they are preparing to bait you in.

<Why do I want to turn on my heating before I'm home when I have a pullover?>

Because you took your wife's pullover by mistake and she left yours at work.

Why do I want to switch on the bathroom light when I'm in the kitchen?

When you are finished baking those nice hot cookies, you can take then directly from the oven, still on that very hot plate which requires 2 hands and oven gloves, straight into the bathroom without having to fiddle with the light switch. And please don't try and fool us into believing that you don't eat cookies whilst having a bath and reading El Reg..

Next question!

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: "We cannot see any content access or information sent over the internet."

Could he be hosting a Tor Node ?

Alternatively a CIA Safe House used for ensuring the safety of Australia (cough) ?

A Pablo Escobarian supercomputer used to pull all the details of his coca-dollar banking transactions with the various governments mafias of the world ?

What's is very surprising though is the quantity of hard disk space that one would require should this been a download session. Not everyone has 27 TB of space "available" on a home computer....

Beware of bad Santas this Xmas: Piles of insecure smart toys fill retailers' shelves

Khaptain Silver badge

Easy solution

Go back to using toys that don't need batteries.... That should solve around 99.9% of IOT problems.

Action Man's gripping hands or Eagle Eye might not have been very much IOT but at least you didn't have to worry about him getting hacked....

When I was young were were warned about Old Men giving free sweets to kids, nowadays you have to worry about the Pedofiles at the other side of the world hacking your damned Barbie House with builtin Webcams on the Security Cams..

This damned world just keeps getting crazier.. and no-one gives a shit as long as "commerce" keeps racking up the cash....

Lobes carry the load, says IDC: 'Hearables' sector accounts for half of all tech clobber sold

Khaptain Silver badge

Cheap stuff actually not too bad

Because of the fear of losing my EarBuds whilst jogging I went for the cheap 25$ buds, SoundPeats. In general I never buy cheap stuff, I usually prefer brand names and quality. However and very surprisingly the sound quality, I am not an audiophile, is actually quite good, the autonomy is great or at least for my needs, 3 or 4 hours is fine and they are reasonably comfortable... I have nothing bad to say about them at all.

For once, cheap is just great, it makes me wonder what you are really getting when paying for Bose, Jabra, Apple or Samsung ear buds because honestly I can't see how their prices are justifiable for such a gadget as ear buds.. I find it hard to believe that a true audiophile would use earbuds....

Gartner : What a load of crock, what do they really do ? Just lift some numbers from Amazon's current high selling list and then publish an article, cmon most of us here could do that within a few minutes....

We've heard of spam filters but this is ridiculous: Pig-monkey chimeras developed in a Chinese laboratory

Khaptain Silver badge

<Though it WILL benefit the rich more, since the poor are in general less likely to have access to the required health care nor the means to pay for it. >

So it won't really help the poor then.....

Khaptain Silver badge

these animals are growing up just to die a bit later.

We all follow the same road, it's just a question of scale.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: The ultimate goal of the experiments is not to create a race of hideous super-monsters

Who the fuck wears sunglasses in the forest whilst PigMonkey hunting?

What is far more likely to happen is that one of these little bastarfs will steal your Hunting Rifle, then the real problems are gonna start.. It's gonna take a bunch of well equiped Boston Dynamics PigMonkey clones to successfully remove this new threat....

Khaptain Silver badge

"The ultimate goal of the experiments is not to create a race of hideous super-monsters, but rather to figure out if it will be possible to develop human organs inside pigs that could then be harvested and used for transplants."

This would then allow our rather more alcoholic, drug abusive, Hollywoord stars, politicians or otherwise , rich bastards to live for much longer thereby affording the rest of the planet the sufferance of having to put up with yet another TV interview with aforesaid has-been.

Khaptain Silver badge

Is this really necessary ?

I can think of a hundred other things that scientists could be doing but this is definately not one of them..

Fucking around with ADN, cells at this level will eventually lead to something very much unwanted...... Someone will eventually take things out of the public lab, into a private lab and then the monstrosities start.... All in the name of money. pseudo research, assistance etc....

Evolution takes hundreds, thousands or millions of years to determine what should or should not survive through natural process, selection.. We are pushing that now down to a couple of days and "hoping" that nothing will go wrong.... I use the word "hope" as this is not theoretical science.....

