Posts by Anonymous Coward

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans, thank you very much

Re: So: in 100 years time ...

100 years seems a bit optimistic.

I'd say 50 is more believable.

Tech contractors fume over payday outage at Giant Pay after it sniffs 'suspicious activity'

Re: Update

"We can confirm that our databases are encrypted"

Yes, but were they before the 'suspicious activity'???

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

Re: It's not got any better...

9600-7E1 ??

You masochist.

9600-8N1 FTW

Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover protocol found leaking hundreds of thousands of credentials

A few requests that return 404 is fine. If your servers are loaded so heavily that they can't handle that, they'll struggle anyway.

It's not any significant load beyond the NODOMAIN response from a DNS query.

What would be better would be an option to attempt autodiscovery or not - that would've saved me a lot of time over the years waiting for it to try the various methods before allowing me to enter the correct details manually.

The earlier version of autodiscover didn't require the credentials be transmitted, so was actually a pretty reasonable system.

They've implemented this poxy version in the last 10 years or so, which means that they should've been fully aware of what the internet was like.

Apple tried to patch this security hole in macOS Finder but didn't consider upper and lowercase characters

Re: four months since Apple comms last provided proof of life

Perhaps worth trying piNg?

Ofcom swears at the general public for five days during obscenity survey

Re: Scottish Swearing

Billy Connolly had a good monologue about Scottish swearing being poetry.

I can't find the whole thing right now, but here's a clip: https://twitter.com/BBCComedyScot/status/1430607408586543106

(Sorry for the twatter link)

US Federal Aviation Administration issues draft assessment of SpaceX Super Heavy impact

Re: Which is why Texas

Plus, it would take very little digging to divert the Rio Grande north and make the whole site Mexican rather than US.

If the US government get too awkward, just emigrate but without having to do any of that awkward physical moving stuff.

How long till some drunkard puts a foot through one of BT's 'iconic, digital smart city communication hubs'?

Re: portable units to be wheeled to safety at night?

Would it not be better to make the 'garage' into a useful place that provides the functions that this monstrosity provides, but with the advantage of a simple lockable door to render it unusable at night???

Re: Plug your phone into a random USB Socket

And how well will your 5310 cope with 5kV into its USB/charging port?

Google extends right-to-be-forgotten to app permissions on older Android devices

Re: Wrong way round

Think of this not as withdrawing consent in the sense of turning allow into deny, but as re-requesting consent the next time the app is launched. Withdrawing the record of consent, if you like.

Following your argument, it's actually a requirement of GDPR to verify that consent is up-to-date at reasonable intervals. But this is a technical permissions thing, not a personal data thing so GDPR is irrelevant.

Re: Pointless, doesn't address the problem

It won't stop that sort of app from working. It changes a previously granted permission to be an unknown state. ie it goes from 'Approve' to 'Ask me', not to 'Deny'

When you open that app next time and it asks the OS for location data, the OS will pop up a dialog asking you if it's OK for that app to have location data. That's also the state it's in when first installed.

Space tourists splash down in Atlantic Ocean after three days in orbit

And neither would the 3 other lucky individuals, who now have an amazing story to tell. There may well be book rights and possibly a movie deal, all of which can raise even more money for the hospital.

Technology does widen the education divide. But not always in the way you expect

Re: REAL books! Aaaargh!

You're assuming real refers to paper, as opposed to digital.

I read is as referring to something useful/meaningful, as opposed to _face_book.

Ransomware-hit law firm secures High Court judgment against unknown criminals

Re: Sigh...

Have a proper gander at a dictionary to work out the correct way to spell propaganda.

Or do you think that dictionaries are some form of government-sponsored mind control?

G7 countries outgun UK in worldwide broadband speed test

Methodology?

Did they take aggregate speed divided by number of connections, or aggregate speed divided by the number of households in the country?

Also, were the speeds real-world, or 'capable'?

Those can make a big difference. The UK approach of "give as many as possible a reasonably fast connection" is very different to the US "cherry pick the places we can deliver a really fast service to and ignore anywhere else"

Cloud is fundamentally more profitable than on-prem, says Oracle's Safra Catz as revenue misses mark for investors

"Cloud is fundamentally more expensive for the customers"

DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats sue NYC for trying to permanently cap delivery fees

I really hope that I don't have to contribute to your medical care (ie through taxes) when you burn out from working too much and concentrating on money rather than actually living your life.

