Posts by Neil Barnes

PayPal says crooks poked around 35,000 accounts in credential stuffing attack

Re: 2FA

The day my bank requires me to use a phone application to access any of their services is the day I change my bank.

My banks in both the UK and Germany both require me to use a standalone physical device as well as a customer ID and the appropriate bank card to authenticate myself.

PayPal requires a message to my phone with a key to make a payment or access the account details.

But in neither case, nor any other, does any financial data ever touch the phone. Others like using their phone as a wallet but it is not for me.

If your DNS queries LoOk liKE tHIs, it's not a ransom note, it's a security improvement

Colour me surprised (in upper case)

Obviously I'm getting senile; I had thought that DNS requests were case sensitive.

Publisher breaks news by using bots to write inaccurate stories

Will this AI engine efficiently assist...

Us to pay fewer fleshy meatsacks?

Artificial pancreas successful in type 2 diabetes tests

Re: Metformin

And yet I believe many in the US use it as a hopeful life-extension drug, even without diabetes.

Might explain the kidney stones? Though they've been behaving recently, I'm pleased to say.

To be honest

I was hoping for an organic working replacement for the failing organ...

(Sulking because I have recently started using insulin injections, and it's a pain. Though since moving to Germany a couple of years ago a change in medication from the NHS treatment led to the loss of fifteen kilos in three months, which was a surprise to all concern and required me to buy new trousers. The change to injected insulin has led to a small weight gain, I suspect because sugar in the blood is now being glommed onto by the liver, as it should, and safely tucked away as far, instead of just being peed out at (very) regular intervals.)

Laser-wielding boffins bend lightning to their will

It has been said

That lightning rods on church steeples represent the triumph of science over religion.

Can we expect pretty light shows in future on steeples?

AI may finally cure us of our data fetish

We could be piping every request for documentation into Large Language Models

Or we could be asking what is the point of the documentation request instead.

If a majority of the required documentation is boilerplate, it's (a) unnecessary due to commonality and (b) a classic case of bureaucracy in action.

Twitter 2.0 signal boosts Taliban 2.0 through Blue subscriptions

Re: What?

Token northener here who was employed by the BBC for over thirty years since 1978, didn't (at the time) have a degree, and who is highly amused at the knee-jerk hate-the-BBC reflex visible by people who have neither worked there nor troubled themselves to inform themselves about it.

Bringing the first native OS for Arm back from the brink

Fascinating stuff

In spite of the odd chunk of transcription weirdness - thanks, Liam.

Boffins say their protective satellite paint job could harvest power from the Sun

For totally unscientific reasons

I rather like the idea of sending satellites to the stars glistening with diamonds.

Quickest way to save with Oracle? Get off Unlimited Licensing Agreements, says pundit

Three rules of thermodynamics

You can't win.

You can't break even.

You can't get out of the game.

Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT

Re: "If it's old, it's obsolete; and if it's obsolete, it needs to die."

"I'm feeling better!"

/me returns to debugging a 6502 single-board...

Version 5 of the Endless OS enters testing

Re: Looks like Windows 11

I do wonder about the possibility (probability?) that I (and others) like the early windows generic interface - menus, taskbar, heirarchical start menu - only because that's what we learned first.

I'm a Linux user, but prefer Mint/Cinnamon over any of the others I've tried (many, over the years, but by no means all) largely because it still maintains that simple and (to me) obvious user interface. I use Windows 10 at work, and can live with it, but I wouldn't choose it as a UI - it works for others, but not for me. Personal choice - but likely driven by early experience as well as forty year's muscle memory.

(And it can be the tiniest things, most easily changed, that cause the most irritation: I hated the XP default background screen because it reminded me of Tellytubbies. A silly thing, but nonetheless...)

So why insist that the limitations of one class of devices should apply to all devices?

AI-generated phishing emails just got much more convincing

An interesting thought... software classified as munitions. But hasn't that been done? I don't think it ended particularly well.

Well done!

Technology has now apparently rendered any communication other than the physically face-to-face implausible.

It shouldn't take much more work for an AI equipped with a dodgy biro to be able to convincingly fake a hand-written letter.

Space startup ABL emulates Virgin Orbit failure by crashing

Re: Do I need a hard hat now?

They just fall and forget to hit the ground.

Happy about his orbit --->

Re: Seems odd...