This is seriously scary shit....

I'll take your frame to another dimension, pay close attention: This AI auto-generates 3D objects from 2D snaps

Khaptain Silver badge

Inflatables

OK I presume that the next stage will be to order an inflatable friend after providing suitable pics...

Just choose your friend frim your favourite Pron site et voilà...

Tesla has a smashing weekend: Model 3 on Autopilot whacks cop cars, Elon's Cybertruck demolishes part of LA

Khaptain Silver badge

In totalement agreement with "Elon Pedo Guy Musk".. He is a creepy middle aged man.

China fires up 'Great Cannon' denial-of-service blaster, points it toward Hong Kong

Khaptain Silver badge

Anyone surprised

I can imagine that in the near future the Good Ole US of Trump will begin the same kind of tactics against the fake news, impeachment sites...

Trump aside, I personally would not like to be a Hong Kong native at this time, I can only sympathise with those that wish to remain free and democratic. Its time that Carrie Lam stands down before a damned massacre occurs.

Reasons to be fearful 2020: Smishing, public Wi-Fi, deepfakes... and all the usual suspects

Khaptain Silver badge

Kudos pour le JCC reference.

Little reminder for the Kung Fu International generation.

Outside the take-away, Saturday night

a bald adolescent, asks me out for a fight

He was no bigger than a two-penny fart

he was a deft exponent of the martial art

And some of the Gen X, Z, Snowflake crowd still believe that RAP was created within their lifetime...

Onestream slammed for 'slamming' vulnerable and elderly folk: That's £35k to Ofcom, please

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Only 30k?

Why no jail time , these bastards can easilly afford 30 K whereas 6 months in the slammer, for a first offence at least, would probably change their future ideas.

At the moment they have nothing to worry about, except how to scam a further 30k to cover their immediate losses.

Windows 10 Insiders: Begone, foul Store version of Notepad!

Khaptain Silver badge

"Notepad++ is seriously showing its age"

For example ?

I can't imagine what I would need to do outside of what Notepad++ already is capable of.

Khaptain Silver badge

I would probably have stated 'obligatory' rather than 'traditional' :-)

Just in case you were expecting 10Gbps, Wi-Fi 6 hits 700Mbps in real-world download tests

Khaptain Silver badge
Trollface

But doesn't everyone have reams and reams of A4 quietly floundering in a 2m high stack no more than 5 metres distant from their desktop ?

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: How will it fair in corporate environments

Lol:

"Yes...I have seen many good wifi solutions ruined by poor end device choices. i.e. an environment that can't use 2.4GHz due to interference from other sources, wifi is designed around 5GHz clients to address this and then IT purchases devices that only operate at 2.4GHz to save some money..."

We fell into exactly this problem, our Alarm system operates in the 2.4Ghz as was constantly sending out signals that heavilly interfered with our Wifi. We only found this out after buying a batch of 2.4Ghz only smartphones. In the testing phase things were acceptable because we were only using one or two phone at a time but as soon as we deployed 35 phones things just went haywire....

Final result, the 35 smartphones, Samsung G3s, went back into a carboard box and are still to be found in the IT Office to this day.... We then reduced the number of phones which use Wifi, all of which now have 5Ghz supported, bought a couple of Spectralinks ( which have a crap battery life) and voila a solution that works correctly...( dependant on where you are in the office.., lots of small offices, thick reinforced concrete floors and walls, stairwells that act as Faraday cages, lifts that don't like roaming signals etc).. We have all the worst barriers that could exist.

Khaptain Silver badge

How will it fair in corporate environments

Questions :

How well does it work for VOIP ?

Will it pentetrate walls, floors, stairwells better than 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz.

What would be the optimal, not theoretical range in order to calculate antenae placement ?

How well does it deal with roaming intra-office, especially with overlapping antennaes ?

Speed is only good when all other factors work.....

EU gets a bit STRESSED out about 5G: With great economic benefits come great security risks

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Stop Shouting

Which version of 6G ?

The secret version that works great but is not ready commercially for the markets ?

The version 2 that is even better than v1 but that the ecologists are convinced could fry a fly dressed in a lead suit at 4kms.

The version 3 that the consortium can't seem to agree upon the mystery protocol's finer elements.