Re: Those folks will then be less likely to order from restaurants

> The internet is dominated by middlemen

I took great pleasure in finding a "cheapest price or it's free" offer from one, along with a cheaper price from the actual provider. I ordered through the middleman and immediately sent a "found it cheaper" refund request.

Boffins unveil SSD-Insider++, promise ransomware detection and recovery right in your storage

Re: "detecting infections and reverting unexpected encryption"

How does the firmware know what constitutes a file? At that level they're just blocks; they don't become files until they're processed by the filesystem and the filesystem driver is in the kernel* (ie software)

That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

(* or at least hooked into it)

Amazon says Elon Musk's wicked, wicked ways mean SpaceX's Starlink 2.0 should not be allowed to fly

It's probably a calculated way for pedo guy to avoid another defamation suit.

Summing up that letter

AK: Musk does bad stuff. Musk horrible. Musk rude.

Also AK: When he doesn't get his way, Musk resorts to ad-hominem attacks.

Pot, meet kettle.

SAP 'investigating' after viral video allegedly shows anti-mask employee coughing on shoppers

Re: Covidiots DO exist!

Assault?? Given the current situation, I'd push for classing it as attempted murder.

Can WhatsApp moderators really read your encrypted texts? Yes ... if you forward them to the abuse dept

The "end" in end-to-end-encryption is somewhere in the software stack of your device.

Anything between that "end" and the user's eyeballs (and I'm not convinced it stops there) could be compromised to reveal the contents of the messages. That's by design. To use encryption that survives all the way to the user's brain, you'd have to learn Welsh.

New Zealand internet outage blamed on DDoS attack on nation's third largest internet provider

Re: Wait for the big hit

Ah, you must mean Agile Cloud Hybrid Blockchain Solution

Also known as ACH-BS

Spring tears down math geek t-shirt listing because it dared to mention the trademarked word 'zeta'

Re: "The Greek alphabet is currently protected legally"

> "The English alphabet comes to mind"

Think about the origins of the word 'alphabet'.

I'll save you the googling...

early 16th century: from late Latin alphabetum, from Greek alpha, bēta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

This drag sail could prevent spacecraft from turning into long-term orbiting junk. We spoke to its inventors ahead of launch

The only advantage I can think is that the drag sail doesn't need orienting like a thruster would - that makes it far more resilient.

Fundamentally, it's just a parachute. I don't understand how they managed to make it weigh 15KG though.

Arms not long enough to reach the plug socket? Room-wide wireless charging is on the way

Re: "...37 per cent efficiency..."

Integrated device charging and central heating system.

I really should be in marketing

Fix five days of server failure with this one weird trick

Re: The "inspector"

I once had a client's PC showing typical overheating behaviour (working fine first thing, but crashed around 10am)

Took the cover off (honestly, isn't that what you do with ANY problem?) and could see that the fan had seized, but then the heatsink had got so hot that it had melted the plastic clips that held that fan in place. The fan and plastic frame were hanging off the heatsink to the point that even if the fan had spun it wouldn't have cooled much.

I didn't have appropriate spares with me so I replaced the fan and cable-tied it in place as a 'temporary' fix. That lasted about another 3-4 years until the PC was replaced.

Think you can solve the UK's electric vehicle charging point puzzle? The Ordnance Survey wants to hear about it

Re: Park for Night

"Ethanol is ~ carbon neutral. It gives off the carbon it absorbed when it was grown."

The same can be said for coal. And oil. It's only the timescale that's different.

NASA postpones spacewalk as it would be too much of a pain in the neck for astronaut

Re: Still...

Over this side of the pond, it's already being blamed on Brexit.

Judge dismisses objections to spaceport in Scotland from billionaire who also wants to build spaceport in Scotland

Re: Priorities

do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?

Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?

Re: I'd hire him...

I disagree, although I can understand his approach. He should have reported the hardware as unreliable and got that resolved instead. Computer doing random things with your data means it'll never be reliable or trustable.

Noise pickup warrants better shielding/grounding.

Unless what was meant was that it was executing from memory that hadn't been (intentionally) written, in which case a software fix is appropriate, but not by looking for specific instructions that you know would cause issues.