On a Radio 4 discussion yesterday concerning the Virgin loss, it was stated that the payload *had* to be insured to get flight permission. Though whether that was the carrier or the payload party that had to have the insurance was unclear, and it wasn't obvious whether that was a UK permission or general.

(Apropos of nothing: My late grandfather wrote a textbook "Riley on Consequential Loss", the last edition of which he was very pleased to include satellite losses. When he was born, powered flight was not yet a thing...)

I dunno... it's not like it's rocket science... oh, wait.

Better luck next time, guys.

Microsoft may be counting out $10 billion to inject into OpenAI

Re: The model would help users generate and edit their writing in emails and documents.

I don't see it so much now, but my niece, married with a child, still refers to the capital city of the Chaldees when she means 'your'.

The model would help users generate and edit their writing in emails and documents.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... is this intended as some sort of substitute for literacy? Some further extension of the automated crap it's already necessary to turn off all the time on MS Office products that keeps helpfully reminding you not to use the passive voice while you're[0] being sexist or racist or ableist or whatever today's fad is? Think of it as Clippy on steroids...

There is a possible use for it as the front end to a web search engine, where the GPT might be used to format a request into something the search engine understands, but somehow I feel (a) that the result will pass through the GPT as well, and (b) the results are still going to be predicated on which advertiser has the biggest budget and less on what you're actually searching for.

[0] As an aside: if these inference engines are trained on general internet traffic, does that mean we can say goodbye to the differences between their/there/they're, or your/you're, or other homonyms?

The balmy equator of Mars looks rich in opal-bound water

balmy summer equatorial weather

And to go with that, a side order of hose-pipe ban.

This is the end, Windows 7 and 8 friends: Microsoft drops support this week

" – plus they come with Windows 11 already installed."

And they were doing so well up to that part of the sentence.

Texts from your dog and brain-free astronomy: The best of the rest from CES

Re: Telescope with no viewfinder

If the sun ain't shining, my scope (cheap and cheerful, but it autolocates and then points and tracks itself) stays in the cellar.

Er, you know what I mean.

low-energy radar sensors embedded within the reader measure multiple variables

Do your balls hang low?

Can you swing'em to and fro?

Uncle Sam OKs vaccine that protects honeybees against hive-destroying bacterium

Re: So this vaccine is ..

I suspect the answer might simply be that too many bees are required to pollinate (say) an orchard than might be supportable by other local flowers for the rest of the year. A truckload of hives being carted around the country following the blooms is probably cheaper than growing a bee-food crop locally.

I've not seen this sort of service in the UK, but a quick search found Barry's Bees who charges just twenty-five quid per hive per season, which seems remarkable cheap for half an acre's enthusiasm: https://barrysbees.co.uk/pollination-contracts/

https://beefarmers.co.uk/working-with-other-sectors/contract-pollination also appear to offer the service... I learn something new every day!

Thanks, it's obvious now you point it out.

I suppose 'In the seventy-eleven hives in which we tried it, it had an effect in exty percent and eradicated the disease in another zippy percent. Here's the graphs, make your own decision' is a bit too sciencey for a press hand out.

Just one thought there: I'd much rather have seen something other than 'may' in that sentence. Don't they know? And if they don't, why are they doing it?

To be clear: This is _not_ an antivax post. I'm all in favour of vaccination; it's well tried and it works across populations. But that 'may' worries me... is this just academic cautiousness, or do they really not know if the vaccine is effective? And if they don't know, why not?

I'm not an apiarist, further than attending a couple of bee-keeping courses and knowing a handful of keepers, and nor am I a biologist, so I may be missing something entirely obvious... but can anyone clarify this? Maybe just a transcription error in the original report quoted in the article?

CES Worst in Show slams gummi gouging, money-wasting mugs, and other dubious kit

Why does anyone anywhere take a dietary supplement without medical supervision? How many hundreds of thousands of years have we just been eating stuff?

I can only assume that the same people who purchase these pointless products wash them down with a swig from their two hundred dollar coffee mugs.

AI conference and NYC's educators ban papers done by ChatGPT

Re: I recall a science fiction tale

I thank you! -->

I recall a science fiction tale

in which an AI generated (what else?) the works of Shakespeare, and led to a discussion about whether one takes arms against a 'sea of troubles' (Shakespeare's version) or a 'host of troubles' (Robot's version).