The version 4 that was written, completed, tested and implemented by a non-American country and is therefore on the FBI/CIA's list of undesirable/possibily terrorist hit list.

Or the version 5 which is basically 3G in a shiny wrapper, hated by all, costs and arm and a leg each month, requires a new 2000€ UltraPhone, and who network is so saturated that only Londoners consider it as usable?

Sarcastic, who me ??

Khaptain Silver badge

Stop Shouting

THE FIRST RULE WHEN STRESSED OUT IS NOT TO SHOUT BY USING CAPITAL LETTERS......

Of course 5G will bring about a new wave of security risks, but then everything new in the last 15 years has brought about security risks. The difference nowadays is that we have experience and we now accept that risk is not "if" but "when". This means that we can do a modicum of planning, preparation and hopefully some testing.... None of this is new.....

Personally if they can really bring a serious bit rate to the market, without being maxed out every time you enter the city center, then I believe that 5G will bring about more good than bad... It might even alleviate some of the FTTH false promises....

EU wouldn't! Uncle Sam brandishes 'up to 100%' tariffs over France's Digital Services Tax

Khaptain Silver badge

Shut down the Gafas

See title, watch trump scuttle away

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, so the EU is investigating Google to get some more money in its hat

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Not asked to opt-in

BIG_D.

If you use chrome then it's more than likely that you have must have clicked on their "I Agree to die by Google" button on their EULA when starting Chrome.

And if you don't use Chrome then quite simply your are simply being shafted like the rest of us, either through Android, Gmail or any of the other multiple Alphabet direct or indirect assets..

If you take Google to court I am convinced that they will provide evidence that you agreed, knowingly or otherwise...

You can forget about that Black Friday deal: Brit banks crap out just in time for pay day

Khaptain Silver badge

Bonus Payouts

As long as managers bonus payouts are not affected then nothing is ever likely to change.

And there is no point looking for a particular responsable person as the person that is ultimately in charge is the Managing Director, end of story.

This week, we give thanks to Fortinet for reminding us what awful crypto with hardcoded keys looks like

Khaptain Silver badge

If YY < 80 then 20YY

Else 19YY

Would be a bit safer

'Ethical' hackers say: It's just hacker. To be one is no longer a bad thing

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Hackers v Crackers?

In my part of this desperate planet, Western Europe, a cracker is something upon which you might add some cheese, or other savoury item, and then nibble on said delicacy..

If it means something racially insensitive elesewhere then that is their problem because it means that they participate in the usually collective enjoyment of sharing canapés..

So, hands of my cracker......

Almost any word or combination of words will offend someone, somewhere on this planet.. You can't keep everyone happy, it just can't be done.

And no, I don't want to know what your version means or who it offends.

Alternatively a cracker, at least in my book, is someone who can, or who has removed the protection element from a given piece of software. Usually done through the software debug, reverse engineering or having successfully understood Fravia's various courses...

In Rust We Trust: Stob gets behind the latest language craze

Khaptain Silver badge

K&R Answer : Rust++ or Go++

European smartphone market rallies but Apple didn't get the memo

Khaptain Silver badge

Nike shellsuit owners like their Apple's

"Apple blamed a battery replacement programme, crappy demand in China and people holding onto their devices for longer as reasons for the weaker sales, and it dropped prices as a result to help clear the inventory bottleneck"

Strange that the exorbitant price for a product that has no truly "advanced features", other than a sickening quantity of "stomp on your head" publicity, was not deemed as a reason for weaker sales.

I would hate to imagine the astronomical amounts of cash that Apple pump into their "awareness" program.. You know the one where every damned publicity image in the railway station was paid for by Apple marketing..

It makes owning anything Apple damned embarrasing, like wearing a Nike shellsuit.

Bon sang! French hospital contracts 6,000 PC-locking ransomware infection

Khaptain Silver badge

La Guillotine

Quelle bande des cons...

This is one of those times when this kind of incident really gets my goat... Hospital staff are not highly paid professionals making a fortune,, they are basically normal people that spend their lives saving other people lifes....

I seriously hope that the DGSE find some means of catching these wankers and then making them pay a severe penalty...

If someone dies because of this then the ransomware idiots should be tried for manslaughter.