More Boots on Moon delays: NASA stops work on SpaceX human landing system as Blue Origin lawsuit rolls on

Re: The next deadline for Blue Origin is 3rd September...

Even assuming a failure scenario much like the test runs, that means a failure on/after landing. The launch phase worked absolutely fine. So ~99%[citation needed] of the fuel would already have been burned by that stage.

Cassini data from last decade reveals insights into 'diffuse' nature of Saturn's core

Re: It's quite big isn't it?

[Saturn] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to [Saturn]

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

I can help them to carry it on if needed...

cat /dev/urandom

Re: they are now the last known digits of Pi

"go one better and learn it to 25, or 30"

If you'd paid more attention to the subject, you might realise that "one better" than 20 is actually 21.

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

Re: Not my kind of humor, but

"their IP6 address" ??? Why would you want an address just outside Ipswich?

Starliner takes off ... back to the factory and not space

Re: Tough cookies

In theory, theory and reality are the same. In reality, they're not.

SpaceX are developing starship in the 'reality' realm, not purely theoretically. The fiery disassembly is a not-entirely-unexpected result of that.

Thunderbird 91 lands: Now native on Apple Silicon, swaps 'master' for 'primary' password, and more

Re: It's probably systemd that broke your calendars

In the world of dead-tree calendars, I can imagine an air movement device breaking a calendar. Surely not in the digital realm though??

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Re: Eh?

Stable as in it doesn't change much.

Its inability to continue running is indeed stable.

Scientists reckon eliminating COVID-19 will be easier than polio, harder than smallpox – just buckle in for a wait

Re: What do you mean no Apocalypse?

" indicates 5000 deaths involving influenza. "

You missed the "or pneumonia" on the end of that. Many covid patients are suffering pneumonia as a result of the covid.

Re: Meaning what exactly?

This paper isn't about the science. It's basically a funding application to give them resources to come up with some (slightly) less contrived numbers.

"Give us money and we'll prove this"

THX Onyx: A do-it-all DAC for the travelling audiophile

$ tends to be before tax (which varies by state) whereas the £ price includes VAT.

VAT is very similar to the exchange rate, so the pricing looks like a direct translation.

Breaking Bad or just a bad breakpoint? That feeling when your predecessor is BASIC

Re: The problem

Three-digit years? Now THAT would be confusing!

Only if the deadline was the previous Friday.

For me it tends to be a regular Friday, and the deadline is the same day.

BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it

Re: Eerily good

Exactly. Why wasn't the cattle-prod keyboard energised? Or the claymore connected to the power button?

Ecuador shreds Julian Assange's citizenship

Re: Journalist prosecution

Some more facts for you:

If the rape case was so weak, he would've done better by turning up and explaining why he did what he did. If it was as weak as you claim (it wasn't), he could've dealt with it before they could file any extradition paperwork. Running away just makes you look guilty.

Sweden dropped the case because their statute of limitations expired.

If he wanted to avoid a hypothetical extradition process, he would've been better staying in Sweden than fleeing to a country which has a famously generous extradition arrangement with the US. Or he could've gone to pretty much any other country and had less chance of being extradited. No, he chose to flee to the country most likely to hand him over to the US.

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: Only half the story

My 2006-era dishwasher has had 2 faults in it's 15 years of frequent use.

Both in the last 18 months.

Both can be described as gunk accumulation.

One was gunk on the door seal that lead to the catch tray filling with water and tripping the float switch.

The other was gunk in the drying vent's drain that eventually stopped the flap from opening. That required a fairly extensive disassembly to access but then just needed a good clean (inside various components).

Parts cost: zero.

Earache from the Mrs, however: "well why don't you strip it down and clean it out every year so it doesn't build up"... Well, if it took 14 years to cause a problem and is now completely clean, I won't need to do it again for 14 years and even then it's a fairly easy job. No, I don't think doing it annually is worthwhile.

SSD belonging to Euro-cloud Scaleway was stolen from back of a truck, then turned up on YouTube

> One SSD stolen?

I can imagine some damaged packaging and one disk falling out in the back of the truck. Driver not noticing it until the end of the day (or several stops later) and not knowing what drop it was intended for, so just sticking it on ebay.