No particular point to make, just trying to recall the story.

Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional

Re: fratzonic chambered exhaust

No names, no pack drill...

But if you happened to be walking along the Strand at the back of Bush House one sunny afternoon in the early nineties, you might have been surprised by the fighter jet screaming along, complete with missiles and machine gun sounds.

At least, that's what it said on the sound effects recording...

I don't know *who* might have arranged the loudspeakers and several hundred watts of amplification, but it did scare the pigeons off for a couple of days.

Re: fratzonic chambered exhaust

Is there a register anywhere of completely pointless ideas?

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Re: Water and IT

Built a studio complex in Paris some years ago, and discovered the hard way that a cast iron sewage pipe made a vertical to horizontal right angle in our ceiling space.

When the foot of sewage was being cleared out we discovered the undeclared asbestos that had also to be removed.

Messy...

Re: Clarence?

Was he a friend of Gladly, the cross-eyed bear?

More pre-Musk Twitter 1.0 execs leave the building

Is there still time to buy some peanuts?

I don't like popcorn.

Rate of disruptive tech and science discoveries has slowed over the decades, claims study

Re: Way finder

I think the technical term is 'cornering the market'. They did the same for F1: In Germany there is now no way (absent techno-cheating) to watch a race except on Sky; you can't even watch it from the F1 company themselves..

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

affordably priced R1T starts at $73k,

Ah. Some new and unusual use of the word 'affordable' then. It seems an extreme price for a machine to keep the rain off while carrying the shopping home.

Microsoft chases Google with ChatGPT-powered Bing

What I'd like

Is a search engine that gives me what I asked for, perhaps with a side order of symonyms but definitely with the ability to block everything that does not include specified search terms in close proximity.

What I'll get is statistical guesswork and a slathering of the highest paying advertisers.

Citizen Coder? Happiness Concierge? Here come 2023's business cards

Re: But then there's the completely fictitious jobs which public figures like to mention......

Hmmm... forty-odd years ago I applied for a job with a major UK company which asked among other things: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? How about your parents? And how about their parents?

This was not a military company... twenty years later I actually found myself in the position in which it might have been important.

Re: Entity Naming Consultant

I was off by one, once. Or was it twice?

Patients wrongly told they've got cancer in SMS snafu

There's a difference between sending best wishes for what is largely a civic festival, and an implicit assumption that you believe in the same invisible sky faeries that they do. The latter is offensive to many; either because they believe in a different set of invisible sky faeries, or because they thing you do.

Re: Is this common?

I no longer live in the UK, but in the last twenty-five years with my local GP I *never* had a text message from them. It was always a phone call, and even an answerphone message merely asked me to contact them, sometimes 'urgently'.

Literally, look who's back: A comet that last swung by Earth 50,000 years ago

Re: A map of where to look would have been handy

Well it was a lovely night here last night, nice view of Mars very close to the moon, but I didn't know to look for this damn comet...

A map of where to look would have been handy

So here's one: https://theskylive.com/c2022e3-info

Of course, it's raining...

NASA boss says US may lose latest space race with China

Where does 'outer space' start?

The Karman line? Geostationary orbit? The Oort cloud?

Is the moon actually *in* outer space?

Intel: Please buy these new 13th-Gen CPUs, now with 24 cores

The numbering used to be easy

8080, 8080A, 8085...

'Multiple security breaches' shut down trucker protest

Re: Superspreader? Give me a break.

Do the Canadians have seatbelt laws?

Elon Musk's cost-cutting campaign at Twitter extended to not paying rent, claims landlord

How do billionaires get rich? With other people's money...

For every self-made billionaire, there's a billion people shy a buck.

Riding in Sidecar: How to get a Psion online in 2023

Re: As an aside...

Oh yes, couldn't agree more. The move to using cheap processors to replace dedicated hardware is an obvious one that's been going on for decades: you can get an ARM chip for a cent and a half in bulk.

And I've just designed an EEPROM programmer so I can program a 6502 SBC using, er, an STM Nucleo dev board, cost about a tenner[0]. It's fast enough on its own to replace the ROM and RAM in the 6502 system, and in some versions fast enough to replace the processor as well... but where's the fun in that?

[0] About the same price as I paid for my first memory expansion chips, 4 bit by 256...